The Immortal Warriors Boxed Set: Books 1-11

by H. T. Night

  “Can I offer you… comfort?” I knew what she meant. She meant physical comfort. I was not going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.

  “Oh my, what a nice thing to offer. I’m okay in that department, Sasha.”

  “Even now, you can’t accept someone reaching out to you.”

  “Never did accept pity well, you know that. And as far as a pity comfort session, I am not that kind of a guy. Not that you aren’t appealing. But Maya surrounds me. No way could I… with you.”

  “All right.” She winked. “You know where I’m at. Give me your phone. I’m going to put my number in it. Call me, Tommy. If you need anything, I will always be here for you. Friends for eternity.”

  She said that so smoothly, after she tried to get me to kill some other vampires. Not that she wasn’t sexy, but Sasha had agendas. And I was still in love with Maya.

  She kissed me on the cheek. Was this what I had to look forward to for the rest of my life? Being the safe guy who was kissed on the cheek? I had a feeling that more of that was coming in the next few months.

  Just as she did that, kissed my cheek, Josiah pulled up in my Mustang. Since I had my bike, I’d let Josiah drive my Mustang. I’d told him he could drive it whenever he wanted. Now, he drove it everywhere. You wouldn’t even know he had his own truck. It was okay, because I had my bike now.

  I hugged Sasha and jumped in the car with Josiah, on the passenger side.

  “Tommy,” Sasha said, just before I opened the door. I stopped, and then turned around. Sasha continued, “Be careful. If anyone did see you and it gets reported to the Carni, you will become a target.”

  “I’m not scared,” I said to Sasha. “Let them come for me. As a matter of fact, I welcome it.” I gave Sasha a wink. I shut the door and Josiah skidded out on the dirt highway.

  “Really?” I said to Josiah.

  “Really? Tommy?” Josiah said back. “Missing the reserves unexcused?”

  This was going to be an interesting ride back to my bike. I just hoped it was still there.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It took us about four hours to find my car back out in the middle of the desert. But it was still there. Thank God. Fifteen grand was a lot of money. I stepped out of my Mustang and picked up my dusty motorcycle that was nearly covered in desert sand.

  I walked my bike around to the driver’s side window of my Mustang. Josiah rolled down his window so we could speak.

  “Thanks for coming to get me. I was in a world of hurt without my ride.”

  “Tommy,” Josiah said in a calm, soft voice. “Are you okay? Do you need professional help?”

  “Why? Do you?” I asked Josiah.

  “I’m not the one drinking so much that I’m passing out on the street constantly.”

  “Josiah,” I said. “You deal with your grief your way and I will deal with it my way.”

  “Please don’t hurt yourself. In many ways, you’re all the family I have.”

  Fucking Josiah, he was getting me all emotional. I teared up. “I’ll come home in a few days. I’ll head up north and get there on the second day,” I said. “I’ll explain what happened in my life and they’ll give me extra guard duty and hopefully, that will be the end of my punishment.”

  “I think that would be smart to show up. The U.S. military is no joke.”

  “You’re telling me.” I didn’t fucking know. I didn’t fucking care because that wasn’t where I was planning to go. The reserves were only my cover story for disappearing every full moon to turn.

  “Be safe, Tommy.”

  “You, too, Jo.”

  Josiah took off on the desert sand and made his way back to the 15 freeway. I was planning on making it to the 15 freeway myself, but I was going to go in the opposite direction. The city of sin was calling my name again and I was ready to place some more bets.

  ***

  I drove into Vegas around noon. I had about eight hours until the second night of the full moon would hit. I needed alcohol and I needed to do some gambling. I had a hundred Gs burning a hole in my pocket. Well, my figurative pocket. My money was still in the bank… I wasn’t an idiot.

  I went to my bank and I pulled out twenty thousand. I guessed Las Vegas banks were used to those kinds of transactions because the teller didn’t even blink. I knew if I tried to pull out twenty grand in California, there would be a thirty-minute holdup.

  Okay, now I’m the idiot with 20 Gs in his pocket.

