H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (46 page)

“You don’t have to say anything to Hector. I
still have the card. I just used it to get the room, so I can keep
my cash in case I need it for a place that doesn’t take plastic.
Aren’t you going to ask me where I am?”

“Aren’t you still in London?”

“No, I’m not. I’m calling you from
Transylvania, Romania.”

“Oh, wow!” Lena said. “You’re already
there?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Did you find the little blue guy you were
looking for?”

“Yeah, I did, and our training has already
started.”

“Holy shit!”

“Still want to make jokes?” I said,
laughing.

“You know I was kidding.”

“Were you jealous?” I asked.

“Who wouldn’t be, the guy you’re crazy about
calls you up from Europe, and tells you that he has a date with one
of the most notorious bachelorettes in the world!”

“More like one of the most notorious con
artists in the world.”

“What did she want from you?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to
wrap my mind around. All I know is it was an apparent set-up where
she paid three Mani to fight me.”

“She paid three vampires to fight you?” Lena
asked.

“I know the whole thing sounds crazy, but
that’s what happened.”

“But you’re the Chosen One.”

“Yeah, some welcome wagon that was.”

“Did you beat up the vampires?”

“Seriously? You need to ask that? When don’t
I?”

“That’s true. You are my little blonde
warrior,” Lena got distracted. “Hold on, Josiah. Tommy wants to
talk to you.”

“Hey, Josiah!” Tommy yelled into the
phone.

“What’s up, Broham?” I said to Tommy.

“You were already in a fight?”

“You know me, Tommy. Confrontation tends to
find me, no matter where I am.”

“You and I both, brother, you and I
both!”

“It’s all we know,” I laughed.

“But still, Josiah, I know you. You need to
pace yourself. You can’t waste ass-kickings on every Tom, Dick and
Harry vampire and werewolf you meet. One of these days, you’re
going to get caught off guard.”

“I’m always caught off guard. That’s when
I’m the most dangerous!”

Tommy paused, “That’s true.” Now Tommy
seemed distracted.

“What’s wrong, Tommy?”

“Be safe. It’s driving me crazy that I’m not
there with you.”

“You know I had to do this by myself, but
that means a lot to me.”

“It better. Well, I don’t want to take all
your time. This poor little lady has been waiting around for your
call for the last twenty-four hours like a puppy dog.”

I heard a smack!

“Ouch!” Tommy said, in response to the smack
I heard. “What Lena, you’re trying to tell me you weren’t gazing
lovingly at your cell waiting all day for your knight in shining
armor’s call?”

I heard a bigger smack!

“Hey, Josiah, you better put your woman on
lockdown. She is out of control right now! Later, buddy!”

“Bye, Tommy.”

“Hello, Josiah,” Lena had apparently grabbed
the phone from Tommy. It sounded like they were having a lot of
fun. I missed that. I was in Europe flying around castles and into
open windows. For what? To save the world? Who was I kidding? I
wanted to go home real bad. I had never felt more homesick than I
did at this moment.

“Josiah, don’t listen to him,” Lena
said.

“So, you weren’t hoping I’d call?” I said,
pretending to be hurt.

“No, Sweetie. Of course I was. I just wasn’t
so Air Supply about it.”

I laughed. “I miss American pop culture and
McDonald’s burgers. And I miss you, Lena.”

“I miss you, too.”

I was quiet. “Lena,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I won’t be able to talk to you for a while.
The little blue guy wants me to be focused.”

“Really? How long will that be?”

“However long it takes to be trained, I
guess.”

“That sucks. What is this guy? Some kind of
communist?”

“I don’t think he’s too political,” I said,
laughing. “Lena, I love you.”

She was quiet, and then after a few seconds
I heard a loving exhale, “Forever and always, Josiah.”

I smiled. My lungs filled up with her love,
with her promise. God, she was something. No fear to tell me. Just
like that. Forever and always.

“Josiah, do you have any idea when you’ll be
done?”

“I don’t know. Hopefully, it will only be a
week or two. He’s doing this Yoda meets Mr. Myagi thing with me.
Everything he says is some grand life lesson.”

