by H. T. Night
“Girls, get in the car!” I said.
“Fuck no,” Sasha said. “These guys don’t scare me.”
“Maya, get in the car,” I repeated. Maya looked at me, scared, and it broke my heart. I never wanted to see her ever give me a look like that. Maya jumped in my car and locked the door. Her eyes were riveted on us and she was suddenly pale.
“Cute girl, Gutterball,” the guy continued. “Which of these skanks is your date?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Excuse you!” the black-haired punk repeated back to me. “You probably will want to get into the car with your girlfriend. You seriously don’t want to see this.”
“See what?” I asked.
“Well, Gutterball went AWOL, and there is only one way we deal with AWOL cowards.”
“No one’s touching Patrick,” I warned them.
The three Mani men all laughed at me.
“Cute,” the Mani guy said. “Patrick found himself a boyfriend while he was gone. No wonder we found him in West Hollywood.”
“You need to shut your punk-ass Mani mouth,” I said, without a hint a fear in my voice.
“Mani? Patrick, you told this guy about us, and you let him live? We weren’t going to kill you, too,” the guy said directly to me. “But now, you leave us with no choice. Unfortunately, now that Patrick let the cat out of the bag, there’s only one thing we can do.”
Screw that. I was tired of this asshole talking and prolonging the inevitable. I knew Sasha was pretty tough, but I had no idea what Patrick was about when it came to fighting. At worst, it was three on three, even if my three were questionable. Plus, no one calls my girlfriend a skank and gets away with it.
I charged the guy that was directly in front of us making the most noise. I grabbed him by his shirt and threw him on top of an SUV. I threw an elbow across his face that absolutely obliterated his mouth. I began dropping elbows like sledgehammers down on his skull. His eyes rolled back and then he just disappeared and a fraction of a second later, a black, injured bird shot across the sky and flew off. Yep, a vampire.
I looked over at Maya in the car and her mouth was completely dropped open. She seemed worried, and I knew I’d better take care of business quickly, and get the hell out of here.
I turned around and Patrick was clearly getting his ass beat by one of the bastards, while the other guy was on top of Sasha. First things first. I ran over to Sasha and wrapped my arms around the neck of the vampire that was on top of her. I dug the front of my forearm deep into his skinny, little Mani neck, so I felt nothing but Adam’s apple. I cranked up my forearm and swung the asshole in a circle while choking him out.
“Transition!” the other vampire yelled while he was dismantling Patrick. And sure enough, the Mani I had swinging by his neck disappeared and flew off into the dark sky.
There was one remaining and he was surely getting the best of Patrick. Sasha tried to go over there but this guy was definitely the biggest and the baddest of the three, and unfortunately, he attacked our weakest member.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked. “Why do you even care about Patrick?”
“Because he’s one of us. If we let him live, then there is no order.” Then the Mani guy roundhouse-kicked Patrick and dropped him to the gravel.
Patrick yelled, “I never wanted to be part of this, Monty. You guys made me into something I never wanted to be.”
“Oh, cry me a river,” Monty said, with about as much empathy as a drill sergeant.
Okay, this needed to stop. Monty had obviously drunk the Kool-Aid, and as far as I knew, he was the one serving it.
Monty leaped on top of Patrick while he was on the ground and had a silver stake in his hand. The same stakes those Mani had had that night in the desert.
I hurried over to him and stomped on top of his neck. It was the most ferocious stomp-like kick I had ever delivered. His neck made a cracking sound that almost made me throw up when I heard it. Patrick slid from under him and Monty faced-planted on the pavement and didn’t move.
“Transition, asshole, and get the fuck out of here,” I yelled at him, trying to spare his scrawny little life.
Monty turned over and said, “This isn’t over.”
“Oh, I think it is.” I turned my head for a brief moment to look at Patrick, and that was all it took for Monty to plunge onto my neck. He bit down into the side of my neck and began to suck like a... well, a vampire.
