Running From the Night

Acknowledgments

A big thank you to Rick Rhodes for helping me in getting this work polished and your honest feedback. You’ve helped me quite a bit, and I very much appreciate it.

A very special thank you to Mamta Swaroop. Your help in creating Saaya has been not only instrumental, but has also saved me a lot of time, and given me a perspective on her culture that only personal experience can provide. You’ve been a big help and a great friend.

***

Chapter One

“Stay away from me!” As soon as the words left Larry’s dry mouth, they died in the thickness of the woods, his terror devoured by the darkness. “You can have my money; whatever you want!” he called over his shoulder as he turned and sprinted down another path. Though he’d come here more times than he could count, knew every path inside and outside the massive rainforest-like park, Larry could not elude his pursuers.

For years he’d taken nightly walks through Stanley Park, turned down one path to the next in daylight and night. He knew these paths better than anyone he knew, and whether raining or clear, he would take his daily or nightly walks to clear his head and enjoy the fresh air.

But then these two men showed up right on the dirt path in front of him. It wasn’t wholly unusual to encounter someone walking the paths late at night, but these two practically smelled of danger. He’d thought to take a turnoff that was fortunately closer to him than the two men, and see if they followed him. Once they had, he’d quickened his pace, until all three were running.

“Heh, heh, now what would you offer me that I can’t just take from you, little man?” one of his pursuers, the smaller one, called out from behind.

Larry ran on, ignoring his burning legs and laboring lungs. Every path he took, they were there. Twice he’d jumped off the path and into the woods, thinking to slow them down. Both times he’d seen at least one of them actually in front of him, and had to turn aside. How could anyone move that fast?

“Tell me,” the other man said, in an amused voice that didn’t sound the least bit winded despite the fact that they were running uphill now. “How long do you think this guy can keep running before his little lungs give out?”

“Or his little legs turn to jelly and stop working?” the other replied, laughing.

Larry kept running. They didn’t even sound tired! He turned right, heading toward Third Beach. If he could make it to the paved pathway that skirted the perimeter of the park, he might be okay. There were always people walking those paths.

“Uh, oh,” one of the men called from behind in an amused voice. “Looks like he’s trying to get out in the open.” They might have been jogging behind him for all the effort they were expending.

“Well we can’t have that now, can we?” the other replied.

Larry lowered his head and sprinted as fast as his burning legs could take him. He darted into the woods again, jumping over fallen trees and through shrubs. His pursuers no longer spoke, but he still heard them running. He angled back toward the dirt path. He could hear the ocean now; almost there! He made it out of the woods and back onto the path, now within sight of the paved sidewalk. A blur of movement flashed in front of him, causing him to flinch away and slam into a tree.

The impact sent him spinning to the ground where he rolled in the rocky dirt, gritting his teeth against the pain. Dazed, he struggled to rise and fell again.

“Hey there, hey there! You alright?”

Larry craned his neck to look up at the speaker. His vision was a bit blurry from that hard impact with the tree, and the night didn’t help either.

“Did you …” he shook his head carefully, struggling to rise again. “Did you see those men chasing me?”

“Careful, man. Don’t try to get up too fast, that was quite a fall. I’m surprised you weren’t knocked out.” Strong hands gently lifted him to his feet and held him steady.

Larry put a hand to his head to steady it. “Thanks. That really hurt.” Finally his vision came into focus and he saw a man about his height looking back at him, concern in his eyes. In the scant moonlight that penetrated the trees, Larry saw that the man was wearing a jumpsuit, likely out for a night walk or jog, like he had been. Fortune was on both their sides for running into each other like this. The same fate could have befallen this guy as well.

“Man, am I glad to see you,” Larry said, looking nervously over his shoulder at the vacant dirt path.

“Why is that?” the other man said, running a hand through his dusty blonde hair. He smiled a crooked, questioning smile. “You didn’t knock yourself out, so I think you would’ve been fine.”

Of course, Larry knew that wasn’t true. He’d have been robbed, beaten, or maybe killed. He glanced over his shoulder again. “Did you see two men chasing me?”

“Two men?” the other man repeated.

“I’m pretty sure he means us.”

Larry’s spun around in alarm. Arms crossed and leaning against a redwood tree to the side of the dirt path, the larger man that had been chasing him smirked, turning toward the pair.

“Holy shit!” Larry said, backing away while looking for his second pursuer. “Man these guys are trouble, we’ve got to get away from here!” The big man chuckled, but remained where he was. Larry looked back to his left and saw that the blonde guy was gone. He’d abandoned him! Cursing again, Larry continued to back away, then turned and almost ran into the blonde guy, who was now behind him.

