H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (93 page)

Sasha looked at me and with a wishful tone
in her voice said, “I wish you believed me.”

“So do I,” I said. “It would at least
explain your erratic behavior.” I turned around and walked down to
my car and didn’t look back. I got into my Mustang and headed onto
the freeway and got to my apartment in about 20 minutes. I went
straight to my bed and crashed. I looked over at my clock, it read
10:15. Maybe I can get four hours in.

I closed my eyes and I had a bizarre itch
come over my body. I scratched all over and each scratch felt a bit
euphoric. I was sure satisfying the itch in a way that was almost
therapeutic.

I rolled over and protected my shoulder and
fell asleep almost instantly. I woke up about one hour later.
Someone’s car alarm was going off outside. What an asshole! Turn it
off!

I got up and went outside to yell at the
jerk. I could hear the alarm and it was loud as ever. I began
walking down the street, trying to find the car alarm. The closer I
got to where the sound was coming from the more my ears felt like
they were bleeding.

I must have walked a half mile down the
street. How fucking loud was the asshole’s alarm? Finally, I got
into mini mall parking lot and there was a little yellow Volkswagen
bug alarm just screeching away.

There were people outside and I was shocked
they weren’t floored by the noise like I was. This was the loudest
alarm I had ever heard. It sounded like ten sirens going off at the
same time. There was a guy walking toward me and he seemed pretty
unaffected by the noisy alarm.

“WHY ISN’T ANYONE TELLING THAT GUY TO TURN
OFF HIS ALARM!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

The guy mouthed “Why are you screaming? It’s
just a car alarm. It’s no big deal.”

“JUST A CAR ALARM?!!” I screamed even
louder. “IT COULD WAKE THE DEAD!”

“No, asshole, your voice can wake the dead.
Get a grip, will you?” The guy walked past me and got into his
car.

Huh? I looked over at another man calmly
walking out of a bagel shop, pressing his keys that stopped the
blaring obnoxious alarm. His alarm stopped and I could finally hear
again. My ears were literally stinging. Damn, that was loud!

The guy got into his little yellow bug and
left. I looked around; there must have been a dozen people outside
and not one of them cared. That alarm was so loud it woke me from a
mile away. A mile?

I turned around and went home. Well, so much
for sleep. I had a fight tonight, and Mo wanted me there by 4:00
p.m. Los Angeles was about an hour away on a Saturday, so I thought
that I better just get ready. I could sleep when I was dead. Which,
at this rate, wouldn’t be much longer.

I put my fight bag together and then took a
long shower. I thought about my opponent and how Mo trained and
prepared me for my fight. I needed to quit worrying about one-night
stands and car alarms.

I wrapped my shoulder good and tight, so
that no one would know that I was butchered the night before. I
would need to let them know I was wearing the bandage as a
precautionary measure. A lie. I hated lies.

I got to the arena and I met with Mo in the
training room. We were the first one up, so, I needed to get my
head on straight. I told Mo I slept on my shoulder wrong and that’s
why I bandaged it up. He wanted to look at it, but I told him it
wasn’t a big deal. Little did he know how bad my shoulder ached and
that I had 45 stitches in it.

My opponent was exactly my size, but I was
younger and quicker. My ground game was one of the best in the
business. Mo and I went over a few key points and soon it was time
for my second professional fight.

Chapter Seven

I stepped out into the ring for a
professional fight with a veteran fighter and could only use the
left side of my upper body. The only strategy I had, considering
the condition I was in, was to break him down and get him to the
mat so that I could do a submission move. I was in for a painful
night.

After the opening announcements, I went back
to my corner and Mo was outside the cage yelling instructions.
“Just like we ran it in practice Tommy, you got this.” Little did
Mo know what I was truly dealing with.

Round one. I rushed out and Vasquez circled
me. He knew he didn’t want me to shoot into his legs and have our
fight on the ground.

