Vampire heart

Chapter 1: A Stranger in the Smoke

The rains had come early to Nairobi, thick sheets of water hammering rooftops and washing red earth into the streets. The city gleamed in the downpour, alive with headlights and hurried footsteps. But in the shadow of the aging buildings near River Road, there was one figure who moved untouched by the wet or the cold-an outsider whose presence bent the world just slightly around him.

His name was Malakai.

Or at least, that was the name he had chosen for this century.

He walked slowly, savoring the night. The scent of blood and oil mingled with the spice of roadside nyama choma and something more bitter-fear, perhaps, or longing. His boots made no sound on the wet pavement. A man in a tattered coat passed him and shivered as though a cold wind had cut through his bones. Malakai didn't turn.

He felt it now. The heart.

It was here.

He had chased whispers across three continents: a name scribbled in a stolen diary, a song sung in a forgotten dialect, a rumor carried by a dying priest in Casablanca. All of it had led him here. Somewhere in this city, pulsing beneath the noise and neon, was the heart he had been searching for. The heart that once beat inside the only man he had ever loved.

Malakai closed his eyes, letting the hum of the city fade.

And there it was.

A rhythm-faint, but familiar. The same cadence he had memorized centuries ago as he lay tangled in warm limbs, counting the seconds between heartbeats. It shouldn't have been possible. But then, neither should he.

He opened his eyes and turned down a narrow alley where red lights flickered above a rusted door. A bar. Of course. Humans always gathered in the places where their emotions bled easiest. Lust. Rage. Despair. All the beautiful, brutal things he no longer felt the same way.

The bouncer didn't stop him. Didn't even see him, really. Malakai had long since mastered the trick of passing unseen when he wished it. Inside, the bar was loud, the air thick with cigarette smoke and sweat. The music thumped like a second pulse.

Then he saw him.

Not him, not exactly. This man was younger, leaner, his skin deep brown and glowing with youth. His laughter was loud and careless as he leaned across the bar to snatch a drink from a friend. But the moment Malakai saw him, something inside him cracked like dry bone.

Because the boy's heart-his heart-was the same.

Malakai stood frozen, centuries collapsing in on themselves. He remembered the original. Elijah. The boy with the crooked smile and poet's hands, who had sung to him beneath the Baobab tree and kissed him like salvation. Elijah had died in Malakai's arms in 1823, throat torn open by the very monster Malakai had once called brother.

And yet here he was. Or something like him.

A second chance.

The boy must have felt his gaze because he turned, eyes scanning the crowd. They landed on Malakai-and for a moment, they both stilled. The boy tilted his head slightly, brows knitting as if trying to remember a dream that had slipped away with the dawn.

Then his friend shouted something and the moment passed. He laughed again, raising his glass. But his eyes flicked back to Malakai once, quick and curious.

It was enough.

Malakai slipped back into the night, heart pounding.

The next morning dawned grey, the kind of washed-out sky that made Nairobi feel half-awake. In a small flat off Juja Road, the boy from the bar-whose name was Ayo-was very much awake, pacing in boxer shorts with a toothbrush hanging from his mouth.

He couldn't shake the feeling. The man from the bar. The one who had stared at him like he knew him. Not in a creepy way, exactly. There had been something... mournful in it. Like looking at a ghost that had loved you once.

Ayo had dreams sometimes. Strange ones. A field of tall grass, a stone house with no roof, kisses that tasted like salt and fire. He always woke up breathless and aching. He chalked it up to stress, maybe the stories his grandmother used to tell him about spirits who followed souls across lifetimes.

Reincarnation, she said.

Love that wouldn't die.

He laughed at the thought, spat into the sink, and rinsed. He didn't believe in that kind of thing. He believed in rent. And university deadlines. And trying not to fall in love with straight boys. Especially ones who kissed him when drunk and ghosted him the next morning.

He tugged on a T-shirt and grabbed his phone.

Two missed calls. One from his cousin. The other from a number he didn't know.

He ignored both and headed out.

Malakai stood across the street, leaning against a lamppost like a shadow. The hunger had started to build again. Not the need for blood-that was always there, manageable. No, this was worse.

It was the need to know.

Was this really him? Could souls be reborn, even when bodies could not?

He would have to get close. Carefully. Not frighten him.

He didn't want to make the same mistake again.

Malakai stepped into the light.

And for the first time in two centuries, the heart inside his chest stuttered.

Because Ayo had turned. And he was smiling.

As if he had been waiting.