Dhampir

Chapter 1

Something never smells right to me when a vampire or dhampir dies. Just something about the blood never had smelt right to me, but at least I can control my thirst. If he had been a dhampir like me, then he’d still be fighting. Well, I suppose he was a dhampir, but he was a sheer-blood, a weakling compared to my strength.

Okay, let me start at the beginning. Dhampirs are a type of vampire that are created when undead vamps have knock up humans, and quite frankly, it happens more than you would think. But there are two types of dhampirs: one type is like the dhamp like what I just kill, a sheer-blood, which is created when a male vampire has sex with a human woman. This type of dhamp has one life; when they die, they stay dead, the unmoving kind of dead.

Then, of course, there is the dhamp like me, a true-blood. True-bloods are created when a human male has sex with an undead female. We are called true-bloods because our mothers have the true blood of immortality… blah blah blah…something like that. I didn’t make up the crappy category names for dhamps, some old fart in history did. We are stronger and faster than sheer-bloods, are powers matching that of weaker undead vamps.

We, unfortunately, have two lives; when we die the first time, we become undead vamps, the soul is sucked out of our bodies, yadda yadda yadda…. I’m sure you’veread all this in some Anne Rice novel. Speaking of which, the vamp that gave her his life story, was promptly staked when everything was said and done.

Now, back to the dhamp I just slaughtered, I really didn’t mean to kill him. He wanted a fight, and I needed to blow off some stress, so I agreed. Honestly, I didn’t realize when I drew my long stiletto knife and sliced his head off, I was to busy shouting. Course that’s what happens when I get mad; lets just say I have anger issues. If my boss, the source of my infinite stress and anger at the moment, didn’t report to one of the head vamps in the city, then he’d be in the same condition as the dhamp here.

I wiped the blood off my knife on the dead-dhamp’s shirt. He wouldn’t care, he’d be dust, literally, by sunrise. I walked right back into the bar I’d left to pay off my bill, and why not, pay off dead-dhamp’s.

As usual, some drunken chick came up to me and tried to rub her body against mine, while trying to start a conversation. I brushed her off; I was still trying to get over my last break up. My girlfriend had caught me drinking blood out of a human, and the look of sheer bliss on the person’s face was too much for her. The endorphins that are in dhampir and vampire saliva go into the bite wound when the canines slash the skin; it creates a feeling of bliss and peace, and, unfortunately the human doesn’t even realize that they’re dying from blood loss.

The bartender nodded at me when I left the money for the bill and said, “Sunrise is in roughly 20 minutes.” I muttered thanks. Vampires of all sorts supposedly have this great sense of time, like a clock in their heads, but if I have one, it’s obviously broken.

I’d have to drive quickly to get back to my apartment; I may not burn up like an undead vamp, but sunlight makes me weaker and very tired, and gives me a migraine. Of course, at five o’clock in the morning, the traffic in Chicago was worse than it should have been. Just my luck.

I normally worked as the night manger of a huge automobile plant; four twelve-hour shift over four days, okay technicallyfive days, and three days off a week. But my bosses decided that he didn’t need a day off for three-weeks straight. So I demanded a week off, and my boss grudgingly granted my wish.

I pulled into the dark underground parking lot; not bothering to check if the parking slot was reserved, I swung in and brought the car it a subtle stop. I slammed the door, my signal that the weekend, even though it was Monday, had begun.

As usual, my “weekend” had ended far to quickly for my taste. Mainly all I did was sleep and read. No good movies were on at the theatres and most of my friends are humans, and by their nature, they work in the day and sleep at night, so my social life is kind of… dead.

I could have gone out and about, but as one person I once told me that isolation suited me well. Well, I guess it does work in my favor for the occasional blood I need. Oh, I forgot to mention, Trues have to have blood roughly once a month or we… die. Then we need blood once a day to keep from going insane.

I got to work at five p.m. and the sun was still shining, not wanting to go and let the moon reign over it’s territory. I sighed, I was still drowsy for having to wake up so early…well, its early for dhampir. A black as night Porsche slid into the parking lot and pulled up right next to my car.

