The Dhampir Dimension

by Viktoria Alukard

  He stared into the solid black eyes of his own animated reflection that possessed its own thoughts and movements, and very likely matched him in strength. His doppelganger possessed the same physical attributes as him and mimicked his every move.

  “Where the fuck are these things coming from?” he thought out loud. The dhampir-twin launched itself at him, and when it opened its mouth, a swarm of small black insects crawled out and flew to attack both him and the baby boy. Enttu would have no choice but to employ his fire-magic and create more work for the firefighters down below. He closed his hand and formed a tight fist, while he muttered a Latin incantation. When the wall of insects was a mere inch away from his face, he opened his fist and flung his hand forward, unleashing a wave of fire that traveled upwards to the ceiling and set the whole room ablaze. His doppelganger hissed in agony when the fire sizzled it alive. Its skin bubbled and charred, and then, it imploded into a pile of black ash that rose upwards and eventually vanished into nothingness. He shook his head, hoping to never run into it again, and with the baby safe in his arms, he escaped the collapsing building.

  Outside, streams from fire engines sprayed upwards of two hundred feet as they quenched out the flames, and all the victims lined the streets. The dhampir descended in front of the crowd with the agitated child crying once more, and he held the baby to his chest to shield it from the rain.

  “My baby!!” cried a young woman in black exercise leggings, and she pushed to the crowd and then when she saw the tall blonde man hovering slightly above ground with his floor-length black cape gently draping behind him, she knew that a vampire was responsible for rescuing her child, and she was grateful.

  “Aren’t you the rock star from that local band?” the woman questioned him. He looked into her eyes and said nothing, but he handed her the little boy, a six-month-old infant. She graciously took the baby and hugged him so tightly, and sobbed tears of joy, grateful that he was rescued. The rest of the crowd had been too distracted and talking amongst themselves, also, most of them were being shuttled to the paramedics, who were treating many victims for burns and smoke inhalation. The young woman couldn’t keep her eyes off the mesmerizing dhampir’s beauty, and he noticed her stare. Once more, he blinked once, and whispered to her,

  “This is an elaborate dream,”

  Her expression then went blank, and he used this timing to his advantage to disappear out of her line of sight. When he flew over the buildings and back to the cul-de-sac where he expected the patrol car to be, it was gone. He squinted his eyes in disbelief. Could his companions really have deserted him out of anger? He dialed both of their numbers, but neither one of them picked up, so he resorted to patrolling the city alone, before sunlight came. Not surprised at the lack of response in the remaining hours, he flew back to his residence in the woods and tucked himself away in a velvet coffin.

  Marlboro Mansion, 19 June 2018, Saturday evening.

  Regina had come back from her run, to release the stress and worry of neither Cassandra nor Radu answering the phone. Could it have been that they were upset at her for her absence even though she had just begun her job? She worried endlessly, and resorted to a hot bubble bath, where she daydreamed of her vampire lover and the next time she’d see him again. He had said it would’ve been soon, but how soon?

  7:30 P.M, Bucharest Police Headquarters.

  Tensions were high in the atmosphere, as the chief of police paced back and forth in front of an oblong wooden table. He slammed his coffee cup down before going on another heated rant.

  “Goddamn it Tepes! You almost risked the lives of your entire unit, all three of you! Why do I get a feeling it’s not the first time you’ve ever done anything so outlandish?”

  “Well Sir, my outlandish behavior has saved countless lives, and you can’t deny that,” Enttu stated, surprisingly calm through the stinging words. He was about to get fired that night. He stood at parade rest.

  “Celentano, tell me what happened this morning!” demanded the chief.

  Vittorio stood in nervous silence next to the dhampir, who stood next to a trembling Marc.

  “Sir, Tepes went into the burning building to save people. I mean, it’s always been his moral obligation, and I respect that. In no way did he endanger us sir,”

  “No, but you had told him not to, correct? And now, we have residents making outlandish claims of a levitating man who very much fits your description, Tepes, unless there is anyone else in Bucharest roaming around with fangs, long blonde hair, and a cape!”

  “You know what sir? I quit. Your department needs me more than I need it!” the dhampir yelled back at the boss. He slid his pistol across the table and flung his badge against the wall. It ricocheted and landed on the coffee-stained carpet.

