it again,” Belinda said to the group of ladies at the other end of the table.
Emily stood up and they cleared the dishes on the way to their favorite sanctuary, the knitting room.
“Why didn’t the fight go as quickly s the first night?” she asked as everyone settled into their positions.
“Maybe they adjusted to our strategy?” Kayla countered.
Sharon put her two cents in, “Was there a full moon last night?”
“I was just glad to finally see some action and not have ape guts splattered all over me,” Ariel said.
“They were strong,” Valerie Justice stated.
“Real strong,” Nicole added.
“Stronger than the first night?” Carla asked.
The group looked at Maggie, who still seemed to have an axe to grind with Billingsley and his apes.
“Stronger than the first night. Let’s keep an eye on it tonight.”
Maxwell came to a conclusion, but the group was not sold that it was completely conclusive, “They were 10 percent stronger on night two than they were on night one.”
Samuel mirrored Ariel’s conclusion, “I’m just glad I didn’t get ape guts splattered all over me.”
Daniel said to Max, “Collect all of the data at tonight’s fight and we’ll talk about the results tomorrow.”
“What if they’re even stronger tonight?” the neophyte Samuel asked the group.
Hartwell replied, “Then a few of us will be waking up in the in sun room.”
The apes were feeling supremely confident on their way to the field that night.
“I haven’t felt this good in years,” Mary Brewster said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this good,” Eloise Phillips countered.
“Starting to feel like I did when I was running up and down the football field in high school scoring touchdowns,” Greg Justice stated.
“And I could do splits just about anywhere I pleased as head cheerleader,” his wife Julie glowed.
Agent Carter chimed in, “I used to take down the bad guys back in the day.”
“And I could bite into the neck of anyone I pleased,” Charles Lowery added.
Billingsley smiled because his crew was about to make inroads into moving to the other side of the beatdown. It was his and Brenda Vinson’s plan in the beginning to lure Hartwell’s gang into a false sense of security.
“I want to get stronger with every fight,” Gabriel said to Brenda.
She thought for a moment and then replied, “Each time you die your strength will become greater. So make sure you take a few defeats early to build up your power. By the time they realize what’s going on, you all will be too strong to defeat.”
The apes rumbled onto the field and showed no signs of slowing down as they approached the enemy. Maxwell abandoned his lawnmower strategy in favor of a scatter technique he simply called “Scatter!” which sent his warriors in all different directions like they were ants being moved off the top of a hill by a huge raindrop. The strategy was possibly less relevant than the execution, as the hunters, protectors and hybrid creatures were expert swordsman capable of defending the fiercest attack.
The night ended for four of the eight apes at the hands of the first line of defense, but four apes - Agent Terrence Carter, Mary Brewster, Eloise Phillips and Billingsley - made it to the second layer, which meant they would be battling the vampires. The protection that Hartwell, Maggie and Daniel initially benefited from Kayla was now down, courtesy of the more than three deaths suffered by front line players Thad, Gary and Cal. Billingsley went right after Maggie, Mary Brewster had already taken care of her husband and her grandson and was now en route to Belinda, Eloise Phillips also ended her husband’s night early and was headed toward her granddaughter’s husband Daniel, Agent Terrence Carter had disposed of Agent Blake Wallace and Aaron and was fixed on Brandon Justice, and Charles Lowery only had eyes as usual for Hartwell.
Lowery was inexperienced as an ape and probably would have preferred to fight Hartwell vampire to vampire. Sharp nails and even sharper teeth seemed like a better option to the elder vampire until he pounded his chest and then roared after driving Nicole and Carla into the turf. He jumped into the air and Hartwell decided to meet him half-way as he extended his nails and prepared to do a little outdoor rotisserie barbecuing.
Mary Brewster was perhaps the only person in her family that was consistently nice to Belinda during the mortal lives. But all of that equity she built up vanished in the blink of an eye as Belinda waited for Mary to make the first move. She had refined her craft over the years, paying close attention to the martial arts lessons taught by a host of instructors, including Hartwell, Daniel, Thaddeus, Agent Blake and Garrison. Mary rumbled toward Belinda and took a swipe at her neck with her meat hook of right hand. Belinda took a step back with her left foot, karate-chopped Mary with the back of her right hand and then spun around and swept her right foot through the hitting zone and took Mary’s short, yet powerful legs out from under her sending her thudding to the ground.
