by H. T. Night
I opened the door. Sasha looked at me. “Hi, Tommy.”
“What’s up?” I said slowly, my tongue almost frozen in stupid mode.
“How you been?” she asked.
“Great. You?” I felt weird exchanging trivial chat with her when my future rested in her hands. Err, her bite.
“I’ve been okay. I’ve missed my friends,” she said pointedly.
“Good to hear. So have I.”
“Invite her in,” Maya yelled from the kitchen.
“Would you like to come in?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure. Thanks.” Sasha came in nonchalantly—as if my entire supernatural future didn’t rest in the palms of her hands—and walked toward the kitchen. She said hi to Maya and they hugged. My heart went up into my throat as I saw them embrace, a truce between them. No jealousy or games. Just friendship.
“Are you hungry? We made enough for a platoon,” Maya said to Sasha.
“I’m actually starving.” She sounded exhausted.
“Well, have a seat. We set a place for Patrick, but he’s not up yet.” Maya was being hospitable. That’s why I loved her; she had such a good heart.
“Patrick is still here?” Sasha asked.
“Why wouldn’t he be?” I said.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t sure how domestic you two have become.”
I shook my head. I knew it was just a matter of time before she would say something inappropriate. And she had.
“Can I ask you two a favor?” Sasha asked, her voice hesitant.
Here it is. Here’s the reason she came over. She was going to ask for money.
“Sasha,” I said. “Ask away.”
“Can I stay here the next three nights, you know, in the cage?”
“Seriously? That’s what you want?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah, what did you think I was going to ask?”
“I wasn’t sure,” I said.
“Of course you can.” I looked up at Maya. She nodded to me and smiled. “Let us know how we can help you.”
Sasha’s eyes brightened. “Thanks so much, guys. I was going to wander around in my werewolf state and I want to control myself from what I will do after I transition.”
“Well, you’re in luck,” I said, jokingly. “We just happen to have a cage right smack in the middle of our living room.”
“We?” Sasha said.
“Yeah. We,” I said.
“Aww. The state of ‘We’ is good,” Sasha said, smiling. “I am truly happy for you guys.”
“Well, Sasha, in a weird way, I would never have met Maya if I hadn’t met you,” I said.
Maya sat down and the three of us ate like starving orphans. I had thirds and both girls had seconds. It was nearing night time and Patrick hadn’t awakened yet. His door was shut and I figured he must have been wiped out from the night before.
Sasha used the bathroom and then came back into the living room and nodded at the cage. She said, “I’ll see you on the other side, my friends.”
I nodded as Sasha walked into the cage and I locked her into it with the chains.
Eventually, the full moon came out, and she turned into a werewolf and hooted and hollered and screamed bloody murder at us to let her out. Her tormented howls were chilling. How none of my apartment neighbors called the police was beyond me.
Maya and I decided to go in my bedroom, so maybe Sasha would shut up. We put a movie in the Blu-ray player and eventually, we both fell asleep.
A couple of hours later, Maya woke me up. “Tommy, Tommy,” she said.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Feel my face. I think I’m getting a fever.”
I sat up and felt her face, and she was very hot. “You’re hot,” I said.
“Do you have any Tylenol?”
“I have aspirin.”
“I need something stronger.”
“Down the street, there’s a Walgreen’s that’s open 24 hours. I can go down and pick up some for you.”
“Could you?”
“Sure,” I said. I would have gone to downtown London for her.
“Could you also get something for a sore throat? My throat is scratchy!”
“No problem.” I stood up and put my shoes on and grabbed my keys. It was 5:00 a.m., so Sasha had about an hour left to be a werewolf. She was amazingly quiet. I don’t think she saw me. Just before I left the apartment, I put my hands through the bars and stroked her soft fur. Her ears pricked up, but she didn’t turn around or try to bite me. She was wrapped up in her werewolf world. If she was going to put the bite on me, it wouldn’t be tonight. She was almost tame.
I slid into my car and headed to the store. I decided to pick up a few items while I was there. It had been a while since I’d been to a convenience store, so I needed some things. I took about a half an hour going through the aisles, shopping. I brought my stuff to the register. It was two hand baskets filled to the rim. I guess I did go a little crazy.
It came out to $140.37. That was officially the most money I had ever spent at a Walgreen’s or any other convenience store.
I arrived back at my apartment right as the sun came up. I entered my apartment, holding two big plastic bags filled with everything from cough syrup to toothpaste.
I put the bags on the kitchen table and watched as the werewolf turned back into Sasha in beautiful girl form. She was drenched and she lay in the middle of the floor, shivering. I opened the gate and unlocked all of her chains. She looked up at me like she had just finished running a marathon.
I went and grabbed a couple of towels from the bathroom and came back and wiped her down and dried her off.
“Thanks, Tommy,” she said in a hoarse voice.
“No problem, what are friends for.”
“You’re a good friend. You have a great heart.”
I smiled at Sasha. “You do, too, when you allow yourself to be honest with yourself.”
“I was being honest with myself. That’s why I had to leave. I saw how happy Maya made you. I saw how perfect she was and how she is everything I’m not. I knew I couldn’t handle being around you two.”
