How to Save a Life While Undead

Save your breath, the firefighter told me as she tried to help me out from the rubble. I looked at the tall, crimson-haired and brown-skinned young Black woman, whose lusciously dark skin was covered with soot, and fought back the urge to smile. I don't breathe, I thought smugly and took the hand she offered. Fires in large apartment buildings like this can be quite hazardous, even for someone like me. I walked on shaky legs as I was taken out of the building by one of the FDNY's finest, in every sense of the word. Upstairs, my enemy burned, along with all evidence tying me to him. I have won the day.

In case you're wondering who this is, my name is Marquis Jacques Holland. Friends call me M.J. No relations to any former NBA legends, of course. Anyone looking at me would see a six-foot-one, lean and athletic young Black man with dark brown skin, curly black hair and light brown eyes. I was born in 1887 on the island of Haiti, and became a vampire in 1911. Six decades later, I left the Caribbean to explore life in the newly integrated United States of America, most specifically Boston, Massachusetts. I have been living here ever since. What can I say? Something about this town and its people appeal to me, and even the undead can get sentimental. If I love Boston so much, what in hell was I doing in the Big Apple? I was there on business, folks. I was there to make a killing, so to speak.

There are all kinds of creatures out there, and we the undead are but one of the many breeds of human-like monsters living right here on this planet. Werewolves are real, and so are demons, and many other creatures you thought to be the stuff of myth and legend. The various species of nonhumans steer clear of each other, because we don't get along with one another anymore than humans of different races and religions do. However, there are rules for all nonhumans. The number one rule? Humans cannot find out about us. A gentleman named Wahid Khan should have remembered that. Wahid Khan was born in what would one day be called Bangladesh in the summer of 1492, and he became a vampire in 1531.

Even as a vampire, he remained loyal to his country of origin and the faith he was born into. For the most part, us vampires don't put much stock in religion because we know there's life after death, and we tend to break the rules of just about any society or faith just by existing. Wahid Khan was the exception. As a young man in Bangladesh, he was passionate about Islam, eventually becoming a Hafiz, and studying to become an Imam in Turkey. He traveled the world, and one day, felt inspired to join the legions of Muslims from various nations who targeted the European world. He lost, of course, and while on the run from British soldiers, he wandered into the Bengali jungle and met a strange man, Siavash the night walker. Siavash was an ancient vampire whose existence predated both Christianity and the arrival of Islam. He turned Wahid Khan into one of the undead. Shortly after rising from the dead as one of us, Wahid Khan destroyed his maker, and set about traveling the world in search of knowledge and power.

Wahid Khan is the original terrorist, ladies and gentlemen. Forget about Bin Laden, the Hezbollah guys in Lebanon, the Al Shabab guys in Somalia and those lone wolf Islamist terrorists in the United States and western Europe. Wahid Khan used his many centuries to amass immense power and wealth, and he's been a shadowy mastermind behind numerous radical Muslim organizations since the dawn of the twentieth century. He believes himself to be the Mahdi, a legendary figure that many Muslims believe will lead them to total domination of the world. Wahid Khan's human followers have no idea that he's really a vampire from ancient Bangladesh manipulating their faith and their fears in order to gain power over them. From Israel to Lebanon, from Palestine to Syria, from Saudi Arabia to Yemen, from Turkey to Nigeria, this guy's influence over the Islamic community is vast. Now, the fact that he's been able to get away with so much death and destruction has turned him into somewhat of a legend among the vampires as well as the few humans who suspect his existence.

I've encountered Wahid Khan before. He was in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1999, recruiting young men from the local Arab community. I was hanging out with my good friend Marisol Hernandez, a plump Latin matron who became a vampire at the age of forty eight in 1990. We were having fun preying on local coeds, and one of them, Nicole Sanchez, was dating Abdullah Qasim, one of the young Arab men Wahid Khan had come to recruit. Abdullah was the perfect recruit for what Wahid Khan had in mind. He was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents from Yemen, had a business degree from Princeton University, and worked for a big company. Wahid Khan wanted to recruit him into a terrorist cell. My good friend Marisol wanted him for lunch. When two predators want the same prey, there's bound to be trouble. Marisol challenged Wahid, and he killed her. I swore that I'd avenge her. And I always keep my promises.

