The vampire Lyrica awakens from her slumber in the Thornhill tomb and returns to her family’s long-abandoned mansion on top of the hill. But the world she re-enters is soon whispering of a vampire stalking the old Victorian cemetery, drawing journalists, occultists and hunters to its gates.
To divert suspicion from the real vampire hiding in plain sight, Lyrica sets a plan in motion. Summoning the spirit of her murdered uncle, Lord Algernon Thornhill, she orchestrates a haunting convincing enough to satisfy the living.
But neither the living nor the dead are easily controlled.
As the vampire panic grows and a large-scale hunt prepares to descend on Highgate, Lyrica finds herself contending with restless spirits, mysteriously appearing dead foxes, the return of an old family nemesis… and the guilt of leaving her cousin Venedict sealed inside a chain-wrapped casket beneath the mansion.
Fanged Panic is a Gothic vampire novella set in the world of The Thornhill Vampire Chronicles by Lucius Valiant.
The first book Lucius Valiant truly remembers reading is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And that, as the saying goes, was that. There would be no turning back.
Lucius’s literary inspirations include Gothic classics such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, alongside horror, supernatural, and speculative fiction by writers including Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, and Stephen King. He also draws heavily on Britain’s rich history, folklore, and legends.
These influences shine through his writing like glittering dark fairy dust, in stories readers have described as vivid, visceral, and cinematic, with a sprinkling of wry humour.
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