Vampire Uprising in Toronto

"Shit happens," Mara Philemon muttered to herself as she hid in the pit, submerged in sludge, human excrement, and heaven knew what else. Ever since the world found out about the existence of vampires, special squads called Hunters had been deployed in all of North America's major cities, to hunt down and slay the Undead. Last night, she'd been spotted by such a squad, and hid in the last place where the gunmen and their hunting dogs would think to look for her...

The City of Toronto, Ontario, had been Mara's home for decades and she was one of a handful of vampires who opted to stick around even after the Premier of Ontario declared martial law, and the Hunters started patrolling the streets. Clad in body armor, brandishing lethal weapons and the latest in tracking technology, these ruthless men and women marched into basements, warehouses, townhouses and backrooms, the traditional lairs of the vampires, and exterminated them.

Last night the Hunters came for Mara, who thought she was safe in her plush townhouse in the east side of Toronto. Safe, ha! When the Hunters came for her, she'd been watching the news, unable to sleep. Her whole existence had been disrupted by the Edict, as the new law mandating the extermination of North America's vampires was called. The private blood delivery service she'd relied on for years stopped making deliveries, and Mara was contemplating starvation when her enemies came for her...

Fearing for her eternal life, Mara Philemon made a run for it, and the Hunters tracked her down to a seedy warehouse in the factory district. The abandoned warehouse had long been home to nests of squatters, homeless folks, and others. Thankfully, it was not deserted when Mara went in, and in the confusion of homeless folks waking up to the sound of guns blazing, she managed to elude her pursuers. And the best place to hide turned out to be the most disgusting of all...

One of the blessings of being Undead is that the vampires no longer required oxygen in order to function. So hiding in slime, or under water, well, that suited them just fine. As the hours ticked by, Mara waited in her slimy hole, anxiously awaiting the sunset. With nothing to do, and sensing that her enemies might still be lingering in the area, she thought about all the twists and turns that her, well, not life, but, well, her existence had taken recently...

Mara Philemon was born in the City of Cap-Haitien, northern Haiti, in 1834, three decades after the birth of the Haitian nation. Her parents, Bertrand Philemon and Michelle Jean-Philemon met as warriors fighting for freedom in Jean Jacques Dessalines Army during the Haitian War of Independence which pitted former African slaves in the colony of Saint Domingue against the Napoleonic Army led by General Leclerc. Mara Philemon was born during a turbulent, hectic time that Haitian nationals refer to as the Heroic Age...

"Ma fille, tu as un grand destin," said Mara's grandmother, Granny Elsie Jean, a wise old Haitian woman who sat the young woman down one evening, and taught her the ways of the Loa. In the minds of Europeans, the Voodoo faith, practiced by many Haitians and others, was nothing but silly superstition. Mara knew better, and even at a young age she could sense that her grandmother, a wizened, dark-skinned and silver-haired, lively old woman was definitely out of the ordinary...

"What do you see about my future when you commune with the spirits?" Mara asked eagerly, and the old woman looked at the bag of bones lying at her feet. Mara bit her lip, and Granny Elsie scowled. They were at the family estate in the rural community of Quartier Morin, not far from the City of Cap-Haitien. Mara was nineteen years old, and as a tall, beautiful young woman, she was fielding romantic requests from many young men. Feeling flatted by all the attention and confused about her future, Mara sought advice from her grandmother...

"Oh, ma fille, I see great darkness in your future," Granny Elsie said, shaking her head, and Mara blinked in surprise. She was not expecting that. The old woman looked at her granddaughter, and then at the bones, and she cast and recast them, throwing them this way and that. Again and again they fell in the same order, and a hush fell over the campfire as granddaughter and grandmother looked at each other in silence...

"Whatever my destiny, I will meet it with dignity," Mara Philemon said at last, and Granny Elsie smiled sadly, and nodded, but said nothing. The two ladies retired for the evening. That night, as Mara lay on her bed, unable to sleep, she thought of what Granny Elsie had said. That old woman doesn't know what she's talking about, Mara thought, shaking her head. Pulling the sheets over her nubile, sweaty body, Mara fell into a restful sleep.

A fortnight later, Mara traveled to the City of Jacmel with her cousin Vanessa, and the two young women attended a local festival. While hanging out and dancing, a certain well-dressed, smiling young man caught the ladies attention. He was very tall, dark and handsome, and moved with a feline grace that definitely set him apart from the other young men at the festival. As the music boomed and the drinks flowed, the smiling stranger purposefully approached Mara and Vanessa, who exchanged a smile.

