Victoria Abdullah is the name, and I'm a Vampire living in the City of Ottawa, province of Ontario. I was born in the Baalbek region of Lebanon in 1690, and became a Vampire in 1720. I stand five feet nine inches tall, curvy, with long black hair, light bronze skin and pale brown eyes. I don't look a day over thirty. Arab, female and one of the Undead, definitely not something you hear about every bloody day, that's for sure. After walking the planet earth for 323 years, I find that I can still be surprised, both at myself and others. I've lived in many places over the course of the centuries, from my beloved Lebanon to Syria, from Sudan to Ethiopia, and from Britain to the Caribbean island of Haiti, where I broke my most sacred rule and transformed a trusted friend into one of my own kind. A decision I've regretted ever since.
I met Leonard Saint-Preux in the year 1799, back when the island of Saint Domingue was plagued with war as French colonial forces struggled against an uprising of African slaves led by Black soldiers trained by the French forces themselves. Stalwart Black heroes like Toussaint Louverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines along with Alexandre Petion were leading the fight of the Black population to end slavery. I too had been brought to the island of Saint Domingue against my will. A wealthy French plantation owner named Guillaume Armand captured me in the streets of Paris, France, and brought me to the Caribbean to experiment on me in the hopes of discovering the key to immortality. He experimented on me, torturing me for years and bringing me to the edge of death and the brink of madness.
The old Frenchman wanted to become immortal, but he knew that I'd never turn him into one of my own willingly because I had sworn centuries ago that I would never turn any human being into one of the undead. I became a Vampire against my will the night a Vampire overlord named Elias Fouad, who had been roaming the vastness of Lebanon since the time of the Crusades, transformed me after feeding on me. I swore two things to myself the night I became a Vampire. I would destroy Elias Fouad, and I would never turn anyone into what I had become. In today's pop culture universe, people seem fascinated with Vampires. They think we're cool. They're so wrong about Vampire life it's not even funny. Sometimes I wonder where they get their information from. There's nothing happy, glamorous or cool about being a Vampire. Being one of the undead is like being a walking disease, and the only way you survive is by corrupting and destroying all life around you. A virus on two legs, that's what a Vampire is. People don't think the flu is cool, yet they idolize us Vampires because they don't know the truth of what we are. I for one will gladly enlighten you mortals.
Anyhow, for ten years I was kept in the secret underground chamber deep below the Armand plantation in the northern town of Cap Francais, which would later be renamed Cap-Haitien by the African insurgents once they drove the French colonists from the island of Saint Domingue. My captor kept me alive by feeding me animal blood because he knew that human blood would strengthen me to the point where I'd be able to break the adamantine chains he used to bind me. And he wouldn't have any of that, of course. One night, a group of former slaves attacked the various plantations of the area, led by a stalwart young Black soldier named Leonard Saint-Preux, the right-hand man of legendary insurgent hero Toussaint Louverture himself.
