Somali Vampire King Ch. 01

"Fuck this lousy place," I said angrily, glaring at Stewart Mill, and the ugly, smug little fucker smirked, a wicked gleam in his pale eyes. I walked out of the Rex Bar, never to return. I thought about pulling my stake out of my pocket and dusting the annoying little bozo, but I couldn't afford to get such heat on myself. A man's got to know his limitations, you know?

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Salim," Stewart called out, just as I reached the doors. I closed my eyes, hard. Even though I no longer breathe, I felt like taking a deep breath. Seriously, I really wanted to walk away. My car's in the parking lot, and I've got a tank full of gas. I could easily drive out of Ottawa, never to return. This part of provincial Ontario is pretty dull anyway. All the interesting stuff is in Toronto. Ottawa sucks!

"That's your last mistake," I said, and I swung around in a fluid motion, pulled the wooden stake out of my pocket and hurled it at Stewart Mill. The sharpened piece of wood thudded into Stewart's chest with a meaty smack, and the most annoying vampire in the world exploded into a cloud of dust. Everyone in the Red Bar stared at me, and quite a few people smiled while others shook their heads.

"Bud, you've just signed your death warrant," said Jessica, the waitress. I casually shrugged, then headed to the parking lot. I knew exactly what I was in for. In vampire society, pretty much anything goes but there are just three rules. One, humans aren't supposed to know about us. Two, don't get into beef with the "Others," as we call other creatures such as demons, werewolves and monsters. Third, don't kill your own kind.

Stewart Mill, born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1879, turned into a vampire in the summer of 1905, is the dim-witted younger brother of Rex Mill, owner of the Rex Bar, and a rather powerful member of Ottawa's vampire community. Rex and Stewart Mill have a love-hate relationship with one another, like a lot of brothers. Still, even though Rex has kicked Stewart's ass plenty of times, they are brothers, and you don't simply kill a man's brother in his own bar, in front of everybody, and expect him to do nothing about it.

Yeah, after dusting Stewart, I decided to high-tail it out of Ottawa. In case you're wondering who this is, the name is Salim Shire, and I am a vampire. I was born in the City of Kismayo, southern Somalia, in 1917. In 1939, I was turned into a vampire by Lorenzo Agnelli, an ancient vampire who hails from the City of Modena, Italy. Lorenzo had been alive since the time of the Last Crusade, and had grown tired of Immortality. The old one turned me into one of the undead, and his blood made me vastly more powerful than a vampire of my young years has any right to be.

Lorenzo was my friend and mentor, and he was also the first vampire I killed. Now, it's really not what you think. The old man was torn apart by a clan of werewolves, the Lobos of Perugia, and everyone knows that a werewolf's septic bite has a devastating effect on a vampire. We vampires are superhumanly strong and fast, and we heal instantly from bullet wounds, knife wounds, and even the most debilitating of injuries. A werewolf's bite negates our ability to heal, and depending on the extent of the injuries, it condemns us to a slow and painful death.

"End my suffering, my son, I beg you," Lorenzo whispered to me as he lay on the floor of his villa in the south side of Modena, Italy. I'd gone hunting and left the old man unguarded, and the Lobos took advantage of that to slaughter him. Putting a stake through Lorenzo's heart was one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do. The old man was kind to me, a young black Muslim man from the Horn of Africa. In those days, Italy was even more racist than it is now. As a person of color, I was the object of hatred, scorn and derision.

Lorenzo Agnelli and I met while he was visiting Mogadishu, Capital of Somalia, where I lived at the time. The old man was new in town and needed a guide. Since the dude was offering big bucks to explore the nightlife, I eagerly accepted the assignment. Well, one night, we got attacked by machete-wielding bandits, not an unusual occurrence in the otherwise lovely City of Mogadishu in those days.

The Italian people have done all kinds of bad things to the people of East Africa, ask any Somali, Ethiopian or Eritrean. Colonialism, folks. It's left some ugly stains in the modern world, and it's not easily forgotten. As the bandits came toward Lorenzo and I, I faced a drastic choice. I could abandon the rich old white man to his fate, or I could stand and fight. The Horn of Africa was full of rich white guys who come to live under the African sun, living like kings while enjoying the food, culture and the women. Still, I had a code of honor and wasn't about to abandon an old man to the clutches of bandits. I defended Lorenzo, and got fatally wounded by the bandits as a result.