I did the only thing I could do. I pulled his fucking hair like a little girl. I yanked his head back to where I could get my right hand into his mouth. And with my fingers, I ripped his vice grip that he had on my neck. He continued to bite down, but I shoved my fingers down his throat. I did this repeatedly until he began choking. He finally let up, and then he fell to the left of me, gasping for air. Sasha jumped on top of him and just unloaded a blur of fists on his face. He didn’t know what hit him, and I was glad one of my friends had finally stepped up. The guy eventually composed himself, and was able to defend himself against Sasha. He caught her with a backhand and she flew back into my Mustang.
I was now extremely pissed off. I was tired of these assholes biting me—first a werewolf and now a vampire—and something in my brain just temporarily snapped. I jumped on top of Monty while he was still on the ground and pounded his face in further. He managed to get to his feet and we squared in a fight for the ages, or at least it was for me. I spent the next few minutes beating the shit out of this guy. I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted him to live and feel my wrath. The guy finally gave up and never once got a decent shot on me.
“You’re not human,” he said.
“Well, I’m not a werewolf either.”
Then something unusual happened. This Mani man’s eyes lit up. “Really? What are you?”
“I’m in between jobs right now. I’ll let you know when I settle in.”
The guy wiped his brow, and nodded his head. He was apparently tired of taking an ass beating by a half breed. He transitioned and flew off across the sky like a black shooting star.
I looked at my two injured friends. “There’s never a dull moment with you two, is there?”
I slid into my car. And Maya immediately put her jacket around my neck and hugged me.
“We need to get to the freeway quick, babe. Who knows who’s coming back?” I said.
Maya looked at me and didn’t seem too worried. As a matter of fact, she seemed a bit proud. “I take it back,” she told me. “You just might be able to beat up my brother.”
I looked over at her and shook my head, and then peeled my Mustang out of the parking lot, with Sasha and Patrick right behind me in Sasha’s Jeep.
Chapter Twenty
Maya put pressure on my neck bite the whole way home with her jacket. “You should go to the emergency room.”
“I’m all right. I’m actually becoming a pro with the whole being bitten on the body thing. I just need some Bactine.” I exited the freeway and headed toward my apartment. I looked up in my rearview mirror and saw that Sasha was still following me.
I looked up in the sky and it appeared that we weren’t being followed by any black birds, red hawks or any other supernatural creature of the night.
I pulled into my apartment complex, parked, and hurried to my apartment. I knew couldn’t be too careful, considering I didn’t want any of these assholes knowing where I lived. It was apparent that whoever was after Patrick had no idea he was staying with me. Sasha and Patrick parked, then followed behind us into the apartment.
When we all arrived at my apartment and I knew we were safe, that was when I decided to explode. “What the fuck was that about, Patrick? Are you fucking kidding me? You’re part of some secret Brotherhood that you never let any of us know you were running away from? You failed to mention that these guys might want to hunt you down and try to kill you if they were to find you? Worse yet, you put my girlfriend and Sasha in danger. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“It�
�s not like that, Kyro, I swear!” Patrick said.
“Look, dude. These guys were so pissed off at you to that they were willing to kill you and not think twice about it.”
“They would kill anyone and not think twice about it!” Patrick now shouted. “They’re vampires!”
“You’re a vampire, too!” I said.
“I’m not like them! You know that!” he spewed at me. “They have this gang mentality and I am not going along with it.”
It was nice to see him have some emotion, but it was a little too late. We could have used it back there when we were fighting his Mani buddies. Patrick began to pace around the apartment. He finally gained control and said, “Tommy, I would never intentionally put you in a situation like what happened tonight. I especially wouldn’t want Maya and Sasha to have to deal with any of that.”