Then she stepped out. You know those people who you just look at and you automatically know that you’ll hate their guts. That’s what happened here. Her smile, and face, even her slender body repulsed me in ways I could have never imagined.

She held out her hand, and I shuddered and the thought of shaking it, but I over came my repulsion and did it anyway. “Hi,” she greeted, teeth gleaming with an unnatural whiteness, “My name is Vera Hitsugaya.” Her pale, yellow tinted skin implied that she was Asian, but something about her just screamed not human.

“Hello,” I replied, looking into her eyes, trying to figure out what she was, “my name is Joseph Thropp. I’m the night manager here.”

“Ah,” she exhaled, “my position here hasn’t been decided yet….” She let the sentence trail off awkwardly. “I actually thou…” she stopped herself in mid word. I was curious now what she thought and where she would work.

As long as It isn’t anywhere near me, I decided. “Come on,” I said, trying to be nice, even though my instincts screamed, kill her! “I don’t want to be late or the boss will be ticked.”

“You have a boss that is here at the same time you are?” She inquired, eyebrows raised as we headed forward, towards the steps that lead to my personal hell. Each step closer to the door made my heart fill with dread and my head ache.

“Yes,” I sighed, “the idiot is the one of the Owners’ son and I just love him to death.” I said the last phrase with more than malice, she gave a little high pitched laugh as she saw my eyes burning with hatred.

We pasted the final step of the stone staircase and made our way to the door, and I finally figured out what made me hate her so. It was her scent it was just so…so repulsing and it sunk and rolled off her in waves. I had met hobos and dirty, filthy people with better scents. Out of all of her disgusting smell, one truth stood out; she wasn’t human, and she was in the sun so she could be a vampire, and her smell was wrong for a dhamp.

I struggled over this for a few seconds before being a gentleman and holding a door open for her. As I followed her inside, I realized that being trapped inside, in a building where very little outside air seeps in, with her would be torture to my nose. My mind whirled around that thought, and I seriously thought about killing her. Of course not knowing if she would become dust in the wind or if she’d be a corpse stopped me from actually going through with it.

Well, I reasoned with myself, I could just eat the body… I let my mind wrap around that thought, but I don’t like human flesh…. I tried it once, the flesh got in between my teeth and the blood stains to hours of brushing to come off. Plus it just doesn’t taste that great.

I saw my personal slave driver walking toward me, grin plastered on his face. He stepped forward and held out his hand, offering it to Vera. She outstretched her smaller hand and grasped his, then he shook hers vigorously.

“Hello,” he started, “My name, as you probably all ready know, is Jeff Covington. You are here for an interview, yes?”

“Hello, my name is Vera Hitsugaya. Joseph here has told me loads about you.” He glared daggers at me for a split second, then gave a little laugh as if she had made a joke at my expense.

“Ah, I see you’ve all ready met our Night Manager, old Joey-boy here,” He grinned. Where he got that nickname for me, I don’t know, but I hated it with a fiery passion.

My smiled at the idiot, it was filled with malice and loathing. He smiled back, but, as usual, it didn’t reach his green eyes. Vera interject my glaring, and commented, “Actually sir,” blue eyes peering into his, “You must be misinformed. I’m not here for an interview, I all ready have a job.”

“And that is?” He questioned.

“Your old position.”

He was stupefied at this possibility; He was the over-seer for the entire plant in Chicago. I tried to choke back a laugh at that moment, but I failed miserably. He just stood there, not uttering a single word. Then, what she said next was the icing on the cake.

“Your dad’s shares of this company were bought, so he no longer held any authority whether you retained this position or not. My bosses obviously decided that they needed someone with more experience for this job.”

Needless to say, that day was blissful, well as blissful as work can be. Except for Vera’s awful stench wafting into my office, the day was great but… I seriously considered cutting my nose off. Then I decided I might end up looking like Michael Jackson, so I decided not to. As I arrived home, my only agenda was to sleep, but with paperwork and a report due tomorrow, I didn’t get my full eight hours.

