“Alucard? Alucard is dead, Selene,” stated Enttu, as he observed the jelly-black eyes of Selene gazing upon him.
“Dead on Earth only, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. His blood and his power are still bestowed in you. If you have no other questions, get out of my afterlife,” the Goddess ordered the dhampir. She spoke with a womanly soothing voice of an older black woman.
“I mean well, Enttu. You’re not just a vampire, you’re a dhampir, like Alucard was. Your duality of light and dark makes you a force to be reckoned with. A normal vampire couldn’t fight Basilisk alone. You’re the best of both worlds, now go embrace the darkness,” the Goddess echoed in her one last sentence.
The dhampir took a deep breath of freezing air that filled his lungs. It was the wee hours of the night, where it was the coldest. He hummed Alucard’s Threnody, as he stared down the ledge from the top of the building, looking distantly at his tall black shadow on the far away sidewalk. His cape flew upwards and helped him glide down smoothly after he jumped from the fifth floor. He landed gracefully on his heels, unaware of the hobos on the corner of where he landed. They covered themselves with old knit blankets that’s smelt of beer and stale piss and watched the towering raven-caped male figure march away from them. “You saw that, right?” one hobo said to the other. They passed a flask of whiskey between them.
CH. 5
“STIGMATA OF THE
BYGONE SCORES”
Cassandra slept on the spacious and comfortable couch in Regina’s room, while the other girl twisted and turned in a restless slumber, in which the dark fog sprang up from the moisture of the clean-cut grass into the familiar male figure.
“I want answers. Who actually are you?”
The hovering shadow just silently stood before her beside the tombstone, without a response, materializing before her vision into the rock star from the bar, the lover from her dreams, the phantom, the cop.
“ANSWER ME OR YOU WILL DIE BY MY HAND!”
Regina grew silent as her eyes welled with tears of sorrow that didn’t feel like hers, before her loath-filled speech carried on, with tears flooding her voice.
“YOU LEFT ME TO DIE AND NOW SO WILL YOU!” a guttural, demonic female voice echoed from her throat. An electric current gathered in the palm of her hands, and she aimed towards the silent blonde entity in front of her.
“Nayeru….,” whispered the man sorrowfully, before resorting to the deathly blow that Regina released from her hands.
A visible blue sine wave of her deafening shrill broke glass windows, and once the etheric double of the dhampir was hit, his heart exploded internally, and he collapsed to the ground. He coughed forth a deluge of blood and tissue of his dissolving organs out of his mouth.
In a palpitating sweat, Regina woke up gasping for breath, and a pounding headache, not remembering what the hell she was ever dreaming about but remembered only seeing red and black. Her fingers were twitching, and tingling with what felt like electricity, and heart audibly pounding. After regaining composure and the grog wore off, she rose up and went downstairs to prepare some coffee. Cassandra slept undisturbed, until the smell of ripe, roasting coffee beans brewing the chestnut brown fluid roused her from a dream about the beaches of Constanta. She was wearing a borrowed robe and slippers.
From the morning till noon, the girls spoke of firsthand experiences and how work was fairing so far with Regina. Most questions were geared toward her military life before coming to Romania and settling here. They went out to a shopping mall with a food court later in the day for recovery and leisure to take their minds off work and the mostly recent unfolding events. It felt like a liberty port visit to Regina, though she was now permanently on land.
“I will need a massage, let’s go after we finish our sushi,” she nudged Cassandra, who was in a hoodie with leggings, finishing her last two pieces of her volcano roll.
“So, I saw you striking up a conversation with the lead singer of Cold Iron. You’re lucky, he is so handsome! What all was he saying to you? Does he look like an actual vampire up close?” Cassandra asked Regina almost too invasively.
“Oh, him…yeah. He’s, he’s nice and friendly in person. But he’s human,” Regina lied, stuffing her face with a piece of tuna nigiri right after.
To quickly prevent her coworker from asking her any further questions, she waved her hand at some waiter, and asked the waiter for another round of spicy ahi tuna and rice. The girls went for a massage after lunch, and Regina opted for a deep tissue since her nerves on her upper back were brutally torturing her, probably from sleeping the wrong way. She later ended up blowing more money than she intended to, on a new dress and dazzling heels, because Cassandra talked her once more into going out that night.
