Born Ramona Jean Vogel in 1950, Ramona grew up in a suburb of Augusta, Maine as the youngest child of a printing press operator and a stay at home mom. Her father was rarely home, working long hours at the press, so she spent most of her early years with her mother and her older sister, Elisa. Ramona had several cousins on both sides of the family, but was the youngest out of any of them.
Elisa and Ramona were sent to the local public school when they reached school age. Ramona had always been a bold child, always seeming to find a way to try and set herself apart as the youngest, but when she was six, she decided her life aspiration was to sing. She had her mother sign her up for every school play, but she never won the star role – even for a child, her voice was average, nothing special.
As Ramona entered her early teen years, her relationship with her sister deteriorated. Elisa was three years older and properly interested in boys, makeup, and teen idols, leaving Ramona’s childish interests behind. Though wounded, Ramona found comfort in other friends, though spite for her sister would stay with her – the two never again became close.
Ramona also stayed fervently interested in theater and signing. She was in most of the school plays, but never as the star character. Her practice throughout the years earned her significant support roles, but her dreams of stardom did not seem apparent. Despite this, after graduating from high school in 1968, Ramona was not content with attending the local junior college. Ramona had other plans – she took the money and headed to New York City, hoping her star potential would finally be recognized on Broadway.
As most young hopefuls quickly realize, New York wasn’t the glamorous big city she thought it was. Ramona earned worked as a waitress during the day, and cleaning an old second-rate theater off Broadway at night. She rarely slept, and took up smoking cigarettes and drinking in a boys’ town bar after cleaning. That’s where she met Lev.
Lev Krinov stood out among the dirty men and women in the bar – his skin was flawless, and he was cleanly shaven. He was in his mid-thirties and married – his wife, Natalia, was just as beautiful as he was. They met Ramona in the bar after a few drinks one night, and she willingly told them about her wish for fame. She was in luck – the couple, it seemed, actually owned one of the theatres.
Lev and Natalia ran a respectable theatre that performed foreign plays along with another younger couple, Donny and Virginia. They promised that if Ramona would learn a language, she could be a star. But more than that, Lev and Natalia offered to let her stay in the small apartment in the theatre. They paid her, and they took her out on the town. Lev and Natalia were like a new family.
There was always something off about the Krinovs, but Ramona thought it was just because they had that certain star quality. One night Natalia told Ramona she was ready to be a star. Ramona was elated – she offered to sing the new song she’d learned, but Lev and Natalia just exchanged an odd sort of smile, before Natalia was upon her, sinking her teeth into the skin above Ramona’s breastbone.
Ramona’s last human memories were extremely painful and angry. She thought she was dying a strange, desperate death for weeks. She came in and out of the realm on consciousness, gasping for breath and hearing above all else, the laboriously slow beat of her heart. Even worse, the dark, dampness of the Earth rattled the newborn and frightened her – it was, after all, still New York, and it was no peaceful burial, with the steady hum of transportation all around her. Still, she was able to claw herself from the clutches of the earth, if only to feed her hunger. Her first victim was an unassuming bag lady – the feeding was done in a mixture of confusion and raw emotion.
For weeks Ramona didn’t know what or who she was. Even worse, the Krinovs were gone and the theatre was completely vacated. Blurred in her understanding, Ramona went out onto the streets, thirsty and animalistic. She killed to satisfy the burning in her throat several times and wandered… and slept during the day. Within a few days, she was found by some other vampires in the city, and brought to the sheriff.
The sheriff was understandably irked at the newborn’s presence without a Maker. He made it known that Natalia would be punished from her neglect, and assigned Ramona to stick with an older, more conservative nest in the city. She stayed with them for a year.
During that time, Ramona filled in the details to what happened to her, but she didn’t seek out Natalia or the other Krinovs. She saw no advantages to her new form – sure, she was beautiful, but she couldn’t be around humans with the hunger. She was an outcast – her worst fear. She sunk into depression and lived a rather hollow existence.
She did, however, snap out of her depression, mostly because she was bored – bored of those she nested with, bored of routine. She began moving north from city to city, meeting others of her kind and finding a cold shoulder. Few welcomed another in their territory. It took a few months to find the Krinovs – they were in Montreal, starting another theatre. They weren’t surprised to see her, claiming they left her alone because they didn’t want the responsibility of a newborn, but knowing she’d come back. It didn’t sit well with Ramona, but they were all she had left. She hardly remembered her human family.
It was easy for Ramona to be swayed from her anger and abandoned feelings with pretty words from Lev, a man she’d always admired and perhaps even loved, in her own strange way. Soon, it was like she never left – the five were a family again, albeit dysfunctional.
The Krinovs stayed low during the 1980s, avoiding New York, where Natalia was still wanted by the sheriff. But they grew restless in Montreal, and moved to warmer weather in the far south, in Houston in the early 1990s. There was no rhyme or reason – it was just time to leave.
If they thought they’d find peace and a place to call home in Houston, they were wrong. A few members of the old nest Ramona ran with as a newborn had recently moved to the south, and they remembered her immediately – and as friends of the New York City sheriff, called him down. Suspecting they were being hunted, the Krinovs fled Houston, but somewhere along the way, Natalia ended up missing. They woke up one morning after burying themselves in the ground, and she was gone…and so were the friends of the NYC sheriff.
Lev retreated into depression for the next few years. With nowhere else to really call a home, and with too much pain associated with Houston, the foursome moved back to Toronto. Canada had treated them well, and they could establish themselves in the world of theatre without going to New York.
Along with the help of Donny and Virginia, they opened a small theatre that mostly catered to other vampires in the city. Lev helped little, different since Natalia’s disappearance. Ramona finally got her spot on stage, but without great satisfaction. They continued for the next five years with the theatre, until they came up with a better plan.
Donny had always been rather musically talented. He was usually the music person behind the productions at the theatre. For a lack of nothing better to do, he began to teach the others music. Lev even seemed energized by it – and it turned out, he was a rather skilled guitar player. Ramona tried her hand at the bass guitar, and found similar success.
By 2001, the Krinovs were writing a few songs, and performing some of it at the theatre. They hired a few vampires to do some back-up vocals (for some reason, the humans in those positions never lasted long) and came up with a band name: Crimson Delirium.
In 2002, they decided to go more public, still under the guise that they were just humans, of course. They moved to Los Angeles wary of the sunshine, but needing the connections and the same of the area. It was a bit harder to manage the disappearance of random humans around them when they began to taste success, so they all had to curb their eating habits – rather than finishing off humans, they acquired a large mob of groupies to feed off and enjoy.
By 2003, the band was wildly successful. What started out as a band that enjoyed the appreciation of gothic/alternative groupies become a full-fledged rock band with two platinum singles that year. The fame was intoxicating, and Ramona was truly in her element. It also managed to grow her ego by 350%. She could have anyone she wanted (though she usually preferred isolation), and she could buy anything she wanted. It was hedonism at its finest.
It came to a gradual end in 2004. The fame created a monster, essentially, and the Krinovs forgot their roots. They stopped writing songs and perfecting their music, and in perfect time – as vampires came out of the closet, it would have been much easier to identify them as so, and thus become suspect to hate groups. They faded into the background, though the rock stations do still play those old singles.
Ramona was devastated. No longer widely recognized, she began to loathe LA. Lev began to sink back into depression. Things were looking down for the nest until late 2004, when word came that Natalia Krinov might be alive somewhere in Texas…the Krinovs moved down, purchased a home in Dallas (where she was supposedly spotted) and has some hopes of going back into the theater business.
