The sun rose over the City of Accra, Ghana. After a successful hunt, Nadia Mahama lay in her lair, safe and sound. College Town, a geographical area of ten kilometers encompassing several of Accra's top schools, including the University of Ghana, Accra Polytechnic, Central University and the Accra Institute of Technology, proved to be a rich feeding ground.
"To a great hunt and a successful hunt, my dear," Nadia said to her lover, Geraldine Voltaire, and she nodded in agreement, flashing her fangs while she licked blood off her lips. Deep in the underground lair that Nadia spent years carving out below the abandoned plantation that they called home, the two of them were safe at last. Well, for the moment anyway...
As a Vampire, one of the apex predators of the planet Earth, Nadia Mahama knew better than to assume that she was ever safe. A while ago, shortly after Nadia Mahama became a Vampire, West Africa underwent the Purge. It was 1920, and in the grip of colonialism and religious fervor, the people of Ghana rose against those who had been their protectors since time immemorial, and slaughtered them...
During the Purge, many Vampires perished, including Abdulai Zamesi, an ancient Vampire who had been the one to turn Nadia. Once a powerful Imam, and a great leader of the Muslims of Ghana, Abdulai had ruled the Ghanaian Vampire community for six centuries. He took great care to select only strong men and strong women to join the ranks of the Undead, and kept their numbers low, for too many predators in any locale is never a good thing.
Nadia Mahama was twenty two years old, the daughter of a wealthy Muslim family from the Dagomba tribe, when she met Abdulai Zamesi, the being who changed her life. At that age, Nadia was very demure. Five feet ten inches tall, chubby and plain-faced, with dark chocolate skin and short kinky hair, Nadia felt unremarkable. The young woman felt destined to an unremarkable life, until fate stepped in...
Nadia didn't know what to make of the stranger who approached her on the street, as it drawn by the chaos currently swirling in every corner of her life. Abdulai had quite the presence. To her untrained eyes, the tall, dark-skinned, muscular and fit yet silver-haired man dressed in a preacher's robes seemed quite strange. Yet she did not fear the man when he approached her...
"Come to me, daughter, and watch your world change," Abdulai said, and he gave the hesitant Nadia a smile of gentle wisdom. Into his arms Nadia went, like a lost sheep going into the waiting arms of the shepherd. Nadia was truly lost, in more ways than one. She'd just slain her husband, an abusive brute named Mahmoud, after months of abuse following their wedding, and didn't know what to do...
"I am lost," Nadia said, and once in Abdulai's arms, the young woman sobbingly confessed what she'd done. Nadia expected to be put to death, as Islamic law demanded. In her faith, women who kill their husbands, even after enduring nightmarish abuse and savage beatings, were the subject of social scorn and hatred. Nadia had killed Mahmoud, and thus she sealed her fate.
"My dear, come into my world and you will become more powerful than you can imagine," Abdulai said, and he sat Nadia down and revealed himself to her. The young woman looked into Abdulai's eyes, which shifted from normal brown to bright red, and his teeth elongated and sharpened. In spite of her shock, Nadia did not feel afraid. There was something reassuring about Abdulai, something that put Nadia at ease...
"What must I do?" Nadia asked, and a smiling Abdulai nodded, pleased with her answer. The Elder Vampire welcomed the lost soul that Nadia had been with open arms. That night, he sank his fangs into her neck, and drew her blood into his mouth before infusing her blood with his. Nadia passed out, and when she came to, she was...changed.
"An eternity of nights await you, you are now stronger and faster than ever, but you must feed," Abdulai said to Nadia, as she rose from the grave. The Elder Vampire welcomed Nadia into a brand new world. That night, Nadia went out and, under Abdulai's supervision, the newbie Vampire slaked her thirsty by feeding off a condemned criminal, a man who raped his neighbor's wife and killed the man when he intervened.
Nadia relished the powers she developed as a new Vampire. Abdulai became her mentor in this wondrous world of night. Sadly, Abdulai was cut down when the mobs came for the Undead, in the grip of Christian fervor. With her maker dead, along with hundreds of other Vampires, Nadia grew to despise the humans. The young Vampire remembered watching hapless members of the Undead community who were dragged out of their lairs and into the sunlight by angry mobs.
The people of Ghana chose to turn their backs on their traditional African beliefs and embraced the Christian religion, the religion of their European colonial oppressors, and slaughtered the Vampires who once protected them from any and all dangers. In Ghana, in ancient times, there was a covenant between the humans and the Vampires.
The Vampires weren't monsters to the people of West Africa, but agents of mother nature. They culled the human herd by ridding it of the undesirables, the thieves, the murderers and the rapists, the worst of the worst, thereby improving the lives of the West African people. Vampires had a purpose, a function, and they had rules that they observed and boundaries which they did not cross. Balance, it's everything in Africa, and both mortals and immortals dare not alter it in any way. Until the Europeans came...
