Fratelli: The Awakening (The Vampire Cartel #1)

14. Soldier Boy

Chapter 14

Soldier Boy

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Baton Rouge, LA - April 13, 2018

( 9 Days Before Death )

In the eighth grade, Lamont Johnson founded the group Neutral Ground with three of his closest friends. By the time he graduated high school, only one of those friends was still alive. By chance, at twenty-four, he and Deshawn would meet a mysterious promoter who would facilitate a meeting between them and destiny. He’d later learn that the record deal he signed with Di Salvo Entertainment was irrevocable. The pursuit of money, women, and fame had always been the golden road that paved his way to hell.

“Hurry the fuck up!” A voice boomed from beyond the door. A loud pound of angry fists accompanied it. Lamont ignored the command. Why fear anything or anyone after what he’d seen Don Lucio morph into?

The weight of the world dropped on his shoulders. In the solitude offered by the shower, he pressed his hands flat against the cold tile wall and bowed his head to let the downpour from the rain showerhead wash over him and cleanse away his tears. Today would mark the last day he’d allow himself the privilege of defeat. He had to fight back and overcome. Every moment he had left in his life, he would do all he could to protect his family from the curse brought upon them.

“You heard me, motherfucker? Get the fuck out of the shower now, soldier boy! Don’t keep the boss waiting.”

After his hundredth weary sigh, he shut off the shower, dried off, and slipped into the fresh clothes left for him. When he emerged, he was greeted by a man so tall his head nearly grazed the ceiling. Was this the giant who had been banging on the bathroom door, growing impatient with his mere thirty minutes of solitude? Lamont met his gaze with a glower, his patience worn thin yet emboldened by his own apprehension. The towering figure responded with a sly sneer and gestured toward the source of loud music. At the end of the hall, a room filled with marijuana smoke and the sound of laughter and chatter beckoned. With no real choice, Lamont followed the unspoken command and walked through the hall to the gathering.

Clusters of men filled the room, none of whom belonged to his neighborhood or any part of Baton Rouge. None he recognized. They varied in race, height, and meanness. As each set of predatory eyes turned to fix on him the deeper, he walked into the room, Lamont thought he glimpsed a fang from one man’s smile who was at a table dealing cards. Quickly, he averted his eyes, choosing not to seek confirmation of the threat in that lethal smile.

“Tell me again, Tristan, why this motherfucker is here?” Leonardo asked.

“He’s an investment,” Tristan replied smoothly. “The boss wants him broken in. Your organization came first to mind.”

“He’s a rapper. Yo, I like your shit,” called out a voice from behind him. Lamont didn’t dare look back. He kept his eyes fixed on Tristan, trying hard not to show his anxiety. Tristan stood confidently; his hands clasped in front of him near the desk of a man whose face bore a tapestry of tattoos. This man, who seemed to command the room, appeared slightly more amenable in Tristan’s presence, a fact that Lamont guessed might work slightly in his favor.

“Fuck that. No disrespect, but Don Lucio pushes it, bro. My organization is tight now. No vacancy!”

Tristan's gaze for once left Lamont and dropped over to Leonardo as if he’d just registered his defiance. Lamont couldn’t fathom how. The hatred and anger seem to ripple off the gangster. Leonardo felt Tristan’s stare and lifted him to meet it.

“Tell the boss, I respectfully decline. We got enough hitters, no need for soldiers with feds crawling around the ports.”

“Your approval is not required. Your obedience is,” Tristan said. The men in the room stopped talking. The music blared on. Lamont felt an icy wave of unease wash over him. It caused the hairs on the back of his neck to rise and goosebumps to prick his arms.

The killers in the room braced with anticipation. There hung an expectant charge in the air, almost electrifying. Did they really expect Leonardo to make a stand? Did they not know who Tristan was and what Don Lucio could become? They had to. This was his organization nestled in the back of a deserted Walmart warehouse. Lamont watched with dread as Leonardo mustered up more of his defiance. He had the courage to face off with Don Lucio’s trusted driver. Once he did, Lamont froze, anticipating that the Don himself would appear with his fangs and darkness and then kill them all—like he did with Deshawn. It was not to be.

The violence that ensued was both swift and brutal—but enacted by another threat—Tristan. Tristan barely moved a muscle before he slammed his fist into Leonardo’s chest with terrifying precision, it shattered flesh and bones, crushed through the ribcage, and extracted the man’s still-beating heart in a gruesome blood spectacle. It happened so quickly that Leonardo looked down in horror at the grapefruit-size hole in his chest and understood his fatal mistake before he collapsed dead.

Half of the men in the room turned. Vicious, fanged teeth monsters are what they became. Shocking the other gangsters who must have never conceived who they were in league with. Through a storm of blood spraying and raining everywhere, chairs, tables, bullets, and anything the mortal gangsters could find as weapons sailed through the air as the vampires attacked and slaughtered every one of them.

The stench of gun smoke, blood, and gore overwhelmed him. A vampire half his size took the giant, who had bullied Lamont out of the shower earlier, down. With ease, the creature tore through him. And he was one of many. It was mayhem. Lamont went to his knees, screaming. He closed his eyes and held his hands to his ears, while blood covered him, and the sounds of the dying men tortured him. Everywhere, death rang out.

Lamont's screams went on and on until he was too hoarse to summon the wind from his chest. And as he coughed through his sobs, he noticed he was the only noise left in the room. All the death gurgles and tortured pleas for mercy or escape had stopped. The ghastly sounds of slurping, chewing, and drinking from the dying had ceased too.

“Hey! Hey motherfucker, what is wrong with you?” A vamp hit him on the back of his head with its clawed fist. Lamont fell forward on his hands and immediately recoiled when his palms were slicked with wet, warm blood. He stopped screaming, but the shock had rendered him insane. The world he was hurled into became incomprehensible to him.

“Why him? This motherfucker fears his own shadow,” said another man. “Leonardo was shit, but this is a kid.”

To this, Lamont finally opened his eyes. He looked up at the one who spoke. A man was seated at a table with two others who played cards. The other man who sat at the table swiped up the hand, and just played and shuffled the cards. His gaze intensely focused on Lamont. He asked a question of his own: “Where is the other one? Aren’t there two of them?”

“Yeah. Yea. What was his name?” said the third man, who stared at his hand in deep concentration. “Dietrich, Dennis, Delray… fuck, can’t remember his name.”

The three men differed from the other savage beasts who had killed their fellow gang members. Lamont would later learn that those vampires who were unhinged were considered ‘soldiers’. Untamed and sick with the vampire curse. They had little impulse control. They were the definition of what the movies had told him vampires were. Unable to survive in the daylight, forced to only feed on blood, a slave to their curse. Each of them, and he counted at least fifteen, stood still as if they were chained animals, snarling at Lamont, desperate to be released to finish him.

The men seated at the table were who Leonardo called ‘hitters’. They were not bound to the rules of vampire lore. They were a step beneath what Lucio was, but of greater power and discipline than the soldiers. And there were three. They were like Tristan.