Wahid Khan should have learned the art of discretion and distance himself from human causes and politics the day he became a vampire, but instead he immersed himself in the mortal world more than anyone else ever had. What we were in mortal life has a big role to play in the type of vampire we become. For the most part, we hide in the shadows, discretely feeding on humans and trying not to attract attention to ourselves. Wahid Khan didn't follow any of these rules. He broke some of the most sacred rules of the nonhuman community. And since he was protected by an army of religious nutcases and we in the shadows didn't want to risk exposure, he was untouchable. Well, I decided to take him out, and recently, I got my chance.

Athena, an old friend from NYC told me she'd seen Wahid Khan and his devotees in Brooklyn, plotting against the local Jewish community as revenge for the November 2012 Israel air and naval attacks on Gaza, and I went to New York to deal with Wahid Khan. I had to fight my way through dozens of his thugs, young men and women who were ready to die in the name of their faith. I didn't enjoy what I did to them, but it was necessary. Finally, I cornered Wahid, alone, on the rooftop. We faced each other, vampire against vampire. Most vampires my age wouldn't go up against someone like Wahid if they had a choice in the matter. I was only 125 years old, a heartbeat in vampire years. Wahid Khan was 520 years old. This guy's existence predated the discovery of the New World by several months! We fought on the roof, in the way of our kind.

As a vampire, I am three times stronger than any man my size ought to be. A vampire's strength and speed increase with age. The more blood one drinks, the stronger one gets. Wahid was much stronger and faster than I was, but he was also cockier. When a vampire reaches half a millennium, they sometimes lull themselves into a certain false sense of invincibility. Nothing lives forever, least of us we the undead. No matter how long you live or how powerful you get, it's best not to forget that. Wahid had gotten so powerful in his own mind that he didn't bother carrying weapons anymore, at least not the weapons designed to take out our kind. He came at me with an AK-47, if you can believe that. Since when do vampires fear guns? What an idiot! I snatched the gun from his hand, but not before he emptied a full clip in me and blew a gas line, causing the fire which later spread from the roof to the rest of the building.

Wahid wised up to the threat I represented, and came at me with a sharp stick. The bozo intended to stake me through the heart. He would have done it too if I hadn't shoved him into the fire, the one thing guaranteed to end a vampire's existence. I've heard old wives tales about really ancient vampires growing their heads back after being decapitated, and even regenerating after being staked through the heart. Are such things are possible for a vampire who's, say, a thousand years old? I honestly couldn't tell you. I have never heard of a vampire, ancient or otherwise, coming back after being burned to ash. So I stood there and watched Wahid burn, and then the flames threatened me too, and I probably would have died if it hadn't been for a certain red-haired, light-skinned African-American female firefighter, whose coworkers called her Claire.

When I got back to my hotel, after discretely getting away from the emergency medical technicians, I did my research on Claire Hallman of the New York City Fire Department. She was born on February 7, 1984, in Kingston, Jamaica. Her parents, Shawn and Beatrice Hallman moved to New York in 1994. She studied at Rutgers University, graduating in 2007 with a bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice. Instead of going to Law school or applying for a police job, like most of her former colleagues in her program, she took the firefighter exam and joined the FDNY, after enduring the usual hell of basic training and good old-fashioned sexism, of course. What a woman. Her profile picture on Facebook didn't do her justice. She was much better-looking in person.

I thought about what I smelled on her even before she led me out of the building. This chick had cancer. One of the worst forms, actually. It wouldn't manifest fully until a few months from now, and by then, it would be too late. She would stand one chance in a million of surviving. I thought about how strong and how beautiful she was, how fierce and pure. Such resilience, strength and beauty needn't be cut short. So, three nights later, I paid her a little visit at her apartment in Queens. She was asleep, and as I knelt down to bite her neck, I froze. She had no pulse. I stood there, crestfallen. I smelled the cyanide on her, long before I saw the remaining pills. I found the letter she wrote to her friends and family, explaining why she did what she did, six months after her doctor delivered the bad news about her health. She wanted to go out the way she always lived her life. Whole. Before the cancer could wither her body and turn her into something she didn't even want to imagine, she would kill the cancer, and herself with it.

I stood there, for a long moment, shocked. Even in the century-plus that I've been alive, some things that ordinary men and women do still amaze me. Her body was still lukewarm. She took the pills a few hours ago. Had I been faster I could have saved her. The blood of a vampire can turn a living human being into one of the glorious undead, but it cannot revive anyone who's already dead of other causes. I felt something very close to agony and torment as I walked out of Claire Hallman's apartment. This woman saved my life, and I honestly wanted to return the favor. I allowed myself to briefly think about what kind of vampire such a beautiful and fearless woman might have made. A true queen of the night, to be sure. Oh, well. I guess we'll never know.