The Somali Vampire Empire

The job of a good father is to take care of his offspring. No matter what. More and more I found myself pondering the meaning of this as I look back at deciding moments of my nine-thousand-year existence. I first saw the light of day in what would later be called Somalia, long before Islam, and the conflicts that follow wherever followers of that faith tread. I existed long before the Christians, and probably before the Hebrews too. Across the ages I've been called many names. The one that I prefer to this day is Waaq.

Long before the Arabs began invading our lands and colonizing parts of what would later become the Horn of Africa, Africans and their Arab neighbors lived peacefully. My father, Cha'Agar was a tribal chieftain of the Aurhai people who lived in Somalia at the time and my mother, Awitar was a tall, bronze-skinned and raven-haired woman from distant lands. Her people lived in what would later be called the realm of Assyria. In those days, in the interests of peace between various lands and peoples, women of noble birth were exchanged as wives in order to bring different peoples closer together. Think of it as a sort of honey offering.

So it was that I came into the world, the offspring of a most unique couple. The territory ruled by my father's people comprised hundreds of kilometers, and our tribe, the Aurhai numbered only a few hundred people. I was perhaps twenty when a more aggressive tribe known as the Ha'Bar invaded our territory. I was on the Great Ma'k Hunt, the one every young male of the tribe must undergo in order to be considered a man. Only then will he be allowed to leave his father's house, take a woman as wife, and establish his own household.

I was gone for several days, and sought a most dangerous prey for my Ma'k Hunt. A male lion. For in those days, lions and leopards roamed the African desert. Humans hadn't hunted them nearly to extinction just yet. I fought one of the local pride's top males, and brought him down using only a spear. I hurled it with such strength that it penetrated the lion's neck, and he fell, dead as a rock. Crying triumphantly, I began carving off the lion's head, and used its carcass as food. Then I began the long trek home. When I arrived at my village three days later, my world had ended. The Ha'Bar tribe had slain every man, woman and young ones of my clan. I found their mutilated corpses strewn apart, often missing limbs, and vital organs. And they left nothing but smoldering ruins after burning our village to the ground.

That night, I wept tears of rage and frustration as I began the long task of burying each and every last one of my tribespeople. Two days later, after the last body was properly buried, I stalked the land, eventually finding the Ha'Bar's trail. With vengeance in my mind I prayed to all the Gods for fortitude as I sought those who destroyed my life. Six days later I found them. I waited until nightfall, when the entire Ha'Bar tribe, some four hundred strong, slept. The fools left only a few sentries around, and I dispatched them easily and silently with my stone knife.

Afterwards, I stalked from hut to hut, and my blade tasted the blood of men and women, and sometimes young ones. It was a grisly scene, in later years I grew disgusted with the very thought of it. That night, though, I gloried in the destruction of my enemies, slaughtering my sleeping foes like sheep. Fathers and mothers, grandsons and grandmothers. I spared none. For these men and women had violated the worst taboo in the world. They had consumed human flesh. They deserved no mercy. I saved their chieftain for last. In his hut I found my father's ceremonial dagger. I used it to kill his wife and daughter in front of him, and then I cut off his head.

Still unsatisfied, I gathered the blood of several men and women into a bowl, and drank it. I don't know what possessed me to do this. As soon as I ingested their blood, I fell ill. I lay on the blood-soaked ground, writhing and moaning. For you see, the tribe I had just slaughtered practiced cannibalism, and had done so for untold millennia. I didn't realize it then but I had effectively damned myself. There's a reason why these cannibals had been so easy to slay. Consuming human meat had poisoned their systems, and they were all ill in one way or another. By drinking the blood of the infected, I caught their malady.

It had a disastrous effect on me. It didn't kill me, unfortunately. When I woke up three days later, I was...changed. I had become an abomination. An evil thing sickened ( but not burned or killed ) by the light of the sun. An unholy monster that drinks blood. For as I drank the blood of my tribe's enemies, I doomed myself to sharing their curse. Unlike them, my curse did not end in death. In fact, death was only the beginning.

