The Immortal Warriors Boxed Set: Books 1-11

by H. T. Night

  “Kill me, Josiah,” he said, coughing up blood.

  “No! I don’t like this. It smacks of suicide. Even of a dark side. As the Chosen One, I will not take a life like this. It is utterly wrong that you want me to take it. It goes against everything we are as Mani. To preserve ourselves and our culture, our heritage, our future. Stop this madness,” I said, holding him tight but not killing him.

  “Kill me! Now!” he insisted. And then he mustered up enough strength to kick me in the balls. Again!

  I looked down at this persistent little shit who was the specialist in ball torture. I just snapped. Yes, that’s right. The Chosen One... fell from grace. And a ball kick is all it took.

  Dammit, Goshi! Why does it have to be this way? A rage surged up from my poor maligned tender parts. I wrapped my hands around his neck. I pressed my fingers as hard as I could. I felt his life leaving his body as I continued to tighten up my grip. “Throw me like a silver stake,” I yelled to the group.

  “Here!” Rubidoux tossed me a stake. Goshi had barely any life left in him. I turned his body over because I didn’t want to see his face as I took his life from him.

  I picked up the stake and started pressing it into his tiny neck. As the stake hit his skin, something started happening, something far beyond my wildest dreams.

  Goshi began changing form. First his coloration left his entire body and he was as pale as a ghost. Then his body began to expand and elongate.

  “What are you?” I shouted. “What. Are. You?”

  He was getting bigger and larger. Dark black hair protruded out of his scalp. As Goshi grew, I could feel the power grow from inside his body. What the hell was happening? I jumped off of him and took a step back. He was now seven feet in length and he was still lying on the ground facing the rocks.

  Then I heard laughter. Cruel, maniacal laughter that rippled the force of who I was, inside and out. “Oh, Josiah, this was too easy.” He looked up at me and I saw who it was.

  It was Atticai! Goshi had been Atticai all along!

  Atticai was wearing the exact same outfit he was wearing the night I killed him. He was wearing a long, black trench coat with black pants and boots. He stood up and scanned the crowd. Everyone, including me, looked on in disbelief. “What’s the matter, my Mani friends? Are you not happy to see me?” Atticai yelled at the top of his lungs.

  “I don’t understand. I killed you,” I said.

  “I didn’t fully understand myself, Josiah. But after you killed me, I woke up in a little blue body form. It took a couple of weeks for me to figure out what my destiny was. Through visions and dreams, I figured out what I was supposed to do. I was to find you and train you. I was to give you all of the knowledge I had obtained over the last few hundred years. I knew if I did that for you, the Triat would give me a second chance. Yet another life of some sort.”

  I looked at Atticai and I wasn’t sure what his intentions were now. Did he train me just to come back and kill me? I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. All I could say was, “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t do this for you, you pompous child!” Atticai said to me. “I did this to gain my life back. To be the Mani I once was.”

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was so confused. I loved Goshi, but he had never truly existed. It was all a lie. It was always Atticai. Atticai wrapped in a blue skin was still Atticai.

  I looked out into the crowd and saw Lena and she looked absolutely horrified at the sight of Atticai. If anything was about to go down, my only concern was to protect her.

  “Fuck this bullshit!” Tommy yelled out from the crowd and made his way over to where Atticai and I were standing. He walked right up and got into Atticai’s face.

  “Tommy! Go sit down!” I yelled. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  Tommy turned to me and said, “This doesn’t concern me? Are you kidding? This guy fought me at full strength and nearly killed me! He didn’t have the balls to wait for me to become a werewolf.”

  Tommy turned and faced Atticai again. Atticai wouldn’t even give Tommy the respect of looking at him in the face. “Josiah, please control your dog.”

  “Tommy, you needed to go back with the others. This situation is bigger than that.”

  “Bigger than my life?” Tommy yelled. “He left me for dead!”

  “Actually, I just made my point and your savage friends were the ones who left you for dead,” Atticai said smugly.

  “Fuck you, you piece of shit.”

  “Must we associate with this uncivilized animal?” Atticai said to me.

