H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (4 page)

Atticai casually picked Ron up by his neck,
lifting him entirely off the ground. Ron’s legs dangled like a
five-year-old’s. And with a primeval growl, the tall freak threw
Ron off the stairs and into the bushes nearby.

And that’s when complete pandemonium broke
out.

Chapter Four

Most of the party goers took off running,
but there were some unfortunate bastards who stood their ground
trying to defending their frat house turf.

Like I said, unfortunate bastards.

The three guys in trench coats were moving
so fast that they appeared more of a blur than anything else. I was
beginning to wonder if I had been the one who had been slipped a
“roofie.” Anyway, time skipped a bit. One moment, the tall, freaky
guys were here. And the next, they were over there. In a blur, a
blink, and sometimes, even instantly. Since I no longer had a dog
in this fight—not to mention that I was seriously questioning my
sanity—I decided to duck behind the Jeep and see how this all
played out.

And then get the hell out of here.

The red-headed woman had now joined the
three trench coats. All four, as best as I could tell, were laying
beat downs with their chains and whips in a scene that could only
be described as surreal, and one that made movie prison riots look
tame. No one here had a chance.

The red-headed woman, who had just disposed
of a man twice her size by throwing him hard against a tree trunk,
suddenly stopped and looked straight at me. I wanted to duck, but
it was too late. Her eyes narrowed and then she did something
unexpected. She nodded slightly and motioned with her head. I
frowned and was momentarily overcome with an impression that she
recognized me somehow, although I was damn sure that I had no clue
who she was. She motioned with her head again, and my foggy, dense
brain finally understood the gesture. She wanted me to run!

Well, that sounded like a hell of a good
idea, and so that’s what I did. Well, as I best as I could pull
off. With a sharp pain ripping through my injured back—and pain
that was eclipsed by a powerful surge of adrenaline—I bolted down
the driveway.

And that’s as far as I got.

Before I could even get to the sidewalk, one
of the trench coats guys had tripped up my feet. I fell to the
ground. I tried to fight him off, but it was no use. He had the
strength of ten men. He was impossible to move. I was a world-class
mixed martial arts fighter, and this Goth dude was keeping me down?
I rolled over, and he bit down on my neck. What the hell was this
crazy asshole doing?

He was freaking biting into my neck!
Really?

I had been in at least two hundred fights,
in my life. Not one time did my opponent think that a smart move
was to bite my neck.

I tried fighting him off, but it was no use.
With everything I had—and using every wrestling technique Tommy had
ever taught me—I broke his grip on me and heaved him off me. All in
one motion. And as he went spinning and stumbling, I leaped to my
feet and grabbed my neck. He regained his balance and turned and
faced me, eyes wide with wonder and confusion. He didn’t plan on me
being that strong. It was if that would be the first time anyone
ever got the best of him.

I looked at my hand. There was a small
amount of blood on it. “What the fuck did you do that for?” I said
to the man who just took a bite out of my flesh.

“You should have never come,” he hissed, and
lunged toward me again, his mouth wide. This guy also had his teeth
filed.

What the hell was going on? They all had
some crazy vampire fetish.

I landed a punch that did him little harm,
although it slowed him down some. He shook off my blow and kept
coming at me. The blow that I had landed would have laid out most
people. People being the operative word here.

And in a move that would have made any MMA
fighter proud, he grabbed my hand in a blink and pulled me forward.
The movement was so sudden and powerful that I lost my balance. He
yanked me again and now I pitched forward onto the grass. Not the
world’s most graceful take-down, but it worked. Not to mention he
still had me by the hand, which he had yanked awkwardly behind
me.

Awkwardly and painfully. Too painfully. I
turned my head and saw that the son-of-bitch had bitten down on my
wrist. I tried to free myself, but I was in a hell of a twisted
position.

He bit down harder, tearing away some of my
skin.

This man was now drinking the blood from my
wrist. I could see the crazy motherfucker swallowing my blood. I
looked toward the grass, and the other two guys were biting their
victims, too. I began to feel faint.

