H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (57 page)

Goshi said, “Guidance counselor?”

“Huh?” I said.

“I don’t know, how about mentor?”

“This is my mentor!” I yelled to the
crowd.

Everyone cheered in a drunken fury.

“You want a drink?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, Josiah, this meeting isn’t of
the hospitality nature.”

“Oh, it’s not?”

“It’s time,” he said.

“Right now?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You want to do my final training at this
moment?”

“Yes.”

“Right here in the front yard?” I asked.

“No, there’s a place near here that I have
been told about. We should go there,” Goshi said.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked.

“You all refer to it as Flatlands.”

“You want to go to the Flatlands? You’ve
heard of that place?”

“Yes. I think that would be an appropriate
place for our final training.”

I turned and faced the party. “Listen up,
everyone! I’m going to need to leave the party!”

“Josiah, wait!” Goshi interrupted me.

“Yeah?”

“Let everyone come! Let’s have everyone see
your final training session. Let’s have everyone witness you
becoming all that is in you. You should share this last part of
your journey with all your friends.”

“Okay,” I said. “Hey everyone!” I yelled.
“We’re moving the party to Flatlands.”

Everyone cheered, mainly because most of
them were very drunk and would have cheered anything I would have
yelled out.

I said, “Every one of us has been drinking.
Nobody here wants a DUI. Instead of driving, we better just
fly.”

Chapter Twenty

A sea of drunken ravens and hawks made their
way to the Flatlands. Hector, Wyatt, Cyrus and myself all
transitioned and dug our claws into Tommy’s clothes and air lifted
him to Flatlands like air cargo. Under any other circumstance, I
wouldn’t have allowed such a bold visual to take place over the San
Bernardino Mountains, but I needed to make an exception on this
one.

Everyone had made their way up to the
Flatland parking lot. We let Tommy go from a few feet up and he
landed safely. Tommy looked over at me as I transitioned and said,
“Talk about sobering your ass up!”

“Did you lose your buzz?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said. “I think I lost it for
the rest of my life. I have officially been scared sober.”

Soon all the Mani that were at the party had
arrived. Everyone had transitioned and we all stood on one side of
the Flatlands facing Goshi. Goshi made his way out to the middle of
the group and said, “Meet me out here, Josiah.”

I walked out to where he was standing. I
turned and faced the Mani crowd. There was now over 150 Mani
watching this take place. These were my people. This was my crew. I
felt like it was graduation, but this wasn’t a graduation, it was
my final test and I needed to be on my game. I looked at Goshi and
asked, “So, what exactly are we going to be doing?”

“You and I are going to...” I stopped Goshi
from speaking as a red hawk made her way down and landed near the
back of the group. I watched as the hawk transitioned. It was
Lena.

“Hold on, Goshi!” I made my way over to
Lena. She seemed nervous and apprehensive.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“Please don’t embarrass me, Josiah,” she
said.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, please don’t let me interfere with
what you guys are doing,” Lena said.

I reached out my hand and took hers. She
took my hand and warmly smiled at me. “Please Josiah, do what you
need to do. You need to focus. Please go back out there.”

I nodded my head and looked back at Goshi.
He seemed particularly interested in Lena, but then turned his
focus back to me.

“Come back to me, Josiah,” Goshi announced.
I turned around and walked back over to him. “Like I was saying,”
Goshi said to me. “You and I are going to battle.”

“Battle?” I asked.

“Yes,” Goshi answered.

“That’s it? We’re just going to spar?”

“Not spar. Fight.”

“Fight?” I asked. “To what degree?”

“We are going to fight to the death.”

“What?” I asked, flabbergasted.

“You and I, Josiah, will battle one another
till one of us kills the other one.”

“You can’t be serious?”

“I have never been more serious in my entire
life.”

“I don’t want to kill you,” I said. I looked
at the group of Mani and they all seemed just as shocked as I
was.

“You need to attack me and try to kill me!”
Goshi said, loudly to me. “You need to separate who I am and what I
mean to you. For the next few minutes, I will be your enemy and you
will need to try to finish me. And whatever happens to either of us
will be in the Triat’s will.”