  Then, I saw something that chilled me to my very bones. Tommy’s eyes went yellow.

  Shit! He was transitioning to the werewolf! This was all I need right now!

  Tommy transitioned into his mighty grey werewolf form and leaped to Atticai. He looked bigger and more ferocious than I remembered. Tommy tackled Atticai onto the rocks. Atticai threw Tommy’s werewolf body off of him, with a swipe of his arm. Tommy turned and leaped back on top of him, pinning Atticai to the ground. Atticai kicked Tommy off his body by drilling him in the stomach.

  Then I heard Tommy’s voice in my head. “Josiah, it is my right to kill him.”

  “Tommy, you can’t!” I yelled out.

  “It is my right! And my honor,” he repeated back to me. “You are the Chosen One and he has come back to try to reclaim what is not even rightfully his. Not your crown as Chosen One. But your life! You want to talk about loyalty? Let’s talk about a lifetime friendship.”

  “Tommy, not now. Not tonight!” I yelled out again.

  “Fuck you, Josiah. This is my fight. The fight for my best friend’s life! Not for the Mani, not for the Triat, not even for myself. I fight tonight for my friend, my friend, Josiah, forever and always!”

  A tingle of fear went down my spine as I heard the phrase. Had Lena said it to him too? I was nearly reeling from the conflicting emotions. I knew that Tommy would fight to the death, to protect me. Josiah. Not the creature. Not the Mani. The Man.

  This was what love was. This was what honor was. And this was what truth was. ‘Forever and always’ was the secret of all life. It was all about whether we let our mere form define who we were, even in our very hearts. It wasn’t about who was our enemy, at all. Or even who we loved. It was about who we were inside! Forever and always. It began to make perfect sense, that if there was any order in the universe, it was because we made it so.

  Suddenly, Tommy jumped on top of Atticai and clawed him in the chest, making a huge rip in Atticai’s long black shirt. Atticai backed up and didn’t seem worried at all, he was mainly annoyed.

  “Josiah, you can’t allow a Carni to kill one of our own,” Rubidoux yelled out.

  “You better do something, Josiah!” another Mani yelled in agreement.

  Tommy had come after Atticai and now Atticai was having a hard time fighting off Tommy. Tommy caught Atticai a couple of times in the face and he was bleeding from the right side of his cheek.

  “Do something, or we will!” others were yelling out.

  Dammit!

  Tommy now had Atticai pinned to his back. I had to do something. I couldn’t allow Tommy to kill Atticai in front of the whole Mani nation. I ran over and tackled Tommy’s werewolf body off of Atticai.

  “Fuck you, Josiah!” Tommy said, in my head and swiped at me also. “I’m not going to just stand back and let Atticai take your life. Let me do this. For you!”

  “Stand down, Tommy!” I yelled.

  “Fuck that,” Tommy then ran over and tried to leap on Atticai, but I was able to get to him before he made contact. I once again tackled Tommy. We both rolled and I ended up on my back with Tommy on top of me. Suddenly, I was face to face with the werewolf.

  “You need to choose, Josiah,” Tommy said, looking down at me. In my head.

  “I already did, Tommy!” I yelled out as I reversed him to his back. I was now on top of him. I wrapped my right arm around his neck and began choki
ng him out in a reverse headlock.

  “Tommy! I don’t want to hurt you, but you’re going to have to stop!” I yelled.

  “You’re going to have to kill me!” he answered.

  “Transition!” I yelled, as I tightened up my grip. I had my choke hold in deep and I knew the werewolf couldn’t last much longer. Finally, Tommy gave up and turned back to his Carni form. I let him go and he rolled to the side gasping for air.

  Lena broke through the crowd and ran over to him.

  “What are you doing, Lena?” I yelled out to her.

  “You nearly killed him,” she yelled back at me.

  Tommy shrugged Lena off of him and stood up in his Carni form.

  I looked up and Atticai, Tommy and I were in a perfect triangle with about forty feet separating us. Lena was outside the triangle looking on.

  I looked over at Atticai. “I cared for you, Goshi,” I said.