“Don’t hurt him, Wyatt!” a voice shouted, in
the night. It was hard to be sure from where, exactly. Blackness
had seriously started encroaching along the edges of my vision. The
voice might have been coming from the van. “He’s the only one who
helped me!”

And with that, the man let go of my wrist.
My hand dropped, and I fell forward on my face. I was completely
drained of all energy. I lost all desire to move.

As I laid there, feeling as if I had been
attacked by a grizzly bear, I could hear the sounds of approaching
sirens. I’m no stranger to sirens or even to being arrested. If you
grow up as a street brawler like me, you get used to both; however,
I was too weak to move.

Now, I seriously felt drugged, and my neck
and wrist hurt like hell.

Suddenly, Atticai was by my side. He knelt
down, which took him a heartbeat longer than most people, since he
was so damn tall. He lowered his face to mine, and I was struck
instantly by the strong scent of coppery blood on his breath.
Indeed, blood was dripping in large globs down his chin. My stomach
flip-flopped.

“Is this true?” Atticai asked me.

“Is what true?” I could barely muster
out.

“Did you help Lena?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

He glanced over his shoulder to the others.
“Then let’s get the hell out of here.” He looked back at me and
grinned through all the blood. “And, you’re coming with us.”

Amazingly, he gripped the back of my shirt
and lifted me clean off the ground. I found myself briefly
dangling—and gasping for air—before he threw me into the back of
the open van like a sack of potatoes. The rest of the freak show
gang of blood suckers followed in behind me and the side door was
slammed shut.

Wyatt, the same guy who tried to feast on my
arm, started the van and threw it into reverse. Dirt, grass, and
mud kicked up and soon the tires screeched rubber trails across the
sidewalk and back onto the asphalt street. I heard it. I smelled
it. Burned rubber, acrid against the metallic copper scent of their
breaths in the van. There, Wyatt shoved the gearshift into ‘drive’
and the van literally squealed away, briefly slewing sideways.

Most of the seats had been removed from the
van. The others freaks were hanging out the windows, bracing
themselves against the madcap turns. Only Lena and the red-headed
girl were looking at me. A brief thought ran through my head that I
was in some sort of Scooby Doo horror flick in an alternate
universe, or that I was having a pizza-induced nightmare, but the
pain in my back, neck and wrist was so all-consuming that I knew it
was real. I was hurt, bad. Me, martial arts professional, was
nearly slayed by a baseball bat and a blood sucker.

I wanted to ask where the hell they were
taking me—to a hospital?— but I was still weak and oddly drained of
energy. I could not even speak. And so, I did the only thing I
could think of. I closed my eyes and hoped that I would awaken from
this terrifying nightmare.

Chapter Five

I must have passed out in the van.

When I next opened my eyes, the redheaded
woman was half reclining next to me. She had my wrist in her hand
and was swabbing rubbing alcohol on the bite marks from a first aid
kit with a red cross on the container. “Does it hurt?” she
asked.

“A little,” I said, not wanting to wuss out
in front of her.

“Wyatt is terribly sorry for biting you. He
thought you were one those pricks at the party.”

“Yeah, sorry about that, dude. That was
totally my bad. I should have realized they were all wearing those
matchy-matchy Izod polo shirts with their logo,” Wyatt said to me
from the driver’s seat, without turning around. “I thought you were
making a run for it.”

I had no idea how to respond to a guy who
had just bitten my neck and drank blood from my arm. I’m sure my
expression said it all. It was a cross between What the hell? And
Seriously? You drank my blood?

Instead of answering, I turned back to the
redheaded girl and asked, “Where are we going?”

She looked at me with a softness that was a
complete one-eighty from what I had seen earlier, when she was
whipping dudes into submission. “We’re headed to the Flatlands.
It’s just north of Arrowhead.”

“We’re in the mountains?” I asked.

The girl nodded. “We weren’t about to stick
around and allow you and Lena to get arrested.” She grinned a
little. “We’re not complete monsters.”

Being arrested was nothing new to me. Then
again, explaining the bite marks on my wrist and neck to the police
might be hard to do. Yeah, it was probably best to get the hell out
of Dodge. Then again, getting the hell out of Dodge with these
weirdos might not have been my best choice, though. Not that I had
much of a choice.

