Darius, page 1
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To you, and your mate.
In so many ways, you were what started it all.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS AND PROPER NOUNS
ahstrux nohtrum (n.)
Private guard with license to kill who is granted his or her position by the King.
ahvenge (v.)
Act of mortal retribution, carried out typically by a male loved one.
Black Dagger Brotherhood (pr. n.)
Highly trained vampire warriors who protect their species against the Lessening Society. As a result of selective breeding within the race, Brothers possess immense physical and mental strength, as well as rapid healing capabilities. They are not siblings for the most part, and are inducted into the Brotherhood upon nomination by the Brothers. Aggressive, self-reliant, and secretive by nature, they are the subjects of legend and objects of reverence within the vampire world. They may be killed only by the most serious of wounds, e.g., a gunshot or stab to the heart, etc.
blood slave (n.)
Male or female vampire who has been subjugated to serve the blood needs of another.
the Chosen (pr. n.)
Female vampires who have been bred to serve the Scribe Virgin. They are spiritually rather than temporally focused, and meet the blood needs of unmated members of the Brotherhood, as well as Brothers who cannot feed from their shellans or injured fighters.
chrih (n.)
Symbol of honorable death in the Old Language.
cohntehst (n.)
Conflict between two males competing for the right to be a female’s mate.
Dhunhd (pr. n.)
Hell.
doggen (n.)
Member of the servant class within the vampire world. Doggen have old, conservative traditions about service to their superiors, following a formal code of dress and behavior. They are able to go out during the day, but they age relatively quickly. Life expectancy is approximately five hundred years.
ehros (n.)
A Chosen trained in the matter of sexual arts.
exhile dhoble (n.)
The evil or cursed twin, the one born second.
the Fade (pr. n.)
Non-temporal realm where the dead reunite with their loved ones and pass eternity.
First Family (pr. n.)
The King and Queen of the vampires, and any children they may have.
ghardian (n.)
Custodian of an individual. There are varying degrees of ghardians, with the most powerful being that of a sehcluded female.
glymera (n.)
The social core of the aristocracy, roughly equivalent to Regency England’s ton.
hellren (n.)
Male vampire who has been mated to a female. Males may take more than one female as mate.
hyslop (n. or v.)
Term referring to a lapse in judgment, typically resulting in the compromise of the mechanical operations of a vehicle or otherwise motorized conveyance of some kind. For example, leaving one’s keys in one’s car as it is parked outside the family home overnight, whereupon said vehicle is stolen.
leahdyre (n.)
A person of power and influence.
leelan (adj. or n.)
A term of endearment loosely translated as “dearest one.”
Lessening Society (pr. n.)
Order of slayers convened by the Omega for the purpose of eradicating the vampire species.
lesser (n.)
De-souled human who targets vampires for extermination as a member of the Lessening Society. Lessers must be stabbed through the chest in order to be killed; otherwise they are ageless. They do not eat or drink and are impotent. Over time, their hair, skin, and irises lose pigmentation until they are blond, blushless, and pale eyed. They smell like baby powder. Inducted into the society by the Omega, they retain a ceramic jar thereafter into which their heart was placed after it was removed.
lewlhen (n.)
Gift.
lheage (n.)
A term of respect used by a sexual submissive to refer to their dominant.
Lhenihan (pr. n.)
A mythic beast renowned for its sexual prowess. In modern slang, refers to a male of preternatural size and sexual stamina.
lys (n.)
Torture tool used to remove the eyes.
mahmen (n.)
Mother. Used both as an identifier and a term of affection.
mhis (n.)
The masking of a given physical environment; the creation of a field of illusion.
nalla (n., f.) or nallum (n., m.)
Beloved.
needing period (n.)
Female vampire’s time of fertility, generally lasting for two days and accompanied by intense sexual cravings. Occurs approximately five years after a female’s transition and then once a decade thereafter. All males respond to some degree if they are around a female in her need. It can be a dangerous time, with conflicts and fights breaking out between competing males, particularly if the female is not mated.
newling (n.)
A virgin.
the Omega (pr. n.)
Malevolent, mystical figure who has targeted the vampires for extinction out of resentment directed toward the Scribe Virgin. Exists in a non-temporal realm and has extensive powers, though not the power of creation.
phearsom (adj.)
Term referring to the potency of a male’s sexual organs. Literal translation something close to “worthy of entering a female.”
Princeps (pr. n.)
Highest level of the vampire aristocracy, second only to members of the First Family or the Scribe Virgin’s Chosen. Must be born to the title; it may not be conferred.
pyrocant (n.)
Refers to a critical weakness in an individual. The weakness can be internal, such as an addiction, or external, such as a lover.
rahlman (n.)
Savior.
rythe (n.)
