H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (3 page)

Fair? I thought. You’re a trained fighter.
There’s nothing fair about it.

Ron rubbed his soft-looking knuckles, sizing
me up as I squared off in my own stance. He didn’t like what he
saw. Now, I saw the fear in his eyes. Ron and I both knew he wasn’t
tough. He was just big. A guy like this got through life barely
fighting because he was usually bullying people into thinking he
was tougher than he was. He couldn’t bully me, and he knew it.
Tonight, he was about to be exposed for the fraud he was.

As he continued to stare at me, I said,
“Look, Ron, I’m not falling in love looking at you this long. If
you’re going to do something, do it. Otherwise, I’d like to make it
home in time for Jimmy Kimmel.” I knew this would piss him off.

Ron continued rubbing his knuckles. He also
continued not doing anything.

I gripped the girl, Lena’s, hand tighter.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go, Lena. Ron is apparently a nice guy
and is going to let us leave.” I turned around and let go of Lena’s
hand, knowing Ron would push me in the back, and sure enough, Ronny
boy didn’t disappoint.

Like I said, when I get into a fight, things
always go in slow motion for me—and they did so now. The moment I
felt Ron’s hand on my back, I whirled around and grabbed his hand.
Ron wasn’t prepared for me to turn. I’ve been told my reflexes are
off the charts, my anticipatory skills are unrivaled. I credit it
all to the slow-motion thing. How it works, I don’t know, but the
world seems to slow down around me while I go to normal speed. So,
while Ron’s eyes widened in fear as he saw me spin around, he was
helpless to do much about it. I grabbed his right hand and pulled
him forward using his own momentum. Ron stumbled forward and hit
the side of an oversized SUV parked on the street near us. He
bounced off the door and fell straight to his ass. I heard
chuckling from the crowd.

Ron got to his feet slowly, watching me.
People were still laughing behind us, and I could see that their
laughter was making Ronny-Boy increasingly angrier. There was a red
mark on his forehead where it had bounced off the side of the
SUV.

And that’s when he charged at me in a
clumsy, uncoordinated motion. I wasn’t sure if he would try to
punch me or grab me. Regardless, I turned my body to the left and
got into a perfect position to throw a vicious uppercut with my
right hand. And that’s what I did. My punch landed directly on his
chin, and Ron flew backwards onto the sidewalk, landing hard on his
ass and back, his head bouncing off the concrete like a basketball.
To my utter surprise, he scrambled quickly back to his feet, where
he stared at me unsteadily. I think his eyes might have crossed a
little. He staggered once, twice, and then fell backward.

I looked over at Lena. Her eyes and mouth
were wide open. I couldn’t tell if she was scared or excited. Then
she pointed, and I turned quickly and saw four of Ron’s frat
buddies surrounding me. I’ve been jumped before. Being jumped isn’t
a big deal if you know how to fight, and there are no weapons
involved. As far as I could tell, these guys were packing nothing
but their soft fists. And since the crowd was composed of a lot of
women, the guys would be less inclined to fight dirty. At least,
that has been my experience. Then again, these were the same
scumbags who had just tried to hurt Lena, so all bets were off.

The group backed up a little. And once
again, I marveled at my propensity to get into fights. Some guys
attract money and girls. I attract fists.

The guys were staring at each other, trying
to decide what to do. They were waiting for a signal. Out of the
corner of my eye, I saw one of them nod, and I thought: Here they
come.

And they did, all four charging me at once.
Except, of course, they charged at me in slow motion, my brain once
again slowing things down like it always did. The first two guys
tried to throw punches in the direction of my head. I easily ducked
and sidestepped and gave a sharp left cross to the guy on the
right—and broke his nose on contact. Blood spurted down his face
and over his shirt, and he screamed and fell away. One down. Three
to go.

Nearly simultaneously, I gave the second
guy, coming up behind me, a back kick that hit nothing but manhood.
He fell to the ground, holding his gooseberries. Two down. Two to
go.

The next guy jumped on my back. I threw him
over my shoulder, and he landed on the guy with the bloody nose.
Three down. One to go.