“That’s cute.”

“Oh, if you could only see this creature,
Lena, he’s anything but cute. It’s like Yoda and a Smurf got thrown
in a blender together.”

She chuckled. “Be safe, baby.”

“I will.”

“And no more fighting! Tommy is about to
take a plane down there to be with you.”

“Tell him I’ll be okay. How’s everyone
else?”

“They’re good. We aren’t exactly the Brady
Bunch here. You’re kind of the nucleus, and when you’re not around,
everyone seems like they are just trying to play nice.”

“Are you talking about Yari?”

“Her, me, everyone.”

“How is Yari?” I asked.

“I told you already, she’s good.” Lena
didn’t sound too happy about answering that question. Yari was
still a touchy subject. She didn’t have anything to worry about
when it came to her. Don’t get me wrong, Yari was hot as hell, but
Lena was my world. I decided not to press the issue and say
goodbye. “I’m going to go,” I said. “I’m going to rest.”

“Goodbye, Josiah.”

I put the phone down in the cradle and laid
on my back on the lumpy, uncomfortable bed. Whenever I stay at a
hotel, I never get under the covers. It grosses me out. I knew it
was the nicest and cleanest place in the city but it was just…well,
travelers had been in and out of that bed for years. It gave me the
heebie jeebies. I can kick a seven-foot-tall werewolf’s ass. but
dirty sheets are my Kryptonite.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know… another superhero
reference.

Chapter Eight

I used the bedspread in my hotel room as an
extra covering over the drapes of the room. No sun was getting in
and that was the way I liked it. I laid down and tried to get some
sleep. My mind was racing as I tried to drift off. A lot had
happened to me and I think most people would have cracked by now.
But, I’m not most people. As a matter of fact, there is no one in
this world like me. That thought alone is what gave me peace even
when my mind was going a hundred miles an hour. I know that under
any circumstance, I can come out ahead. I meditated on that concept
for a while. All these different things that have been thrown at
me, I’m still here. I haven’t faltered; as a matter of fact, it’s
only made me stronger. I took some solace in that fact, and I
finally I fell asleep. And it was the best damn sleep I ever had. I
slept like a dead man for at least fourteen hours.

When I got up, it was nighttime. In a way
that sounds depressing, but these days, it is all I know. I flipped
on the TV and watched some CNN. I was having a hard time figuring
out how the remote control and TV worked together. I was really
itching to watch a good reality show. Survivor and Hell’s Kitchen
weren’t exactly in the Romanian TV guide. I would just have to wait
till I get back to the States to watch my favorite programs.

I watched the news till about midnight. Then
I decided it was a good time to head over to the courtyard. I
transitioned into the eagle and made my way over to the castle. It
took only a couple of minutes to get to the castle from my hotel
room. When I approached the compound, I circled around the castle
and looked down into the courtyard. I saw Goshi, and it appeared
that he was doing Pilates. This creature definitely perplexed
me.

I flew down to the courtyard beside where
Goshi was warming up and this time I did a better job on my
landing.

“Josiah, I almost didn’t recognize you
without the crash landing.”

“Funny, blue man. Funny.”

“Have you stretched?”

I looked at Goshi and he was going all out
in his stretch. I sure as hell never stretched like that, even when
I was in MMA.

“No,” I said.

“Well you might want to transition to your
Mani form and stretch.”

Huh? I forgot to switch?

I quickly transitioned into my vampire form.
“How was I able to speak to you as the eagle?” I asked.

“Josiah, powerful Mani will be able to
understand you even when you are the eagle. It isn’t the audible
sound that we hear come out of your mouth. It is the voice inside
you that gets translated.”

“Was I speaking eagle?”

“If that is what you would like to call it.
It will benefit you to speak eagle at certain times so that you can
only be understood by the most powerful Mani.”

I shook my head and looked at Goshi. “I have
no idea what I am actually capable of doing.”

“That’s why I’m here. I’m your guide to
yourself, Josiah.” Goshi’s eyes shifted in a way I didn’t quite
trust. It was the first time he had rubbed me the wrong way. He
noticed me studying him. “You’re curious about me, aren’t you?”

