"Good one!" Victor said, while caressing his jaw. Justin came at him harder, hitting him in the chest and arms, faster and faster each time until his fists were a blur. He was getting stronger every day, every moment.
"See…that Martin Luther King, peaceful hippie shit ain't gonna work when those vampires are trying to attack you again," Victor said, getting in a few choice punches where he could, pushing Justin back into the open space of the living room.
"You leave MLK's name out your mouth, bitch," Justin retorted, kicking Victor in the gut, forcing him backward.
"Come on…that all you got?"
"Oh, I got some more, bitch. Ole uppity blood sucker."
"Uppity?"
"Mmm-hmm. Ole pale face hyena."
"Hyena?" Victor said angrily. "I got your hyena!"
Victor did a flip from a standing position and kicked Justin in the chest with both feet. Both of them crashed to the floor.
"Oh, so motherfuckers want to do flips now!" Justin said from the floor. He scrambled up, prepared to continue the fight.
"Okay, that's enough for now. I said that's enough," I said, standing between them as they tried to get at each other.
"Let me at him," Justin said while Victor smirked.
"You'll get your chance," I said. "Your training will be long and complicated and bloody. But yes, you will learn how to fight just like we do. No ordinary human will ever be able to stop you."
Victor sneered and walked away.
"When I'm gonna fight you?" Justin asked me.
"I'm not going to fight you," I said.
"Yeah, you are," Justin said. "And on that day, I'ma fuck you up."
I laughed.
"We'll see about that."
A Late Night Snack
We trained with Justin for as much as twelve hours a day over the next few days. As it turned out, Justin really was a lover, not a fighter, so he came to the table with even less knowledge of how to fight than the average man might.
He was in terrible shape, but his Razadi blood as well as our vegetarian diet made him stronger and leaner. He spent hours at the recreation center lifting, took a break for lunch, then spent more hours at a top of the line boxing gym. He built muscles he didn't know he had.
I was going to miss the old Justin with the soft chest I could rest my head in, the bear-like arms that would embrace me, and the thick thighs and ass that crashed into my body when we were intimate. But I knew that the old Justin was human, with human habits and sensibilities. The new Justin was emerging as the old Justin fell away with the fat and sweat.
He still called his mom regularly to convince her he was doing okay. He also called his coworkers and stuck with the flu story. They knew not to question it.
After a long evening at the boxing gym, Justin approached me earnestly.
"I'd like to shower and sleep at my place tonight," he said.
"I don't know about that, Justin. We gotta protect you."
"You can come with me. I just really want to sleep between my own sheets tonight, you feel me?"
"Okay," I said. "We can do that."
We went back to Kennedy Street, a place I hadn't seen in weeks, and walked up several flights of stairs to Justin's apartment. I sat on the edge of the futon in his living room while he went back into his room to disrobe and shower.
I was tired. I had never successfully made anyone a daywalker before, but it was an awful lot of work. The cooking, the fighting, the planning—it was all so much. Whenever Justin was awake, I had to be awake. And when he was asleep, I had to be awake, planning for the next day.
I lay back and soon fell asleep on the couch while Justin showered.
~
I was awakened by loud pounding on Justin's door. I sat up and looked around, still groggy, and walked toward the door. I looked through the peephole, saw Victor, and opened the door.
"Where is he?" Victor demanded, pushing past me.
"He's taking a shower," I said.
"I told your dumb ass not to let him leave the house!" Victor yelled at me.
"Don't call me a dumb ass!" I shouted back. "He wanted to sleep in his own bed for a change. I thought he deserved that."
"Deserved that? He's one of us now, Dante! He can't leave. We stick together."
"Just like we stuck together when you left? When John Irons left? When Orlando left? Are you kidding me?"
"That's not the same."
"But you couldn't wait to leave, could you? You made the cell weak. You left me here by myself. Razadi stick together when it's convenient."
"Nightwalkers leave us alone when we don't seem threatening. You were always safe."
"Fuck you, Victor."
"Hey, stop it. I'm not going to apologize over and over again for doing what Babarinde allowed us to do."
"You haven't apologized at all."
"Listen. Aren't you even worried about where Justin is right now?"
I paused. I listened. No water running. No movement from the back of the apartment. I ran to Justin's room. He was gone.
"Fuck!" I shouted.
"Didn't Babarinde say you were supposed to keep him safe?"
"Shit." I nodded, in disbelief that I had somehow lost him.
"Then fucking focus so we can find him. Close your eyes."
I shut my eyes tight, seeing fireworks beneath my dark lids. I stood still. I smelled.
"He only left like five minutes ago, maybe ten."
"Dig deeper," Victor insisted. I inhaled and tried to visualize Dante.
"A street. Dark. Streetlight is busted above. He's…he sees a family. Aw, fuck, we gotta go."
We ran out of Justin's apartment, following his scent down Kennedy Street. He foolishly hadn't even taken the alleys, but he didn't know better. I knew he was looking for a meal.
At Fifth and Kennedy, we ran to the right for another block. We paused in front of one of the quiet homes and stared.
"This idiot is in their house!" Victor hissed.
"Wait…is this a crack house?" I asked.
