2002 horror, tenth and last in Saberhagen's loose Dracula series.
Dickon, a cowardly ancient vampire, brings a friend to visit Dracula
(still living in Chicago as "Matthew Maule"); in the morning, the
friend is dead and Dickon has vanished. But what does this all have to
do with alchemy and ancient Egypt?
This story happens almost entirely in the modern day, with only
very slight historical flashbacks. But mostly it's an exercise in
juggling many characters and factions, starting with Dracula and his
allies (descendants of Mina Harker), and particularly Andy, the son of
Joe Keogh and Kate Southerland whom we first met in 1979's An Old
Friend of the Family. (And to give this series credit, its chronology
has kept pace with the real world; indeed, Dracula here briefly
contemplates his continuing efforts to keep up with a society that's
changing round him.)
Then there's a being claiming, with some plausibility, to be Sobek the
crocofile god, and a group of less-civilised vampires than Dracula,
and Dickon is still out there somewhere… all right, there's also the
recurring theme of bringing in new people to the secret that there
really are vampires, but a demonstration in person works rather better
than the videotape of the previous book.
As for the plot, it's basically "The Six Napoleons": the MacGuffin was
hidden in one of a set of identical statues thousands of years ago,
and for unclear reasons everyone's started looking for them at once.
There are some interesting twists, where a lesser author would have
had six acts tracking down one statue at a time; indeed, this is at
the core much more a story of characters, how someone reacts to
learning that his beloved "uncle" is a blood-drinking monster, of how
humans and vampires cooperate to make the most of their various skills
and resources, than it is of tracking down items or having big fights.
The solutiono to the whole business is daring, but very much in
keeping with what has gone before.
This is not a definitive end to the series, though Saberhagen died
before writing another. It's also to my mind not a high point, though
it does a decent job; if you've enjoyed the previous nine, you might
as well keep going, but if you haven't got on with the others you
probably won't find anything more to your taste here.