H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (94 page)

The wolf leaped on top of the statuesque man
and then he found his opening and pierced the animal right in the
chest. Then, the wolf was gone. Poof. Vanished.

In a matter of minutes, half of the wolves
had disappeared and the humans seemed to have only lost a couple of
soldiers. The remaining wolves all took off running. The
black-clothed humans all jumped up and cheered.

Who the hell were these people and why did
they feel the need to attack these animals minding their own
business in the desert?

I got back into my Mustang. I couldn’t get
over the fact that I could have sworn the humans were birds before
they fought. My mind was playing tricks on me. I was tired and had
lost a lot of blood in the last 24 hours. That had to be it. None
of this was real this was a hallucination. That had to be it. I
started my car and flicked on my lights. Right in front of me stood
two black birds. I honked at them to get out of the way. The birds
flew on top of my hood. I tried to shake them off by reversing and
getting right on the freeway. I headed down the 215 and went from
lane to lane, trying to shake the birds off my Mustang. Those
little fuckers wouldn’t fly off, even though my speed got up to 90
miles per hour.

I pulled off the freeway and went into a
Union 76 station. I opened my door and jumped out.

“Where are you going?” said a voice on top
of my hood. The birds were gone and two men were sitting on the
hood of my car. I was obviously losing my mind. I needed to get
home and get to bed. I ignored the illusion and began to walk into
the service station to buy a bottle of water.

Within seconds, both men stood before me. I
decided to just continue to walk, after all they here just a
figment of my imagination. Or so I thought. I walked right into one
of them.

“Hey, watch where you’re going,” the man
said.

Great, these fuckers were real. “Sorry, I
didn’t see you.”

“You most certainly did. You made direct eye
contact with me and you gave me and my friend a nice little ride on
the hood of your car for the last 10 miles.”

I have surely lost my mind. I was now
communicating with an imaginary person. A man walking out of the
station looked over at me. “Sir!” I yelled. The man looked up at
me. “How many people are over here?” He shook his head and
continued walking. “No, I’m being really serious, please tell
me.”

The man said, “There’s three, counting your
crazy ass.”

I nodded and knew I was fucked.

The man across from me then said, “Oh, we’re
most definitely real.”

I looked at him perplexed. How did he know
that was what I was thinking? I decided to treat this like any kind
of street fight. I needed to forget what I’d seen and get to the
bottom of what these assholes want.

“So, what do you need?” I asked

“Need?” the man laughed. He was a
light-skinned, black man that had bleached-white hair and two
hooped earrings. The other guy was about an inch or two shorter and
seemed to be this guy’s sidekick. He had black hair and very pale
skin. Both seemed in pretty good shape. “I don’t need anything,” he
continued. “I just want to know if you enjoyed our party?”

“You mean the battle of humans versus wild
animals out in the desert?”

“Humans?” the man laughed again.

“Hey, Patrick. You hear that? We’re
Tandra.”

“He obviously has no clue, Nero,” Patrick
answered.

“Huh?” I asked, surprised. “What are you
then, aliens?”

“He’s cute,” Nero said, “It’s a shame he
knows too much and we have to kill him.”

My heart sank. I had never heard that phrase
come out anyone’s mouth before in my life. Kill him.

“Look, man. I saw nothing and I know nothing
so if you have a piece, just put it away.”

“A piece? This guy is a crack-up. We don’t
need guns to kill you, silly rabbit.” He then leaped on top of me,
opening his mouth. That was when I saw two little fangs protruding
from his mouth. HOLY SHIT! I threw a left cross and caught him in
his right temple and he went flying to the left. The other guy
leaped on me and tried to bite me also with his fanged teeth. I
smacked him in the head and he slid across the pavement. As I did
so, Nero jumped on me and bit into my arm. What the fuck? What the
hell is going on with all this biting?

I got a hold on Nero and clamped down on his
neck and began choking him out. I clamped down harder than I had
ever done in my life. This would have killed anyone else. At least
I made him pass out. He gasped for air. But I cranked harder on his
neck.