At 11:30, the Saturday night was pumping with the blood of school aged teens and young adults on summer break. The nightlife was pulsating in a neon motley rainbow etching the streets. Some pre-gamed alcohol lowered the inhibitions of Regina and her friend. Both girls already had to stop to pee in unseen locations out of the view of the public before they got to the door of Club Serenata. The bouncer ID’d both girls, mean-mugging Regina’s DOD ID as he scanned it to verify her age. He stared at her skeptically, and had a challenging time believing that she was indeed a twenty-eight-year-old woman already; she looked no more than twenty. The burly, green-eyed Romanian then stamped her and Cassandra’s hands for entry.
Once inside, both ladies went for more drinks at a black and neon blue counter, where an attractive woman with a short blond bob attended them. Her name was Alderina, and she made them both a round of red-headed Sallies. This place was a place for ravers, and they pushed through a sea of sweaty bodies to reach the dancefloor, to become one with the synths of trance vibrating the dance floor. It reeked of alcohol and marijuana smoke in here, and that made them reach a marked state of inebriation at an accelerated rate. The dancefloor was pitch black, save for the flashing strobes of green and blue lasers.
In an all-black Subaru outside, the three detectives of the supernatural unit sat in undercover guise and were on duty that night. They were called in to patrol Club Serenata after sights and reports of suspicious folks in black dusters and sunglasses-at-night were seen lurking in the club, around the same time that six missing Romanian girls all disappeared from here. Earlier attesting from the club owner stated that three men in black were seen only lingering, but not necessarily dancing nor drinking in the establishment, and that in those same nights they were seen, a girl was reported missing the next day. This continued for the next six Saturday nights, until recently, when the Supernatural Unit was called to investigate by the Bucharest Police. Luckily, with a vampire in their team, whose identity the department swore to keep secret, harnessed his natural psychic abilities to track and locate the female victims. A successful rescue was then planned and executed, and the girls were taken for medical treatments and reunited with their families. One common factor was that none of them could remember what happened up until the time they were saved.
The dhampir Enttu stepped out of the driver door, and his gang followed along, with concealed weapons and shurikens. He used his vampiric charm to smooth-talk the bouncer, and almost hypnotize the man by transmitting a subtle frequency from an electric blue stare. Amidst his distraction, Vittorio and Marc were able to sneak into the club, and he caught up with them not too long after, into a pot and drug-infested mayhem. He pushed his way through the crowd of warm bodies, bearing his fangs at one bloke who got a little too much in his face. The bloke ran off, frightened. It didn’t take too much longer for him to lose sight of the mission, because he was once again under a spell of tunnel vision and mystical magnetism when he laid eyes on her.
A couple of free-goers offered the Regina some ecstasy, but she declined. She wanted another drink, so she would soon head back to the bar. Cassandra was pulled away by her hand by a college-aged male in a black flap-jacket, w
hom she found very attractive. She went along with him, in hopes that it would lead to the type of raunchy sex in a stall or the back of a car that she frequented to. Regina stayed behind and shook her head, with a smile.
“Lucky bitch,” she thought to herself.
She danced in a twinkling ocean of flashing green, blue, and the rhythm of a booming bass, finishing off her drink. When she stepped off the dancefloor to make it back to the bar, she saw the outline of his face, the unmistakable luminous skin and his white-blonde hair secured in a black ribbon. Stefan, or Enttu, whomever he was or wasn’t, looked effortlessly dapper in hip-clinging black slacks tucked into combat boots, and a silky black dress shirt he used with shirt stays to keep in place. They absorbed each other’s presence and lingered in each other, short-lived too soon, when a drunken clubber spilled her drink on Regina, and her reverie ceased. A girl in a tube top, hot pants and fishnets vehemently apologized to an agitated Regina, who murdered her with her eyes.
“Watch where the fuck you’re going next time,” she cussed her out.
