I Hate Thursdays
They shouldn't exist. They're positioned just right to make you long for the weekend, yet realise the weekend is far enough away to make you miserable. When I was still able to work, Thursdays never failed to piss me off. Now that I'm not working, they still piss me off for my friends who must endure them. The only good thing about Thursday is Fringe. I hope I can get it tuned in. Fox is iffy at best on our digital tuning box thingie.
Okay, now that I've been all negative and shit, I guess I should write something positive. How about The Augury of Gideon? I've decided to pull characters and plots from the early days of my Vampire writing into the mix. Sydney, now named Ishtar, is going to be a main character. When I was writing her story yesterday, acook came rushing into my psyche and embodied Sydney perfectly. Before that even happened, I'd decided that Sydney/Ishtar would be an important figure in the resurrection of Faust/Kallum. It's my desire to see the two of them become very deeply involved.
Here's what I've written on Sydney/Ishtar so far. The Dhampir becomes a Vampire thanks to Dmitri. I'm cutting it for explicit sexual content and length. Click at your own risk.
CHAPTER 3
THE DHAMPIR
There’s a philosophy, don’t mean a lot to me - “the value of anything is how much it hurts.” I’m nearly but not quite incinerated, I can’t see anything for digging in the dirt. ~ Shriekback “Achtung”
Sydney Tenin thought about her parents. She thought about them quite a lot, especially since one was an absentee father with a penchant for aching in churches and the other was confined to a padded room raving about how Sydney’s father was a Vampire.
Sydney was raised in the system, bounced from one family to another, never really loved or made to feel wanted. She had always been a strange child and no wonder; her father was a Vampire. She didn’t need her insane mother to tell her, she knew by her very nature.
There was a name for this, she learned. The Romany nation called mortal children of Vampires Dhampiri. They were strange children, inclined to eating rare meat and mixing the blood with milk. They were psychic and could tell when Vampires were near. They were prone to becoming Vampires themselves upon death. The Romany both honoured and feared the Dhampiri, employing them to be Vampire killers, but fearing to have the Dhampir dwell amongst them.
But Sydney had never been in a Romany family, so her inherent abilities were never fully developed or encouraged. The families in which Sydney had been placed feared Sydney’s strangeness and always gave her back to DCS for placement elsewhere.
Sydney had never had a home. Now that she was an adult, she didn’t need a home or a family. But she had reconnected with her father Vasily and his caregiver, a woman by the name of Eve. Both of them were Vampires and desperate for a mortal or quasi-mortal to help them.
At the age of 18 Sydney entered into an arrangement with her father Vasily and his Redemptor caregiver Eve. Vasily had been sorely injured by Eve’s Vampiric groom, Cadmus Pariah. He had been left starved, crucified, and tortured to the point of death. Had it not been for Eve, Vasily, the king of the Great Hive, would have died and taken many of the Redemptors with him.
The Hive of Redemption was considered the conscience of Vampiredom. Despite some of their bizarre behavior such as entering churches or temples to suffer the pain eternal sin experiences in the presence of sanctity, they worked diligently to bring a sense of holiness to a state that seemed beyond redemption.
It was Eve who sought out Sydney. Unable to do it all herself, being intentionally weakened by Cadmus so that she would always be available to him as a “garden of Blood,” Eve came to Sydney and revealed to the mortal woman why it was she had always been different. The story behind her conception was one of desperation, sadness, and insanity.
Her mother Wendy McCurrie was the abused fiancée of banker Gordon Parkinson. They shared an apartment in downtown Greenville, South Carolina. The couple below them was Vasily and Anna Tenin. They were quiet, kept to themselves, and polite when encountered. They were also Vampires, Gordon found out. The revelation gave Gordon, who was a control freak, a freakish sense of purpose. It was his quest to reveal to the world that Vampires actually did exist.
