by H. T. Night
I spread my wings and felt the wind underneath me. Damn, it felt awesome to be an eagle. I sped down in a quick motion beak first and I aimed my mouth directly into the giant dog’s back. I nailed him like a linebacker blitzing a quarterback. The beast flew forward. The wolf was black and white in appearance and I was having trouble seeing him in the dark. I needed to remain an eagle because my eagle eyesight was off the charts. So, this fight was going to be ‘eagle versus wolf.’
The wolf turned around and I flew up about 20 feet over his head. I once again sliced down and pierced him hard, this time in his left front leg, tearing into his flesh down to the bone. He fell over in pain, crying and howling like a puppy that had been spanked for peeing on the carpet. The wolf hobbled into the middle of the street when a giant truck came flying down the street. My heart sank as the truck slammed into the black and white wolf. As this happened, I flew up again and watched the wolf lying in the street. I didn’t like killing anything, but now I had no choice. It was kill or be killed.
Nonetheless, I flew down to try to help it. I was too late. The wolf had vanished. Dammit, I killed him. The truck driver stopped his semi and stepped out to see what he had hit. He seemed bewildered when he saw there was nothing there. The werewolf disappeared just as Atticai had months earlier.
I flew up and I saw Tommy on the roof. There was a white wolf crawling up the side of the house, ready to leap from the drainage pipe. As far as I could tell it was just one. Tommy was highly aware of the beast as the white wolf slipped up the side of the house and made its way to the top of the roof. Tommy didn’t let him get situated; he slammed into the wolf with a fierce throttle and the white wolf did a backward somersault, falling off the roof. The wolf landed on its back on the grass below. I flew down and grabbed the injured wolf with my talons. I flew away as fast as I could. I thought about dropping him in Arrowhead Lake, but watching the last one die made me nauseous. I dropped the wolf into some brush. Maybe the brush broke his fall, maybe it didn’t. At least this way I was giving him a fighting chance.
Back to the house. The wolves were now down to four. I glided up to the roof where Tommy was. I landed next to him, “Good job, Tommy!” I thought.
Tommy panted proudly. “Where’s Goliath?” he said in his head.
“I don’t know.” Suddenly, I saw two more wolves going up the side of the house.
“Tommy! Watch out!” I yelled out loud.
Tommy saw that there were two of them. “I might need your help.”
“I’m already on it.” They were both brown, so I could see them reasonably well. I transitioned back to my Mani form to be more agile. Both wolves jumped on the roof at the same time. I flew up in the air as a Mani to have elevation on them. Tommy held his ground in the center of the roof.
The first brown wolf leaped on top of him, with the other not too far behind. Not on my watch. I flew down and kicked the second wolf right in the face before he could land on Tommy. I fell backward on contact and slipped on the roof.
The wolf, dazed, turned and leaped on me. It was trying to bite me. This creature was ferociously strong, but I was stronger. I reversed the wolf MMA-style and was on top of him—riding him like a fucking bull. I slammed my elbow into the back of the wolf’s neck. It reached back to claw me from behind. I grabbed the wolf by its neck and had an amazing hold—choking him out. I knew I could have killed the wolf with my bare hands, but didn’t want to see him die. I threw him off the roof and didn’t bother to look down. The creature sealed his fate coming here. The Triat would allow me to defend myself when I was clearly outnumbered.
I looked over and saw the fourth wolf make his way to the roof. Still no Goliath; that big ape probably couldn’t climb up the side of the roof. The fourth werewolf was the smallest of the bunch and was completely white. Child’s play. Still, Tommy was outnumbered 2-1. I transitioned back to the eagle in midair. I darted down again with more force and speed than I ever had before. I was seriously feeling it. Tommy was doing a great job of fighting the other brown wolf one-on-one. My only goal was to spear this white wolf in his back. My beak was more powerful than a sword at this speed. As I flew down, the wolf leaped out of the way, I hit the roof like a pile of bricks and slid as I hit the shingles falling off the roof landing right in front of Goliath. Holy shit! He was huge!
