Haitian Vampire's Somali Bride

Smiling with utmost satisfaction, I licked my lips, tasting the last droplets of Esther Rosenberg's blood before dropping her corpse unceremoniously on the ground. At last, the Huntress is no more. And vampires and Hunters far and wide will know that I, Hanna Ismail is the one who brought her down. I looked at Esther Rosenberg one last time before disposing of her corpse. Even in death she remained beautiful, her glazed eyes eerily calm, granting her body an odd dignity only slightly marred by the fact that she had her throat ripped out.

It didn't have to be this way, I thought to myself, shaking my head in disgust. I walked off in the foggy London night. Just another evening in England's Capital region. On April 17, 2017, the world discovered the existence of vampires, along with werewolves, demons, monsters and various other supernatural beings. Entities that had coexisted with mankind peacefully for centuries found themselves hunted by the men and women who had been their friends, neighbors, co-workers and sometimes lovers. I guess none of that meant anything in the face of their xenophobic frenzy.

Humans are such a bigoted lot. Allah made all things, and we of the supernatural realm are but another group among His creations. What determines whether any sentient being is good or evil isn't their species or race, it's their personality and character. What drives them, and how they interact with others. All sentient beings are capable of both good and evil. It's part of what makes sense intelligent beings in the first place. Why can't humans see that?

I watched a crowd of humans drag my friend Erik Tally, ( known as Alric the friendly Troll to us non-humans ) in the streets of Berkshire and set him ablaze. They caught Erik as he shifted out of his human disguise, from the tall, bespectacled silver-haired Persian gentleman he pretended to be and into his natural self. The seven-foot-tall, vaguely humanoid creature with glowing red eyes and chartreuse skin. They killed him even though he'd done nothing to hurt them. An ancient being who'd been alive since the Pyramids of Egypt were first built. Burned to death by a horde of bigoted, intolerant humans on the streets of Berkshire.

The day I watched my friend Alric die, I lost all respect for the humans. Seriously. How could I respect such a wicked race? I haven't been a vampire long but I am confident that I will survive. You see, long before the majority of humans discovered the existence of the supernatural, a select group among them known as the Hunters culled our numbers regularly. If you are a vampire, a werewolf, a shape-shifter, a Troll, a Golem, a Merman or Mermaid, or anything other than Homo Sapiens, they tracked you down and killed you. Most of the Hunters were recruited among former cops, soldiers, etc.

The Hunters were feared and hated by all of us, but they're nothing compared to the mobs assaulting random non-humans who've been exposed to them. They've got these DNA-scanning machines known as Detectors now, and with them, they can detect even the most clever among us. Take shape-shifters for example. They're among the oldest breed among all supernatural entities but even they cannot fool the Detectors. You see, if you can make yourself look like any person you've ever laid eyes on, you can get away with a lot but your DNA is still the same, it's your outward appearance that changes, not your basic genetic makeup. So, yeah, you're still you, only disguised. The Detectors have wreaked havoc among the shape-shifter community.

The person who invented these diabolical devices is Sharon Rosenberg, the Commander-in-Chief of the N.H.E.U. or Non-Human Elimination Unit. My former best friend Esther called her mom, once upon a time. This woman will not be pleased when she finds out that her daughter, the Huntress par excellence and a legendary hero among those who hate the supernatural, is now worm food. As you may have guessed, Esther and I go way back. In fact, we were once neighbors.

When my parents, Omar and Hodan Ismail moved to London, England, from Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1989, they didn't know Jack about western culture or life in Great Britain. I was born a year later, complicating things for the struggling immigrant couple. Sharon Rosenberg, then a police constable with the London Police force and a former social worker, proved to be our closest friend. Her daughter Esther became my best friend. We were inseparable, right until our graduation from Saint Joseph Academy. I opted to study bio-chemistry at Brunel University and Esther went to study business at Oxford University. Nevertheless, we kept in touch via Facebook and Skype. On weekends we'd hang out in London, just two girls walking through Europe's oldest town without a care in the world.

On the surface, Esther Rosenberg and I couldn't be more different. I'm five-foot-eleven, busty, curvy and big-bottomed, with caramel skin, long curly black hair and almond-shaped golden brown eyes. I have often been told that I look exotic, whatever that means. My father was half Somali and half Arab, so I guess I get it from him. I don't really know nor do I care. I am only, well, me. Esther is five-foot-nine, stocky, with reddish brown hair, light green eyes and freckles everywhere. The most Irish-looking British gal in all of London, I swear. Our friends nicknamed us Red and Caramel. We were inseparable.

