In every organization, there are those at the top and those at the bottom. I work for Jerome Magnus & Associates, the top criminal defense law firm in the City of Toronto, Ontario. And since I'm hanging out in a dark alley, standing over a dead body, and having to dispose of it as it's starting to snow, I guess you could say that I'm not one of the movers and shakers of the organization. I'm a garbage man. I clean up other people's messes. And I can't stand that shit. As a vampire, I can smell a lot of things, and the stench of death nauseates me to my core.
Before we go any further, the name is Yousef Chatah and I was born in 1790 in the region of Sana'a, Republic of Yemen. My father, Omar Chatah was a Yemeni scholar and preacher, and my mother, Fatima Mohamud, was a Somali tribal chieftain's daughter. A princess among her people. In my lifetime I've been many things. A thief and a scoundrel by necessity, a preacher, an assassin, a poet by avocation, an artist, and a wanderer due to the constraints of fate. I had lived a full, adventurous life long before I joined the ranks of the undead.
In 1812, I became a vampire, thanks to Abdul Fatimid, a legendary vampire who ruled the desert-dwelling undead in a vast realm stretching from the Yemeni desert to the depths of Somalia, all the way to the Ethiopian border. Fatimid had been alive since the time of the Crusades, and he was feared by mortal and immortal alike in that region. I attempted to steal from him one night, on the docks of the port of Aden, Somalia.
I should have known better than to attack the stocky, muscular older Arabian man I saw walking in the docks at midnight by himself. He carried himself with preternatural self-assurance. Yet, driven by despair, I sought to relieve him of the contents of his purse, for I had not eaten in several days. Fatimid proved to be more than a match for me, though I was a tall, large man. Even a physically powerful man like myself is no match for a vampire. Fatimid caught me, overpowered me and then, he fed upon me. Before he could dispatch me, as was his custom with scoundrels, I hurled myself into the Gulf of Aden's cold waters.
The currents carried me far from shore, and the vampire master leapt into the waters, searching for me. Fortunately, he didn't find me. I drifted a long way from shore, and effectively drowned. My body lay at the bottom of the sea, hidden from the sun's rays in the daylight hours by algae-encrusted rocks. Three days later I awakened, and I found myself changed. Any man or woman bitten by a vampire will become one of the undead unless their body is properly disposed of. Cremation is an effective method, as is decapitation.
Anyways, I awakened as a vampire on the third night, and slowly, painfully made my way back to shore. As a mortal, I'd been a lot of bad things. As a vampire, I got even worse. First, I set off on the trail of Abdullah Fatimid, the monster who created me. It didn't take me long to find him. There's a bond between a vampire and his maker. We can sense each other across great distances. Almost like a magnet sensing metal. Anyhow, Fatimid lived in an underground lair with his haram of gorgeous female vampires, dozens in number, guarded by a trio of eunuchs whom Fatimid transformed into his own undead bodyguards centuries ago. It wasn't easy infiltrating the lair, I had to do it in the wee hours of the morning, when vampires at their weakest.
