Her Guardian Angel Is a Vampire

The vampire smiled to himself as he watched the young woman take on the thugs in the dark alley. The City of Ottawa could be a dangerous place sometimes, and clearly this gal hadn't paid attention to her surroundings. And now she was in trouble, surrounded by thugs in a blind alley. Her assailants could turn around and leave at any time but she couldn't, because she literally had her back to the wall. What a fool, he thought. Still, he had to give her credit, she put up a fight. With a mean left hook she gave the largest thug, a burly blond guy with tattoos, a bloody nose. He growled in pain, and his two acolytes laughed. Get her! He yelped, and as one the three moved against the lone woman, intent on finishing her off.

The vampire leapt from the rooftop, soundlessly landing on the badly paved road. Moving swiftly, he waded into the men. Grabbing the big guy by the shoulders, he whirled him around and tossed him. The big man crashed against the large dumpster with a sickening thud, slumped on the ground and lay still. The other two men didn't even realize their buddy was gone. The vampire made short work of the second one, a slender Asian male, knocking him unconscious. He turned around to deal with the last man, only to find him already on the ground, with his intended victim standing victorious over him. The young woman, a dark-skinned beauty with dreadlocks, glared at the vampire. Suspicion flared in her dark eyes and she assumed a fighting stance.

The vampire looked at her, and smiled. The young woman stared at him, without a doubt thinking him another one of her assailants. He took a step closer to her and she tensed, warning him to keep his distance. A fighter to the end, the vampire thought, how admirable in this age of cowards. He pointed to the two men he had incapacitated, and shook his head. I didn't come here to kill you, he said. With that, he turned and left. The young woman watched, amazed, as the mysterious man seemingly melted into the shadows at the mouth of the alley and vanished utterly. She stood there in the dark for another minute, then left. Gazing down at her from his perch on the rooftop, the vampire smiled. Go home my sweet Marjorie, he said, watching her go.

The vampire resumed his solitary walk in the darkness, continuing his walk over the City of Ottawa, Ontario. After a while, he descended to the street and walked into a mall, the Rideau Shopping Center. Eight o'clock on a Friday night, the mall was buzzing with activity. The vampire walked through the crowd of shoppers, among soccer moms, hustlers, businessmen, wannabe thugs, the mall attracted all sorts. The vampire had been here many times. Something about malls appealed to him. He thought about one of his favorite marketplaces, in his hometown of Cap-Haitien, Haiti. He hadn't been to the island of Haiti since 1908, when he left as a young man to seek his fortune in the United States of America.

Twenty-year-old Eugene Raphael thought himself an adventurer, setting off for the land of Uncle Sam, for his piece of the American Dream. What he found when he moved to the City of New Orleans, Louisiana, was far from a dream. In this wonderful old American town which reminded him so much of Cap-Haitien, he met the gorgeous Cassandra Lemieux, a gorgeous Creole woman whom he fell in love with. If only he'd known that Cassandra Lemieux was no mere mortal but a vampire who had been alive since before the American Civil War. In 1909, Eugene Raphael was turned into a vampire by his lover and mentor. Cassandra Lemieux and Eugene eventually returned to the island of Haiti, where their reign of terror lasted for decades.

The vampire remembered these dark days, and sighed. A lot of people in today's world have a romantic view of vampires. They see them as lonely souls doomed to wander the world for all eternity, craving the blood of the living. Movies like interview With The Vampire and Twilight have enflamed the imagination of many, and vampires are seen as cool and oh so human. Nothing could be further from the truth. Vampires are predators, first and foremost. They have no more qualms about feeding on human beings than people do about eating the flesh of cows. It's the way of nature. The strong feed on the weak. Humans feed on the flesh of animals, and vampires feed on the blood of humans. One day, the vampire Eugene Raphael encountered a priest named Antoine Clairmont in the suburbs of Santo Domingo. This priest was no ordinary clergyman. He was a member of the Order of Light, a secret society of Christian scholars and warriors dedicated to fight against the forces of darkness.

The vampire tried to prey on the priest, he had a fondness for the blood of clergymen and nuns, and had proven himself a great foe for religious leaders in recent decades. He had become somewhat of a legend among clergymen in the Caribbean, the death stalker that preyed upon priests, nuns and laymen in the dark hours. Eugene Raphael delighted in turning servants of God into minions of darkness. Priests and nuns tend to make magnificent vampires, another little-known fact of the universe. There were so many such facts out there, known to a select few, and creatures of the night tended to be privy to most of them. Evil knows evil, after all. When the good Father Antoine Clairmont captured Eugene Raphael, the vampire princeling who had terrorized the island of Haiti and much of the Caribbean for decades was in for a shock. He was shipped from the hot shores of Haiti to the vaults of The Vatican, and locked up under Saint Peter's Basilica.

