H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (84 page)

Tommy grinned at the Mani and charged him.
The priest transitioned to the raven, but this time Tommy held
back, and with lightning-fast reflexes, he caught the bird in
mid-flight as he tried to fly past him.

In a panic, the priest transitioned back
into his Mani form as Tommy had a hold of him. It didn’t matter
that Tommy had reached down with his right hand and grabbed the
metal stake and jammed it through the priest’s neck. He disappeared
instantly.

Inside of five minutes, Tommy had now killed
two Mani.

Tommy wasn’t a guy who craved the kill. In
fact, killing was against his nature as much as it was mine. This
was not like him. He was killing for a reason.

I turned to Romero. “What the hell is he
doing? Why is he fighting till the death?”

Romero smiled, “What can I say? Our boy puts
on a great show,” Romero laughed.

Now I was pissed off. Something was up. “Did
you offer him money to kill?”

“Not even Tommy would be influenced by that,
you know that, Josiah.”

“Why is he killing his opponents?”

“Shhh, Josiah. Quiet, here comes some eye
candy for both of us to enjoy.”

I looked out into the crowd and the
announcer was already in the middle of the ring. Tommy had a crazed
look in his eye.

“Tommy! Talk to me! Why are you doing this?”
I pleaded to him in my mind.

This time he answered. “I have to, Josiah.
That’s all I can say!”

I turned my head, and Romero’s greedy ass
was standing up watching the ring announcer. The announcer took the
microphone and said in a solemn voice, “Lust.” It seemed the deaths
were also affecting the announcer in a bad way.

What was going on? I needed to piece this
together.

The black double doors burst open. And the
sexiest woman I had ever seen stepped out. She was an Amazon. She
was six foot two with legs that stretched on for days. She was
dressed in white lingerie, if you could even call that skimpy
outfit that. She was carrying a white whip that matched her very
revealing outfit. Her get up made WWE divas look like nuns.

“How does she represent Lust as a fighter?”
I said, to Romero. “The only Lust that is going on is from the men
in the crowd.”

“Oh, trust me,” Romero said. “She’s a
nympho.” He turned to his body guards and they all smiled and
laughed. Apparently, she had provided a group rate before the
fight.

This wasn’t good. I hoped Tommy wasn’t
planning on killing the woman. Tommy transitioned into the gray
wolf. The woman immediately transitioned into a beautiful red hawk.
The crowd booed. They apparently wanted to gawk at her body a
little longer.

I looked at the audience; no one had left.
This was what they had paid for. They paid a half a million a seat
to watch death. And that was exactly what Tommy and Romero were
giving them. What was making Tommy go along with it? I had no
idea.

The third bell rang. For about two minutes,
the fight looked like a bizarre episode of Wild Kingdom. It was a
red hawk fighting a giant gray wolf.

Apparently, she had a game plan and she was
sticking to it. She was not going to let Tommy get a hold of
her.

The crowd began to boo at a deafening level.
Romero didn’t like that. It was as if Tommy was unsure about what
he wanted to do. He really wasn’t fighting back. The hawk would
bolt into him like a spear and pull back. Tommy really wasn’t doing
much of anything except standing there.

Her pattern was blatantly obvious. Every
11.5 seconds she bolted in. I could time it in my sleep. Tommy knew
it, too. It was as if he was letting her get to him.

She finally gave up her strategy of strictly
fighting as the red hawk. She transitioned into her womanly form to
the absolute delight of the crowd. You would have thought they were
watching a mud-wrestling match in Buenos Aires, not that they had
just witnessed two individuals being killed before their eyes.

Tommy remained as the wolf. They circled one
another for about another minute. I knew Tommy could easily leap on
her and take her out, he was reluctant. It was obvious that the
killings were affecting him.

Even though Lust was only wearing a
G-string, complete with a revealing bra and sexy nylons, the
audience was craving more bloodshed. They began to boo once
again.

Then Tommy said to me in my head, “I’m
sorry, Josiah.”

He then leaped on top of her and mauled her
like a cat tearing into a bird. But she wasn’t a bird. She was in
her womanly form and it was very hard to watch.

