Giving Dracula diplomatic immunity seems like a dangerous thing…but it would go a long way towards keeping cops from hunting him down whenever he hunts in London!
Dracula returns to London where he meets Lord Henry, a Parliamentary minister who is under the Count`s vampiric control. Lord Henry has arranged diplomatic immunity for Dracula and a place to reside - Castle Dunwick, sixteen miles from London, but currently occupied by one Shiela Whittier...
Elsewhere, a restless spirit rises from a thirty-year old grave, it is drawn towards a farmhouse where a fatal domestic argument has taken place - an angry father has accidentally killed his daughter`s husband. The spirit enters the daughter`s body and she is transformed into Lilith! She promptly kills the father and, changing into a bat, flies to London to search out her original slayer - Quincy Harker!
In Harker Estate, Taj is preparing to leave to a mystery destination. Downstairs, the doorbell rings, and Quincy answers to a distressed girl who, once inside, transforms into Lilith. The vampire bites into Quincy`s throat and leaving him sprawled on the floor, departs into the misty night as a bat...
Dracula has arrived at the gothic sprawl of Castle Dunwick and laughs. In one of the bedrooms, Shiela Whittier awakens, and slips a nightgown on, over her back, covered in angry welts. she opens the door to be confronted by Dracula!
Meanwhile, the sinister but alluring Lilith has entered a tavern, and is proving an attraction to some of the local lads. One admirer approaches her, and they both leave for the man`s flat. Once there, however, Lilith kills him and departs once more, as a bat through the open window...
At Castle Dunwick, Shiela Whittier appeals to Dracula to end her torment, the Lord of Vampires soon realises she has mistaken him for someone else. She confides in him, telling Dracula that over the last couple of months she has been tormented by an unseen vengeful spirit...
Showing a rare soft side, Dracula tells Shiela he must leave for her own safety. Outside he spots a bat, and recognises it as Lilith. Dracula transforms into bat-form and flys to intercept her...
Father and daughter fly over a football stadium and fly down to one of the terraces to talk...Dracula is cold and tells Lilith straight that he has no interest in her or her welfare. He is bitter about his one year marriage to Lilith`s mother - five hundred years ago:
Dracula had been forced into a marriage by his father, for court purposes. He had no love for his wife and despised their infant child. Following the death of his father, the Count expelled her and their daughter from their home. Devastated, the wife gave the infant daughter into the care of a gypsy woman and then killed herself by thrusting a dagger into her broken heart.
Dracula was himself turned into a vampire by a gypsy and he took his vengeance out on these people with a killing spree. However, one of the gypsies killed was the son of the woman taking care of Dracula`s child. In revenge she cursed the young girl - to become a vampire invunerable from the effects of cross or daylight. And to hold a hatred for her father, Dracula, to be an eternal thorn in his side - to become Lilith!
Lilith proposes a truce and an alliance with her father, to become `lords of the undead`. Dracula flatly refuses and departs from his angry and rejected daughter.
In Castle Dunwick, Shiela Whittier is once more being haunted by unseen horrors. She runs and in her terror, tumbles over the balcony - to fall into the arms of Count Dracula who has just returned. He wants Shiela as his aide and tells her he will deal with her tormentor...
As the vampire rushes up the stairwell, a figure steps out thrusting a wooden stake. It is Lord Henry, who has somehow shrugged off Dracula`s influence over him. The torn cabinet minister draws a pistol and shoots himself, dead. Dracula sees the mystery is solved - it was Lord Henry hiding in the castle that haunted Shiela Whittier and not some ghostly presence...
But somewhere, somehow demonic laughter echoes through the castle....
Note: This issue features the first appearance of Lilith, daughter of Dracula
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