Thus I began my journey, wandering across the Horn of Africa, into the lands that would later be called Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eritrea and of course, Somalia. In my deranged, borderline animalistic state, I couldn't help myself. I fed on humans, and drank their blood. The infection had changed me. My teeth had become fangs, the better to rend human flesh with, I guess. My fingernails lengthened and sharpened to the point of becoming three-inch claws. As I ranged the African motherland in search of prey, I have been shot with arrows, speared, and even stabbed with swords and stone knives. I must have died a hundred deaths in those early years, but I always came back. As long as I drank enough blood, I always returned to the land of the living...as a dead man that preys on his fellow man.

Eventually, I began to gain greater control over myself. You see, in the early years, I was little more than a beast. I slept in holes, I stalked men and women in the woods, the deserts and the ravines. The more blood I drank, the more lucidity I regained. Disgusted with what I've done, I sought to end my life. Better to die a horrible death than to go on like this, as a monster. I found a cliff and leapt to the bottom. A fall of several hundred meters, which surely would have killed any living thing on the planet. It didn't kill me. Instead, it left me badly broken. I lay there, praying for death, but knowing it would not come.

At last I was rescued by a strange woman. Her name was Adanech, and she was of the tribe of Am'har, whose territory matched the borders of what people call Cush in later days. Adanech took me and nursed me back to health. I came to three days later, and although I could not speak her language, I thanked her profusely for her kindness. I had been, not alive, but I had existed, for about thirty summers by that point, and hadn't aged a day since I drank the blood of that tribe, on that cursed night so long ago. Thus I will always be a caramel-colored, curly-haired and bronze-eyed man of twenty.

Adanech taught me her language, and I learned about her as well. This young Cushite woman was estranged from her tribe, which cast her out for being a witch. Like me, she was cursed. Adanech had the ability to see the future, and her people almost killed her over it. That's why she ran away from her tribe. Cast out by her own kind, Adanech cast her lot with me. I endeavored to protect her, the only woman to show me kindness.

In time, we fell in love. Adanech was truly heaven-sent. When I revealed my curse to her, I expected her to be frightened but she wasn't. Instead she embraced me and told me that I was only a monster if I chose to be one. I took her as wife, and swore to her that I would only feed on animals. I hunted animals, and brought them to her. I took the blood, and she took the meat. Thus I began to see myself as a man once more, instead of a monster. I built a house for my wife with my bare hands. Monsters don't build houses, I think. Men do. It wasn't much, but it was home.

Adanech and I lived together for many years, and sons and daughters were born to us. Our first was a daughter, little Halga. Three years after Halga's birth, our twin sons Sher and Kah came into the world. Thank the heavens, they seemed to take after their mother and not I. Honestly, I don't know what I would have done if they had. Thus twenty years passed, with Adanech and I raising our sons and daughter the best way we knew how. In time, we began hearing rumors of mysterious predators from the travelers passing through the valley in which we dwelled.

What they shared with us chilled me to the bone. The travelers spoke of monsters plaguing the land. Eerie creatures that looked like men but only came out at night, to drink the blood of the unwary. The monsters these merchants and salesmen spoke of sounded disturbingly familiar. I hadn't fed on the blood of a human since before I met my dear Adenech, and I swore to her that I never would. What I would later figure out is that my predations more than twenty years before yielded frightening results and would have devastating consequences for mankind for untold millennia.

You see, prior to meeting Adenech and changing my ways, I fed on humans for years. I do so without knowing that those I fed upon would rise three days later, cursed with the same blood thirst and agelessness that plagued me. I had fed upon dozens, and they in turn made hundreds more like themselves. And now, they were driving people from the Horn of Africa. Entire tribes had been slaughtered by the night-walkers, as people had taken to calling them. I had unwittingly endangered the entire human race through my carelessness. And now, I had to leave the family I loved so much to right this most egregious of wrongs.

I returned to the territory once inhabited by the Aurhai tribe, my people. I met the new lords of the land which had belonged to my ancestors since time immemorial. And they were my creations. Blood drinkers. I fought a long and costly war against them. Among them rose a leader, a blood drinker named Faro. He'd been one of my earliest victims, a member of the tribe I slaughtered to avenge my own. If I am the progenitor of the race of blood drinkers, then he definitely was one of my earliest creations.

