Author's Notes: I'd like to point out that at any given time, I can be stupid. Which means that Rella Rhea. The lady's name is Rhea. I'll change it when I get the chance. For now, I'd just like to wash my hands of being stupid for awhile; here's chapter 2. Comments? Critiques? C'mon, I KNOW you guys don't hate me. TT This story takes place after The Storm but really, it had no affiliation with it.

A Dhampir Story

Chapter II

It was wet and cold and miserable the day the Vampire King's son came to the Refuge. Though the sun came piercing through the clouds now and then, the rainbows thereby spawned gave no joy for the young dhampir. A small, black smudge of a figure slowly picked its way over ankle-deep puddles in the road that littered his path. The gender was as yet indiscernable, for the face was young and almost angelic, the mouth feminine but the youthful set of his jaw firm.

Children raced outside to the large, grassy front yard, dressed in ordinary clothes. In contrast, they had faces and eyes and features totally unlike those of ordinary humans. One human being, hardened by living on the Frontier, might find such a sight mildly unsettling and most offensive. Most of the children stayed inside out of the daylight, pressing their malformed faces against the glass. The flower boxes were chock full of a colorful, large blooms. In contrast, large men with guns and swords guarded the lethal, bio-electric fence that killed anyone who so much as brushed their clothing on it. It was a device designed to keep from coming in, as well as contain the creatures within; the giant, muscled men patrolled its perimeter every day, tirelessly.

Finally, the large double doors opened again, permitting a tall, youthful woman to step outside in mahogany khaki trousers and a white blouse with pearls buttoned at her throat. Draped about her shoulders was a heavy green rain coat. Her modest eyes and soft expression became darker as she observed the young person staggering along the road toward them. He tripped and fell more than twice; every time, he struggled back to his feet. The rain drenched his clothes to the skin. Water dripped from his hair, into his squinting eyes. His skin was as pale as that of any corpse laid six feet under, but he was quite beautiful in the eerie way that the blood relatives of vampires could be.

He looked up at the figures beyond the fence once he realized he could go no further. He sank down onto the ground and waited, his breath coming hard and desperate. The guards had taken notice and, alarmingly, raised their firearms at the small one. The woman called out a sharp, angry word.

"He's just a boy!"

"But he's one of the Nobility! Look at 'em! He can barely stand the touch of the sun!"

The woman marched toward the offender. Her fist made a solid, impressive crack against his jaw. He was even knocked to the ground. "I think you should remember who feeds and clothes you and gives you orders! Stand down!"

She turned back to the boy, ordering the gates open. The children did not budge an inch. Though they were many races and ages mixed together, rarely had any of them seen a real living dhampir. It seemed a spell had been cast over them, their eyes wide and gleaming, all keeping the wretched half-vampire within their sights.

The woman ran forward and bunched up the dhampir boy in her arms. A groan escaped him, his hands trying to grasp at the raincoat. His small, soft hands closed unsuccessfully on thin air. As she watched his consciousness slip into blissful oblivion, her voice rose above her reason and she cried out for the children to start digging in the dirt beneath the oak tree. When the task was undertaken, it was with oddly mixed emotions that the halfbred ones bent with shovels, making a child-sized grave for the unlikely newcomer. They were grim-faced, speaking in quiet voices, the guards keeping an eye over the proceedings.

The dirt was hard and cold from winter. The woman lowered the child into the small grave, and without even being asked, the children instinctively piled dirt over him. It was humbling; it felt far too much like burying a stranger, no one knowing what to say or where to begin. When he was covered to the neck with the softly churned earth, the woman who had brought him inside the Refuge told the children gently to go back inside.

"Mama Rhea," murmured the littlest who had remained behind. With a round, innocent face and eyes like fresh-grown grass, she must have been abandoned at a tiny age. She rarely spoke in the presence of her peers. She was a tiny thing with horns protruding from her chestnut hair which was tied in pig-tails. "Is he really dead?"

"No, my dear," she told her quickly, collecting her up in her soothing embrace. Rhea was still a young lady barely turned twenty, but never had children of her own. She stared at the stunning vision of the boy buried in dirt, his face showing stark white against the black earth. Death seemed to shy away from his cheeks, which slowly regained the color of youthful vigor. "No, he's not dead. He's just sleeping."

"Why he sleep in the dirt, mama?"

"Because he's a dhampir. The dhampir must pretend to be dead sometimes so nothing can harm them." The words themselves were enough to evoke a tremor that chilled her to the very marrow of her bones. Dhampirs were terrifying and mysterious. Most of them never lived through the torment of adolescence without being killed by their villages or slaughtered in the wild, lawless Frontier. He seemed born out of some terrible tragedy, out of a storybook.

