H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set

by Night, H. T.

  Soon all the Mani that were at the party had arrived. Everyone had transitioned and we all stood on one side of the Flatlands facing Goshi. Goshi made his way out to the middle of the group and said, “Meet me out here, Josiah.”

  I walked out to where he was standing. I turned and faced the Mani crowd. There was now over 150 Mani watching this take place. These were my people. This was my crew. I felt like it was graduation, but this wasn’t a graduation, it was my final test and I needed to be on my game. I looked at Goshi and asked, “So, what exactly are we going to be doing?”

  “You and I are going to...” I stopped Goshi from speaking as a red hawk made her way down and landed near the back of the group. I watched as the hawk transitioned. It was Lena.

  “Hold on, Goshi!” I made my way over to Lena. She seemed nervous and apprehensive.

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  “Please don’t embarrass me, Josiah,” she said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, please don’t let me interfere with what you guys are doing,” Lena said.

  I reached out my hand and took hers. She took my hand and warmly smiled at me. “Please Josiah, do what you need to do. You need to focus. Please go back out there.”

  I nodded my head and looked back at Goshi. He seemed particularly interested in Lena, but then turned his focus back to me.

  “Come back to me, Josiah,” Goshi announced. I turned around and walked back over to him. “Like I was saying,” Goshi said to me. “You and I are going to battle.”

  “Battle?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Goshi answered.

  “That’s it? We’re just going to spar?”

  “Not spar. Fight.”

  “Fight?” I asked. “To what degree?”

  “We are going to fight to the death.”

  “What?” I asked, flabbergasted.

  “You and I, Josiah, will battle one another till one of us kills the other one.”

  “You can’t be serious?”

  “I have never been more serious in my entire life.”

  “I don’t want to kill you,” I said. I looked at the group of Mani and they all seemed just as shocked as I was.

  “You need to attack me and try to kill me!” Goshi said, loudly to me. “You need to separate who I am and what I mean to you. For the next few minutes, I will be your enemy and you will need to try to finish me. And whatever happens to either of us will be in the Triat’s will.”

  “To either of us? Are you going to try to kill me?” I asked.

  “Yes. I will be trying to kill you, too.” With that, Goshi flew into me and kicked me in the face. I somersaulted backwards onto the hard rocks, tucking my jewels away from that sadistic blue guy with all of the painful surprises.

  Damn that fucking hurt!

  From my back, I threw my body forward and stood up. I shook off Goshi’s kick.

  Like it or not, this shit was on!

  I got into my warrior stance where I could fly, fall, go left or right in a blink of an eye. Goshi came at me again striking me in the face with a haymaker punch.

  What the hell happened about not attacking an opponent first without warning?

  He threw a rapid-fire, five-punch combination, and as he did so, I leaned back and focused on my task. I looked at Goshi and I knew what I had to do. This was where my brain goes into Good Will Hunting mode, where everything happens in slow motion. Each punch came at me and I easily deflected his little hands off me with my arms. The last deflection I was able to catch his momentum and threw him to the ground by pulling his arm forward.

  He got up and I came at him returning an eight-punch combination of my own, with the last punch hitting him so hard that he flew ten feet in the air.

  Damn, I had gotten strong!

  Goshi hurtled through the air and got control of his body before he hit the ground and was able to land on his feet.

  Okay, that was a sweet recovery.

  He made a motion for me to strike him. I shook my head remembering the first rule he had taught me. If I was to attack him, I had to play by his ethics. I didn’t think his ethics would be that bad, but I was considering this whole match as a test and I wanted to show that I had taken everything he said to heart.

  We circled each other and got closer and closer to each other’s space. There was a difference between striking your opponent first when you’re squared up the way we were. Your opponent has an equal chance to strike you, and I knew I was well inside the honor code for attacking him first. “Okay, Goshi,” I said. “This is where I earn my stripes.”

  I swept his legs with a sweep of the leg. I tripped him up and he lost his balance. I flew up over his 3 foot body and grabbed him from behind and tackled him to the ground.

  I had my hands wrapped around his neck. His body felt strong even though he was tiny. I pressed my fingers deep into his neck and he gasped for air and dropped to his knees. I had him where I wanted him, but I didn’t want to kill him. I could feel him weaken and it was breaking my heart. I wasn’t sure what it would take to kill someone so small. I really didn’t want to kill him. He was my friend. I couldn’t do it and I let him go and pushed him to the ground. He slid backwards into the rocks.

  “Get up!” I said.

  “You need to kill me, Josiah,” he said, trying his best to breathe.

  “I can’t do it, Goshi. Please don’t make me,” I said, pleading with him. “It’s wrong. It can’t be the will of the Triat for a student to kill his beloved teacher.”

  “You need to kill me, Josiah. If you don’t, I promise you, I will kill you first.” Then once again he flew at me and kicked me in the stomach.

  Damn, that hurt! He knocked the wind out of me. I hunched over trying to catch my breath and the little fucker grabbed me by my neck.

  Holy shit, he was strong!

  He was digging his hands deep into my Adam’s apple. I couldn’t allow this to happen. I flew up into the air while he was still choking me. We were now 30 feet up in the air and he still had his little hands around my neck trying to choke me out. I began to feel dizzy, and I needed to do something fast. I started throwing punches at him and landing them all over his face. I must have thrown 30 punches in a row, and finally, he let go of my neck. We both fell to the earth and I landed on top of him and landed on his back.

  “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 he
ll 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 myself 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 be 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 seemed 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 choking him out in a reverse head lock.

  “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 Attica, 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.”

  A
tticai 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 very 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 to need to step away from the hero manual. Nobody needs or wants your Narnia-esque mentality.” Atticai was very 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.