“What…?” he trailed off when he saw the smile on the other’s face.

“Man these guys’re trouble!” The blond mocked. “We’ve gotta get away from here!”

The bigger man laughed and moved away from the tree. “You really should watch where you’re going. You ran into me full force and went spinning over to my friend there.” He indicated the blond behind Larry. “If I was as weak as you, I might’ve been hurt.” He
tsked
, grinning.

Larry’s head was whirling. How could that guy have gotten in front of him so fast? It wasn’t possible. He turned nervously from one to the other, trying to decide which way he could run. Maybe he should try and take the blond guy down quick. He was the smaller of the two.

“Uh-oh,” the bigger man said. “Judging from that desperate look, I’d say he’s gonna try to take you down, Jake.”

Larry looked from one to the other, then lashed out with a roundhouse punch at the blond man’s jaw. The man caught his fist and squeezed, breaking Larry’s hand. Larry cried out, but a hand went over his mouth, muffling his screams.

“Now, now,” the man said, bringing his face closer to Larry’s. “We can’t go screaming like a little girl now, can we?”

“Will you quit playing with your food already and get it over with. You take much longer and I’m gonna come over there and help you.”

The blond looked past Larry at the other man. “You already had your dinner. You still hungry? Find your own!” He looked back into Larry’s eyes, and the agonized man saw pupils that were fading from blue into a milky white color. Larry’s eyes widened in terror.

“Ha-ha. Looks like little man here is getting a bit nervous.”

“Mmm. Gives the blood a little bit of a sour taste to mingle with the sweet. Sweet ’n’ sour!”

The two men laughed. Despite the pain, Larry pulled with all his strength, but he might have been trying to free his crushed hand from a vice. The blond man smiled, just a bit, and Larry saw the tip of an elongated canine dip below his upper lip, like death, peeking through at him. Larry screamed at the top of his lungs, but the sound was still muffled by the hand over his mouth.

“That’s right, scream. Get it all out.” The man closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “I can smell the flavor.”

“Will you get on with it? We don’t have forever for you to play with your mouse.”

Larry tugged and yanked, but he couldn’t get free.

“I guess I am being a bit cruel,” the blond man said. “Alrighty then. Turn your head and close your eyes, and daddy will quickly drain you dry.” An impossibly strong hand turned Larry’s head aside, and to his endless horror, the blond man opened his mouth, and his lips curled back to reveal two elongated canine teeth.

He had just enough time to scream again before hissing jaws tore into his neck.

***

Chapter Two

Jelani glanced to his right and couldn’t help a mental grin. His evening jog was taking him by Third Beach, known for its trademark visual and olfactory stimulation. Now, in mid-November, the place was deserted, but when summer came around again, all of the marijuana smoke and topless female tanners would return.

He rounded another bend on the snaking path and passed a man in shorts, walking hand-in-hand with his wife. It’s just too damn cold for that, he thought. It was negative five degrees outside! Of course, that was twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit, he reminded himself, but either way it was too damn cold to be out for a stroll in shorts.

He slowed his pace, huffing a cloud of crisp, cold air. Slowing to a brisk walk, he decided to take a few minutes to enjoy the moonlit ocean. It was still hard to believe he was living downtown. Always a suburb kid, he’d never seen a downtown with so much of nature interwoven. When first he’d vacationed here, he was told that Stanley Park was the first place he needed to go, and when he visited the huge park, he’d understood why.

Jelani breathed in the fresh night air and exhaled it in another cloud in front of his face. Five years he’d been living here. Sure, it was ridiculously expensive, but everything desirable in the world was expensive unless you were wealthy, which Jelani was not. Not yet, at least.

He sat for a few minutes, enjoying the fresh night air and the dark, undulating waves, until he felt the cold start to creep up. Time to get moving before the muscles cooled down. He’d just started back into his jog when he heard what sounded like a muffled scream down one of the dirt paths to his left. He slowed just a bit as he neared the path, and peered inside. A man was squatting low to the ground, his back to the path, and hunched over what looked to be another person.

Jelani frowned. Did something happen to the other person, and this guy was helping out? He started to ask if they needed any help, when the crouching man gave a jerk upward, and one of the legs of the person lying on the ground twitched violently. Jelani’s eyes widened. What the hell?

He slipped his hand into his pocket while carefully backing away. Just as his hand closed around his phone, the squatting man’s head whipped around and eyes as white as the moon stared directly into his. Blood coated his mouth, all the way down his chin and throat like a macabre crimson beard. He stood and smirked, wiping his hands on his bloodstained jumpsuit.

“Not the place to be,” Jelani said under his breath backing away.

“Too late for that,” said a voice from behind.

