by H. T. Night
Atticai watched him with a bemused expression on his face, and I thought that was going to be it. Ron would run to his room, and everyone would disperse, and I would limp my way home.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The tall man swirled his long chain like a lasso and what he did next defied logic and reason. He threw the chain, which whipped through the air, humming as it went. The chain wrapped around Ron’s legs perfectly and the burly dope pitched forward onto the house’s concrete steps. My mouth had barely dropped open, when this Atticai character somehow, miraculously appeared on top of Ron.
Then Atticai opened his mouth, and in the ambient street and house light, I could see that he had filed down his teeth. What the hell? A second later, he buried his teeth and face into Ron’s neck. Ron screamed like a girl. Someone else screamed, too. Ron kicked once, twice. More people screamed.
Was I being Punk’d? Was this happening?
A moment later, Atticai pulled his face away—a face now covered with blood. Ron laid perfectly still, with blood pouring down his neck; his blood splashed over the concrete stairs.
This was real. The seven-foot-tall freak fucking bit into fat boy’s neck. And in front of a crowd of people. Unbelievable!
Atticai casually picked Ron up by his neck, lifting him entirely off the ground. Ron’s legs dangled like a five-year-old’s. And with a primeval growl, the tall freak threw Ron off the stairs and into the bushes nearby.
And that’s when complete pandemonium broke out.
Chapter Four
Most of the partygoers took off running, but there were some unfortunate bastards who stood their ground trying to defend their frat house turf.
Like I said, unfortunate bastards.
The three guys in trench coats were moving so fast that they appeared more of a blur than anything else. I was beginning to wonder if I had been the one who had been slipped a “roofie.” Anyway, time skipped a bit. One moment, the tall, freaky guys were here. And the next, they were over there. In a blur, a blink, and sometimes, even instantly. Since I no longer had a dog in this fight—not to mention that I was seriously questioning my sanity—I decided to duck behind the Jeep and see how this all played out.
And then get the hell out of here.
The redheaded woman had now joined the three trench coats. All four, as best as I could tell, were laying beatdowns with their chains and whips in a scene that could only be described as surreal, and one that made movie prison riots look tame. No one here had a chance.
The redheaded woman, who had just disposed of a man twice her size by throwing him hard against a tree trunk, suddenly stopped and looked straight at me. I wanted to duck, but it was too late. Her eyes narrowed and then she did something unexpected. She nodded slightly and motioned with her head. I frowned and was momentarily overcome with an impression that she recognized me somehow, although I was damn sure that I had no clue who she was. She motioned with her head again, and my foggy, dense brain finally understood the gesture. She wanted me to run!
Well, that sounded like a hell of a good idea, and so that’s what I did. Well, as I best as I could pull off. With a sharp pain ripping through my injured back—and pain that was eclipsed by a powerful surge of adrenaline—I bolted down the driveway.
And that’s as far as I got.
Before I could even get to the sidewalk, one of the trench coats guys had tripped up my feet. I fell to the ground. I tried to fight him off, but it was no use. He had the strength of ten men. He was impossible to move. I was a world-class mixed martial arts fighter, and this Goth dude was keeping me down? I rolled over, and he bit down on my neck. What the hell was this crazy asshole doing?
He was freaking biting into my neck! Really?
I had been in at least two hundred fights, in my life. Not one time did my opponent think that a smart move was to bite my neck.
I tried fighting him off, but it was no use. With everything I had—and using every wrestling technique Tommy had ever taught me—I broke his grip on me and heaved him off me. All in one motion. And as he went spinning and stumbling, I leaped to my feet and grabbed my neck. He regained his balance and turned and faced me, eyes wide with wonder and confusion. He didn’t plan on me being that strong. It was if that would be the first time anyone ever got the best of him.
I looked at my hand. There was a small amount of blood on it. “What the fuck did you do that for?” I said to the man who just took a bite out of my flesh.
