H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (18 page)

We woke up around noon and I tried talking
her out of it several times. Mostly, she didn’t want to talk about
it. We got something to eat, and mostly I couldn’t eat. How can you
eat, knowing the person sitting across from you, a person you had
come to care about deeply, was going to die in just a matter of
hours? We talked a lot, and I got to know her even more. Every time
I brought up her upcoming birthday, she shushed me with a haunting
smile. All in all, it was an extremely odd day.

Finally, it was about 10:30 at night.

“You’d better leave, Josiah. They’ll be
picking me up at any minute to take me over to Savoy Ranch.”

I walked over to her and hugged her tight. I
hugged her the way I would have hugged my mom and my sister on the
day they got into their car accident, had I somehow known their
fate ahead of time. I knew Lena’s fate if she did not come with me.
I looked down at her and kissed her on the lips.

“Lena, whatever happens, please know that I
care about you. That I always will.”

“I know, Josiah,” she leaned in and held me
tightly and then let go. “You better go.”

I left Lena’s house feeling sick and
disoriented. I needed to control something in my life. Everything
important was spiraling in circles, just out of my reach.

What the hell was I going to do?

One thing I knew I could do was go to the
hospital and try to see where they moved Tommy’s body. Was there a
morgue in the hospital basement, like in the movies? It was a grim
thought, thinking about my closest friend in the world’s lifeless
body, stuck in a freezer, waiting for autopsy, burial, closure. It
was all I had to grip onto at this moment while I waited for Lena’s
sick and twisted demise. She seemed perfectly happy to go to it. I
was aghast at her decision.

So, I went to the hospital in search of my
other best friend, the dead one. I needed to find out where they
had placed Tommy’s body. After all, I still needed to make funeral
arrangements.

The eeriness of pulling into the hospital in
Tommy’s car wasn’t lost on me. I shuddered slightly and felt sick
again. I went straight to the front and asked them about the
deceased. They sent me to the morgue in the basement, just like I
visualized before I went there. After going through a bunch of
doors and two different security guards, I found a pleasant-looking
lady wearing horned-rimmed glasses sitting behind a desk. She
seemed to be waiting for me.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

The room was cold. I shivered. I said, “My
friend died in this hospital a few days ago, and I need to make
funeral arrangements.”

I knew a thing or two about hospitals and
death, since I had lost my whole family. I knew hospitals kept
bodies until family members could make arrangements for a proper
burial.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, and to
her credit, she sounded legitimately sorry. “What’s his name?”

“Tommy Jensen.”

She paused and stared at me. “You’re the
family of Tommy Jensen?”

“Yes, more or less.”

“You need to go back upstairs and speak to
Human Resources.”

“Why?” I said. “I was told to come down
here. What happened?”

“I can’t get into it, young man. You’ll need
to speak to a hospital administrator.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Do you
have Tommy or not?”

She stared at me and, amazingly, I saw that
her hands were shaking. What the fuck was going on? I forced myself
to calm down, even though I felt my heart racing.

“Please, what’s going on? Tell me.”

She looked over my shoulder and then behind
her. We were alone. “I’ve been working in this hospital for over
twenty years, and I’ve never seen what I saw with your friend.”

Now my heart figuratively froze in my chest,
but I could feel an actual chill tighten my breathing. “What are
you talking about?”

“I shouldn’t be telling you this. In fact, I
was told specifically never to mention again what I saw.”

I was suddenly finding it extremely
difficult to breathe.

“But you’re here now, and...you have a right
to know.” She took off her glasses and started shaking her head.
“Screw my bosses. Sometimes, you just have to do the right
thing.”

“Please,” I said. My voice sounded strangled
to my own ears.

“Three days ago, I get this body sent down
to me. He’s all scratched up and has bite marks all over it. I’m
thinking this poor young man is a mess. Anyway, I do what I
normally do to prep the body for autopsy.”

She paused again, and I found myself leaning
over her desk, supporting my weight.

“So, I began to wash some of his wounds. But
the weirdest thing happened. I would wash a wound, and the body
would heat up, and the wound would...heal right before me. I called
a couple of my colleagues over and we started cleaning all of his
wounds. Two hours after he was pronounced dead, his pulse
returned.”

