A drought in Andalusia.
A village rises from the water.
A crypt that should have stayed drowned.
A coffin smuggled out of the Black Sea in 1807.
And a bloodline that was waiting for him.
Deliver Us from Evil
Unpublished · a vampire saga in two centuries
The story
A drought drains a reservoir above Marbella and uncovers a drowned village. In its flooded crypt, a vampire who has slept since the Napoleonic Wars wakes hungry, and the only man who can see him for what he is never knew whose blood runs in his veins.
In a drought-hit August, two Danish tourists canoe into the ruins of a village exposed by the falling waters of La Concepción reservoir, high above Marbella. In the flooded crypt beneath its church, they wake something starving. It has forgotten its name. It has not forgotten its hunger.
On the same storm night, on Anglesey, a glowing mist pours from a sealed tomb in the grounds of a ruined mansion. In Marbella, a retired Welsh shopkeeper collapses with visions of the dead, and in North Wales his son, an ex-soldier who rides with the Hells Angels, feels his senses sharpen. Neither knows what they are.
As the creature builds a following among the villas, clubs and superyachts of the Costa del Sol, the Church of England sends its quietest department: the Deliverance Ministry. And two hundred years earlier, a Royal Navy captain from Anglesey is ordered to collect a man-sized crate from a Black Sea beach, and never to open it.
The world
Where it happens
- 01
The Costa del Sol
A drowned village in the mountains above Marbella, and the glamour of Puerto Banús below.
- 02
Photo: Philip Maxwell
Beaumaris, Anglesey
The ruins of a great house, and a tomb in the woods that was sealed for a reason.
- 03
The Black Sea, 1807
A night landing behind enemy lines, a coffin, and a priest who will not stop praying over it.
- 04
Photo: Hernán Piñera, CC BY-SA 2.0
Puerto Banús
Villas, nightclubs and superyachts: the perfect hunting ground.
- 05
Gibraltar
Where it all must end, deep inside the Rock.
The characters
Who you’ll meet
Chris Bennett
An ex-Army veteran and Hells Angel who has never fitted anywhere, until his blood gives him a calling.
Dr the Rev. Susanna Moreton
An Oxford priest, scholar of witchcraft and would-be Olympic gymnast, who studies the supernatural without believing in it.
Thaddeus Chase
An eccentric exorcist of the Deliverance Ministry, with tinted glasses, a straw trilby and a sword in his umbrella.
Gareth Bennett
Chris’s father: a retired shopkeeper with a bad heart, and the first to see the creature for what it is.
Captain Richard Bulkeley
Heir to an Anglesey estate and captain of HMS Raquel, ordered to carry a cargo he must never see.
The Count
Charming, ruthless and two centuries out of time, learning the modern world one victim at a time.
The manuscript
Unpublished, and unseen
- Complete novel
- About 92,000 words
- Not yet published
- First-look rights available
Chapter One · The Black Sea, February 1807
The swirling sea mists curled around the two long boats like dancing wraiths, long twisting wisps contrasted against the deep gloom of the night. Each oar stroke took them further from their ship, until a single pin prick of lantern light was the only indication of HMS Raquel’s presence in the murk. The long boats slipped towards the shore, the mist swirling around and enveloping the crew. Every few yards the curtains of grey haze would part revealing a copper-red full moon: an ancient portent of impending ill-fortune.
The sea itself was still, the silence broken only by the rhythmic slosh of muffled oars dipped in and out in unison. A trail of froth on the inky blue surface trailed in their wake. From the fog shrouded shore ahead of them, the screech of a bird penetrated the stillness and echoed across the bay.
The truth behind the fiction
Real history, real legend
Drowned villages
Droughts across Spain have repeatedly exposed villages flooded for reservoirs in the twentieth century, their church towers rising from the mud. Wales has its own: Capel Celyn, drowned in 1965.
Osman Pazvantoğlu
A rebel Ottoman pasha who ruled Vidin, on the Danube, as his own kingdom and defied the Sultan for years. He died in 1807.
The Dardanelles, 1807
In February 1807 Admiral Duckworth forced a British squadron through the Dardanelles towards Constantinople, under fire from the Ottoman forts, in a little-remembered episode of the Napoleonic Wars.
The Knights of St John
Napoleon seized Malta from the Knights in 1798. Tsar Paul I of Russia took the scattered Order under his protection and was even elected its Grand Master.
The Deliverance Ministry
Every Church of England diocese has a deliverance adviser, trained to deal with reports of hauntings, possession and the occult. Few people know it exists.
Baron Hill
For centuries the Bulkeley family ruled Beaumaris from Baron Hill. The great house was abandoned in the twentieth century and survives as an overgrown ruin in the woods above the town.
For the screen
Why it works on television
Two timelines
A Napoleonic naval adventure in 1807 and a modern horror on the Costa del Sol, cut together. Period spectacle and contemporary thrills in the same hour.
Locations that pay their way
Andalusia, Gibraltar and North Wales: sun, sea and ruined grandeur, with Spanish and Welsh production incentives behind them.
A real-world hook
The Church of England really does have a Deliverance Ministry for hauntings and possession. Few viewers know it exists, and it gives the supernatural a believable, institutional face.
For producers
Film and television rights available
Returning drama · 2 seasons × 8 × 60. Interview with the Vampire meets Master and Commander, with the Church-versus-darkness of Evil.
Request the pitch pack