The Dhampir Dimension

by Viktoria Alukard

  After breakfast, she paid and walked onwards to her destination, which was a good three blocks, still walking distance and not too bad. She’d been distracted by staring at her Google Maps to make sure she was walking in the right direction. Her distraction was broken when she bumped head on into a stranger that was dressed head to toe in black, and his outfit covered by a long wool cloak. A few strands of silky blonde hair hung down alongside his angular face, the rest of it tucked into his cover. He wore black aviator frames and a fedora, and said nothing to the young girl, nor even offer an apology. Taken aback by the stranger’s rudeness, she gave him a piece of her mind.

  “Hey, you need to watch where you’re going!” she yelled at him angrily.

  The stranger said nothing, but sneer at her, and give her a sideways glance which made her uneasy. He kept walking, leaving her behind, rolling her eyes. Who the fuck wore that much clothes in the springtime, she thought to herself. The weirdos were already coming out of the wood work.

  Continuing, she encountered many townspeople who looked at her strangely because they could easily tell that she was a foreigner. A group of three young men in urban street wear near a dog park said something to her that she could only assume was vulgar, after one of the three men whistled twice at her as she kept walking. She paid them no further mind. Other than this minor occurrence, she noticed how beautiful and unmarred Bucharest was, even though it was a modernized city. Many of the older, historic architectures were still standing in good condition, the spires of cathedrals and missions decorating the low skyline, and pine trees adorned the city in verdure, plenty of streets were only for pedestrians and were cobblestone, even though on the main highways, visible in the distance, she still spotted a Fiat, Volkswagen, or a BMW, mostly small cars, driving about. What made the view so majestic were the Transylvanian Alps in the background of the city, not very far away, to which she fancied the idea of a hike soon.

  Before becoming too distracted, Regina regained focus and kept walking in the dog park on a concrete sidewalk built upon grassy slopes to an art museum across the street from the park and was met by a small flight of stairs going down into the street, where several small European cars were parallel parked on both sides. The museum was directly in front of her, a new age architectural monument built to encase a historic art gallery. The words “Magalesti Gallery of the Arts” in English displayed on a banner, with a sign of black metal letters right above the banner in original Romanian.

  She walked across after looking both ways, with her Air Pods in her ears, listening to some grunge playlist she kept on repeat. There was not a lengthy line at the admissions counter, that had a sign posted written in black permanent marker, 20 euros. When it was her turn, she handed an awry-faced receptionist her American Express, and after he rang her up, he quietly placed a pink paper band around her wrist that granted her admission to the museum.

  Inside the museum, it was dimly lit, with fake electric candelabras illuminating the side passageways, transformed into different sections of artistry.

  There were metal artifacts on display in glass boxes, of swords, shields, armor plates, chainmail, loot, ancient currency, and the creepiest one of all she had seen was top half of a skull of a long-haired man with the patchy hair distribution, but the hair itself still intact, unaffected by time. She kept moving on to the paintings, most of these life-sized, oil-based, with liquid gold and gemstones flawlessly blended into some of these paintings.

  The one painting that caught her attention immediately was an extravagant oil base, with liquid gold melted into the painting, which was part of a throne, with the shape of a crescent moon above the throne. It was taller than she, and every detail was very exquisite, one could tell that the original painter had a very steady and delicate pressure on the brushes. It was a painting of a tall young man, between the ages of 18 and 30, who had some feminine factions to his features, but was still masculine enough for her to notice he was obviously a male. Perhaps it was his protruding stance he was painted in, or the solemn expression written on his face, or his broad shoulders and impressive, fit build that could be seen through his gothic-Victorian style clothing of that time. It was merely a painting but Regina still regarded him as possibly one of the most beautiful men she had ever seen.