She tried fighting back, but she was no
match for Tommy. She laid there, almost motionless. Tommy
transitioned back to his Carni form and grabbed the steak that was
still in the middle of the ring.

Then he did something that both surprised
and disgusted me even more. He dragged the mangled Mani woman all
the way up to the window in front of Romero’s suite. There was only
a giant plate of glass separating Tommy and Romero. Tommy still had
a hold of the woman, who was barely breathing.

“This is what you want to see?!” Tommy
screamed at Romero. Tommy then whispered something in the woman’s
ear and closed his eyes as if he said a prayer. Then he shoved the
metal stake into her neck and she disappeared.

Tommy stood there staring through the window
at Romero. I wasn’t sure what Romero was going to do. Then, he
slowly stood up and began to clap, as did the crowd. It was the
sickest display of affection I had ever seen a crowd give. Romero
wanted a night to remember and Tommy was sure giving it to
them.

Chapter Twenty-eight

I sat back in my chair, totally overwhelmed
at what I was witnessing, the downspiral of Tommy into the darkest
emotional place I’d ever known him to inhabit. This was supposed to
be a night of seven deadly sins, and the deadly part was as
apparent as the sins themselves.

Tommy had three huge matches before I was
supposed to step into the ring with him. He just took down
Gluttony, Sloth, and Lust.

Next was “Greed.’ It should be an easier
match. Romero made it sound like he offered an average fighter an
insane amount of money to just get into the ring with Tommy. I
guess the guy now knew what his life is worth because he would not
leave this ring alive.

Tommy stood alone in the ring in his Carni
form. I couldn’t communicate with him even if I wanted to. He
needed to be the werewolf for us to be able to hear each other’s
thoughts. I think he purposely was in his Carni form, so he
wouldn’t have to hear an earful from me.

The fourth fight was taking longer to start,
compared to the others. I looked at Romero and he was leaning back
in his chair in a sea of his own blissful arrogance. I knew he and
I weren’t going to have any kind of truthful conversation about
what was happening in front of our eyes.

A feeling of uneasiness had now manifested
inside of me. Something was going on and that was as obvious as
Romero’s ego. Whatever Romero had worked out with Tommy had to be
gigantic to have him kill his opponents. Romero had either offered
something huge in return or was blackmailing Tommy.

“What’s taking this fight so long to start?”
I asked Romero.

“That’s a good question.” Romero snapped his
fingers and then whispered something into one of his bodyguard’s
ears. His bodyguard then whispered something back to him.

Romero smiled and said something very stern
in Spanish in his bodyguard’s ear and he promptly left the room.
Romero looked at me and gave me a business smile that men do when a
situation isn’t good.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“Apparently, ‘Greed’ isn’t as greedy as we
were hoping.”

“He backed out?”

“He’s trying to.”

“Well, think about it. Why wouldn’t he? He
just witnessed Tommy kill three of his opponents. He’d be a fool to
go out there.”

“A deal’s a deal,” Romero said, plainly, to
me. “We already gave him part of the money just to show up. From
what I hear he already sent it back to his family in
Guatemala.”

“How are you going to get him to fight?”

“Easily, we’ll kill his family if he
doesn’t.”

“You have got to be kidding me!”

“It’s practical,” Romero, said with no
emotion.

“You would even kill the women?” I
asked.

“It didn’t seem to stop your friend,” Romero
smiled. “Why should it stop me?”

He was ruthless. This night was not going to
end well, that was one thing I knew for sure. The feeling of death,
and yes, even a little bit of fear had now taken over my body.
Something was going on and I needed to find out.

I decided I better get out of the suite and
take a look around. “I need to get ready for my fight.” I stood up.
“I don’t need to watch anymore.”

“It would probably be good if you sit and
watch one more fight,” Romero said to me, like he was my
father.

“I need to prepare,” I said.

“When does the great Josiah Reign ever
prepare before a fight? I’ve been told that you have shown up
seconds before your previous fights and won easily.”

“None of them could hold Tommy’s jock. Tommy
is a world-class fighter and it’s going to be the fight of my life.
He’s already beaten me in the ring once and I don’t plan on him
doing it again.”