I watched the clock, seconds slowly ticking by as I quickly found myself drowning in paperwork, after my initial procrastination of course. I watched as boring words filled the once empty computer screen and charts and graphs took a produced themselves as need be.

I dragged my energy-less body into my room around noon. I should have been checking my work, but even dhampirs need sleep. As soon as my body hit the soft pillows and comfortable bed, I was out like a light.

I woke up, bleary-eyed, still not capable of coherent thought, as I threw myself out of bed and into the shower. Hot, steaming water pounded my body mercilessly, and it woke the part of me that was still asleep with a shake. As I hopped out of the bathroom, I got a good look at the clock, and it was…. My mind slowed. The clock had to be wrong; the power must have gone off and reset it or something.

5:55, my digital clock read, and I was to supposed to have been at work an roughly and hour earlier. Great, just what I needed, I thought groaning, to be late on my second day of work with a new boss. I threw my work clothes on as fast as possible, and considered the possibility of pulling off a lie. My chances of the that weren’t likely. This new boss, Vera, was smart enough to have qualified to take Jeff’s job at a moment’s notice.

I ran to my car, only looking back to make sure I had closed the door. I had never been late for work, not even when I started at a fast food restaurant as a teenager. I backed out of the parking slot, an pulled out of the underground parking lot fast enough that it could have given someone whiplash.

No time for breakfast, I moaned, speeding along the highway. I thought I had seen a Chicago Police car, and I slowed down while they were watching me. Starting at rock-bottom wasn’t exactly a horrible way to start a day, because at least then, you didn’t have any place to go but up. Unfortunately, I still had some room to fall.

The moment I walked into the building, I knew that I was screwed. It was 6:30, when Vera approached me in my office; I had just printed off my sorry looking report. She stood at the doorway, seeing that we would be uncomfortably close in my office, which was a little bigger than the average worker cubical.

“So, Thropp,” she started, not bothering to call me by my first name… at least she could have added Mr. “Where’ve you been for the last hour-an-half? I know where you haven’t been…. Here!” She seethed flames at me, face slightly flushed.

I recoiled, the thought of losing my job made me act respectfully. “I’m sorry, Ms. Hitsugaya. I obviously forgot to set my alarm clock last morning, but I have completed the report that you asked for and all of this week’s paperwork.” I saw her face drain of color, and I continued, “I have also have the job placements and interviews on a schedule, all you will haveto do call for the approve the appointments.”

She looked over my work, nodding in a approval and sometimes grimacing at the statics, and then replied, “Good work. If you’re going to be late, either call first, or have a lot of work done to make up for it.”

She left me to my extremely boring work. At one point in my life, I loved this job, I even thought of it as my career, but after working like a slave (A/N: HOUSE ELF!) I decided I had a job, definitely not a career. Could be worse, I considered, I could be the Day Manager.

I worked nonstop so that I could take an hour lunch break instead my normal half-hour break. I sighed, as I attached one last graph to an email, my body slumped against the desk as I clicked on the “send” button. With that last email sent, I was on my lunch break…if you can call midnight a lunch break.

I headed towards the “mess hall” as my fellow workers called it. I could smell freshly brewed coffee from the other side of the door. I opened to see a piping hot coffee pot full and it was as black as a winter night. I grabbed a coffee cup that was, hopefully, clean and filled it to the brim, then I guzzled it down, not caring that it was scorching my throat.

Then I felt wobbly as I went to sit down. The floor rushed up to meet me and that was all I could remember.

Author Comments:

Hey, people I hope you enjoy. I plan on extending this to 5 chapters, but I don't know for sure how long it will really be. I had to write a short story for my Creative Writing class, and I finished rereading Vampire Academy (an amazing book, a must read for fans of Twilight and Marked) and the first paragraph to a book that my Aunt bought (I don't know the name of it, but it starts out like Dhampir). I'd really love it if someone would be kind enough to give me a title for this piece because really suck a titles. Thanks!

View from the Windowsill