As events would have it, and the events of that time were sketchy at best since Wendy was out of her mind, Gordon and Anna were dead, and Vasily was wounded almost to the point of death by a Vampire called Cadmus Pariah, Gordon killed Anna in front of a task force of law enforcement. When he raised the killing stake to show the mortals what he had done, the police shot him dead.
Vasily had taken Wendy to thrall months before that because he didn’t trust Gordon’s insistent nosiness concerning Vasily and Anna. The act of thralling a human female always involved impregnation. So was Sydney conceived. By the time she was born, Vasily had moved on to Asheville, North Carolina and become a religions instructor at UNCA and Wendy had been involuntarily committed to Patrick B. Harris Psychiatric Hospital where Sydney was born.
It had been a sad and confusing life but, now that Sydney knew why, she was truly involved in her father’s life and her visits with her mother went much more easily now that Sydney knew her mom wasn’t nearly as crazy as people believed.
Sydney McCurrie Tenin was a statuesque woman, being almost six feet tall and extremely well-fed, although she wasn’t excessively overweight. She was truly big-boned and her coppery red hair gave her away as a woman of pure Celtic descent. She had her father’s dark brown eyes and full lips, and her mother’s womanly curves and upturned nose. She had always gone by Sydney McCurrie while she sought her way through the DCS system but, once she met her father, ill and almost beyond healing, she took on his name as well.
Her conception was one of necessity, this she knew. She just wished her youth had been a happier one. Sydney had the most incredible capacity for forgiveness, which she gave to both her parents. Eve was in awe of Sydney’s ability to forgive and sought to learn the skill for when she was forced to encounter Cadmus Pariah.
Eve and Sydney became the best of friends as they worked on healing Vasily. Living in a loft in downtown Asheville, Eve worked on Vasily’s immortal wounds from his crucifixion and Sydney worked on his psychic wounds, having a bond of enthrallment all Dhampiri possessed with their Vampiric parent. They spent three years together in the apartment until Vasily was able to hunt for himself. By then, they had become a family of sorts, but one that Sydney still felt a certain exclusion from, still being a mortal.
So it came that one night she asked her father if he would transform her.
“No, Sydney, I cannot do that. I can’t propagate a curse that only God can end for good and true. My transforming you would damn me further and ensure your own damnation.”
Eve would have transformed Sydney, but did not have the strength to do so. Cadmus had made it so that her existence was awash in weakness and personal sacrifice.
So it came to pass that, one night, Sydney spied a bearded man walking his white dog down Lexington Avenue. It was none other than Thanatos, Kelat’s soulmate and husband in the Blood. Sydney approached him, looking him directly in the eye without any sense of fear in her demeanor.
“You’re Thanatos, aren’t you? Or Dmitri, possibly Thaddeus Brannon? What name are you currently using?”
The Vampire was taken aback by surprise, but was also delighted by this woman’s moxie. “You may call me Dmitri and who might you be?”
“My name is Sydney Tenin, the Dhampir daughter of the Hive King. And I want to be a full Vampire. Being a half-breed is a kind of misery to me and Thiyennen,” she said, using the King’s Tarmian name. “He won’t do it because it offends his religious convictions.”
“You do realise what you’re asking of me.”
“Yes. I’ve never fit in anywhere and I don’t want to be a Gypsy Vampire hunter. It looks bad on a resume.”
Dmitri laughed.
“I’ve tended to my father for the past three years. I’ve learned the ways of Vampires from him and his nurse and bride to the Pariah Eve. I want to seal my fate, to put it a certain way. I want to be a Vampire.”
“You do realise that you’ll be my Blood daughter and no longer subject to the inclinations of Thiyennen.”
“I do. I know much about the Hive of Redemption. They have their purpose, but that path is not for me. My sense of freedom and adventure won’t allow me that path.”
“Let me think about it. I’ll be in town all week before going back to Jerusalem to be with Kelat. Meet me at the Octopus’ Garden in three night’s time.”