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The following evening, an unremarkable black carriage rattled up the road, gleaming black steeds of thoroughbred lineage, their crimson oculars gleaming maliciously in the overcrowded gloom of the forest. When the floodlights swerved on the carriage, it had stopped and each animal stood perfectly still but for their heaving sides. A great, terrible darkness had come with this particular carriage, which had no markings to speak of, bar that it was purely black with dark, heavy curtains that were not drawn back at all. The crickets were still chirring in the late twilight air, and eyes like tiny red suns peered from an opening in the curtains.

Rhea crouched beside the boy, who had risen from his makeshift grave just before sunset. He was clean and silent, his hair combed back from his immaculate face. Such a somber look on a young boy did little to ease Rhea's discomfort.

"There's a man outside in a carriage. No... He's the Nobility and he demands to see that you are safe. Will you not come outside and show him? He says he's your father."

But the child would not be swayed. He looked away, his mouth set firmly and abstinently. He had not spoken a word since his arrival. When he spoke next, Rhea was riveted by the voice that somehow matched his body beautifully. "I don't want to see him. He told me to go away, so I did."

Rhea felt her skin prickle from the cold presence growing impatient outside, a power rising like nothing she had felt in her short life. She stood up after a moment, her smile like a hundred sunrises. "I'll go tell him. And if he doesn't like it, then he'll just have to deal with it, won't he?" Those brave words which might have been her last echoed in the dorm hall where the young boy sat. His baleful blue eyes watched as she walked through the heavy steel passage and outside. She stopped once to take a high-velocity rifle from one of the gentleman.

The night was fully enroached upon the peaceful Refuge. But the cold was immense. The very trees seemed to lean away from the carriage, making the very object seem larger and more menacing than when it arrived. The crickets had gone silent, and the crunch of frosty grass under boots seemed unreasonably louder than it should have. The carriage door had opened, and its lone occupant stepped out, making Rhea utterly freeze in her tracks. Her eyes were huge and engaging, like a deer caught in headlights. Or a woman in the unbreakable thrall of a vampire's gaze.

So were the rest of the men guarding this precious little-known sanctuary. Some of them could not so much as draw a single breath in the choking aura of the Noble standing beside the black carriage.

He was tall, strong of build, his shoulders broad. Wild black hair seemed to pile over one pulsing crimson eye. He wore purely black and one vermillion jacket that hung down to his calves. He looked much like most Nobility, pale skin, and fangs that seemed to line a mouth that perpetually smiled like a madman. The one visible red eye showing narrowed slowly, fixing on the lone figure of the woman. Still without the child at his side, his patience was dwindling rapidly judging from the way the frost enroached even closer, threatening to enclose even the building.

"The boy is fine," Rhea said, her tiny mortal voice sounding fragile. "But he refuses to come out. He says he left your damned home and left, just like you said. Now isn't that enough? Why do you have to come here and torment these poor orphans?"

The Noble stared. The origin of evil itself could not possibly have matched the smile growing like an infestation on his handsome face. "That sounds just like him." Then he fixed his horrible gaze on Rhea with scrutiny like superheated razor blades. "You speak very boldly for such a young little thing. You're barely out of adolescence and yet you mother these children like your very own."

Rhea tried not to show that she was trembling. Her expression was admirably brave. Not many could stand the presence or even speak words to a Nobility. But this man was no mere monster. He looked upon her coldly, before he strode forward. He became blurred, then spread out like a fog, sliding through the fence. Without so much as triggering a suspicious spark. Rhea cried out, scooting backward before raising the enormous rifle with strength belying her stature. She had barely raised it to eyelevel when a cold, white hand seized the barrel out of the growing blackness and bended it upward.

"You can't bear children," he murmured, enclosing his power around her and around the entire building. One of the gentleman who could not breathe fell to the ground, the lack of oxygen giving him no end of suffering. "Look at me. What is your name? Ah, you won't tell me. Then I'll tell you who I am." His mouth drew closer, teasing her pale throat with his lips, his teeth barely scratching the skin to break it. She was blinded, his hair tickling her skin, and her body responded though her mind screamed rebellion. I shouldn't be doing this, she thought desperately, I should be indoors, hiding, like a sensible woman--

The last whisper chilled her to her soul, marking her for ill fortune forever. "I am Dracula, the Vampire King."

The wind tossed the leaves from the ground, and it was quiet. The only sound Rhea could remember afterward was the sound of running horses, the carriage speeding its way from the Refuge.

Shrouded in his own darkness, young D had wrapped himself tightly in the blanket of his new bed, shutting out the world.

