The Order of the Dragon, an elitist order more akin to a secret society or gentleman’s club than a sacred order, met only twice a year.  However, Mikhail loathed the lavish dinner parties and late councils, but mandatory attendance was enforced.  The urbane mannered members one might associate with a sacred order, were conspicuously absent for these obligatory conclaves.  And supposedly, vampires were superior and more civilized than the humans!

This was why Mikhail found the primary debate issue for this assembly, hunting humans openly, reckless and insane.  He argued that the order of vampires survived these generations by remaining in the shadows.   Unfortunately, his argument fell on deaf ears.  The ancient vampires thirsted for the masses of human blood they recklessly sought a millennium ago, no longer wishing to survive on the blood of mere cattle and the like.  These ancient minor characters remind the reader of the old style vicious vamps of vampiric horrors.  The more civilized vamps represented a new generation that preferred to blend with modern society, and the clash with the ancient was invigorating.  The mere debate of the vampires promised to put the primary vampires at odds.  The argument:  not only were there segments of society that modeled themselves after the legends of vampires, but some vampires believed there existed a segment of the population whose disappearance would draw little if any attention if they should one day disappear.

But Mikhail warned, if innocents suddenly began to fall as prey, the Order of the Dragon would be found out.  Yet, it was decided that the experiment would continue and that Mikhail, himself, would be responsible to carry it out, not because he was in favor, but because he possessed more control and could be trusted not to let chaos ensue.  And to aid Mikhail, his friend Marcos chose the prey, Lauryn O’Brien, who made the fateful mistake of walking into the antique shop of the vampiric duel. 

The problem was Mikhail fell in love, at first sight, with the one human he was meant to kill and to make matters worse; she was not a mere human. Yet somehow, Lauryn and Mikhail managed to begin a passionate affair, but vampires will be vampires.  One antagonistic character is a devilishly rogue vamp that took matters into his own hands and made a mess of things… literally.  Will Mikhail and Lauryn’s love endure or will misplaced fear, lack of trust and Mikhail’s allegiance to the order end it before it has a chance to flourish?  These two characters posses just the enough chemistry and lust, yet each feels a foreboding as if their relationship is somehow forbidden, for Lauryn it’s more instinctual.  Dyana Lunaris’s short fiction, The Order of the Dragon, is an enthralling, skillfully written, novelette with a splendid twist that vampiric fans will ardor.