I threw a left. He blocked it easily. I
telegraphed it too much. Vasquez came into me and we began to
pummel our arms, trying to gain control. I locked my arms around
his head and shot underneath his legs with my left arm and got him
in a fireman’s carry. There was a problem with that move; I was
forced to use my right shoulder. Crap, the pain was intense! The
pain only made me angrier. I slammed Vasquez to the floor of the
ring and took control. I shifted my weight, trying to get my legs
inside his legs. Vasquez was face down on the mat and I was riding
him like a cowboy on a bull. Except, I had this bull under control!
I dropped a series of elbows with my left arm.

“Use your right arm!” Mo yelled at me.

I was waiting for just the right moment
where his neck would be left open so I could sink my arm in for a
choke submission.

He was guarding it beautifully, and it was
impossible for me to get my arm through. So, I continued to hammer
down my left arm on the back of his head and neck.

I went into complete spastic mode. I
unloaded 10-12 consecutive punches and elbows and I could see
Vasquez weakening.

Just give me an opening, I thought. I’ll
choke you out and then we can all go home. Then it happened—he used
his arm to try to get position by placing them on the mat. And for
a brief second, his neck was exposed and that’s all I needed. I got
my left arm underneath his Adam’s apple in a blink of an eye. I
yanked up and tightened it with my right arm which gave me an
immense amount of pain.

He shifted his body, trying to get out. He
was a veteran and he wouldn’t tap out lightly. He fought me off for
a good 20 seconds, and then I saw the most beautiful thing in
sports: my opponent tapped out. That only meant one thing. He gave
up and threw in the white flag. I had my second first-round
knockout.

I jumped up and I looked at my shoulder and
I was bleeding through my shoulder wrap. I had torn out a number of
my stitches. But it was worth it, I was still undefeated. Granted,
I was only 2 and 0, but I’d take it.

Mo came into the ring and he hugged me and
looked at my face. “I didn’t notice you were sporting a beard
before.”

Huh? I never grew facial hair in my life. I
had an easy routine where I shaved in the shower each day. That was
an odd thing to say. I felt my face and felt stubble and hair. What
the hell? I shaved before I came down here. That was odd.

The announcer said I was the winner by
knockout and the referee raised my right arm and I nearly passed
out from the pain.

I showered up after the fight and the arena
doctor re-stitched my arm and warned me to never fight again
without coming clean about an injury. He told me that would be my
ticket out of MMA because I put the company in jeopardy with the
state by fighting while injured. He told me that luckily, I was
still ‘a nobody’ so it wouldn’t make ESPN. It was nice to be
considered ‘a nobody’ by his own organization after my two
consecutive first-round knockouts.

I headed out to the parking lot by myself. I
looked up in the sky and saw the full moon as huge as I had ever
seen it. I stopped in my tracks and just stared at it. It was
weird. I had never gazed at a full moon or any kind of moon for
that matter. But for some reason, this particular moon on this
particular night was almost giving me a religious experience. I
felt this intense feeling and it was all directed at this moon that
I was staring at in the middle of the Staples arena parking
lot.

I got into my vehicle and drove home alone
which seemed a bit sad, considering the night I’d just had. I
didn’t have many friends and that was just the way it was. I didn’t
party or celebrate that much. I was exhausted and I wanted to go
home for a long winter’s nap. If I properly set the mood in my
bedroom, I had a good 14 hours of sleep ahead of me.

When I got to my apartment, I checked on my
stitches that were redone by the fight doctor. I knew I was going
to be out of commission for a while. This sucked, but that’s what I
got for getting involved with a girl who was trouble.

I got in my room, put on my favorite musical
soundtrack, Les Miserables, London, on my CD player and went right
to bed.

I laid still, listening to the greatest
musical score of all time and tried to nod off. But I couldn’t fall
asleep. I felt hot and itchy and it seemed like I could hear every
single car on the freeway passing by, every car door shutting and
every dog barking. It was starting to drive me nuts. One hour
became two hours, and two hours became three hours. I had to face
it, I couldn’t sleep.

I needed to do something that would tire me
out. You would think after fighting an MMA match with one of the
toughest motherfuckers in the world at my weight and with a bum
shoulder, that would be enough to send me to sleepyland. But that
wasn’t the case tonight. I needed a sleeping pill or some NyQuil. I
decided to find a 24-hour drugstore. I also felt weary and I
couldn’t quite make out what was wrong with me.

