Vampire Queen of Haiti

History will remember Jean Jacques Dessalines as the strong black man who defeated the French colonial forces on the island of Saint Domingue, founded the Republic of Haiti in 1804, crowned himself Emperor of the New World's first independent black nation, defeated Napoleon's overconfident and ultimately outmatched forces and showed to the entire world that European colonialism isn't invincible.

To me, right up until he was assassinated by some of the very same black men whom he fought so hard to free from slavery, Jean Jacques Dessalines was my lover. The only man I've ever loved in the 389 years that I've lived upon this earth. From the moment I first laid eyes on him, I knew Dessalines was different. When I told him that I am one of the Undead, he accepted my true nature and I became his lover, his ally and his confidante.

Although I came from far away, the island of Haiti is my home and its people are my people. Now and forevermore. While it is true that African and Arabian blood flow within me in equal measures, my heart is with the people of Haiti. Family doesn't stop with blood, and I consider myself a citizen of the Republic of Haiti. The African-descended men and women living there are my brothers and sisters.

My name is Fatima. I was born in the City of Nouadhibou, Mauritania, in 1627. The daughter of Cheikh Mahmoud Yassin, an Arab tribal chief who married an African woman and came to Mauritania during the clash between Berber, African and Arab tribal factions. My mother Mariam Bamidele came from West Africa. She was born and raised in what is today known as the Republic of Nigeria. I grew up at a time when Mauritania was torn by war. Berbers, Africans and Arabs fought over control of Mauritania, culminating in the Char Bouba War which lasted from 1644 to 1674.

Five-foot-eleven, with long black hair and light brown skin, I am often mistaken for a mulatto woman. I take offense to that term. I was born of an African mother and an Arab Muslim father. There's nothing European about me. I am definitely a woman of color and I've embraced the African within me for centuries. A series of unfortunate events brought me to the island of Saint Domingue. Yes, I've lived here long before it was called the Republic of Haiti. I thank the fates for bringing me to this wonderful place.

Today, I live in the City of Cap-Haitien, northern Haiti, and work as an instructor at the prestigious College Notre Dame Du Perpetuel Secours. It's an all-male Roman Catholic school, and the students are all young black men from the town's middle-class families. I love my job, sharing my worldly experience with impressionable youths and molding their young minds. It's a task worth doing. I teach history, which I'm passionate about. I played a hidden hand in the history of Haiti, one which I can never reveal, unfortunately.

I have quite a story for you today. Let's start at the beginning. In 1645, at the age of eighteen, I married an Arab merchant named Jabir Mustapha who, through his European allies, became an active participant in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which I despised. The Africans who were being bought and sold by the Europeans and others looked like my mother, and I despised the institution of slavery. My new husband Jabir was an even worse monster than I thought. For this evil man had a secret. Jabir wasn't a man at all but a monster who drank human blood, using his wealth and power to hide this horror from the world.

"What kind of fiend are you?" I asked Jabir as I discovered him feeding on one of the slaves he was transporting from the Motherland of Africa to the New World for his European business connections. I'd long found my husband peculiar. I only saw him at night. Although he was quite virile, his skin felt cold to the touch. Oh, and he seldom ate, though he drank a lot. I thought Jabir a very strange man, but had no idea what type of monster he was. Until that night.

"I truly wish you hadn't seen that, my dearest Fatima," Jabir said, and he tossed aside the slave's lifeless body, and came after me. I tried to flee but it was to no avail. Jabir caught me, bit me, and killed me. When I awakened a few nights later, I was...changed. I became a vampire, and like most fledgling vampires, I was completely in thrall to my new vampire master.

"What have you done to me?" I asked Jabir as I woke up in our house, the following night. I felt...wrong. All over. Laughing, Jabir sat me down and talked to me. The fiend explained to me that I was his slave, and would be until he died. I seethed with rage and wanted to lash out at Jabir but I decided to bide my time. Indeed, a plan to escape eternal bondage was already forming in my mind.

I became the most devoted servant Jabir ever had. I learned from him. Jabir taught me the ways of the vampire. How to hunt and dispose of our human prey. How to hide from the hated sunlight and move stealthily in the darkness. How to hide what we are from mortals, who have been known to hunt down and kill our kind in ages past. I learned all that I could from Jabir, and then one day, in 1779, while on a ship bound for the island of Saint Domingue, I murdered him in his sleep. I shoved a stake through Jabir's heart, and my vampire master turned to dust.

The crew manning our ship, The Crimson Dagger, was loyal to Jabir and turned against me. I dove into the dark waters of the Caribbean ocean, and swam to the island of Saint Domingue. Once there, I began my new life. Due to my exotic good looks and education, I easily assimilated into Saint Domingue's growing community of Free People of Color. I became Mademoiselle Fatima, something of a socialite among those known as Les Affranchis. Those black men and black women on Saint Domingue who'd earned their freedom from their former masters and now lived as free people.

