by Night, H. T.
“I doubt that.” Lena sat up, and I set the tray in her lap. “You have a very loyal group that would follow you into hell if you needed it.”
“You’re probably right.”
Lena stretched her back as her giant belly balanced the tray of food. “My back hurts. Sleeping on my back all night wears on me. I also think I’ve developed sleep apnea. I feel like I’ve been snoring.”
“Not that I heard. If you have, that should go away once you lose the belly.”
“Who says I want to lose it? I might keep it around for a while.”
I unconsciously gave her a cross look.
“What was that look for? Are you telling me that you would have a hard time loving me if I remained fat?”
I chuckled and thought about the question. “I would love you even if I had to push you around in a wheelbarrow because of your obesity.”
“You’re so good to me,” she said with a wry grin.
“You better remember that, young lady.”
“Why? Do you need some equity on something you’ve done wrong?”
“I have done nothing yet, but when I do make a mistake I want you to remember that I will love you even when you outweigh me.”
“I don’t think I outweigh you yet. And thanks for that mental image.”
I winked at her and assured her that I still had her by fifty pounds. I was pushing two bills these days. It was solid muscle. I doubt if I had seven percent body fat, but still. Two hundred pounds is 200 pounds. Lena was nowhere close to that weight. I just liked to give her a hard time.
“Well, you can’t exactly sleep on your front,” I said, going back to her back pain comment. Lena was enormously pregnant. Her tiny frame could barely handle twins. From the back, you could barely tell she was pregnant. Her shapely legs and firm ass would give you no reason to suspect that this woman was packing at least 25 pounds of kids in front. When Lena turned around, the only words that come out of people’s mouths were, ‘Wow, you’re really pregnant!’
“You came in late last night, again,” Lena said as she took a bite of her eggs.
“I was hanging out with the guys in the bunker.”
“You guys are worse than a fraternity. All you need are the matching sweatshirts and paddle boards.”
“We are probably tighter than your average fraternity. No fraternity ever went through what we did in Mexico,” I said, smiling.
“There are a lot of good men out there...”
“But?”
“But, it’s the law of numbers that every one of them can’t have good intentions.”
“I’m highly aware of that. All I can say is the ones that don’t… have potential.”
“I’m just worried that there might be one or two bad apples in the group who are flying under your radar.” Lena seemed particularly concerned. Why shouldn’t she be? Any day now, she was bringing two children into the world. Our two children.
“Well, I have a lot of supernatural abilities. My ‘Spidey senses’ are always on high alert whenever I hang out with the guys. There is a lot of intense dude energy that seems to engulf every room we’re in. That’s just the way it is with guys like that.” Being an MMA fighter, this was nothing I wasn’t familiar with.
“That’s an understatement. Those guys make the movie Gladiator look like Daddy Daycare.”
“Very nice movie reference, Lena. I can see I’m rubbing off on you.”
“Well, that’s all a girl can do is watch movies all day when she has two bowling balls in her belly.”
“Those two bowling balls are going to be our kids. So try to be less crass when referring to our offspring.”
“You try carrying these two squabbling gorillas in your stomach for nine months and see how fondly you refer to them.”
I laughed and kissed Lena’s stomach and rested my head below her lap. “I’m just glad I’ve got my army.”
“I know you are, honey. Since the guys have been here, you seem supremely relaxed and in many ways, a lot more confident.”
Lena was right. What the guys did for me was take a lot of the burden off my shoulders. It was comforting, knowing I had 200 trained killers at my disposal if Krull wanted to act up. “How are you feeling? Any morning sickness?”
“No sickness, I just feel as if I’m going to pop!”
“Don’t pop just yet. At least wait until Christmas. I’d like to have some New Year’s babies.”
“Oh, you would, Mr. Reign. Maybe you might like to carry the next party of two in your stomach. You’re not the one carrying a moving brickyard in your belly.”
“I wonder how they are going to look.”
“They will probably have Tommy’s color hair,” Lena said.
I nearly fell off the bed. “What?”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said laughing. “I only meant Tommy’s hair is lighter than mine and darker than yours.”
I looked at Lena and smiled. I knew what she meant, but it still bothered me a tad that she had feelings for Tommy. I understand that was in the past, but I just don’t like to be reminded of it.
Tommy had proven himself tenfold when it came to me forgiving him. What he did seven months ago was off the charts. I loved him more than a brother, and I obviously loved Lena more than anything on this earth. At least until our children got here. Then, they would come first.
“Josiah?” Lena asked.
“Yeah, babe.”
“Do you ever think about what the Deity said about the boys?”
“Every single day. It scares the blood outta me.”
“Do you think with what you are …. you can prevent what is destined for one of their fates?”
I nodded my head. “Yeah, I do. I will protect these boys until I have no breath left in me. Prophecy or not, it will be over my dead body if anyone moves to harm a hair on their heads.”
I heard the doorbell from downstairs. “Was that the doorbell?” I asked.
“Sounds like it. What else goes ding-dong in this house?”
“Who rings the doorbell around here?”
“No one,” Lena said. “It must be an outsider.”
