H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set

by Night, H. T.

  “You want to tell the authorities?” Maya asked.

  I sighed and as the sun grew hotter, I felt worse and worse for Sasha, out there somewhere, seriously injured. “I’m not ruling that out, but first, let’s go get Josiah. He is in good shape and will be able to move around quickly. He’ll be another set of eyes and feet that we desperately need.”

  “I don’t want my brother to know about any of this,” Maya said, horrified.

  “He won’t know about any of it. We will tell him that Sasha wandered off drunk last night after a party that we had at a friend’s house up here, and now we’re looking for her.”

  “He’ll ask us why we’re not getting the cops involved. He’s a pretty inquisitive boy.”

  “Seriously, you think he’ll ask that? He isn’t exactly a Boy Scout. If he asks questions, then we will come up with something. Otherwise, let’s just tell him we need his help, and we’ll take him out to eat to wherever he wants to go if he comes with us. I’m pretty sure that’s all he’ll care about.” I stared at Maya and seriously needed her okay. Finally, she nodded her head and took out her cell phone.

  “You had your cell phone this entire time?” I asked.

  “I was never alone. I did turn it off at some point to save the battery if I was going to use it. I had to do it while the phone was still in my pocket.”

  I couldn’t imagine these savages keeping her hostage. It made me nuts thinking about it. I did all I could last night, but still, I was afraid to ask if they had hurt her in any way. However, I needed to know. I needed to know if they had ever touched her inappropriately.

  “Maya, at any point, did any of them touch you sexually?”

  Maya looked me dead in the eye and said, “Never. The higher-ups threatened the peons who were looking after me that if they did anything questionable to me that they would kill them personally.”

  I stared at Maya and knew she was telling me the truth. I felt good about her answer. I reached out my hand and held hers and said, “I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, Tommy. You came for me.”

  “That I did.”

  Maya turned on her phone and she tried calling Josiah, but he was asleep. So, we decided to drive down and get him. Maya and Josiah’s house was only thirty minutes away down the mountain. I pressed on the gas, and we hauled down the mountain to go grab her rock star brother. I say he is a rock star because he is a legend in his own mind.

  We got to the house and Daniel was sitting in his big chair in the living room. Daniel, Maya and Josiah’s dad, is about as nice of a guy you could ask for in a dad of a girl you’re dating. “Hey guys, how are you?” he said, as friendly and genuine as a person could be. It was nice to be in Maya’s house after what I had encountered the night before.

  “Hi, Dad,” Maya said.

  “Hi, Daniel,” I said.

  “What brings you two lovebirds by?” Maya’s mom said, coming in from the kitchen to bring Daniel a cup of coffee.

  “Actually,” I interjected. “We came by to see if Josiah wants to go to breakfast.”

  “Good luck getting that lug up,” Daniel scoffed. “He was up all night making mix CD’s. He kept asking me for my old records. He’s trying to put together some new workout music.”

  “Josiah likes old records?” I asked.

  “He loves Tony and Frank.”

  “Tony Bennett? And Frank Sinatra? Josiah? That little grease monkey who doesn’t take a shower unless told to likes the classics?” I asked.

  “Funny, huh?” Daniel laughed.

  “That kid surprises me more and more. He was definitely one of a kind,” I said.

  “You guys can wake him up,” Maya’s mom said. “Just to warn you, he’s a big grump in the morning. Especially, be aware that today’s one of his non-workout mornings. He loves to sleep till noon on these days.”

  I grinned at Maya’s parents. “I have my ways of getting him up. I know what I’ll do.”

  I walked quietly down the hall and slowly opened Josiah’s bedroom door. Josiah was lying face down on the left side of the bed. He was in perfect bottoms-up position. Maya and her mom and dad followed me into his room. The four of us were completely quiet.

  I took off my shirt. I did do because Josiah was shirtless. I gently laid behind him on the right side of the bed. I very delicately placed my left arm and wrapped it around his warm shirtless body. The little weirdo didn’t wake up. I began cuddling him tighter and tighter. He had a smile on his face. The little creep was enjoying my tender loving. Maya and her parents were trying their best not to laugh. I started blowing in his ear, and massaging his shoulders.