“Guess what, Patrick? We all had to deal with it! Wait a second! No, I had to deal with it. And Sasha had to deal with it. As I recall, we were the ones fighting for all of our lives!” I looked at Maya and she seemed overwhelmed. She hadn’t a clue what she had just experienced. “This is so unfair, you two,” I said, to both Sasha and Patrick. I was finally going to stand up for myself and it was about time. “You two came into my life and completely fucked everything up.”
Sasha looked at me, shocked.
“Don’t look at me like that, Sasha. It’s because of your werewolf pals that I’m some tweaked-out, half-werewolf. You screwed up my life and now you’re trying to screw up Maya’s? This isn’t fair to her.” I looked over at Maya. “I am so sorry to bring this horrible world to you.” Tears began to roll down my eyes. “I wanted us to be normal, I was hoping...” I stopped myself from continuing to speak because I was afraid to show any more emotion.
Maya didn’t respond. She seemed to be in utter shock.
“Maya, I’ll take you home,” I said. “I know you don’t want any part of this.” I walked over to the door and opened it.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Maya said softly.
My back was to the three of them, facing the door. “How can I be wrong?” I said. “No one would want this.”
“I don’t necessarily want this specific situation, but what I do want is you.” Maya walked over and put her arms around my waist. My back was still to her and all I could do was sigh and lower my head.
“Come back inside, Tommy,” Maya said softly to me. “We all need to talk this out and figure out what our next steps are going to be.”
I turned around and all three of them were looking at me with a desperate need. Like it or not, this was my reality, and it looked like Maya was on board. I closed the door and walked over and sat at my table. I put my head on top of the table and groaned. “What the fuck are we going to do?” I said.
Sasha walked over and sat at the table with me. “Tommy, you kicked a lot of ass tonight. You don’t have any idea how impossible it is for a human to defeat a Mani or a Carni. Tonight, you defeated three Mani men, pretty much by yourself.”
“No,” I said. “You helped me a lot, Sasha. You can kick ass in your own right.”
“I held my own but I couldn’t have for much longer. There is no one out there who is like you, Tommy. You make your own rules. You don’t need to be part of any kind of clan or brotherhood if you don’t want to be. You can do whatever you want.”
I stood up and walked into the living room where the cage occupied most of the room. Maya looked at the cage and said, “I still can’t get over the fact that there is a huge cage in your living room.”
“That’s my crib when the moon is full,” Sasha said. “It keeps the world safe from me.” She stroked one of the bars affectionately. “And keeps me safe from the world.”
Maya digested that for a moment.
“And what about you?” she asked Patrick. “What stops you from putting the vampire bite on someone?”
“I get my blood from a hospital employee. I’ve never bitten anyone and don’t intend to.”
Maya walked over to me and the two of us sat on the carpet to the side of the cage, facing the others in the kitchen. Maya then asked, “So, basically vampires and werewolves are among us, and no one knows it?”
“Oh, people find out. That’s when the Mani kills them,” Patrick answered.
“Why doesn’t Carni feel the need to kill?” Maya asked.
“Carni are closer to human DNA than Mani,” Sasha said. “Carni are basically humans 27 days out of the month. They only have paranormal abilities on three nights out of the month. They live among the humans, and the Tandra—humans—never find out who’s among them. Other than the fact that they don’t age, they are basically humans. Because Carni and humans work so close together, the Carni have a soft spot for the Tandra. Unfortunately, Mani could give a shit because they look at humans as a way to survive.”
“Because of their blood?” Maya asked. “But Patrick seems pretty normal. He hasn’t wanted to jump on top of me and suck my blood.”
Sasha nodded her head and continued, “Patrick is different because he’s still a baby when it comes to being a Mani. The more he feeds, the more he will crave human blood. Once that happens, he will be a bigger risk of becoming like the violent guys we met tonight.”
“So, Mani are basically psychopathic killers that wait around to kill?” I said. “Great, this is what we have to look forward to with Patrick?”
“I hope not,” Patrick said. “But the truth is I’m constantly fighting the urge not to bite you.”
“For real?” I asked.
