The Immortal Warriors Boxed Set: Books 1-11 Read online

  “Wow, you do know there is a thing called video games?” Maya joked at the sight of all the board games I dropped in front of her.

  “I am highly aware of video games, but that isn’t the biggest turn-on to a girl when you first start dating her. Board games are interactive and sexy. They are hands-on and engaging in a way that video games cannot compare to, for a game or two.”

  “Oh, you plan on waiting till we’re married to whip out that little detail of your life?”

  “Married?” I nearly swallowed my tongue.

  Maya realized what she said and put her hand over her mouth. “Easy there, Tommy. It was just a joke.”

  I looked at Maya and couldn’t believe what I was thinking. I was thinking if I could be so lucky. “Didn’t someone challenge me in a game of Connect Four?”

  “I sure did, lover boy.”

  Maya and I played six games of Connect Four and we split them 3-3. We went through nearly every game in my stack and had a blast playing each one. She even taught me how to play Texas Hold’em poker toward the end. I had seen it on TV, but had never fully understood the rules.

  It being winter and, knowing that it gets dark around 6:00 at night, I decided we should hit the ice skating rink around 5:00, figuring it might be less weird for her if some of my issues happened in public.

  We drove down the mountain to Arrowhead. Arrowhead was the next city below Running Springs. We passed a high school named Rim of the World before we arrived at the rink. That had to be the all-time, most unusual name ever for a high school. It sounded more like an amusement park or a landmark.

  We pulled into the ice skating rink and it was pretty packed. What did I expect? It was winter and a Saturday night. There wasn’t a whole lot to do out here and the locals must love this joint. We grabbed our skates and went over to the chairs to lace them up.

  “So, you’ve done this before, right?” Maya asked me. She was having trouble lacing up her skates. So, I leaned over and helped her get her skates tightened.

  “They need to be on tighter than anything you have ever put on your feet before; you don’t want to twist your ankle, which is extremely easy to do,” I said. I put on my skates and then we were off to the rink.

  I hit the ice and showed off a little by speed skating around the rink a couple of times. The second time around, I whipped in and went over to Maya.

  “Done impressing all the girls in this place?” Maya asked. She obviously wasn’t too pleased with my display of testosterone.

  “I wasn’t trying to impress girls, plural,” I assured her. “I was just hoping to impress you.”

  She winked at me. “You sure did, Apolo Ohno! Could you be a dear and help a newbie get started?”

  I took her hand and she hobbled onto the ice. We went slowly around the ice. I told her to just glide her feet like roller skating.

  Eventually, she got the hang of it and was doing pretty damn good. We skated around for about an hour and I knew the full moon was going to be out any moment. Then, it happened right on cue. The music DJ guy put on a slow song.

  “Couples’ skate!” he announced over the speaker.

  “Wanna skate?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “Unless you were hoping to ask one of these teenagers to skate with you?”

  “I just want to skate with you,” I assured her. “Teenage girls have nothing on you.” They seriously didn’t. Maya was the prettiest girl in here.

  I decided to turn my body around and so I could face my girlfriend while we skated. I skated backward slowly while holding both of Maya’s hands. Maya skated in front of me tentatively. She started out rough, but after a lap around, she was getting the hang of it.

  “This is nice, Tommy.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  I smiled at her warmly, she smiled back. But then her mouth just dropped wide open. “Are you okay, Tommy?”

  “Why?”

  “Your eyes are bright yellow.”

  Holy shit! Here it is! It must be dark outside. “I feel fine,” I said, trying not to freak her out.

  “Let’s go sit down,” she said. “You don’t look good.”

  “We don’t need to do that. I feel great.”

  Maya continued to stare at me and her face said it all. She was completely freaked out. “No, we’re going to go sit down.”

  “All right.” We skated off the ice and sat in a couple chairs by the snack bar. The snack bar was more lit than the ice rink, and that didn’t make things any better.