  “You can’t quit Enttu, we need you!” cried Marc.

  “No, the Supernatural Unit has no need for this….traitor. Leave him be. I am sure he will regret his decision later,” sneered the chief of police.

  The dhampir walked off silently, in anger, and slammed the door shut on his way out. A younger officer who considered him a rival bumped into him as he was about to reach the exit. In a mocking tone, because he already knew what was going on from brown-nosing with the boss, he laughed in his face.

  “Oh, boy. You look like you just got fired, vampire boy. I can’t blame them. I wouldn’t want some demonic freak in my department either,”

  The snob was soon met with a fist that felt like taking a slab of cement to the face at a hundred miles an hour. All his front teeth were broken, as he fell and landed on his back. His nose and parts of his face were broken, and his eyes were stinging and beginning to swell. He spat out dribbling blood and spit from the side of his mouth, and to add insult to injury, Enttu spat on him, before he walked out the doors of the police headquarters one more time.

  “I have been dying to do that,” he said under his breath.

  When Regina awoke from her nap in the bathtub, about twenty minutes had passed, and the water had gone lukewarm and almost bubble less. It still smelt intoxicatingly pleasant of lavender and some powdery nag champa incense she had burning near the window. She pulled the rubber stopper inserted into the drain, and slowly, the soapy water she’d been soaking in began to swirl down the drain in a smooth whirlpool. She stepped out the tub and grabbed the fluffy black towel that still carried the fresh warmth of being pulled out the dryer earlier. She lathered some lotion on her lithe, naked body, and she brushed her teeth. Her plans for the rest of the evening were to stay indoors and curl up with a good book from the shelf in the parlor.

  Downstairs, she delved deep into the works of Edgar Allen Poe, slightly surprised that she had found the book in English. Perhaps it had belonged to Magnus. While she read “The Raven,” a voicemail on the landline startled her out of her focus on the poem, and she heard the voice of a male leaving a message.

  “Hello father, Halo Mama. This is Julian. Atlanta and I are currently in San Diego, California. It is so much rainier than we expected, and there have been several small earthquakes daily since we have been here. We will be back in the house in Norway next week. Please call back when you can. We love you!” Click.

  “Julian? Could that have been their son?” Regina wondered. She drifted off to sleep in the sofa, and eventually, the three cats that inhabited the mansion curled up on and around her. Her mind slipped into a heavy exhaustion that she couldn’t overcome, and she kept falling into an abyss to the cosmos. Within the cosmos, there were infinite worlds and dimensions in which she flew over and across.

  She stopped slipping through and through each of the dreamy, blurry worlds when she finally recognized that she was in front of a tenebrous, moon lit bog full of stagnant green water. Everything was tinted with an olive green, including the night sky, the moon, and the stars. There was a stone bridge that appeared before her, so she could cross over to the other side where there was
a gate here. She carefully took one step onto the bridge, and then continued onwards. Underneath, the green waters of the bog began to bubble, and the shadow of an aquatic creature loomed beneath the surface. She ran so fast, and almost suffered cardiac arrest. Once she made it across, she pushed the gate open, and beyond it was an eerily magnificent backdrop of what she assumed were the Carpathian Mountains. There was an expansive field of assorted flowers illuminated by a full moon, and she stood up to observe it in peace.

  Then she found that she was able to levitate towards the moon by sheer will of thought, and successfully did so, and got close enough to touch it, before an inverted pyramid appeared hovering right in front of her. Here, on the flat surface reflecting a darkened gold, was standing a tall, black-haired man of long hair, small features, and in a long crimson duster. She felt compelled to land atop the floating surface, and it was then that the moon turned into a dark, coppery amber that painted everything in the light of this same color. The man in front of her extended his hands out to either side as if he were welcoming her on this strange vessel. They were soon hovering above the brick rooftops of domestic households in the upscale neighborhoods in Bucharest, where even the second story balconies were adorned with green hedges. Everything appeared as the color of sienna, and the platform hovered right over them.

  “Who are you, and where am I?” she asked the extemporaneous man, who somewhat resembled Enttu with black hair.

