Fratelli: The Awakening (The Vampire Cartel #1)

Prologue

In 1918, a super hurricane ravaged the small town of Frenier and its neighboring parishes in southern Louisiana.

Cajuns, Blacks, Natives, and Sicilians all suffered devastating losses of life.

Most of the populace vanished, swallowed by the inexplicable savagery of tornado winds and rising tides that flooded every acre everywhere.

Only those who heeded the premonition of Julia Brown, a hoodoo priestess rumored to have died before the hurricane’s arrival, survived.

Since then, tales of hauntings have surrounded the waters of Manchac Swamp.

Locals whispered of seeing unmanned rowboats, their lanterns glowed eerily in the murky darkness, as the boat glided over the alligator-infested swamp waters and around swamp trees covered in Spanish moss.

They also spoke of the specter of Julia Brown herself, with four tiny white babes, traversing the marshes.

She was a guardian over her strange minion.

No one dared to enter Manchac without a holy man and a shotgun, and those who did emerged broken or insane.

Yet, the true genesis of this enduring nightmare became the vampiric curse thanks to a singular entity: Don Vittorio Di Salvo of Sicilia .