Races of Armis - Midnight Oasis

by Deb Sartoris

  I decided that I would not tell my human father that I was the chosen male from our species to be mated to his daughter. This news was not something my human father would ever accept and I was not willing to take the life of someone from my adopted human family. I had many thoughts on this matter as a new leader of our species. I did not believe that a human life needed to be taken in order for our species to continue. Our lives as Dhampirs never ended unless we so chose to do so ourselves. We could end our lives by walking into the sun or allowing another Dhampir to destroy us by tearing us apart. We had no known natural enemies and increasing our species did not seem logical any longer to me.

  I managed to calm my human father and promised him that I would go back to my elders to discuss this matter. I made sure that my human father got home and I returned to my elders. I managed to talk our elders out of taking my human father’s daughter for the next mating. I also traded my mating for another in my species. It was agreed that two different people would take this cycle for the mating. It was not an answer but it bought my human father extra time.

  I left after several days to go and visit my father with the news. I had expected him to come to the meadow at our usual time. I waited for one whole night. He never came to meet with me. I finally decided that he must still be upset with me. I took the chance and went to see my father at my birth home. When I came to the hut I could smell my human father. He was there but not there. It was a strange scent for me. I had been around my human family for a long time and I knew their scent very well. This scent was new to me. In the back of my mind I knew what the scent would mean for my father. I did not want to face him. I had never been with a human that I loved when they died. I approached the hut very slowly and found my human father lying on his bed. He was very frail. He was not breathing well and I could tell by his heart sounds that he would not last very long. I was surprised to find all of his family with him. It was not custom for our species to have other persons around them when their life ended. Our species were considered as loners and only came into contact with others to feed or mate.

  I could not decide if I should make myself known to the whole family. My human father must have sensed me there and he called my name and said it was alright for me to be there. At a great risk I made myself visible to them. At once, I could see the shock in my human family eyes. I could see the horror that they felt when I appeared to them. Everyone was looking at me with such hatred except for my human father. I sat down next to him on his bed. He took my hand and smiled at me. I told him of the decision to use another human women for the mating and that his daughter would not be chosen for this breeding cycle. I had made an agreement with my elders that no human females from my human birth family would ever be chosen for mating. This agreement also had strings attached to it that only I would bear the consequence for.

  For a long while I stayed with my human father and his family. Finally, after several days my human father went to the great mountain spirit. He was surrounded by his family and his Dhampir son. I had never faced this kind of a human death before. I had killed many times over the years. I took killing as a requirement to survive. I had to eat and that always means that I had to kill to do so.

  Our species can survive on any type of blood so humans are not always required. However, human blood is what brings our species to its full splendor. I have taken humans before. I have killed them for their blood. But I have never watched as someone I loved faded and died before. The death of someone you care about is something different to be part of. The death of my human father still brings blood tears to my eyes after all these centuries.

  I left my human family after I watched them bury my human father next to my birth mother Rose Maria. I had such sadness in my heart that I did not know what I would do.

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  Chapter 5:

  For many moon cycles I traveled the jungle. I could not ease the suffering that I felt and I knew that I must find a way to reconcile the death of my father with the life and death that must exist for all species.

  We Dhampirs do not think of time as humans do so I do not exactly remember how long I was away from others of my species. I am sure however that much time had passed.

  I saw many strange things over the years that I was away from my Dhampir family. My human village died out completely. None of my human relatives are alive any longer. The worst side of being a Dhampir who does not die is that you see all those around you pass away. There were many strange events that I could not explain. There were strange noises in the jungle and strange things in the sky. Animal and human life in the jungle changed and I found myself alone. The old world was changing very quickly and I could see that unless our species was ready to accept this change we would be lost to the world as we know it.

  When I finally decided it was time to return to my Dhampir family they were not unkind to me. It was as if I had never left them. I knew that my return would bring me face to face with the consequence of my pact with my elders. I had agreed long ago to pass up my chance to mate with a human woman in exchange for allowing my cycle to be moved to a later date. I had hoped that the time would give me and the elders both a chance to find a way around the taking of a human life.

  My return to the Dhampir family has now brought me to the point in my story where I must tell you something that is not written down in our lore. It is not something that our species likes to discuss. If not for the long passage of time since I left the old world I would not be telling this story to you now. My elders were not willing to accept that our species could find a way to exist without killing human women. My return brought me to a decision and a fight with the elders. I had to choose between humans and Dhampirs. I was not the only one of our species to speak against traditions and my willingness to fight the elders started our civil war. The war within our own kind has lasted as long as I can remember. It has not yet ended and many of our species have died or gone into hiding.