“How do you feel now?”
“I’ll be okay. She’s a lucky girl, and I’ll make sure she knows it.”
“It’s okay; you don’t have to do that. Let me grab a couple of Maya’s things so you can change your clothes.” They were about the same size and I knew Maya wouldn’t mind.
I walked into my bedroom to grab the clothes and I thought my eyes had deceived me. Maya was gone! Not only was she gone, my bedroom window was wide open!
“Maya!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. I stuck my head out of the window and could see footprints below in the dirt. My heart fell out of my chest. “No! No! Patrick!” I screamed.
I ran to Patrick’s room. It was locked. I yelled for him to open it.
“What’s wrong?” Sasha ran over to me.
“Patrick! Open the fucking door!” There was no response. I took a step back and kicked the door open. Patrick wasn’t there and his window was wide open too, with cardboard and masking tape ripped off the wall, with pieces hanging out the window.
“What the hell is going on?” I screamed. “What the fuck!”
“Tommy, calm down. There has to be a clear reason why this happened.”
I looked at Sasha with disdain. “Yeah, there’s a clear reason! You and Patrick have cursed me! What the fuck did you do, Sasha?” I pinned Sasha up against the wall. “Did you lead some Carni... or Mani to my apartment? Huh? Answer me!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Sasha looked horrified.
I couldn’t tell if she knew anything or not. “You must know something, Sasha! This is your fucking world! You must have led someone here and they took Maya!” I looked at the two empty rooms from the hallway. “And they probably killed Patrick!”
“Patrick!” Sasha screamed. And her face said it all, how much she cared for him.
I was horrified. What had
just happened? Why did I leave Maya by herself? Why? I was only gone for an hour to the drugstore. How long had Patrick been gone? I only assumed he had been sleeping. He could have been gone since yesterday.
I fell to my knees. “What am I going to do? I don’t know what to do. Help me, Sasha. If you know anything...”
Sasha dropped to the floor next to me. “Tommy, you need to believe me when I say I had nothing to do with this! I was locked away in my cage, keeping the world safe from me and keeping myself safe from the world.”
“I don’t care. That’s not going to make anything better. I need to find Maya.”
“Just try to relax. Let’s piece this together.”
“What’s there to piece together? They came in and killed Patrick, and then took Maya.”
“But they came into two different windows. That means they had to come at different times.”
“No, they could have come in through one and left through the other.”
“Then why was Patrick’s door locked? Why isn’t there any kind of mess by either door? They only came in and out of the same windows.”
“Okay, but what difference does that make?”
“I bet they took Patrick the night before, not last night. They must have been waiting for you to leave Maya’s side so they could get her.”
Just the thought of someone touching Maya against her will made me want to throw up. “Why? Why would they want Maya?”
“Because they want you, Tommy. It is obvious that Mani have done this. It must be that brotherhood crew from the other night. I think they kidnapped Maya as bait to draw you to their lair, their hideout. On their turf, they probably have a way to beat you, but not here on your turf. They are probably setting you up with a lot of people and all kinds of traps and weapons that go beyond fists and feet.”
I looked at Sasha and she seemed really certain about what she was saying. “Why do they want me?” I asked.
“Because they know how tough you are. You beat the crap out of three of them and you’re a human. They can only imagine how insanely powerful you’d be as a vampire.”
“They kidnapped Maya, so that I will come after them?” I asked stupidly.
“That’s what I’m saying. They probably won’t hurt Maya because they know that if she is transformed to Mani that you won’t want her.”
My mouth dropped open at how clever Sasha was, how she extrapolated all of this from the few clues that we had. I had seriously underestimated my slender werewolf friend. She was as clever as she was pretty.
“But why?”
“Tommy, they can have any human they want. They handpicked her to get to you. They don’t want to kill you. They want you on their team. If you were turned Mani, their creepy cult gang would be invincible. They could take over Southern California. And that’s just for starters.”
“Well, if they intentionally wanted me to come to them, why aren’t there any clues about where they went?”
Sasha thought for a minute. “Well, there’s one huge clue.”
“What is it?”
“They left me alive. They didn’t find the need to kill me.”
“Would they just have killed you for sport?”
“Oh, they would have killed me and not batted an eye. They left me alive for a reason. They knew I could lead you to them.”
“Can you?”
Sasha was quiet.
“Can you?” I shouted.
“I’m thinking.”
Sasha and I picked ourselves off the floor and went into the kitchen. “Okay, let’s start here,” I said. “Where have you been the last two weeks?”
“I was staying with a friend in Arrowhead.”
“Arrowhead? In the mountains?”
“Is there another?”
“Do you know of any Mani hot spots up there?”
“Yeah, there’s the biggest one in Southern California. It’s called the Flatlands. All Mani and future Mani go there. It’s like their traditional hangout.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a gravel parking lot. Sometimes they set up bonfires and hang out all night.”
“What about during the day?”
“Mani can’t function during the day unless they transition into birds.”
“Then, who’s watching Maya?” I yelled.