“That’s never good.” I put my blue jeans on and threw on a black t-shirt. “I’m going to check it out.”
“All right, babe, I’ll be here... fat as ever.”
“You know, you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“I love you, Josiah.”
“I love you, too.”
Chapter Three
I left our room and made my way to the upstairs hallway. We lived in a giant house with too many rooms to count. It was the biggest house I had ever seen. I looked down and could see Tommy talking to what appeared to be a dark-haired woman in the doorway. She had a little bit of an accent. Tommy was in major flirt mode, so she must have been hot. Tommy saved his fifth-gear flirt shift for the sexiest of ladies.
I made my way to the stairs and got a close look at the woman. My heart sank as I saw who it was. It was Yomaida. The young lady I rescued from a brothel in Mexico, the first time I went there.
“Yomaida?” I said, excited and confused.
“Hello, Josiah,” she said stepping through the doorway.
I hurried down the stairs, and I gave her a giant hug. She smelled incredible and looked even more beautiful than I remembered.
“A hug for Josiah? Wow. I can’t wait to be that familiar with you,” Tommy said, winking at Yomaida.
After Yomaida hugged me, she turned to Tommy and gave him a giant hug, too. As she did so, Tommy looked at me and smiled, as if to say, ‘I’ve still got it.’
That’s my Tommy. Always the opportunist.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Actually… a whole lot,” she said. “I have been trying to track you down for the last ten months.”
“Track me down?” I asked.
“Yes, I needed to know more about the guardian angel who saved me that night.” Yomaida looked at Tommy uncertainly, as if she
was unsure if Tommy knew I had abilities like being able to fly.
I smiled and said, “You can say whatever you like here. Everyone here is aware of everyone’s special talents.”
“Everyone? Is everyone here like you?” Yomaida asked.
“Not like me, necessarily,” I paused. “But, they have their own thing going on. Was there a reason you needed to see me?”
“No, I just needed to see the man who saved my life. I just wanted to touch base with you one more time. It was weird. I got obsessed with finding you.”
"Why don’t you come in and have a seat on the couch? We don’t need to stand by the door while we talk. May I ask how you found me?”
The three of us walked into the living room and made our way to the couches. I sat on one couch while Tommy and Yomaida sat a couple of feet apart from each other on the other couch. There went Tommy, always near the girl. Damn, I loved him! He was as transparent as glass.
Yomaida began to answer my question. “How I found you? Well, it wasn’t the easiest thing I have ever done. I looked you up on the internet, and I discovered that you used to be an MMA fighter. Do you know there is a rumor that you died?”
I smiled. “I have read that. I’m as alive as I have ever been.”
Yomaida continued, “I knew you were special.”
“Special?” Tommy laughed. “We don’t use that word around here. We like to refer to Josiah as logically challenged.”
“You know what I mean. I mean, for God’s sake, you can fly. So, I began keeping my eyes wide open in public places. I began looking for pale-faced men who had an eerie presence about them.”
“Why, did they remind you, of me?” I laughed.
“That was my first impression of you. Obviously, that changed once you shared with me your intentions when we were in Mexico. I have to admit, when I first saw you on the elevator, I thought you were a bit creepy. Don’t get me wrong, I thought you were sexy, but also exceedingly odd.”
“Wow, sexy and odd,” Tommy said. “I get the creepy and odd part, but I have to disagree with the sexy part. Josiah’s clearly not bringing sexy back anytime soon.”
“Trust me, Wolfie, Josiah is very hot and extremely sexy.”
“Hold on, besides me disagreeing with your opinion on what is and isn’t sexy, how do you know I’m a werewolf?” Tommy asked.
“You’re Tommy, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Josiah and you are pretty legendary in the underground immortal world. And, by the way, it’s too bad you disagree with what I find to be sexy, because I think you’re sexy as hell.”
“Okay, one of two opinions on sexy isn’t that bad.”
“Shut up, Tommy. What she said concerns me.” I looked Yomaida in the eyes and asked, “How are Tommy and I well known?”
“You’re not serious?” Yomaida said. “You’re legends.”
“With all due respect, Yomaida, how does a Tandra or a human like yourself find this information out?”
Yomaida was quiet. Her energy regressed. Everything about her seemed to go inward.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I made the mistake of asking too many questions,” she said under her breath.
“What kind of mistake?” I said, pressing.
“I talked to the wrong guys about you.”
“What kind of guys were they?”
Yomaida spoke up and said, “I started hanging out with Carni at first, they didn’t let on that they were werewolves. I quickly found out on the night of the first full moon that I was dealing with a whole other part of the immortal world. I was attacked, and luckily, I wasn’t killed, but...”
“But…you have become a werewolf?” I said.
“Yeah,” Yomaida had tears in her eyes. “I’m a werewolf. I got caught up in their world and I was curious to see what happened during the full moon. I soon found out, the hard way.”
I got up and sat in between her and Tommy and put my arm around her to comfort her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know what it’s like to have your immortality surprisingly sprung on you. I was hoping that by bringing you back to your family that I would give you a better life. I should have warned you about the harsh world that I’m from. I had no idea that you would try to seek me out.”
