Dracula Lives #2 (1973)

1459: It is three years into the reign of Count Dracula, Prince of Transylvania, and Dracula is leading his army against the invading Turkish hordes led by the merciless Turac. It is a battle that Dracula and his armies fight valiantly, but lose, Dracula himself is mortally wounded in battle. Before one of Turac's troops can slay him on the battlefield, Turac -- recognizing Dracula as the tyrannical ruler of Transylvania who has a reputation as Vlad the Impaler, a cruel man who slays men, women and children despite the fact that he has a loving family all his own -- stays his soldier's killing blow. Turac surmises that Dracula's reputation of evil cruelty would do them more good with Dracula alive and in their control than dead. One of Turac's soldiers recommend they take Dracula to a gypsy woman named Lianda who is known for her ability to heal even the most gravely wounded individuals. Dracula is taken there and Lianda agrees to revive Dracula and tells Turac and his men to leave her to her work and tells them to return the next evening. Left alone, Lianda mocks Dracula over his "friends" paying so much to revive him, decides that she will do their bidding but also in a means to pay Dracula back for all the years that he has given her people grief. Lianda is really a vampire, and she bites Dracula feeding upon him, knowing that her hated foe will be revived as a vampire. After she is finished feeding, Lianda is interrupted by Turac who demands to see results before he gives her payment. When she tells him to come back the next day he refuses and she attacks him. Turac impales Lianda through the heart with a wooden spear killing her. Believing that the woman had done her job he takes the weakened Dracula away laughing at how he got what he wanted without paying the old gypsy. Dracula revives sometime later to find himself locked in his own dungeon where Turac mocks him by bringing Dracula his wife and son, Vlad. Turac threatens to harm both of them unless Dracula agrees to pledge his loyalty to the Turkish monarch who wishes control of the land. Dracula initially refuses to bow down to his enemies, however, he buckles when Turac threatens to kill his wife, Maria. Turac leaves Dracula alone briefly with his wife and child, and Maria tells Dracula that while he was unconscious, Turac and his men had raped her before his unconscious body and begs for Dracula's forgiveness. Hearing this Turac reenters the room and furiously demands that Maria go to "his" bedchambers. Refusing to be raped once more, Maria tries to get away from Turac, however, in the scuffle she trips and strikes her head against the dungeon walls, the blow strong enough to kill her. In a rage of fury over his wife's death, Dracula breaks free of his bonds and kills Truac's guard and then easily overpowers Truac himself. Realizing that he has been turned into a vampire, Dracula then feeds upon his enemy, draining him of all his blood. When Turac's guards come to see what the commotion is all about they are put under Dracula's hypnotic spell and killed. After all of Turac's men have been destroyed, Dracula then takes his son and dead wife's corpse in his bat form. For young Vlad, Dracula leaves the boy with some gypsy's to care for, while he puts his wife's corpse to rest. After in the Transylvanian wilderness, stripped of all his clothes, Dracula swears to his late wife that all the world shall pay for her death, and it is such that the scourge of Dracula the vampire begins....