I quickly transitioned back to a Mani and Goliath seemed to like that. His eyes sparkled like I was a big juicy steak. I wasn’t as hurt as I thought I’d be having fallen twenty-five feet. Eagles were pretty tough, I guess, but I needn’t have worried about that at the moment because I was now a Mani. This was definitely your classic David vs. Goliath matchup. I was tiny compared to the mammoth werewolf. I looked over and saw a motorcycle parked next door. I needed to use everything I had and this was as good of a time as any to do try to do that moving-shit-with-my-mind business. I looked at the motorcycle, connected with it, and with a quick glance I shot the motorcycle across the grass and rammed right into Goliath’s back. Woo Hoo! I controlled it! Goliath yelped. The motorcycle did some major damage. Goliath wasn’t moving at all but he was definitely still alive. I left him there yelping and made my way back up to the roof to help Tommy. Thank God Tommy was holding his own, battling the two werewolves.
“It’s about time you showed up,” Tommy said, shooting a look in my direction.
I yelled out loud, “Sorry, I was just throwing an 800-pound motorcycle at Goliath with my mind.”
“Impressive,” Tommy then smacked the white wolf with his left claw. “Take the one on the right, I got this little shit.”
“Always leave me with the hard work,” I said, charging the wolf on the right. As I ran forward, the wolf also charged into me. It was going to be ‘Mani versus werewolf’ in an old-school football collision. We collided into each other like a car crash. I bit down with my razor-sharp incisors and chomped him in the neck on contact. He never saw it coming. And with my left arm, I uppercut the wolf in the chin. The first brown wolf stumbled backward, nearly falling off the roof, but stopping just short of doing so. He turned around and I greeted him with a roundhouse kick. The wolf fell to the ground below. I turned my head to not watch him die. I turned my head back to Tommy where he was fighting his wolf that was like something reminiscent of the Lion King.
Tommy was able to bite the wolf in the front of its neck. The wolf yelped as they did when they felt pain. Tommy didn’t let up. He bit down and with his right claw, he punched the wolf as hard as he could with his claws extended. Tommy’s claws went deep into the wolf’s stomach. Blood poured from his mouth and abdomen. Within seconds—the wolf disappeared.
There was just Goliath left. I looked up at the sky and I saw the sun was coming up. Goliath and Tommy will turn back, shortly. Sure enough, Tommy was lying on the roof in his boxers, soaked.
“Let’s get out of here, Tommy.” I transitioned into the great white eagle, grabbed Tommy gently with my talons and headed down the mountain with Tommy in claw. I didn’t see Goliath as we exited. It was probably better that way.
Chapter Twenty
As I flew down to my house, I gently dropped Tommy on my front lawn and landed beside him—transitioning back into a Mani. The morning air had dried Tommy off, but he still stunk of sweat.
“Well, Tommy. How do you feel?”
Tommy looked at me and didn’t say anything. “Are you answering me in your mind?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Tommy laughed.
“I can’t hear you anymore,” I said. “Can you hear my thoughts?”
Tommy focused on me. “No,” he answered.
“The sun is out and my skin is beginning to sting.” I opened the door and Tommy and I entered the house. Wyatt and Hector were asleep on the living room floor.
We walked to the back of the house. Yari was sleeping in Tommy’s room, and Lena was asleep in mine. “What a couple of Goldilocks!” Tommy said, laughing.
I smiled. “Let’s go talk in the kitchen.” We walked to the kitchen and sat
at the table.
“You hungry?” I asked.
“I’m starving.”
“I’ll make us a couple of omelets.” I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of eggs, milk, cheese, and some lunch meat. I opened the bottom cabinets below the stove and took out a skillet. “You want three or four eggs?”
“I’m starving. Give me five.”
“You want lunch meat?”
“What kind?”
“Turkey.”
“Sure.”
I proceeded to crack the eggs open and make us both a couple of omelets. Tommy put out a couple of plates and poured us some orange juice; it felt like old times.
“I miss this,” I said as I put the hot plates on the table.
