Blood Summer Series / Louise Cooper

Marion and Roland, two students on a camping holiday in Cornwall, meet the mysterious Keith Sharwood while looking for a campsite. Sharwood is a strange man who looks like “a half-finished painting by an artist with an obsession with death”. Marion soon falls under his spell, and when the couple are invited to Sharwood’s house party, her attraction to him intensifies. Sharwood shows Marion a unique gold statue in the shape of a hermaphrodite with the head of a bird of prey entwined with two giant snakes – a four thousand year old statue from the ancient city of Ninevah.

It’s not long before Sharwood is sleeping with Marion and poor, unsuspecting Roland gets the boot. Shortly after choosing Sharwood, she discovers his secret – that he is a vampire who has just killed Roland, and she finds Sharwood still covered in his blood.