When Esther revealed to me that she was a lesbian, I didn't care and fully supported her. Her own mother, London Police captain Sharon Rosenberg became estranged from her over her 'lifestyle' choice. Esther and I grew closer together. A lot of people are surprised that I fully support gay marriage and causes like that because I'm a Muslim gal from Somalia. I'm supposed to be conservative, set in my ways and intolerant. I'm anything but. That's okay, though. As a hijab-wearing Muslim gal, I'm used to people judging me before getting to know me.

Esther always had my back. When I met and subsequently fell in love with Charles Eugene Pierre, a six-foot-tall and burly, gorgeously dark-skinned guy from the island of Haiti, Esther was the only person I could talk to about him. Charles, a civil engineering student at Middlesex University at the time was visiting his sister Nadine at Brunel, when we bumped into each other. The dude was lost because he'd never been to our campus before and like the helpful sister that I am, I showed him around. We added each other on Facebook and exchanged numbers along the way, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, this might seem odd to you if you're unfamiliar with Islam or Muslim family dynamics but my parents were less than thrilled when they found out I was dating Charles. For starters, he's neither Somali nor Muslim. The guy was a crucifix-wearing Catholic and didn't know Jack about Islam. Yet somehow, we fell in love. I had to keep our romance a secret from my folks because, while Muslim guys can date and marry women from any religion, Muslim women are forbidden from doing the same. Esther was my only supporter through this ordeal.

Charles and I were in love, and he revealed something astonishing to me one night. We were walking through East London, coming home from the movies when these three guys from the English Defence League attacked us with baseball bats. With a ferocity that stunned me, Charles surged at them and easily defeated them with his bare hands. As the last League member fell to the ground and lay still, Charles turned to look at me. That's when I noticed his eyes were yellow now, and his teeth were wickedly sharp. I should have ran but I didn't. Instead, I asked him to explain.

With a sad, resigned look upon his handsome face, Charles told me the awful truth. My Haitian boyfriend was a vampire. He'd been once since the summer of 1817, back when he was twenty two years old. That's when Charles was bitten by a legendary vampire named Alexandre Petion, whom history remembers as one of the Heroes of the Haitian War of Independence. Charles subsequently transformed his sister Nadine into a vampire, and together, they terrorized the Haitian countryside for centuries.

Yeah, that night, I learned that my boyfriend Charles was a vampire. A day-walking vampire at that. I thought the undead only came out at night but Charles explained to me that while sunlight weakened vampires, rendered them sleepy and sapped their strength, it wouldn't kill them outright. The sun's rays act like a sedative to a vampire's system. It doesn't kill them. It just weakens them. The undead preferred coming out at night because they were at full power then. Wow.

With Charles as my guide, I began to know more about the world beneath the world. The realm of vampires, werewolves, demons, monsters and all kinds of creatures and entities I previously thought to be the stuff of myth and legend. All of them coexisted with humans, living among us without our knowledge. Yup. Charles introduced me to Leanne the werewolf-turned-librarian, Liam the shape-shifting factory worker, Alia the Mermaid-turned-fitness instructor, and Ivan, the telepathic psychiatrist. Beings I'd previously encountered and even befriended but had never known were...more than human.

For over a year, Charles and I were together. One magical year. He's the one secret I never told Esther about. I couldn't reveal to anyone that Charles was a vampire, not even my best friend in all the world. I thought Charles and I would be together forever, but it wasn't meant to be. On April 17, 2017, Charles and a group of vampires were attacked during a bar brawl. Someone filmed it. Thus the supernatural was exposed to the human world. Charles and several of those vampires were hunted down, captured and never seen again.

Before he got exposed and disappeared, Charles and I were doing research on what I called the Human/Vampire Genome Project. I had several vials of his blood in my own private little lab. When the governments of Britain, America, Canada, Germany, South Africa, Pakistan, India, Brazil, Nigeria and many others began pooling resources together to eradicate all non-humans, I swore that I would avenge my beloved Charles. For all I know he's dead. So I used the only asset I had in my upcoming war against xenophobic humans. My own species. I injected myself with Charles blood. It knocked me out. Three days later I woke up...changed.

