Chapter 1

Victoria ignored the concerned, covert glances from the few in attendance at the open grave site. Damn them all. Mother is dead and it is that bastard’s fault. She would avenge her mother’s death and destroy the man who’d reduced her mother from a strong, vibrant woman to a weak, lifeless one. Even if it meant his death, or the death of everything he loved. Closing her eyes, she blocked out the shadowy image of the man responsible, her pathetic excuse for a father.

Opening her eyes, she caught several mourners staring at her. Narrowing her eyes at them, they glanced away, worried expressions on their faces. Of course she was making them nervous. They could probably feel the anger emanating from her. She hadn’t shed a tear, made a sound, or turned her gaze away from the casket since the service had started twenty minutes ago. It was the only way she could keep focus. 

Mom was everything to me—my only family. Blinking rapidly, she undid the braided ponytail and ran her fingers through her long strands in an attempt to keep the tears at bay. Inhaling deeply, she let her lungs fill with fresh air, then closed her eyes, trying to force her body to relax as she exhaled slowly. It was a vain attempt. Her heart was still racing.

 The sun began shining brightly through the trees. A soft expletive slipped through her lips. Patting her coat pockets, she realized she’d forgotten her sunglasses. Harsh and unforgiving, the sunlight pierced her eyes. A sheen of sweat broke out against the stinging daggers shooting from her eyes to her temples. Wiping her damp palms off on her coat sleeves, she smiled. Pain was good. She was back in control. 

She needed her strength to go after her father.

All of the information her mother had on him; his driver’s license number, social security number, and birth date could not be matched with the state or federal database. It was as though he didn’t exist. But she knew the bastard was still living the free life, as if he had no responsibility to her or her mother.

By her mother’s description, her father was tall with light brown skin. He had the most magnetically beautiful eyes she had ever seen. It was love at first sight for both of them. He’d swept her mother off her feet. In a whirlwind courtship, they quickly moved in together and remained together for about five years. 

Lifting her hand above the sunglasses against the painfully persistent sun rays, Victoria used the soft sniffle sounds coming from behind her as fuel to harden her heart and strengthen her inner resolve.

By her mother’s account, her parents were happy and in love, until he disappeared one night after a terrible argument. She didn’t remember too much about it, but the gist of it was that her mother was pregnant with her and kids were not part of her father’s plan.

Her mother came home from work the next day to find the man she loved gone. There was no trace of him ever living there. He’d simply disappeared. Her mother was left alone, pregnant. After she was born, her mother worked two jobs to provide a decent life for her and to avoid being on welfare.

After all, they only had each other. About a year after her father left, her mother got sick. The disease left her weak, but she still managed to keep her life together. That changed when Victoria turned twelve. The mysterious disease had progressed, and her mother rapidly deteriorated. Too weak and worn out, she’d stopped working. Throughout her illness, Victoria’s mother never bad-mouthed her father. He was the greatest man alive, the love of her life.

Until her dying day, her mother believed he would come back to her. 

For a few years Victoria too believed he would return. With naïve hope, she’d asked her mother countless questions about him. In her youthful optimism and enthusiasm, she’d brought him Christmas, holiday, and birthday presents every year, so he would feel welcome when he came home. She wanted to let her father know he was in her thoughts while he was away. They even shared the same birthday, April 13. He was born on a Friday at midnight, just like her.

 Reality was a cruel mistress who wouldn’t be ignored. After several birthdays and holidays passed with no word from him, she realized he wasn’t coming back. She held no illusions about her father. Where her mother saw the love of her life’s good points, she saw the man for what he truly was: the reason for their struggles and the reason for her mother’s early death. 

Victoria had seen it all. She watched her mother go from vibrantly beautiful to sickly and weak, and now had to live with the fact there was nothing she could have done to stop it. She remembered how her mother’s pale, gaunt face lit up whenever she talked about her father, and, like a good daughter, she had listened. Now she would be an even better daughter and avenge her mother’s death. 

There were other reasons she wanted to find her father. She had questions. Questions she’d dared not ask her sick, fragile mother. Questions no one could answer except the man she needed to find, her father. The yearning to find him was a huge weight pressing down on her shoulders. 

She had no idea where to start. Her mother told her he wasn’t from the Boston area or even Massachusetts. She said he had a New York sort of accent, but the child support database had found no one with his name there. Something kept pulling her to go to North Carolina. She couldn’t explain why, but Victoria knew he was there. Even though her odds were slim, she knew she would find her answers once she crossed over into the Old Tar Heel State.

She also knew her father had a triangle tattoo on the side of his neck. He’d never answered her mother’s questions about what it was, what it stood for, or how he got it. Her mom assumed it was a tattoo representing a gang’s symbol.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” As the preacher spoke, the past evaporated from her mind.

Eyes still dry, her gaze remained focused on the casket. Grief could not win right now. Tomorrow she would leave home to travel to North Carolina. She had to find her father, not only for vengeance but for another reason. A strange design on the side of her neck had appeared on the first day of her period when she’d turned thirteen. One she didn’t have tattooed.

