New Title 3

by H. T. Night

  In fact, oddly—or perhaps hysterically—he even hated high-pitched noises.

  My eyes were growing heavy and I dozed off. Sometime later, I felt a hand guiding me to the bed. I cracked my eyes open and saw Yari pulling down the covers. She unbuckled my belt and slid my pants off like a mother putting a son to bed. Still wearing my boxers and T-shirt, she guided me into bed and tucked me in. She was sweet and gentle and kind in every movement she made. She slipped under the covers next to me, her body surprisingly warm.

  “Aren’t vampires supposed to be cold?” I asked.

  “I’m not a vampire,” she said patiently.

  I nodded once. “You’re a Mani.”

  “There’s a big difference.”

  “Of course,” I said, and actually grinned.

  I turned and faced her. “I don’t know what to do. Where do I go from here?”

  “Don’t think about it, Josiah. Not right now. Tonight, just close your eyes.”

  I could feel her breath on my face. I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Thank you for saving my life.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I slept a long time. It felt like years. I opened my eyes and saw that Yari had opened the single window because it was now dark outside. The clock on the nightstand showed 8:42 p.m. Wow, I had slept fifteen hours. I sat up. The shower was going in the connecting bathroom. Considering I had been out for the past fifteen hours, I really needed to use the facilities.

  Duty calls. I eased open the bathroom door and could see Yari’s silhouette through the steamy glass shower door.

  “Josiah, is that you?” Yari called out over the water.

  “Of course it is. Who else could it be?”

  “Who knows? Maybe the maid. I’m not sure how familiar the staff is at this bed and breakfast.”

  I did my business. Luckily, she couldn’t hear it above the drone of the rushing water. When done, I started walking out the door. “Where you going?”

  “Outside. To give you some privacy.”

  “Aren’t you dirty? Do you need a shower?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take one when you’re done.”

  “There’s plenty of room in here.”

  I paused. “Seriously?”

  “If you’re shy, I understand.”

  “I’m not that shy.”

  “Well, you better hurry up I would hate to use up all the hot water.”

  Oh, she was good. I looked at her silhouette one more time. That’s all I needed to see. My boxers and T-shirt were off in seconds. I walked over to the sliding glass shower door. I took a deep breath as if I was entering a swimming pool and pulled open the door. I looked in and Yari was facing me. Her body was perfect. The wispy shower steam did little to hide her curves. I tried not to stare but the truth is I haven’t seen that many women naked before—and the ones I had seen naked were nowhere near Yari’s jaw-dropping perfection.

  Oh, my God.

  Her skin was milky white. Her body as curvy and hard and soft as anything I had ever seen. Her wet hair hung over her shoulder and she put a long-fingered hand on one hip.

  “You getting an eyeful, mister?”

  So much for not staring.

  “Uh, sorry,” I said. At least, that’s what I think I said. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I had any control of my mouth or my voice at that moment. My hormones were somewhere in orbit at the moment.

  “Come over here silly. I’m not lying about the hot water getting used up.”

  I stepped into the hot shower and she backed up underneath the shower head. The water flowed over her, accentuating her curves. I went straight to her like a moth to the flame, and into the epicenter of the water flow.

  At first the hot water shocked me and then it felt incredible. Yari turned my body around and began lathering my back and shoulders with a bar of soap. As she did so, she gently massaged my skin and muscles. Oh, dear Lord. She next guided my head so that the water sprayed directly onto my scalp, and then poured some shampoo into my hair. Now she was massaging my scalp and I think I died and went to heaven. I tried to turn around but she stopped me.

  “Hold on,” she said. “I have to wash out the soap.” She rinsed my hair thoroughly. I relished the feeling of her gentle fingers on my scalp. I couldn’t take all this sensuality much longer. My passion was burning and I was going to explode.

