After Sunset

by Clayton Hanson

  There was still time to feed without losing control, but I was getting close to the edge.

  I crept up behind her and sank my fangs into her neck. At first I only felt her heartbeat but after a moment, I felt a secondary, much fainter heartbeat. When I recognized that the second beat was the baby’s, I snapped out of my blood lust. The little heartbeat skipped a beat and I withdrew my fangs. Killing a mother and baby was too much. While I was drinking her blood, the mother had passed out, and I had been feeding on her while she was on the ground. I held her in my arms and her eyes were trying to flicker open.

  I said, “Ma’am, are you okay?”

  She looked at me confused, trying to figure out who I was and why I was holding her. “Huh? What happened?”

  Then a couple from up ahead came around the corner. “Is everything all right?” The guy asked looking at me suspiciously.

  “Yeah, I think,” I said. “ She started to pass out and I caught her.”

  The mother sat up and the lady came over and helped her up while the guy she was with kept looking me up and down, puffing his chest out like a rooster.

  “Are you going to be all right?” I said to the mother who now had her back turned to me.

  “I think so…” she said trailing off. “Can you guys walk me home?” she asked the couple.

  “Yes, of course,” the guy said, still looking at me like he was deciding whether or not to attack me.

  She got up and started walking away with the couple. I took that as my cue to leave.

  John called me and had me meet him at the spot where I had robbed his worker. When I got there he was waiting in his car and waved me over.

  “I’ve been robbed here recently by some mortals. The problem is that I don’t know if they are my mortals or if they are someone else. It started with you robbing me and now it keeps happening.” He furrowed his eyebrows at me because we both knew that in a way it was my fault. I had exposed one of the weaknesses in his commerce. “I want you to follow my men and let me know how it goes. There are whispers that a competitor of mine is going to make a move on some of my employees. Don’t let anyone see you. You need to be aware of your whiteness. Your lack of fear when you are in this neighborhood makes you stand out. When white people come through here they rarely take their time and they never come on foot, okay?”

  “Yep,” I said. “I’m a man of the shadows.” I thought my line was fairly clever but it was lost on him. “Do you want me to help if they are robbed?”

  “Do not save them. I don’t care of they live or die. My men are expendable.” John shrugged. It’s easy to feel that way when the people you first learned to love had been dead for hundreds of years. “I need to know if they are trustworthy.”

  The opportunity seemed pretty exciting. I had only seen big drug deals on TV and I was curious about how it was going to go down. Would there be a bunch of guys with guns, Mexican stand-off style, or would two guys hand each other briefcases and it would be over with? The scariest part of a drug deal is getting killed or arrested, and I knew the odds of either one of them happening was very low given my new powers. I could feel how much stronger I had become in the past two months and as long as I kept moving, I would be almost impossible to attack.

  On our way to the meeting I jogged and jumped from roof to roof. I didn’t know where we were going so it was hard to keep up with the non-descript car. The car pulled around a corner and was out of my sight when the shooting started. I hadn’t ever been to a war zone, but it was exactly what it I thought it would’ve sounded like. There was intermittent automatic gunfire from a few sources, followed by the heavy boom of a shotgun combined with glass breaking and the hollow thud of holes being punched through metal. By the time I got there the guys in the car were returning fire with the slow methodical rhythm of an experienced shooter.

  The car that I had been following was riddled with bullets and the three tires I could see from behind were flat. All of the windows were blown out and smoke poured from the engine.

  There were three shooters on the roofs of the buildings overlooking the car, one on my side of the street and two more on the other side. From my view I couldn’t see how many people were on the ground, but I could hear yelling and see the occasional flares from guns as people returned fire on the car. The solitary light at the end of the street gave the attackers an advantage because the streetlight shone on the car but everywhere else was dark. The lack of light didn’t cause me problems though.

  It took me one good leap to get to the shooter on my side. I landed behind him and before he had time to turn around I picked him up and tossed him off the three-story building like a sack of trash.

  Both of the shooters on the roof across the street watched him fall to his death. As I leapt to the other side, the shooter that was the farthest away from me took a shot at me but I could tell by the aim of the barrel that he wasn’t going to come close. Even though he had no chance at actually hitting me, I was scared. I saw the bullet fly off to my right, spinning because of the rifling in the barrel.

  Until that moment I had a God Complex about mortals. I knew that if it came down to a fight between me and them, they would lose every time. Even though I had leapt from building to building over a street the guy was still shooting at me. I was offended that he could even think about trying to shoot me. I was the apex predator in this situation and he needed to show me respect.

  I landed on the other side near the guy that hadn’t shot at me. He backed up, determined not to have me launch him off the roof as well. When he turned to run I jumped on him, piggy-back style. I reached around the front of his head with my right hand and got a grip on the left side of his chin. With my left hand I reached behind his head to the right side of his head with my hand near his ear and like I had seen in every Bruce Lee and Steven Seagal movie, I cranked his head in a twisting motion. His neck popped, then snapped, and then there was the sound of meat being ripped.