“He might have beaten you when you were
mortals, there is no way he’s beating you now. Oh, you’ll be fine.
You forget, Josiah, I’ve seen you fight. Tommy is a great fighter,
as he has demonstrated tonight. But you are the greatest fighter I
have ever seen. You’re the Muhammad Ali of the underworld,” Romero
laughed.

He was trying to build me up, but I saw
through it. I saw through his game, more than he knew. He was
trying to keep me away from the ring area for whatever reason.

“I will need to get my head right, Romero,
at some point. I’ll watch one more, but then I need a place to get
settled before it’s my turn to get in the ring.”

I sat back down in my seat and looked out
into the arena. Tommy stood in the middle of the ring. He was only
wearing some ripped jeans and had no shirt on. His back was to us.
It was as if he refused to look in Romero’s direction. The crowd
loved him as they chanted his name repeatedly. I knew that was the
only solace he was feeling at this moment. The killings were
weighing heavily on him.

Then the announcer once again made his way
to the middle of the ring. He grabbed the microphone. The announcer
appeared to have seen enough. He looked pretty shaken up. He said
in a deep voice, “Greed,” and stepped out of the ring.

The black double doors opened and a Mani man
entered who looked to be about fifty years old. I recognized him,
he used to own a Mexican food chain in the states called El
Burrito. It went bankrupt a year back. No wonder he needed the
money. He wasn’t a fighter. He was a failed businessman.

“This isn’t even close to being a fair
fight!” I said to Romero. “Age alone, that guy can’t compete with
an athlete such as Tommy.”

“You’d be surprised. That’s Manuel Vega. You
recognize him from his humorous El Burrito commercials, but he was
a golden gloves champion such as yourself in his youth.”

“That was at least 40 years ago. Tommy is in
the prime of his life.”

“What can I say? You offer a man five
million dollars and he grows a pair of balls.”

“Or if you threaten his family by gunpoint,”
I said back to Romero. Romero just looked at me. He knew I was
getting riled up. He was a smart guy and knew when to shut up, even
though he was a billionaire.

This wasn’t going to be good. Tommy watched
as the guy tentatively approached the stage. Then something else
hit me, this guy wasn’t a Mani or a Carni. He was a human, a
Tandra.

“You can’t do this, Romero!” I yelled.

“Why is that?”

“He’s not immortal, he’s only a man.”

“Wow, you’re good, Josiah. What are you,
some kind of Las Vegas psychic?”

“This is inhuman,” I said.

“Well, then it’s good that Tommy is no
longer human.”

“This is wrong. It’s against the Triat code.
We can’t fight unwilling humans. You’re damning Tommy!”

“Don’t talk to me about your vampire voodoo,
son. Tommy agreed to fight seven people tonight, regardless who
they are underneath their skin. There was never talk about each one
having to be immortal.”

This was not going to be good.

Tommy was smart. He was going to know very
quickly that this guy wasn’t a Carni or a Mani. The only chance he
had was if he never transitioned to the werewolf. If he fought the
guy only in his Carni form, he might be able to skate pass the
Triat by-laws.

Tommy turned toward the Romero suite and
shook his head at Romero. He knew this guy was mortal.

Thank God.

“Come on, Tommy,” I whispered, underneath my
breath. “Whatever you do, don’t transition.”

Tommy reluctantly took a fighter’s stance,
as did Manuel Vega. Here were two people fighting to the death and
neither one of them wanted to fight each other, but for two
completely different reasons. One didn’t want to kill, and the
other didn’t want to be killed.

The fourth bell rang.

Manuel came at Tommy and with his right
hand. jabbed Tommy’s chin. Tommy didn’t even try to get out of the
way. Tommy purposely took the jab. The jab is used to set up a much
harder punch. This man was a southpaw, meaning his power hand was
his left.

Manuel continued to move around Tommy and
soften him up by jabbing him in the face. Tommy stood in his way
and just took each punch. Manuel was giving him the best he had.
Then he unloaded a left hook that hit the side of Tommy’s face.
Again, Tommy didn’t get out of the way. The left hook shook him up
a bit, but didn’t knock him down. Manuel was giving the best he had
and Tommy not only took each punch, he didn’t even try to get out
of the way of them.