"Hard to say," he responded.
I looked to both sides of me then sprinted to the back door of the house. Justin had left it wide open. Of course. Victor appeared next to me.
"He's in here," I said. "Let's go."
The house was pitch black except for the dim light from the street spilling in. We entered through the barren kitchen and felt our way upstairs. We could smell Justin's trail leading up there.
"Sweet Olódùmarè, please give him restraint," I prayed silently.
In the master bedroom slept a white man and a black woman, half naked, looking like life had chewed them up and spit them out. They were oblivious to our presence.
"Crackheads," Victor said.
"I've seen them around before when I visited Justin on his block. The man…he's always unfriendly. Never a smile. Surly. The woman has her good days and bad days. But when she's with her baby, she's fine."
Victor turned to me.
"There's a baby?" he asked.
"Shit."
We hurried to the next room, where we saw Justin crouched in the dirty corner, holding the cooing, sandy colored infant. The baby instinctively wrapped his little hand around Justin's finger. Justin's fangs were elongated. His nose was millimeters away from the child's scalp and he inhaled. Not at all startled by our presence, he glanced up at me and spoke.
"Hi."
"Hi," I replied. "What are you doing here?"
"Nothin'," he said, caressing the baby's cheek with his nose.
"You can't drink the baby, Justin."
"Yes, he can," Victor said with a laugh. "Babies are a 'sometimes treat.'"
"Victor! No, Justin."
"He smells so good…"
We heard shuffling coming from the other room. Footsteps came toward us, slowly but intently. The white dude who lived in the house entered the room and turned on the light. Roaches scrambled across the floor and up the dry, chalky walls covered in ancient wallpaper that
practically fell off if you stared at it too hard.
The man was pale as a zombie and out of shape, that sort of skinny-fat that white dudes in America seemed to get into in the last century or so. He had dark circles under his eyes; patches of his brown hair were missing. He barely lifted his head up or opened his eyes when he talked.
"Oh," he said nonchalantly. "How y'all doin'?"
"We good," Victor said. "'Sup with you?"
"Chillin'," he said. He opened his eyes slightly to observe Justin in the corner, still holding the baby.
"That's my son," the man said.
"Yeah, we know," I said. "We're just leaving man."
"You want him?" the man asked.
"Yes!" Justin answered excitedly.
"No," I said.
"I mean, three stacks and you can have him."
The already quiet room seemed to drop ten decibels below the threshold of silence. Even the roaches on the walls seemed to be still in horror.
"What?" I asked.
"You can have him for three thousand." He scratched his stomach.
"Are you trying to sell us your son?" Victor asked. His caramel skin seemed to glow red under his collar and he inched toward the man.
"Aight, two thou. But that's as low as I can go," he said matter-of-factly.
Victor walked slowly toward the man. He inhaled deeply. He then walked over to Justin.
"Give me the boy, please," he asked, reaching for the baby. Justin hesitated for a second, and then handed over the child. Victor then smelled the baby.
"Are they really related?" I asked. Victor nodded.
"Sicko," he muttered under his breath.
"So how 'bout it?" the man asked. Victor cradled the child against his chest and walked toward me.
"No HIV. Either of them," Victor whispered. I nodded.
"We'll take him," Victor said, handing me the baby.
"How you wanna pay?" he asked.
"Justin will take care of that," Victor said. We hurried into the hallway.
"Justin," Victor called out. Justin looked up hopefully.
"Dinner is served."
Justin smiled, bared his fangs, and walked toward his victim as Victor and I left, closing the door behind us.
"Suck him down to the marrow," Victor instructed through the door. "And don't make a mess."
We took the baby back to the master bedroom where his mother was still sleeping. The man screamed, but I could tell that Justin was muffling him with one hand while his lips clamped around his neck, piercing an artery. I knew it tasted savory and hot in his mouth.
His first kill. He'll love it. He might taste the bitterness of the illegal substances in the man's system and he will remember the difference between that and the blood of a human who lives clean, un-addicted and un-diseased.
Some people deserved to die. Men who would sell their sons to strangers for drug money deserved to die. He would not be missed. His son would be better off without him.
"Your baby's father is gone. He ran off and he's not coming back. You don't know where he is. You're not worried about him. He always runs off. You'll be fine without him. Do you understand?"
She nodded her head.
"Now go to sleep," Victor instructed. "You will wake up and believe everything we said, but you won't remember us."
She lay back down.
"Thank you," she sighed as she nodded off to sleep. Her baby was still awake, gurgling happily, not having a clue that his father was dead in the next room.
"We should check on Justin," Victor said. I nodded.
I laid the baby down next to his mom, with pillows around him so he wouldn't roll of the bed. He looked up at me.
"Be great," I demanded of him. I wasn't sure if I could really hypnotize a baby, but telling one to be great certainly wouldn't hurt him.
We entered the other room and discovered the corpse of the sick addict on the floor. Justin was quietly rocking back and forth, drunk with pints of blood in his system.
"Rock Creek Park?" I asked. Victor nodded.
"Bypass the axe and the garbage bags," he instructed. "If his body is ever found, it's not like anybody will give a damn."