  I sat across from Maya and she just stared at me with a puzzled look.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, you look different. You were scruffy this morning, but your beard looks like it has already filled out.”

  I just nodded my head and allowed her to try to come to grips with what she was seeing.

  “Your ears,” she said. “They appear to be pointier.”

  That’s new, I thought.

  “And your nose seems to be longer than it was just minutes ago. It’s like someone replaced you with a bad body double.”

  “A bad body double? Thanks.” I tried to make light of it, but I could tell Maya was about to lose it.

  “No, I didn’t mean it like that.” Maya continued to stare at me. I could tell she was thinking she was losing her mind and I decided this was the moment to let her in on the truth.

  “Let’s leave,” I said. “I have something to tell you.”

  “Okay,” Maya said, slowly.

  We turned in our skates and headed back to my car. I began to drive back and decided to pull over at the Rim of the World High School parking lot so we could talk. I parked my car in the large empty lot and took the keys out of the ignition and stared straight ahead.

  “What’s happening, Tommy? Are you having an allergic reaction or something?”

  “It’s not an allergic reaction,” I answered.

  “Then, please tell me what the hell is going on.”

  I didn’t say anything at first. I knew I had to tell her and I was just praying this wouldn’t be a deal breaker. “It’s something a little more bizarre than that,” I said.

  “Okay, tell me. What’s happening to you?”

  I turned and faced Maya. She looked at me, petrified, and it broke my heart. She was no longer seeing me as I am. She was seeing this half-thing I had become. “Maya, there are things in this world that are unexplainable, and up to a month ago, I didn’t believe any of it myself.”

  “Okay,” she said. She had apprehension in her voice that scared me to tell her any more, but I had to.

  “Maya,” I said plainly. “I’m in the process of becoming a werewolf.”

  “What? Are you fucking with me?”

  “No, I’m not,” I assured her. “I’m not fully understanding what’s happening to me myself. All I can tell you is that I know werewolves are real.”

  “You’re being totally serious, Tommy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you can just say that out loud and that doesn’t sound weird coming out of your mouth?”

  “Of course, it sounds weird. You need to understand this is something I didn’t believe in either. But, I have seen it with my own eyes. I have seen a human turn into a full-blown werewolf.”

  Maya’s eyes started darting back and forth in a panic and she opened the car door; she started running across the parking lot. I opened my door and yelled, “Where are you going?”

  “Anywhere, but here,” she yelled back to me.

  “Maya! Please stop! If you care about me at all, please let me talk to you!”

  Maya stopped at the end of the parking lot and refused to turn around. At least she stopped running. I walked over to her and brought her back slowly to my car.

  “I tell you what, let me tell you the entire story and maybe it might make more sense. Maya, you know me. You know I’m not crazy. You know if I think it’s true, then there’s at least the possibility it could be because I’m no
t crazy.”

  Maya sat in my passenger seat and she seemed horrified. I reached over and held her hand. And right there, I told her the whole story regarding Sasha and how I was bitten and how now I was in some sort of limbo phase. She was having a hard time keeping it together. It didn’t help either that I mentioned dating my roommate for a short period. She had a lot to take in. But she did allow me to speak. I decided to hold off on telling her about vampires.

  Maya slowly stepped out of the car again, but this time she didn’t run. She just sat on the hard asphalt parking lot, crossed her legs and closed her eyes as if she was doing yoga.

  I stepped out of my car and walked over to her. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “This is how I calm down,” she said.

  I nodded. “Go ahead, knock yourself out.”

  Maya sat there for a brief time and then looked up at me. “What I don’t understand is... what’s happening to you?”

  “Like I said, Maya, I was bitten horribly in the shoulder by a werewolf that was in his human form. I think nature or the Triat has put me in some kind of werewolf purgatory, where I’m neither a man nor a werewolf.”

  “This is the same Triat my grandfather used to talk about?”

  “It could be a coincidence, but I doubt it.”

  “So, you’re saying you might be partially immortal?”

  “I don’t think that’s how it works. You’re either immortal or you’re not.”

