Awakened

Synopsis

The vampire Arabus Drake goes back into his past in 1503 Greece to observe what happened to his former mortal self with the hopes he can change this frightening consequence of mortal cowardice that led him into undeath. But he realizes he cannot change the one pivotal moment -- meeting Althea on the shores of Crete. Mikos is a cowardly boy, afraid of the stories of Vlad the Impaler. At age 11 he is taken from his family to become an Ottoman Turk soldier, as was the Muslim custom of taking the second son of every Christian family in Greece. Mikos befriends another young boy, Dimitri, who tells him that his family would have been killed if they had tried to stop the Turks from taking him. He vows to be Dimitri’s friend forever, a vow he would come to regret. The scenes with the mortal Mikos move rapidly to his inevitable murder at age 30. His fate is sealed when he meets the love of his life, Althea. As they attempt to escape the Janizary life, they are betrayed by Dimitri and killed. But while Althea’s spirit rises freely to the afterlife realm, Mikos is filled with anger. This anger allows the demons of the underworld to grab his essence and re-animate his corpse. Althea sees his fate and becomes trapped in the earthly plane as a ghost, to try and help him learn to control the demons. Mikos becomes a Greek vampire, and at first cannot understand why this ghostly apparition is following him around. He goes on a venge-filled killing spree, allowing the demons control. Once he gets his vengeance against those who’d killed him, he starts to hear Althea’s voice, but the thirst is overwhelming and innocent people begin to fall. One young girl gives him the name Arabus and Arabus for the first time tries to control his thirst. He comes to understand his need for acceptance by mortals, even as undead. When Althea inhabits the body of another gypsy, Arabus kills her family and they have the ultimate showdown. Arabus sees that she holds the spirit of Althea and makes her undead, too, but Althea leaves the corpse, forcing him to deal only with Kindra’s hate. After destroying Kindra, in a symbolic twist, he overcomes his recurring fear of bats by swatting one to the ground as he walks the road of an unknown future.