  I had a good feeling about placing some bets and drinking lots of tequila. I pulled into Caesar’s Palace because I had heard about their infamous sports betting room.

  But first, I wanted to drink. Apparently, I picked winners while drunk off my ass. So, here goes another day of endless drinking. This time, I was back in my kind of town. My very drunk town that served booze 24-7. It was both the worst place for me and the best. Depending on whether I was winning or not.

  I went straight to the bar that was on the opposite side of the sports betting room.

  “Double tequila,” I said to the bartender. She was smoking hot, but I didn’t care. I’d come to drink.

  I woke up and grabbed a daily betting sheet from the sports book, along with an eraser-less, tiny pencil.

  I looked at the betting sheet. There were three basketball games that I loved the spread for the home team. There were also four baseball games that I thought there was no way a team’s pitcher could lose; therefore, I picked their team to win. I couldn’t decide on the eighth game. I was either going to pick Cincinnati in basketball, or the Dukes in baseball. I decided to make a $10,000 bet on both. I kept the seven games I liked and just traded out each team. It was a sure bet. I may have been drunk, but they were giving away money right now. And I was going to keep taking it until I couldn’t take any more.

  Some of the games would end before it became dark in Nevada, but others wouldn’t. I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do. I was thinking about going even deeper out into the desert. I was thinking that it would be too long of a run for me to reach any city just like I did with Annie.

  I figured I would be better off leaving early and heading into the desert, although I would want to know the outcome of the games before it became dark. The likelihood was, that wouldn’t happen. I’d be far into the desert away from any kind of network. I would possibly have the bike’s radio. But I decided I’d check it out after I turned back in the morning. I needed to go far and deep into the desert. Hopefully, I wouldn’t steer away from my bike this time.

  As night came closer, I was at least twenty miles into the depths of the desert. I gently laid my beautiful bike on the ground. I knew it was going to be dark in minutes and I decided if I lay down next to my bike, maybe my werewolf instincts would be to claim ownership of it and I wouldn’t go too far away. I was willing to try anything. I was making up my own rules and I didn’t care. I cuddled my motorcycle as it rested on its side like it was a woman I wanted to protect. I closed my eyes and gripped my bike, even wrapping my arms and legs around it. If my werewolf mind didn’t have a bond with this bike, I knew my human side did. I was trying to tell my inner wolf, “Don’t go far from this bike.”

  As it grew darker, I knew it would only be a matter of…

  Chapter Eighteen

  I woke up staring at the sun just over the horizon. It was quite beautiful. I had no idea what city I was in or what kind of havoc I had wreaked as the wolf. I turned over and to my great surprise, I was ten feet away from my bike.

  That was a whole lot better than the forty miles I had endured the day before, when I had became separated from my bike. I didn’t go anywhere in my wolf form. I had stayed here the whole time. Either that, or I’d programmed myself to return. Either way, it had happened. That was pretty awesome and a huge hurdle leaped as a werewolf. I might never have to go to the ranch or sleep in a cage again.

  I was a little cold. I’d used my leather jacket as a semi-blanket last night before I’d turned. I was pleased to see that my wol
f self didn’t chew up my precious jacket. It’s not like I was going to hit myself with a rolled-up newspaper, but I did like my stuff and didn’t want it destroyed or lost.

  Now, I wanted to get back to Vegas and find out if I won.

  I jumped back on my bike and I dusted off the desert sand. Then, I started up my bike and let her roar like a beast. I took off on my slick motorcycle and made my way back to my second home. Las freaking Vegas.

  I went back to Caesar’s Palace and took my ticket up to the front. I purposely didn’t want to look at any TVs. I wanted to know no scores. I only wanted to hear the good news from the cashier. As if getting it any other way would jinx it.

  I walked up to the only cashier on duty. “Can you check this for me, please?”

  I held my breath until she said rather quickly, “Not a winner.”

  I was bummed, even startled. But I had one more ticket. I handed her the other ticket.

  She ran it through as I held my breath and she said, “Not a winner.”