Sydney was so eager, she found herself at the Octopus’ Garden before the sun even set. Nervously looking at all the doo-dads available there, not to mention every shred of paraphernalia one might need to enjoy the Ganja. She didn’t have to wait very long. Dmitri found her staring at the fiber-optic lamps.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” Sydney said.
“Just like you.”
A silence grew between the two of them. Sydney had never been referred to as beautiful. In fact, she was in her mid-twenties and still a Virgin.
“I thought about your request, Sydney, and I want you to be certain this is what you want.”
“I’ve never wanted anything so badly,” Sydney said. “I no longer want to be the half-mortal Sydney McCurrie Tenin. I want to embrace my Vampire nature and I want you to help me do it.”
Dmitri sighed. “You realise that, since I am an Incubus, I must take you sexually. Are you prepared for that?”
“Yes. Will my aunt Kelat accept such an arrangement?”
“Kelat knows full well what I plan on doing tonight and she gives us her blessing. After your transformation, she will be your grandmother by the Blood as well as your aunt. Eventually, you will have to meet her. Be prepared for a beautiful experience when you do.”
Sydney swallowed. “So what do I have to do?”
“Come home with me,” Dmitri said. He took Sydney’s hand and led her out of the head shop. They took a cab to Dmitri’s Charlotte Street apartment and entered into his comfortable bachelor’s domain.
“I must admit to you that you are only the second person I’ve ever transformed. The last one perished many years ago, so I had to give serious thought to ever doing this again.”
About that time, the large white dog padded into the living room where the two people were.
“This is Dare. That’s one thing you’ll need to learn about me. I’ll always have a white animal named Dare. When the time is right to tell you why, I will. Just bear in mind that it’s very important to me and I’m deeply connected to the animal kingdom. Are you okay with that?”
“Of course,” Sydney said, ruffling the thick mane on Dare’s neck. “She’s a beautiful creature.”
Dmitri again took Sydney by the hand and led her into the bedroom. A plush King size bed rested Feng Shui style with the head pointed north. Sydney began to shake, but Dmitri had a calming effect on her, easing her onto the bed and kissing her lightly on the lips.
He continued this, a repetitive hypnotic kiss, barely touching her lips, but getting more insistent with each kiss. He rested her hands in his, which lay in her lap.
“How do you feel?” he murmured.
“I…I feel good.”
“Good. Now kiss me.” And Sydney did. When Dmitri leaned in to kiss her again, she met his kiss with her own, shy but insistent.
Their kissing became deeper. Sydney placed her hands on the back of Dmitri’s neck and pulled him closer to her as he began to remove her clothes. Soon she was naked, this lovely Amazon of a girl with creamy skin and Celtic locks cascading down her shoulders. Dmitri was smitten with her already and knew her Vampiric beauty would rival many of the most ancient and wondrous of their kind.
He lay her down and began to remove his own clothes as he kissed up her legs. By the time he reached her sexual center, Dmitri was also unclad and highly aroused. He placed his tongue against her and she bucked uncontrollably. Her body became a sacred entity that moved and functioned beyond Sydney’s capacity for thought or control. She grasped onto Dmitri’s thick black hair and pressed him against her as he moved his lips and tongue.
At the moment of her climax Dmitri bit deeply into the femoral artery and drank the orgasmic blood that gushed into his mouth and down his throat. Before he drank too much, he closed the wound with a few swift flicks of the tongue and moved up the length of her body. She was weak from blood loss and from her explosive orgasm, so she let Dmitri have his way. He sank deeply into her, taking her maidenhead with the loss of more blood.
The girl cried out, but only from the pleasure of the pain. She weakly moved her hands up to run her fingers through the hair on Dmitri’s chest as he began to slide in and out of her. The pace was slow at first, rhythmic like a drum in the night. Then that rhythm began to speed up as Dmitri caught his stride. He moved inside Sydney with fervour and it was all he could do to speak, but speak he had to do.
