The Haitian Vampire Lord

"Freeze, don't move!" came a loud masculine voice, and I cursed my infernal luck even as I stepped into the darkened parking lot of Club Styx, intent on getting the hell away. I had been feeling nostalgic about my old digs lately, and decided to come back to the club I once frequented, way before The Change. Major mistake on my part.

In hindsight, I definitely should have known better than to come back here. There's a lot of trendy, edgy clubs in the City of Toronto, Ontario, but Club Styx had a bad reputation even back then, and that hasn't changed. Wannabe gangsters getting into it with each other over sketchy women...again. Very original. I hate it when stuff like that happens. Pretty much ruined my whole night, I swear.

"Um, officers, there are some guys fighting in there, I just want you to know, I had absolutely nothing to do with it," I said as I took a step toward the two police officers who faced me, guns drawn. Bad idea on my part, I guess, for in the next minute I felt a sharp pain in my chest, and went down in a hail of bullets. Yup, sounds like another night in the City of Toronto alright, except I might not live through this one...

As I lay on the ground, in a pool of my own blood, my mind raced. I felt weakened, but even as the pain flooded my consciousness, my inhuman body began to repair itself. I opened my eyes, and saw the silhouettes of the two police officers standing over me. The two bozos were talking to each other, and didn't even try to give me CPR or anything like that...

"Alright, Edwards, we'll tell brass he came at us, if we both stick to our story, this will get definitely swept under the rug just like all the others," said one of the officers, a burly white guy with dark hair. Guess again bozo, I thought, and I heaved myself with a fierce roar, and fell upon them, fangs bared and claws extended, going full-vamp face, something I do for special occasions...

"Reach for your revolver and I'll rip your partner's throat out and then stuff his intestines up your asshole," I said to the second officer, a young Asian woman, as I held her colleague by the throat, lifting him clear off the ground. The younger officer didn't heed my warning and went for her pistol, and I hurled her partner at her, and the resulting collision produced a nice meaty smack, a most satisfying sound...

"Bozos," I said, mostly to myself, as I looked at the two unconscious officers. Wrapping my black leather overcoat tightly around myself, I got the hell out of there. A vampire's existence is essentially one of discretion above all. I faded into the darkness long before a plethora of cops came to the club, further ruining the night for all involved. Oh, well. That's what I get for taking one trip too many down memory lane, I guess...

My name is Andre. Just Andre. Anyone looking at me right now would see a big and tall young black man in his mid to late twenties. Once upon a time, I had a normal life. I was born on the island of Haiti, and moved to the City of Montreal, Quebec, with my family in the early 1990s. I studied criminology at the University of Montreal, intent on becoming a lawyer. I met my fiancée Nora Winters at the University of Montreal campus, and we graduated together.

I later moved to the City of Toronto to study law at the University of Toronto, but the night before I started my first year of Law School, my life changed. I got into an accident, and got taken to the local hospital. My doctor that night was a mysterious man by the name of Dr. Marcus Rosenthal. The bozo wasn't a real doctor. I swear, Toronto hospital security sucks. They'll let any bozo with a white coat waltz right in. In fact, Rosenthal was the vampire who gave me a transfusion of his own blood, thus transforming me into one of the Undead.

I died and arose from the dead as a vampire. Oh, and becoming one of the Undead isn't glamorous or fun, let me tell you. It's nothing like Twilight or Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Today's television shows and gothic novels turn vampires into dramatic figures, beautiful and clever, sexy and dangerous. That's so dumb it's even funny, especially to me. Humanity has forgotten that a vampire is first and foremost a predator...

When you become a vampire, you lose your humanity, and the change isn't just physical, it's also psychological. Humanity can be nothing more than food for me now. I have to drink blood to survive. If I spend more than ten days without drinking human blood, I will devolve into a mindless creature, something akin to a caveman, only nocturnal and bloodthirsty.

Devolution, that's the fate that awaits every vampire who cannot get access to human blood for more than a few days. They become mindless ghouls that have to be put down. For the good of both vampires and humans. I have no desire to become that, thank you very much, so I have to go about the painstaking duty of procuring blood for myself, and it's not as easy or as simple as grabbing a random bozo and drinking from his neck...

That's why I've gotten myself a job as overnight security for a private lab that houses a blood bank, among other things. I live in a sub-basement apartment in Mississauga, and basically, I lead a solitary life. There are other vampires in the Greater Toronto Area but in my honest opinion, vampire society is full of sociopaths, sex fiends and creeps, so I avoid them since I don't care for the drama.

I took the train and reached my place about ninety minutes before the first rays of dawn bathed the Toronto skyline, and went to bed. I pulled the heavy curtains over the windows, and then I had myself a hot cup of human blood, type A, and felt better than I had in ages. How to describe the taste of human blood to a non-vampire? Imagine if you could combine sex, and food, and winning the lottery, into liquid form, if you will. That's what human blood does to a vampire's mind and body. It's nourishment as well as a psycho-sexual drug, all at once.

A lot of vampires go out and prey on the homeless, and drifters, those they feel society won't miss. I find that too dangerous, and stick to drinking blood acquired from the blood bank. Satisfied, I lay on my bed, pulled the sheets over my body and closed my eyes. Outside, the sun rose, and mankind, and animals, began to stir. This is a different world now, a world of light, which has nothing to do with me. Let mortal man have the daytime world. I know the night lasts as long as the day. Tonight, I will prowl...