  “But as far as you know, you could be completely immortal?”

  “Possibly. I don’t plan on testing it out,” I laughed.

  We sat out there and talked until the wee hours of the morning. Maya seemed to believe me and how could she not? I just sported a new beard and my face changed into a partial werewolf. We eventually made our way back to the cabin, and to my surprise, Maya didn’t pull away once after obtaining this new bit of information about me. If anything, it drew her closer to me. The rest of the weekend we just talked and shared—we took care of each other.

  Chapter Nineteen

  During the next couple of weeks, Maya and I continued to get even closer. I had decided to pay for Sasha to get her Jeep out of the police impound lot. She agreed to do my laundry and wash my car until I felt that she had paid me back.

  Sasha had been pushing for herself and Patrick to meet Maya for a couple weeks now. I hadn’t brought the three of them together out of fear that Sasha would say something inappropriate to Maya. Maya was cool that Sasha lived with me, even though we had had a fling. I assured Maya that I had zero sexual feelings toward Sasha, that we were just friends, and that Patrick might be interested in Sasha. All of that explanation was good enough for her.

  I just felt it was better to just keep them isolated. Plus, Sasha had made snide remarks that insinuated Maya was going to lower the boom on me, at any moment, and show her true colors. She couldn’t believe anyone could be as perfect as I claimed Maya to be. Well, she was wrong.

  I knew I couldn’t put off, forever, the three of them meeting. Patrick and Sasha had become two of my very best friends and Maya was my girlfriend. So, after being pressured relentlessly by both Sasha and Maya, I put together a dinner for the four of us in Hollywood. I knew I wanted zero problems, so I had decided we all should go to someplace out of town. That way it would be a new experience for everyone and at least we all would have that in common. Or at least they would. I had picked a nice, little restaurant called the French Market that I had gone to a year ago on a blind date, set up by my trainer, Mo.

  We took two separate cars down to Hollywood. I had picked up Maya by myself and then we took the 10 freeway and did a straight shot to Hollywood. I thought it would be silly for Patrick and Sasha to follow us because it would be extremely out of their way. So, we all agreed to meet at the restaurant around 8:00 p.m. It would be dark, so Patrick wouldn’t have any sun issues to deal with.

  We made it to Hollywood in about an hour. We parked in a small, rundown parking lot down the street from the restaurant and walked to get to the French Market. I had let Maya know that Patrick called me Kyro as a nickname and I made up a story to explain why. It was an awful lie that made no sense, which is one of the reasons why I don’t lie to people because I’m horrible at it.

  When we arrived, Patrick and Sasha were already seated, having a drink. Sasha was dressed to the nines, her hair done up real nice and had enough makeup on to last a girl like Maya a whole month. Patrick and Sasha definitely looked like they were on a date.

  I led Maya to the table where my two friends were sitting. They were laughing, drinking wine and engaged in a conversation. I stopped at the front of the table, and Patrick stopped whatever he was saying when he saw me. “Kyro! You guys made it.”

  I watched Maya’s face as Sasha looked up at us.

  “Hi, guys!” Sasha’s eyes were beaming, her face flushed with happiness.

  “Hello,” Maya said. She seemed a bit surprised that Sasha was a complete knockout. But as far as I could tell, it wasn’t bothering her too much.

  “Maya,” I said. “These are my two roommates, Patrick and Sasha.”

  “Hello,” Maya said again.

  “Wow, she’s gorgeous, Tommy,” Sasha proclaimed, as if I just showed up to the dinner with a show horse.

  Maya seemed embarrassed by Sasha’s overly complimentary statement but smiled politely. I pulled out a seat for Maya to sit down and then I sat next to her.

  “So, what’s good, Tommy?” Sasha asked.

  “I actually don’t remember,” I said. “I would assume all the food is pretty good.”

  “Tommy, didn’t you say you went here before on a date?” Sasha smirked.

