“Well, I rescued helpless innocents at the hands of evil people,”
“And then you’ve been using that reasoning to drink human blood. You’re lucky you’re of great importance, that the Universe needs you in this plane,”
I sighed and responded sardonically, Selene grew annoyed with my insolence.
“You know very well that I would rather be transcended with the rest of my family, I would very much like to see them. This has been nothing but hell for me,”
“Please spare me the complaint. Don’t be so selfish, and go to Tibet for a while, and then come back. You will need to slumber, when signs of my plane of existence starts making itself evident in yours. You will know, and you will need the rest to be ready to face the rising into the fourth and fifth dimensions, and the threat of those evils who wish to syphon the life and soul forms from it. Listen to me for the love of the Universe, and stop killing in vain, or you will be stuck in a rut,”
Selene disappeared, and I was left alone, nonplussed, and grateful to have her presence bestowed back into my life. In the next few days, leaving by nightfall, I travelled to Tibet, by ship, and then by car, where I stayed for a few months in the high, and frigid Tibetan mountains. I meditated deeply into a trance that lasted a week, and this helped me regain some of my metaphysical power back. I was able to roam some parts of the realm of the Afterlife near Selene’s palace, where I ran into my mother, my father, and some loved people from my coven, but could not find Vanya nor Nayeru for the life of me. The grey big-eyed humanoid creatures kindly escorted me out and back into the platform before the winding stairs amidst the galaxy.
Consequently, after I awakened from my meditation, some of the monks told me how I missed out on the display of lights from the giant bird of steel that rested above the temple for three days and nights, and they showed me depiction of “little green and grey men in silver suits” Much to my awe, they resembled the beings I saw in the planes I projected to. Three days later, I quietly left and travelled back to Romania.
I became productive for once in my own improvement and personal advancement, and applied to a night school, where I attended for ten years up into 1960 and I obtained a master’s degree in Psychology, Criminal Law, and Forensics. I worked with the Bucharest police at night as a detective and went under an alias of “Stefan Tepes” only for a short timeframe, and I made a deal with local hospitals where I had access to blood banks whenever needed, under the alibi that I needed it for my detective work. The German government was still loosely interested in finding me dead or alive, and this had piqued the curiosity of the U.S Government as well, whose journalists wrote me off as a myth, partly in thanks to reports coming from Nazis who failed lie detector tests.
In 1964, one dusk, I received a paper at my doorstep from a young mailman who wore a black hooded cloak on a bicycle, who casually rode away. It was an article wrapped in papyrus scroll type paper tied with a string. It was very unusual timeframe for anybody to be dropping newspapers. When I unveiled the paper, it was a ten-page document, and when I read the title, and then flipped to the next page, to a section with pictures, I all but fainted. My heart palpitated so heavily, I could hear my own blood rushing in my veins. The title was “EBE-1 and EBE-2 Touch Down near Dulce, New Mexico, Interview, and Autopsy of EBE-1”
The picture page was a black and white real photograph of none other, then one of those grey humanoids with the gigantic black eyes, wearing a cream-colored suit and shaking hands with what appeared to be a government official! I swallowed heavily and really pondered if this was the sign that Selene meant. I was even more baffled as to who the young man was that dropped me off this document. Scared to death, but still excited about this sign I held in my hands, I began to plan how my slumber would be carried out.
I bought heavy padlocks and began to board up the house with wooden planks and built special shutters to keep out daylight. And then, in the basement, inside of a black leather and red velvet lined coffin, I crawled in here, and performed an incantation and ritual that Mother had passed down to me to invoke slumber. It took several hours of chanting, but soon enough, I slipped away into a deep sleep, around the winter of 1964, when I was almost a century old. I still only looked like I was no more than twenty-five, and remained this way, youthful and cursed, asleep, until 1981.
