The Immortal Warriors Boxed Set: Books 1-11

by H. T. Night

  He was sleeping when I arrived home. If I knew Josiah, he had at least watched Jimmy Kimmel before he finally crashed. I wondered if he was pissed at me for taking off and being a jerk for days and days.

  Maybe the money I’d won would help ease his disapproval at my… oh hell, I was going to call it what it was: my alcohol and gambling bender.

  I sat on the floor of Josiah’s room and watched Josiah as he slept. He looked to be getting rest, but he didn’t look peaceful. The difference in his face, compared to before his family passed away, was like night and day. He grew a spotty beard because he was barely 18. But he hadn’t shaved since that tragic day. He looked so skinny, too.

  My mind automatically turned to fighting, as it often did. I thought he could go down a weight class if he continued with MMA. I thought about my pain, and I wondered if the best thing to do was to put this behind us and seriously get Josiah training harder. Josiah needed to focus on something besides his pain. And so did I.

  I went to the kitchen and made myself some scrambled eggs and toast. My comfort foods. I was getting the food ready when I was surprised to see Josiah walking into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  “Hey,” I said. I didn’t know how else to address him.

  “You decided to come by and make yourself breakfast?” he said sarcastically.

  “Come by?” I said. “Josiah, I live here now. I already told my apartment manager I’m not signing up for another year lease. My current lease is almost up. So, if you are having second thoughts about me living here, tell me now.”

  “Of course, I don’t want you to fucking leave,” Josiah said, annoyed. “I also don’t want to worry about you the way I did the last four days. The way I see it, the ball is in your court. You live wherever you want. Just don’t use this place as a Motel 6. After what happened to my family, I was in absolute agony, not knowing where you were.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You should be. I know I am young, but don’t make me parent you, Tommy. Grow the hell up or I will… Kick. Your. Ass. And don’t think I can’t.”

  I nodded. I deserved that. I sighed. “Josiah, I am very sorry. I do want to live here. I had a wild four days, but what do you expect? Everybody handles grief differently. My response to the deaths was to… take off and blow off the hurt in the only low-class way I know to handle things: drinking and gambling in Vegas when it sizzles.”

  Josiah looked at me and now, he didn’t quite know what to say. “Any hookers?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, bro. Tommy Jenkins has never paid for it and never will. Besides, you know I love your sister. Even if she’s dead, she and she alone has my heart. And I would never go… there. She was my one true thing. I am clinging onto that with a fierceness you cannot even imagine.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Look. Calm down.” I decided to change the subject and tell him a little bit of good news. “I have a ray of sunlight in this whole tale of debauchery—”

  “Don’t!” he said sharply. “God, Tommy, if I lost you…”

  “Josiah, even with all this crap and all the mistakes I’ve made since the tragedy, I managed to have a tiny bit of good luck.”

  “Okay. Pacify me then with your shred of good news. Lord knows we could use some good news to come out of all this anguish. So… what was it?” Josiah asked.

  “It was pretty miraculous how it played out.”

  “Miraculous?” Josiah repeated.

  “I don’t know how else to describe it.”

  “What happened?” Josiah asked.

  “I passed out drunk,” I said.

  “That doesn’t sound too miraculous, Tommy. I’ve seen you pass out night after night in front of the TV.”

  “There’s more. Listen.” I became serious and I gave Josiah a look that told him that he better listen up. “Josiah, I won $112,000.”

  “What?” Josiah said. He sat his skinny butt on the couch. Hard. He was as surprised as I was when I’d first found out.

  “It’s real money, Josiah.”

  “So, where the hell is it?”

  “It’s already in my bank account.”

  “Shit! That’s like eleven undercard fights.” Josiah was referring to the fact the commission pays its professional fighters a bare minimum of $10,000 a fight.

  “I know. It will give us both wiggle room. This money is as much yours as mine,” I said to Josiah and I meant every word of it. I’d write him a check for $55,000 if he asked me. Hell, maybe even if he didn’t ask me.

