by H. T. Night
How was I going to figure this out?
There was supposed to be a woman that I never met in that building. There must have been 400 cell blocks in the concrete hell hole. I did the only thing I could do. I flew over and felt the presence of each individual in every cell block. I might not have been able to see them, but I could get a sense if they were male and female. And that was a good start.
Sion had said he’d be surprised if there were more than five women prisoners on the entire island. These types usually just killed women who stepped outside the lines of what was acceptable in their strict society. They didn’t value the women. Unfortunately, that’s the way life was in this part of the world, as in the Middle East. The radicals put so much value in their beliefs, but they forgot the golden rule about treating others the way you want to be treated. Or perhaps they never knew that rule at all.
I flew over slowly and as low as I could with my three friends close behind. I could see guards at every corridor through the few windows they had. They were very much on alert, so I couldn’t fly any lower without being seen. I concentrated on each cell block as I flew over them.
One thing became very apparent, cell after cell. There were only men in that building. There was not a woman anywhere.
I flew over four different times and detected not one drop of estrogen. I knew we needed to regroup. So, I headed back to the beach on the mainland across on the other side. We all landed on the beach.
“Any luck, Josiah?” Yari asked.
“Nope. There isn’t a single woman in that building. It’s just a sea of testosterone. There is a lot of heartache and distress in that building. But they are all men. I feel their pain, their suffering. It’s huge.”
“Be smart, Josiah. You can’t go around freeing prisoners of crazy people. God only knows why they are here,” Wyatt said.
“I know we can’t rescue everyone.”
“Josiah, look at me,” Yari said. “Look me in the eye.” Yari grabbed my face and forced to look at her, eye to eye. “Josiah Reign, you cannot save anyone else other than Donya on this mission. We don’t have the resources for it.”
I sighed. “I know. We need to find Donya. We need to check the other prison on the south side of the island.”
“There is no way they are keeping her right out in the open,” Wyatt said.
I looked at Wyatt and thought about it for a second. “Why wouldn’t they? She is a 65-year old woman who probably doesn’t need much looking after.”
Then something odd happened. I saw flashes of light. The images took over my body. I started to get a vision. “Hold on, everyone.” I closed my eyes and knelt down.
“Are you okay?” Yari asked.
“Hold on,” I said. As I closed my eyes, I could see her. She was sitting up on an extremely dirty mattress. I saw a lovely older woman with gray hair. She seemed beaten down, but I could see a little bit of hope in her eyes. She had faith. She had always believed she was going to be saved. Tonight, she was sitting up... because she felt a presence. She felt us, she knew we were near. I opened my eyes and said to the others, “Follow me. I know exactly where she is.”
I transitioned back into the great white eagle in a flash and torpedoed over the ocean with my wings spread wide. She was in the south-side prison. She was right on the easternmost corner of the building.
We flew around the island this time to the south side. We came up the back way to the beach. There was a guard tower and that was the first place we needed to attack. These prison compounds had three levels of security. The first one was the guard tower. This first level had two guards, one on each side of the tower. The second line of defense was an officer shed which had at least six prison guards inside, guarding the front of the prison. If somehow, we made it past them, the third line of protection was two security guys patrolling both floors of the building. We needed to get past at least twelve men armed with machine guns and everything else under the sun. So, once again, ‘let the good times roll.’
We had run the two scenarios of attacking both buildings on the plane. We knew the easier task was the one that was given to us. Thank God. The other scenario might have been thirty-to-forty guards.
After weighing the vulnerability of my immediate surroundings, the guard tower needed to be our quickest attack. The reason was, we couldn’t let the shed guys know we were here because they would signal the guards on the other side of the island and then all hell would break loose.
I motioned with my wing for Wyatt and Hector to take care of the two guards in the tower. They flew above the two guards in the tower in their raven forms and slid behind them easily without being noticed. Both transitioned quickly without being seen and were able to slit their necks in seconds. They immediately dumped them into the brush below, which made almost no noise. Wyatt and Hector were flawless assassins. It was chilling to see them work. Thank goodness they were on my side. Their unhesitating efficiency made me shudder.
It was Yari’s job to get the guards to come out of the shed. I flew over the shed to gauge how many men we were dealing with. I felt the breath and heartbeats of seven different men in the shed. So, we had thirteen guards to deal with. That was still better than forty.
Yari, as Daphne, crashed into a pile a wood that was at the front of the shed. It was a much louder commotion than any of us anticipated. We were hoping it would cause a couple of the guards to come outside, not all seven. But there we had it, all seven guards were outside with their automatic weapons engaged. We needed to act fast. Once they realized that the two guards in the tower were dead, they would alert the whole island.
As the eagle, I soared down into the men. With my beak, I pierced the first man I saw in his chest. He flew backward ten feet from my momentum and was dead in seconds.
One down.
The other six had no idea what had just occurred. They scattered, looking around and taking random shots at the sky with their guns.