  The artist’s depiction of him was as tall, well built with long platinum, almost silver hair, and piercing cobalt eyes that stared dead ahead into an observer’s soul. He was well-dressed for that time, in an all-black outfit of a silk vest, cummerbund, and dark wine boots, with a long cloak draping behind him. The liquid gold throne made this artwork really pop. Regina could have sworn for a moment that this was a living painting when she stared into the painted man’s eyes. For being a painting, it surely emanated a sort of energy she picked up, which she couldn’t make out if it was magnetic or ominous. The inscription beside the painting simply read one word: Tepes. The price tag however, was 5,000 euros!

  Regina simply did what all smart people of her age did, and took a picture with her smartphone, careful that no security guards saw her taking the picture. She eventually would want to go back to purchase this painting of the mysterious blonde man, as it would’ve just been another luxurious purchase to her, given her collection of Louis Vuitton purses and shoes, Tiffany sunglasses, Versace jeans, Banana Republic coats, and Chanel perfumes. These luxurious things Regina loved, helped her blend right in with the European population. At the worst, she could have passed for an Italian tourist.

  After exploring the rest of the museum, she wandered outside into downtown, overcast Bucharest, and the foreshadowing smell of dirt was followed by gentle rain. The city became dark as the hovering clouds blackened with rainfall. There was a cathedral that stood sovereignly, right behind the museum that was zoned off from the public with yellow strips of police tape and the outer walls. Despite the many warning signs that read to keep out, Regina did feel drawn to it, and her feet pitter-pattered on the wet sidewalk as she made her way there. She felt apprehensive, but the curiosity beat her, and soon, she found herself standing in front of the expansive wooden cathedral doors. The clouds lit up as they rolled with thunder, and the trees swayed in the motion of the rain. The cathedral doors were blocked off by chains and with wooden slabs that kept the doors shut. They were chained and locked with large, rusty padlocks. Since there was obviously no way to enter through the front, Regina gingerly stepped to the left of the building, where there was nothing except a few parallel-parked cars, spaced out.

  No cars were actively passing through here, so she felt that the coast was clear to further explore. Looking to her upper right, she noticed the aged, stained glass windows, and all of them were in mint condition other than the dirt collected on the weather strips. The further she walked toward the back, she thought she heard the faint rhythm of music. She slowed her pace, and it did increase in loudness as she walked towards the rear of the cathedral and stopped dead in her track upon realization that it was coming toward the building. Just as she was about to turn the corner, she stopped herself from making another footstep. The mystery man in black she’d ran into before was standing outside, seeming to have her right in his gaze behind his aviators. She took a deep breath to stifle her nervousness, and slowly began to turn on her ankle to about-face. He didn’t seem to move, and was suavely leaning against a black Subaru sedan, smoking a cigarette with a glove-covered hand. She looked back to see if he’d move, but he remained in place, without a care in the world. She quickened her pace and broke out into a full run when she crossed the street.

  The driver of a black Fiat honked at her as he narrowly avoided hitting her. Regina’s heart pounded in her chest, and after she caught her breath, she hurried back to the hotel, far away from here. The run later made her hungry, and she went out to fetch dinner. Afterwards, when she’d finish, she made her way back to the room for a quiet evening and an early bedtime.

  The next day that followed was a Sunda
y, and she was out into town by 9 AM this time, catching coffee and a spinach, mushroom and cheese frittata at the same breakfast spot from the day before all over again. Today, she was going for a self-guided hike on the lower trails of the Transylvanian Alps. After breakfast, she caught a ride from an Uber driver who dropped her off in front of a village in the outskirts of the city, in his yellow Fiat. They had passed a cemetery a few miles back, and had entered a beautiful, heavily wooded small town with hiking trails behind it. There was a wooden building with an outside patio deck and some small tables and chairs, with a bar. There were a few locals here who were having a beer or coffee. Across tavern, there was a white-painted shop that sold drugstore goods and flowers. It was a tourist attraction, as there was a gift shop right before the trails began. They seemed empty and like everyone was mostly around the tavern that morning. She went onwards into the dense, rainy woods by herself, and followed the signs written in Romanian.