  “So, in about five days, my MMA prodigy, the check will clear. So, let me know if you need anything. For your fights. For the house. Anything, I mean it. But I have something I think we should talk about.” I was starting to crack eggs over the sizzling skillet. “Do you want eggs?” I asked Josiah.

  “For starters, I’ll take a couple eggs and toast,” Josiah said. “Please.” He said it like he was talking to his mom.

  It was good that both of us were eating. We had probably lost at least 30 pounds between us over the last 10 days.

  “Well, I’m not going to baby you, Josiah,” I laughed. “You’re a big boy. Put some bread in the toaster and you can make the toast for us while I cook the eggs. And talk more.”

  “No big deal, dude. What do you want to talk about?” Josiah stood up and went into the refrigerator and took out six pieces of bread. That seemed about right.

  “Josiah,” I said. “I think for both our sakes, we need to move forward. We can celebrate who your parents and my precious Maya were. But for our own sanity, we need to press forward. I know it sounds easier than it will be. But we had three very special people taken from us. Let’s celebrate them by having great lives. Not sitting here moping, or me running off to Vegas to do God knows what. I don’t even remember a lot of it.”

  Josiah looked at me and reached out and gave me a bro hug by reaching around to the other side of my body and squeezed. He even lifted me up a little.

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll only talk about the tragedy when it’s addressed for either legal reasons or needing tell a family member,” I said. “It can’t be something that continually tears you… us… apart. Or something that we focus on daily, even hourly. We need to let them go and just hold the good things about them in us, not their last hours on the planet.”

  Josiah nodded and I could see him reflect on his family and I could tell he was getting choked up. We needed to just eat. Both of us. Drink some milk. Get some nutrients in our bodies.

  Very shortly, the eggs and toast were done. Josiah and I sat at the table and ate, but we didn’t say a word. As I thought about what I said to Josiah, I saw great things in that kid’s future. He needed to grow past this horrible hand that was dealt to him.

  Me? I already thought of myself as a lost cause. Even Annie, who only knew me for hours, had pegged me right.

  Again, Annie’s words rang in my ear: Because you’re lost, Tommy. You want to be found but you want to find yourself. You don’t want anyone else to find you.

  I may have been a werewolf, but I couldn’t even convince a woman with cancer to let me help her. I thought about Annie and I wished she had believed me. But if I was her, I didn’t think I would have believed me either. The only way I could prove it to her was for her to see me change.

  Speaking of changing, I needed to head up north real soon. In a couple of days, the full moon would rise. The more I thought about it, the less I cared about going somewhere safe when the full moon hit.

  But I was going to go this time.

  I’d take my bike. Fuck yeah, I’d take my bike. I had not even told Tommy that I had a bike now, or that I had left my Mustang in Vegas. I wondered if he would be appalled that the first thing I did with my Vegas winnings was to buy a motorcycle.

  I probably should take off tomorrow morning real early to get there well before the full moon. I liked to give myself a 24-hour window of wiggle room.

  “Josiah,” I
said, “I hate to say it, but I’m going to have to take off tomorrow. It’s that government obligation again.”

  “To go to your reserves? I’m pretty sure there is a bereavement clause and you can miss your military duty one time.”

  “I can’t, Josiah,” I said. I actually didn’t have a good reason, other than the fact I would turn into a werewolf in his parents’ house, and the poor boy had had enough shit thrown at him this month without having a werewolf tear up this nice house and scare the shit out of the people living in the middle-class burbs.

  Unfortunately, Josiah didn’t let me off the hook. “Tommy, there is no way they can make you serve this weekend. It isn’t like someone is attacking our mainland. Your fiancée recently died. I am sure they would understand.”

  “Josiah,” I said. “I need to take the trip for me.”

  “Five drunk days and four drunk nights weren’t enough for you?”

  “This isn’t about getting drunk. This is about clearing my mind.”

  “By going to reserves and marching and shooting?”

