Only when they figured out that the person they wanted to turn had to be on the verge of death and ingest vampire blood at that point, did they meet with success. After they turned the first prisoner into a vampire by using the Czech vampire’s blood, they made sure to keep him weak and deprived him of human blood so he would be easily subdued.

Zacharias was in the cell next to the Czech vampire, and during the times when Müller and his colleagues weren’t in the hospital barracks, and only a few guards were in attendance, they often whispered to each other. During those hushed conversations, Zacharias learned what he could from the vampire.

“Our kind is capable of mind control,” he said one night.

“Mind control?” Zacharias wasn’t sure he’d translated correctly.

“Yes, I can send my thoughts to others to make them do what I want.”

“But then why don’t you tell them to release you?”

A tired smile crossed the vampire’s lips. “I was too starved and weak when they captured me, and even now, they’re keeping me too weak to have enough strength for the task. I need more human blood.”

Zacharias immediately reacted by moving away from the bars that separated them. “No,” he whispered to himself. It was a ploy. If he allowed the vampire to feed off him, he’d grow too weak and die himself. And then who would save Rachel?

“Give me your blood and I’ll help you escape.”

Zacharias shook his head, too scared to believe the man. “You’ll kill us all.”

In retrospect, it was a mistake to deny the vampire. He could have saved them all, had Zacharias not doubted his words.

In March of 1945, a month before the camp was liberated by Patton's approaching army, Müller turned both Zacharias and Rachel into vampires to study the effects on both male and female of the species. Rachel endured the most horrible experiments: they amputated fingers and toes only to watch them re-grow during her restorative sleep. While the pain would eventually subside, Zacharias recognized that his sister’s mind was going; the mutilations and the on-and-off deprivation of blood took their toll on her mind and drove her mad. Her eyes had an emptiness to them that made Zacharias despair.

His own turning had been painful, but what was worse was the constant hunger for blood he experienced right after the turning. He’d thought the hunger he’d lived through in the first two years at the camp had been excruciating, but there were no words to describe the horrendous cravings his body went through, or the shame that came with it. He was an animal now, no longer the sophisticated son of a lawyer who wrote poetry and loved music. No longer the man whose name was once Zacharias Abraham Noah Eisenberg, but only a shell of it, a shell that no longer deserved that name. All that was left of his humanity was a fraction of what he’d once been: Z.A.N.E.

But if he’d thought he’d been through the worst, he was wrong.

One night, he overheard the guards saying that the camp was being partially evacuated and that the hospital and all its inmates were to be destroyed so the approaching allies would find no evidence of the research Müller was conducting. Desperate to save both himself and his sister, he asked the Czech vampire for help.

“Now you come to me,” the other vampire said weakly. “Too late now. We’re too weak. We both need blood.”

“Tell me what to do.” His survival instinct was still strong, and Rachel was suffering.

He stared into the hollow eyes of his cellmate.

“They drained me and bottled my blood. I think they’ll use it later to create more vampires. You want to escape? The silver will prevent it. And mind control is a skill that takes lots of energy.”

Z.A.N.E. shook his head. He couldn’t give up. Rachel depended on him. “Teach me. Tell me everything you know.”

“Remember the day they captured me?”

He nodded.

“You told me then you’re sorry. Your words gave me strength, and had one of them not worn a silver necklace, I would have escaped that night. I owe you for that.” He closed his eyes briefly, before continuing, his voice getting weaker by the minute. “Now listen, my friend, I don’t have much time left, but you can perhaps make it. A vampire’s blood is potent. They may be depriving you of human blood to keep you weak and easily controlled, but if you drain the last of mine, there is a chance you can garner sufficient strength to use mind control on the weakest of the guards to make him untie you. Once he loosens your silver chains you’ll have to drain him. Do it quickly. It’ll heal your body and strengthen you.”