  “You cared for that thing I became. That wasn’t who I am,” Atticai answered.

  “That might be so,” I said, “but there was goodness and mercy in you as Goshi. That sprang from deep inside of you.”

  “Goodness?” Atticai laughed bitterly. “Listen, Josiah, there is no good and evil! Look around! We are all evil to each other! But to ourselves, it is only destiny that has a voice. This is our cruel fate, to live in violence and to die in it. It was all pre-destined who shall have their day in the sun, and who shall be banished to the darkness. Guess which ones we are? Guess!”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “I believe that we’re all inherently good, and we only choose to do evil things. As Goshi, you taught me that.”

  Atticai laughed. “Goshi, that pathetic creature. You had too much faith in him. And your faith made you weak.”

  “This is all well and good, Josiah,” Tommy said. “You and string bean here can have a pow-wow about the good times in Eastern Europe later, but you and I now have a problem. You should have never put your hands on me.”

  I looked at Tommy and he looked like he now wanted to kill me. I looked at Atticai and he was smug and looked like he just got away with murder, in which he did.

  “Relax, Tommy. If I didn’t pull you off of him, this entire mob and their mob mentality would have torn you to shreds.”

  “Of course they would. They would stand by this guy even though he tried to kill their Chosen Savior. They would rather deal with this kind of evil, the evil that you know, rather than face what they are, survivors with an almost racist mentality. They would rather kill a good Carni than an evil Mani of their own kind. They do not choose good over evil, but instead, they choose what genetic makeup shall prevail in a fight. It is the evil song of the ages, that in a battle, you strive to preserve your own kind, no matter how evil it is at the core. You aren’t fighting for a cause, you are fighting for your future as a species.”

  It was shocking what Tommy was saying, and not only was it shocking, it was correct.

  I turned toward Atticai, now knowing that my werewolf friend and brother of my heart had stumbled on a key that brought entire civilizations to their knees, as Atticai and his ilk tried to perpetuate it and give it power and acknowledge it with more of the fucking same.

  “From the mouth of a wolf comes the truth about Mani and Carni,” I said. “He is right. This is evil!” I said to Atticai. “We are evil. In battle, we do not look at hearts, or even good versus evil. We look at whose team someone is on. The evil of this is within us all and we must choose not to give it power. Stop this madness now, Atticai! You can turn from this evil and work with me to save our races, Mani and Carni, from utter destruction. We will work together from the inside out.”

  “Evil, shmevil. Seriously, you need to step away from the hero manual. Nobody needs or wants your Narnia-esque mentality.” Atticai was extremely amused with the conversation between Tommy and me. In it, he did not see the key to the ages that Tommy had exposed. What we are, what we choose, how we choose, and for what reasons we killed and perpetuated the violence of like kills different.

  I looked over at Atticai and said, “The Carni, the werewolf. It is part of the prophecy coming to fruition. Now what? What will we do, Atticai? How will we choose our path that will affect the Mani and the Carni and even the Tandra—until some asteroid comes to destroy the earth and end it in disgust, for what we are, and for what we could have been had we simply made a thoughtful choice for the long run, instead of the short run.”

  “Are you trying to save Tommy? What are you asking me for? He’s your pet,” Atticai said.

  “I’m not referring to Tommy. I’m talking about you and me. I am talking about all of this, the big picture.” Tears sprang to my eyes. He didn’t see! Not at all!

  “There isn’t a you and me,” Atticai said plainly.

  “That’s too bad, Atticai. Because if you’re not with me, you’re against me!”

  “Trust me, Josiah. I will always be against you. I am my own Mani. I call my own shots.”

  “Then you will be doing it from the sidelines,” I said.

  “Oh, I will. I am going to sit back and watch you and Krull kill each other and when all is said and done, I will take my rightful place at the top. You think I don’t see the big picture about the rule of three foes? Let two of the foes destroy each other and the third easily gets the keys to the kingdom.” He paused. “All I have to do is duck and watch you two duke it out over Lena, but it isn’t really even about her anymore, is it?”