  “Yes,” I said, staring at Sasha with a look that said, ‘Did you honestly have to say that right off the bat?’

  Sasha caught my look, and it didn’t seem to matter to her because she had something to say, and it couldn’t wait. “What kind of date was it, Tommy?”

  “It was just a regular date, Sasha. It wasn’t a big deal, so can you drop it?”

  “And you had it here?” She continued to badger me with questions.

  “Yes,” I answered. “What’s the big deal?” I was getting upset now. She didn’t need to push the issue.

  “Look around and tell me what you see,” Sasha said. She stopped herself from laughing out loud.

  What was she talking about? I looked around the restaurant and quickly saw what she was referring to. Every table had couples having romantic dinners. There was something I had apparently overlooked the last time I was here. They were all same-sex couples. I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Were you going through an experimental phase?” Sasha joked.

  Maya looked around and figured it out, too, that this restaurant obviously catered to a gay clientele. Maya looked at me and joined in the joke. “Wow, she’s right, Tommy. You have some explaining to do.”

  Patrick jumped in for my defense, sort of. “Dude, it’s cool, Kyro. We all are a little gay.”

  “Very funny,” I said to Patrick.

  “Well, it’s good to know that you’re not homophobic,” Sasha laughed.

  “I guess not,” I said. “Okay, ha-ha. Live and let live. Love and let love. Could we change the subject?”

  “Yes, we can, sweetie,” Maya said. “We don’t need to make you remember a time you’d like to forget.”

  “Really? Maya? You, too?”

  “Oh, sweetie, the only thing gay about you is your body.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Gay guys are in amazing shape,” Sasha said. “At my gym, all the hottest guys are gay.”

  “Yeah, you’re a real gym rat, Sasha,” Patrick laughed.

  “Hey, I used to be. If I sit around eating cookies all day and playing Monopoly, that is entirely your fault for making it so much fun.”

  I looked over at Maya and she seemed to be enjoying our friendly banter with one another, and from that point on, the four of us had a wonder
ful dinner with great conversation. Sasha and Maya seemed to hit it off. I couldn’t tell if Sasha was just going along with it because that was the right way to act, or if she generally liked Maya. I knew Maya liked both Sasha and Patrick because she was far too real of a person to fake the good time she was having. The dinner felt like a double date.

  We finished dinner and all agreed to meet up at a coffee shop off of Silver Lake Street. The four of us walked back to the little parking lot where Maya and I had originally parked. Apparently, Sasha had also parked her Jeep in the same lot.

  I held Maya’s hand and we walked behind Sasha and Patrick. They weren’t holding hands but they walked closely together. We approached the parking lot and three dark-haired guys, all dressed completely in black, walked toward us. I had a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach; I knew something wasn’t right. Surprisingly, they walked past us and didn’t say a word. Then after a brief moment, the reason for my bad feeling became apparent.

  “Hey, Gutterball!” one of them yelled at us.

  I turned around at the oddity of being called Gutterball. As I turned around, Patrick said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Do you know these guys, Patrick?” I asked.

  “Let’s just go,” Patrick repeated, earnestly.

  “Why are they calling you Gutterball?”

  “Because I first met them at a bowling alley and I wasn’t too good at bowling.” Patrick hurried to Sasha’s Jeep.

  “Gutterball! That’s you, right?” one of the guys continued to yell.

  Patrick continued to ignore them and that didn’t make matters better. In a blink of an eye, the guy yelling at us had shot his way across the parking lot and stood right in front of us. The guy had shoulder-length, long black hair.

  “Fucking Gutterball,” the guy said. “Where the hell you been?”

  Patrick looked up and nervously said, “I’ve been around.”

  “Well, you’ve been nowhere near us. As a matter of fact, one might say you have gone completely out of your way to avoid the Brotherhood.”

  Great, as if I didn’t already know these assholes were Mani—they were fucking vampires. I didn’t know what to do. I mean these guys obviously came here looking for Patrick. Someone must have given them a heads up that he was down here.