“You should have never come,” he hissed, and lunged at me again, his mouth wide. This guy also had his teeth filed.
What the hell was going on? They all had some crazy vampire fetish.
I landed a punch that did him little harm, although it slowed him down some. He shook off my blow and kept coming at me. The blow that I had landed would have laid out most people. People being the operative word here.
And in a move that would have made any MMA fighter proud, he grabbed my hand in a blink and pulled me forward. The movement was so sudden and powerful that I lost my balance. He yanked me again and now I pitched forward onto the grass. Not the world’s most graceful takedown, but it worked. Not to mention he still had me by the hand, which he had yanked awkwardly behind me.
Awkwardly and painfully. Too painfully. I turned my head and saw that the son-of-bitch had bitten down on my wrist. I tried to free myself, but I was in a hell of a twisted position.
He bit down harder, tearing away some of my skin.
This man was now drinking the blood from my wrist. I could see the crazy motherfucker swallowing my blood. I looked at the grass, and the other two guys were biting their victims, too. I began to feel faint.
“Don’t hurt him, Wyatt!” a voice shouted, in the night. It was hard to be sure from where, exactly. Blackness had seriously started encroaching along the edges of my vision. The voice might have been coming from the van. “He’s the only one who helped me!”
And with that, the man let go of my wrist. My hand dropped, and I fell forward on my face. I was completely drained of all energy. I lost all desire to move.
As I lay there, feeling as if I had been attacked by a grizzly bear, I could hear the sounds of approaching sirens. I’m no stranger to sirens or even to being arrested. If you grow up as a street brawler like me, you get used to both; however, I was too weak to move.
Now, I seriously felt drugged, and my neck and wrist hurt like hell.
Suddenly, Atticai was by my side. He knelt down, which took him a heartbeat longer than most people, since he was so damn tall. He lowered his face to mine, and I was struck instantly by the strong scent of coppery blood on his breath. Indeed, blood was dripping in large globs down his chin. My stomach flip-flopped.
“Is this true?” Atticai asked me.
“Is what true?” I could barely muster.
“Did you help Lena?”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the others. “Then let’s get the hell out of here.” He looked back at me and grinned through all the blood. “And, you’re coming with us.”
Amazingly, he gripped the back of my shirt and lifted me clean off the ground. I found myself briefly dangling—and gasping for air—before he threw me into the back of the open van like a sack of potatoes. The rest of the freak show gang of bloodsuckers followed in behind me and the side door was slammed shut.
Wyatt, the same guy who tried to feast on my arm, started the van and threw it into reverse. Dirt, grass, and mud kicked up and soon the tires screeched rubber trails across the sidewalk and back onto the asphalt street. I heard it. I smelled it. Burned rubber, acrid against the metallic copper scent of their breaths in the van. There, Wyatt shoved the gearshift into ‘drive’ and the van literally squealed away, briefly slewing sideways.
Most of the seats had been removed from the van. The other freaks were hanging out the windows, bracing themselves against the madcap turns. Only Lena and the redheaded girl were looking at
me. A brief thought ran through my head that I was in some sort of Scooby Doo horror flick in an alternate universe, or that I was having a pizza-induced nightmare, but the pain in my back, neck and wrist was so all-consuming that I knew it was real. I was hurt, bad. Me, martial arts professional, was nearly slain by a baseball bat and a bloodsucker.
I wanted to ask where the hell they were taking me—to a hospital?—but I was still weak and oddly drained of energy. I could not even speak. And so, I did the only thing I could think of. I closed my eyes and hoped that I would awaken from this terrifying nightmare.
Chapter Five
I must have passed out in the van.
When I next opened my eyes, the redheaded woman was half reclining next to me. She had my wrist in her hand and was swabbing rubbing alcohol on the bite marks from a first aid kit with a red cross on the container. “Does it hurt?” she asked.
“A little,” I said, not wanting to wuss out in front of her.