Without thinking, Jelani leaped to the side and turned. He had thought to put at least a half a dozen feet between himself and the person behind him, but the man—and he was a big one—was directly in front of him.

“Now just where do you think you’re going?”

Jelani didn’t pause long enough for the big man to finish his question. He dropped and spun backwards, sweeping a leg out to trip the man in front of him. To his surprise, the leg sweep had no effect, and actually caused him to fall. Just as the big man opened his mouth to laugh, Jelani flung a handful of dirt and rock into his eyes and mouth.

He was already on his feet as the big man coughed and wiped at his eyes, cursing fluently. Backing toward the paved sidewalk, Jelani took one last glance at the other man, stalking toward him. The man was actually hissing at him! It was a deep, throaty hiss. “What the hell does this guy think he is?”

“Yo, it’s too late for Halloween, dude. You’re a month too late—”

“I’m gonna rip your throat out,” the big man said, still wiping the dirt out of his eyes. The low, growling voice sounded like nothing human. Jelani whirled and made for the paved walkway.

He’d only run half a dozen steps before the big man was right in front of him again! Relying on his instincts, Jelani slammed into him and spun around, whipping a seven-inch long knife out of his pocket in a reverse grip and swiping it across the back of the man’s neck. Before the grunt fully left the big man’s mouth, Jelani stabbed backward just behind the right shoulder. He retracted, then stabbed him in the side of the leg and kicked him in the back.

All this had been done in less than a few seconds, and his attacker should have been thrown to the ground in a pained, injured heap. Instead, the man hadn’t budged, and Jelani’s kick had actually pushed himself back! The man slowly turned toward him, hissing all the while, and his eyes, that had been light brown only moments ago, were now that same milky white as the other guy’s. Even more startling, his lips rolled back from his teeth to reveal a set of elongated canines!

“Sheeeeeiiit,” Jelani swore, as he spun and sprinted away. Having run track for most of his life, he put that talent to full use and ran, head down, and then his upper torso gradually straightened until he was in a full track runner’s sprint. Neither one of those guys looked particularly fast, and Jelani was hoping he was right.

He wasn’t.

He could hear both men, grunting behind him.

“I’m gonna rip your neck open, you little bastard,” one of them said. Whether through speed, or just plain good fortune, Jelani made it back onto the paved walkway and darted left, sprinting toward English Bay. It was a long run, but he’d been running for years. He just had to hope those two weren’t possessed of equal stamina. When he looked ahead, his heart rose at the sight of several groups of people spread out up and down the walkway. They couldn’t do anything to him out in the open with so many witnesses!

A hand wrenched him from the ground so forcefully, the thoughts in his head felt as though they’d been yanked out of his mind. Suddenly he was airborne, and a second later he was rolling through the shrubbery before slamming into a fallen tree trunk. He ignored the pain and struggled to his feet. His attackers were casually walking up the hill toward him. Up the hill! He’d been thrown off the path and through the woods, uphill!

Jelani looked around desperately for an escape route, but the only option was into the woods, since those two were between him and the walkway. He pulled out his knife, but it felt almost inconsequential in his hand. The big man noted the weapon and scoffed.

“Those were some nice moves back there with that little fingernail pick. Think you can do it again?”

“Think you wanna find out?” Jelani retorted, trying to buy some time to think.

“Sure,” the big man said, now directly in front of him. He’d traversed the dozen or so feet in less than a second.

Jelani pushed aside his shock and stabbed upward, but the man caught his wrist in a grip as hard as steel. He winced, and the big man squeezed, bringing him to his knees.

“Heh, heh. Looks like you caught yourself another snack.” The blond haired man said from behind. “But since he interrupted mine, I think it’s only fair that we share this one.”

What were these guys? They were talking about him like he was food? Were they cannibals? Then he saw the inconceivable truth. The big man’s eyes, which had gone brown again, faded back to that grotesque milky white color, and he leaned his head back, baring a set of elongated canines as his mouth opened impossibly wide. Jelani struggled to free himself, but the effort yielded no result.
This cannot friggin’ be real!
he thought, just as his face was splattered with blood and the man released his arm and fell over.

The smaller of the two backed away a step, staring at his fallen comrade. “What the hell is this?”

Jelani looked down at the big man to see some kind of long, spear-like shaft that had been driven through his mouth and out the back of his head. A black clad figure dropped from the trees in front of him, facing the blond man, who was now backing away.

Jelani slowly, quietly, retrieved his knife and crept backward, careful to keep this new person between himself and the other man’s line of vision.

“Why are you here?” the blond man demanded. “I’ve done nothing wrong! It would have been one feeding tonight if that idiot hadn’t found us!”