Faro and I fought one night, with neither of us able to claim victory. When dawn came, he fled. For unlike me, sunlight would cause him to burst into flames. The light of day renders me sleepy and weakens me, but it does not kill me. When I move about during the day, I feel like I am carrying the weight of the planet on my shoulders. My feet feel heavy, like lead. Every breath takes effort. Sunlight drains me of my superhuman strength and speed. It saps my power. That's why in later years I avoid daytime travel when I can.

Countless times my thoughts wandered back to the night I battled Faro. If I had killed him, it might have stopped the spread of the vampires. Faro was their first leader, the one who organized them from isolated predators fighting one another for territory and turned them into an organized army. An army of the undead. I killed most of the first brood, but many still escaped. They went on to spread the vampire plague, traveling from nation to nation, first in the Horn of Africa then they moved into the lands of the Arabs, and beyond, into Europe. Until every nation in the world had felt the vampire's bite, directly or indirectly, one way or another. I could have stopped it. Why didn't I?

The night we fought, Faro cursed me for transforming him into what he is and swore to me that he would not rest until everything I held dear was destroyed. I should have killed him. I underestimated his importance all those years ago. For the next time we met, he'd taken from me what I valued the most. While I remained in the land of Somalia to battle the undead, Faro returned to the land of Cush and found my dear wife Adenech and our sons and daughter. He didn't kill them. What he did was worse. Faro turned them into what he was. The unholy undead.

I returned home, to my wife Adenech and our offspring...changed. No man should have to endure the loss of his family twice in a single lifetime. Yet that's what happened to me. My daughter Halgas and my sons Kah and Sher along with their mother Adenech greeted me with fanged mouths and yellowed eyes. Faro turned them mere days prior to my return. I should have destroyed them then, but couldn't bear it. Instead, I banished them. And I swore to whatever unimaginable power made the universe in which we live that I would destroy Faro one day.

I've made many mistakes over the nine millenniums during which I've walked this earth. My worst mistakes occurred when I was still young, caught between the mundane world and the unnatural, the good and the evil. When Faro transformed my wife and offspring into vampires, he forever bound them to that which I hate the most. I cannot destroy them myself. They are and will always be the only family that I have. I have killed countless vampires over the course of my seemingly eternal life. I have long sought Faro, and the Family. Across the ages and in lands near and far, Faro and the Family have done terrible things.

If the vampire race can be considered to be one people, regardless of their numbers and whatever lands they dwell in, the head or leadership of their downtrodden breed is the Family. With my sworn enemy Faro as its head. My wife Adenech is now known as the Black Queen, my sons Sher and Kah are the Princes of Rage, my daughter Halga is the Red Blade, and Faro calls himself the Supreme Prophet of the vampire race. He believes that vampires are destined to rule the world someday, with him as their leader. I oppose him with every fiber of my being.

Thousands of years have passed since those dark days. I have traveled far and wide, and seen civilization rise and fall. The Hebrews. The Hittites. The Mesopotamians. The Assyrians. The Babylonians. The Cushites. The people of Axum. The Egyptians. The Greeks. The Romans. The Byzantine Empire. The Mongol Empire. The Ghanaian Empire. The Zulu Empire. The Aztec Empire. The Incas. And now, the Americans, the western Europeans, the Saudis, the African Union, the Chinese and the Japanese. Each of these people thinks their way of life, their view of the world and their influence on it will last forever. Shows you how young and naïve the human race really is.

Throughout the ages I've been many things. A wanderer, a scholar, a healer, a poet, a religious leader, a mapmaker, a merchant, a trader and a warrior. I did what I had to in order to survive. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, I moved from Nigeria, where I'd spent the past hundred years or so, to North America.

I found the City of Toronto, Ontario, much to my liking. I remade myself as I do every few decades. I'm now known as Adam Saint-Vincent, a criminology student at the University of Toronto, and an avid soccer player. I'm a student-athlete by day and I hunt vampires by night. Someone's got to do it, and it might as well be me. I'm directly responsible for the mess, after all.