H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (12 page)

I totally blacked out.

When I opened my eyes, I could barely think
clearly. I could hear someone talking to me from seemingly far
away. It was Tommy and apparently, I lost. Tommy and a paramedic
team were crouched down next to me.

“Come back to us, Josiah,” Tommy said, and I
had a feeling he had been saying it a few times before that, too.
Tommy gave me a big, relieved smile when he saw me blinking and
breathing.

Now a doctor started asking me questions to
see if I would be okay. I could see they had brought out a
stretcher, and with that, I jumped straight up. There was no way I
would be hauled off on a stretcher.

“Stay down, Josiah.” Tommy said to me.

“No freaking way, Tom. You deserve a proper
hug.” I reached over and embraced Tommy.

Tommy grabbed my face, squishing my cheeks.
We had always been like brothers. “You kicked my ass that first
round, you know that.”

“Only because you didn’t have the heart to
throw a punch, dumbass. You got me, Tommy. You deserve it.”

“I’m coming home tonight. I’ll take you out,
and we’ll head up to Los Angeles and wreck that city.”

“Sounds good to me. I might need an aspirin
first.”

“Me, too.”

We both laughed. I looked out into the crowd
and both Lena and Yari were standing ringside, both looking
terribly worried. I gave them a thumbs up to let them know it was
okay. They both exhaled. The crowd cheered. Wow, two beautiful
women were deathly concerned for my well-being. Could be worse.

I noticed that Atticai was making his way to
the ring, too. He motioned for me to come to him, and I did.

When I reached the ropes, he said, “It’s
bullshit, man. They should have never allowed that thing in the
ring.”

I blinked. “Thing? What thing?”

Atticai looked at me with cold eyes. “No
Tandra can handle a Carni. It’s not a fair fight.” What are these
words? Mani? Carni? Tandra. What the hell were these people talking
about?

I said as much to Atticai, and he just shook
his head and walked away.

What the heck was that all about? I swore
everyone in that group was bat-shit crazy.

The announcer announced that Tommy had
knocked me out, and I gave Tommy one more hug and told him that I’d
see him at home.

Chapter Sixteen

I got home and took a long hot bath.
Ironically, the only thing that hurt was my back. I swear it was
still hurt from that a-hole hitting me with a baseball bat a few
weeks ago.

After my bath, I put on a pair of sweats and
laid on the couch and waited for Tommy. I thought about the fight.
I couldn’t believe I’d lost. Honestly. I have only lost two fights
in my entire life. I lost my very first boxing match when I was a
kid, and I lost today. I wished my dad would have seen Tommy and me
tonight. He would have been proud of both of us.

I closed my eyes and took a moment and
thought about my parents, especially my dad. My dad was a lucid
dreamer and loved to tell me his dreams. The last thing he had ever
said to me was on the morning of their accident. I had just gotten
up for school, and as I went into the kitchen, my dad was sitting
there, staring off into oblivion.

“Hey, Dad, what’s up?” I had asked, still
bleary-eyed from sleep.

He looked over at me. “Oh, I just had the
most amazing dream, son.”

This wasn’t the first time my dad had told
me about an extraordinary dream he had, but whatever this dream had
been, well, it was obviously giving him some serious food for
thought.

“What was it about?” I asked, opening the
kitchen door and grabbing the milk. If my father wasn’t there, I
would have downed the milk straight from the carton. As it was, I
found a box of cereal and started making breakfast.

“It was about you, son.”

“Me?”

“It was about us. We were camping up in Big
Bear. You were a lot younger, maybe around seven years old. I had
lost you and went looking for you in the woods. I couldn’t find you
anywhere, and I began to panic. I sensed you were in danger.
Considerable danger. I ran and ran looking for you, until I reached
an enormous cliff.”

“A cliff in the woods?” I said,
confused.

“Hey, Josiah, it’s a dream. A big, pink
Easter bunny could show up, and there would be no rhyme or reason
for it, all right?”

He was so cranky in the morning. “Sorry,
Dad. Go on.”