  “What a shame is your past life amnesia, my sweet Elvira,” the man spoke.

  A loud, slamming click awoke Regina from this bizarre, vivid dream, that left her in a state of consternation and lightheadedness in her abrupt awakening. Darkness surrounded her, save for the moonlight, and she realized that the power had gone out, and the breakers in the mansion had tripped loudly. She awakened, and her vision was blurred but for a moment, and when it cleared, she was drawn to staring at something she thought she saw moving along the ceiling. The energy of her anxiety attracted the negative charge of the molecules of the still air around her and it began to pool in her fists. At first, they felt like jitters, and the sensation escalated in a crescendo of tingling warmth at her fingertips, like painless needle pricks. Her breaths were shallow, and her adrenals pumped fluid into her bloodstream in case of fight or flight.

  The cats began to hiss and the fur along their backs and tails puffed out with the static from aggression and self-defense. They ran away together when a loud thud hit the floor in front of the couch, and a black sinewy figure rose from the ground. It was a thin male with whitish blonde hair, long and hanging freely. He was fanged and long-clawed, and his skin was a cracked ceramic white. He didn’t mutter a single word but bore into the depths of a petrified Regina’s soul through his liquid black eyes. He resembled her vampire but something terribly evil about his atmosphere had her suspecting that it couldn’t be. He then growled and revealed stained black fangs, and an exaggerated, long, black tongue. Regina screamed and simultaneously, she released the charge of electricity pooled in her hands, and hit the evil twin look-alike of Enttu, and he began to convulse in the electrical power surge of pure, raw current.

  The doppelganger cursed the air in a demonic, non-human and guttural gargle. He then paused, and smoke from the electrocution rose from his charred skin. He collapsed to the ground, and Regina was relieved. Out of curiosity, she approached him to examine him and make sure he didn’t get back up on his feet. She took advantage that he remained stunned and knocked out cold. She slipped into a pair of moccasins by the door and jiggled the knob to open it.

  There was a chirping sound behind her that caused her to turn around and look, even though she knew she shouldn’t have done so. In sudden horror, her jaw dropped to the ground when she gasped, and she saw that the pile of the doppelganger had then transfigured into a mound of overgrown, black mutant cockroaches, that fluttered their wings and chirped in crazed hunger. She swore that they felt her energy of her staring back at them, because they all began to fly toward her. She screamed and kicked the door open. She then bolted through the crack, and then went toward the front gate. The swarm of black insects followed her out the open door, and she had never run faster in her life.

  She successfully opened the gate and went running out into the street. It was pitch-black out here too, and the only light came from the blood-red moon. Cockroaches were her worst nightmare, and now, they were chasing after here as if she had vexed the disgusting, yet normally non-aggressive bugs. She paused in the middle of the street to catch her breath and turned back to see if the swarm still followed her. After five seconds of her standing by in silence and frightened desolation, she was shocked and relieved that they didn’t follow her out here.

  “What the f…”

  Regina was sharply cut off from speaking to herself, as the Cadillac that hit her with a fatal impact sent her flying in the air. Her body went rolling onto the asphalt, and she lay there, writhing in all-over agony, and heard the driver in the Cadillac curse her as he drove off. From what she made it out to be, he yelled something that sounded like,

  “No more dhampir scumbag shall be born ever again!”

  She couldn’t quite decipher what this message was supposed to mean, because the pull of death was dragging her by her foot down into the abyss, as her hands remained on the cliff, grasping on for dear life. The dirt under her nails of the stained, ephemeral life she had on her trip on Earth caved in under the pressure of her last dregs of hope and fight in left in her that were fleeting together with her soul. The eternal nap of darkness however, had an offer for her too good to pass up, of eternal cosmos, no more pain, and the opportunity to travel the world and parallel universes free of charge. The hidden ancient knowledge of worlds near and distant would now be at her disposure, and she could have it all, the freedom she couldn’t have before afforded even with an accumulation of wealth so great, she could have bought mankind.