  I turned around and switched spots with her so that now she was underneath the flow of water. I ran my fingers through her thick, black hair and pulled her toward me. She came willingly. I kissed her passionately, and soon we were pressed up against the side wall, kissing hungrily. I had never kissed any woman in my life with this much intention. I wanted her to know how much I appreciated her and wanted her. I pulled back and looked at her intensely. Then I leaned in and kissed her again and again. It was the first time I had ever felt in complete control in her presence. Everything up to now she had dictated. I sensed that releasing control was somehow turning her on—more so than I had ever seen before in my life.

  Stumbling and slipping, I led her out of the shower and into the bedroom. I threw her on the bed and proceeded to kiss every square inch of her body. I was in the midst of kissing her belly button when she reached around me and grabbed my buttocks and pressed me up against her. Then she wrapped her arms around me and just held me close.

  I look down at her, gasping. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay, Josiah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Josiah, I....”

  “You what?”

  “Josiah, I....”

  “You what?” I was anticipating her saying that she loved me, which would have floored me. To be honest, I wanted her to say it. So I pressed again. “What? Please tell me.”

  “Josiah, I...have to kill you.”

  “What?” I jumped off of her.

  “I know I have to do it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Josiah, the Triat led me to you. I never understood why. I thought it was because it would have something to do with Tommy. But I think the Triat led me to you because you were going to ultimately mess up the prophesy.”

  “The prophesy? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “The Children of the Night’s prophesy.”

  I got up and put my jeans back on. Having someone tell you they were going to kill you sort of dampened the mood. “Sure, of course. That makes a tremendous amount of sense. Look, I was about to make love to you, and now I’m seriously thinking I have to stick an entirely different kind of stake in you. Start talking fast, or tonight’s about to get real ugly.”

  I glanced around. I didn’t have a stake. Would a toothbrush do?

  God, listen to me. I’m going nuts.

  “Atticai, Mesha, Wyatt, and I were all given the same prophetic dream. The four of us didn’t meet by chance. The Triat brought us together through dreams.”

  “This just gets better and better. What was the dream?”

  “The four of us were given the same vision in our dreams. This was fifteen years ago. We all had the same dream to meet on April 18, 1995 at midnight. We were to meet and form a clan called Children of the Night.”

  “So you’ve known Atticai for fifteen years now?”

  “Not quite. In the mid-eighteen hundreds Atticai and I were in a giant clan on the east coast. So I met him first during the Civil War.”

  “The Civil War?”

  “Yes, Josiah.”

  “You have got to be kidding.”

  “Josiah, I was born October 18th 1673.”

  “You need to give me a moment here. You are over three hundred years old?”

  “I look pretty good, huh?”

  “I’ll say. Okay, so you and Atticai were in some giant Mani vampire clan during the Civil War? Just saying that out loud makes me think I’m crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy, Josiah.”

  “Says the girl who calls herself a vampire. Go on.”

  “A Mani.”

&n
bsp; “Somehow that sounds even crazier. Anyway, go on.”

  “Atticai was the head of our clan. There was a Mani named Krull who didn’t like the way Atticai ran things. Believe it or not, Atticai is not about death and destruction. He defends and protects the will of the Triat, but ultimately he is a peacemaker.”

  “Sure, he seemed real peaceful when he sicced half the rattlesnakes in California on my ass.”

  “I can see how you would think that, but the will of the Triat is what makes him a killer. Mani such as Krull are the real killers. Such Mani are the reason why we often get referred to as vampires—and why so many Tandra—humans—have died over the years.” She paused and sat back on the bed. God, I still wanted her. Did she really just say she was going to have to kill me? She went on, “Krull and others like him want the Tandra to discover our world because then they have a license to kill. Atticai knew that’s what Krull and those who followed him were doing. Atticai put a stop to this, until Krull’s legions rose up over Atticai’s clan, and Atticai—and many others—were forced to flee.”

  She paused and studied me a moment longer. Her eyes were so damn hard to read. “Josiah, there is a whole world of Mani out there that want to destroy all Tandra.”