“Wyatt is terribly sorry for biting you. He thought you were one those pricks at the party.”
“Yeah, sorry about that, dude. That was totally my bad. I should have realized they were all wearing those matchy-matchy Izod polo shirts with their logo,” Wyatt said to me from the driver’s seat, without turning around. “I thought you were making a run for it.”
I had no idea how to respond to a guy who had just bitten my neck and drank blood from my arm. I’m sure my expression said it all. It was a cross between What the hell? And Seriously? You drank my blood?
Instead of answering, I turned back to the redheaded girl and asked, “Where are we going?”
She looked at me with a softness that was a complete one-eighty from what I had seen earlier, when she was whipping dudes into submission. “We’re headed to the Flatlands. It’s just north of Arrowhead.”
“We’re in the mountains?” I asked.
The girl nodded. “We weren’t about to stick around and allow you and Lena to get arrested.” She grinned a little. “We’re not complete monsters.”
Being arrested was nothing new to me. Then again, explaining the bite marks on my wrist and neck to the police might be hard to do. Yeah, it was probably best to get the hell out of Dodge. Then again, getting the hell out of Dodge with these weirdos might not have been my best choice, though. Not that I had much of a choice.
Atticai sat pressed up against the inside of the car door. With his long limbs bent sharply, he looked a bit like a giant praying mantis. He had his arm around Lena. A protective gesture. It reminded me of a father protecting his young daughter. It made me jealous nonetheless. Anyway, Atticai was staring at me, and it was making me feel extremely uncomfortable. I’m not used to feeling uncomfortable. I decided I didn’t like the feeling.
He stared at me for another few seconds and then asked, “Did you seriously beat the shit out of those five guys before we arrived there?”
I thought about his question. I wasn’t sure if the king freak would be impressed by that or threatened. Finally, I shrugged and said, “Yeah, I did.”
“With only your hands?” he asked.
“And my feet,” I said.
Atticai nodded. “Impressive,” he said. He was now stroking Lena’s hair, who sat impassively. I couldn’t see if she liked his touch or not. Anyway, he seemed to treat her more like a pet than a human being, which I found creepy as hell. He looked back at me. “So, what’s your name?”
“Josiah.”
“Well, thanks, Josiah. I’m not sure what would have happened to Lena if you hadn’t stepped in.”
Was this guy for real? Was he truly acting this normal?
He and his buddies just finished literally ripping the flesh and drinking the blood of the party goers; he just sat there, calmly petting Lena, as if she was a pet cat. Austin Powers, he was not.
Something seriously strange and terribly wrong was going on here. And I was trapped in the van with the freaks from Gothville, still weak as hell from having my own blood feasted upon.
“What are you guys?” I ventured.
The third guy spoke up. “We might ask you the same thing. What are you?” he asked. “A superhero?” He sat in the front passenger seat next to Wyatt. He was as thin as the others and just as pale, but he had a Middle Eastern look to him.
I sat up a little more, feeling some of my strength coming back into my body. Or maybe I was just willing my strength to come back. The redheaded girl and Atticai were still staring at me. I guess I was just going to have to get used to these creeps looking at me and not talking. Granted, having a beautiful redhead staring at me was certainly not as creepy, but not by much.
I said, “Not a superhero. I just wanted to help Lena.” I looked over at her again. “We were acquaintances in high school.”
Now, she glanced at me and smiled, even while Atticai continued running his fingers through her hair. She had a zen aura about her now that she was obviously extremely safe. Her eyes, however, were reaching out to mine. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. This woman has captivated me in such a short amount of time. My brain is spinning. Lena knew these people. And she wasn’t afraid.
“Well, you guys seemed to have things pretty well under control,” I said, purposely not mentioning the part where they also seemed to have enjoyed a late night snack. On blood.
Seriously. I worried about when they were going to tank up next. And on whom?
“No, really,” I said. “Who in the hell are you guys?”
