Copyright 2011 Phil Wohl
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One
Hartwell’s blood was flowing into Daniel’s shirt, as the son scooped up the father from the paved alley behind the Beach Haven Grill. On the way from the alley to Hartwell’s house – which took a mere second in the vampire's domain but would have taken hours or days in the mortal world – Daniel managed to close his father's wound, thus giving him an opportunity to complete the desired transformation.
Daniel exposed his machete-like fangs much to the delight of Hartwell, who was gasping for air like a fish out of water. He furiously bit into Hartwell’s neck and drank his blood until he could sense the injured party slipping away.
The beauty of a life on the edge did not escape Daniel at this
moment. He wiped his mouth clean of Hartwell’s blood and then bit into his own wrist, while also using his powerful mind to pry open Hartwell’s mouth.
Daniel’s blood flowed through the body at rest and shot around
Hartwell’s veins like he had ingested a case of energy drinks.
Seconds later, they both stood in the middle of the main room of Hartwell’s house showing no signs of wear. The blood that had stained both of their shirts was gone – thanks to the vampires' trademark fastidiousness – and the wounds that Hartwell displayed from Cal Brewster had been fully healed.
“Wow! I feel great! I can’t remember feeling this good last time!” Hartwell exclaimed. “Of course, that was over 100 years ago…”
Daniel’s mother Belinda flashed into the room and said, “Danny! There you are!”
Both men smiled as Daniel moved behind Hartwell and forcefully snapped his neck, which was the final requirement for a successful turn.
Belinda was shocked at first until she saw Hartwell move on the floor. “I’ve upgraded the transition protocol,” Daniel said to Belinda, who's
metamorphosis took a few days following a near-fatal car crash.
Hartwell snapped his neck back into place and then stood up. He then smiled at Belinda and hugged Daniel.
“Excellent job on the transitional protocol! I can’t believe how fast I can download information now,” Hartwell gushed, and he wasn’t known for his gushing.
“I told you!” Daniel concurred. “You better go get your other half,” Daniel said to his mother.
Belinda quickly returned with Agent Blake Wallace, her boyfriend and resident FBI agent.
Daniel added, “No, the other half.”
Belinda left Blake standing across from Daniel and Hartwell with his pants around his ankles and a pair of Smurf boxer shorts.
“Well, that’s an upgrade from those light blue cotton panties you had on the other day,” Hartwell observed as he made Wallace get in touch with his feminine side.
Daniel and Blake agreed with that assessment, “Yeah.”
“I have the privacy of a goldfish. Can’t a guy go to the bathroom in peace?” Blake said as he picked up his pants and then buttoned and zipped his way to some sense of dignity.
Belinda returned with Hartwell’s wife Maggie and said to Blake, “Sorry, I’ll try to slow it down a bit next time and knock before I grab the merchandise,” she said as she playfully poked him in the stomach.
Daniel gagged, “We’ll all try to set aside the nausea of just seeing that and move on to the business at hand here.”
Hartwell stepped toward Maggie and moved in real close. He put his hands gently around her arms.
“This is what we were talking about the other night. You hold the key to setting everything in motion, my love.”
He stepped back and spoke to the group, “And triggering a chain reaction, the likes of which we have never seen. This will officially bind us all as family.”
Agent Blake was happy to be fully clothed, but was really elated to finally be included in the family after years of seclusion as a special agent. It would also finally give him a chance to clench his fist and punch Cal Brewster squarely in the face without fear of being snapped in half.
After the group exchanged warm greetings and words of encouragement, Belinda pulled Hartwell aside.
“Have you guys located Brandon?”
Hartwell diverted his focus away from the task at hand for a moment to feel genuine loss.
“It’s like he fell off the face of the earth. Daniel checked the entire Eastern seaboard and there was no trace of either him or his girlfriend Valerie.”
Daniel floated over to join the discussion and then the three of them realized they should share any and all information with the rest of the group.
Belinda addressed the group, “Our little boy, Brandon Justice, was lost today. Done in by the hand of Andrew Brewster.”
She started crying as mini red ice cubes, which fell from her eyes to the floor, creating a pile that buried her feet.
“Mom, you better stop crying or you’ll create the next ice age,” Daniel stated. “We all miss the little guy.”
The group came together and held hands as Daniel felt a warm feeling in his heart. “But we hope to be together one day as a united family.”
The five bowed their heads and contemplated life for a moment, in the veritable calm before the storm. The reflective pause ended and Hartwell assumed his proper place in his leadership capacity.
“Let’s get to work,” he said. “There's no telling what we’ll have to deal with by nightfall.”
TWO
It was a mad scramble for the Brewster family once the chain of retribution was complete. Cal Brewster had concluded a memorable back- to-back feat, and would be considered for the Hunter’s Hall of Fame if there was one.
