Blade, on the trail
of the vampire who killed his mother, confronts vampire PI Hannibal King in a
darkened apartment. The hotheaded Blade immediately tries to kill King who
knocks him around to get him to listen. King explains he is also pursuing
Deacon Frost, the vampire who turned him, and suggests they team up. Blade is
reluctant until King turns on the lights to show him a body on the floor,
victim of a vampire; Blade is still reluctant but agrees to work with King….
Meanwhile, as Doctor Strange
and Wong depart from the mansion of Doctor Sun, leaving the dead
Dracula behind, the vampire lord resumes his human form, having hypnotized
Strange into believing he had died. Dracula returns to the deconsecrated church
he discovered in DOCTOR STRANGE #14 and plans to use it for his latest scheme:
to start his own religion and conquer the world though deception. His one
problem is that some mysterious force prevents him from removing the huge
portrait of Jesus Christ that hangs there and decides he must live with it….
Dracula seeks out
Harold H. Harold and asks for the name and address of the local Satanists. He
chooses and old woman to feed upon but she remembers the vampire from when she
was a child and refuses to be afraid of him, leaving Dracula angry and
frustrated. Quincy Harker, Rachel van Helsing, and Frank Drake spot Dracula flying
by; the latter two go out to eat and Rachel tells Frank that she doesn’t like
the guy he has turned into; he tells her he loves her. Aww.
At a meeting in
Cambridge of the Church of the Damned, a woman named Domini is being prepared
to become the bride of Satan. Cult leader Anton Lupeski has her hanged on an
upside-down cross, doused in the Sacred Oils and set ablaze. Dracula arrives to
claim Lupeski and he is taken to be Satan coming for his bride. The flames are
put out and Domini is found unharmed. Dracula decides on a change of plans and
accepts her as his bride, allowing himself to be hailed as the devil and
announcing the marriage of Dracula will take place in three days before
departing….
Blade and Hannibal
King watch as the dead man on the floor rises as a vampire and they question
him about Deacon Frost; he tells them that Frost hired him to unearth a coffin
and repaid him by taking his blood. The man tells them what was in the coffin:
and exact duplicate of Blade….