The island of Saint Domingue was a complex society, to be sure. You had the French colonists, who viewed the growing community of free people of color with contempt and abject hatred, and then you had the teeming masses of black slaves forcibly brought over from Africa via the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. A strict hierarchy kept the island's various inhabitants in line.

The free people of color were for the most part mulattoes, born of the dalliances of French colonists who fancied the African women they kept in captivity on their plantations. These mixed-blood men and women were often highly educated and entrepreneurial, and hated by the French colonists who saw them as insolent would-be rivals, and the black slaves, who saw them as traitors to the black race.

The black slaves comprised the majority of the island's inhabitants. They rightfully resented both the free people of color, many of whom owned slaves themselves, and the minority whites of French descent who tightly controlled the island's politics and economics. The whole place was a powder keg. I fancied myself a match, one that would help it blow up. For I am a vampire, I always find opportunity in chaos.

I supported those among the Affranchis who wanted to free their African brothers and sisters from inhuman bondage. When the blacks began to openly rebel against the French colonial powers, to the point that France sent military men like Leclerc and Rochambeau to quell the rebellion, I got close to the leaders of the black resistance. I wanted them to win, you see. For I too know what it's like to be a slave.

"Of course you can win this war, my love," I whisper to Dessalines as we lie together under his tent. I look at Dessalines, and my lover's dark, soulful eyes meet mine. Dessalines isn't a particularly large man, but he carries himself with a noble bearing, and that's part of what attracted me to him. That and the fact that he set me free, of course.

"Ces maudits francais ont tues mon frere Toussaint," Dessalines said, a crestfallen look on his ebon face. I was with Dessalines when he got the news that Toussaint Louverture was captured by the French colonial army, who approached him supposedly to make peace. Dessalines laments the loss of Toussaint, and while I did respect my lover's best friend and former commanding officer, I don't share his blind idealism.

The French view the blacks of Saint Domingue as little more than animals. That's why they enslaved them. They see themselves as superior to them in every way and cannot and will not recognize their right to be free. Such arrogance cannot vanish overnight. The only way to show to the French the error of their ways is to slaughter them. In the jungle, there's predator and prey, and nothing in between. The sooner the blacks of Saint Domingue realize that every white person on the island is their enemy, the better off they will be.

"You can avenge your departed brother Toussaint, show no mercy to these pale devils," I said, as I gently kissed Dessalines on the mouth. Outside our tent, a storm raged and every black man and mulatto in Dessalines army wearily awaited the dawn of battle. Few of them were asleep. I possess great hearing. Can't blame them. Tomorrow in Vertieres would be a deciding battle between French leader General Rochambeau's forces and Dessalines's army. Only one would win the day.

"Merci, my dear Fatima, what would I do without you?" Dessalines said, grinning, as I rolled on top of him. A wave of pleasure rippled through me as Dessalines kissed me, then his eager hands tenderly gripped my breasts, massaging them gently as I straddled him. I felt Dessalines manhood first stir then harden under me, and grinned as I freed it from his trousers.

"Oh, I shudder to think of where you'd be without me," I whispered, and I kissed a path from Dessalines's full, sensuous lips to his hairy chest, even as I reached for his groin. I felt Dessalines dick harden as I touched it, stroking it gently. Ever since I was in Mauritania, where beautiful men of all colors are to be found, I found myself exclusively enthralled by the masculine mystique of dark-skinned African men. What can I say? Dark-skinned men rock. I like the way they smell and taste.

"A man is nothing without his woman, ma belle reine Africaine," Dessalines said, sighing deeply as I held his manhood in my hands, inhaling his manly musk. Slowly, gently, I took Dessalines's dick in my mouth. It was both long and thick, though not ridiculously so. I took my sweet time as I pleasured my lover, delighting in the moans my lovemaking elicited from him.

"Do tell," I paused to say, and in the dark, I saw Dessalines grin. Pulling me into his arms, he sucked on my breasts, and slapped my rather ample bottom. I've always had a large, prominent and heart-shaped butt, and my dark princes have always loved me for it. Dessalines pulled me close, and whispered something into my ear which caused me to squeal in delight.

"J'adore ton derriere," Dessalines said, laughing as he propped me up on all fours, caressing my bum. Laughing, I backed up and pressed my voluminous derriere against Dessalines groin. My ebon prince laughed and smacked my bum, then proceeded to shower it with kisses. Although we've made love dozens of times since our explosive first meeting during which his troops stormed a plantation where I'd been confronting a gun-toting slave owner, Dessalines always delights at the sight of my derriere.