“We sure had our share of good times, didn’t we?” Tommy dug into his omelet. “Damn, Josiah, this tastes great.” I took a bite of mine. It was pretty damn good. One thing I could do was make a mean omelet. Mastering my Mani abilities was another story.
“So,” I said, “it’s obvious we connected on a far greater level than either of us expected.”
“It appears to be that way.” Tommy continued to eat his omelet.
“What I need to figure out is why the Triat felt it was important for me to train you further as a Carni, while I remain stagnant in my abilities.”
“Maybe by helping me, somehow you grew yourself. Maybe the Triat wanted to see you perform an unselfish act.”
“Maybe. I hadn’t thought about that.” I continued to eat my omelet. I took a drink of my orange juice. “I do, however, believe the Triat wants me to go away and be trained also.”
“Trained? Where? By whom?”
“You’re going to laugh.”
“I doubt that, Josiah. We have experienced too much crazy shit for any of this to be too damn funny.”
“Okay,” I said. “The Triat wants me to go to Dracula’s castle and be trained by a blue gnome.”
Tommy stared at me blankly, then cracked a smile and laughed out loud. “Were you sure it was a vision, or did you smoke some herb before going to bed?
“No, it was definitely a vision.”
“What makes you so certain?”
“I had a couple visions where Dracula’s castle and the little blue gnome were in both of them.”
“Gnome?” Tommy asked. “Liked the Travelocity guy?”
“Sort of. He looks as if the Travelocity guy and Smurfette had a kid.”
“And this guy is supposed to train you like some Yoda?”
“I don’t know exactly. I don’t know if he is going to do the training or I’m supposed to just meet him there to be trained by someone else. I know it’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“Why?”
“It is why I trained you. I was told by the blue gnome to do so, and look what happened. You now have cognitive thought as a werewolf.”
Tommy nodded his head. “So, when do you plan to go?”
“Very soon.”
“Wow, now Dracula is mixed up in this mess,” Tommy laughed. “This just gets better and better.”
Yari came into the kitchen. “Why are you guys here? I thought we were coming to you at the cabin.” She looked pretty hot wearing red plaid pajamas.
“We had a little bit of trouble,” Tommy said.
Yari sat down at the table. “So, which of you is cooking?”
“Josiah made his famous lunch meat omelet. It’s pretty ghetto, but it’s damn good.”
Yari smiled. “I like ghetto.”
“You can’t eat an omelet, can you?” I asked.
“Maybe, if I dipped it in blood.” Yari laughed.
“Sounds delicious,” I said.
“So, what kind of trouble did you get into?”
“Tommy and I made a ton of progress in our training exercises. We were able to do things neither of us anticipated.”
“Like...?” Yari asked.
“When I’m the gray wolf, Josiah and I are able to communicate through our thoughts.”
“Bullshit!” Yari scowled.
“We’re not kidding.” Tommy looked to me for confirmation.
Yari looked over at me. “He’s telling the truth.”
“How did you figure that out?”
“Well, that’s where the trouble comes in. We were attacked by a pack of werewolves,” I said.
Yari looked at both of us. “Seriously? That was the trouble you were talking about?”
“It wasn’t just any pack of wolves,” I said. “It was Tommy’s old gang: Goliath and his minions.”
“You were able to kill Goliath?” Yari asked.
“Actually, no. I did cripple him pretty good with a motorcycle. The sun started coming out, and Tommy and I fled down the mountain.”
“Did you kill any of them?” Yari said, worried.
“We both did,” I said. “We had to while defending ourselves.”
“How many did you kill?” Yari asked with her voice rising.
“Two,” I said.
“Two each?”
“No, one apiece,” I said. “Why, is it a big deal?”
“You killed two Carni and you don’t think it’s a big deal? This isn’t the Middle Ages. You can’t just kill whomever you want.”
“Look, neither one of us killed for sport,” I said. “We were defending ourselves. They came after us.”
Tommy had remained quiet as I defended our brawl to Yari. Yari looked over at Tommy. “If you had any chance of returning to your people, it’s completely over now.”
