(1) Trevor Wallace - Dhampir

I feel as if I’m older than sin, although I’m not. And I’m just about as evil according to some. I was born of a human female and a Vampyre male, which makes me, you guessed it, a Dhampir.

For those of you who are uninformed about us, we have the unique ability to see Vampyres even when they are invisible, and we are also uniquely adept at killing them. We are sometimes called Daywalkers for our ability to be out in the sun, despite our half-Vampyre heritage. We possess all the powers of a Vampyre as well, although to a lesser degree—strength, heightened senses, the ability to control certain animals.

Many Dhampir hire themselves out as Vampyre killers.

I, however, do it for free, so great is my hatred of them.

* * * *

It began when I was ten. Young enough to still be considered a child, old enough that I’d been taught what I was and why I had powers the other kids on the block could only dream of having. I was Superman, Blade, and every other superhero rolled into one, or so they would have thought if they had known.

I’d have killed to be normal just like them.

My mom tried, she really did. She loved me as best she could, considering I was a child conceived of rape, rape by a creature of the night. Oh she didn’t tell me that part, not until moments before she died—murdered by the blood-sucking bastards. They were after me. Wanted me dead because of what I was and what I would become when I grew up.

Mom must have known something was wrong that night. She woke me up, told me to hide though she didn’t say why. Just said someone was coming, someone dangerous. I told her to call the cops, begged her to. “They can’t help me, Trev. No one can help against your father,” she said.

Yeah, my father, the son of a bitch. He led them to us. I found out later he hadn't known about me. Not until some fucking drunken ex boyfriend of mom’s got to talking in a bar. Told some whore of a female he was trying to hook up with how he’d met this woman with a strange kid, like something out of a horror flick with strange powers. Oh, I remember him. The fucker was beating on mom one night and I stopped him. Me. Nine at the time and still able to pull him off her with no trouble. He’s dead now, I saw to that.

But that’s not here nor there, now is it?

The whore wasn’t human at all. She was another of the blood suckers and a friend of dear old dad’s. Well acquaintance, because Vampyres don’t have friends. She told him what the prick had told her, the story and mom’s name. Dad remembered her. He found her drunken ex in another sleaze bar and the coward spilled the beans on where we were to save his own skin.

Daddy dearest showed up at our house on the night in question with two others of his kind. Mom begged them to leave. Told them she didn’t know where I was. That I’d run away again and this time she hadn’t tried to find me. Said she was over having to take care of an ungrateful little bastard. Damn she pulled out all the stops trying to save me from them. They didn’t believe her. They tore the house apart trying to find me but I wasn’t inside, I was under it in the crawl space, with the spiders and whatever other creepy things lived there. I could hear everything. I heard her scream when they took turns hitting on her, trying to make her talk—and then again when they drank her blood.

They left, finally. Left her behind almost dead. I crawled out of my hiding place, went to her, held her while she told me how I’d been conceived. How the bastard had followed her when she’d left work one night. How he’d told her he wanted her, had seen her and fallen for her. She was poor, lonely and he was rich, he claimed, and handsome and said her cared for her. She let him walk her home, invited him in for coffee. When he made advances she tried to send him away. The rest…is me.

She died begging me to find him and kill him. That was my lot in life after all, to become a hunter and killer of Vampyres. That’s what Dhampirs do. That’s why the Vampyres came that night looking for me. To murder me before I could grow up and fulfill my destiny. As mom took her last breath I swore to her I would do as she asked.