"Brave of you to defend me, young man, but I needed no help," Lorenzo said as he knelt over my bleeding body. I'd been stabbed half a dozen times by the bandits before something truly incredible happened. The old Italian man, who seemed feeble moments before, turned into a blur of speed. Lashing out with clawed hands, the old man tore into the bandits, making short work of them. I looked at the old man, whose eyes were red now.

"Before I die, tell me what you are," I whispered, and Lorenzo smiled and told me he would not let me die. The old man turned me into a vampire, took me in, taught me much about the world and about myself. As the Second World War raged around us, Lorenzo Agnelli and I used our preternatural powers to protect the people of East Africa from the depredations of wayward Italian soldiers. You should have seen the way they treated us Somalis and our Ethiopian neighbors.

"Our kind are confined to the shadows, Salim, but we can use our powers for the good of mankind, with discretion of course," Lorenzo said to me, and I nodded in agreement. We stood over the corpse of Italian Army soldier Paolo Martini, a monster of a man responsible for the rape of three young Somali women in the City of Mogadishu. When the young women's families protested, their cries fell on deaf ears. Well, I took great pleasure in ending Martini's life. Before I drank his blood, I ripped off his balls. I cut him into little pieces and fed them to wild dogs in the wasteland outside Mogadishu.

"Well done, my friend, well done," Lorenzo said to me, and we returned to our villa, to sleep away the daylight hours. Like angels of death, we traveled from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Djibouti City, Djibouti, and Mogadishu, Somalia. Wherever European soldiers abused their power and mistreated the local population, we hunted down the worst of them. We always drank the blood of the corrupt and the evil. Our way of making the world a better place.

"Ridding the world of evil, that's our sacred duty," Lorenzo taught me, and I wholeheartedly believed the truth of those words, and lived by them. After the Second World War, Lorenzo Agnelli returned to Italy and I went with him. The old vampire's return to the city of his birth after decades of absence hadn't gone unnoticed. The local supernatural community was in awe of Lorenzo's fearsome name and power. The local vampires welcomed him, but the Lobos, a clan of werewolves, wanted to take out the old man.

Prior to coming to Modena, I had no idea that there were supernatural entities other than vampires in the world. I got the shock of a lifetime one evening as Lorenzo and I grabbed coffee at Casa Di Luciana, a chic restaurant in downtown Modena which the old man owned. A lot of people walking by stared at us, for seeing well-dressed old Italian guys having coffee with young black guys wasn't something most Italians would envision in the 1940s.

"Hey, old man! You're back in town and brought your pet Negro with you, and you expect us to roll over while you take over? Not going to happen," said a tall, burly, dark-haired and bronze-skinned, thirtysomething man who identified himself as Valerio Morelli. Standing there, clad in a black silk shirt, black silk pants and boots, Valerio cut an impressive figure. I knew I could take him, even though he was taller and more muscular than me. I locked eyes with the creep, and he looked at me and smirked.

"Back off, creep!" I said as I got up, and started toward a smiling Valerio, before Lorenzo laid a restraining hand on my arm. I looked at the old man, and he smiled at me but shook his head. Valerio took one step closer to me, and I suddenly realized what I'd been smelling underneath his cheap perfume. This guy didn't smell right. He smelled human, mostly, but he also smelled wrong. There was something vaguely familiar about his secondary smell. Dude smelled like a wet dog!

"Careful, El Negro, don't want to take a beating in front of your Papa here," Valerio said, and in that instant, his eyes changed...flashing bright yellow. His smile remained frozen in place, but his teeth were suddenly longer and sharper. Oh, and was it my imagination or was the fucker more hairy than he was before? I involuntarily took a step back, and Valerio laughed.

"Careful, my young friend, this one is more than he seems," Lorenzo said evenly, and then he put down his coffee cup, and gestured for Valerio to join us. Blinking in surprise, I looked at Lorenzo then at Valerio before I sat back down. Valerio pulled up a chair and sat across from Lorenzo, and just like that, his eyes returned to their brown color, his teeth went back to their normal length, and the extra hair he sported vanished like ice in the sun.

"Lorenzo, let's talk business," Valerio said, and I watched as my mentor and his immortal enemy sat down and talked like ordinary businessmen. As the scene unraveled before me, a surreal feeling came over me. There are so many things living in this seemingly mundane world which I know nothing about. I thought Valerio was an ordinary mortal until he revealed himself to be otherwise. If Lorenzo hadn't stayed my hand, what would have happened?