“When I tell you to drink, you do it, or you will die.”
“I’m ready,” she said breathlessly, moving toward orgasm again.
Dmitri took her hands and pulled them over her head. Lying prone upon her, Dmitri bore his throat to her.
“I’m coming…now now, bite me now!”
Sydney was surprised to find the teeth to bite into him and even more surprised to know where to bite him. The Blood spilled out of him and into her mouth and throat. It tasted like pleasure made manifest and it stopped Sydney’s heart from its intensity. She knew she was crossing over. She felt the transformation moving from her toes up, and she knew that she was Darkblood from almost the precise moment Dmitri’s Blood coursed over her tongue.
They made love the entire night, exchanging Blood back and forth in a trade of passion and delight.
Before the sun rose, Dmitri turned to the newly-formed Vampire and said, “I get to name you now, give you your first Vampire name. Just as Kelat named me Thanatos at the time of my transformation, so do I get to give you a name at the time of yours. You are so incredibly beautiful and I can already tell that you’re going to be a Vampire of uncanny power. So I’m hearkening to the realm of myth and naming you Ishtar. Over time, you may go by any name you wish, even your birth name like I’m doing now. But, for now, Ishtar you are, the Dhampir turned Vampire. May your father accept you for who you are.
With that, they slept and Ishtar dreamt the dreams of Vampires. She saw the world in a nighttime of technicolour, graced and blessed with such terrible and beautiful things, it was enough to make souls weep. And weep they did. Throughout the aether, she could hear the souls of the dead and the souls about to be born weeping with joy at the creation this world had been, was, and would be.
But one soul stood out. He did not weep but simply smiled, but the smile was a song in itself. He waited to be reborn not as a Vampire, but as a mortal. She could hear him as clearly as she could the whisper or crickets miles away. Ishtar needed to find him. It was in her Blood to find this smiling soul and kiss the lips of the person who possessed it.
So there you have it. She already senses the existence of Kallum and it's only a matter of time 'til the adventurers bring out the incorruptible body of Faust only to have him wake up upon tasting Ishtar's blood.
Okay, now that I've been all negative and shit, I guess I should write something positive. How about The Augury of Gideon? I've decided to pull characters and plots from the early days of my Vampire writing into the mix. Sydney, now named Ishtar, is going to be a main character. When I was writing her story yesterday, acook came rushing into my psyche and embodied Sydney perfectly. Before that even happened, I'd decided that Sydney/Ishtar would be an important figure in the resurrection of Faust/Kallum. It's my desire to see the two of them become very deeply involved.
Here's what I've written on Sydney/Ishtar so far. The Dhampir becomes a Vampire thanks to Dmitri. I'm cutting it for explicit sexual content and length. Click at your own risk.
CHAPTER 3
THE DHAMPIR
There’s a philosophy, don’t mean a lot to me - “the value of anything is how much it hurts.” I’m nearly but not quite incinerated, I can’t see anything for digging in the dirt. ~ Shriekback “Achtung”
Sydney Tenin thought about her parents. She thought about them quite a lot, especially since one was an absentee father with a penchant for aching in churches and the other was confined to a padded room raving about how Sydney’s father was a Vampire.
Sydney was raised in the system, bounced from one family to another, never really loved or made to feel wanted. She had always been a strange child and no wonder; her father was a Vampire. She didn’t need her insane mother to tell her, she knew by her very nature.
There was a name for this, she learned. The Romany nation called mortal children of Vampires Dhampiri. They were strange children, inclined to eating rare meat and mixing the blood with milk. They were psychic and could tell when Vampires were near. They were prone to becoming Vampires themselves upon death. The Romany both honoured and feared the Dhampiri, employing them to be Vampire killers, but fearing to have the Dhampir dwell amongst them.
