Bloodline

Cary, Kate. 2005. Bloodline.

Set in France, England, and Romania during World War I, Bloodline is the story of four young people: the brother and sister team of John and Lily Shaw; Mary Seward, a young nurse who falls in love with John; and Colonel Quincey Harker, John's Commanding Officer and Lily's love interest. The story is told through diary/journal entries and/or letters of all the characters involved. When John arrives at the front and meets his new Commanding Officer, he has little idea what torments await him in the following weeks. It is more than the war. It is the horror of watching the twisted cruelty of humanity. John gets the feeling that there is something not quite right about Colonel Harker. He's mysterious. He's dangerous. He seems to have superhuman strength and an uncanny ability to return always unscathed from his nighttime raids and skirmishes. Witnessing a few scenes AND being injured, he ends up returning to England and becoming a patient in a sanatorium delirious with trench fever. His ravings and mumblings convince doctors he's mad--crazy, delirious. But what no one suspects is that his nightmares are rooted in truth--a dangerous, horrifying truth. Mary is the only one who senses there may be something to his suspicions about Colonel Harker. She's the only one who distrusts him when he comes to visit...and when he moves into the Shaw household. Is there really something dark and sinister lurking beneath his charming, charismatic persona? Will Harker endanger them all?

This war is as bad for the mind as it is for the boy. In the fog of combat, we aren't always able to see things for what they really are. (26)

My dear daughter, I fear an old enemy has returned. An enemy my friends and I had hoped our children would never know. He turned to John. "My boy," he said, "I do not believe your testimony of Quincey Harker's demonic activities is that of a fevered mind. For I have encountered such behavior before. From what you have told me, I believe Quincey Harker must be descended from the same evil, parasitic presence I helped remove from the world thirty-five years ago. One Count Dracula... (151)