She wiped off the drink from her sleeve using her other hand, and then decided to go out for a cigarette before another round. She made her way past the bouncer and went into the middle of an alley to light up. A couple of males had whistled at her, as she looked ever-enticing in a slinky black sequined number, with lace long sleeves, two side slits, and a lace cape. She wore gartered stockings and her brand-new red-bottomed black pumps from Christian Louboutin.
As Regina lit up, she noticed a group of three seemingly harmless men in the distance, glaring over at her, which ignored at first, until they slowly started walking over. Regina took faster drags, and then stomped the butt out with her heel, so she could head back inside fast. She walked rapidly and had almost made it to the corner of the front street, but she was then seized by the wrist before she could.
“You will come with us young lady,” one of the men hissed at her. He had black-framed sunglasses, and a pair of dirty fangs peered from under his top lip. She tried to fight him off by kicking him in the balls and screaming bloody murder but unfortunately to no avail other than pissing him off. It was shocking that no one had heard her scream. They dragged her into the backseat of a black Cadillac before peeling out aggressively from the alley, almost hitting a pedestrian in the process.
Inside the club, a frantic blonde dhampir was searching like a madman for his astral lover, and then he stopped moving when he was alerted by the sound of her scream. He texted Vittorio before he ran off into the direction of the sound that was fleeting the longer he lingered here.
“Celentano, head back to citadel now! I will meet later!”
About five minutes into the sudden abduction, Regina was panicking, and let out a deafening, blood-curdling scream that made the ears of everyone in the car start bleeding. The two men she was sitting in between were both vampires, but nothing like the blonde one that began manifesting in her dream and real life. One of the men began to choke her out to try to subdue her, and his hand was deathly cold. She pierced his shin with a stiletto heel, cutting right through his flesh and tearing off an incision into the skin covering his tibia. Now he was bewildered with rage. She continued her screams that seemed to keep the men from putting their hands on her, kicking and punching with her free limbs. The driver of the car swerved aggressively on a bridge over the Danube as if he was driving drunk. A clawed hand grasped for Regina’s throat to choke the screams out of her, and his nails slowly sunk into the side of her jugular, her dark red blood pooling in his hand. He lapped up the metallic red brine in his palm, and his eyes reddened with lust, as his fangs grew longer to siphon the rest of her. She begged him to stop, as he leaned over her with his mouth wide open, ready to tear into the side of her neck.
“THUD!”
The roof of the Cadillac caved in on the side of the man who was about to make a meal out of her blood, cutting off access of reach to her. The driver of the car slammed hard on the breaks when he realized what caused the roof to dent. The passenger in the front withdrew a pistol from an open window and shot towards the roof of the car, where the legendary blonde dhampir stood with his own gun, dodging the first gunshot. He kicked the rifle out of the hand of the shooter onto the freeway. Enttu reached with his arm and yanked open the passenger door of the vehicle, ripping it off in one swift pull. He grabbed the passenger by the throat, and dangled him over the freeway, demanding that the driver stop the car or else. The driver refused to comply, as expected. So naturally, the dhampir flung the passenger, a corrupt human being, to his death onto the freeway. The asphalt shattered every bone in his face and left him an unrecognizable red pulp. Later, a passing car ran his body over again.
On top of the hood of the car now, he blocked the vision of the driver who also tried to shoot the dhampir. Unfortunately for the driver, he was impaled by the force of a windshield-breaking dagger penetrating him through the throat and thus, killing him instantly. Blood sprayed the inside of the partially broken windshield. Now the car was swerving out of control, and the car was headed into the oncoming lane of traffic. The time to get a still conscious but slipping Regina from the backseat was very limited, and instinctively, Enttu dug his claws under the exterior carbon fiber that made up the roof, and peeled it back, like a lid off a can of sardines. He ensured there was enough clearance to reach her hand and pull her out.
Regina was bleeding heavily, and her vision darkened, but she still noticed the familiar figure of the same man who haunted her dreams now standing atop a runaway car that skidded on the asphalt. He wasn’t there to harm her, but to save her. Luckily, she wasn’t wearing any seatbelt to restrain her. Enttu placed one bullet in each forehead of the vampires who held her arms in less than a second per bullet, and then he extended a hand inside the backseat of the car towards the nearly comatose girl, barely grabbing her in time before she slipped away into darkness. He pulled her lithe body, light as a feather in his arms, holding her against his chest, relieved that he was able to save her from the Dragul henchmen. He was a hero with his black cape epically waving in the air, on top of a moving car, carrying the damsel in distress, but the relief didn’t last too long.