“Your carelessness is your own burden,” the black clad figure replied. “You know the law, and if you do not, that is also your burden.”

“I’ve done no wrong here!”

“You were seen.”

“Then let me dispose of him now, and the problem is solved.”

“The problem will be solved twofold, through no action of your own.”

Jelani didn’t wait around to hear the rest of the conversation. He quietly slipped away as they spoke, deciding to wait till later to try not to believe what was happening. A voice called out to him that, despite his intention, stopped him as effectively as if the person had physically restrained him.

“You. Human. Stay where you are.”

Try though he might, Jelani couldn’t will his body to move. It was as though this new man had simply stopped him with his words! He looked back at the other two. The blond man cast him a narrow-eyed glance, but mostly kept his attention on the new arrival. Jelani suspected that however much stronger blondie was to him, this new man was at least that much stronger. And as much as he wanted to hope this guy was his savior, Jelani was not stupid enough to even consider that possibility.

“Why have you been watching me?” Blond man asked. “I know the law. I’ve been careful. Only solitary prey. No witnesses. Nobody turned.”

Turned?
Jelani kept his face calm, but his mind was screaming.
Turned? No. These guys are just freaks who watch too much TV and read too many books. Well, they probably don’t read much.

“Three feedings in two days,” came the even reply. He may have been talking about year-end taxes the way he verbally tallied the body count. “This would have been the fourth feeding.” The black clad man strode over to the twitching body of the bigger man and yanked the spear weapon free. Jelani flinched at the sound of flesh being torn. “You don’t need that much blood now. You are no longer a fledgling.” He drove the spear into the big man’s throat. After a few seconds, he pulled the weapon free again, and before Jelani’s eyes, the man started to decompose, as though death had been long waiting to claim the body.

The blond man took the opportunity to hurl a tree limb at the other and ran in the opposite direction. The assassin, Jelani guessed, easily batted the missile aside, but in that instant, his hold on Jelani’s mind was released and he was immediately on the run, hopping over and rolling under fallen trees, leaping small ravines and passing through the bushes as fast as he could move. He had no doubt about what was happening. That blond guy, who Jelani refused to believe was a vampire, had crossed some sort of line and this new guy came to punish him, most likely in the same manner he had with the big guy. More than likely, after he’d dispatched blondie, he would do the same to Jelani because he was a witness.

Jelani ran on, never looking back. He doubted he could truly outrun either of them, but he hoped the assassin was going after the other guy first.

“I told you to stay where you were, human.”

Jelani’s legs gave out and he went down in a tumble.

“Damn. Can I catch a break?” He looked up to see the black clad assassin stalking toward him. Apparently he’d decided Jelani was the more immediate concern. “Don’t you wanna go get your man back there before he gets into more trouble?”

“The last thing he will do is find more trouble, at least for now. He will hide until he thinks I have forgotten him.” He shrugged. “I will find him long before that. You, on the other hand, must be dealt with now.”

“Dude, I was just out for a jog. I didn’t want anything to do with either of them.”

“Yet see them, you did. Your intentions are irrelevant.”

Jelani held up his hands, palms facing out. “Hey man, I don’t see, I don’t hear, I don’t know anything.”

The assassin’s face might have been made from stone. “That statement will be literal in but a second.”

Before Jelani could flinch, the assassin was on him, or would have been. In a flash of movement too fast for Jelani’s eyes to follow, the assassin was batted aside and he slammed into a tree. There was a loud crack, and the tree split where the assassin impacted and fell to the ground.

Jelani’s wide eyes went from the unconscious assassin to a very tall, cloaked figure that turned to regard him. The man was at least six feet eight inches tall and of African descent. Jelani craned his head back to look up at the man.

“Thanks, brotha,” he offered tentatively. There was no response. There was also no kindness in those dark eyes. “Um,” he started to back away, “so I’m gonna guess that he,” Jelani pointed at the still down assassin, “must’ve crossed a line, also. I just want to go home, I swear that’s all. Can I just please go home?”

“I don’t see why not.” The reply came from behind, and Jelani whirled to face what was quite possibly the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. Even in the scant moonlight that filtered through the trees, she was striking. She winked at him, and the assassin groaned. “I don’t think he’s going to be happy if he wakes up with a headache and you’re the only one standing here.” Jelani looked back at the assassin, just beginning to stir.

“You don’t have to tell me …” he looked back to see that the girl was gone, “twice,” he finished, looking around in bewilderment. They were both gone as if they had never been. The assassin groaned again and Jelani wasted no time. Several minutes later, he was walking down the sparsely populated Denman Street, making his way to the more populated Robson Street, where a quite popular—and always crowded—Starbucks awaited.

***