Hearing gunshots had a different effect on me than it had in times before. I knew now that I could be hit by a bullet and killed. Before, I had a Superman, man-of-steel, mentality. I thought even if a bullet hit me, it couldn’t hurt me. This was a whole new ballgame, one that I hadn’t anticipated until this moment. For the first time since I became a Mani, I hesitated. I actually pulled back and observed my surroundings for the safest route back into the men. It wasn’t a bad idea, just a tactic I hadn’t needed to think about until now. I guess being mortal was going to cause me to be a smarter fighter, and slower, while I thought about my decisions instead with the anxiety of a not-immortal new father.
There was a guard with a smaller build near the front entrance of the prison. I flew toward him when his back was to me. I nailed him in the back of the head and he fell forward, dropping his automatic weapon. I quickly transitioned to my vampire form and grabbed his weapon and threw it deep into the brush. I turned into the guard, and he looked petrified. Good. It’s what this motherfucker deserved, keeping innocent people behind bars. God knew what atrocities this man had seen and caused. In the doorway, there was a metal rod in the shape of a spear. I summoned it with my hand and grabbed a hold of the metal rod. I flung the pole into the man’s chest, bashing him against the front door of the prison. I turned around and saw my friends had done similar moves to the guards they attacked and had killed three on their own.
Five were now down, three were left. They were now firing their weapons at whatever they could. And again, it made me nervous. “Take care of these three!” I yelled to the others. I grabbed the keys from the guard who I’d killed and opened the front door. Our research had shown us that there would be two guards on each of the two floors.
Now, this was where it got weird. I quickly went upstairs and was able to disarm and kill both guards. I knew Donya was in the last cell on the eastern side of the second floor. I knew I needed to remove the guards on the bottom floor first. It would just make my job easier. I hustled down to the bottom floor, still in my Mani form.
I kicked open the bottom-floor door that led to the main hallway where they kept their prisoners. I was immediately attacked by a guard. Apparently, he didn’t have a weapon. I tossed him thirty feet in the air and he crashed into the back wall. He hit with his back of the head first. All I can say was that the sound and the sight of the man were equally horrifying when he hit.
I looked down the hallway and there was one guard left. He had an automatic weapon in each hand. He must have had the other guard’s weapon. Now I was scared. One bullet could kill me. I transitioned into the eagle and flew across the hallway at an accelerated speed. The prison hallway was extremely narrow so I had to watch my wingspan.
The guards shot at me and time slowed down in that way that it does for me in a death-defying fight, to where I could see the bullets flying toward me. I dodged the bullets in midair as if I was in a video game, watching them soar past me in a blur. I came up onto the guard and transitioned to my Mani form in an instant. I open-handed punched him in the face, sending him backward. He dropped his weapons. I finished him off, and he was lucky that I showed him mercy because I was quick in my attack of his vital organs. He died instantly. I turned to look down the hallway. That took a good thirty seconds. Too long in my book. I hurried back upstairs to Donya.
I ran to the easternmost cell block. I still had the guard’s keys on me. I looked inside the cell. The cell looked like something out of a nineteenth-century Western film; just bars and a bunk inside.
I looked in and I could see a woman nervously sitting up, looking at me. She wasn’t sure if I was one of the good guys.
“Donya?” I asked.
She nodded her head.
“I’m here to rescue you.”
I opened the cell with the key and approached her. She was unsure about trusting me. I could feel her uncertainty. I needed to assure her I was kind and not going to hurt her. “All I can tell you is to trust me. My name is Josiah and I know Atticai.”
Then the warmest smile came over her face.
“Can you walk?” I asked.
She nodded her head.
“Follow me.” I ran down the hallway, holding tight onto Donya’s hand. Once, we were downstairs, something didn’t seem right. There was a different presence on the second floor. A presence I recognized. One of the two guards wasn’t dead. As a matter of fact, not only wasn’t he not dead, he was something completely different. He was a werewolf. He had done something that I thought only Tommy was able to do. The guard was no longer a man. Apparently, he could transition at will when there was no full moon, just like Tommy and Yomaida could.
I looked down the hallway and I could see what appeared to be a black werewolf staring me down from across the hall. I didn’t have time to get Donya outside. I was going to have to fight him with Donya in the hallway. “Stay here in the stairwell!” I said to her. “Don’t leave this area.”
I looked across the hallway at the lone black werewolf. I have had plenty of fights with werewolves and knew it would only be a matter of time until I disposed of this unfortunate creature. But I had never fought in such a narrow space. And this creature was gigantic. There must have only been four feet separating the two sides of bars. Another thing concerned me, too. This guard had transitioned on his own accord; which meant that I was dealing with a wolf as tough as Tommy. He was more than likely seasoned and extremely skilled.
So, once again... let the games begin.
The black wolf ran at me and I decided to cut him off in the middle so he would be as far away from Donya as possible. That turned out to be a bad move because I was more eager to block him off than I was to attack. I left myself vulnerable when we rammed into one another.
As we collided, the wolf bit into my shoulder. It was a nice hearty bite. It had clearly punctured my body. I ricocheted off of the wolf, smashing into the sidebars. There was no room to fight in this hallway. I felt dizzy. The wolf jumped on top of me while I was disoriented. The room was spinning and this was not what I had counted on. He tried biting me several more times but I was able to bob and weave away from the beast.