  Meanwhile the other guy fired a shot that was low and a few feet from us. His shot was more likely to hit his buddy than me because I was still on his back. That was the second time I watched a bullet twist in the air as it came towards me. It was beautiful and if I hadn’t been ripping someone’s head off at the time I would have marveled at it.

  I kept twisting because it was my first ninja neck break and I didn’t know when to stop. The guy’s body suddenly dropped away and I was left holding his head while riding his disconnected body to the ground.

  The guy snapped me out of the wonderment of having yanked a head off by whistling a round past my right ear. The buzz of the bullet sounded like an insect in Jurassic Park.

  Now I was offended and pissed. I yelled, “Quit shooting at me you asshole.” Then I threw his friend’s head at him. I missed but not by much.

  I ran towards him and leapt. When I landed by him he took his last shot. It sizzled underneath my left armpit leaving a hole in my hoodie. I punched him in the middle of his chest with a deafening crunch. He dropped to his knees and then with a groan fell forward on his face. I picked him up by the back of his coat and his pants and tossed him over the side of the building. I didn’t want to replicate my ninja head twist move because it was kind of gross and the last guy had bled all over me. I looked like an axe murderer.

  When I looked over the side of the building. There was some shooting going on but it was slowing down, I assumed it was because guys were falling from the sky and people didn’t know what was going on.

  I leapt down from the top of the building and landed near the shot up car. Everyone quit shooting for a moment and watched me, wondering who the hell I was and what I was doing.

  In the car, three of the four guys were dead. The living guy was seated in the back of the car and had a bullet wound in his thigh.

  “Who are you?” he asked me.

  “I’m here to save you,” I said. Once again I felt like a superhero. “Or I can leave and let you die.”

  “What the hell is going
on?” he asked me. He was more confused than in pain. He was in shock from being shot.

  “Either you come with me now or you wait to see what they will do with you once you run out of bullets,” I said. “It’s up to you.”

  “How?”

  “Let me take care of it,” I said, “Just don’t shoot me on accident, okay?”

  He nodded yes. I saw in his eyes that no matter what he had done in the past, no matter how tough his reputation was, he was scared. So was I. A bullet zipped pass and plunked through the driver’s side door and stopping on the passenger side. As if on cue, the shooting started again. I pulled him out of the car and put him on across my back, like a fireman.

  We took off down the street. He yelled left and I went left. In the process of escaping my passenger took a round in the ankle, causing him to yell on impact. Beyond that, he was a soldier the whole time.

  When we were a mile or so away I set him down and he made a call on his cell phone to his friend who came and picked us up.

  His friend was with a young woman who got in the back of the car to take care of the wounded guy while I sat shotgun. His friend asked me who I was. I said a friend and left it at that. The driver asked us where we wanted to go and the wounded guy said, “33rd and Ames, NE.”

  “By RFK?” the driver asked.

  “Yep,” said the wounded guy, who was wincing in pain as the lady in the back poured clear alcohol on his leg. He was trying to stay cool while sucking wind through his clenched teeth.

  We drove for a while and pulled in to a non-descript house on the east side of the Anacostia River. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Washingtonians have it drilled into their heads that the east side of the Anacostia is a war zone but there were no bullet pocked marked houses like I would imagine. It was a typical low-income neighborhood.

  We got out of the car and headed towards the house. The driver and lady stayed in the car when we got out and didn’t wait until we got to the door before they drove off. I was helping the guy up the front porch when the door flew open and John was standing inside the doorway. I thought he was going to kill us both.

  Outside the house was plain and the inside was just as spartan. The front room had a few couches and a TV with cable but that was it. There was nothing in the house that made it looked lived in.

  John said, “You,” to the wounded guy, “sit. You” he meant me, “with me.” We went through a few doors. “You’re lucky I don’t kill you both right now and I would if you knew the fucking rules. First off, never ever, ever come to one of our homes. That gives the owner of the house the right to kill you on the spot. There is nothing more dangerous than having someone know where you live.”

  I immediately thought of Charlie who knew where I lived. “Secondly, what in God’s name is that guy doing here? I told you not to save anyone.”

  “He needed help,” I said. “They would have killed him.”

  “So what?” he said scowling at me. “Do you think that I can’t replace him in a heartbeat? People are lining up to work for me in this economy.”

  “No.” I said. “I’ve honestly never thought about it that way.”

  “And now he has been to where I live. How did you know to come here?”

  “I have no idea. He gave his friend the address and we showed up. I didn’t know you lived here.”

  The whole time he was talking he didn’t move a muscle. He stood there like a statue staring holes into me while I twitched and paced with every question. I could see that he was still mulling over the option of killing us both in his head.

  “Who brought you guys here?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I was doing what you told me to do.”

  “That’s the problem,” he said. “You didn’t do what I told you to do at all. If it wasn’t for his friends driving you both here, I would kill him right now, but because they drove you, I would have to kill them too or they would know where he died.” He finally sat down in the only chair in the room. I wondered why there was only one chair in the room, but I wasn’t in a position to ask.

