Divine Blood (Vampire Love Story #6) (16 page)

That was it for me, that he brought
Tommy into it and there was no turning back now. Rake had crossed
the line with me, with that crack about my best friend, Tommy. And
he’d meant to cross the line.

My opponents advanced slightly, with
Rake at the lead.

The hair on the back of my
neck went up and I took a couple of steps back. Brock definitely
had a burly group. I might have been intimidated, if I wasn’t
Josiah Reign. I knew what I was capable of, and instead of being
rusty, my skills and strategies came back in a rush of less than a
second. I was ready for them.
All ten of
them.

Believe it or not, the
best way to fight a group of guys was to go right smack dab in the
middle. You just couldn’t let them get a hold of you.
Stay in the middle. Stick and move. Stick and
move.

So, that’s what I did. I flew up in
the air in my human form because I knew they couldn’t, unless they
turned to ravens, and I planted myself right smack in the middle of
the circle.

One by one, they attacked me, which
was unwise of them. If they had all attacked me at once, that would
have been harder. I toyed with them for a while, but in the end, I
was going to make sure every single one of them would get a nice
ass-kicking by me. I would spare their lives for now, but if this
continued, I wasn’t sure how far I would have to take this stand. I
didn’t want to take it to the death, because, in truth, they were
my people and I was their leader, even though they did not respect
nor acknowledge that.

For the next ten minutes, I kicked,
punched, even bit my way through the men and tossed aside all of
them, including Rake, until they had nothing left in them to fight
for.

All of the men were lying on the
ground, moaning and gingerly doing damage checks on
themselves.

I walked over to Rake and stood on his
neck.

He squirmed under me. “Ow!”

“
But for my unwavering
sense of right and wrong, I would have slayed every one of you
tonight.”

His angry, pleading eyes looked up at
me. “In the name of the Triat, get off my neck, Josiah Reign.
You’re shutting off the blood to my brain.”

“
Oh, now you whimper for
the Triat?” I moved my foot off his neck and he breathed a sigh of
relief.

“
Tonight, all of you,
along with your black eyes, your busted teeth, and your broken
ribs, I want you to take a bruised and beaten message to the
governor of the island of Attica.”

I took in a deep breath. And now, they
waited without protest.

“
Tell Brock that nothing
intimidates me. Not even ten of you at once. He better stay away
from me and my family. Now get off my island, all of
you!”

One by one, they turned to ravens and
flew off crying their beaten-up raven cries into the night while I
watched them from the highest pinnacle of M1.

I let out a roar of might and rage
after them, one that echoed in the night and bounced back at me
from the sea. I was pretty sure that I bloodied my throat screaming
like that.

I made sure all those thugs left my
island before I returned home, flying in my Mani form, which they
could not.

Chapter
Twenty-one

When I got home, bruised and bloody,
but still the victor of the battle, my adrenaline was up and I knew
I couldn’t wake up Lena, so I decided to call Tommy. We were ahead
of him by a good ten hours, so he should be up by now. I called
Tommy’s number three times until he finally answered.

“
Hello?” he said. He
sounded like he’d just awakened.

“
Tommy! It’s Josiah. Wake
up!”

“
I wasn’t asleep, brother.
I was meditating.”

“
Is that what you’re
calling it now? Meditation?”

“
Alone time is alone time.
Don’t judge. Why’re you calling me? You never call me. If you want
to know how your kids are doing, they are at the dorms at their
school.”

“
Tommy...I know the kids
are at the dorms. I just needed someone to talk to. No, not just
anyone.
You,
specifically.”

Tommy could tell my tone was serious,
so he changed gears rather quickly. “What’s going on,
Josiah?”

“
I got into a little
scuffle tonight with a few of Brock’s guys.”

“
How many guys?
Ten?”

“
Yes. Ten. How did you
know?”

“
A lucky guess. He only
sent ten guys after you? Man, they must think you have gotten old.
Back in the day, they knew twenty guys couldn’t take
you.”

“
Well, it was ten. I could
have exaggerated the number...but why?”

“
Who knows? Maybe ten is
your exaggeration,” Tommy joked. “Maybe the number was really
three.”

“
I was fighting three guys
at a time in junior high,” I said, defending myself.

“
Did you kill any of
them?”

“
No!” I said, horrified.
“After Krull, we Mani were supposed to be united. At least on the
two islands.”

“
Yeah, so much for the
prime directive. That never worked on
Star
Trek
, either.”

“
Not funny,
Tommy.”

“
How did they fight you? I
mean, what’s their style?” Tommy asked, and I heard him open the
fridge at his house.

“
One at a time. I fought
them one on one.”

“
Fools! If you said it was
ten at once who attacked you, then I’d believe you were the old
Josiah Reign—that it was ten opponents thrust into instant dirt
naps by the greatest warrior who ever lived, besides
me.”

“
Ha,” I replied. “We’ve
had this conversation before. In the battles between Mani and
werewolves—”

“
Yeah, yeah, same old
argument,” Tommy said. “But fighting ten guys, Josiah, one at a
time, is just like beating the hell out of the same piss ant, ten
times in a row. Piece of cake.”

“
You’re really an asshole
sometimes, Tommy,” I said.

“
That’s why you love me.
I’m the yin to your yang. We are like a Greek tragedy. We complete
each other.”

“
Are you done?” I
asked.

“
Mocking you?” he
tormented me.

“
Yes.”

“
No.”

“
It’s not easy tonight.” I
had to stop talking because my voice cracked.

“
What’s going on, bro? Why
are you being so sensitive?”