Atticai sat pressed up against the inside of
the car door. With his long limbs bent sharply, he looked a bit
like a giant praying mantis. He had his arm around Lena. A
protective gesture. It reminded me of a father protecting his young
daughter. Anyway, Atticai was staring at me, and it was making me
feel extremely uncomfortable. I’m not used to feeling
uncomfortable. I decided I didn’t like the feeling.

He stared at me for another few seconds and
then asked, “Did you seriously beat the shit out of those five guys
before we got there?”

I thought about his question. I wasn’t sure
if the king freak would be impressed by that or threatened.
Finally, I shrugged and said, “Yeah, I did.”

“With only your hands?” he asked.

“And my feet,” I said.

Atticai nodded. “Impressive,” he said. He
was now stroking Lena’s hair, who sat impassively. I couldn’t see
if she liked his touch or not. Anyway, he seemed to treat her more
like a pet than a human being, which I found creepy as hell. He
looked back at me. “So what’s your name?”

“Josiah.”

“Well, thanks, Josiah. I’m not sure what
would have happened to Lena if you hadn’t stepped in.”

Was this guy for real? Was he truly acting
this normal?

He and his buddies just finished literally
ripping the flesh and drinking the blood of the party goers; he
just sat there, calmly petting Lena, as if she was a pet cat.
Austin Powers, he was not.

Something seriously strange and terribly
wrong was going on here. And I was trapped in the van with the
freaks from Gothville, still weak as hell from having my own blood
feasted upon.

“What are you guys?” I ventured.

The third guy spoke up. “We might ask you
the same thing. What are you?” he asked. “A superhero?” He sat in
the front passenger seat next to Wyatt. He was as thin as the
others and just as pale, but he had a Middle Eastern look to
him.

I sat up a little more, feeling some of my
strength coming back into my body. Or maybe I was just willing my
strength to come back. The redheaded girl and Atticai were still
staring at me. I guess I was just going to have to get used to
these creeps looking at me and not talking. Granted, having a
beautiful redhead staring at me was certainly not as creepy, but
not by much.

I said, “Not a superhero. I just wanted to
help Lena.” I looked over at her again. “We were acquaintances in
high school.”

Now, she glanced at me and smiled, even
while Atticai continued running his fingers through her hair. She
had a zen aura about her now that she was obviously extremely
safe.

Or maybe she’s just as freaked out as you, I
thought. But I doubted it. She knew these people. And she wasn’t
afraid.

“Well, you guys seemed to have things pretty
well under control,” I said, purposely not mentioning the part
where they also seemed to have enjoyed a late night snack. On
blood.

Seriously. I worried about when they were
going to tank up next. And on whom?

“No, really,” I said. “Who in the hell are
you guys?”

The red-headed woman wrapped a bandage
around my wrist. “My name’s Yari,” she said, taping on the bandage.
Her touch was gentle, pleasant...and oddly cold. As if her fingers
had been dipped in a bucket of chilled blood. The contradictory
nature of all of these individuals was making my brain spin.

“Yari?” I asked, trying to pronounce it
correctly. “Kind of like Tasha Yar from Star Trek? But with an
‘eee’ sound at the end?”

She smiled at me. She was incredibly
beautiful. I felt like her bright, searching eyes could see right
through me. “Yes...Yari, Y-A-R-I,” she spelled out. It rhymes with
Atari.” She smiled.

As creeped out as I was, I smiled, too.
“Wow! You made an old-school game reference. I’m impressed.”

“Oh, you have no idea how old school I am.
Way older school than your Star Trek reference would indicate that
you are.” She grinned, then flicked her gaze over to Atticai, who
was still staring at me.

“The freakishly tall scary fellow here is
Atticai.” She nodded toward the driver. “You already know Wyatt.
And in the passenger seat is Hector. Hector likes to smile a lot
and doesn’t say much.”

I nodded and tried to smile at everyone. I
guessed introductions were in order, considering I was being
kidnapped. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.