But Sydney had never been in a Romany family, so her inherent abilities were never fully developed or encouraged. The families in which Sydney had been placed feared Sydney’s strangeness and always gave her back to DCS for placement elsewhere.
Sydney had never had a home. Now that she was an adult, she didn’t need a home or a family. But she had reconnected with her father Vasily and his caregiver, a woman by the name of Eve. Both of them were Vampires and desperate for a mortal or quasi-mortal to help them.
At the age of 18 Sydney entered into an arrangement with her father Vasily and his Redemptor caregiver Eve. Vasily had been sorely injured by Eve’s Vampiric groom, Cadmus Pariah. He had been left starved, crucified, and tortured to the point of death. Had it not been for Eve, Vasily, the king of the Great Hive, would have died and taken many of the Redemptors with him.
The Hive of Redemption was considered the conscience of Vampiredom. Despite some of their bizarre behavior such as entering churches or temples to suffer the pain eternal sin experiences in the presence of sanctity, they worked diligently to bring a sense of holiness to a state that seemed beyond redemption.
It was Eve who sought out Sydney. Unable to do it all herself, being intentionally weakened by Cadmus so that she would always be available to him as a “garden of Blood,” Eve came to Sydney and revealed to the mortal woman why it was she had always been different. The story behind her conception was one of desperation, sadness, and insanity.
Her mother Wendy McCurrie was the abused fiancée of banker Gordon Parkinson. They shared an apartment in downtown Greenville, South Carolina. The couple below them was Vasily and Anna Tenin. They were quiet, kept to themselves, and polite when encountered. They were also Vampires, Gordon found out. The revelation gave Gordon, who was a control freak, a freakish sense of purpose. It was his quest to reveal to the world that Vampires actually did exist.
As events would have it, and the events of that time were sketchy at best since Wendy was out of her mind, Gordon and Anna were dead, and Vasily was wounded almost to the point of death by a Vampire called Cadmus Pariah, Gordon killed Anna in front of a task force of law enforcement. When he raised the killing stake to show the mortals what he had done, the police shot him dead.
Vasily had taken Wendy to thrall months before that because he didn’t trust Gordon’s insistent nosiness concerning Vasily and Anna. The act of thralling a human female always involved impregnation. So was Sydney conceived. By the time she was born, Vasily had moved on to Asheville, North Carolina and become a religions instructor at UNCA and Wendy had been involuntarily committed to Patrick B. Harris Psychiatric Hospital where Sydney was born.
It had been a sad and confusing life but, now that Sydney knew why, she was truly involved in her father’s life and her visits with her mother went much more easily now that Sydney knew her mom wasn’t nearly as crazy as people believed.
Sydney McCurrie Tenin was a statuesque woman, being almost six feet tall and extremely well-fed, although she wasn’t excessively overweight. She was truly big-boned and her coppery red hair gave her away as a woman of pure Celtic descent. She had her father’s dark brown eyes and full lips, and her mother’s womanly curves and upturned nose. She had always gone by Sydney McCurrie while she sought her way through the DCS system but, once she met her father, ill and almost beyond healing, she took on his name as well.
Her conception was one of necessity, this she knew. She just wished her youth had been a happier one. Sydney had the most incredible capacity for forgiveness, which she gave to both her parents. Eve was in awe of Sydney’s ability to forgive and sought to learn the skill for when she was forced to encounter Cadmus Pariah.
Eve and Sydney became the best of friends as they worked on healing Vasily. Living in a loft in downtown Asheville, Eve worked on Vasily’s immortal wounds from his crucifixion and Sydney worked on his psychic wounds, having a bond of enthrallment all Dhampiri possessed with their Vampiric parent. They spent three years together in the apartment until Vasily was able to hunt for himself. By then, they had become a family of sorts, but one that Sydney still felt a certain exclusion from, still being a mortal.
So it came that one night she asked her father if he would transform her.