In 1981, I was abruptly awakened by two African teenaged-looking siblings named Mawu (who I groggily recognized at the former wife of Bennett) and Malakae, who had broken in to attempt to rob me. I got into an altercation with them and due to my hunger, I drained them both of almost all their blood, to teach them a lesson, and then tossed them outside where they would have been burnt alive had they not reacted in time. Later, we had another altercation, when I asked Mawu what the hell they wanted.
“Your people tried to rob me! You want my temple of Sekhmet I take your life!”
I was confused. After calming our nerves, I learnt that it was none other than Narciso Tepes who tried to take their temple in Egypt for himself, but failed and ran off to Norway, with a female aide. They learnt that Narciso and I only shared a last name, but we utterly despised one another. He was technically a very distant uncle or cousin twice removed of some sort, but I let the siblings know that I was in no way affiliated with him and went on to explain the horrors my deceased coven endured partially to blame on the Dragul clan. Finding Narciso, possibly meant finding Vanya, but when we ventured to Norway, no sign of him or her were found. I had just awoken and already, I had no hope.
Because Selene didn’t want me to kill for no purpose, I turned to the comfort of the epic musical decade of this timeframe, and I learnt to play the guitar, performing at local bars only for leisure. Nothing could bring back my wife. I began once more to work for the Bucharest police in 1989, taking up the very difficult, and often, gut wrenching jobs that no one else could stomach, including the liberation of some captured citizens by the dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, and his wife, Elena. Shamefully, while I had slumbered, he assumed control of the Romanian government in 1965.
It was very coincidental, that the same day we held the festival of Alucard, on December 22nd, of the year 1989, was the very same day Ceausescu was executed in Targoviste, the year my age numbered 124 years alive. Since that day, Romania was a freed country, almost a whole century too late. I had lost so much with my Selenians deceased, and Ceausescu was no different than Jedediah Magalesti, whose books on this evil priest were found strewn about the dictator’s home. Birds of a feather flew together.
I carried on with my life, fighting heinous crimes, and performing my music, ebbing between my vampiric immortality, and enjoying the more mortal luxuries of blood and carnal pleasure. In the year 2001, I witnessed the fall of the World Trade Centers in the New York City that I once used to live in, and remembered Bennett, whom Mawu had mysteriously outlived. I did not see her nor Malakae again until 2017. In 2007, a young policeman named Vittorio Celentano who was no more than 35 at the time became my nighttime partner, and soon, he joined me when I played at the bars. Humanity, as much compassion as it evoked me, was becoming disgustingly vapid and selfish, still in modern times, waging wars for trivial differences. Even as such an “evil vampire” or “pretending to be a vampire” I was portrayed to be by the less than educated and often narrow-minded evangelists who prevailed well into the 21st century. To my convenience, I allowed many to believe it was just an act, and I usually kept to myself in the confines of my home, where Vittorio would come play.
In 2012, a blood bank was threatening to shut down to lack of funds and no running power in this part of the city towards the mountains. Vittorio and I did everything we could to salvage the remaining blood packages from the bank, which was enough to supply the entire city. We paid construction men to build a citadel. We bought out a small power plant that provided power to the Meytros Estates. By now, Vittorio and I were local millionaires, but still worked tirelessly, especially him,
to provide for his wife who went to school in Targoviste, and their two children, who stayed with his mother.
In 2013, a young man named Marc joined us, first starting off in the electrical plant, and then joining us. We had become private detectives and formed our own unit, the Supernatural Unit, and still played rock music when we weren’t fighting crime. Marc had a younger brother named Radu whom we hired to run the power plant for a decent amount of pay. We used our money to help create jobs for the Romanian citizens, and for those victims we rescued, we delved our money into new project buildings. Often, I never kept much of the money I made, only enough to sustain paying for a car, of which I owned three, and pay for clothes. Blood I took from the blood bank, now moved into the citadel.