  “Where do werewolves—the Carnis—come into it?” I discreetly moved over to my bag, where I had packed a pocketknife. I wasn’t going down without a fight. Even if I had to fight a female vampire.

  Yari said, “The Carni are their own species and are equally protected by the Triat, although they have their own set of rules. The Carni have less rules to live by and are in constant opposition of the Triat.”

  “Why doesn’t the Triat just have them killed off?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. The Triat works through us and the only way the Carni will be destroyed is by the Mani.”

  “Okay, that’s pretty heavy.”

  “And that’s where the Children of the Night come in. For hundreds of years there has been a prophesy. A Mani that will be so powerful, so pure, that he will return order to the orderless, that he will bring beauty back to us all so that we can live in peace.

  “After Atticai, Hector, and Wyatt, and I all received our visions, we were told to form a four-person clan, or a cell. Once done, the next step would be revealed to us in further dreams.”

  “And was it?”

  “Yes.”

  I nodded, guessing this part. “You dreamed of Atticai being the Chosen One.”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps. There is no face to the Chosen One. At least, not yet.” Her eyes narrowed as she studied me. “Why do you think it’s Atticai?”

  “It makes sense. He fights for humans—well, for the most part—and he’s a Mani.”

  Yari continued studying me, then finally said, “Unfortunately, there’s nothing pure and beautiful about Atticai.”

  “So you don’t think it’s him?”

  “It does not matter what I think, Josiah. I am a very small fish in a much bigger pond. Anyway, most people think it’s going to be Atticai. Already he is prepping to harvest a virgin on her twentieth birthday. When he does so, he will, according to legend, transform into the white eagle.”

  “White eagle?”

  “As you know by now, all male Mani transition into ravens and the Mani women into hawks. The Chosen One, however, will transition into a white eagle.”

  “Er, what exactly do you mean by harvest?”

  “A Mani will drain all the life-blood of a Tandra—or Carni, for that matter.”

  “Yeah, Atticai’s a real saint,” I said sarcastically, shaking my head. “So who’s this virgin that Atticai’s supposedly going to harvest?”

  Yari was quiet.

  I pressed. “There’s not too many virginal twenty-year-olds out there. Is he going to pluck a nun from a nunnery?”

  “No. Our dreams were very specific on who the virgin is supposed to be.”

  Confused, I looked at Yari and then it hit me. Everything now made perfect sense.

  It was Lena.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You’re talking about Lena, aren’t you?” I said. Shit, wasn’t it her birthday any day now?

  “We all had same dream and the same vision, Josiah. In each of them, Lena fits the image of the twenty-year-old virgin exactly. And as her twentieth birthday has come closer, the dreams have been out of control for us. Now we dream about what is to happen nearly every night. And just recently there has been something else added to the dream. A new twist, so to speak.”

  “And what is that?” I asked.

  “There this strong presence of evil. In the dream, Atticai is freeing us all by receiving the necessary blood. But there is an evil presence interfering that we can’t quite make out. We’re not sure if it is a fallen Mani or Carni. But there is something there, and it is very evil and we are all on guard because of it.”

  “Does Lena know any of this?”

  “She knows only that on that special night she and Atticai will be joined together throughout all eternity.”

  “But in reality, she’s not. In reality, Atticai is going to kill her.”

  “Atticai is going to fulfill the prophecy, Josiah. He will then save the Mani. He will fly in as a white eagle. It has been prophesied for thousands of years. Do you understand how lucky each of us is to be asked to be a part of it?”

  “About as lucky as a heart attack. And what if it doesn’t go according to plan? What then?”

  “It has to come to plan, Josiah. Everything needs to come to pass. Every detail all the way down to whatever evil that needs to be taken care of.”

  “Are you still planning on killing me?”