  No, I thought. It’s that I will probably kill you if I stay in my werewolf form because I’m unpredictable once I turn. I have no idea what I do when I become a werewolf.

  “Josiah, let me do this. I promise I won’t do anything stupid while I’m gone and I’ll come right back after my obligation.”

  “I’m going to have to be here all alone? Again? This sucks that I need you this much, but I do,” Josiah said. He turned his head and he had tears in his eyes. I loved this kid as my younger brother. No, more than that.

  “I need you, too, Josiah. We can lean on one another.” I stood up from my chair and left the room. I didn’t want Josiah to see me cry. I went to my room and sat at the front of my bed. I cried silently. I cried long and I cried quietly. Josiah would never see me weak again when it came to his family. He needed me. And I needed to be his rock. In order to do that, I would have to get my shit together. In every way.

  “I have something to show you,” I said when I returned to the kitchen.

  He rolled his eyes. “What?”

  “My new ride.”

  “The hell you say.”

  I gathered myself and Josiah followed at my heels like a puppy. We went outside and I showed him my new pride and joy.

  “A bike! Does this mean I get your Mustang?”

  I laughed. “I don’t think so.”

  “Where is your Mustang?” he asked.

  “Parked with the Club on the steering wheel. In Vegas.”

  “You live dangerously,” he said. “I hope someone doesn’t just pull the steering wheel, hotwire it and drive it home.”

  “Bite your tongue!” We laughed and joked around. For a second, we forgot about the tragedy. For a second, I forgot I had met a wonderful woman friend who had two weeks to live. For a second, it was just my best friend and me. Connecting.

  We were going to need a lot more moments like this for Josiah and me to make it. Luckily, we were both pretty damn funny. We had just had nothing to laugh about recently.

  I hung out with Josiah all day. We even napped at the same time. Yep, we were becoming brothers.

  And for the first time in quite a while, I fell asleep sober.

  Chapter Twelve

  I woke up before dawn the next day and headed out to Northern California on my motorcycle. I was already getting an emotional attachment to my bike. I rode her all the way in. Made five pit stops. But other than that, it was a nice smooth ride. I drove up to the ranch around 1:00 p.m. on the day of the full moon. I was the first one there. The guy who owned the ranch always left his key in a secret place in the barn in the back.

  I went back and found the key inside a flowerpot that was on a shelf where he kept his feed. The key was right on top of the soil of the flowerpot. He didn’t even make an attempt to stick it in the soil. I guess he figured if you’d gone this far then you wanted the key and it wouldn’t matter if he buried it in the soil.

  I unlocked the front door and went inside. I went to the first-floor room I usually stayed in. I had about seven hours before the full moon would rise.

  Okay, this wasn’t good, being alone. My mind could only focus on one thing. Maya, Maya, Maya. Would my mind ever slow down with that thought of her and the stab in my heart that seemed to go on and on with every heartbeat?

  My love for Maya, and how much I ached now that she was gone, had undone me again. I began to cry. Out loud. Why not? No one could hear me. This pain was overwhelming. I felt like I’d lost half my life. In fact, I had.

  Would I be emotionally crippled from here on out? Unable to even kiss a decent girl like Annie? My cries turned into a howl. I howled so hard that I felt more like a beast than man. I went into the downstairs bathroom. I wanted to take a long shower. I needed a cleanse. A full body cleanse.

  I kicked off my shoes and socks and then took off my shirt. I looked at my body in the mirror. I was definitely skinnier. Both Josiah and I were withering away. I just didn’t feel like eating and when I did, it was never that much. I was definitely not on my training diet where I ate copious amounts of meat and eggs. But, I did like how lean my stomach looked now. It was the quintessential washboard six-pack. I undid my jeans and took them off. That left me naked. I’d been going commando lately. Where the hell all of my underwear had gone, I had no idea.

  I felt exposed as I stared at my naked self. My body was lean and muscular, but behind this outer layer was a man hurting like nothing I had ever imagined would come to pass. That I would fall in love and lose my love, just before the wedding.