Patrick then jumped on my back and tried to
bite into the back of my neck. Holy Shit! I got up still holding
Nero in my vice-grip choke hold and swung him around; his legs
belted Patrick in the face. I dropped Nero on contact and watched
as he slid across the pavement and a silver stake flew out of his
pocket. I grabbed the stake off the ground before he could get to
it. As I did so, the white-haired devil jumped on top of me,
grabbing the stake from my hand. This guy was trying to kill me
with the fucking stake! I did the only thing I could. With all I
had, I turned the stake around as we both had our hands around it
and crammed that motherfucking piece of metal into the guy’s neck.
He instantly let go of me and rolled over with his face in the
pavement.

I jumped up and looked down. He gasped for
air and rolled to his back, trying to breathe. But the stake was
all the way through his neck. His eyes locked into mine.

“You’re not a Tandra,” he said. “I should
have known.” Then poof! He was gone. He just disappeared into thin
air and I had no clue what had just transpired. The second guy was
waking up and gasping for air.

I jumped on top of him. “Who are you guys?”
I screamed in his face.

“Please don’t kill me,” he said. “I’ve only
been a Mani for a week. I don’t know what I’m doing. I didn’t ask
for this.”

“Mani? What is a Mani?”

“I’m a Mani! It’s what I’ve become.”

“Are you okay?”

“No,” he said. “I think I ruptured my
larynx.”

“Sorry about that,” I said, helping the guy
up. “Patrick? Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Patrick, you shouldn’t attack people
if you don’t want to get hurt yourself!”

He put both his hands around his neck. How
he was still alive, I didn’t know.

“What’s your name?” he coughed out.

I looked over at the empty ground where his
friend once laid. All that was left was the stake that was once
lodged in his neck. “I guess my name is Killer,” I mumbled.

“Kyro?” he asked.

“Yeah, I said. “My name is Kyro.”

Chapter Eight

I don’t know why but I trusted Patrick,
considering he had just tried to kill me. I knew in my gut he was
being real and not conning me. This poor guy had obviously gotten
caught up in something he couldn’t handle. I was still questioning
if any of this was real, but at this point, my safety was more
important than my sanity.

I helped Patrick into my car. He was pretty
jacked up, but then again, this asshole had tried to kill me. What
was I supposed to do? I shut the passenger door and went behind my
vehicle, staring at the silver stake that still laid in the middle
of the 76 station’s parking lot. I decided to pick it up. After
all, it did have my fingerprints all over it. I jumped into my
Mustang and felt as much pain as I could ever remember
experiencing. My shoulder was killing me, I’m pretty sure I had
busted out a few more stitches. And now, compliments of Nero, my
arm was killing me. I backed my Mustang out at the driveway and
headed back to the freeway.

“Where am I taking you, Patrick?” I said.
Patrick was pretty fucked up, to say the least. He was spitting up
blood all over my interior. I felt bad, but I had to keep reminding
myself, he and his friend had attacked me first. I had been minding
my own business.

That was two attacks in three nights. Not to
mention that I had a MMA fight, too. I had to admit, I was an
American Bad Ass who had clearly lost his mind.

I looked over at Patrick and this poor guy
was coughing and wheezing. He might have been choking to death. I
didn’t know what to do. If I took him to a hospital, I’d get
arrested because I was the one who kicked his ass and my
fingerprints were all over him. I needed to take him back to my
apartment. I looked at my clock. It was almost 5:00 a.m.

I had so many questions for this guy. I had
seen him become a bird, and then a man. I didn’t know if I was
hallucinating on the pain pills, but this motherfucker had, most
definitely, been a bird. If I had lost my mind, I needed to
continue to believe my hallucinations. Just like anything else,
when your mind spirals out of control, if you quit fighting it and
ride it out, you can usually figure out how to steer it in the
right direction.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I
asked.

“Don’t let me out in the sunlight. It’s
almost morning. I need to get indoors.” I think I heard him right.
Sure, why not?

Patrick grabbed my right arm with his left
hand. “Kyro,” he said. “Help me, I’m hurting real bad.”

“I know you are, dude. I’m taking you to my
place.”