  Yari stood up and came over to me. I slipped my hand in my bag and grabbed the knife. Woman or not, she was a Mani, and I knew these things were tough as hell.

  She said, “If I was, I wouldn’t have told you everything.”

  “Maybe you told me everything so it would make it easier to kill me.”

  Yari’s eyes burned through me. I knew then she was in absolute love with me. Her love for me, I knew, was the only thing keeping her from attacking me, from fulfilling her obligations to the Triat. Still, I kept the knife in my palm.

  “There’s nothing in this world that could make me harm you, Josiah.” She touched my cheek and I sensed real emotion from her.

  I knew I needed to save Lena. But I needed more information. Everything I knew about how to defeat a vampire was from novels and movies. And, from what I was gathering, they had gotten things wrong. Dead wrong.

  There was no doubt I cared for Lena. I wanted to save her from this crazy shit. I could give a damn if the Mani and Carni lived in peace or not. But what could I do? The only thing I knew to do was to make sure that there was no way Atticai became the Chosen One.

  I slipped the knife in my back pocket, leaned in, and put my hands around Yari’s waist. I pulled her in close and looked her in the eye. “But what if I wanted to harm you though?”

  “You want to harm me?” she asked with a soft and sexy voice.

  “How would a Tandra have a chance against a Mani like yourself?”

  She studied me a moment, obviously debating how much to tell me. Finally, she said, “There are a number of ways a mortal could defeat a Mani.” Yari kissed me gently on the lips. “Why would you want to harm me?”

  “Not you,” I said, but that’s all I would say.

  She looked at me for a long time, keeping me at arm’s length. I could sense her inner conflict. After all, why should she tell me their deepest secrets? Did she trust me? And why should she trust me? Hell, just a few minutes earlier I was preparing to fight her. Eventually, she shrugged and pulled me in close. When she spoke, she did so in my ear. “You defeated Atticai last night. He was forced to transition to escape. I’ve never seen that happen before. Not from a Tandra.”

  “How would I protect myself against your kind?” I asked.

  “There is no protection, but there are two ways to defeat us.”

/>   “A stake?” I offered.

  “A silver stake,” she corrected. “And you need to pierce a Mani so completely that it goes in through the front and out through the back. Complete impalement.”

  I shuddered. “So it doesn’t have to be through the heart?”

  “If you want maximum chance at a permanent kill, then yes, through the heart.” Yari reached down and began unzipping my pants with her left hand while we still bantered face-to-face. Within seconds she had me free and in a tight grip, and after three hundred years, well, let’s just say she was very good at what she was doing.

  “And what’s the other way?”

  “Excuse me?” Yari had clearly shifted her focus to something else entirely.

  I gasped and actually panted. Jesus, she was good. “What...what is the other way a Tandra can defeat a Mani in battle?”

  Yari turned me around and sat me on the bed. She lifted a leg and was soon straddling me. Within moments, I was completely inside her. She leaned in and our bodies began moving in a slow, sensual motion.

  “Well, Josiah,” she said, her voice husky in my ear, “the other way is to pierce a Mani’s neck from one side to the other with just about anything. Such a wound prevents us from transitioning. A Mani, you see, needs maximum air capacity to transition. After just a couple gasps, a Mani will be done.”

  “Done?” I asked, wondering if she meant dead.

  Apparently so, because she said, “So there you go, Josiah. How to Kill a Mani for Dummies. Just don’t let our secret out, or I really will have to kill you.”

  She grinned and kissed me deeply and I wondered how much of what she was saying was true. Had she really given me the recipe for defeating her kind? I didn’t know, and I didn’t have much time to ponder these questions, because soon Yari was doing things to me that I swore I would never repeat to anyone.

  And I’m a man of my word.

  * * *

  When we were done I laid on the bed and looked at the clock. It was 10:00 p.m.

  “Isn’t tomorrow night the big night?” I asked, when my head finally cleared. “Isn’t it Lena’s birthday in twenty-six hours?”