Alex J. Webster

Return of the Dragon tells the terrifying tale of a mysterious vampire in 1950s Romania on an arduous trek to his castle in Transylvania. After learning scattered details of the vampire's journey through a string of letters and reports about terrifying incidents through the years, readers meet Gheorghe in the town of Oradea. In post-WWII Romania, the Soviet-backed secret police are using harsh tactics to impose communist ideals, and regular people like Gheorghe are forced to go along with their comrades to survive. After a string of child abductions occur, Gheorghe's scheming superior suspects that a group called the Order of the Dragon is trying to undermine the People's Republic, and he seizes the opportunity to ingratiate himself to his Russian overlords by nipping them in the bud. As Gheorghe investigates the mysterious disappearances further, he's drawn deeper and deeper into the chilling world of the "Master." With his gypsy blood allowing the powerful vampire to pressure him from one side and his arrogant boss pushing him to help further his agenda from the other, Gheorghe feels as if he's stuck in a vise that's closing in around him—and there's no escape! When, on October 4, 1897, a frail and undernourished Count De Ville is brought onboard a cargo ship bound for Varna, little does the ship's crew know the nightmare that's in store for them. Return of the Dragon follows a trail of blood from the ill-fated decks of the Czarina Catherine to the town of Oradea in communist Romania, where a reluctant police officer named Gheorghe is just trying to keep his head down when his superior, Captain Codreanu, orders him to look into a string of child abductions. Gheorghe will find himself trapped between the opportunistic Codreanu, who's consumed with making his name by thwarting a royalist uprising of the reemerged Order of the Dragon, and the inexorable influence of the mystical vampire. Author Alex J. Webster lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and works in the health care industry. Return of the Dragon is his first book.