"The Baron Olshevri’s Story from the Family Chronicle of the Counts Dracula-Card" — with that subtitle, the first version of the novel “Vampires” was published in 1812. Riding on the success of Stoker’s “Dracula,” many authors tried to write a Gothic novel about the “children of the night,” so that blood would run cold in readers’ veins. But to be honest, few managed it. And then this book appears. Even now it hasn’t been established who hid behind the pseudonym “Baron Olshevri”—the most varied theories were proposed, from the illegitimate son of an emperor to a Moscow merchant’s wife who traded tea. The truth is still shrouded in darkness. And even within the book itself there are plenty of mysteries. The novel tells of new heirs of the world-famous count, who operate with impunity in the dark—almost primordial—Transylvania of those times. A story that has twisted many lives. A story that reached descendants only through scattered letters and notes in the margins of diaries…