  In a field lavish with green pastures, pastel blue skies and gentle lemon-yellow sunlight, she came upon by her own mental volition. White sheets hung to dry on a golden string suspended on green-leafed eucalyptus trees. She glided smoothly upon a field of sunflowers with blooms the size of her face, yellow petals opened widely, drinking up the daylight. Her hands shoved the sticky stems to one side to make a small clearing for herself. Here, behind the flowers, was the soft, acoustic melody of an ethnic instrument beautifully played by the delicate, tiny tan hands of the toddler in crisp white linen who played so skillfully. He was so angelic and when he noticed that Mommy had finally come to see him like he knew she would, he gravitated to her whilst still playing his Serenata for her. The little brown-haired, amber eyed boy danced in circled around his mother and golden dust made of fragments of light fell from his fingertips when he waved his tiny hands. Soon, Dalton and his mother cuddled together beneath a Joshua tree, and they witnessed the worlds spinning up clouds of cosmic dust, and astral travelling souls zipping over the reddening skyline.

  Regina slipped away in an oozing pool of her own still warm, lustrous blood. Not even five minutes later, Enttu found her freshly deceased cadaver. She was still warm and supple but mangled severely on her left side, and her body lying in a deformed position, from a broken neck and dislocated joints. Her eyes were opened as the impact killed her instantly, and her own blood had repainted her otherwise smooth face of an amber, soft as a baby’s bottom. He dipped his finger in her blood to taste and see anything from recent blood memories. It had been the work of the Dragul as he suspected, and he also had seen the appearance of his doppelganger who led her on into a death trap. Tears of silence welled in the ducts of his eyes and blinded him in crystalline blur. Bitterness and the boiling rage of hatred, severe hatred for both vampires, for humanity, for the worst and most unimaginable atrocities he wished upon Earth right then in the spur of the moment burned in his viscera’s. He fell to his knees, and took Regina in his arms, weeping and getting her spilt blood all over his crispy
, white shirt.

  “Fuck!” he cried out loud.

  He was angry at the world, even more so with himself for his lack of proper timing, and he blamed himself over and over, almost crushing her, and it wouldn’t have been to death as she was already there on her own. Everyone I love has ever and always will fade away from me. Is this the price I pay for immortality, and was it worth it? I wish that moonlight was death-embracing sunlight.

  “You’re burning daylight by not biting her. The time would come sooner or later,” conveyed a familiar but long unheard-of voice like that in ages. From behind the parked BMW, Enttu heard the voice project behind the front of the black sedan. Liquid black, oversized circular eyes, deep set into an egg-shaped, stark white marble face with vestigial

  “Go ahead, you need her in your life,” the alien mentally expostulated once more.

  The dhampir didn’t hesitate now, and in the blink of an eye, he sunk his fangs into the tender skin of his dead human lover bleeding all over his arms, his chest, his designer clothing that was as dark and stiff from the high quality and stitching. Her blood reeked on him, of copper and salt. Pushing her matted black hair to the side, he inhaled her scent cautiously, even though he’d been dying to finally be granted this morbid opportunity. His tongue licked the spot of his bite on her frail throat, and tasted her oozing death, before he sunk his fangs into her, and pulled her body against his as he perched over her and drank the remainder of her life. Her breasts shifted up as he held her body hard against him, and his pleasure of drinking her death to give him fluid vitality inclined to the point of no return. His eyes glowed a fluorescent red that resembled that glow of the brake lights of a car, or of red traffic lights. The insurgence of fresh, foreign blood pouring down his throat sprung forth a faint blush against his pearly marble skin, blood in white diamond.

  He sucked her suffering away a bit harder, and his heart pumped a little bit stronger, and his breathing crescendoed into hot, humid panting of primal lust exorcised. It was poetic coexistence, he was in her, and she was in him, a slivery red cocoon of Death and Life consummating marriage. Her blood was the sweetest he’d ever tasted, it was refreshing, and revitalized every single undead cell in his aesthetic, blonde-haired vessel he didn’t choose to be born into. But it is what it is. He was after all, a vampire by nature. He was a god in his own realm, with the power to give and take life at will and grant the dying their rites. The climax of the culmination of vampiric satisfaction caused small shockwaves to travel up his spine, as he faced the slanting rain that washed away the blood from his lips. He knelt beside his drained lover, capped by his velvet cloak, and him, by the humming silence and the silky, cool darkness.