  Once she was in here, they were not as scary as she thought they were, but quite oppositely, very enchanting. The trees closed the path behind her, and before her there was a dirt trail lined with pink and red blooms whose petals lined the trail sides. Up ahead, she noticed falling lavender petals that cascaded from somewhere up above. The further she wandered into the forest, the less she heard the voices and noises of the outside civilization, and it became denser and colder. It began to smell sweetly of fresh lavender, and that is when she found herself in the raining of lavender petals. She danced and spun herself round and round, arms outstretched to the branches above, carefree and with a spell of incredible elation befallen upon her. She grew weary almost immediately and had soon come to a peaceful rest on a bed of petals.

  Regina did find herself dreaming. Overall, there were mostly dreams of her past life, with her ex-husband Jedd, and their finalization of their divorce, which was supposedly sent to her mother’s house in San Diego by June of 2018. Thank god they had no children, or Regina wouldn’t have even been able to make it out of the States. As much pride as she took in being an American, she was happy now, to be gone.

  She awakened on something soft beneath her which she thought was the lavender, as it still smelt sweetly of its essence. To her sudden realization, she wasn’t asleep in her makeshift bed that she took an unexpected snooze on, and instead found herself awakening in a very silky bed of crimson satin, still groggy from sleep. As Regina gains full consciousness, she kept trying to convince herself to wake up for real this time.

  “Hey, you’re astral projecting, wake up girl, come on, wake up,” she told herself.

  As she tried to get up from the fancy bed, she realized a pair of arms wrapped around her small waist, holding her immobile until she gave her capturer a soft nudge in the ribs out of panic. The arms gripped her more tightly against her captor’s chest, and a warm breath was felt running down her ear, as supple lips brushed against her lobe. Her heart was pounding wildly, and she was hyperventilating, as she feared for her life. She’d been kidnapped.

  “Don’t move if you value your life,” her captor said, a male voice distinguishable, as his cold, pale bony fingers more closely entwined a grip around her frame.

  She was frozen in fear, hearing her heart almost pounding out of her chest. She realized she was still fully clothed and this brought her some degree of relief, but she was very sure she was abducted during the lavender incident, though neither her arms nor hands were bound. Only she was, to her kidnapper in his arms. She tried to turn to see his face, but he put a hand over her shoulder to hold her in place.

  “You’re going to either kill or rape me aren’t you,” she inquired, through a shaky apprehensive voice. The kidnapper brushed his lips against her ear, and in his low tone of voice, in an almost old English accent, he whispered to her,

  “I would never dream of killing or harming you, I just want you to remember me,”

  Regina went from afraid to furious,

  “Well who the fuck are you then I can’t even look at you,”

  He relaxed his grip on her and let her turn over to face him. What Regina saw next made her blood run cold, and a mixture of disbelief and raw amazement quivered in her stomach. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The man from the painting she had seen in the museum, was the one who turned out to be her very handsome kidnapper, and he was charming. But why would he bring her to his bed? His eyes pierced into hers, sending chills down her back, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. She couldn’t decide if he was intimidating or comforting, as he lay beside her. He was dressed all in black, and that platinum hair draped over his shoulders, reflecting light in his strands. His skin looked youthful and dewy, even though he seemed like he was some enigmatic, all-knowing entity. She resisted the urge to grab a lock of his hair to see if he was just a bizarre apparition as she did suffer from very strange dreams in the most recent times.

  “You, you’re just a dream,” Regina stated so calmly, still glaring back into his eyes, sending him some of his energy right back at him. He reached and softly cupped the side of her face with his hand. Holy hell, his touch was freezing cold, was he sick, she thought to herself. She didn’t flinch despite how cold he felt,

  “I’m very real, and very soon you will have no doubt,”

  The mysterious blonde man leaned closer over her and took her in his arms, his cold hands on her back, and she found herself not resisting the urge to fight him off at all, almost as if her mind and body were both betraying her. His body was perched over hers, and even though she normally never slept in a stranger’s bed, or the thought of having sex with someone she didn’t know ever cross her mind, she felt undeniably attracted to him. A feeling of a rising fever rushed through her entire body, as he moved against her. She felt his apparent response of attraction and arousal pressed into the side of her inner thigh though they were both clothed. and he leaned in to passionately kiss her, with such a deep passion that she had pretty much missed out on in her previous love life. She ran her hands softly through his blonde locks, enjoying how the cool silk wrapped around her fingers. He was incredibly strong, lifting her off the bed with one cold hand under her shoulder blades. And more passionately he pressed his body onto her, lips traveling from her mouth to her neck.

