H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (9 page)

“That’s too bad.”

“So, where are you headed? You look as if
you’re dressed to go to a party.”

“That’s why I’m here. I’m heading over to a
party in Victorville. I was thinking you might want to come.”

“You drove all the way out here to see if I
wanted to come to a party?”

“Well, I didn’t have your number, did
I?”

“How did you get here? There are no cars
outside.”

“Some friends dropped me off.”

“And what if I wasn’t home?”

“Then I was going to call my friends to come
back and get me. Your light was on so I told them to take off.
What’s up with the third degree?”

“There is no third degree. I’m just
flattered, I guess.”

“You should be. If you haven’t noticed, I
look smoking hot right now. I don’t know how often a hot woman
comes to your door and asks you to escort her to a party.”

“That happens like...never,” I said.

“Then do you want to scratch your pathetic
dinner plans and come with me?”

I grinned. “Sure, let me grab a jacket.”

I went to the closet and did just that. When
I returned, Yari was staring at me with a big smile.

“What?” I asked.

“You look good, Josiah. Real good. I just
might want a taste before we go.” Yari leaned into me and kissed my
lips. I kissed her back. I had a lot of pent-up energy considering
that I subscribe to the no-jacking-off rule before a fight. Or a
date, for that matter.

Her lips felt soft and tender. She was such
an incredible kisser. I pressed her up against my wall in my
hallway and turned her body around. Her dress felt unbelievable. It
was silky and soft. I placed my hands around her body and onto her
thighs. Her perfectly-shaped buttocks pressed against my groin. I
kissed her neck and slid my hands up the front of her body until
both my hands were cupping her breasts. She turned her head and
kissed me. Her tongue was soft and wet. Her pheromones were flying
off the chart, up my nose. She smelled incredible, and even her
saliva smelled refreshing.

“In my entire life,” I said, “no one has
ever turned me on the way you do.”

Yari stopped and looked at me with a
tenderness I had not seen from her before. “That’s good,” she said.
“We should get going.”

Then she walked to my door and outside my
house. I was left there, turned on, but at least I did have a place
to go with that pent-up power.

Chapter Twelve

I drove us to Victorville in about a half an
hour. Victorville is one of those little desert cities along
Highway 15 that people pass on their way to Las Vegas. The city is
in the high desert. It still has an old-fashioned feel to it. It
was a place where a young Clint Eastwood might squint and settle a
score, in exactly that order. Him and me both.

Anyway, the party was another thirty minutes
off the highway, and when we finally arrived at the house, I pulled
into a long, narrow driveway. I noticed there weren’t many cars out
front. I also noticed a lot of black birds flying around outside.
They appeared to be the same birds that had been hovering around
Flatlands. I looked up through the windshield at the house in front
of us. It was, as Tommy would say, ginormous. It had a stately feel
to it and seemed better suited for a governor or senator, ,not a
place you would expect to be in the heart of Victorville.

“Am I going to know anyone at this party?” I
asked Yari.

“Atticai and Lena should be here, along with
Wyatt and the others.” Yari looked down at my wrist. “Your wrist
seems to be healing.”

“Yeah, the teeth marks look more like I got
branded than bitten.”

“You know that Wyatt feels bad about
that.”

“I bet he does. I still have no clue why a
grown man would want to bite me.”

“You can ask him, yourself.” Yari motioned
to my rear view mirror. Sure enough, the infamous black van pulled
up behind my truck.

I opened my door and got out.

Atticai stepped out of the van’s side door
with his held high as if he was royalty. He turned and saw me, but
gave no indication of recognizing me. His face looked paler than
before. Lena came out after him. She saw me and ran over to me.

“Hey, you!” she said to me.

“Hey yourself,” I replied.

“What? Are you too good for me?” she asked,
putting both hands on her curvy hips.

“Why you say that?”

“Ever hear of returning a call?”

I looked at Atticai. I wanted to see if he
would be annoyed that his girlfriend was calling me on the
telephone. Again, he had zero expression on his face. He just
continued walking up to the house.

“Oh, sorry. I’ve been training hard for my
next fight and turned my phone off. You know, to cut down on the
distractions.” I winced at the moment that last sentence left my
mouth. Yari whistled next to me.