  Suddenly, his eyes opened. “Get off me, bitch!” he said. Josiah’s parents and Maya busted out laughing.

  “What the hell? What are you guys doing?” Josiah sat up and tried to gather his thoughts.

  “Oh, stop it,” I said. “That’s the most action you have ever gotten.”

  Josiah looked at me and winked. “Unfortunately, I can’t respond with mom and pops in the room.”

  “It better be, son,” Dan said. “I don’t want any grandchildren unless they come from Maya and Tommy.”

  Maya and I both shot a look at her dad.

  “What?” he said. “Like the two of you aren’t ready to get married and have kids!”

  I looked at Maya and laughed. I didn’t laugh too hard and neither did she. I think deep down we both knew he was right. Or at least, I did.

  “We thought we’d take you to breakfast,” I said to Josiah. “So, get up and get dressed.” I tried to break the uncomfortable silence that was floating in the room after Daniel’s ‘married with children’ statement.

  Josiah had his blanket on his lower body and said, “Breakfast? That sounds good to me. You guys need to leave so I can change.”

  “You’re not naked, are you?” I asked.

  “No!” Josiah protested.

  “Yeah, you are, you little weirdo!” I said laughing.

  “I swear, I’m not,” he said indignantly.

  There was only one way to find out. I ripped the covers from off his body. He was right, he wasn’t naked. He was wearing a bright yellow Speedo that had lettering on it. “What the hell are you wearing?”

  “It’s my chonies, Tommy. No one asked you to peel the covers off of me!” Josiah said, standing with his physique admirably out.

  “What does it say on your underwear, son?” Daniel asked Josiah.

  Josiah grinned. “Man at work.”

  “Oh my,” his mom said. “Where did you get those?”

  “I bought them at the swap meet.”

  “Well, you better put some shorts on, kid,” I said. “Because there are laws in this state about indecency, and that’s as indecent as you get.”

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” Maya said, laughing, and she left the room, horrified. “That image is forever burned into my brain.”

  We all followed Maya out of the room. It was a good thing because we all had an eyeful of Josiah. He got dressed and came out of his room. A few minutes later, Maya, Josiah and I all piled into my black Mustang to get ready to leave. Once we got into the car. I turned around and faced Josiah, who was folded up in the back seat. “There’s a change in plans,” I said plainly.

  “Huh?” Josiah asked, confused.

  “We need your help.”

  “My help? Doing what?” Josiah asked.

  “We need to find someone.”

  “Who?”

  “My roommate, Sasha.”

  “Where is she at?”

  “That’s the problem, we don’t know. Look, Josiah…”

  Maya cut me off. “Jo, we need your help, but under no circumstances can you repeat this to anyone what we’re doing today.”

  “What the hell are we doing? I’m not doing anything illegal,” Josiah protested.

  Now he chooses to be a Boy Scout? I thought. “We aren’t doing anything illegal, you little shit,” I said. “It’s just real c
omplicated. We think my roommate Sasha is injured and might be in the brush somewhere in the mountains.”

  “Like in the trees or bushes?” Josiah asked.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “Why don’t you call the police or the fire department? Or search and rescue with the sheriff’s office?”

  “Like I said. It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

  “Try me,” he said.

  I looked at Josiah. “All you need to know is that we’re doing nothing against the law, and a good friend of mine needs our help.”

  “Is she hot?” Josiah asked.

  “She’s really hot!” I laughed.

  “Oh, really?” Maya said. “She’s really hot?”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to convince your brother to help us.”

  “I didn’t realize that the woman who lived across the hall turned you on so drastically.”

  “I’ll help,” Josiah said.

  “Really?” Maya asked Josiah.

  “You had me at ‘She’s really hot,’” he said.

  “Of course we did.” I started the car and the three of us made our way back up the mountain.

  “Really hot, huh?” Maya mumbled under her voice.

  I looked at her and said, “Trust me, you are way hotter.”