The car was still moving and headed straight towards an oncoming eighteen-wheeler who was already blaring its horn. The dhampir, without thinking, leaped about two-hundred feet in front of it, before the semi almost crushed him and Regina to death. In one swift deflection with his forearm, he struck the grille of the car, sending the Cadillac plummeting up into the air, like he was a baseball player batting for the homerun. The car splashed in the distance, sinking into the watery grave of the Danube. Right as the truck was two inches away from claiming both his and Regina’s life, he shot like a bullet into the night sky, away from the impending, but prevented accident that could have resulted in more tragedy.
He flew away towards an abandoned bridge in a woodsy outskirt of the city, near a mouth of the river that flowed from the nearby mountains, and moonlight danced in ripples along the breaking waves. He knelt on an embankment and held the girl to his chest, desperately trying to get her to awaken. He lightly slapped her cheek, checked for a pulse, pumped her chest to restart her heart, everything, in vain.
The body of Regina was losing warmth. Out of all measures, and with him surely losing his senses this time, he bit his wrist as a last resort, and dark red blood ebbed from his self-inflicted wound. It was plain sacrilege to bring her back this way. Within a matter of minutes, after he sprinkled his blood over the uncovered mouth of the girl, the fading color in her cheeks began to blush, and the breath of Gaia sprung back into the rise and fall of her chest. She was still in a coma, and she was still very badly wounded. Enttu removed his cape and gently enveloped her in its offering warmth, and then flew with her in his strong, protective arms to an old place where he would care for her, so she could recover. The bitter cold of the night stung him badly, but he soon recovered back some homeostasis, wh
ere he was naturally cool to the touch, upon arrival at his undisclosed haven. The courts of Selene and Alucard echoed a silence of the cosmos, as they had witnessed the sacrilege occur, though with ultimate good intention.
“Selene, leave him be, he has been in suffering through the eons, longing for her return,” a black-haired Alucard persuaded Selene, from the gold and black halls of his cosmic palace.
“Just this once, and only once, as we truly have no one else. I can feel Basilisk disturb the balances of good and evil,” the booming threnody of Selene’s voice reverberated.
Enttu laid the young girl on his luxurious bed of red silk sheets and covered her with a duvet made of mink. He then carefully stripped her to check for any more wounds.
“It’s okay, my blood alone cannot fully transform her, lest I drain her dry, but oh, I am at the edge of temptation of her intoxicating scent. I will leave her be in rest before the vampirism wins me over,”
He floated off to retrieve medicine, for a girl who didn’t wake for the next three days and nights to follow, and during these three days, work was uneventful other than heading back to the Danube and fetch and destroy any evidence of the existence of vampires. Had any word of ever reach the ears of the government and of the Roman Catholic church, he feared that the events of 1894 would repeat themselves again, but this time, on a much more global scale of decimation. There was no doubt that the Dragul hadn’t been completely killed off as most of the Selenians had been, and they may have gotten wind of him being alive to date. Malakae and Mawu were held highly suspect, as his relationship with them was always on the thin ice of tension. Not to mention that they sicked Anubis, the jackal-werewolf hybrid on him. It would make perfect sense that some of the Dragul coven, whose modo operandi likened them more to a mafia, would be around Bucharest to draw him in their traps. Technology had advanced exponentially since the late 1800’s, when he thought his fallen kingdom had everything. The Dragul vampires dwelt in Targoviste in Transylvania, on the other side of the mountains that separated them away from Meytros, Wallachia, Romania, where Enttu once reigned on the Selenian side of the vampiric Tepes family. War had taken everything but his own life away from him. Both Dragul, and the religious zealots in those dark ages held the Selenian coven entirely as a pariah. Humans hated them out of superstition and fear, after legend told of the atrocities committed by the common Tepes ancestor, Vlad Dracul Tepes, the Impaler.
The Dhampir Dimension Page 12