  It didn’t take too long before they were both completely in the nude, and he was lost in passion inside of her. It was the strangest sexual encounter she had ever had, with a stranger that she still couldn’t figure out if he was going to murder her later, but she was relentlessly attracted, almost as if she was under a spell. As she was enjoying the moment, her unnamed lover kissed her neck, the fleshy veiny skin exposed for him. During her body reaching another wave of the climax of pleasure, a very sharp, stabbing pain made her snap right out of her spell, as her lover bit into her neck, so deeply that he drew blood from her. She cried out and tried to fight him off when she realized he wasn’t stopping himself from drinking pouring blood from the wound, but he was too immensely strong, and she got weaker by the second, until she drifted off into blackness.

  Regina gasped for air, adrenaline rushing to her heart, waking her straight out of her nap. To her relief she awoke for real this time, in the same bed of flowers, her back aching from sleeping on it, her mouth dry, head pounding, and bladder getting full, she would have to find a place to pee soon. She sat up and took in her surroundings. The path of flowers and arching branches full of fresh blooms were perched high above her head, but she heard civilization nearby. She hadn’t strayed too far from the tourist village, much to her relief. The time on her cellular was 12:05 P.M, same day, and she felt a huge wave of relief wash over her as she sat up and pondered that bizarre dream she awoke from. She checked her neck, out of slight paranoia to make sure no wounds were present. Her clothes were still intact, no sign of anyone else around, just herself. Who was that man, and was he possibly the same one from the painting labeled “Tepes?” As in Vlad Tepes, the vampire legend that Bram Stoker
made famous through his novel? That dream was too real, and it became blurrier every time she tried to reimagine every detail of the dream, from the bed, to the lover, to the sex, to the biting.

  “Why would I dream that? Vampires don’t exist. I really need to sleep or get a massage or start eating better, or drink myself to death, or get laid, ugh, fuck this, I’m going back.”

  She went back to the tavern of the village and grabbed some food, and kept to herself about the experience, and yet wondered if any of the other tourists had similar experiences. The name “Tepes” really seemed to resonate in her mind, so much that she decided to take to her phone to look anything up on the name. She didn’t find what she was looking for even after specifically typing “Tepes Blonde Male Painting” in the search bar. The only results that came up were pop culture video games, anime shows, and references to Bram Stoker and Vlad the Impaler. Anything else was in Romanian. With great disappointment, she hopped onto a taxi to take her back to town later, and it had become cooler, and once again came the rain.

  By almost 3 that afternoon, she was back in town and went straight into the nearest spa from her hotel, for an indulgent, hot oil massage. The building was of rustic stone, painted red, with wooden door frames, and a coffee deck next to it. It was a mere ten-minute wait before her masseuse, a beautiful, petite brunette female with green eyes took her in to a relaxation room. It was dimly lit except for a pink rock salt lamp, and reiki music playing from a portable Bluetooth speaker that changed into the rainbow spectrum of colors. She was surprisingly sore even though she didn’t go too far, and the lavender oil poured down her back was deliciously relaxing, as her masseuse worked on her back. Regina was in a state of sleep and awake, the events of earlier coming to her mind, fleeing as quickly as they came, melting into nothingness. She got carried away into the peaceful atmosphere of the reiki music and all her muscle tension dissipated. An hour and a half passed, before her session was done. She redressed before coming out of the room, since before she was stripped down into just lace panties. She met her masseuse outside, thanked her graciously, and paid before going out into the evening, hunger pangs creeping up on her.