“How could I not? You were a knight in shining armor. You literally swept in and saved me from a truly sad and hard life.”
“Let me get this straight,” Tommy said. “Josiah saved you in Mexico a few months ago, before he and I fought in that underground fight club?”
Yomaida looked at Tommy and said, “He saved me from having to be a prostitute. I was a prisoner in a brothel. And he was to be my first customer. Instead, he became my rescuer.”
That shut Tommy up. He nodded his head. “Cool.”
I looked over at Yomaida and asked, “When did this happen? That you turned into a werewolf.”
“Last month.”
“You said you turned on the first night. What happened to you the other two nights?”
“I’m not sure, both times I woke up outside with ripped clothes. One of the times I didn’t even have a shirt on. God knows what happened to it.”
“You were naked above the waist,” Tommy said, with a bit of lechery in his voice.
“Enough, Tom,” I said. “That is obviously not the point of the story.”
“I’m just very detail-oriented. Visualizing it.”
“I bet you are. Just try to keep your hormones reined in for one second.” I could tell Yomaida kind of liked him, and that was why he turned on his Tommy switch, the one that seems to make every woman within a two-mile radius crazy to get next to him. But, he seriously needed to tone it down. I knew Tommy really well. He was acting so goofy because he liked her, but it seemed like the more time went on, the less smooth this guy was around women. His inner werewolf was a very horny dog.
Yomaida continued her story. “At first, I wanted to find you. I just had to see you again. Just so I could go on with my life. But now, I needed to find you so that you can help me.”
“Help you?” I asked.
“I’ve heard you did something amazing with Tommy. I heard you trained him.”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s not spoken about in public settings, but privately, people know that Tommy has a gift. A gift that was given to him by you. In very private circles, you are called the werewolf whisperer. And he is called the king of the werewolves.”
“Shit,” Tommy said, inflating his chest. “Imagine that.”
I shook my head at Tommy, a signal to chill.
I looked at Yomaida, and I knew that she wanted me to become the werewolf whisperer one more time for her. I couldn’t do that. I needed for Tommy to be the only werewolf that possessed that gift. The more werewolves that knew how to control how they transition, the worse it would be for Mani. Not everyone had a heart for Mani as Tommy does. “I’m sorry, Yomaida, I can’t help you in the way you want.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t do it. Tommy had years of bonding as best friends before I ever trained him as a werewolf. If you need a safe place to stay, I can keep you safe when the full moon hits. We have cages.”
Yomaida shuddered.
“It’s not that bad. The cage. I just can’t teach you what I taught Tommy…not at this point. I’m sorry.”
“Because at this point you don’t trust me,” Yomaida said.
“I trust you very much. Trust and loyalty don’t necessarily go hand in hand. I trust you in the sense that I believe your intentions are pure. But, that also doesn’t mean that you’ll be loyal later. Tommy’s loyalty runs deep. We’ve had years of friendship to build that trust on. Training someone to be like him is giving a gift that is beyond even the immortal realms. In time, you might prove to have that kind of loyalty, but for now, I can’t do that for you. I don’t know you to the core like Tommy and I know each other. I don’t even know if it is possible to repeat our success
with Tommy. I don’t aim to use you as a guinea pig for any further werewolf whispering. It’s dangerous to both werewolf and to me.”
“Are you serious?” Yomaida sounded extremely insulted. “You can’t or won’t?”
“Yomaida, I have thirty werewolves in bunkers who would each give their right paw for me to teach them what I taught Tommy. I get asked every day by one of those guys to help them. All I can tell them is that when the time comes, I will teach them, but their loyalty to me needs to take priority. I’m a Mani first, above everything else. I can’t afford to have this knowledge and power to get into the wrong hands. And, like I said, I don’t know if I can repeat the success or even the exact process that I used. When I trained Tommy, it was a labor of love, for my best friend, and I risked my life to do it.”
“He did,” Tommy said. “I could have killed him, ripped him apart. As you know, in the werewolf form, we don’t have a social consciousness, only instinct.”
Yomaida chewed her lip.
I nodded and continued, “That’s right. I don’t see how I can apply that depth of personal connection or personal risk to a step-by-step workshop for thirty unruly werewolves or even just for you. I’m not running a werewolf whispering clinic. We use cages here and if you stay, you must agree to this because that is our security protocol. We have to lock up all untrained werewolves during the full moon. This is still new, that a werewolf can be controlled. It may be that Tommy is the only one who will ever be trained. Further, it may be that I want him to be the only one. I have thirty werewolves ahead of you, all wanting the same thing and they are already on my team and all risked their lives to be here, surrendered to a Mani leader. They have to prove their loyalty before I even will consider training them. And I have to have a sense of personal security, that I won’t be torn limb from limb, when getting in a cage with a fully functional werewolf.”
Yomaida nodded her head slowly. She seemed highly disappointed. “I understand.”
“Yomaida,” I said, “you’re welcome to stay here. We will protect you during the full moon, and make sure you’re taken good care of. The cage seems daunting, but it protects others from you and protects you from others. After it is over, you’ll be let out. From my understanding, the full moon is in a couple of days.”