  “Look, man, I’m sorry. I was trying to help.”

  “I know but you made things worse. Now he’ll think you’re a superhero. Aren’t there enough white superheroes in the world?”

  “Yeah, good point.”

  “Okay. Lets go out and talk to him. No, I’ll talk, you listen.”

  John walked out into the room and the wounded guy was sitting on the floor next to the couch.

  “Hey X, I didn’t want to get any blood on your couch. Sorry I got a little on your floor.” His bleeding had stopped but the bandages were pretty miserable looking and would need to be changed soon.

  “It will be fine. Here is the deal for both of you. Neither of you have ever been here. If anyone asks you about tonight, tell them that you were dropped off at the wrong house. I don’t care where. Do you understand?” he didn’t wait for us to tell him that we understood because it was pretty straightforward. “Here is some cash for the hospital.” He said to the other guy and tossed him a wad of money held together by a rubber band. “You are excused.” The guy got up and hobbled to the door. John helped him out by opening it and once he was out he shut the door.

  “As for you, this should help your money issues.” He gave me a roll of hundreds that was bigger than I had ever seen in my life. “I appreciate you saving my guy but next time I pay you to do something, follow my directions. I don’t like to do this but I can’t have you coming around my house. You clearly don’t belong here and I don’t want to raise any suspicions with the neighbors. If I see you on the east side of the Anacostia River, besides just passing through, I’m going to have to kill you. I won’t want to but I will. I can’t afford to jeopardize all I’ve done to create a solid life here. That is the way it is. No hard feelings.”

  “Okay.” I said. And then I left. I resented the fact that he had threatened my life but I understood. I wasn’t used to being talked to that way. That was the first time anyone had every told me that they would kill me and had the means and guts to do it. I started walking home, after all, I was only a few miles from my house. When I was on the Whitney Young Memorial Bridge heading towards RFK stadium it started to drizzle rain. By the time I was all the way across it was pouring on me. I considered running home but there wasn’t a point. I was as wet as I could possibly be.

  CHapter 12

  I snuck in through the back window of the hospice. Most of the windows were open because it was warm out with a gentle breeze. I crept down the hallway and passed a partially open door when I heard someone say, “James, there you are. You came back for me. I knew you would. They said you wouldn’t but I knew you would.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  I stopped. I didn’t think that I was her James but the way she said “I knew you would” made me look in through her door. I didn’t want to let her down if she thought I was her James. There was no one else in the hallway.

  “Oh James. It has been so long,” she said. “How have you been?”

  I went inside the room and stood at the foot of her bed. I didn’t want to get caught, so I listened to see if anyone was coming down the hallway at the sound of her voice but no one noticed. I had hoped that I could take someone while they slept because the last time I had a conversation with my dinner I left hungry.

  “I’ve been good,” I said. “How are you?”

  She was so little and skinny that it was hard to tell the difference between the rumpled blankets and her limbs. Her hair had big gray curls and was spread out all over her pillow as if she had a head of dandelion fluff.

  “You know how I have been James,” she said. “You have been with me the whole time.”

  “Yes, I have,” I said. I smiled as sincerely as I could. When people are that sick, looking at them feels intrusive, like watching a private moment that no one else should be a part of. I wanted to look away from her, to give her privacy but that would’ve been rude.


  Her soft green cataract filled eyes started to glisten wet.

  “Please have a seat. Or is it time to go?”

  She started to move around like she was going to get up. Even though she didn’t weigh much I doubted that her little bones would be able to handle it.

  “No, no. I came for a visit.”

  “So it isn’t time for me yet? I’m so tired. Please. I can’t do this anymore.” Her bottom lip started to tremble and a few tears rolled slowly down her cheeks until they ran out of energy and stopped along her jaw line.

  “I’m here for to visit, okay? Maybe it will be time to go soon,” I said.

  I didn’t know what to do. She clearly wanted to leave and the only way she was in a body bag. Her room had no personal effects or any indication that anyone had ever come to see her.

  “Will you please take me with you,” she said. “I would like to go now.” She tried to raise her voice but she didn’t have the strength.

  I stood next to her bed facing her. I put my hand on top of hers. She tried to look at me and smile but her eyes were so bad that she was looking somewhere off to my left.

  I leaned down. As gently as possible, I pierced the carotid artery in her neck. She flinched only for a second and then leaned into my teeth. After two spurts of blood the rest dribbled out into my mouth. Then she was gone. She was so close to death that all she had needed was a little nudge. I left and for the first time since I had turned I didn’t feel guilty about killing someone. I was able to convince myself that she was going to die that night, whether I had visited her or not.

  My phone rang less than a minute after the sun went down. Without looking at it I knew it was either Andrew or another vampire. The timing was too good. I climbed out from in between my mattress and box spring. I couldn’t buy a coffin and drag it downstairs into my place to sleep in. There are too many people who live on my block who might see me with it. Besides, thought of sleeping in coffin was too creepy to me and I drink blood.