On The Shores of Albion

Aboard the deck of HMS Albion in Plymouth, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was giving a speech on the need to keep British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Said Blair, "The War on Terror cannot be won by military force alone but it cannot be won without it."

Sitting in the audience next to Labour party bigwigs was the billionaire ancient Egyptian vampire Set.

Japanese vampire huntress Moritaka Hayasawa watched him out of the corner of her eye.

Sitting there and looking radiantly beautiful in a long black evening dress and beautiful pearl necklace, those of the Labour party faithful sitting around her gazed at her and not Blair.

"War on terror," Moritaka Hayasawa thought to herself, "and there sitting in the audience is one of the world's greatest vampiric expressions of terror."

It had been quite a day. In London, she had been receiving reports of Buddhist groups in the city worshipping some golden serpent figure who came strolling into the city's Buddhist temples.

The Buddhists would bow before the serpent and then the serpent would turn into a man saying, "I am the Maitreya."

And members of London's Shi'ite Muslim community were eagerly talking of the springtime arrival of Islam's messianic style figure- the Imam Mahdi.

It appeared that the worlds of vampires, demons and geopolitics were about to merge head-on.

No wonder Gregorio Palamas the President of the International Federation of Vampire Hunters wanted her to speak to the man who was both a vampire hunter and a cutting edge geopolitical analyst... Dracul Van Helsing.

Her cell phone started flashing.

She picked it up.

It was an e-mail from home.

A tsunami warning for the Pacific region after a major earthquake had just struck her homeland.



Japanese vampire huntress Moritaka Hayasawa (third from left, first from right) in happier times
Prior to geopolitical and literal earthquakes and vampiric and oceanic tsunamis