"Welcome to the Domain of Mistress Ayaan," said the six-foot-tall, attractive black woman on the video. Clad in a black leather jacket over a black turtleneck shirt, black leather pants and stylish black cowboy boots, her face hidden by a leather mask, the lady looked beautiful and mysterious. The BDSM page advertised Mistress Ayaan's services and rates as well as her uniqueness as the only professional dominatrix of Somali descent. To the person viewing the site, this was most intriguing...
"Could it be you, my darling, Lady Arawelo?" Samatar wondered aloud, and he leaned back on his chair in the basement of his townhouse, located in the Glebe area of Ottawa, Ontario. Anyone looking at Samatar would see a six-foot-two, wiry and dark-skinned man in his mid-thirties. He was clean-shaven, save for a slick goatee. With clear, intelligent brown eyes, Samatar looked at the screen, quietly absorbing every bit of information available on this latest player...
Samatar raked his tongue over his fangs as he looked at Mistress Ayaan's web page, and mulled over the information available to him. The vampire came to the conclusion that this woman just might be a direct descendant of his former mistress, Queen Arawelo, former ruler of ancient Somalia. In ancient times, Queen Arawelo defied her husband, King Abdi of the Toljaala Tribe, which once ruled all of Somalia. Rejecting the submissive role assigned to women in ancient Somali society, Queen Arawelo deposed her husband King Abdi and seized power.
Queen Arawelo believed that women could be great leaders and warriors instead of just wives and mothers. In ancient Somali culture, such ideas were unheard of. Queen Arawelo made war against the Sabean Kingdom, which often ventured into African kingdoms and stole young African women and men which they sold as slaves in foreign lands. A lot of African leaders feared the might of the Sabean Kingdom, as they were a fierce desert people, but Queen Arawelo invaded their land, and set free many Africans who had been stolen and enslaved.
Samatar, a vampire so old that he remembers the days before the Roman Empire, had been around during Queen Arawelo's time. For thousands of years, Samatar regretted not turning his beloved Queen Arawelo into one of the Undead, so that they might be together in all of eternity. He'd offered to make her immortal but the tall, beautiful and stubborn African queen refused to spend eternity in the shadows, choosing to die in the light instead. In the end, the men of ancient Somalia rose against their defiant queen and she fell during a brutal uprising. Samatar never forgave himself for not saving Queen Arawelo from her grisly fate...
After wandering the planet earth for eons, Samatar finally got the urge to settle down. The ancient vampire had been living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, for over fifteen years. He'd moved there from Saint Paul, Minnesota, and found the place to his liking due to the sheer number of Somali people in the area. Samatar has always enjoyed being close to his people even though, he wasn't, strictly speaking, one of them anymore. The Undead state changes a person into a monster that craves human blood, and this last bit cuts a lot of ties.
The City of Ottawa might seem like a quaint, if passive-aggressive, sort of dull government town but many supernatural entities call the place home. Vampires, werewolves, demons, elves, and various breeds of monsters that go about in human disguise have found the City of Ottawa to their liking. Samatar, an ancient vampire who's roamed the earth for thousands of years, is just another resident in such a place. Things are run a certain way in the City of Ottawa.
Beneath the veneer of mundane life and tranquility lurks much darkness, as fitting a world-class metropolitan capital. There are secret groups of powerful humans who conduct business with the supernatural communities. Those groups keep the peace between human and inhuman in the Canadian Capital. All of this happens in utmost secrecy and often in broad daylight, and that's the key to their success. The monsters are never who or what humans think they are...
The monsters are everywhere in the City of Ottawa, blending in effortlessly among the human population in all of its diversity and strangeness. Don't look for monsters in the wilderness. The young man serving you coffee at Tim Horton's might be a werewolf in disguise. The Uber driver who only works nights just might be a vampire. The butcher who provides you and your gourmet friends with exotic meats might be a witch. You just never know.
After wandering the world for thousands of years, Samatar had amassed much wealth. He was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and kept his money in various banks around the world. The Swiss banks were among his favorites. They didn't ask too many questions, unlike the Royal Bank of Canada and TD Bank, both of which Samatar was forced to deal with since he was now a Canadian citizen, at least on paper. Things are done a certain way in Canada, and not even an eons-old immortal can claim to be the exception.
During his many journeys around the world, Samatar had encountered much strangeness. Unique among them was the remarkable phenomenon of human genetic reincarnation. A person's genes might recombine themselves in later generations, thus creating that same individual in later times. Human beings have always known that their genes lived on in future generations, as long as they reproduced successfully. Why couldn't a long-dead person's genes recombine themselves and thus recreate that same individual, genetically and visually identical to their predecessor, at a later time?
Samatar had been living in the Kingdom of Axum during the reign of Roman Emperor Caligula. He'd journeyed to Rome itself as a merchant of exotic animals and spices, and witnesses firsthand the excesses of the depraved Roman Emperor Caligula. Thousands of years later, Caligula was genetically reincarnated as a certain U.S. politician with a grandiose sense of self and a fondness for dictatorships. The American people weren't prepared to deal with this tyrannical madman who almost single-handedly destroyed their democracy, but Samatar had seen his like before.