His body was huge and being that we were in such a small hallway, my body had nowhere to move in such a tiny space that separated the cells from one another. The big, fat, giant wolf was smothering me. I couldn’t breathe. I knew I had to transition. As we rolled through the concrete hallway, I hesitated transitioning while the wolf had all his weight on me. He kept clawing at me and lunging his ferocious mouth inches away from my body and neck. I began panicking. I needed to do something fast. I had no room. He was too damn large.
I had to transition and that was all there was to it. So against my better judgment, I transitioned into the eagle.
Or so I thought...
Usually when I transition, my mass shrinks in size and my eyesight becomes amazing sharper, due to the fact my eyes are closer together as the eagle. Not this time. When I transitioned, the black wolf that was clawing above me, elevated higher. Which only meant one thing. My body mass was larger than his.
Out of pure instinct, I threw the wolf off, completely off my body. Yes, that’s right... I threw him off me. Not with my talons, but with my arms and claws.
I looked down at my body and to my surprise, I had somehow, someway, transitioned into a werewolf myself. I looked down at my coat and it was black as the night. I hadn’t had time to worry about what just happened to me. I needed to save myself and most importantly get Donya the hell out of here.
I scurried over to the other black werewolf. His eyes seemed as shocked as mine must have been. I spent the next ninety seconds beating the wolf with my new werewolf body. I didn’t know how to judge my strength, so, I was just going to say the other wolf had little chance. His dismembered body disappeared.
I turn around and now I had Donya and my three friends staring at my beastly body. I knew I’d better transition fast.
I transitioned and stood there in my Mani form.
“Holy fuck! How long have you known that you were a werewolf?” Yari asked.
“About three minutes,” I answered.
“Are you still a Mani?” Wyatt asked.
“I hope so.” I closed my eyes and focused on being the eagle and in a millisecond, my eye level had dropped and I was standing there as the eagle. I quickly transitioned back to my vampire self. “I guess that answers that question.”
“How is this possible?” Hector asked. “No offense, Josiah. What kind of freak show are you? You’re like the platypus of the paranormal world.”
“All I can tell you is that the other guy was Carni, too. He bit me and we fought a bit and before I knew it, I was werewolf myself, fighting him off.” I looked over at Donya, who seemed not as freaked out as someone in her predicament should be. I was pretty sure she thought I was some kind of wizard. “I know we want to figure out what the hell just happened to me. But we need to get out of here.” I looked at Donya and reached out my hand to her. “Do you still trust me?”
“Do I have a choice?” she asked.
“Actually, at this point, no, not really. If you want to be free, you need to hold onto me for dear life because you’re going for a ride.”
The five of us flung open the door. My three friends transitioned into their respective birds and took off to the east. I had to remain in my Mani body, so I could hold Donya as I flew home.
“Where’s the helicopter?” she asked. “Or whatever.”
“Donya, hold on tight. You’re about to be Lois Lane.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Oh yeah, we have a lot to catch you up on.”
Chapter Fifteen
We flew across the night sky at an accelerated speed.
Donya held onto me tightly and she was petrified and clung to me like she was worried about being dropped. It was a little nerve-wracking for her because I could fly faster if I had my arms extended. Don’t ask me why. I thought it was just a gimmick that superheroes used. It actually worked. We pushed our way east and, unlike airp
lane pilots who liked to take the northern route, so they spent as little time as they can flying over the ocean, I didn’t mind. I was safer than any airline out there, any day. In about three hours of flying at insane speeds, we flew over Hawaii’s main island.
“I am awfully cold,” Donya said, shivering. “Can we land and I can get some shelter for a little while? Maybe a coat?”
“Of course,” I said. I looked down at the earth for a spot that we could land. I wanted to be out of the eyesight of people. I was also looking for a place we could possibly get some coffee, and maybe I could buy a coat off of someone’s back.
As I scouted the ground below me, I heard a voice in my head. It was Tommy. “Josiah? Can you hear me?” Tommy spouted.
“Is everything okay?” I said back to Tommy in my head.
“Lena’s water just broke. The doctor will be here in five minutes.”
“Are the nurses with her?” I asked.
“Yeah... all six of them. Seriously, you have six nurses? What’s the matter? Was five not enough and seven too many?”
“I wanted to make sure she was well taken care of.”
“I would normally be turned on by the fact that there are so many nurses walking around, but none of them are younger than fifty.”
“I thought you like the classics?” I said, referring to Tommy’s love for older women.
“Maybe. I’m just extremely into Yomaida.”
“How’s Lena?” I asked, cutting Tommy off. This wasn’t exactly an ideal moment for Tommy and me to have a heart to heart, especially in our minds. Telepathy should not be used frivolously. I had a feeling it was taking a lot of our power to use it.
“She’s doing all right. The nurses are having her breathe.”
“Breathing is good. Make sure everyone takes good care of her.”
“Of course, buddy? Hey, do you have the girl?”
“You mean the lady? Yes, I have the lady. She’s cold, so I am going to land in Hawaii and try to get her some coffee.”
“Be safe, brother.”