“To either of us? Are you going to try to
kill me?” I asked.

“Yes. I will be trying to kill you, too.”
With that, Goshi flew into me and kicked me in the face. I
somersaulted backwards onto the hard rocks, tucking my jewels away
from that sadistic blue guy with all of the painful surprises.

Damn that fucking hurt!

From my back, I threw my body forward and
stood up. I shook off Goshi’s kick.

Like it or not, this shit was on!

I got into my warrior stance where I could
fly, fall, go left or right in a blink of an eye. Goshi came at me
again striking me in the face with a haymaker punch.

What the hell happened about not attacking
an opponent first without warning?

He threw a rapid-fire, five-punch
combination, and as he did so, I leaned back and focused on my
task. I looked at Goshi and I knew what I had to do. This was where
my brain goes into Good Will Hunting mode, where everything happens
in slow motion. Each punch came at me and I easily deflected his
little hands off me with my arms. The last deflection I was able to
catch his momentum and threw him to the ground by pulling his arm
forward.

He got up and I came at him returning an
eight-punch combination of my own, with the last punch hitting him
so hard that he flew ten feet in the air.

Damn, I had gotten strong!

Goshi hurtled through the air and got
control of his body before he hit the ground and was able to land
on his feet.

Okay, that was a sweet recovery.

He made a motion for me to strike him. I
shook my head remembering the first rule he had taught me. If I was
to attack him, I had to play by his ethics. I didn’t think his
ethics would be that bad, but I was considering this whole match as
a test and I wanted to show that I had taken everything he said to
heart.

We circled each other and got closer and
closer to each other’s space. There was a difference between
striking your opponent first when you’re squared up the way we
were. Your opponent has an equal chance to strike you, and I knew I
was well inside the honor code for attacking him first. “Okay,
Goshi,” I said. “This is where I earn my stripes.”

I swept his legs with a sweep of the leg. I
tripped him up and he lost his balance. I flew up over his 3 foot
body and grabbed him from behind and tackled him to the ground.

I had my hands wrapped around his neck. His
body felt strong even though he was tiny. I pressed my fingers deep
into his neck and he gasped for air and dropped to his knees. I had
him where I wanted him, but I didn’t want to kill him. I could feel
him weaken and it was breaking my heart. I wasn’t sure what it
would take to kill someone so small. I really didn’t want to kill
him. He was my friend. I couldn’t do it and I let him go and pushed
him to the ground. He slid backwards into the rocks.

“Get up!” I said.

“You need to kill me, Josiah,” he said,
trying his best to breathe.

“I can’t do it, Goshi. Please don’t make
me,” I said, pleading with him. “It’s wrong. It can’t be the will
of the Triat for a student to kill his beloved teacher.”

“You need to kill me, Josiah. If you don’t,
I promise you, I will kill you first.” Then once again he flew at
me and kicked me in the stomach.

Damn, that hurt! He knocked the wind out of
me. I hunched over trying to catch my breath and the little fucker
grabbed me by my neck.

Holy shit, he was strong!

He was digging his hands deep into my Adam’s
apple. I couldn’t allow this to happen. I flew up into the air
while he was still choking me. We were now 30 feet up in the air
and he still had his little hands around my neck trying to choke me
out. I began to feel dizzy, and I needed to do something fast. I
started throwing punches at him and landing them all over his face.
I must have thrown 30 punches in a row, and finally, he let go of
my neck. We both fell to the earth and I landed on top of him and
landed on his back.

“Kill me, Josiah,” he said, coughing up
blood.

“No! I don’t like this. It smacks of
suicide. Even of a dark side. As the Chosen One, I will not take a
life like this. It is utterly wrong that you want me to take it. It
goes against everything we are as Mani. To preserve ourselves and
our culture, our heritage, our future. Stop this madness,” I said,
holding him tight but not killing him.

“Kill me! Now!” he insisted. And then he
mustered up enough strength to kick me in the balls. Again!

I looked down at this persistent little shit
who was the specialist in ball torture. I just snapped. Yes, that’s
right. The Chosen One…fell from grace. And a ball kick is all it
took.

