I’ve always toyed with the idea of a vampire-human hybrid, or dhampir.  
I finally decided to write a story based on this, on what would happen to 
such a person.  This is the result.  I hope you all like it.  It is placed in

Toronto some 19 years after an alternate ending to Last Knight (I don’t 
care which alternate ending, just pick one where they’re both alive, Nick’s 
still a vampire, Nat’s still mortal, they’re together and they’re happy.)

Disclaimer:  Nick Knight and Natalie Lambert belong to someone other 
than me.  Rachel Knight is my creation.  Yes, we share the same first 
name but no, she is not me (Not that I don’t wish she were.  Ahh, to be 
related to the illustrious Nicolas de Brabant.)  It was inspired when I
actually 
was sick like it is described and I was wondering if that was what it would 
feel like.  The term Dhampir is real, not some contrivance of mine.  It
refers 
to the child of a vampire and a mortal, usually a male vampire and a female 
mortal.  Typically, the dhampir tends more toward its vampire half.

Enjoy!

Day’s End (1/1)
(Copyright 1997 Rachel Carroll, Archive rights granted)
	
	Rachel Knight sat at the bar of the Raven, her arms laying on the 
top of the bar and her head resting on them.  She was thinking.

	So much to think about lately.

	Since Nick had re-opened the club ten years earlier, when Rachel 
was only seven, the vampire community had trickled back in.  They were 
glad to have a haven again.

	But they did notice changes.

	The dancing cages and the rest of LaCroix’s less-than-tasteful 
‘improvements’ were gone, and the place actually looked a lot like it 
had when Jannette had been around.

	Except that there were actually *fewer* mortals.

	This was easily explained, of course, by the fact that in the nine 
years the club had been closed, the mortal population had plummeted 
as the Community seemed only to grow.

	It seems immortality has its perks.

	Rachel sat there for a long time, her short dark hair splayed out over 
her arm.  They had never figured out where she had gotten that hair.  
Neither the blonde nor the light brown they had expected, her hair had a 
rich, dark chocolate color with reddish-chestnut highlights, especially 
noticeable when the sunlight had hit it just right.  It was ramrod-straight 
and she had cut it into a one-level bob sort-of haircut, parted on the side 
and split in the front.  It was the perfect length, right around the ears,
that it was short enough to look rebellious and long enough to still look
feminine.

	Her eyes were blue, like Nick’s, the kind of blue eyes that almost 
seem to glow, that you can see like a beacon across the room. And she 
was smart.

	She had so much potential in the mortal world.  True, she was short 
for her age and had a tendency towards near-sightedness, as the round, 
wire-framed John Lennon-esque glasses perched on her nose attested.  
But still.

	She remembered her mother, Natalie, telling her about the fist day of 
her life.  About the joy of holding her for the first time.  About that joy
turned 
suddenly to horror as her brand-new child’s blue eyes had flashed, for a 
moment only, to gold.  

	But the moment passed, and it never happened again, so they assumed 
that the brief struggle was over and that Natalie’s mortal genes had
completely triumphed over Nick’s vampiric ones, weakened, of course, by their
efforts for his mortality, rather than creating a dhampir.  That was what they 
had truly feared, but they thought it was over, for good.

	Of course, a few lingering reminders of her mixed parentage remained.  
Her first sunburn, for example, at age four.  Burnt red and blistered in less

that seven and a half minutes.  They were never without sunscreen in the 
house again.

	The blood tests had shown that she was completely mortal in every 
way.  The sun-sensitivity was viewed as merely being influenced by 
Nick’s genes, not as evidence that those genes were in control.  She 
was mortal.  She would stay that way.

	Her 10th grade year in high school, Rachel decided to become a 
vegetarian for moral reasons.  She endured endless comments from other 
students and even from the school nurses about how man was naturally 
a predator and meat was his food.  They said she would ‘waste away’ 
without meat and that she was ‘stupid’ to care about and feel sorry for 
the ‘dumb’ animals.  She proved them all wrong.

	Nick naturally sympathized with what she was going through, having 
endured similar comments in the vampire world when he gave up human 
blood.

	By her 12th grade year, everything seemed to be smooth sailing.  Good 
test scores, Honor Societies, lots of good colleges interested. Then she 
got sick.

	She fell horribly ill for five days, alternating between a raging fever with

chills and inhumanly low temperatures with hot flashes.  She grew paler by 
the day, soon matching Nick’s own complexion, and she lost her appetite
completely.  Her whole body ached and by the fourth day she could barely 
move.

	Natalie had wanted to call a doctor, but Nick had realized what was 
happening and assured her that there was nothing the doctor could do.  The 
vampire half of her being, long dormant since that shortest of struggles 
seventeen years ago and not destroyed as they had hoped, had suddenly 
resurged, battling and finally, on the fifth day, coming to a lopsided
balance with her mortal half.  Their worst fear had come true; They had 
created a dhampir.

	Rachel emerged from her reverie as the bartender asked her what she 
would like.  She looked at him for a moment, then decided.  Her first step
into  her new world.

	Removing the now useless glasses and placing them, carefully folded, 
into the pocket of her corduroys, she responded, half-smiling, "Oh, I guess
just the house special."

	She was truly at her day’s end.

*Fine*