"Worship it then," I said, and I pushed Dessalines onto the cot where he lay, and proceeded to sit on his face. My wonderful lover began fingering my already wet womanhood while licking my derriere. I absolutely love having my ass eaten, and when Dessalines worked his tongue up my asshole, I moaned softly, loving every moment of it.

Later that night, Dessalines took me on all fours, pulling on my long black hair and thrusting his hard dick deep into my cunt. I screamed with wild abandon, loving the ardor with whim Dessalines fucked me. So strong and so passionate was he that sometimes I forgot that Dessalines was a mortal. Yet he was unlike any man I'd ever known. The fact that I was a mixed-blood woman from far away, and a blood drinker, didn't scare or intimidate Dessalines. And I loved him for it.

"When you're by my side, I feel like I can do anything," Dessalines whispered into my ear as I lay in his arms, my head on his hairy chest. I loved listening to his rhythmic heartbeat. The heart of a strong black man. I looked at Dessalines and smiled, and watched over him until he fell asleep. When dawn came, I was gone. For I must be in darkness when the sun rises. Dessalines knows and accepts this but doesn't like it.

"I always dream of you as I sleep during the daytime hours," I whisper into Dessalines ear right before I depart. The other men in Dessalines army view me wearily, especially his personal bodyguard Francois Capois. They fear traitors, for several deserters have gone back to their former colonial masters. Apparently some of them prefer life on the plantation, bowing and scraping under the white man's whip, to the hardy existence of a wartime freedom fighter. Pathetic fools. I guess freedom isn't for everyone.

Dessalines's army, made up of black men recruited from escaped slaves along with the free people of color who previously served in French and English regiments exceeded the expectations of their French enemies by besting them in battle time and again. The French underestimated the black warriors of Dessalines army. They thought the sons of Africa were ignorant and cowardly. A belief Dessalines allowed them to hold onto right until he outsmarted and later captured and slaughtered them.

There were other women of color in Dessalines army. Catherine Flond, famed for creating the future Haitian flag, was a close friend of mine. A lovely chocolate-hued sister who truly believed in the fledgling nation that my beloved Dessalines was trying to build. The Army of Dessalines defeated the French colonial forces at the Battle of Vertieres, and shortly after, the Napoleonic forces surrendered to Dessalines. White minority rule was over on the island of Saint Domingue, slavery was abolished and a new era of black power had begun. The Haitian nation was born.

I truly do wish that my beloved Dessalines and I had a happy ending to our love story. When the French colonial forces left, the newly freed blacks of Saint Domingue, the free people of color, the mulatto class, and the white minority all wondered what Dessalines would do. Overnight my beloved had gone from leader of a rebel army to leader of a nation. Becoming head of state transformed Dessalines...and not always in a good way.

"My dearest Fatima, you know I love you but now I must lead a nation, and avenge the wrongs done to my people by the white devils of France, I will be closely watched by all, the time has come for our arrangement to end," Dessalines said to me one night, shortly after the French colonial army surrendered to his victorious forces in the northern region of Haiti.

"Jean, mon amour, after all I've done for you, you mean to cast me aside?" I whispered, shocked, as I looked at Dessalines, whose handsome, stern face betrayed no emotion. Dessalines looked me up and down, his gaze colder than ice. Indeed, for a moment, you would have thought that he was the soulless predator, void of emotion, and I was the vulnerable mortal.

Yet Dessalines was the warm-blooded, soulful mortal and I was the undead thing whose heart did not beat. The creature of the night. The drinker of blood. The ageless fiend walking among mortals, pretending to be one of them. In that moment, it would seem I was more human than Dessalines was. I closed my eyes, hard, took one last look at the man I loved, and walked away. I disappeared into the night, and faded from the history books.

I watched my beloved Dessalines become a tyrant after crowning himself Emperor of the newly formed Republic of Haiti. When he ordered the 1804 Haiti Massacre, during which thousands of whites were slaughtered, the French were horrified. As were many of the free people of color and the mulatto elites. The teeming black masses loved Dessalines, who saw them as his most devoted followers. Power went to my lover's head, and in time, his closest friends and allies turned against him.

"My beloved, what have they done to you?" I whispered, as I stood in front of Dessalines tombstone inside the Cimetière Intérieur of Port-Au-Prince. Just as I feared, after Dessalines went power mad, those closest to him turned against him. Of his former lieutenants, only Francois Capois remained loyal to him.

According to the historians, Francois Capois died defending Dessalines from the assassins. Capois was a truly brave man. Indeed, his bravery caused French leader Rochambeau to congratulate him. Can you believe that? Rest in peace Francois Capois, and rest in peace my darling Dessalines. Perhaps one day I'll see Dessalines again. My love for this man hasn't ebbed, even though it's been centuries since we've held one another. They don't make men like him anymore, that's for damn sure.