“What?!” I yelled. I couldn’t help myself.
The word just burst from my mouth.

“Quiet down. Please. So listen, we are all
freaking out because we have a freaking miracle on the table. My
colleagues and I leave the room to find the doctors...” Her voice
trailed off.

It was all I could do not grab her by her
damn uniform and shake the story out of her.

“What happened to Tommy?” I said
sternly.

She hesitated and then said, “When we came
back...he was gone.”

“What do you mean gone?” I asked.

“His body was gone. We had everyone
searching, but he was nowhere to be found.”

I felt my knees buckle. I leaned on her
desk, almost falling on it.

Tommy was… alive?

“Why, why didn’t anyone call me?”

“This is out of my hands; you’ll have to
talk to someone upstairs. I already told you too much.”

“So, no one saw him leave? Not even the
security?”

She shook her head.

I looked at the clock on the wall as the
elevator closed. It read 11:30. Savoy Ranch was ten minutes away. I
thanked her and left.

I wasn’t sure how but I was going to save
Lena, but I was going to. I also wasn’t sure how I was going to
find Tommy, but I was going to do that, too.

Chapter Twenty-nine

As I sat in Tommy’s Mustang, I wondered if
Tommy had been back to the house. I also wondered if he had tried
to contact me. He must have. I had been so caught up in all this
crap, and I hadn’t been around to see him. Well, I still needed to
do one more thing and, to be honest I had no idea if I would make
it out of this alive.

We’ll find out soon enough, I thought.

I headed to the ranch. The ranch was tucked
away in the canyon right before you head up the highway for the
mountains. It’s a popular spot for hikers and campers...and
apparently, vampires.

Tommy and I used to train up there, which is
how I know about it since I’m not exactly the outdoorsy type. It
was, admittedly, beautiful up there. Well, tonight there wasn’t
going to be much beauty up there. Tonight was going to be anything
but beautiful.

The Mustang bounded around hairpin turns and
straight cliffs, as I drove wildly, recklessly. A few miles from
the ranch, I turned off my lights. I wasn’t sure how acute a
vampire’s hearing was, but I didn’t want to announce my arrival in
a blaze of headlights, either. Using the moon as my sole source of
light, I followed the slightly glowing road all the way to the
Ranch, the Mustang taking the tight turns like a race car.

As I rounded the final bend, at exactly
11:50 p.m., I saw a flickering glow toward the back of the ranch. A
bonfire. Surrounding the fire were four black-clad figures. No,
there was a fifth, too. Someone dressed in a white gown. Lena.

It was now or never. I had no plan, other
than to fight. Hell, that’s all I was good for anyway. I had a
feeling that I was born for this moment. I may not be a vampire,
but I sure as hell knew how to defeat an opponent, dead or
undead.

On a whim, I opened Tommy’s glove
compartment and could hardly believe my good luck. There was a
long, rusty railroad spike inside. What he was doing with it, I
didn’t know, but I had my suspicions. The spike made for a perfect
stake. Granted, it wasn’t silver, but it would have to do.

I shoved the spike in my front pocket, took
a deep breath, and stepped hard on the gas. Tommy’s Mustang
responded wonderfully. The tires spun, rumbling loudly, no doubt
kicking up lots of loose rocks and shredding rubber.

And I shot forward in the car like it was a
rocket.

The pinpoint of fire that had been the
bonfire grew rapidly in my windshield. Soon the fire and all five
figures filled the glass, and I turned the wheel hard, tires
screeching recklessly over loose dirt. Had the Mustang not been so
low to the ground I might have flipped it. I jumped out of the car.
Breathing hard, my mind was on the railroad spike in my front
pocket.

Atticai, mouth open and as tall and gaunt as
ever, just stared at me. “You’re alive?”

“Surprise, motherfucker!”

He nodded slightly and cocked his head. “I
guess the evil has arrived.”

“The only evil is you, Atticai.” I looked at
Lena, and she looked scared. She looked, if anything, as if she was
having second thoughts about this, her compliance in her own
demise.

“Lena, you don’t want to do this,” I
implored.