"Ladies, I couldn't help notice that you are new here, welcome to Jacmel, I am Zouk," the young man said, and as Mara held out her hand, he took it and instead of shaking it he kissed it. Mara blushed and Vanessa smiled. As the evening rolled on, Mara and Zouk danced, and Vanessa danced with another young man. Later, though, she lost track of her dear cousin. After searching the party and asking about Mara, Vanessa was unable to find her. For Mara had indeed done something completely out of character and gone home with Zouk...

"You're unlike any man I've ever met," Mara said haltingly to Zouk, as she lay against his chest. Grinning, Zouk gently caressed her face and then kissed her forehead. Playfully he slapped Mara's thick derriere, and the young Haitian woman squealed in delight. Straddling him, Mara looked into Zouk's soulful brown eyes, which seemed to glow in the dim light of his tastefully decorated dwelling...

"You're a unique woman, the kind of beauty I wish could be eternal," Zouk said, and Mara smiled, then kissed him. Gently he caressed her breasts and Mara's hands went all along his hairy chest, and then settled on his manhood, which lengthened and hardened in her hands. Mara pumped her hands up and down Zouk's dick, and the chocolate-hued, handsome brother looked at her and grinned, and then nodded gently at her.

"Hmm, I like the way you taste," Mara cooed softly, as she took Zouk's dick into her mouth, and the brother sighed happily as she began sucking his dick. Once Mara had him good and hard, Zouk put her on all fours and spanked her big butt before thrusting into her. Mara hummed happily as Zouk gripped her hips and began fucking her, filling her pussy with his long, hard dick. Passionately they went at it, sucking and fucking the night away, until the wee hours of the morning...

After hours of passionate lovemaking, Mara fell asleep in Zouk's arms. When she woke up, she was...changed. For Zouk had bitten her in her sleep and mixed his blood with hers, turning her into one of the Undead. As it turns out, the handsome Zouk was a vampire of great power and renown. Once, he was known as the legendary Prince Azubuike among the Igbo people of Nigeria, until he became a blood drinker and was driven out of his West African kingdom for preying upon his own people.

"What have I become?" Mara demanded, when she rose a night later, feeling strange, and she looked at Zouk with confusion in her lovely eyes. The tall, dark and handsome man whom she found so seductive looked at her with compassion, and it dawned on her that he was not like other men. Something inside told her that he wasn't quite human, rather, he was something else. Something dangerous, and he'd done something to her...

"My dear, I gave you a wonderful gift, the gift of eternal life, I couldn't stand the thought of beauty like yours fading away," Zouk said, and Mara looked at him, and knew that from now on, her world would never be the same. It turns out that it was all true, what Zouk said. He did indeed turn her into a vampire, and although she resented him for ending her life, she knew that she needed his help until she got her bearings in her new existence...

A few years later, Mara Philemon dispatched her former lover and vampire master in a most ingenious fashion. As he slept during the daytime hours, she sent armed men after him to capture him and drag him into the sun, where he burned to ash. As he perished in a flash of fire, Zouk cursed Mara's very name, and in her lair, the young female vampire smiled. At last, she was finally free...

Over the next few decades, Mara Philemon wandered throughout the island of Haiti, moving from place to place in search of blood and power. Later, having grown bored of her homeland, Mara wandered through the rest of the Antilles. She took money from her victims, and killed whoever got in her way, mortal and immortal alike. In doing so, Mara acquired quite a reputation. Indeed, by the time Mara ventured into Africa, in search of the origins of man and vampire, she had become known as the Black Angel.

In 1977, Mara Philemon came to the City of Toronto, Canada, and did something she had never done since her mortal days. The fearsome female vampire decided to stay in the vast metropolis, for at last she'd finally found a place that felt like home. In Eglington West, also known as Little Jamaica, Mara became a fixture of the art and music scene.

Using her wealth to encourage and support writers, painters and musicians from the Caribbean and Africa was Mara's way of redeeming herself. Having preyed on countless humans in her nearly two centuries of roaming the planet, Mara had grown tired of the killing. And she'd seen a lot of careless, overconfident vampires die at the hands of fed-up humans. There had to be a way for humans and vampires to coexist. That's why Mara and several other enlightened vampires created a blood delivery service catering to the needs of the vampire community.