“
Sensitive? I just fought
ten vampires tonight. I’m looking for a little...”

“
...rubby-tuggy as a
reward-y?”

“
Oh, you’re
sick.”

“
Again, that’s why you
love me.”

“
Tommy, seriously, Brock
is moving in close and I need you to be my eyes and ears when the
boys are down there at school.”

“
Of course, brother. You
know I would never let anything happen to them. They’re my heart,
man!”

“
I know I can count on
you. I’m just giving you the heads up that something is definitely
afoot. I don’t think he plans on kidnapping a seventeen-year-old,
but after tonight, I don’t put much past him on the intimidation
side. Next time, he’ll send twenty Mani thugs and they will all
rush me at once.”

“
Doesn’t he know you and I
can’t be intimidated?”

“
He knows now. I gave a
strong ass-kicking to his guys. Hopefully, they will give him the
message. Not a one of them will be working tomorrow.”

“
How about you?” Tommy
asked.

“
You know me. Twenty
minutes of ice on a bruise and I’m good to go again
tomorrow.”

“
I just hope you don’t
have to.” Tommy sighed. “I could come down there, bro, stand up for
you, and with you.”

“
Aww, Tommy, you’re the
best, but no. I think I need to do this on my own.”

“
All right, bro. You just
say the word and I will gather my workout gear and come to
you.”

“
Like I need a trainer,” I
replied.

“
A little refresher
sparring wouldn’t hurt ya.”

“
No, stay close to the
boys.”

“
Will do.”

After about twenty minutes of bullshit
ranging from how good we thought the Lakers would be this season to
who was hotter, back in the day, Jessica Alba or Alyssa Milano, we
started running out of stuff to say. Eventually, I hung up the
phone.

I didn’t sleep for the next 36 hours.
I needed to protect my home. Once I felt it was calm on the home
front and I had my security upgraded, I ached for rest, wondering
if Lena was still mad as hell at me.

I tried the doorknob of our bedroom
and was so glad that she’d unlocked it.

Chapter
Twenty-two

Things settled down on my island after
that encounter with the ten Mani thugs that Brock had
sent.

Time passed and I tried to get to the
place where Lena and I were in synch again, but we sometimes still
struggled to communicate. We spent a lot of time flying back and
forth to the boys’ sporting events and awards
ceremonies.

The boys were now ending their senior
year and would be returning to Helena until they decided on their
next step. Lena was still in mother mode, wanting them to go to
college, but I knew the boys’ destiny was grander than getting a
full ride to UCLA. But when did I know it was time to have them
stop parading around in normalcy and accept their destiny, as I
had, when I was about their age. This was actually something I
hadn’t figured out yet. I didn’t think I ever would truly know
until it happened.

Joshua still had a new girlfriend
every time I spoke to him, but the way it sounded, these brief
romances were just mild flirtations. At least that’s what a dad
tells himself, so he can sleep at night.

Jason was a different cat. He took
pleasure in learning about science and math and we got news that
not too many parents truly plan to receive. Jason was the
valedictorian of his school’s graduating class.

They both got scholarships to play
baseball at a small school in Northern California. Neither child
seemed too excited about their free ride. Not to say they didn’t
appreciate it, but neither kid acted like college was in their
future. It was like they had an innate sense that something else
was supposed to happen to them, but they weren’t sure what. None of
us were.

I totally understood on some level
where Brock was coming from as a man, protecting his own family.
This was his only son we were talking about. And he was getting
closer to death, from the rumors we occasionally heard on our
island.

All I could say was that I believed
Jason knew what he was doing on that day when he refused to heal
Pierce because he was so evil that it threatened the world. These
were his rules. I would never question him. I was humbly coming to
terms that his calling was greater than mine. It was quite an eye
opener.

Throughout the last eighteen years, it
became quite apparent that the Triat had blessed Jason’s life more
than mine. They had blessed Joshua’s life, too. It was just
different than how they had blessed either Joshua or me. Jason was
coming into his own as a supreme power, or he would, when the time
was right, as far as the Triat knew. What kind of power he had
remained to be seen. It appeared he was taking a more inquisitive
approach, but keeping his thoughts close to his vest. Jason did not
ask for my advice.

After that night on top of M1 Mountain
where I had stood up to ten ravens, I hadn’t even heard from Brock.
It had been months. I figured he had just backed off. I had a guy
on the inside who was letting me know the health of Brock’s son.
Apparently, it was not going so good. That concerned me. How would
this person I perceived to be a madman snap when that day happened,
when his boy died? It kept me up at night and I was always on high
alert. It made Lena nuts that our security was so tight that I did
constant perimeter checks and installed security
cameras.

She was under the impression that I
might be overreacting, but I kept one important detail absolutely
secret from everyone but Tommy. Lena never knew I got jumped that
night on M1. It would have taken away the security she felt on this
island. As far as I was concerned, if I was in the house, that was
all the security she needed. So, to say she wasn’t as alarmed as me
was an understatement. She was starting to think I was becoming a
bit paranoid. That was understandable since she did not have the
complete information of just how dangerous Brock had become, that
he was sending thugs to trounce me.

It was hard juggling the emotions of
an entire family, but I was doing the best job I could. I was
responsible for many lives. Not just the ones in my home. Until I
got that under control, I was a fool to believe I could do
otherwise.

The boys graduated high school when
they were still seventeen. It was a proud moment. Maybe my proudest
moment was when I watched my two sons receive diplomas from St.
Michael’s High School, a top-ten school in California.