It was obvious from the first punch that Eloise Phillips had an axe to grind with Daniel. The vampire had married his daughter and produced offspring in the form of Maxwell without her consent, or at least that’s what she was spouting.
Daniel absorbed the blows to his head and stomach as she yelled in defiance and apparent anger, “You went behind my back and had relations with my granddaughter without my permission! Bad vampire!”
Daniel let her say her piece but then realized by a scan of her brain that these were not the waves of a family member. That the memories she was infused with were pre-programmed and were not of her own. He was on the ground and the blood trickling out of his mouth and nose stopped flowing and instantly healed, revealing a man with no apparent injuries. She almost took a step back from the sight of her best shots having absolutely no impact. He stood up slowly and then gained control of the conversation and fight.
“I mean no disrespect in what I am about to say, but are dead and my wife no longer has a grandmother. But if you were around...” Daniel continued to talk as he landed a huge right hand to her kidneys, “I would have surely asked you for your permission to spend time with Nicole,” he said and then landed a mighty uppercut to the jaw that sent Eloise flying half-way across the field.
Brandon Justice was one of the most well-rounded beings in the House of Hartwell and Agent Terrence Carter was learning that real fast. Carter had only one look and that was powerful, angry and straight-ahead slow. Brandon started transitioning through his many facades as a hybrid creature, starting with his centaur exterior and finishing as a merman, which seemed to frustrate agent Carter as he was slapped upside his head with a huge fin.
Hartwell extended his blade-like nails on his right hand and pushed clean-through the hairy ape body of Charles Lowery, his vampire sire of a previous world. He looked deep into the eyes of the man he thought he was battling, but saw little in the way of actual humanity.
“Hugh, ain’t that a hoot,” he mumbled as Lowery’s night ended. He retracted his finger-swords and then cleaned them diligently before glided over to Daniel, who he felt had experienced a similar revelation.
Gabriel Billingsley took his time to get over to his wife, somehow believing that his patience would create some added pressure and intrigue. The delay only served to let the other individual fights conclude, as Daniel beheaded a shocked Eloise Phillips, Belinda extended her left index finger and pierced the heart of a prone Mary Brewster, and Brandon Justice settled on his favorite vampire facade and took a huge bits out of the neck of Agent Terrence Carter, who’s blood was drained within seconds, sending his useless carcass face-first to the turf.
Hartwell made it over to Daniel and asked, “Did you see what I saw?”
Daniel replied as the vampires made a circle around Maggie and Billingsley, “They are simply shells.”
“Yes, nothing familiar exists in their souls,” Hartwell count
ered.
Maggie was in no mood to counter-punch and see what kind of moves Billingsley had on this night. She had spent too many years mistakingly thinking about him and feeling bad for his plight in life to ever back up again. He saw the absolute look of rage in her eyes and knew that he would have no chance of surviving the siege, but he decided to fight gamely anyway. He stepped forward and raised both of his fists into the air and then came down with all of the force of hell on her head but she didn’t budge. He continued to pound her at close range for the next ten seconds before he could punch no more. All of Maggie’s focus was on the one thing she wanted to shatter and that was Gabriel’s heart. All ten of her nails pierced his chest and entered through different parts of his heart. He was barely dead when she pulled her hands out of him, pushing him on his back to the ground.
“Useless,” she grumbled as she barely cleaned her nails and walked away.
Everyone looked at Hartwell as Maggie glided home, “She has some issues with him. We should probably let her work it out fully.”
They all nodded and then following Maggie on the slow-glide back to the house.
NINETEEN
The vampires rested comfortably while the limp bodies of the protectors, hunters and hybrids were propped up in comfy adirondack chairs in the sun room awaiting the new day. Maggie and her gang of vampires were so jacked up that they eliminated