  That stung. I shook my head and was sadly disappointed with Atticai’s answer. A part of me had thought there was a chance we could team up. “Goshi would have understood this.”

  “I am not Goshi. I am free of that blue body and of that mentorship. I am Atticai, and I will have a stake in your neck and take your place, the law of survival of the fittest, my only agenda.”

  “No!” I shouted. “It’s wrong, Atticai! Turn from it! Goshi would have!”

  “I am not Goshi. I was humbled in that small blue body, with my utter contempt for it, and for your unconditional trust. You are the one who is weaker.”

  Atticai then looked at Tommy. “And for you, you mangy dog, you are lucky I’m feeling generous tonight, I should end your pathetic existence right now, but I’m going to let your ignorance slide and just chalk it up to your low Carni IQ.”

  “I’m lucky?” Tommy laughed. “You’re lucky Josiah stopped me.”

  “Oh, that is where you’re wrong,” Atticai stated. “The only life that was saved tonight was yours.”

  I looked at Atticai and Tommy and if they wanted to kill each other, that was on them. I was done with this whole fucked-up night, and this whole mindset that we perpetuated the concept of like kills different. It was a mind-fuck of the highest order. And, I swear, it was the Triat who was trying to mind fuck me. All of us.

  I said, “You two can do whatever the hell you want. You want to kill each other, go right ahead. I’m leaving. I’m not going to be part of a three-person stand-down.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a glimmer of a tear, Lena’s tear. I looked over at Lena and said, “Let’s go.”

  Lena walked halfway toward me and stopped. She was now directly in the middle of the three of us in the center of the triangle. She looked over at me, and didn’t move.

  Atticai was once again amused, this time it was over Lena’s hesitancy. “Oh, look! Josiah no longer has the loyalty of his precious Lena! She, too, sees the weakness in his new no-kill mentality. Maybe we should just put you in charge of an animal shelter, Chosen One. We’ll round up all of the unwanted werewolves and put you in charge of re-homing their pathetic existences.”

  “Lena,” I said. “Let’s go. We don’t need to be a part of this.”

  Lena just stared at me with zero expression on her face.

  “Seriously,” I continued. “After last night, please don’t do this. Let’s get out of here. We don’t need to be a part of this.”

  Lena’s eyes softened as she looked at me
. I didn’t know why she wasn’t moving. What could she possibly be considering?

  Atticai saw an opening and decided to take it. “Lena,” he said. “You know deep down who your soul mate will always be. You and I have something that is eternal. He might have been inside your body, but all this time, I was in your head.”

  What the fuck? Atticai was seriously making a play for Lena?

  I looked at Lena with a look that said, ‘There is no way you’re considering leaving with that animal!’

  Then the situation became even more weird.

  “Lena,” Tommy now said. “You don’t want to be part of any of this. Neither do I. I know you care for me. In my heart, I know that you love me. Let’s leave all of this behind us. You and I can go somewhere far from here and share a life together.”

  Lena looked over at Tommy, and I could see she was having a hard time with this decision. She was surrounded by three guys, each of whom had an emotional investment in her. But I didn’t have an evil agenda and neither did Tommy. Atticai did. Oh yes, he did!

  Like the showdown shootout with Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, in the scene in the Mexican cemetery where he either had to kill Angel Eyes or Tuco, this was Lena’s three-way standoff. She looked at us three males, from one to the other, then swiveled her head back and forth between Tommy and I and then between Atticai and me. Lena’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. She was utterly stumped.

  What the hell was going on? How could she even consider either one of these two other guys?

  Again, Atticai made his case. “Lena, you know deep in your heart... I am your first and only true love.”

  I looked at Lena and she looked at me. She was clearly confused. You have got to be kidding me. “Lena,” I said. “After last night...”

  Lena looked at me and then completely turned around and looked at each of us.

  What the hell was she doing?

  She stopped and looked at Tommy, and then she turned and looked at Atticai.

  What in the world could she be considering?

  She looked at me and I could see the love in her eyes.

  “Lena, there is no decision here,” I said. “Let’s go.”