“No, Sydney, I cannot do that. I can’t propagate a curse that only God can end for good and true. My transforming you would damn me further and ensure your own damnation.”
Eve would have transformed Sydney, but did not have the strength to do so. Cadmus had made it so that her existence was awash in weakness and personal sacrifice.
So it came to pass that, one night, Sydney spied a bearded man walking his white dog down Lexington Avenue. It was none other than Thanatos, Kelat’s soulmate and husband in the Blood. Sydney approached him, looking him directly in the eye without any sense of fear in her demeanor.
“You’re Thanatos, aren’t you? Or Dmitri, possibly Thaddeus Brannon? What name are you currently using?”
The Vampire was taken aback by surprise, but was also delighted by this woman’s moxie. “You may call me Dmitri and who might you be?”
“My name is Sydney Tenin, the Dhampir daughter of the Hive King. And I want to be a full Vampire. Being a half-breed is a kind of misery to me and Thiyennen,” she said, using the King’s Tarmian name. “He won’t do it because it offends his religious convictions.”
“You do realise what you’re asking of me.”
“Yes. I’ve never fit in anywhere and I don’t want to be a Gypsy Vampire hunter. It looks bad on a resume.”
Dmitri laughed.
“I’ve tended to my father for the past three years. I’ve learned the ways of Vampires from him and his nurse and bride to the Pariah Eve. I want to seal my fate, to put it a certain way. I want to be a Vampire.”
“You do realise that you’ll be my Blood daughter and no longer subject to the inclinations of Thiyennen.”
“I do. I know much about the Hive of Redemption. They have their purpose, but that path is not for me. My sense of freedom and adventure won’t allow me that path.”
“Let me think about it. I’ll be in town all week before going back to Jerusalem to be with Kelat. Meet me at the Octopus’ Garden in three night’s time.”
Sydney was so eager, she found herself at the Octopus’ Garden before the sun even set. Nervously looking at all the doo-dads available there, not to mention every shred of paraphernalia one might need to enjoy the Ganja. She didn’t have to wait very long. Dmitri found her staring at the fiber-optic lamps.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” Sydney said.
“Just like you.”
A silence grew between the two of them. Sydney had never been referred to as beautiful. In fact, she was in her mid-twenties and still a Virgin.
“I thought about your request, Sydney, and I want you to be certain this is what you want.”
“I’ve never wanted anything so badly,” Sydney said. “I no longer want to be the half-mortal Sydney McCurrie Tenin. I want to embrace my Vampire nature and I want you to help me do it.”
Dmitri sighed. “You realise that, since I am an Incubus, I must take you sexually. Are you prepared for that?”
“Yes. Will my aunt Kelat accept such an arrangement?”
“Kelat knows full well what I plan on doing tonight and she gives us her blessing. After your transformation, she will be your grandmother by the Blood as well as your aunt. Eventually, you will have to meet her. Be prepared for a beautiful experience when you do.”
Sydney swallowed. “So what do I have to do?”
“Come home with me,” Dmitri said. He took Sydney’s hand and led her out of the head shop. They took a cab to Dmitri’s Charlotte Street apartment and entered into his comfortable bachelor’s domain.
“I must admit to you that you are only the second person I’ve ever transformed. The last one perished many years ago, so I had to give serious thought to ever doing this again.”
About that time, the large white dog padded into the living room where the two people were.
“This is Dare. That’s one thing you’ll need to learn about me. I’ll always have a white animal named Dare. When the time is right to tell you why, I will. Just bear in mind that it’s very important to me and I’m deeply connected to the animal kingdom. Are you okay with that?”
“Of course,” Sydney said, ruffling the thick mane on Dare’s neck. “She’s a beautiful creature.”
Dmitri again took Sydney by the hand and led her into the bedroom. A plush King size bed rested Feng Shui style with the head pointed north. Sydney began to shake, but Dmitri had a calming effect on her, easing her onto the bed and kissing her lightly on the lips.