“You have no idea? You’re fucking ripped, Tommy! Your veins bulge out constantly. It’s like waving a steak in front of a starving dog.”
“I’ll be sure to quit flexing in front of you,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to joke, but I couldn’t resist. “Just keep sipping on your water bottle full of human blood and stay away from my veins.” I looked at Patrick, and then asked, “You’re constantly sipping on your blood. Doesn’t that help?”
“The blood bottle helps, but I imagine that nothing goes down and tastes as good as live human blood, sucked and warm, dripping from someone’s body.” Patrick’s eyes looked like they were about to come out of his head.
“All right, calm down,” I said to Patrick. “You’re freaking Maya out. And me, too.”
“I would never harm you, Tommy,” Patrick said sincerely.
I laughed out loud. “I’m pretty sure I could handle you, Big Boy. Remember, you didn’t exactly hold your own in our little tussle earlier.”
“I wasn’t a fighter before I became a Mani,” Patrick said, defending himself. “Plus, I’m still hurt.”
“Yeah, you didn’t fight well tonight because of your larynx,” I said sarcastically.
“I didn’t even want to be a Mani. It was the last thing in this world I wanted to be.”
“What happened to you, Patrick?” Maya asked.
Patrick paused and then looked at Maya and said, “I had no choice. I had been bitten twice in the last two years by Mani, and just like you, Tommy, I was in this weird limbo place where I would crave blood, but couldn’t actually consume it.”
“So what? You just gave up and let them bite you a third time?” I asked.
“Not exactly. I put myself in a bad situation one night at a bowling alley and just allowed fate to run its course.”
“I guess you didn’t bowl too well that night either, Gutterball.” I couldn’t help myself. I looked at everyone and said, “I’ve now been bitten twice by Mani. Great, I’m now going to have vampire tendencies as well as werewolf ones.”
“You’re going to need to make a decision, Tommy,” Sasha came out and said to me.
I knew what she was leading to. “I’m not ready to do that,” I said.
“Tommy, you’re on the Mani radar now,” Sasha continued. “They know you’re a complete stud who just kicked the shit out of three of their own. The way that Mani function as a group is they don’t look for revenge against Tandra or hum
ans. It’s pointless to them. The way they see it, if you can hold your own against them, then you’re a great candidate to become a Mani. They are always seeking new members. They are going to want you to be one of them. They know if they had you, they would have one of toughest motherfuckers ever on their side.”
I looked at Patrick and he nodded his head. I then looked at Maya and she was heavily engaged in the conversation but definitely had apprehension in her eyes.
“Patrick, why were you hiding from them?” I asked.
“Because I regret allowing myself to be bitten for the third time,” he answered. “I put myself in a bad situation and I regretted my decision instantly.”
“You can’t run from them forever,” I said.
“I know, Kyro. They are worse than a street gang. If you denounce them, once you have become one of them, you might as well be dead. You become a cog in their machine to gain power over the Tandra and either kill it, or recruit it. There is no middle road with them. There is no mercy, no quarter given, and no hope,” Patrick said.
I looked at Maya and she was doing her best to take all of this in. How she was holding up was beyond me. “So, what do you think?” I asked Maya.
“It doesn’t matter what I think. The way I see it, there’s no turning back for you. If you get bitten one more time by a vampire, you will be one of them, like it or not. I think you should at least have a choice.” Maya stopped, and then looked at Sasha. “Are the Carni like the Mani where they desire to harm people?”
“No, not at all,” Sasha said. “Carni regulate themselves and they live by a strict code of honor with a respect for life. Carni try to live as normal of a life as they can and assimilate into the human condition. Mani don’t have a social consciousness, just a thirst for blood and damn the consequences.”
“So, what you’re telling me is,” I jumped in, “I have to decide between being a bloodsucking vampire that has psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies, and being a werewolf where I have no recollection when I turn, but I do have an innate respect for life?”