Ritual manner of asserting honor granted by one who has offended another. If accepted, the offended chooses a weapon and strikes the offender, who presents him- or herself without defenses.
the Scribe Virgin (pr. n.)
Mystical force who is counselor to the King as well as the keeper of vampire archives and the dispenser of privileges. Exists in a non-temporal realm and has extensive powers. Capable of a single act of creation, which she expended to bring the vampires into existence.
sehclusion (n.)
Status conferred by the King upon a female of the aristocracy as a result of a petition by the female’s family. Places the female under the sole direction of her ghardian, typically the eldest male in her household. Her ghardian then has the legal right to determine all manner of her life, restricting at will any and all interactions she has with the world.
shellan (n.)
Female vampire who has been mated to a male. Females generally do not take more than one mate due to the highly territorial nature of bonded males.
symphath (n.)
Subspecies within the vampire race characterized by the ability and desire to manipulate emotions in others (for the purposes of an energy exchange), among other traits. Historically, they have been discriminated against and, during certain eras, hunted by vampires. They are near extinction.
talhman (n.)
The evil side of an individual. A dark stain on the soul that requires expression if it is not properly expunged.
the Tomb (pr. n.)
Sacred vault of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. Used as a ceremonial site as well as a storage facility for the jars of lessers. Ceremonies performed there include inductions, funerals, and disciplinary actions against Brothers. No one may enter except for members of the Brotherhood, the Scribe Virgin, or candidates for induction.
trahyner (n.)
Word used between males of mutual respect and affection. Translated loosely as “beloved friend.”
transition (n.)
Critical moment in a vampire’s life when he or she transforms into an adult. Thereafter, he or she must drink the blood of the opposite sex to survive and is unable to withstand sunlight. Occurs generally in the mid-twenties. Some vampires do not survive their transitions, males in particular. Prior to their transitions, vampires are physically weak, sexually unaware and unresponsive, and unable to dematerialize.
vampire (n.)
Member of a species separate from that of Homo sapiens. Vampires must drink the blood of the opposite sex to survive. Human blood will keep them alive, though the strength does not last long. Following their transitions, which occur in their mid-twenties, they are unable to go out into sunlight and must feed from the vein regularly. Vampires cannot “convert” humans through a bite or transfer of blood, though they are in rare cases able to breed with the other species. Vampires can dematerialize at will, though they must be able to calm themselves and concentrate to do so and may not carry anything heavy with them. They are able to strip the memories of humans, provided such memories are short-term. Some vampires are able to read minds. Life expectancy is upward of a thousand years, or in some cases, even longer.
wahlker (n.)
An individual who has died an
whard (n.)
Equivalent of a godfather or godmother to an individual.
INTRODUCTION
My name is Darius, son of Marklon. I was sired of the Black Dagger Brother Tehrror, and born in 1618 by the human calendar. I died in 2005.
If I had a gravestone, those would be the sum of my identity descriptors and the numerical fences that corralled the events of my life upon the earth. They are at once the most essential details of my autobiography, but also the least significant things you will know of me.
Let me share with you the most important sentences:
When I first met her, I did not know she would be my one true love.
When I fell in love with her, I did not know she would bear me a daughter on her deathbed.
When I died, more than twenty years later, it would be while trying to save the life of our young. On a rainy night. When the tears I could no longer shed fell from a disinterested Caldwell sky.
Those are the real details of me.
As a keeper of diaries, I wrote down the events of my life in a compulsive fashion, even though I rarely reread them and was well aware the Chosen in the Temple of the Sequestered Scribes were doing a far better job at the recording. Looking back on it, I wonder whether I’d sensed my destiny all along and that was why I took to ink and page. In marking my present, it’s possible I was trying to take some control over the future that I could feel coming for me, the brief sunshine that was followed by so many years of dark suffering looming just under the surface of my conscious mind.
But if that was the case, how stupid. Penmanship, no matter how fine, has never been as persuasive as prayer. And prayer is no guarantee of happiness or salvation, either.
Given my grieving, you might ask if I would have chosen a different path, if I’d have denied or avoided my destiny if I could have. It would be more courageous, more admirable, to clothe myself in the armor of “absolutely not.” But that’s just an easy virtue signal—as well as a claim no one can refute because nobody else is in my head, in my heart.
The honest truth is more nuanced, more complex. In the moment my path collided with my female’s, before everything started, yes, I probably would have taken another route: If the second before we met, I would have known what I had to face, I’d have balked.
There. I admit it.
That’s just the survival instinct at work, though. Nothing more than a reflex to avoid pain that fires in a nanosecond and is untempered by higher purpose and reasoning.
It is a truth, but not the truth.
One night after I first met my female, I knew over Campbell’s tomato soup and Wonder Bread toast that I would never leave her. And even after she told me to go… and then after she died in my arms… I never left her. I’ve taken my beloved everywhere with me, hoping that through my eyes she could see the beautiful thing we made together and know our daughter is safe.