  “Now that’s just gross,” Josiah said. “You’re talking about my sister.”

  * * *

  It was now around 10:00 a.m., so I was crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. I pulled into the Flatlands. This was where I last had seen Sasha last night. Sasha had left this place after being dragged by a truck and beaten to a pulp. She was injured badly and as far as I could see it, she couldn’t have gone too much further without collapsing somewhere. The likelihood was that she was within a one- to two-mile radius from this spot.

  I didn’t know if she ran off to the right or to the left. The right was east of the spot. My instincts were telling me that east was where she went. Just by determining the positioning of everyone from the night before, the odds were that she went east. I decided to have Josiah go south and Maya go north. I didn’t like leaving Maya alone, but she insisted on looking by herself so we could quickly cover more ground. We agreed to look for sixty minutes and then return back to the Flatlands.

  I closely scoured my area for about an hour. I looked behind every piece of brush and up and behind every tree, calling out Sasha’s name until my throat was hoarse. I didn’t mind yelling her name loudly because anyone would think I had lost my dog and was trying to find it. It was getting hot, and for an April day, I was really itching and sweating something awful. It felt almost natural to stick out my tongue and have saliva drip off of it. I resisted doing so, but it was tempting. My inner werewolf was alive and well.

  One thing I did notice was that my sense of smell was now off the charts. It was as if I could smell every flower, piece of grass and dead carcass round me. I was hoping the dead carcasses were only road kill and not poor Sasha. Then I got a bizarre idea. If I had werewolf tendencies, then maybe if I grabbed something of Sasha’s and smelled it, it might lead me in her direction. At this point, I was hot and thirsty and needed to pee pretty badly. I decided to head back to see Maya and Josiah and regroup.

  I got back to the car and called Josiah and Maya on their cell phones and had them meet me back at the car. I looked in my car for anything that Sasha might have touched. I opened up my trunk and hit the jackpot. There was a sweater of hers right on top of an old cooler. She had snagged it on another car a couple months ago which caused her to bleed a little in the sleeve. There were drops of her blood stained to the fabric.

  I figured, here goes nothing. I nearly shoved the sleeve part of the sweater entirely up my nose trying to get a scent. There was a very strong scent on it. It was covered in pheromones and human bacteria. It was very sexual and unfortunately, it did arouse me.

  I couldn’t believe what a horn dog I was. I was getting turned on by Sasha’s sweater. Here I was, trying to grab a scent so I could find a good friend and my animalistic nature was taking over. Maybe I could use my werewolf’s high sex drive to my advantage. So, I continued to allow myself to be turned on by the pheromones. I didn’t care how it appeared because it was giving me a strong scent and the more I sniffed her sweater, the hornier I got. Suddenly, Maya and Josiah walked up. I turned my body slightly, so they couldn’t see my half-arousal.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Josiah asked. “What are you, a dog trying get her scent?” he joked. He had no idea how accurate he was.

  “Ha!” I said to Josiah, which I sometimes said to put him off when I didn’t want to answer something that he asked me.

  I pulled Maya aside and told her what I was doing while Josiah decided to relieve himself behind a tree. Ah, nature, it’s a bathroom to every species. “I got her scent from her sweater,” I said to Maya.

  “Is that what you were seriously doing? I thought my brother was kidding.”

  “Nope, he was right on.”

  “Did you get a scent?” Maya couldn’t believe those words came out of her mouth, but she also knew the severity of what I had become.

  “Yes, a big one. You and Josiah need to walk in front of me because I’m probably going to be acting weird, sniffing and stuff.”

  “I was afraid you were going to start acting weird, but this is even beyond my wildest imagination.”

  “Very funny.” I hope she was kidding. I hadn’t given her any reason not to trust me, and after last night, she must know I’d do anything for her. I had a strong scent and the truth was I had never done anything like this before. I decided to walk about 50 feet in all four directions from the car. First, I went south. I didn’t catch a whiff of anything that triggered the scent. “Let’s go in the opposite direction for a look-see,” I said.