***

Not finding the source of the smell would be a death sentence. Leaning back in his recliner, Sarim gazed out the penthouse window. The moon shone bright and brilliant, no clouds or stars in the sky. Ordinarily, it would be an almost perfect night for hunting. However, on this night, neither his mind nor his palate was interested. He was intrigued by the air. A scent called him; beckoned him. No one else smelled it or even felt its presence. On occasion, he’d scanned the thoughts of his tribesmen. As Abu, the leader of his tribe, he had the rare ability to read the thoughts of other tribal members. He had scanned everyone before, realizing no one else smelled anything but him.

The smell was not the scent of human blood. No, this was different. Sarim had smelled it since he’d returned to Varlancia, the central vampiric quarters, two weeks ago. The scent permeated the air he breathed, making his body go into alert mode. His already heightened senses would increase in an effort to locate the smell’s source. Steadily, over the last couple of weeks, the scent had been growing stronger every night.

The scent had once overwhelmed him while he was hunting, and his victim had taken advantage of his momentary confusion to run screaming for help. This had infuriated him. Humans were not easy to come by. Their instincts usually led them away from predators. And during the daylight, his hunting senses were dulled, making it impossible to hunt effectively and camouflage his presence.

The season only lasted for a month. It took cunning and skill to effectively catch humans and keep them. During the season, trained Taalib Duma’s stole nearly a thousand humans to store for feeding in vancanes. There, humans were kept in a coma state in a large storage facility. To avoid suspicion, the facility had the outward appearance of a five-story gray office building. The humans had to last for two years, until the next hunting season. 

As leader of his tribe, he was primarily responsible for making sure the Soganta’s vacane was well stocked. Each of the six Taalib Duma tribes that were spread across the country had their own vacane. Since each tribe had up to two hundred members, at least one hundred humans were needed. His tribe could not suffer for his distracted state of mind. 

Sarim stood, frowning. While the scent was throwing him off-task, its familiarity caused concern. Where did it come from? 

The scent was the smell of Talib Duma blood, specifically his blood. A Taalib Duma only smelled his blood when his offspring was in close proximity. Sarim, to his knowledge, knew of no children he had fathered, particularly children he would smell while among the sun-walkers’ world. 

His mind wandered back to the last time he had lived among humans, nearly twenty-five years ago. He’d left the brotherhood for safety reasons. The incident jeopardizing his safety still lived vividly in his mind. As the Abuu, it was customary for him to be the last one leaving tribal meetings. 

After one meeting, Sarim had turned off the gaslight in the meeting tent. A hand shot from behind him and grabbed his throat. Startled, yet in control, Sarim tried to read his assailant’s mind, but it was blocked. A soft voice whispered in his ear, “It’s just a matter of time before the end of your line, my dear Abu.” The ominous threat sent shivers up his spine. Then he felt a prick near his heart and saw a silver droplet of his blood ooze from his chest. Before he could mentally summon his assistant, Khafil, the attacker was gone. It had taken nearly four years for his attacker to be found. The vampire was a vigilante. He was sentenced to death at the council inquisition. Afterward, for nearly four years, he had lived and worked in the human world at a human job. Those years were spent with Tammy. He had lived as her “significant other” (in human terms) and enjoyed a deeply intimate relationship with her, warning her at the beginning that their “arrangement” was only temporary because he was on a respite from his usual way of life. 

At the beginning, she had seemed pleased by the arrangement, and had mentioned she was only looking for companionship and had no wish for any heavy emotional involvement. A human lie if he ever heard one. Most of the pathetic creatures thought they could have physical relationships without emotion. He knew better. Humans were emotionally unstable creatures. A human woman was an emotional time bomb. Like clockwork, their relationship had turned ugly.

 Tammy became possessive, jealous, and demanding. She began following him, demanding to know his every action when they were apart and flew into jealous rages if she even suspected he was talking to other women. In one incident, she threatened to kill herself after he’d stayed out all night. She’d thought he’d spent the night with another woman. He had, but not for the reasons she thought. While she believed he had spent the night having wild, passionate sex with a woman, he’d actually had a wild, satisfying feeding with one. Every time he’d had sex with Tammy, some of her life force would seep into his body. If he drank from her as well, he would have killed her in weeks. 

It wasn’t as if he had feelings for her. She was an excellent cover for him in the human world, and he didn’t need any authorities questioning him about Tammy’s untimely death. 

 After the suicide attempt, Sarim had had enough, and they parted. She with feelings of hate, hurt, and betrayal; he, with feelings of relief. Fortunately for him, the security situation that had threatened his safety had been worked out, and he’d been summoned home. 

 Sarim sat back in his chair after pacing the room. Could Tammy have been pregnant? He’d told her during their time together to stay on the pill, or whatever human females used to prevent conception. He remembered specifically telling her he would not be around long enough to help her raise a child. 

Tammy had no knowledge of Sarim being a vampire. He had taken great pains to hide that facet of his existence from her. As far as he knew, she had no idea of what she was sharing her home, life, and body with. Vampires were not encouraged to have relationships of an intimate nature with humans. Humans were not capable of handling a vampire’s selfish, intensely cold personality. Sarim knew how emotionally standoffish his kind could be toward each other. A human would be emotionally scarred for life.