“Anyway, I walked to the edge of the cliff
and I look down, and about 300 feet below, I could see you. You
were calling out for me. I yelled down to you that I wanted you to
wait there, that I would be coming down for you. But then something
horrible started to happen.”

I was about to shovel in my first spoonful
of Cap’n Crunch. I waited, genuinely intrigued.

He went on. “About twenty hyenas surrounded
you. They were growling and hissing at you. And as they started
closing in, all I could do was watch from above, feeling totally
helpless. I was going to have to watch all these animals tear you
apart, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. So
without thinking, I jumped. It was more like a dive. It was
instinct, you know? I had to protect you. And as I fell, something
miraculous happened. My arms began turning into wings. My entire
body had changed into a beautiful white bird. I swooped in and
grabbed you, just in the nick of time.”

Now the first spoonful found my mouth. “Wow.
That’s pretty crazy,” I said, talking with food in my mouth, which
immediately irritated my dad.

He frowned at me. “Anyway, it was so real.
Josiah, I can still feel the air beneath me.”

I had looked at my dad, and he had this
amazingly peaceful expression on his face. Far-off and dreamy. A
tranquility I had never seen in him before. The irony was, of
course, that he would die eight hours later. He would never be able
to save me from the hyenas.

As I lay there on the couch, remembering my
last conversation with my dad, with tears filling my eyes, I turned
on the TV. I put on some Jimmy Kimmel since it was 12:30 in the
morning. So, where was Tommy?

I didn’t know, and soon I dozed off.

Chapter Seventeen

My cell phone was ringing. My eyes cracked
open, and I tried to collect my thoughts. My body and mind were
beyond the point of exhaustion. I grabbed the phone and did my best
to focus my eyes on the Caller I.D. It was a local number, but I
didn’t recognize it. And as I answered the call, I saw Daphne
peeking in the window at me.

“Hello,” I said, as much to the hawk as to
the caller. My voice sounded groggy as hell.

“Is this Josiah Reign?” A woman asked at the
other end.

“Yes.”

“Are you a relative of Tommy Jensen?”

“No, I mean yes. We’re practically
brothers.” Okay, now I was worried.

“Tommy has been in an accident.”

I sat up. “What kind of accident?”

“We’re not quite sure. We pulled his file,
and you were the only contact listed. He’s in the ICU.”

“Which hospital is this?”

“San Bernardino Memorial.”

“Okay. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I jumped up and put on a pair of jeans and a
t-shirt and headed out the door. Daphne was on the hood of my
truck, almost as if she were waiting for me. I got in my truck and
honked my horn, so she’d fly off. She did, squawking at me with a
shriller kee-eeeee-arr than usual, and I pulled out of the parking
lot and headed to the hospital.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled up to the
emergency entrance. Surprisingly, there were a lot of empty parking
spots. Even at 5:00 a.m., I would have thought most of Southern
California ER’s would have been busy. Learn something new every
day. I went through the double doors and headed straight to the
nurse’s station.

“Hi, I’m here to see Tommy Jensen,” I said
to the dark-haired, heavy-set Latina woman behind the desk.

“He is in the ICU. Why don’t you have a seat
and someone will be available shortly to speak with you.”

“But I got a call from you guys. Can I go
back and—”

“Have a seat and someone will be out to
speak with you.”

“All right.” I sat down in a seat near the
back, my stomach churning. There were sure a lot of people in the
waiting room, considering how few cars there were in the parking
lot.

A police officer came in from outside. He
walked over to the nurse, and the nurse pointed him in my
direction. I guess the “someone” who was to speak with me was going
to be a police officer. He came right over to me. “Are you Josiah
Reign?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“I need to ask you a couple of
questions.”

“Sure,” I said.

“What relation are you to Tommy Jensen?”

“There is no relation. He’s my roommate.
He’s the closest person in the world to me, but there is we are not
related.”

“Were you with Tommy tonight?”

“Well, sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

“Tommy had a fight tonight at the Honda
Center in Anaheim.”

“A fight? You mean a professional fight? A
boxing match?”

“Close. It was a mixed martial arts
fight.”