I was no longer human. I'd become a vampire. One of the undead. Losing my humanity and becoming what I am now definitely changed me. As a vampire, I grow weak, sleepy and sluggish during the day. At night, I am supreme. I can lift ten times my body weight, run almost as fast as a cheetah and I heal instantly from injuries that would kill or cripple a normal human. I am not invincible, however. Fire, decapitation or a stake through the heart will definitely do me in. I am careful. Unlike a lot of older vampires, I can function in the daytime. I don't simply get sleepy. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because I am new, or maybe because, well, I wasn't made like other vampires. I also can last longer without blood. Most vampires need to drink the blood of a person or animal at least once a week otherwise they go nuts. Me? I've lasted two weeks without blood, and only felt a slight discomfort, not the ravenous hunger that the others feel.

I choose to believe that Charles strength flows through me. I will always cherish the memory of our love. It's a shame that we couldn't be together in the glorious state of being undead. We could have been together for eternity, but sadly the Fates had other plans. Wherever he is, whether in the vaulted gardens of Jannah or the depths of hellfire, I wish to be with him again. The only one I've ever loved. After the persecution of non-humans began around the globe, people quickly picked sides. In Caribbean islands such as Haiti, Trinidad and Jamaica, where large numbers of non-humans lived, for the most part they survived. Elsewhere, we were hunted down like rats in a snake pit.

Sharon Rosenberg rose among the ranks of those who hated non-humans the most, her ambitions flourished in these dark days. In time, the Queen of England herself appointed her the rank of Commander-in-Chief of all task forces charged with eliminating non-humans in the United Kingdom. Esther, who was a cadet at the police academy in those days, quickly distinguished herself as a Huntress. Her specialty? Hunting down and killing vampires. Her favorite prey among the non-humans, apparently.

Thus it came to be that Fate put my former friend Esther Rosenberg and I on colliding paths. I've been watching her for ages, you see. For every vampire she killed, I forcibly converted ten humans into the undead. My methods were ruthless. Instead of abducting people and biting them, I put vials of vampire into bullets and distributed them among my elite corps of vampires especially trained to take out Hunters. I called them The Cadre. We began turning the tide of the war against the non-humans, with vampires as the shock troops.

Even now, as Esther Rosenberg was busy fighting for her life ( and losing ) I had my operatives in place, doing untold damage to the very fabric of human civilization. We vampires are the most numerous and prolific of all the non-human races and the humans made us pay dearly for it. The Rosenberg women excelled at killing our kind, but as you can see, we fight back. Someday soon I mean to capture Sharon Rosenberg, sworn enemy of all non-humans, and take her apart myself. Piece by piece. The witch had my parents killed after she found out I'd become a leader among the undead. Her way of forever separating them from me...I guess.

Tonight, though, I am really having a major moment. It's a truly wonderful feeling when one's best laid plans are fulfilled to the max. Pulling out my cell phone, I checked with my pals. Milan? Check. Houston? Go. Atlanta? Cool. Vienna? Awesome. The Vatican? Amen. Mecca? A-Okay. Melbourne? Aye, mate. City after city confirmed that the plan had gone off without a hitch. The blood supplies of various banks had been secretly contaminated, precious sacks of human blood replaced by vampire plasma. Ready to infect any human in need of a transfusion. Within a few days, hundreds of thousands of men and women around the world will join Club Undead.

The Hunters will be overrun, and while they're jumping from one foot to the next, unable to stem the tide of the flood of vampirism consuming their cities and nations, I've got a special surprise cooking for them. For you see, while the police and military forces of these nations will be busy battling a horde of nascent vampires, I will unleash a true doomsday weapon against them. Ironically, it shall be a device of their own making.

Last time I checked, all species of non-humans are immune to various wavelengths of radiation. While the world battles the latest outbreak of vampirism, The Cadre will seize control of the United Kingdom and America's nuclear arsenals and detonate them. The world will be plunged into chaos and darkness. At last, with their numbers significantly reduced by the nuclear holocaust, and the nuclear winter and permanent darkness that will follow. At last the humans will bow down to us, the so-called freaks. And we vampires will finally rule the planet. Time to unify all non-humans and bring humanity to its knees. It's going to happen soon and it will be so cool.