“Probably future Mani, like Patrick. If he’s not dead, maybe even him.”
“What does that mean? What the fuck is a future Mani?”
“They usually are teenagers who are waiting to be fully developed until they turn. They want to have maximum height and muscle mass before they become vampires because after they transition, their bodies can’t further mature.”
“It makes sense,” I said. “So, some of these teenagers might be keeping Maya hostage?”
“I would bet on it,” Sasha said confidently. “They are going to stay hidden until tonight and more than likely meet up with whoever originally took Maya at the Flatlands.”
“So, I have to sit around all day and not know what to do?” I knew I was going to lose my mind waiting around all day.
“I know it’s going to be hard, but from everything I know, there is no way they would harm her. They want you on board with them happy, not looking for revenge. I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t treating her like a queen. Well, a captive queen. She’s a hostage for negotiation, not their dinner. Not their new girlfriend either. I hope.”
A surge of anger blasted through me. “I swear to God, if anyone of those guys lays a hand on her in any way, I’ll kill the whole lot of them.”
“Trust me, Tommy. They know that. They are just using her as bait.” She paused. “Are we going?”
“Hell, yes!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
This was the longest day of my life.
I felt so guilty not calling Maya’s parents and telling them that Maya might be in some kind of danger. I even debated getting Josiah involved. I knew he could kick as much ass as I could. And that was what I needed: another ass-kicking machine. But there was no way I could put a seventeen-year-old boy in that kind of jeopardy. I knew he would jump at the chance, especially for his sister, but I couldn’t do it.
Sasha wanted to come with me. She said she would take off into the woods once she became a werewolf and distract some of their attention to her. I told her to stay at my house, but she insisted on coming because she knew exactly where to go.
“You need me on this trip, Tommy. Not only do I know just where to go, I can kick some ass, too, if the going gets tough. Unless you are going to go get Josiah, you need me to have your back.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Why didn’t you want to bite me last night, and turn me to Carni?”
“I was just about to come out of my werewolf state and I had this awareness that you were stroking me, comforting me. Were you?”
“Yeah. I was hoping you would bite me and I would turn. Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. Usually, I don’t have human awareness when I am a werewolf. It’s all instinct, and less introspection. Last night, in my werewolf state, as I was approaching what was probably the last hour of my transition, I had this awareness of comfort and friendship as you stroked me. For the first time in my werewolf skin, I wasn’t alone in my world. You were there with me, caring about me.”
“Wow,” I said, and we hugged.
“Should we stay here and wait for dark so you can bite me and turn me?”
“Tommy, get real. Someone has to drive your car to Arrowhead.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Hurry up. Or you will have a full-size werewolf in your car when it gets dark.”
“Oh shit,” I said, and ramped up my getting-ready speed.
We jumped into my Mustang and headed to the Arrowhead Mountains. It was nearing dark, and as we neared the Flatlands, my adrenaline levels were off the map. I had no idea how I was going to control myself. All I knew was I needed to make sure Maya was okay and get to the mountains befor
e Sasha turned into a werewolf in my moving car.
I pulled into a rocky parking lot. “This piece of shit area is Flatlands?” I asked.
“It’s not exactly Griffith Park, but it’s a pretty popular area up here.”
There was no one in the parking lot. Not one body, not one car. “Do you think you made a mistake?”
“I’m sure I haven’t,” Sasha said. “There is still a little bit of daylight and the Mani can’t transition yet.” Sasha looked at herself in the passenger-side vanity mirror on the visor. “My pupils are turning yellow. Tommy, I’m going to turn at any moment. I need to get away from you. I don’t want to bite you and turn you yet. You need all of your human faculties to rescue Sasha. And Patrick, too.” She shoved open the door, and left my Mustang.
“Sasha!” I yelled out.
She turned around. “Yeah?”
“Thank you. Be safe.”
“You, too. And Tommy, this is very important: Don’t let a Mani bite you or it’s all over. Everything. Not just your life as you know it, but if a Mani bites you, they will kill Patrick, if he is still alive, and Maya will be lost to you forever.”
I shivered at her words of warning and watched as she ran toward the woods, first on two legs and then on all fours. The sun had set and the moon was in full view. I had to admit, whenever the full moon came out I received an extra boost of energy like I had just downed six Red Bull energy drinks.
I looked on as I saw Sasha turn into a werewolf. She took off running into the woods, bounding, leaping, howling. She was beautiful, truly poetry in motion, a full-grown female wolf. I felt my face; my beard was as long as ever and I knew that when I was a transitioned Carni, that this would be my wolf’s mane. I decided to get back in my car and wait.
About ten minutes went by and then all hell broke loose. Four vehicles whizzed into the parking lot. A couple of black ravens and red hawks landed in the middle of the ground. I looked on and watched as the two ravens transitioned into two Mani men.
Sasha’s words rang in my ears. Don’t let a Mani bite you!
One of them was seven feet tall and looked like the guy from the desert that killed that enormous werewolf. The other was about my size. The red hawk transitioned into a beautiful redheaded woman. She was the same person who was finishing off Carni after they were injured from the other night.