I began sweating profusely as I went out to
my car. I got into my car and just sat there, staring at the full
moon. What was it about this damn moon that seemed to be the only
thing to make me feel right?

I looked at the spider-web crack in front of
my windshield and it made me even more nauseous. I decided to head
out. As I drove my body felt as hot as it has ever been. It was
like I was having a fever and breaking one in the same moment. Then
the weirdest thing happened: I didn’t feel like driving to the
convenience store. I passed it and got on the freeway. Why? I had
no idea. I felt sick and gross and the more I drove toward the moon
it seemed to settle me down and made me feel better. I followed the
moon all the way down to San Bernardino. Why? I had no idea. I took
the 91 freeway east and went on the 15 to Bakersfield. Where was I
going? I passed a couple more freeways and could tell I was heading
in the direction of the San Bernardino Mountains. I didn’t know
what possessed me to pull over to the side of the road, but I
did.

The moon lit up the sky like a chandelier. I
stepped out of my Mustang and made my way to the right, where there
was nothing but desert for miles.

I could hear growling and snarling in the
distance. What the hell was that? What could be out here in the
middle of nowhere? I had a pair of binoculars in my glove
compartment. I got them, got out and stood on my hood in about the
same place where that asshole had put a dent into it the other
night. I looked through the binoculars in the direction of the
snarls and moans. I looked on and what I saw nearly made me pee my
pants. I saw about a half a dozen bonfires, and surrounding the
bonfires were the biggest wolves I had ever seen. I kept watching,
trying to figure out what the hell I was looking at. There were
black ones, white ones, brown ones and others that seemed to be
calico-colored. They were all 6 to 7 feet in length. Some were
howling and others were wrestling and growling.

How did they find the bonfires? Did these
beasts kill the humans who left the fires?

From above I heard a horrid sound—the sound
of a thousand birds screeching across the sky. I looked up and I
could barely make out what appeared to be a huge flock of black
ravens circling the wolves below.

I looked on as if I was watching the most
bizarre episode of Animal Planet ever aired. All the birds landed
about 500 feet away from the wolves. Only sand and tumbleweeds
separated the birds from the beasts.

Then I saw something that made me feel I had
fallen asleep and was now dreaming. The birds seemed to be
transforming into human beings. The hundreds of black birds became
an army of humans. They were all dressed in black clothing and made
up of all races. There was an exceptionally tall one that seemed to
be the leader. I zoomed in and this guy looked eight feet tall and
from this distance, he looked like the guy in that Crow movie.

What the hell was I watching? I pinched my
arm, and my shoulder moved, so I knew I was wide awake. Then I saw
something that looked like a scene out of Braveheart. The hundreds
of men charged the wolves.

The wolves caught a glimpse of these crazed
people and charged at them also. It looked like a battlefield scene
from every gladiator movie ever shown on the silver screen. The
only difference was that it was humans versus wolves. I noticed
that all the humans seemed to be holding silver spears in their
hands. They were shorter than spears; they were the size of daggers
or stakes.

What I saw next nearly made me get in my car
and pray to God. As the humans and wolves battled, the wolves were
biting into the necks of these guys and the humans were piercing
the wolves in their hearts with their silver weapons. Then what I
saw made me clearly think I had lost my mind. As each wolf and each
human apparently died—they just disappeared into thin air. As I
looked on, I noticed that they weren’t all men fighting the wolves.
In fact, there was a red-headed woman doing a lot of damage. She
literally walked to injured wolf after wolf, stabbing them in their
hearts to finish them off. She was merciless about it, too. No
expression on her face, at all.

There was an exceptionally large wolf that
was fighting the eight foot, bean-pole giant. They were having an
epic battle. It reminded me of a MMA match. The tall motherfucker
wouldn’t allow the beast to get a hold of him. The beast would claw
and grab at him. The tall man did a series of kicks and punches to
keep the wolf at bay. He still had the silver stake in his hand. I
could tell he was waiting for an opening.