The last guy just charged me like a football
player. I took a step back and gave him a high kick to the chin
that made him stagger back. He came at me again and I gave him a
four-punch combination, with my last hit breaking his nose. All
were down.

My adrenaline was pumping, and I felt as if
I could do this all night. By the looks of it, these four couldn’t.
They were done. Unfortunately, the Gamma Phi Betas brothers
weren’t. The whole fraternity—or at least what was left of them—
surrounded me. There must have been twenty-five guys out there. I
was good, but I wasn’t that good.

I was about to say something that would call
attention to how unfair the numbers were, when something
excruciatingly painful exploded in the middle of my back. I fell to
my knees and then to the ground. I turned around, and sure enough,
Big Red Ron was standing there holding a baseball bat, sporting a
shit-eating grin. He raised the bat again.

I hate when that happens.

Chapter Three

Ron looked like a kid ready to hit the crap
out of a piñata. He was the deranged kid and I was the piñata.
Already, I figured he had done some serious damage to me. He had
either chipped my vertebrae, or ruptured my kidney, or both.

As he wheeled back to take another swing,
and as I was about to dive under the nearby SUV, we both heard a
commotion coming from down the street. He stopped in mid-swing, and
I stopped in mid-dive, and promptly coughed up some blood.

And while I coughed, a van appeared around
the corner, screeching on two tires. Three guys in black trench
coats hung out of the open van doors, whooping and hollering at the
top of their lungs. I had just propped myself up on a knee when the
van burst over the curb. It bounced and skidded to a halt, tearing
up the lawn next to me.

You have got to be kidding me. What the hell
did I just get myself into?

All of the doors to the van seemingly opened
at once, and three guys poured out of the van, all wearing trench
coats and looking as if they had just gotten back from a Marilyn
Manson concert. Oddly, they looked alike: tall, pale, and with
long, greasy black hair.

I coughed, and more blood came up. I stood
slowly. I think Ronnie boy had cracked a rib, too. As I stood, I
felt a gentle hand under my elbow, helping me. Say what? I looked,
surprised, wanting to know who it was. Lena! She smiled at me, but
the smile quickly faded. Her eyes flashed a warning in the
direction of the death rock trio.

As I steadied myself, the tallest of the van
freaks—easily seven feet tall—rushed over to Lena, who was still
holding my arm. He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. She
pulled me with her a little, and I spun, too, nearly falling.

The giant weirdo said, and none too
politely: “What the hell are you doing at this meathead party? I
warned you to stay away.”

She stood her ground, looking up at the guy.
“You think I wanted to come to this party, Atticai? One of these
assholes drugged me at the club, kidnapped me, and brought me
here.”

A woman got out of the driver’s side of the
van. She had dark reddish-maroon hair and was paler than all the
guys put together. She was stunning. She too, wore all black, but
it looked like a jumpsuit, and she had a bull whip in her hand. She
cracked it in the air for effect, not hitting anyone, but it was
one of the sexiest things I had ever seen. Hot damn. This night was
just getting better and better.

“They drugged you?” asked the tall guy.
Atticai, I assumed.

But before she could answer, one of the frat
guys yelled out, “Hey, Freak Show! Get your fucking van off my lawn
or I’m calling the police.”

“Who said that?” Atticai said, scanning the
crowd, which was pretty easy for him to do, since he was the
tallest guy I had even seen up close.

A real muscular guy came forward. “I did,”
he said. “Now get your fucking van off my grass or I’m going stick
my foot deep in your bony ass.”

Atticai turned away, ignoring him. He took
both of Lena’s shoulders in his abnormally large hands. “Did they
hurt you?”

Lena looked away. There were tears in her
eyes. Hell, there were tears in my eyes, too. “Almost.”

I looked at Ron. He was standing with his
back to me, holding the bat loosely, completely absorbed by the
three strangers. My back throbbed to the rhythm of my
heartbeat.

The tall guy said, “So, which one of these
young men thought it would be okay to drug a young woman and take
advantage of her?”

Without hesitation, Lena pointed at Ron, who
stepped back a little and gripped his baseball bat. “Hey, man, I
don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“Of course not,” said Atticai. “Lena, get in
the van and shut the door.” He looked back at Ron. “My little
ginger-haired friend is going to be taught the correct way to treat
a lady.”