After being jailed in the bottom of the ocean by Hartwell and his protectors, Sharon and Garrison Phillips, he escaped after 15 years and made a bee-line for Hartwell. It was the vampire’s 100th death, a magical threshold that signaled the return to mortal life for connected beings such as vampires, protectors and hunters.
The second set of life-endings was a lot less logical and a lot more irrational than his initial romp to freedom. Taking Hartwell 'out' the second time was an act that was steeped in revenge. Actually, Cal was looking for any excuse to move on in his life without Thomas Hartwell, and the bitter results from the baby Maxwell's DNA test provided the necessary spark.
Carla felt confused and alone on her drive back from the park, until she realized that Kayla was sitting next to her in the front seat. She looked over at her daughter and suddenly felt a wave of calm wash over her. While Carla was experiencing her deep cleansing moment, the rest of the Brewster clan was deep in anything but calm.
Emily ran all the way home from town – about two miles – as her angst over watching Cal take Hartwell’s life was aided by her high fitness level. She had been getting back to her long-distance running roots as of late, and she planned to run in a half-marathon in the spring and follow that up with the New York Marathon in the fall.
Sharon and Cal trailed her by a few minutes, as they walked in relative silence. In their case, love had truly scaled the divide between the heart and life’s duty. She thought it was best, at least at first, to say nothing rather than to take her anxiety and frustration out on Cal.
Just before they reached the front door, the day’s events hit Sharon like a ton of bricks.
“I can never go home again!”
Cal took a couple of extra steps and then stopped in his tracks.
> “Is this going to be the part where your head tries to catch up to the rest of you?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He simply pounded his chest with a right fist that was used to pounding the human skin of others.
When Sharon realized that he was talking about their hearts, she knew this man would do anything to protect her. Anything that didn’t stop her from trying to rationalize the day’s events.
“This is your home now,” Cal stated and then walked into the house.
Carla pulled into the garage with Kayla as Thaddeus and Andrew approached the house.
“You young punks have no respect. When are you going to learn that you’re not Cal? You’re not like him!” Grandpa' Thaddeus preached.
Drew walked some heavy steps and then came to a stop. “What’s wrong with Cal? Who wouldn’t want to be like him?” Drew said his piece and decided to walk around the back of the
house to get away from his silver-tongued grandpa’ for a bit. He opened the wood fence door, as the respectful and elegant Thaddeus calmly walked into the garage to see if Carla needed help.
Carla saw Drew stomping off into the backyard and then stopped to greet Thaddeus.
“What’s up with Andrew?” she said as Thaddeus bent down and unlocked Kayla’s car seat from its base, but she was already loose.
“I don’t think you want to know, dear,” Thaddeus replied.
“Why don’t you take Kayla inside for me, please,” Carla asked and then walked back outside and through the backyard door that was still ajar.
Drew spotted his mother sitting on a hammock under a shady tree. “Tell me you weren’t involved in all of this, Andrew?” Emily asked
even before Drew had any idea that his mother was alerted to his presence.
Carla came in from behind the play and yelled, “Involved in what, Andrew?” as both of the women resorted to calling Drew “Andrew” when they sensed he was the source of trouble.
Emily flipped out of the hammock as Drew was now sandwiched between his mom and his baby’s mom.
Carla started, “Drew! Why didn’t Brandon show up for our walk in the park? He has never been as much as a minute late for any of our appointments. Did you have something to do with that?”
Emily stepped uncomfortably close, “Yeah, did you?”
Thaddeus walked outside with Kayla with the top down on her little seat. He tried to make a U-turn to go back into the house, but something compelled him to keep walking outside.
Drew didn’t know what to say under all of that pressure, but he was about to feel a lot stronger with his partner in crime walking through the house and out the back door as he heard the commotion.
“It was my idea!” Cal yelled as he made his way down the brick steps and headed toward Emily.
“I knew that!” Emily replied as she walked toward her brother. “I
knew you killed Hartwell, because I was watching you. But what happened to Brandon?”
Cal was happy to take the first bullet for Drew, but he knew his protégé had to stand on his own two feet eventually. He looked at Drew, and the younger Brewster was infused with a renewed sense of confidence and purpose – even if it was completely misguided.
“I killed him!” Andrew proudly stated.
“You did what?” an outraged and shocked Carla yelled. “Why would you do that?”
“For all those years he tortured you. He had it coming!” Drew explained.
“He had it coming? What kind of gangster terminology is that? We made peace with the whole torture thing,” she said waving her hands.
“But I hadn’t.” Drew plainly stated, setting off another wave of anger and yelling.
Sharon Phillips was sitting on the front porch, trying to come to grips with everything that had just transpired. She heard the loud discussion and thought about leaving and going home, but this was her home now and those were her people, for better or for worse.
