Timothy Swiney

The Brazen Serpent Timothy Swiney

Two years after the car accident that killed his wife and seven year old son, police officer Jesup Beal remains tormented by sorrow and unable to heal from the tragedy. He feels his family's presence all around him as if they were still alive and only away for the moment. His son's bedroom is kept like a museum, the toys in perfect order, the clothes neatly folded; everything as it was the day of the accident, waiting for his son to return home. Time has not healed Jesup's grief, rather it has intensified it. Each night, Jesup sits alone in his empty apartment grieving. He holds his pistol in his mouth, and squeezes the trigger little by little, testing how much pressure the gun can take without firing. Each night, he gets closer and closer to the trigger's limit, but he cannot bring himself fire. Rather than taking his own life, Jesup instead offers himself up to fate. He walks the dark and dangerous streets of a city caught in the grips of a prolific serial killer. Unarmed and defenseless, Jesup taunts destiny, daring it to do what he cannot do himself ... pull the trigger. When fate finally brings Jesup face to face with death, it is not the peaceful release he had sought. Instead, the death he encounters is something much more sinister. He is bitten by a vampire and cursed to be resurrected as one of the living dead Condemned to remain in this world with his grief and forever separated from the family he loved. His only hope for redemption is the Brazen Serpent, an ancient religious relic believed to heal the vampire bite.