I agreed. I looked down on the fiend's body and knew we'd done the right thing. When Justin sobered up, he'd feel awful about it, but he'd get used to it. We all did after our first kill.
The Gym
I woke Justin up early the next morning and fed him fresh fruit to cleanse him and alleviate his blood hangover. He could barely keep his eyes open. He was largely quiet as the placed pieces of honeydew in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
"Did I do…what I think I did?" he asked.
"Yes," I said softly.
"I…killed somebody?"
"Yes. You did."
"Oh my goodness…"
"He was a sick fuck, Justin. He would have sold us his own son."
"That doesn't give me the right to take his life."
"One thing you're going to have to learn is that your morals are going to have to evolve right along with your body. We are advanced beings for a reason. We live in the shadows for a reason. We are older than the laws of this country. Justin…that guy you drained last night was born into this world with nothing, just like you and I were. Born with nothing, but with every opportunity to get things right every day. Every day, he woke up and decided to abuse drugs, abuse his family, and do whatever he needed to do to get his fix. We're not above the law, Justin. We're outside of it. We can fix things that the police can't fix, that social services can't fix."
"I thought I could drink him until I got full. But I couldn't stop."
"Even if you had stopped, we would have finished the job."
"I can't control it."
"Yes, you can. You will learn."
"I was so hungry."
"You will learn to control the hunger. You will learn how to survive."
"I would have killed that baby."
"But you didn't. You are getting stronger every day. Your body. Your mind. Your willpower. You will be great. And that kid will be great, too. You're still learning."
He ate the rest of his meal in silence. He didn't ask me any questions as I told him to get in the van. He didn't say anything on the half-hour drive to Mitchellville in Prince George's County. And he didn't say anything when we met with Salaad at the two-story warehouse in the remote industrial park.
"Justin, this is Salaad. He's a friend of the Razadi."
Salaad cut an impressive figure. He was tall and lean—about six feet, four or five inches—with sandy brown skin and close cut, but curly hair. Justin sized him up and spoke.
"I remember you," he said, gripping Salaad's hand. "You delivered Babarinde's invitation to me. Thank you."
"It's an honor to meet you," he said.
"Is it?" Justin asked. Salaad's smile faded.
"You're Djinn?" Justin continued.
"I see your sense of smell grows stronger every day. Come in," Salaad said. He pushed a heavy door open and we entered the dark warehouse. I hadn't seen the inside of it in years. Salaad flipped a switch and the room was filled with fluorescent light bouncing off the gray walls of the hangar-like facility. Old blue mats lined the entirely of the room, save pathways dividing the space into quarters. There were balance beams, pommel horses, ropes, and structures that looked like jungle gyms.
"Where are we?" Justin asked.
"This is our gym," I said.
"You own it?"
"No, we don't own it. But we know the owners. They're good Djinn."
"I feel like it's hard to trust Djinn," he said, looking at Salaad squarely.
"Sometimes it is. But once you have a good Djinn at your disposal, you've got a friend for life. Salaad is one of the good ones. For real."
"Unless they possess you like that poor kid we met."
"Morlas," Salaad muttered. "He's renegade. I'm not like him. Nobody in my family is like him."
"I'll have to take your word for it," Justin de
adpanned.
"Listen, don't worry about that," I said, touching Justin on his shoulder blade. "This gym here? This is your playground now. You're going to learn how to run, how to jump, how to climb. How to do all that superhero shit you only read about in comic books and saw on television. You will work out seven nights a week for at least four hours at a time. You will learn wrestling, capoeira, fencing, a wide array of martial arts, and parkour."
"What's parkour?" he asked. I smiled.
"This is parkour."
I ran to the first quadrant of the room at my top speed and scrambled up the iron holds embedded in the concrete. I leapt from the top of the makeshift climbing wall onto some hanging ropes and swung myself to the first balance beam. On the beam, I forward flipped all the way to the end, launching myself onto some staggered boxes, crisscrossing them like a videogame I once played.
I flipped, jumped, climbed, and swung my way across the entirety of this make-shift obstacle course designed to mimic the very same environment that we live in from day to day. This would prepare Justin for a life in the shadows and on the run if need be. The back alleys, the dark roads—those were our domain, for the safety of our kind.
I finished my run with a flourish: a spinning jump that would have been more suitable for a figure skating event in the Winter Olympics. I landed on both feet, inches from Justin's face.
"Holy shit," he said.
"Let's get started."
You Better Run
Wake up. Eat. Run. Study. Eat. Boxing gym. Eat. Big gym. Eat. Fuck. Sleep. These were Justin's days until we felt he could fend for himself. No more resting, just lessons in our history and our traditions in between training.
"Run!" Victor barked.
"I am running!" Justin hollered.
"Faster!"
We ran through Rock Creek Park in the middle of the day, just like any other joggers.
"Keep running. If I catch you, I'm going to fuck you."
"Don't you mean fuck me up?"
"No. I mean I'm going to put my penis inside you if I catch you."
Justin sped off in a blur, the first time I had seen him do so. He was getting the hang of this transition.
"That's funny as shit," I said.
"What's funny? I fully intend to catch up to him." Victor quickened his pace.
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