A World of Vampires: Peuchen

These illustrations are part of a series of commissions I've been doing for a friend of mine. She discovered that every culture in the world has some sort of Vampire-creature legend, telling of beings or spirits who suck the blood or life energy of the living. So, she decided to write a series of novellas, each one featuring a different culture's vampire in a different location around the world.

This story features the peuchen, a creature from Chilean folklore, and takes place in a Machi village in the 1500s, when Spanish colonists began to infiltrate the area for colonization. A young shamaness in training accepts a partnership with the spirit in order to drive the aggressors away.