Soon, the blood delivery service had affiliates in every major city in North America. Money exchanged hands, and supply met a growing demand. Mara Philemon and her fellow vampire investors made a bundle. It was a wonderful agreement, blood banks donated a large percentage of their intake to the service, and vampires stopped preying on humans. The City of Toronto had become her home, and Mara Philemon never thought she'd leave...until the Hunters came.

All these thoughts raced through Mara Philemon's head as she lay submerged in the pit, buried under tons of sludge, slime and human excrement. With a vampire's keen hearing, she listened to the ambient sounds around her. In the City of Toronto, mortals went about their daily business. As the Hunters exterminated vampires in North American locales like Boston, Montreal, Tijuana, New Jersey, Acapulco, Vancouver, New York, and beyond, humanity continued to go about its business...

When night fell, Mara Philemon emerged from the slime, and her eyes fell upon a potential victim. A policewoman who'd parked her squad car in a secluded spot and apparently nodded off. Well, this gal's laziness was about to prove lethal. Mara snuck upon her victim and sank her fangs into the unsuspecting policewoman's neck. For the first time in several decades, Mara fed upon a live human. For a brief moment, she felt regret. It didn't have to be this way, but if the humans were playing for keeps, so was she...

"That's better," Mara said to herself as she emerged from the empty hotel room into which she'd snuck, having escaladed the sheer wall like Spiderman, only better. Taking a shower and obtaining new clothes and shoes from the boutique downstairs made her feel like a new woman. Clad in a black leather jacket, black tank top and black jeans, Mara emerged onto the street, ready to face the Toronto night. Out there, the Hunters roamed the streets, exterminating her kind at will.

Marching into one of their outposts, somewhere in Mississauga, Mara pulled out the pistol she'd taken from the slain policewoman and shot three Hunters point blank, killing them instantly. After taking their weapons, and tons of ammo, Mara paused. Haughtily she smiled at the security camera she knew was focused on her, and shrugged, knowing that somewhere out there, the legion of techno-wizards monitoring her enemies were aware of her every move.

"To the humans, I stopped hunting you for food many years ago, but you broke the truce so now I hunt you, to my fellow vampires, let's rise up against these creeps, they're our food, nothing more," Mara said boldly, before taking out the camera with a single shot. With that, the vampire warrior walked away, striding confidently down the block. Out there, police sirens were closing in, as Mara thought she heard the howling of the tank-like, heavily armored cars driven by the Hunters. Let's dance, Mara thought, and she took to a rooftop and begin firing at her enemies...

When the human forces, both police officers and Hunters began arriving, Mara took careful aim and with a vampire's preternaturally keen eyesight, she began firing at them, taking them out one by one. The human forces surrounded her building, and then began firing at her. Ducking for cover, Mara returned fire, and then saw her enemies hesitate, and wondered why. That's when she sensed...them.

Out of the shadows they came, pouring out of warehouses, subway tunnels, manhole covers, and townhouses. Male and female, black and white, young and old, the fanged, Undead residents of the City of Toronto. Brandishing guns, knives, baseball bats, samurai swords, axes, pitchforks, sledgehammers and even rocks, they fell upon the stunned human forces and swarmed them. Not a single breather was spared. It was a grisly scene, one which made Mara smile.

Descending from the rooftop, Mara Philemon went out to meet her people. The vampires surrounded her, and looked at her with awe and reverence. Looking at these ordinary vampires, beings that seldom came together unless it was to face a common threat, Mara felt pleased. L'union fait la force, as her glorious Haitian ancestors would have said.

"We saw you on TV and on YouTube, the humans broadcast footage of you and your location, you're now their topmost enemy, will you lead us?" said an old vampire, and Mara looked at him, and then at the others. Undead faces filled with hope and trepidation greeted her feral gaze wherever she looked. Smiling, Mara embraced her people, hugging this one and that one, and a great cheer went up among the Undead.

"It will be my pleasure to lead you, my people, now, let's kill some humans, kill one and infect two, that's how it's done, that's how we will beat them," Mara Philemon said gleefully, licking her fangs and smiling like the Devil himself. The vampires cheered, and then a swarm of purposeful Undead descended upon the City of Toronto. Wherever they went, life either ceased or was forcibly changed. It was a beautiful thing...

Undead historians in later times marked this event as the turning point of the vampire wars. The night the vampires united under one banner, the charismatic and irresistible leadership of Haitian-born vampire heroine Mara Philemon, and began to fight back against the prejudiced and hostile humans, an oppressive regime that has terrorized and violated the planet earth for thousands of years. The time had come to liberate the planet earth from human tyranny and usher in a brand new day, or, rather, night...