Another reason a relationship of this nature was discouraged was because night walkers had large appetites for sex. Humans were not physically built to withstand a vampire’s demands. His kind not only drained blood from humans for food and energy, they also drained human life force. It was how vampires received immortality. If a vampire encountered any of a human’s body fluids, it would gain energy force or life force.

He remembered one sexual episode that had nearly killed Tammy. It had happened one night after a thoroughly satisfying hour of explosive intercourse. As usual, she was lying on top of him, satisfied, but complaining she was tired (her usual nightly response). After a minute or so of her whining, she suddenly became quiet. Sarim looked at this as a small blessing from the Vampire Gods and thought nothing of it. A few minutes later, Tammy’s body became cold, and her teeth started chattering loudly. When he couldn’t warm her up by placing his hand over her heart, he called the human rescue assistance, 911. Tammy had had to receive an emergency blood transfusion due to severe anemia and weakness. Her doctor had said he’d never treated anyone with hemoglobin that low before.

After the incident, Sarim was careful about their sexual relations and to what levels he would take them. He cut back on kissing and oral sex. One more incident like that would have killed her. He didn’t need the suspicion or added annoyance of having to get rid of Tammy’s body, especially when he still had to live in the human world for an indefinite time period. He already had everything he needed now. He did not desire the stress of having to find another human female to live with. It usually took him about a month to mold a human female to his specifications. Molding another female mind to ignore his unusual sleeping habits, lack of consuming human food, and molding her body to accommodate his size for sex was not an easy task.

He also had taken extreme caution not to get her pregnant. This would have caused another life-threatening situation. One of those precautions was not having sex during a full moon. A vampire’s sperm count was at its highest during that lunar phase. 

Since his sperm could survive anywhere in the human body, Sarim could have gotten her pregnant by receiving oral sex. He also made sure he drank the vandilum Khafil had acquired for him. A drink made from the blood of a dying vampire rendered any male vampire impotent, except during the full moon. The blood of a dying vampire weakened the reproductive life force of a vampire. One vial (about four ounces) of the bitter fluid lasted about six months. For Sarim’s hiatus, Khafil had packed a sufficient quantity to last a few years. 

He had consumed it religiously every six months. He frowned, only recalling drinking the potion once during his last year among the humans. That dose occurred in January, and he’d left in July. He let out a sigh and relaxed. His system had received so much of the vandilum, he was probably sterile for years from it.

He could have embraced Tammy, but his personal code would not allow such an error. There were instances where vampires had embraced humans that they were infatuated with. In his opinion, this often led to vampires with human emotions that could not perform ordinary vampire tasks without questioning why, where, and how. Most of these Humvansi, as they were called, were usually too concerned with the feelings of humans. It created unnecessary conflict. Children of these human and vampire unions were not blessed with long or healthy lives. They were not considered true members of the Vampire brotherhood.

They were caught between two worlds and usually could not deal with the emotional ramifications of it all. Their human DNA could not fully understand them, and neither could their vampire lineage. Some who had the sign had special powers, while others were cursed with an unquenchable thirst for blood. This often led to them being placed in human mental wards for their strange and sick taste. The human medical community deemed them as the worst and sickest sort.

Sarim had made one vow during that interval in his life. He would not embrace Tammy or impregnate her with a humvansi. It wasn’t out of concern for her situation. He would not disgrace his ancestors’ lineage by bringing in unnecessary conflicts and distractions. An unknown humvansi could threaten the stability of the brotherhood. His father and grandfather were both Vampire Chiefs of the Soga brotherhood. The Soga would not appreciate an annoyance of that magnitude.

As the strongest and oldest tribe of vampires, their main concerns were staying in control and retaining power. Other brotherhoods were more than ready for the slightest blunder to happen. Many were eager to take the Soga’s place as the elite. The Soga was the only tribe of African descent not eliminated through assimilation or blood diseases. This could happen as a result of intermixing with other brotherhoods. The Soga was a descendant of the Soganta tribe of Africa. As legend had it, Sarim’s ancestor Hanit fled from Egypt as the last remaining Soganta member.

Sarim bought his thoughts back to the present. Was there a Soga humvani, with his blood, walking with day crawlers? If so, the humvani had to be from his liaison with Tammy.

“Abu Sarim,” a voice beside him beckoned. Sarim stood, irritated by the interruption, as he answered sharply, “Yes, Khafil?”

 “It’s nearly dawn. We await your presence,” was the smooth response. 

As Sarim walked to the door, Khafil materialized beside him. He nodded at Khafil. “Tell them I will be there shortly.” 

“As you wish, Abu.” Khafil disappeared.

Sarim needed a minute to collect his thoughts before overseeing the deep sleep. As Abu, no Taalib Duma could lie down before him. Sarim walked to the windows and gazed at the lightening sky. Finding this descendant was of the utmost urgency. His time as Abu was drawing to a close. If the role were to continue in his family, he needed a son or another descendant. As of now, he had neither. His time of breeding had passed. He was now dependent on finding this heir. His family’s legacy depended on it.

“I will find you,” he said, then vanished.