In a way, I felt as if my Selenians I missed so dearly had reincarnated into everybody I came to know, every victim I rescued, in Vittorio, since he was a descendant of Raphael, in Marc, who reminded me in personality of Bennett. Here I am now in the year of two thousand and eighteen, about 153 years of age, but I remain disgustingly, and unwantedly, eternally youthful.
-Enttu Stefan Tepes to Regina Brighton, after they became more than intimately familiar.
Part III
CH. 10
STAKE AND RED WINE
Mid-June 2018
Always a noble man of honor, the dhampir offered Regina his velvet and red brocade cape as they sat under the moonlit path of lavender and gargoyle sculptures for what seemed like eternity. They bathed under the candor of the rays which accentuated the shadows of solemnity on his face. When they locked gazes, he softly raised his eyebrows at her, sensing the sympathy twinkling in her eyes. The gravity of his story provoked tears threatening to spill out of the corners of her eyes.
“I’m sorry for everything that happened to you” she said to him. A soft shadow of sorrow fell onto the contours of his fine facial features, and he let out a soft sigh.
“Don’t burden yourself. You’re not the cause of my pain.” he said to her softly. He took her hand gently in his and gave it a gently squeeze. She didn’t flinch, but she did raise her eyebrow at him. He had gone from behaving cold-bloodedly to suddenly tenderhearted after they had slept with each other. That’s all it takes with these creatures, huh?
The way he stared into her made her feel uncomfortable vulnerable, and if there was someone who could literally strip a woman with their eyes, it was him. His skin glowed a greyish white and the way the moonlight struck him made him look slightly gaunt from the severe shadow in the hollows of his cheeks. Yet he was oppressively, morbidly beautiful. Regina had visibly lost some weight while spending time here, and he could see it on her thinned-out oval face and sharpening jawline. Her collarbones were beginning to jut out a bit, and her temperature felt cooler than before. Her long eyelashes concealed her amber eyes from him inadvertently hypnotizing her, and she stared ahead to the deep dark forest. I hope my vampire blood isn’t turning her, it shouldn’t as I haven’t drunk any of hers. Yet. She’s in danger just being around me, and she’s in even more danger if I let her go.
She surrendered to his touch as he twirled his fingers through her hair and massaged her scalp. It felt like smooth ebony silk that had the opalescence of a raven’s plumage. She was his perfect, living, breathing doll he could have played with forever, but his heart ached in lament of the beautiful lie. He was always dressed so strangely for this time, a little too dapper for any occasion. Regina stared back at him again, lured by his magnetism of his aura that had the power to bring time to a halt. His cascading, sunlight-colored hair, well-kept, and voluminous, remained his distinguishing trademark, along with his wide blue almond eyes. He was stunning, unnaturally graceful, but then again, he wasn’t a human, so this was normal for him to elude such inhuman beauty.
“You look like you have something to say,” Enttu undistracted her, with such a gentle voice when he spoke to her, almost like a seductive whisper.
“I….,” she paused, reminiscing of the explicit pleasure of him spilling into her the night before. She bit her lip before she continued, to try and conceal her guilty pleasure, though her flushing cheeks gave her sordid thoughts away, “I need to an emergency contraceptive. I’m not stupid, and I know you finished inside me. I lost myself in the heat of the moment. But I’m not ready to have a child anytime soon,”
He blinked a few times as the words hit him slightly like a metaphorical dagger through his heart. Secretly, he had hoped that she’d forget, and go about her days, because even though it was a selfish intention, he hoped to impregnate her. She resembled his wife so much that he couldn’t help himself from seducing her and he lost all control and judgment.
“I’m, I’m, s..sorry about that,” he stammered, “You didn’t give me the impression that you seemed to mind. I just haven’t had sex in so long that I couldn’t help myself,”
“It’s not a big deal but can you let me go get my pills and can I go back to work eventually?”
He sighed in audible vexation. She was becoming irritated with him and the impression he gave off that he wanted to be in control.