“You mean like ultimate fighting?”

“Yeah, something like that,” I said.

“You were at the fight?”

This guy wasn’t going to believe what I was
about to tell him, but it was the truth, so I had nothing to lose.
“I was his opponent in the fight.”

“You’re kidding me? You fight also?”

“Yes.”

“And you fought Tommy tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Who won?”

“He did.”

“He did?”

“Yeah, he did,” I said, suddenly
annoyed.

“Wow, there’s a first for everything.” The
police officer sat down in the chair next to me. “So, what did you
guys do after the fight?”

“Nothing. I went straight home. What is this
about? Can I see Tommy now?”

“You didn’t stop off for a beer or an ice
pack?”

“I received all the ice packs I needed
before I left the arena. No alcohol at all after a fight. Gotta
heal up.”

“What did Tommy do after the fight?”

“He had been staying at his grandma’s during
training. After the fight, he was supposed to come over, so we
could go out and celebrate our first fight together.”

The police officer stopped writing and
looked me in the eyes. “You were going to celebrate getting your
ass kicked?”

“No, not exactly. Tommy is ‘in line’ to
fight for the title in our weight class.”

“I see.” The police officer paused. “Did you
throw the fight?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, that’s neither here nor there. Have
they told you the severity of Tommy’s injuries?”

“No. I don’t know anything.”

“Did Tommy call you and tell you that he was
going to be late?”

“No, he didn’t. What has happened to
Tommy?”

“We’re not quite sure. All we know is that
he was attacked.”

“Attacked? After the ring fight?”

He paused and leveled his stare at me. “And,
due to the nature of his injuries, it appears that he was attacked
by some kind of wild animal.”

I think my eyes bugged out of my skull.
Before I could speak, the officer went on. “Even more unusual, he
was dropped off at the ER, where the nurses found his body lying
near the door.”

“No.” A sense of dread filled me. “Who
dropped him off?”

“We don’t know.”

“Someone just dropped him off and took
off?”

“Exactly. So where were you at 1:00
a.m?”

“I was at my house just about to fall
asleep.”

“Can anyone else vouch for that?”

“No. I was alone.“

“Well, hopefully Tommy will regain
consciousness shortly and he be able to shed some light on what
happened.”

The police officer closed his notepad,
nodded at me and walked outside. I just stared at him. Had I heard
him correctly? Tommy had been attacked by a wild animal?

I sat there and waited. And waited. Two
hours later, I got up and went to the nurse’s station.

“I’ve been here for two hours. Is there
anyone who can give me an update?”

“The doctor will be out shortly to talk to
you.”

“The doctor?” I questioned.

“Yes, the doctor.”

I was about to head back to my seat when I
heard someone call my name. I turned around, and there was a man of
Middle Eastern descent coming toward me.

“Yes, I’m Josiah.”

The man walked over to me. “Are you related
to Mr. Jensen?”

“I’m pretty much all he has. What’s going
on?”

The doctor paused. “I’m sorry. He didn’t
make it.”

I’ve been hit hard in my life, but never
have I been hit harder than that. All the air left my lungs, and I
struggled to find words.

The doctor went on, but his voice reached me
as if speaking from a deep well. “Mr. Jensen was pronounced dead
ten minutes ago.”

“His name is Tommy. Please call him Tommy.”
My voice sounded strange to my ears. Panicked, strained,
high-pitched.

“I’m real sorry.”

I took in a lot of air. I could tell I was
close to hyperventilating. “But...what happened?” I managed to
say.

“He had bite marks all over his body. It
appears he was attacked by multiple animals. But that’s for the
medical examiner to determine.”

“But this doesn’t make any sense! He was on
his way home from a professional fight.” My brain spun. For all, I
knew I was spinning, too. I wished like hell that there was
something nearby to hold onto. I would have used the doctor, but I
didn’t think his frail body could support me. “What kind of animal
was it?”

“I have no idea. The bites were deep and
unmistakable. The medical examiner will look into it, along with
the police.”

“He’s seriously gone? Dead?”

“Yes, I’m sorry.”