Once at the mercy of his enemies, Eugene Raphael expected his blood-stained existence to come to a swift end, instead, his captors had other plans for him. The Roman Catholic Church has existed for thousands of years, and as the largest denomination within Christendom's two point two billion adherents, they're quite powerful. Over the course of millennia, they've acquired much in the way of wealth and power, and knowledge on matters arcane, mundane and most importantly, profane. The average Catholic clergyman will deny the existence of magic while speaking about the mystery of the death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The average Christian won't believe this if told but there is a secret society of spell casters and magic wielders among the priests and nuns of the Roman Catholic Church. The Order of Light recruits, trains and utilizes such individuals in their never-ending battle against the forces of darkness.

The Order of Light's most powerful magic wielder cast a spell upon Eugene Raphael, enslaving his will and binding him to that which he loathed the most, the cross, symbol of Christendom. They cut open his chest and inserted a cross inside of him. A huge silver cross. From that moment on, the vampire Eugene Raphael was cursed. Doomed to atone for his sins. If he stopped fighting against the forces of evil, the silver cross would burn him from the inside out, and he would die. That was his curse. He'd been carrying it for centuries. As the first, last and only denizen of darkness forcibly recruited into the Order of Light. The church assigned him handlers, men and women who kept him in line and gave him his marching orders. The first of those had been Antoine Clairmont, his captor, his first handler, and eventually, his friend.

The vampire thought of the long list of people the church assigned to track him down, to make sure he kept to the straight and narrow. Of all of them, the only one he ever truly called a friend was Antoine Clairmont. The man had been a visionary, even among all the supremely gifted magic wielders, scholars and other luminaries in the Order of Light. The old man saw his potential, and believed in him. The others hadn't, when they looked at him they only saw a monster. The old man saw the darkness in him, but also the spark of goodness that had been restored to him. The silver cross inside of him prevented him from killing human beings. If he crossed the line and voluntarily took a human life, the curse would cause the silver cross to pierce his heart and destroy him.

The curse prevented him from hurting human beings, but it couldn't force him to protect them. Even creatures of darkness have free will, God's gift to all sentient beings in the cosmos. Eugene Raphael's decision to fight against the forces of evil to protect humanity was his and his alone. He made that decision the day he fought his former lover, the vampire princess Cassandra Lemieux, to stop her from killing Antoine Clairmont. He almost died, for Cassandra had been a vampire far longer than he, and she was vastly far more powerful. Nevertheless, he fought her off. That day cemented his allegiance to the Order of Light, and sealed his fate as far as Cassandra Lemieux was concerned. The Queen of All Vampires declared her undying hatred for her former lover, for all eternity.

The vampire continued his nightly battle against his own kind, and against other dark forces. For there were a lot of things far worse than vampires out there. Things like the many different breeds of demons, and the numerous monstrosities they created by interbreeding with ordinary humanity. Even more dangerous than the demons were the forgotten gods of ancient times, the pagan deities worshipped by various cultures throughout human history. The gods of Mount Olympus, the Yoruba gods of western Africa, the Egyptian Ennead and the Mayan deities, among others, all were alive and well on present-day Earth. They still lusted for power and influence, and they had less fondness for humans than humans do for cockroaches. And he was supposed to take on all of that as the sole superhuman agent of the Order of Light.

Life goes on, even for the undead. The vampire thought of the last funeral he attended, that of his former rival-turned-mentor Antoine Clairmont, who died at the ripe old age of ninety one. He made a promise to the old man that day, swearing to protect not only humanity but also the Clairmont family. Father Antoine Clairmont's brother Julian left the island of Haiti for the City of Miami, Florida, in 1960. He married an Irishwoman named Deirdre O'Leary in 1967 and they had a son, Roger Clairmont. While traveling to Montreal, Quebec, on business during the summer of 1989, Roger Clairmont had an affair with Elisabeth Adewale, a Nigerian immigrant and newcomer to Canada. The result of that affair was Joanne Adewale, a feisty young woman constantly in trouble with the law.

Joanne Adewale grew up in one of Montreal's toughest neighborhoods, the only daughter of a single mother. In a neighborhood teeming with gangsters, drug dealers and rapists, she learned to fend for herself. While other young people her age went to school and dealt with ordinary everyday issues, she worried about staying alive and putting food on the table for her mother, who was slowly losing her mind due to early on-set dementia. The young woman had some inner strength, that's for sure. In spite of her humble beginnings, she won a scholarship to Carleton University, one of the most best schools in all of Canada. She wanted to become a doctor, God bless her heart. The vampire knew all those things about her. Of course, he'd been shadowing her ever since he became aware of her existence, mere days after she was born.

What better duty could the world's only heroic vampire embrace than looking after the great-niece of his benefactor? A long time ago, when he was a monster like all the other monsters, one man taught him the meaning of honor, truth and justice. One man believed in him when everyone else saw him as another creature of the pit, good only for destruction and mayhem. Antoine Clairmont, venerable Roman Catholic priest and faithful servant of the Almighty. Eugene Raphael smiled to himself as he exited the Rideau Shopping Center. The night was still young, and there were all kinds of things out there that needed his special attention. In the east end, there was a particularly nasty demon out and about. This creep liked to prey on the young, draining them of their souls and leaving behind a dried-up husk. Eugene Raphael, vampire hero, would put an end to that monster's days of terror. Or die trying. Looking up at the moon, he smiled and shrugged before getting to work.