  I, Roberto Thomas, chose to alter my life so that humans could live. I gave up my Dhampir family and decided to leave the jungle. The trackers of our species would find me on occasion and I would always give them the option to live or die. To my surprise many chose to live. The others who came to find me often had made an unconscious decision to save humans but had not chosen that way of life until their own death was put to them.

  I formed my own clan of our species hidden far away from our original jungles. I picked an area near a large city where feeding would be easier and where we could try and blend in with the humans.

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  Chapter 6:

  One hundred years have passed since I left the jungle. Many of our species have taken up residence near my home now. Over the years our species learned to live on the blood of animals. While this method of feeding kept our bodies alive it did not truly give us full strength and abilities. I have many friends who have chosen to live their lives without the taking of humans. As with anyone who ages you look at your life and try to find some meaning to all that occurred in it. I found that I had a calling to work in the sciences. I knew that I could find a way to save the human women and with an endless time ability of our species I could spend working on this endeavor until I would hopefully give purpose to my life.

  Some of the males in our species still found the need to mate with human women as this was an urge that was difficult to control. There were of course some of our kind who could not give up the human women and death and births still occurred.

  I still believe that there was a chance to birth our species without loss of the human women. I studied all aspects of the human sciences hoping to find something that I could utilize to save our species from returning to our old ways.

  Over the years, the sciences have improved and our species was able to save most of the human women during the birthing process. Babies were planned and birthdates were chosen such that the child did not kil
l the mother during the process. However, we still had not solved the issue of human mothers to Dhampir children and the child had to always be removed from the human mother at birth. Human women never lived or stayed with our species as this was our custom. The human mother’s loss of their child has become a sore spot to me over these past years. When the birth mother died – the child separation was not an issue. When we started to save the mothers and the child was then taken – the grief that the human mothers felt was something that I did not wish for them to bear.

  I knew that if we could find a way to save the mothers at birth that over time we could also find a way to keep the human women with their babies.

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  Chapter 7:

  I had become so involved with my sciences that the moon cycles slipped passed me. New inventions came and went and our way of life began to change. The sciences had moved in a direction that had found other planets. The old world had realized that their planet was not the only one in their solar system. I found myself intrigued with the idea of the other planets and often thought that perhaps the answer to many of my questions might exist on one of those distant planets.

  My species were still finding themselves involved in our age long war. It was becoming more and more difficult to hide for long periods of time. I knew that sooner or later I would be faced with a Dhampir that was not coming to save me but to kill me. The sciences had brought forth a scientific method to track our kind and there were many times I had to escape the trackers. Tracking our kind had become a game and very profitable for those who chose this profession. The killing of our species allowed the tracker to inherit the assets of the Dhampir he killed. The trackers were obsessed with killing and the profits were such that the game never ended.

  It was on one of those escapes that I moved to the other side of the old world into a small remote village in France. I found that the language of these humans could hide my accent and I could fit into their lifestyles very easily. I purchased a villa near a forest area suited for hunting and hiding. The villa offered a place away from the main village and yet still close enough that I could continue my studies in the sciences unnoticed. The villa had many hidden rooms and cellars. I could come and go within the villa without my house staff taking much notice. It was a good home to setup my lab. I had the large forest area to allow my feeding to go unnoticed and there was an abundance of good animals to choose from.

  I had been at the Villa Caprina for many years before I became aware of something different within me. I had noticed that I no longer enjoyed the long days and nights alone. I found myself going into town more often. I was afraid that I was reversing back to my old days where I needed to feed on the humans again. It was as if my entire being was being torn apart. I fought with myself on many occasions to stay hidden at the Villa. I had made some human friends in town and I did not want to take one of their lives should I stray off my chosen lifestyle. I threw myself into my studies hoping to deter my thoughts. But alas, no matter how many times I tried to distract myself I still found myself longing for human contact.

  One day I could no longer stand the thought of the being cooped up in the lab or the villa so I decided that a trip into town was required. I was edgy and felt that this was an unsafe adventure for me to take. I threw caution to the wind and arrived at a bookstore that I often visited. The smell of the old books lined up on the shelves reminded me of the jungle that I missed so much. The musty pages and the way the books felt was a comfort for me. It was good to be near something that was as old and ancient as I was. I was sitting in a chair far away in the back of the book store when I heard the door bell ring. I could hear the light foots steps of someone coming into the store. I returned my thoughts back to the book I was reading. I smelled the woman before I saw her. It was something different to become aware of another human so quickly and especially so for a male of our species to become aware of a human female.