  Not a winner? That was a pretty accurate description of the emotions roiling inside of me at the moment.

  I had just bet and lost $20,000 like it was “house” money. Oh, wait, technically, it still was. Just a different casino’s house. Still, $20,000 was $20,000. It was asinine of me to make such an incredibly risky bet… not once, but twice.

  I’d gotten lucky the first time. That’s all there was to it. I didn’t even remember placing the first bet when I had won over a hundred grand. It was as if I won the lotto with that first eight parlay betting ticket I found in my pocket the last time I had been here.

  I felt sick to my stomach as the loss kicked in with all sorts of negative emotion chemicals surging through my body. That was a lot of money to lose. I needed some control over my bets, bets that depended on my skill and not luck. Yes, that was the ticket. I needed to be in complete control of my game, and the only game where I could do that was poker.

  I was off to the Venetian for more poker fun. Or in my case, I needed to win back my $20,000.

  I took a cab. It was easier to do that than haul my bike around everywhere and look for parking spots at each place. So, I left it in the Caesar’s Palace parking lot. I decided to tell the cab to head over to my bank before we hit the Venetian. He was glad to do it. More money for him. I had him run the meter as I went inside my bank and I took out $80,000. It was time to play poker with the big boys.

  The cab driver dropped me in front of the Venetian Hotel. I paid my bill, and tipped him $100 for his trouble. Of course, that excited him to the point where he handed me his business card and told me to call whenever I needed a cab in Vegas.

  I was going to make back my $20,000 playing the highest stakes at poker. I made my way through the casino and headed for the poker room. I stopped at a bar just outside the room and ordered a double shot of tequila and downed it. I needed my morning juice.

  I made my way in and I walked up to the floor man who was telling new players where to sit.

  I walked up to him and said, “I’d like to play in your highest game you have.”

  “Well, the highest game we have is in the back. It’s protected by security guards. It’s a $10,000 minimum buy-in but those sharks usually buy-in for 100 grand.” The cashier looked at me and suspected me to freak out and say, ‘no thank you, I would play one of the safer games out here in the main poker room.’

  But of course, I didn’t say that. “I want to buy in for 80 grand.”

  The cashier looked me over to see if I was being serious or just some drunk person pulling his leg. After a short pause, he said, “Well, the first thing you need to do is change your cash into chips. You can do that right inside the door. I will let them know you’re coming in. What’s your name?”

  “Kyro,” I said.

  “Kyro?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, Kyro, good luck,” the floor man said. “You can go back there.”

  I walked through the large poker room and went to the narrow hallway in the back. I walked about forty feet. Then I saw a door that had a sign: “The Highest Stakes Poker Room.”

  On the door, another sign read, “Please knock before entering.”

  So, that’s what I did. I knocked three times. A giant gorilla-looking man opened the door. He was large, white and pasty looking.

  He said, “Kyro?”

  “Yes,” I said. Then he led me to the cashier to turn my cash into chips. I had a lot of hundred-dollar bills and they were in three different white envelopes in three different pockets; my back left pocket and both front pockets.

  I pulled out all three envelopes. The cashier counted it and then counted me out $80,000 in house chips. tI was about four racks of chips. That meant each chip was at least a hundred dollars.

  Shit, is that the starting bet or the ‘blinds’ as it is known in poker?

  In the middle of the room were six poker sharks sitting around the table. There were three empty seats, so I knew they would welcome a fresh body.

  I sat down in seat ten, which was to the right of the dealer. It wasn’t the best seat because it was hard to hear and see hands. But for some reason, the closer I sat to the dealer, I felt luckier. I was just going with it.

  So, I began playing. I decided to keep the drinking to a minimum and treat my time in here like a job. Not that I was promising myself that I wouldn’t drink at all. I was just telling myself… a minimum. Maybe just half as much?

  I didn’t play a hand for an entire hour. I was enjoying my alcohol beverages and trying to get tells from men at the table. I noticed in my poker days, poker player tells are shown far more in the type of bets they make, opposed to if they have a left-eye twitch every time they’re bluffing. That’s one for the movies.