Lena grabbed the tall guy’s hand. “Atticai,
please. Someone already took care of it. Just let it go.”

Ron, hearing this, took a step back. He also
raised the bat again. Atticai continued looking at Ron. “Yes, I can
see that someone did some damage to the boy.”

“Who are you calling boy, punk?” Ron jutted
the fat part of the bat in the direction of the tall figure.

Atticai’s face hardened. He looked back at
Lena. “Get in the van. Now.”

Lena looked at me one more time, tried to
smile, and then hurried over to the van. I want to say something,
but I’ll admit, I was awkwardly caught up in the scene. Besides,
Lena seemed to know these weirdos and didn’t seem afraid. Or, at
least, she seemed less afraid.

I had been in enough brawls to know that one
was about to go down, and I was pretty fought out for the evening.
Getting hit in the back with a bat has a way of doing that to
you.

I told myself: This is none of your
business. Leave now before this gets ugly.

Easier said than done. For now, it was all I
could do to suck in a deep breath, let alone walk away. Besides,
there was the small matter of a little payback.

Let it go, I thought. And get the fuck out
of here.

“So, you play baseball, Fatty?” Atticai
asked to Ron. From somewhere deep inside the tall man’s trench
coat, he removed a length of chain.

A woman in the crowd gasped. A lot of people
did. Lena was watching from the front seat. She looked sick.

Ron dropped the bat. “Look, no harm, no
foul. You guys can just go.”

“Oh, we can?” Atticai began circling Ron.
The chain hung limply from his long arm. “How very generous of
you.”

“Please—”

“If only life could be so simple, Red.”

“My name is Ron.”

“Thanks for clearing that up, Red. So, you
met a pretty young girl at a bar, slipped something in her drink
when she wasn’t looking and thought that you and your buddies would
do the unthinkable to her. But, somehow, your plans didn’t quite go
as planned.” Atticai smiled at his little play on words.

Ron gulped audibly.

Atticai continued circling Ron. The gaunt
figure, easily a head taller than the cherub-faced Ron, looked at
me and caught my eye. He nodded perceptively, and I understood the
meaning. He was thanking me. Atticai looked back at Ron.
“Unfortunately, for you and your sick plans, you didn’t count on
others helping her. You sick rapist fucks never figure that in...
that some people truly love these girls who you hurt.”

“Look, man. I’m sorry. I didn’t do anything.
You can even ask her.”

“I don’t need to ask her. You want to know
why? I can see through you. I can see your heart. I can see your
soul. And you know what? You aren’t a righteous person. So, that is
why I’m going to finish giving you the beating that someone else
started.”

Ron faded to a whiter shade of paleness that
was so light that his freckles stood out like black polka dots on
his skin. Then again, that could have just been a play on light.
Either way, he started walking backwards—and promptly tripped over
the garden hose. He screamed as if he had been shot, scrambled to
his feet, and made a mad dash toward the front door of the
house.

Atticai watched him with a bemused
expression on his face, and I thought that was going to be it. Ron
would run to his room, and everyone would disperse, and I would
limp my way home.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The tall man swirled his long chain like a
lasso and what he did next defied logic and reason. He threw the
chain, which whipped through the air, humming as it went. The chain
wrapped around Ron’s legs perfectly and the burly dope pitched
forward onto the house’s concrete steps. My mouth had barely
dropped open, when this Atticai character somehow, miraculously
appeared on top of Ron.

Then Atticai opened his mouth, and in the
ambient street and house light, I could see that he had filed down
his teeth. What the hell? A second later, he buried his teeth and
face into Ron’s neck. Ron screamed like a girl. Someone else
screamed, too. Ron kicked once, twice. More people screamed.

Was I being Punk’d? Was this happening?

A moment later, Atticai pulled his face
away—a face now covered with blood. Ron laid perfectly still, with
blood pouring down his neck; his blood splashed over the concrete
stairs.

This was real. The seven-foot tall freak
fucking bit into fat boy’s neck. And in front of a crowd of people.
Unbelievable!