I’m a male who keeps his promises.
In my female’s last moments, when she knew she wasn’t going to survive, she asked me to watch over our daughter. She made me swear that I would guard our young. I would have done that anyway, but as it was the one and only way I was able to honor my mate, that vow became my connection to her and my reason for living.
I stopped writing anything down about my life after that night. But there were other recordings, photographs now, no longer my words, that documented my time. I amassed a collection of hundreds of pictures of our young, and I framed them so that those moments I could not be by our daughter’s side in person were preserved forever for my heart. From a distance, from the oculus of a camera lens held by another, I witnessed her maturation. Raised as an orphan, she was never alone, my loyal butler doing the daylight shift and I, myself, on the nighttime watch. Wherever she was, in the orphanage or out on her own in the world, we were never far from her.
She could not know the truth of who her father was, however. Half-breeds are rare, and although being a human is not safe, existing as a vampire is downright dangerous. Further, I always had the hope that her mahmen’s genes would prevail and she would never go through the transition.
That was another prayer not answered.
As our daughter’s time for the change approached, after years of mere worrying, I became terrified. To see any vampire through their first feeding is perilous. To get a female with mixed blood through it? There was only one male she could take from and have her best chance at surviving.
Only one purebred vampire left on the planet.
Except it was like turning her over to an undertaker. Who kept his business going with black daggers and throwing stars.
It was at this critical juncture in her life that death came for me in the form of a car bomb, leaving our daughter not just undefended, but on the precipice of a life-altering, mortally dangerous change she didn’t even know was on her horizon.
So of course, I had to find a way to come back.
When my time to enter the Fade came, I struck a bargain with the Scribe Virgin, the mahmen of the species, and I returned to the earth in a different form for a different life… with the same purpose.
And so it has been, for these most recent years, me peering through new eyes at the beautiful proof that I had known love.
Unlike my destiny, our daughter has had much joy: a King who loves her, a son to call her own, a protected home, and an extended family. Everything I could have wished for her has come true, and if the cost of such a fate required my sacrifices?
One does everything for one’s children.
Yet as time has changed her, it has also changed me. The foundational role of a parent is to usher their progeny into adulthood, to make sure they are set and settled, prepared to carry the torch forward past the lives of those who created them. Of late, I am beginning to think my purpose for her has been served—and the more this feels true, the more the pain of who I miss, who I am separated from, who I long for, is growing intolerable.
With the same compulsion I previously focused on my present, I now find myself returning to the past and reliving the origin story of our daughter. But it’s not about the young.
It’s about my female. Myself.
Through the course of my recollecting, I am compelled to get each and every detail of our love story right. I want all the words we shared relived with their proper tone and inflection. I want the glances, the touches, the heartbeats, cataloged. I want even the scents right.
I have to remember everything.
It’s the only way I can decide whether it is finally time to release myself of my duty upon the earth… and try to find my love on the Other Side.
If she’ll have me, that is.
Perhaps this story of mine will at long last lead to a happily ever after.
Or maybe I was wrong about everything.
And nothing awaits me in the Fade.
CHAPTER ONE
May 1981
Caldwell, NY
Darius, begotten son of Tehrror, forsaken son of Marklon, decided to drive into town the night his destiny came to claim him. Two weeks before, he had directed his trusted, elderly doggen, Fritz Perlmutter, to go to the BMW of Caldwell dealership and accept delivery of a brand-new 735i. The car had been ordered about six months before, and although vampires did not celebrate the human Christmas holiday, as its arrival date drew nearer, Darius knew all about sugarplums dancing in the head.
The sweet anticipation had been an antidote to so much dread and duty in his life, and the wait had been interminable. There had even been a delay or two, the production in Germany hitting a snag, and then the cross-Atlantic shipping taking longer than scheduled. But then, finally, the call had come in, and when Darius had returned home after a weekend away of fighting, covered in black blood that smelled like baby powder, with a gunshot wound through the meat of his upper left arm, Fritz had whipped open the back door and proclaimed that “she is being prepared and is ready to be gathered tomorrow afternoon!”
Darius had stood there on the kitchen stoop like a big dummy, his sluggish, exhausted brain failing to process whatever news had made his butler light up like a streetlamp. And then it had sunk in. Talk about your second wind.
As a doggen, Fritz could go out into the spring sunlight, and given that he was the most faithful servant on the planet, he had been as excited as his master when he’d headed off twelve hours later to pick up the new car. The last sixty minutes or so of patience had been a slog of centuries-long duration, and Darius had churned through the time pacing in his subterranean bedroom, circling his desk, his bed, his seating area. The hearth. The bath. Rinse and repeat.