  Tears just dripped from my eyes. I put it to the temperature I liked, and then turned the shower on. I liked it to be hot, but not scalding. My tears mingled with the shower spray until I didn’t know how much I was crying. Water and tears dripped off my body. I didn’t know which was which. I was going to need to get past this. I needed something to live for. I’d never had parents. At least, ones that I remembered. I was raised by a grandma who probably resented me since I only saw her twice a year.

  I’ve been on my own since I was seventeen. I went to college and the only classes I liked were in the theater arts. So that was when I earned my bachelor degree, all the while I trained my ass off doing mixed martial arts at night. When I did that, I was thinking how clever I was, that I would someday mix the two and make MMA movies. That didn’t happen and it would probably never happen. I became a werewolf and suddenly, life became complicated. And my dream of being an MMA movie star, and having my own production company—like Jackie Chan—was dead.

  None of my life made sense… until the day Maya stepped into it. I’d finally found a home for my heart. I began to cry. I didn’t care who could hear me. I cried for Maya. I cried because I longed for her. I needed just to hear her voice. I wanted to hear her tell me she loved me. I did this for ten minutes. I didn’t know when I’d ever be over this. I couldn’t imagine going through life without her. It wasn’t fucking fair. I had nothing. Then, I was given the most beautiful gift I could have ever asked for. I’d only had a year and a half with her. It felt like a minute and a half. So fleeting. So precious. So missed.

  “I love you, Maya,” I said out loud in the shower. “I love you so much. I’m not sure how I can make it without you.”

  I stared at the drain for about two minutes, watching the water swirl down it, and pulled myself together and stopped crying. My nose was bright red. Hopefully, none of the guys would notice before we turned at the full moon rising.

  Eventually, all my friends came up and we did our werewolf routine for the next two days.

  I didn’t tell my werewolf friends what had happened during the first two days. Maybe I should have. Maybe it would have helped, but instead, I bottled it up inside of me like the horrific secret that it was.

  At night, we all turned into wolves and did God knows what on the property. Ate rabbits or peed on trees, scrapped with each other over position in a pack or whatever wolves did by inst
inct. Then, in the morning, we’d wake up in bizarre places and find each other and live out a normal day. Most of us slept during this time. I tried to, but I just tossed and turned in my bed.

  It was a complicated and painful first two days. I got through it, saying little to anyone.

  It was about one in the afternoon and I received a call from a strange number I didn’t recognize. That usually meant it was a creditor or someone trying to sell me something. I let it go to voicemail and went back to sleep for the next two hours.

  When I got up, I saw that they did leave a voicemail. What the hell, I would listen to it.

  The message beeped and then I heard a woman’s voice. I couldn’t recognize it at first, but as she continued to talk, I knew it was Annie.

  She said, “Hey, Tommy. I’m still in Las Vegas. I’m scared. I don’t want to go back to Connecticut. I don’t want to see the pain in my family’s eyes. I don’t want to go into a hospital and submit to being hooked up to stuff and have them start giving me IV morphine when drinking alcohol does the same thing. As far as painkillers, I choose alcohol. I know you can understand that. I also know this is a long voicemail, and you might be fucking loony tunes. But I am left with no other choice. I’m ready to hear you out. Your final solution to my problem. Can you please help me, Tommy?”

  That was the end of the voicemail. Holy shit! I needed to get to her before it became dark. Tonight!

  I called her back.

  “Hello,” Annie answered.

  “Hi, Annie, it’s Tommy. I’m coming for you tonight. Meet me at O’Hara parking lot. It’s near Las Vegas Boulevard. GPS it if you have to.”

  “Why do we have to do it tonight?” she asked.

  “Because if you’re supposed to die in less than two weeks, the only chance we have is tonight. Because this is the last night I will turn for a month, and I have to be turned in order to turn you.”

  “God. I can’t believe I’m doing this. All right.”