“Yes, you can go get your pill. I apologize. I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t want to force you into doing anything you don’t want to,” he said, bowing his head down. It was exaggerated for any human to think this, but solely from her late reaction, he resigned to telling himself that happiness was in no way slated for him in the 21st century.
“I appreciate you saving my life. And thank you for the sex. But I don’t want to risk getting pregnant,” she insistently told him as a reminder.
In the darkest corners of her mind, the painful memory of her miscarriage at five months pregnant resurfaced. She would have had a two-year-old little boy by now if she was able to carry out to full term. Instead, she laid the corpse of an unborn infant she named “Dalton” to rest in May of 2016 in Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego. It troubled her to no end and caused a myriad of rocky and risqué sexual encounters after that. In her heart, she did feel that even for a somber vampire, Enttu was so set apart from any man in this century, and underneath his frozen aura, was a man destitute of love. He apparently sowed what he wanted to reap with the perfect woman despite his sanguinary, murderous nature laced with sorrow and vendetta. He was undoubtedly sweet, and she burdened herself with hopes that he wouldn’t take her dense self-guard personally. I can’t fall in love, and much less with someone who’s a killer.
“You label me as a killer too. I shouldn’t have expected any romantic potential from a human girl,” he scoffed, shaking his head. Bitterness tinged his words.
“Stop reading my mind. That’s rude. You’re a very sweet person underneath all that darkness. But seriously, my pill. Now,” she demanded, now standing in front of him.
He looked up and caressed the side of her face with his cold hand, trying to mentally convey how much genuine love he felt for her, that she had awakened in him, ever since he first saw her. She was a carbon copy with shorter hair of Nayeru. But the words couldn’t leave his mouth, and for the first time in ages, he was very intimidated by this young woman, much in the same way that Nayeru had that effect on him. Regina grabbed his wrist, and he felt a slight pulse of voltage run up his forearm.
“Are you gonna move?” she inquired, a little more awry now, before she let him go. The dhampir leaned back and looked genuinely afraid of her.
“Yes, let’s go,” he replied, rising and towering over her. He surprised her when he scooped her up in his arms and he flew back through the woods, into his residence. She felt weightless in his arms, but she felt secure, despite the feeling of vertigo from looking at the tree tops below. When they arrived, he escorted her inside. She then realized she had no change of fresh clothes to change into before she hit the streets again. He came into the bedroom in such a timing that it seemed like he was synchronized with her mind. In his hand he carried a black shopping bag labeled Dolce and Gabbana, a
nd he had a box of shoes in the other hand labeled “Christian Louboutin” on the side. She stared at the items in perplexity, and then at him.
“What’s that?” she asked, playing the dumb card.
“That’s for you. I got that for you while you were out during those three days,” he said, the solemn expression seeming to budge into the illusion of a smile.
“That’s expensive. I can’t just accept that from you,” she protested.
“No please I insist. Can’t a vampire do something nice for a beautiful woman?”
She surrendered to his argument and changed into whatever it was that he bought her. From the Dolce and Gabbana bag, she took out a pair of black studded leggings, a black wool and lace dress, and a wool coat with a fur collar trim. There was also a black silk and organza button down. The shoes he got her were red bottomed, patent-toed and suede pumps. She was pretty sure that her ex-husband had never spent this much on her within the four-year timeframe in which they were married. She was both flattered and a little taken aback. What if this turns out to good to be true? Cause it usually always is.
“Try it on, I’ll wait outside,” the dhampir told her.
He stepped out, to give her time and space to change, though he already knew what her body looked and felt like, from the inside to out. She was taking a while because he had forgotten that he also bought her some makeup. Twenty minutes passed, and she finally emerged from the bedroom, in the pants and exquisite organza shirt, the patent pumps, and she wore red lips and heavy black mascara. She looked like a supermodel, and he was pleased that the clothes had fit her perfectly.
“You look nothing short of a femme fatale. Drop dead gorgeous,” he complemented her, bearing his fangs as he smiled.
The Dhampir Dimension Page 26