The redheaded woman wrapped a bandage around my wrist. “My name’s Yari,” she said, taping on the bandage. Her touch was gentle, pleasant...and oddly cold. As if her fingers had been dipped in a bucket of chilled blood. The contradictory nature of all of these individuals was making my brain spin.
“Yari?” I asked, trying to pronounce it correctly. “Kind of like Tasha Yar from Star Trek? But with an ‘eee’ sound at the end?”
She smiled at me. She was incredibly beautiful. I felt like her bright, searching eyes could see right through me. “Yes... Yari. Y-A-R-I,” she spelled out. “It rhymes with Atari.” She smiled.
As creeped out as I was, I smiled, too. “Wow! You made an old-school game reference. I’m impressed.”
“Oh, you have no idea how old school I am. Way older school than your Star Trek reference would indicate that you are.” She grinned, then flicked her gaze over to Atticai, who was still staring at me.
“The freakishly tall scary fellow here is Atticai.” Then, she nodded toward the driver. “You already know Wyatt. And in the passenger seat is Hector. Hector likes to smile a lot and doesn’t say much.”
I nodded and tried to smile at everyone. I guessed introductions were in order, considering I was being kidnapped. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
Wyatt suddenly turned the van hard to the right and hit the brakes. “We’re here.”
Atticai leaped into motion, his long limbs unfurling in a blink like some weird alien life form awakened from a space travel stasis slumber. He threw open the bay door, and he and Lena jumped out. I slowly followed with my bandage around my wrist and, no doubt, a damn big hickey on my neck, compliments of Wyatt.
The Flatlands was a giant gravel parking lot that was surrounded by trees. We were obviously in the heart of the San Bernardino Mountains. The sky was lit up by stars that you just couldn’t see in the city, due to light pollution. There were several trucks and cars parked throughout the gravel area. Beyond the cars were fires and voices that belonged to many dark-clad figures. It appeared to be a giant party, a rave of some sort, except that everyone was dressed in black.
A freak convention, I thought. Of epic Goth proportions.
There were bonfires everywhere and the sounds of old-school Suicidal Tendencies blaring. A quick scan and guesstimate told me that there were at least a hundred or so of these “emo” characters in the gathering. I shivered, deprived of blood and still pretty shocky.
I was led over to one of the bonfires. Atticai still had his arm around L
ena. He was still giving off this protective vibe when it came to her. It was surreal, to say the least. My eyes kept drifting over to where she was standing. I didn’t usually feel this crazy about a girl who seemed quite unattainable. It was the innocence she possessed in this maddening place.
Anyway, as we walked up, there was no doubt who was the alpha male in this group. A swath opened for him in the pressing crowd of black-clad bizarros, and he walked down the middle of it like a freaking king at his coronation. Everyone seemed to turn and watch him. I stopped at the edge of the fire with Yari and watched as Atticai took off his trench coat and then his T-shirt. He was pretty ripped. He was damn pale, granted, but the dude had some serious game in the abs department. His stomach looked as if it was carved out of alabaster by Michelangelo himself. No wonder Lena liked this guy. Even though he was a colossal freak, he was a man among pale, skinny boys in this adoring crowd. As he turned his back to me, I saw that he had a pretty strange tattoo covering the upper half of his back. It was, in fact, writing. Big, black Old English font letters spelled out the acronym: “C.O.N.”
Okay, whatever.
One of the guys at the party walked up to Atticai and handed him a wooden jug that looked like something out of the 1800s. Atticai grabbed the jug and immediately jumped on the hood of one of the trucks and took a long drink from whatever was in the container.
He shuddered briefly, then turned and looked straight at me. “Hey, Josiah! Want a swig?”
“What is it?” I asked from the other side of the fire.
“A little of everything. Tastes like shit, but that’s not the point.”
I was about to ask what the point was, but I decided I didn’t want to know. It was probably laced with God-knows-what. Whatever it was, I know I didn’t want it in my body. Not with my big fight coming up.