“Well, it’s good to know that I’m only a
distraction.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I’m just busting your balls. I know you’re
busy. I was just wondering what happened to you. I guess I now know
why. You look as if you’ve lost some weight. Damn, boy, you look
skinny!” Lena leaned in to pinch my stomach, but Yari promptly
blocked her hand with her own hand.

“You don’t have to touch,” Yari snapped at
Lena.

“Wow, Yari. Down, girl. I was just playing
around.”

“Nobody has time for your games,” Yari
responded.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had already
marked him.”

“I haven’t marked anybody. Why don’t you go
find Atticai and you can play your games with him?”

“Fine, I’m going to go inside.” Lena looked
at me sadly and walked off.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said to
Yari. “She was just fooling around.”

“Look, you two can play grab ass all you
want. I’m going inside, too.” Yari stormed off, and I was left
alone with the guy who had enjoyed my wrist as a snack, just a
couple of weeks earlier.

“Chicks, dude.” Wyatt laughed. “I have no
clue what any of that was about.”

“You’re telling me,” I said.

We shook our heads some more in one of the
strangest moments of male bonding I’ve ever had, and then he showed
me into the house. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but I know I
wasn’t expecting this. Except for a few dozen flickering votive
candles, the whole house was entirely dark. I stopped in the foyer,
but Wyatt urged me along. Deeper in the house I saw that there were
candles placed just about everywhere, in every room and on every
table. The candles provided just enough light so that I didn’t run
into furniture, but not enough to make me feel anywhere near to the
concept of comfortable.

What the hell was going on?

As I walked through the small party, I
noticed a lot of couples making out. I had been to a lot of parties
in my life but never one like this. It reminded me of a junior high
make-out party. Well, everything but the insane candles. If I saw
one Ouija board, I would be outta here.

Anyway, I made my way to the kitchen since I
was starving. There was no food anywhere. Just tons of alcohol. I
needed to eat something ASAP.

I opened the refrigerator, and I hit the
jackpot. Chicken wings. A whole plate of them. I looked around to
make sure I wasn’t snagging someone else’s food. Well, I was, but
they didn’t have to know about it. I grabbed eight wings and sat at
the table, near a stack of napkins and cups. I put the sticky wings
on a napkin and poured myself some of what appeared to be straight
tequila.

I took my time with the wings, enjoying each
bite. When I polished off the last knobby bite, I quickly downed
the two or three shots of tequila I had poured. I blew out of my
mouth, the second the alcohol went down my throat. I learned that
trick a couple years back. Somehow, blowing out of your mouth and
not inhaling through your nose helps with the harsh aftertaste.

Almost immediately, the tequila seemed to be
doing its job. I had a decent size buzz going. I felt a little more
relaxed, considering I was in a house of full of self-proclaimed
spooks. I decided to look for Yari, and see if she would be in a
better mood. First, I looked around downstairs and ignored the
folks sucking each other’s faces, but she wasn’t in the house.

I peeked in the backyard but no luck. No
Yari. I went back inside and still felt buzzed, then headed
upstairs. The second floor was almost entirely dark, and all of the
doors were shut. All of them, except one. I had just decided to
check it out when a drunk, pale-skinned, bald guy walked out of the
open door and straight over to me. Amazingly, he leaned over me and
sniffed me.

Yeah, sniffed me.

As he did so, he made noises that sounded
disturbingly like lip-smacking. The same noises I had made just
five minutes earlier when I had come across the chicken wings in
the fridge. He continued on, stumbling his way downstairs. I half
expected to hear him pitch forward and tumble all the way down.
Somehow, amazingly, he made it without busting his ass.

Just then, Yari walked out of the same room
the drunk guy had been in. “You don’t want to be up here, Josiah.
Let’s go downstairs.”

“No problem. I was looking for—”

But she grabbed my forearm and steered me
back down the stairs. As she did so, I couldn’t help but notice the
woman’s grip. Sweet Jesus, she was strong. Once back down the
stairs, I heard a squawk and saw two gigantic black birds flying in
the house. I nearly dove for cover, but someone calmly opened the
rear sliding glass door and the birds flew out of the house. Not a
single person called attention to them or seemed to care that two
big birds had been in the house. I looked around to get a reaction
from somebody. Nothing.