He continued this, a repetitive hypnotic kiss, barely touching her lips, but getting more insistent with each kiss. He rested her hands in his, which lay in her lap.
“How do you feel?” he murmured.
“I…I feel good.”
“Good. Now kiss me.” And Sydney did. When Dmitri leaned in to kiss her again, she met his kiss with her own, shy but insistent.
Their kissing became deeper. Sydney placed her hands on the back of Dmitri’s neck and pulled him closer to her as he began to remove her clothes. Soon she was naked, this lovely Amazon of a girl with creamy skin and Celtic locks cascading down her shoulders. Dmitri was smitten with her already and knew her Vampiric beauty would rival many of the most ancient and wondrous of their kind.
He lay her down and began to remove his own clothes as he kissed up her legs. By the time he reached her sexual center, Dmitri was also unclad and highly aroused. He placed his tongue against her and she bucked uncontrollably. Her body became a sacred entity that moved and functioned beyond Sydney’s capacity for thought or control. She grasped onto Dmitri’s thick black hair and pressed him against her as he moved his lips and tongue.
At the moment of her climax Dmitri bit deeply into the femoral artery and drank the orgasmic blood that gushed into his mouth and down his throat. Before he drank too much, he closed the wound with a few swift flicks of the tongue and moved up the length of her body. She was weak from blood loss and from her explosive orgasm, so she let Dmitri have his way. He sank deeply into her, taking her maidenhead with the loss of more blood.
The girl cried out, but only from the pleasure of the pain. She weakly moved her hands up to run her fingers through the hair on Dmitri’s chest as he began to slide in and out of her. The pace was slow at first, rhythmic like a drum in the night. Then that rhythm began to speed up as Dmitri caught his stride. He moved inside Sydney with fervour and it was all he could do to speak, but speak he had to do.
“When I tell you to drink, you do it, or you will die.”
“I’m ready,” she said breathlessly, moving toward orgasm again.
Dmitri took her hands and pulled them over her head. Lying prone upon her, Dmitri bore his throat to her.
“I’m coming…now now, bite me now!”
Sydney was surprised to find the teeth to bite into him and even more surprised to know where to bite him. The Blood spilled out of him and into her mouth and throat. It tasted like pleasure made manifest and it stopped Sydney’s heart from its intensity. She knew she was crossing over. She felt the transformation moving from her toes up, and she knew that she was Darkblood from almost the precise moment Dmitri’s Blood coursed over her tongue.
They made love the entire night, exchanging Blood back and forth in a trade of passion and delight.
Before the sun rose, Dmitri turned to the newly-formed Vampire and said, “I get to name you now, give you your first Vampire name. Just as Kelat named me Thanatos at the time of my transformation, so do I get to give you a name at the time of yours. You are so incredibly beautiful and I can already tell that you’re going to be a Vampire of uncanny power. So I’m hearkening to the realm of myth and naming you Ishtar. Over time, you may go by any name you wish, even your birth name like I’m doing now. But, for now, Ishtar you are, the Dhampir turned Vampire. May your father accept you for who you are.
With that, they slept and Ishtar dreamt the dreams of Vampires. She saw the world in a nighttime of technicolour, graced and blessed with such terrible and beautiful things, it was enough to make souls weep. And weep they did. Throughout the aether, she could hear the souls of the dead and the souls about to be born weeping with joy at the creation this world had been, was, and would be.
But one soul stood out. He did not weep but simply smiled, but the smile was a song in itself. He waited to be reborn not as a Vampire, but as a mortal. She could hear him as clearly as she could the whisper or crickets miles away. Ishtar needed to find him. It was in her Blood to find this smiling soul and kiss the lips of the person who possessed it.
So there you have it. She already senses the existence of Kallum and it's only a matter of time 'til the adventurers bring out the incorruptible body of Faust only to have him wake up upon tasting Ishtar's blood.