  “Seriously, Tommy, you called us back for this?” Josiah asked. I could tell he was tired and cranky. My acute hearing could hear Josiah’s stomach growling. We had promised him a breakfast out and not delivered. Maya knew this was a matter of life or death, to find Sasha, but even she seemed out of sync.

  “I tell you what,” I said to them. “Why don’t the two of you go get something to drink and meet me back here in a half an hour?” I knew I could probably do a better job if I wasn’t trying to openly mask the fact from Josiah that I was sniffing around, trying to catch a direct scent of Sasha. They both seemed exhausted and after what Maya had been through last night, it made me feel better if she was at least with Josiah, because that kid can take care of himself.

  “Are you sure, Tommy?” Maya asked. “Aren’t you thirsty, too?”

  “I’m positive. I’m fine. There is a coffee shop right up the way. Why don’t the two of you go up there and grab some coffee or some juice and get yourselves rehydrated?”

  * * *

  I got a strong scent from the west. That surprised me because that was the opposite direction from which she’d run last night. I needed to respect my new ability and go with it. I couldn’t allow my common sense or supposed human instincts to override my werewolf instincts. They were my most valuable asset for the task at hand.

  As I went west, it led me to the main highway. That wasn’t making me feel any better because there were so many opportunities for her to be hit by a car. And if she had been hit by a car and died last night, then I was obviously wasting my time looking for her. The way I saw it, trying to save a friend was never a waste a time.

  I went across the highway and her scent was strong right over the canyon. My werewolf nose allowed me to discern the craziest things about Maya and I separated them out in my head as I identified each of them: her sweat, her blood, her pheromones released from fear and pain, a quick squat and hurried urine splash behind a bush, and even the fragrance she was wearing, right down to the low notes of something intoxicating in her perfume. I tried to think of what it might be, visualizing the bottles on my roommate’s dresser at home: ambergris oil in a roll-on was her favorit
e. No wonder Sasha drove me nuts. The stuff was joy juice for my nose with its aroma like sweet, smoky embers, mixed with the allure of her skin’s own individual pheromones. It was hard not to drool at how the scent that she rolled on almost every day was the major trail that I followed. Her scents, here and there on the ground and even on the wind, gave me great hope that she was still alive. I did not smell her death, and I believed that I would have.

  On the other side of the street was a steep canyon. I stuck my nose over it and got a strong whiff of Sasha’s scent. I decided to go down in the canyon. The canyon was covered in rocks, bushes, trees and brush. I tried to be careful, but the angle was just far too steep. I stumbled down some rocks and dirt and slid into an area that didn’t exactly look like the safest place to stumble into. God knew what kind of animals were in here. As a werewolf, a Carni, I feared less, actually, than as my former human self, but I had a sense of smell that was very distinct of rattlesnakes in the canyon, and I avoided their trails and sidestepped around them, smelling them long before I saw them almost camouflaged against their natural terrain.

  But, the scent was now overwhelming and I needed to continue into the thick brush if I was going to find Sasha in time and get her to medical help. I grabbed a large branch and began using it as a walking stick to help my balance as my body kept going downward into the canyon at a pretty steep rate.

  At the bottom of the canyon was the thickest brush I had ever seen. My ankle gave out once again, and I stumbled into it. As the ground became level, I scurried into it from my 45-degree angle.

  “Sasha,” I yelled out. I resisted the urge to howl for her, but wondered if a Carni howl would travel further than a human shout. The scent was now as powerful a smell as I had ever sniffed. I would have known her anywhere, or my nose would have. I knew in my heart of hearts that she was here inside this thick brush, dead or alive. But probably alive. I was confident I had found her. I said a little prayer to myself that she was still alive. I tried to hold my breath and see if I could hear her heartbeat. I could not, but I heard the sound of many cicadas clicking their abdomens, the fast, tiny heartbeats of kangaroo rats as they dove into holes as my huge feet crossed their tunnels, the high-pitched thrip-thrip of hummingbirds as they dived me when I pulled back bushes, looking, looking for Sasha. All of the other animals and insects were like a cacophony of noise that covered up a human heartbeat, if there was one nearby, other than my own.