So she walked across the driveway and then opened the seven-foot door to the backyard, where she was unexpectedly greeted by Emily’s boyfriend, Aaron Driscoll.
He said, “After you,” as they walked through the door and was not seen by the others just yet…
THREE
“Ready?” Hartwell asked Maggie.
She smiled with nervous excitement. “Ready!”
She pulled back her dark mane and exposed her neck. Hartwell knew the quickest and least painful method to turn her, but Daniel found a way to vastly accelerate the process.
Maggie was drained, fed and snapped, all within the course of a healthy seven seconds. And then it took another three seconds for her to download the vampire protocol to her hard drive.
“That wasn’t so bad!” Maggie exclaimed as she opened her eyes and floated to her feet.
“You have to thank Daniel for that." Hartwell replied.
Daniel zipped into the room. Maggie kissed Daniel on the cheek and gave him a hug.
“It’s important that we maintain physical intimacy even though we can attain such feelings in our minds,” she said while they separated from the hug.
They walked into the main room where they were joined by Belinda, Blake, Nicole, Max and Garrison.
Hartwell looked at Garrison and the two old friends supplanting the language barrier as usual. Garrison shook his head “No” to indicate that Sharon would not be joining them.
“We’re eight strong,” Hartwell stated, as they gathered in a circle, Nicole and Daniel on either side of Maxwell.
“Four vampires, three protectors and our little Maxie,” Daniel stated. “This bond between us shall never be undone,” Hartwell said. “Let us
now join hands and complete this tribe.”
Hands were clasped from the largest to the smallest, as intense energy spun around, stopping at the neophyte Blake and halting the aging process and fully restoring Garrison's capabilities.
Nicole’s body sculpted away the effects of pregnancy and child-birth, and she was once again a protector in the prime of her existence. Albeit a protector who had to move forward without her mother by her side.
The arguing reached a fever pitch in the Brewster’s backyard. Cal was going at it with Emily and Carla could not hide her disappointment and scorn for husband Drew.
Sharon and Aaron were planning on acting as peacemakers and they did just that when the floated through the air and hovered over the
bickering foursome. Thaddeus joined the floating duo and so did Kayla, who was playing with some dangling plastic toy in her portable seat.
“What the?” Carla gasped as she joined the floating quartet. Drew rose up into the air and instinctively clasped hands with Carla and then got a hold of Kayla, as both parents held her little hands.
Drew reached out to Thaddeus and then grabbed Cal’s hand, who joined with Sharon. Emily floated up and held Sharon and Aaron’s hands almost simultaneously and completed the circle of hunters.
“What’s happening here?” Carla yelled as the wind picked up in the backyard, sending the group spinning.
“It’s happening!” Cal yelled in a statement directed at Andrew. Cal Brewster had a theory that things weren’t exactly as they
appeared, and he shared this hunch with his nephew when he started to plan the April Fool’s Day attack.
“The whole thing is not right,” Cal said one morning while pounding his lightly-padded fists into the heavy bag at the boxing gym.
“What isn’t right?” Drew asked while trying to coordinate a consistent rhythm on the speed bag.
“The whole thing with Hartwell,” Cal stated and then grunted when he put together a left hook to the body and right cross to the chin combination. “I mean, you’ve seen him fight me. It’s not like the guy would ever let me kill him, but now he’s done it two times in a row, in between the time he
threw me a beating in the alley and the other time we beat each other’s brains out in the ring!”
“So, do y
ou think he’s a vampire?” Andrew asked. “No, but…”
“But?”
“Someone else might be,” Cal flatly stated. “Who?”
Cal looked over at Drew , “You’re just a wiz with those one-word questions, aren’t you?”
“Yes?” Drew panned.
“There’s an obvious list of candidates,” Cal said as sweat dripped from his body like a faucet. “Belinda, Sharon, Garrison… Daniel.”
Drew started laughing, “It can’t be Daniel. He can’t even beat me at basketball.”
Cal chuckled back, “But he could make you believe that you’re beating him at basketball.”
Andrew’s pride would not accept another potential defeat to Daniel. This was shortly after the father of Nicole’s child was disclosed and Drew’s ego was about as breakable as a glass table in an elephant pen.
“Nah! It must be someone else. Do you think Hartwell changed that person before you came back?”
“The term is ‘turned’ my boy - he must have, knowing that his 100th death was imminent and he would return to mortality.”
“It’s either his mother – who got into a car accident and… and then magically disappeared from the hospital when she was on the verge of death. Where did that come from?”
Cal stepped away from the hanging bag and slapped his nephew on the back.
“It happens to the best of us, Drew. They made you forget. That is why you had to take care of Justice. He can never be allowed to terrorize your baby’s mom again.”
“Her name is Carla,” Drew reminded. “I knew that,” Cal replied.