“You do understand what I am right?”

I was afraid to answer.

“I’m a vampire.”

After a moment, I said, “Of course you are.”
That was when my brain went numb. I put my foot on the accelerator
and I was suddenly going 110 miles per hour on the freeway. He said
vampire, I said to myself. Of course he’s a vampire, I mumbled.
He’s also a fucking bird and some other kind of thing called a
Mani.

Patrick squeezed my arm with his left arm
and then passed out. Was he dead? I didn’t think he was, I could
see him breathing ever so slightly. Plus, the other guy had
disappeared when I killed him. Then, it dawned on me: I fucking
killed someone! A horrible dread spread through me.

I got to my apartment and helped Patrick
into my room. I laid him on my bed. I could see the sun peeking
over the horizon. How was I going to keep the sun out? Could he
really be a freaking vampire? And if he was… what the hell was I
doing nursing him back to health?

I had some cardboard boxes in my backyard
and I grabbed some nails and a hammer. I covered my bedroom window
with the cardboard and I nailed the sides in the drywall
surrounding the window. I must have put a hundred nails in that
cardboard. There does my deposit on the apartment, I thought. No
outside light was coming in, I made sure of it.

I rolled Patrick on his side and got him
some water and some ice. I wasn’t sure if I could fall asleep or
even rest. I definitely couldn’t stay here, I needed answers. I
looked in the mirror and my beard was gone. Did I shave before I
left? I had no clue about anything. I decided to go to the only
place I knew to go. After all, she did say she was a werewolf.

I jumped into my car and headed back to the
Radisson Inn over on Beach Boulevard. I parked my car and went up
the stairs and to room 202 where I had left Sasha. I knocked on the
door and there was no answer. I yelled out, “Sasha!” Nothing. I
knocked as hard as I could, and then I heard some rustling from
inside the room. In a few seconds, I heard the door unlatch. It
opened a little and I saw Sasha. Her hair was soaked. She must have
just taken a shower.

“Hey there,” I said. “Can I come in?”

Sasha stared blankly at me. “The room isn’t
exactly the same as you remember it.”

“Just let me in,” I persisted.

Sasha opened the door, and I could tell
right away something wasn’t right in the room. It looked like a
tornado of wild animals had come through it. There were claw marks
everywhere. The door looked like a million cats had gotten to it.
Cats with huge paws and claws.

“What the hell happened in here?” I asked,
surprised beyond words. Sasha didn’t say anything. I continued to
look around the room; the bed was turned over and shredded, the TV
was on the floor, both lamps were busted in the middle of the
floor. It even looked like something had gnawed on all of the
cords.

I repeated my question and this time I
wasn’t playing around. “What the fuck happened, Sasha? I used my
fucking credit card! They are going to make me pay for all this.
There’s at least ten thousand dollars’ worth of damage in
here.”

Finally Sasha whispered softly, “I told you,
Tommy. You didn’t believe me.”

I shook my head in disbelief. I sat on the
shredded mattress and just stared at the room in absolute horror. I
think this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, I was now
finally about to have a nervous breakdown.

I just closed my eyes and calmly said, “So,
you’re really a werewolf.”

“I told you, look at this place. Do you
think in my wildest dreams I could had done this? Look at the door.
It would take me years to do that to a door as a woman.”

“But you did do it,” I said, even more calm.
“You did it as a werewolf.”

“What else would explain it?”

I truly had no clue what could explain this
sight. When I came over here to talk about the vampire asleep in my
bed, the last thing I could’ve imagined was that I’d be sitting in
the middle of downtown Nightmare Alley. I continued to look around
the room and I thought about all the crazy shit that had been
happening. Now everything was coming together. In a bizarre,
crazy-ass way, this was all starting to make sense.

“We need to get you out of here. We need to
tell management that we left, and when we got back, the room looked
like this. There is no way in hell they have ever seen anything
like this. They will have to believe some kind of coyote got in
here—a whole gang of them.”

“Let’s get out of here.” Sasha grabbed her
purse that, ironically, that had nothing wrong with it.