  Sofia came into my life that day. She was small for a human. She had bright blue eyes and a very small nose. Her hair was dark which made such a stark contrast to her eyes. She had an accent that was different then the locals in the area and I knew at once that she was not from the local village. Sofia was looking at books in the science fiction section of the bookstore. She settled into a chair not too far from where I was sitting with an old book about life on other planets. She was very still and did not make any attempt to contact me when she sat down. She seemed to be lost in the new adventure of her book.

  I watched Sofia for a long while that first day at the bookstore. She never seemed aware of me that first day of encounter. Sofia read for a while before she got up and purchased the book and left for the day. Before Sofia reached the first street in the village I was behind her. Sofia intrigued me. Never before had I received such an intense feeling as I had with her. I did not want to frighten her so I kept to the shadows so that she would not become aware of me.

  I followed her to another villa along the main road into town. The villa was well hidden and deep within the forest. I watched as Sofia entered the house and I could hear her walking through the first floor. I was overwhelmed at the new senses that I was receiving from Sofia. She was like nothing I had been around in all of my many years on old Earth. I found myself longing to be near her.

  I was terrified at what this might mean to me. It had been a very long time since I was with my clan in the jungle. I remember stories of the elders and the other men. There was always talk of how the human women would cause a type of fury to occur within our species. This emotion would cause the male of our kind to hunt for and mate with the woman that was calling to them. There was never a chance encounter like this in our lore. Always the females were chosen and a time and place would be given for the encounter to take place. It was always known to the male of our species that this time was arranged so it was thought that the desire was brought on by the anticipation of the arranged mating. I had never heard of anyone of our species being attracted at random to a human female before.

  I returned to my villa and quickly decided that a hunting trip to the forest was required. I could not understand what was happening to me. It was like my blood was on fire. I killed many animals that night and several other nights following that first encounter. I tried for days to vanquish my feelings but I could not resolve the longing that I felt for Sofia.

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  Chapter 8:

  For many nights I tried to vanquish the feelings that Sofia had arisen in me. I spent many nights consulting with others of my species only to be disappointed in their lack of information regarding this type of encounter. I realized that there was nothing that would ease the intense feelings except for being near Sofia. I managed to stay away from her villa for almost one whole moon cycle.

  I was out one night hunting deep in the forest when I realized that I was very near Sofia’s villa. Perhaps it was by chance or fate that I would wind up within eye sight of her home. It was very late and I assumed that Sofia would be asleep in one of the rooms of the big mansion. I did not notice that the lights were on until I got very close to the main area of the villa.

  I could see that there were many lights on at the top floor of the mansion. The tall windows were open wide and the breeze was blowing the curtains outside of the window frames. I could see that the windows all had small balconies attached to them. It would be very easy for me to leap up to the ledge and stay hidden at the same time.

  I found myself tracking around the grounds for some time. I don’t know what I was searching for – except perhaps I was trying to locate Sofia somewhere within the mansion. Finally, after almost an hour I could smell a scent that made me crazy with fear. I had felt this feeling before a very long time ago in my old life in the Amazon jungle. The strength of the longing to be near this scent was such a powerful entity that there was nothing I could do but comply and leap to the balcony close to where I knew So
fia was.

  I was very nearly crazy at this point. My mind was focused only on seeing Sofia. I had not realized that I had leaped to the window without being in my shadow mode. Again – perhaps fate or something else was causing me to make these dire errors in judgment. I saw Sofia at the same time I realized that she saw me. I expected to hear her scream and call for her servants. It was as if time had frozen. She stood in the lighted room near a small dresser. Her hair was freshly brushed and her skin was a bright pink color. She was wearing a pale blue evening gown. It was strapless at the top and made of very thin materials and tied at the waist. The light reflecting from many candles that were lit within the room was casting a bright shadow that allowed me to see her thin body behind the fabric of the dress. Sofia made no attempt to move and I was terrified of what would happen next.

  We both stared at each other – each of us waiting for the other one to say something. Finally, Sofia smiled. She gestured me to come into the room. I willing obliged her command. Each of us sat down in chairs that were near a small sitting area in this room. I started to notice all of the antique items in her sleeping chambers. She had very old paintings on the walls. Her bedroom furniture was a dark black wood. Her bed was large with 4 tall posts. Draped over each side of the bed post was a fine white fabric like netting. She had fresh cut flowers on her dresser and the fragrance from them filled the room. Her floor was made of hard woods of many different shades. There were large red rugs in places around the room giving the room a Persian look.