“Well, yeah. I sort of had to wonder, when
you had me put my girlfriend on the back burner if you…if there are
others like you, of your, um, species.”

He didn’t answer and then I was quiet. I
tried to imagine how it would be if there were none of my kind. No
Lena. No Yari. What a terrible thing it would be. To be alone. To
become a teacher and a philosopher in that aloneness took great
inner strength.

“Ask me a question from your inner self,” he
asked, as if he could read my mind. “Not from the surface. From
deep inside of you.”

I was quiet. I didn’t know how to answer.
For the first time, this situation gave me an adrenaline rush of
fear. I hated fear. But there was something not right about the way
Goshi shifted his eyes. There really wasn’t much I could do about
it if something was off. I knew one thing for sure, I was gonna
guard my balls from that guy. He had no mercy.

“Well?” he said.

I should have died at least five separate
times by now, and somehow I was still going strong. I needed to
trust my surroundings.

“No,” I said. “I’m not curious. What’s there
to be curious about? You’re a little blue man that appeared to me
in a dream. You had me travel halfway across the world to learn
from you. That’s what I’m here to do, learn.”

Goshi seemed disappointed that I didn’t seem
to care who he was or where he might have come from, only that I
wanted to know if there were others like him. One of the reasons I
asked is because I sort of feared a whole ball-kicking drill team
of little blue men descending on me, as well as feeling sorry for
him about him possibly being the only one of his kind, or maybe the
last of his kind, like Highlander. What he didn’t realize was that
I did care; that was not a hand I was prepared to show at this
moment in time.

“Let’s review some of the punches from
yesterday,” Goshi said, and then proceeded to run through all the
hand and arm drills we had done the previous night. We reviewed for
about an hour then switched over to kicks. Goshi showed me how to
kick from all angles. He gave me an insane workout. I think I
pissed him off. My hands, arms, legs, and feet were extremely
tired. It was about three in the morning when we finally
stopped.

“Let’s take a break, Josiah.”

“What’s the matter, Papa Smurf? You tired?”
I said, gasping for air. “I’m the one doing all the work.”

“Papa who?” Goshi asked.

“You never heard of The Smurfs? It used to
be a Saturday morning cartoon back in the day.”

Goshi sat on a rock near the courtyard. His
legs were small and pointy; his body and demeanor appeared to be
beaten down from life. I wondered how old a creature like him could
possibly be.

I sat on the grass and stretched my back in
a sitting lotus position. “Why are you doing this, Goshi? What are
you getting out of it?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know about
me,” he said, in a way that told me my assumptions that I had hurt
his feelings were correct.

“It’s not like that at all,” I said,
honestly. “I’m very curious about you. I just don’t need to know
all the behind-the-scenes crap. I don’t think that would benefit my
attitude.”

“Behind-the-scenes crap? Are you really that
selfish?” Goshi was really turned off by what I said.

I needed to save this. “Okay,” I asked.
“What’s there to know?”

“Josiah, I have seen things and experienced
heartache that you will never understand. You could walk the earth
for a thousand years and never see the things I have seen with my
own two eyes. You think the world revolves around you, because you
were given this gift. A gift you didn’t even deserve. But the Triat
shined their good will on you. All I can tell you is you need to
show some appreciation for those who came before you.”

“It’s hard to appreciate a culture that
every time I turn around one of them is trying to kill me.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that a trail
was blazed before you and now you have a task ahead of you. You
can’t protect a future of a people if you don’t know anything about
their past. You need to hear their stories. You need to feel the
pain of their persecution. Someone like you doesn’t understand
heartache, and until you do you won’t be a good leader.”

“I don’t understand heartache?” I yelled at
Goshi. “Are you fucking kidding me? My entire family was taken away
from me two years ago. I have had the life I once knew stripped
away from me! Do you think for one second that if I didn’t know
about heartache, I would even be here? Don’t you know that it’s my
pain that drives me?”

Goshi stared at me for the longest time
without saying a word. Then he mumbled, “You shouldn’t have called
my life crap.”