Running From the Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

with the honey business.” He waited for Jelani to take off his coat and shoes. Daniel Ng was one of the talented physics programmers at EA. He and Jelani had met almost a year ago after a session for an action adventure game that was sitting on the shelf in the living room. Daniel had called him a narcissist after Jelani had said how cool it would be to control himself on the TV. A few laughs and many video game conversations later, and a close friendship had flourished ever since.
    “So you gonna tell me what happened? You look fine enough to me.”
    “That is due to more than a little luck.”
    “Do tell.”
    Jelani sat in his cushioned chair across from the couch and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Dude. I don’t know where to begin with this. It sounds utterly absurd to my own mind, and I know what happened and what I saw.”
    “Just get on with it already and tell me what happened.” Daniel draped an arm over the back of the couch and smirked at him. He was definitely what any girl would consider very attractive. Black hair combed up in those hair spikes a few inches long, almond shaped eyes, and a winning smile. He also was a few inches taller than Jelani, at about six feet two inches tall, and with an athletic physique. He’d laughed when Jelani first called him a pretty, Russell Wong-looking bastard.
    Jelani took a deep breath. “Okay. So I was out jogging, and decided to go around Stanley Park. I stopped to take a break, and just as I was about to get going again, I heard what sounded like a muted scream and some scuffling up one of the dirt paths leading inside the park. I crept toward the path and looked in.”
    “I thought you said black folks don’t go snooping around when bad things happen,” Daniel said, referring to the many times Jelani complained about how stupidly the black people died in movies.
    “I can’t speak for all of us, but we don’t. And I wasn’t planning on it. What I was planning on doing was looking to get a good enough description of what was happening, get away, and call the police.”
    “So what happened?”
    “The guy heard me.…”
    “You know how to be quiet, Jelani, and he heard you?”
    “Hey man, he must have super hearing or something. Anyway, he heard me despite the fact that I was barely moving, and turned on me. Now here’s the part where you resist the urge to call the loony-mobile on me. His eyes were white, there was blood all over his face from where it looked like he’d been eating on someone, and he had elongated canines.”
    “Get the hell outta here!” Daniel said, throwing his head back. “Man, come on! It was dark out; the moon is out and you witness an assault or, hopefully not, a murder. But white eyes, fangs, and blood? You did not see a vampire, Jelani. You didn’t.”
    “Look I’m not disagreeing with you, here. I’m telling you exactly what I saw. Exactly. And it gets better. Another guy I hadn’t seen managed to get the drop on me. I tried to sweep his feet, and it was like I tried to trip a tree. The guy didn’t budge! I was forced to pull my knife, and managed to score him on the back of the neck and in the side of his arm. It was like I did nothing to him.”
    “That’s all you did?”
    Jelani looked up at him. “What was I gonna do? Kill the guy? I hadn’t planned on him not feeling any pain, or I might have been a little more aggressive.”
    “Alright, so you met up with two ghouls eating on an unlucky guy who happened across them.”
    Jelani stared at Daniel a moment, then chose not to respond to the sarcasm. “Yeah, and once I got free of the big one, I took off.” He shook his head as he remembered the details. “Look I’m not the fastest sprinter in the world, but I’ve won more than my share of gold medals since I was ten. I was in a full sprint, man. I was sprinting like first place was life, not a medal. I could hear these guys behind me, almost talking conversationally. Then I felt a hand grab me, and the