  So far, I had lost $800 in blinds even though I didn’t play a hand. I was getting antsy but my pocket cards sucked. If I saw a face card, I’d think it was an ace. My cards were so bad.

  During the hour, I noticed a few things at the table. One guy had a betting pattern that determined the hand he was projecting to have. He was betting big. Players could go all in for any amount of chips they had on the table. Some guys were sitting on $500,000 stacks. Now that I knew that, I just needed to play the math of poker and only make bets when I knew I had the best hand. Or at least, I thought strongly that I had the best hand. Not guessing or wishing or praying. But knowing.

  There was one guy at the table I noticed and tried to figure out. He was Middle Eastern. The guys at the table were calling him Lucky. Not a good sign. He didn’t seem like he was getting any luck today, however. He was making erratic bets and forced to show his hand and he was consistently bluffing. But he didn’t seem to care that he was losing a shitload of money. Almost as if he knew he’d get something royally big if he was a lion in waiting. He made me nervous.

  The dealer dealt the cards. I looked down and nearly had a heart attack. I was dealt two aces. Finally, a hand! By far, the best starting hand in poker.

  There was a dealer button that was passed each hand to the person to the left. The dealer did it. He or she moved the button. In this case, the dealer was a she. She was an older woman in her late sixties. She must have been doing this a long time to have this gig. She had been getting tipped very well. I hadn’t had any reason to tip her because I hadn’t played in a single hand. If this hand went well, she would get a nice $25 chip from me. That seemed to be the going tip.

  I was second to last to act, so I was in a pretty good position to read the table. The bets started. The blinds were $100 and $200. That meant to call the blinds, players needed to put $200 in the pot.

  Everybody called, all the way to my hand, meaning every person put $200 in. There was already $2,000 in the pot. There were way too many people in this pot. Someone was bound to crack my aces.

  So, I did the only thing I could. I needed to do a giant raise so it only kept big hands in the round and we could get rid of the riff-raff holding to catch a straight with their “8�
�- “9” not even suited.

  “Raise,” I said. I started counting out chips. I counted ten grand and then put it in the pot.

  “That is a $9,800 raise,” the dealer said to the table.

  The guy with the dealer button folded. Then they all started folding, except for Lucky. He stared at me with his big brown eyes, trying to get a read on me.

  “You haven’t played a hand in an hour, and now a $10,000 opening bet? All I can say is, aces or kings, ladies and gentlemen.” Then Lucky turned to the rest of the guys at the table. They were treating me like a joke because they knew I either finally had a great hand or was stupidly bluffing. That pissed me off. Now, I seriously wanted all their money.

  I tried not to give any kind of reaction, but I was drunk, so I said, “You’re way off. It’s my favorite hand.”

  Poker players often had favorite hands. It was usually a reasonably big hand. The poker player liked the hand because he or she has won a lot of money in the past playing that hand.

  My favorite hand was ace-king of hearts. I’d won a lot of money with that hand. So, I said, “This is my favorite hand,” hoping he would think I had a worse hand than I did.

  Lucky paused and said, “Aces are a nice hand to have as your favorite.” He folded, and so did the remaining players left in the hand.

  What an asshole. His talking had made me lose all my action. I thought about pounding him, but of course, that wasn’t going to happen.

  However, I took down my first pot. I received around $2,400 in chips just in a hand where we didn’t even see a flop. I added the chips to my stack.

  I just had my cherry popped in the Highest Stakes Poker Room.

  It was time to have some fun.

  Chapter Nineteen

  For the next three hours, I played the best, drunkest poker of my life. The drunker I became, the better I played. I had to pace myself, however. I didn’t want to pass out at the table. I looked at the clock and I had about six more hours before the last night of the full moon.

  I needed for my second wind to kick in. I decided to hold off for an hour or two on the alcohol. I needed to concentrate. I was up big. Real big. And I was craving more chips. I had at least three hundred grand in front of me in chips. I could barely sit still and I was so anxious in each hand.