Dammit Goshi! Why does it have to be this
way? A rage surged up from my poor maligned tender parts. I wrapped
my hands around his neck. I pressed my fingers as hard as I could.
I felt his life leaving his body as I continued to tighten up my
grip. “Throw me like a silver stake,” I yelled to the group.

“Here!” Rubidoux tossed me a stake. Goshi
had barely any life left in him. I turned his body over because I
didn’t want to see his face as I took his life from him.

I picked up the stake and started pressing
it into his tiny neck. As the stake hit his skin, something started
happening, something far beyond my wildest dreams.

Goshi began changing form. First his
coloration left his entire body and he was as pale as a ghost. Then
his body began to expand and elongate.

“What are you?” I shouted. “What. Are.
You?”

He was getting bigger and larger. Dark black
hair protruded out of his scalp. As Goshi grew, I could feel the
power grow from inside his body. What the hell was happening! I
jumped off of him and took a step back. He was now seven feet in
length and he was still lying on the ground facing the rocks.

Then I heard laughter. Cruel, maniacal
laughter that rippled the force of who I was, inside and out. “Oh,
Josiah, this was too easy.” He looked up at me and I saw who it
was.

It was Atticai! Goshi had been Atticai all
along!

Atticai was wearing the exact same outfit he
was wearing the night I killed him. He was wearing a long, black
trench coat with black pants and boots. He stood up and scanned the
crowd. Everyone, including myself looked on in disbelief. “What’s
the matter, my Mani friends? Are you not happy to see me?” Atticai
yelled, at the top of his lungs.

“I don’t understand. I killed you,” I
said.

“I didn’t fully understand myself, Josiah.
But after you killed me, I woke up in a little blue body form. It
took a couple of weeks for me to figure out what my destiny was.
Through visions and dreams I figured out what I was supposed to do.
I was to find you and train you. I was to give you all of the
knowledge I had obtained over the last few hundred years. I knew if
I did that for you, the Triat would give me a second chance. Yet
another life of some sort.”

I looked at Atticai and I wasn’t sure what
his intentions were now. Did he train me just to come back and kill
me? I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. All I
could say was, “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do this for you, you pompous
child!” Atticai said to me. “I did this to gain my life back. To be
the Mani I once was.”

I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was
so confused. I loved Goshi, but he had never truly existed. It was
all a lie. It was always Atticai. Atticai wrapped in a blue skin
was still Atticai.

I looked out into the crowd and saw Lena and
she looked absolutely horrified at the sight of Atticai. If
anything was about to go down, my only concern was to protect
her.

“Fuck this bullshit!” Tommy yelled out from
the crowd and made his way over to where Atticai and I were
standing. He walked right up and got into Atticai’s face.

“Tommy! Go sit down!” I yelled. “This
doesn’t concern you.”

Tommy turned to me and said, “This doesn’t
concern me? Are you kidding? This guy fought me at full strength
and nearly killed me! He didn’t have the balls to wait for me to be
a werewolf.”

Tommy turned and faced Atticai again.
Atticai wouldn’t even give Tommy the respect of looking at him in
the face. “Josiah, please control your dog.”

“Tommy, you needed to go back with the
others. This situation is bigger than that.”

“Bigger than my life?” Tommy yelled. “He
left me for dead!”

“Actually I just made my point and your
savage friends were the ones who left you for dead.” Atticai said,
smugly.

“Fuck you, you piece of shit.”

“Must we associate with this uncivilized
animal,” Atticai said to me.

Then, I saw something that chilled me to my
very bones. Tommy’s eyes went yellow.

Shit! He was transitioning to the werewolf!
This was all I need right now!

Tommy transitioned into his mighty grey
werewolf form and leaped to Atticai. He looked bigger and more
ferocious than I remembered. Tommy tackled Atticai onto the rocks.
Atticai threw Tommy’s werewolf body off of him, with a swipe of his
arm. Tommy turned and leaped back on top of him pinning Atticai to
the ground. Atticai kicked Tommy off his body by drilling him in
the stomach.