* * *
I returned the body to the same house, left it where it had fallen. I drifted back into the darkness of the school grounds, where I knew in my heart they were going to drag me off to be raped.
It was still early morning, still dark. No one was out on the streets. Curious neighbors had gone back to sleep; there were no police investigating the sound of a gunshot. Apparently gunshots here were a common enough occurrence to not arouse that much suspicion.
The attackers themselves were long gone. They were scared shitless, no doubt. One of their own had been shot by one of their own. Each would awaken this morning with a very bad hang over, and pray to God this had all been a very bad dream.
Instead of their prayers being answered, they were going to awaken to find the body. What happened next, I didn't really know or care. I doubted a group of men would even attempt to identify me, lest they reveal the nature of their true intentions the night before.
At any rate, using a half empty can of beer from the nearby dumpster, I had cleaned the wound of my lip imprints. Let the medical examiner try to figure out why someone had sloshed beer all over the gunshot wound.
As I stood there in the darkness, with a curious phantasmagoric mist nipping at my ankles, I remembered the taste of his blood again.
God, he had tasted so good. So damn good�Dand pure. The difference between good chocolate and bad chocolate. The difference between good wine and bad wine. Good blood and bad blood.
All the difference in the world.
I left the school grounds and the neighborhood as a slow wave of purple blossomed along the eastern horizon. I hated the slow wave of purple that blossomed along the eastern horizon. The sun was coming, and I needed to get home ASAP.
Already I could feel my strength ebbing.
Since my belly was full of Switchblade's blood, I did not want to cramp up and so I kept my jog slow and steady. On the way home, as the guilt set in over what I had just done, I held fast to one thought in particular as if it were a buoy in a storm:
I did not kill him; he was already dead....
The kids were playing in their room and Danny was working late. Tonight was Open House at the elementary school, and he had promised to make it home on time.
The words "we'll see" had crossed my mind.
I had spent the past two hours helping Anthony with his math homework. Math didn't come easily to him and he fought me the entire time. Vampire or not, I was drained.