Wyatt stepped forward. “Do you have any idea
what you’re doing, Josiah? This isn’t about us. This isn’t even
about Lena. This is about—”

“I know what this is about, Wyatt: killing
Lena so that Atticai can become some super vampire to defeat the
Carni and the fallen Mani. Yada-yada. And they all lived happily
ever, except Lena.”

Atticai crossed his long arms over his
narrow chest. “Oh my, I see someone was given a lesson in Mani
prophecy. And since it’s not the Reader’s Digest version that we
give to Lena, that can only mean....” He turned to another
black-clad figure, the smallest of the four. “Was he worth it,
Yari?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,
Atticai,” she said.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,
kid,” he said. “Don’t you think that I know you’ve fallen for
Josiah? Don’t you think that I know the only way Josiah’s even
alive tonight is because you saved him from the snakes?”

“It’s not true, Atticai.”

“Oh, it is true, but what I don’t understand
is how the Triat has allowed it to happen?”

“You’re wrong, Atticai. He saved himself. He
deserves your mercy.” Yari was grasping at straws.

“My mercy? A Tandra who refused a chance to
become a Mani deserves my mercy? What the hell had got into
you?”

“Please, Atticai, consider it.”

Wyatt snapped open his cell phone and looked
at the glowing faceplate. “It’s almost time,” he said.

Atticai nodded. “But first things
first.”

He grabbed Lena. Although she didn’t make a
sound, the confident girl I had seen just hours before was long
gone. She looked terrified. I wondered if Atticai had her under
some spell, the same type of spell he had placed on the snakes.

Wyatt and Hector stepped in front of them,
forming a wall between them and me. Atticai walked behind Lena and
looked at his watch on his left hand. “Ten seconds,” he said.

Lena looked terrified. I didn’t blame her.
Shit, she was surrounded by vampires, and her death was just
seconds away. She suddenly began to struggle, the will to live in
her strong and true.

I did the only thing I could think of. I
removed the iron spike from my pocket and ran at them. Wyatt jumped
up into the air, Karate Kid-like, and kicked me full in the face.
Motherfucker, I hadn’t expected that. Not the face! Now I was
furious. Actually, I hadn’t expected him to be that fast.

On the ground, I snapped my head around and
watched as Atticai opened his mouth. Moonlight reflected off his
elongated canines. He looked at me, smiled, and bit into Lena’s
neck.

I jumped up and summoned all my fighting
instincts. This was, after all, going to be the fight of my life.
And Lena’s.

Wyatt came at me again. He tried the exact
same move but I ducked beneath his kick, grabbed his leg and yanked
him down to the ground. I punched him as hard as I could in the
face. The blow rocked him enough that I jumped up and turned my
attention to Hector, who was coming at me from the other direction.
He hit me hard, so hard that I flew backwards and into something
solid. A tree trunk. Air burst from my lungs as I sank to the
ground. Good God, I felt as if I had been hit by a car. Oh God, my
back. Not yet healed from the baseball bat injury, my back was on
fire again.

And before I could fully clear my head and
see through the bright lights that had burst just behind my
eyelids, two powerful ravens—Wyatt and Hector, I assumed—grabbed me
in their massive talons and flew me up into the air. Once again, I
found myself dangling from flying creatures. Being lifted up above
the treetops had a definite way of clearing one’s head. Far below,
in a small glow of fire, I could see three people standing. Atticai
had his face pressed into Lena’s neck, and Yari stood nearby—on
guard, I presumed.

This time I was certain they were going to
drop me—and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I had
failed to save Lena; in fact, I couldn’t even save myself.

But instead of immediately dropping me, they
flew up, up. Now, Savoy Ranch was far below. They were going to
drop me from hundreds of feet up, making damn well sure I was
smashed to smithereens.

But they surprised me again, they circled
back over a cliff’s edge, where they promptly landed, dropping me.
What the hell? Both transitioned back into Mani and faced me. I
knew then that they were both going to give me a thorough beating
first, just like the undead scum they were. Mani bullies, really.
No doubt they planned to drink from me first, too, and get a
late-night snack squeezed in. After all, why let a good meal go to
waste? Only then would they toss me off the cliff, dead and
bloodless, to disappear in a broken heap of skin and bones.