“Who said I wanted to? They left me for dead.”
“But you’re not a Mani, Tommy. I am not even sure if Mani and Carni can coexist inside the will of the Triat.”
“Look, Yari,” Tommy said. “I know you have been around since George Washington. But none of us knows what any of this means. Josiah had a vision that told him to work with me. That’s all we know. This might not be about Carni versus Mani. It might be as simple as good versus evil.”
Yari looked at both of us and it was obvious that she cared deeply for both us. “Nonetheless, we all need to get the hell out of here. It’s bad enough we have Krull after us, now we have the Carni Nation after us, too.”
“We did what we had to do,” Tommy said indignantly.
“I know, boys, you’re the good guys. I know that much for sure. Regardless, we all need to get the hell out of Dodge.”
“Great,” I said. “More running. For being the supposed chosen few, we sure do a lot of running and hiding.”
“Get everybody up, Josiah,” Yari said. “We all need to transition and head to Los Angeles.”
“Why Los Angeles?” I asked.
“I’ve had a place there since the 1940s.”
“Of course you do,” I said sarcastically.
Chapter Twenty-one
I woke Hector and Wyatt up and then walked down the hallway to my room.
Lena was still asleep in my bed. I walked into my bedroom and sat in my computer chair next to my desk. I closed my eyes and just took a moment for myself. I haven’t had too many of these moments in the last few days.
Lena lay in my bed peacefully and had no idea what Tommy and I had just been through last night. As far as I was concerned, I wanted to keep her as far away as possible from that world. I knew I couldn’t. In the end, she was in this as deeply as I was. She was willing to do whatever it took to help the cause. Would I be able to protect her? Or was it both our fates to become martyrs? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I was staring at the most beautiful woman I had ever seen sleeping in my bed like a princess from a fairy tale. I just wasn’t sure if this fairy tale had a happy ending. All I knew was that I would die trying. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to fight for the Mani people as a whole, but I was certain I was ready to lay my life down for her.
I calmly walked over to her. “Lena, sweetie,” I whispered. “We need to leave.”
Lena opened her eyes. “I’m nobody’s sweetie,” she said with a smile.
<
br /> “You know what I mean.”
She sat up and stretched. “Are you okay, Josiah?”
“Yeah, I’m okay, but some crap went down at the cabin.”
“What happened?”
“Some of Tommy’s old werewolf buddies from the other night came looking for me. Or maybe, they came looking for him? Maybe they were following a smell? We weren’t quite sure. We ended up killing or injuring all of them.”
“Are the two of you okay?”
“We’re both fine. We were able to isolate them. They didn’t have a chance.”
Lena brushed back my hair. “You’re a tough son-of-a-bitch, aren’t you?” She looked at me in a way she never had before. She had looked at me lovingly before, but this was different. She seemed to be looking at me with a different kind of energy. I could feel her sexual attraction toward me. It was the first time I had ever felt that coming from her. I just had my first erection as a Mani.
This wasn’t the time or place, so I decided to talk about what I came to her room to talk to her about. “Yari thinks we just started an all-out Carni/Mani war. She thinks all of us need to leave.”
“Where are we going to go?”
“Some place in Los Angeles. Yari apparently has a place.”
“In Los Angeles?” Lena asked, surprised.
“She’s a woman with many secrets.”
“Do you trust her?”
That was a weird question for Lena to ask. Especially, since she had been living with her the last 72 hours.
“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”
Lena looked at me for a moment and didn’t say anything.
“Is there something I need to know? Why wouldn’t I trust her? She saved my life and Tommy’s, too.”
Lena nodded. “You’re right,” she said.
“Do you know something?” I asked.
Lena shook her head.
“We can’t afford to second-guess each other right now. The six of us is all we have.”
“You’re right, Josiah.” Lena smiled.
I took her hand. “When all of this is over, you and I are going to be all right. I know it in my heart.” I leaned in and hugged her. I closed my eyes and just took her in.