Jeffrey Sackett. Blood of the Impaler (Bantam, 1989) In this vampire novel, Sackett explores the ramifications of a fascinating premise: Dracula was not fiction, and the Blood of the Impaler never dies.

Malcolm Harker is the grandson of that Quincy Harker whose "bundle of names links all our little band of men together." And just when he has found the perfect girl to spend his life with, his inheritance begins catching up with him. Suddenly he finds himself oversensitive to sunlight -- and consecrated wine. It seems that in a sense Jonathan Harker was not Quincy's only father, for his mother's blood had been tainted by that of Dracula, blood that survives the passing of generations. Understandably, Malcolm has no desire to combat this taint by living a life of pious isolation. Convinced that there must be some way of cleansing himself of his inherited curse, he goes vampire-hunting. Not just any vampire will do. He raises Lucy Westenra herself, and she directs him to Dracula's ashes. The memories in Malcolm's veins direct him as well, toward an end his blood relative carefully prevents him from foreseeing. . . .

It's strange to see Stoker's familiar characters with their "real" names (which Stoker changed in his work of "fiction"); until you get used to it, it's even stranger to see Dracula used as a vampire-hunting Bible. And Bible is a significant word here, for while Dracula's blood has power to raise his former antagonists from the dead -- as vampires! -- Christian paraphernalia and beliefs have powers still more astonishing. These powers would not have been astonishing to the principals of Dracula, of course, good Christians that they were. But this isn't a sanctimonious novel, and there are delightful touches. Undeath has sharpened Lucy's wit as well as her teeth, and Malcolm Harker's friend Jerry asks some questions that -- well --

        "Remember that night in the cemetery?  They took
        the form of fog, right, like the book says they can,
        right?  So when they took human form again, where did
        they get their clothes?"

        Malcolm gave him an angry glance.  "Jer, you wonder
        about the damnedest things!"

        "Do their clothes turn into fog, too?  Do they,
        I don't know, knit clothes out of fog or something?"

        "You can't look for logic in stuff like this,"
        Malcolm said....