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Every six months, new guards came to the Refuge to take on work. The money paid was usually from anonymous philanthropists who cared just enough to send money to a good cause. Some of the children weren't born because they were wanted. Monsters often raped humans for the sheer pleasure they derived. The resulting births were usually fatal for both the newborn and the expecting mother. But the children that did survive usually had nowhere to go and no one who cared about them. The Refuge was a last-resort, a burning candlelight in the dreary monotony of being adopted by reluctant communities. This opportunity of second chances was a heartwarming story for people who just did not want to look at the tormenting, ugly faces of children nobody else wanted. Money poured in steadily; Rhea and her grandmother Saya did not necessarily mind who donated, so long as she had enough to order the crates of food required to nourish her young, broken charges.

Some of the money also went toward the protection of her facility. That meant ensuring that her guards were well-paid, well-armed, and kind enough to be sympathetic toward the children. Some of the guards even acted as surrogate fathers to the youngsters, playing with them on their breaks and on days they could rest.

The next morning, the guards and Rhea were well-recovered to follow through with their duties. Rhea joined the twenty youngsters at their tables for breakfast. It was a gorgeous morning at a balmy sixty-five degrees celcius. Children's memories were short, so none of them seemed to take much negative notice of their unnatural guest, making their number an uneven twenty-one. He wore too-large pants that were folded up at his feet and a snug longsleeve shirt of soft, rare cotton. He would soon be able to have his own clothes and a chest filled with whatever belongings he accumulated.

Rhea watched the little girl with horns slide out of her seat, disappearing behind the others as she circuited about her table and approached the dark figure who alienated himself at the end, leaving as much space between himself and the others as possible. She carried her plate with her, balancing her glass on an empty space, but when she tried to slide herself in between chair and table the cup toppled, splashing red cranberry juice onto the dhampir's napkin, red slowly creeping along the white cloth too much like spilled blood.

"Ah! I'm sorry!!" She grabbed a handful from the pile near the end of the table, soaking up the cranberry juice, squishing the napkins down hard onto the table.

If anything, the dhampir's expression betrayed a fleeting glimpse of perplexed amusement. He put his hands over hers. "It's okay, really."

She blushed furiously, her eyes wide, their alarming clarity almost matching that of the young boy's. "I'm Eili."

He fidgeted slightly, scooting his chair to give her more room. "I'm--" His nose scrunched up slightly, then resumed softly, "D."

"Mama says you're a dhampir."

This made him look away. Emotions flashed in his eyes, so he hid them. "I am."

"Is it true that dhampirs pretend to be dead so nobody hurts 'em?" Eili looked perplexed, moving her hands from underneath his, gathering up the dirtied napkins and placing them on her empty plate.

Deron looked at her then, chillingly void of emotion. "I... I don't know." Her small face, full of innocence, made him think twice about telling her to leave him alone. He looked back at his food and scooped some of the stew into his mouth, chewing and swallowing. "Who were your parents?"

"I dunno," she murmured. "Rhea's my mommy now. She's your mommy too."

D looked a little less perplexed, and almost-smiled with unprecedented kindness. "I guess so."

"My horns came in last year." Her eyes shined with irrepressible joy, bubbling out of control as with so many children Eili's age. "Rhea said they weren't supposed until this year but they did! They grew in last year and they won't get much bigger but Rhea says they're pretty." Blushing, she ducked her head, as if ashamed to have said so much in the company of a stranger. She touched her small, pointed horns which gently curved in toward the centerline of her skull.

"Well, I like them."

Eili blushed even more. "O-Oh, th-thank you."

Rhea looked from her cup of coffee, a tiny smile forming on her lips. Eili's innocent questions and observations often dispelled any pall on one's black mood. That was a strange power of hers that had nothing to do with her half-demon race. She tucked back her chestnut hair and smiled to herself. The other children had noticed the spill but now they were talking and chattering excitedly because yesterday, not only had they seen a dhampir, but it was rumored that a Noble had come last night, supposedly the very one who was their new friend's father!

"Hey, you!" A dark-skinned, serpentine-tongued boy hissed. "What'sss your name?"

"D." The boy looked up, his stunning eyes capturing the lizard green ones of the slightly older adolescent.

"Well, I'm Vice. Why don't you come outside later and play with uss?" His grin was full of sharp white teeth. D was not sure if he should trust it. He nodded eventually after gazing at Eili, who seemed as willing to have him join them as one of their own. He nodded, allowing himself to smile just a little bit. This place had seemed like a nightmare, a prison; maybe it wasn't so bad.

But it was soon to be discovered that playing was not the thing on the other children's minds.