What the hell was going on here?

Yari led me to one of the downstairs
bedrooms. “Let’s go in here,” she said. She then opened the door.
The room was lit by a couple of candles in the window still, and
there was a mattress with a comforter on the floor. She reclined on
the mattress, as I stood there looking at her, dumbstruck. I was
still trying to wrap my brain around everything I had just seen,
from the candles, to the secret upstairs bedroom, to the damn
birds. And now, Yari was leading me to a bed. It seemed like we had
skipped a few steps on the way to bed.

One weird thing at a time, I thought.

Yari’s eyes were bright and expressive, as
if she was amped up on something. So, I started with the obvious
question, even though I suspected I already knew the answer. “So,
what was going on up there? Drugs?”

“No one was doing drugs, Josiah, but trust
me when I tell you that ‘people’ were having a good time.” She
stared at me long and hard, and I wondered if she was one of those
having a good time.

A good time doing what?

I asked her, “Is this like, one of those sex
parties or something? Or maybe is it one of those candle parties,
the kind with the MLM recruitment to be a hostess and sell them
yourself?”

She chuckled softly. “Why don’t you lie down
next to me?” she asked.

“Look, if what you wanted is to fool around,
then we didn’t have to come to the world’s freakiest party to do
it. We could have just stayed at my house. If you want to fool
around, I like my own turf better.”

“World’s freakiest party?” Yari then smiled
really big. “Are you scared of these people?” Yari rubbed my leg
and was trying to get a rise out of me.

Which kind of rise? I wasn’t exactly sure. I
think she was succeeding at both kinds.

“I’m not scared. It takes more than a few
pale-faced dudes and a house that seems to have zero electricity to
scare me.”

“Oh, this house has electricity.” Yari took
her other hand and rubbed it on my upper thigh near the goods. I
drew in a slow breath, trying to think of unsexy activities: raking
leaves, delivering newspapers, eating Kraft macaroni and cheese.
Nope, none of that was working while she traced her slender fingers
across my denim-clad legs. I chastised myself: No sex during
training!

Yari was holding a silver flask. She reached
up and grabbed a shot glass from the dresser next to her. “This
looks clean.” She giggled and poured some red alcohol into the shot
glass. She handed me the shot glass. “Try it, Josiah. You’ll love
it.”

“Thanks, but I had some tequila; I’m feeling
good.”

“Trust me, this isn’t tequila.”

“I don’t want to get wasted. I have to train
tomorrow.”

“Josiah, you’ve been training hard these
days. Tonight, let’s have a little fun.” She got up from the
mattress and slipped behind me. I was wondering what she was doing
until she put her left hand around my waist. She then reached
around with her right hand and held up the shot glass full of red
liquor.

I puckered my lips and turned my head away.
“I said I don’t want any!”

Yari kissed my neck. I froze. She hit the
right spot. “Try it...for me...please. You know I would never hurt
you.”

I smiled at Yari and said, “I don’t know
that to be true.”

“You need to trust me.” Yari slid her hand
down and grabbed my inner thigh. “Please, Josiah, just one
sip.”

I continued to resist the drink. And the
more I resisted, the higher Yari’s hand rose up my thigh, massaging
as she went. I let out a long, shuddering breath. Honestly, what
guy could have resisted her? I clearly wasn’t strong enough. And
besides, it was just something to drink, right? If these Goth nut
jobs were going to poison me, they would have done it out on the
Flatlands, when I drank that weird shit.

I said, “You promise you’re not trying to
kill me?”

Yari leaned even closer and whispered real
softly in my right ear. “I just want you to loosen up, so we can
have some fun.”

Then she thoroughly grabbed my expanding
goods, my package snugger than snug in my jeans. I gasped, all the
breath leaving my lungs. She continued to massage me, not without
considerable skill, I noticed. She knew her way around the goods. I
was excited, to say the least. Then she lifted the flask to my
helpless lips and gently poured the drink down my throat. It was
thick and sweet. It didn’t taste anything like alcohol.