with Drew.
“I really never got to thank you for including me in this night. It always meant a lot to me that we were such good friends. But it’s always been Danny and you, and thankfully it always will be.”
Nicole hugged Andrew, much to the disdain of Daniel and delight of Manuel. The originator’s celebration appeared to be premature as Hartwell pointed to Drew and Nicole and said, “Wait, there’s more!”
Andrew backed up from the hug and he and Nicole transformed from their high school forms into their current bodies. And, as Daniel approached the duo, he also transformed into his current form.
“Well, I’ll be,” Manuel said.
“We’ll call that one a draw,” Hartwell stated, as they both were impressed with the cohesiveness and sanity of the trio formerly known in volleyball circles as ‘The Three Slam go’s’.
Daniel shook his cousin’s hand and then they met in a bro’ hug.
“So glad it worked out this way,” Drew said and then extended his hand out to the side once they broke the hug, and Carla appeared.
Daniel started slow-dancing with Nicole and then Andrew drew Carla close and kissed her on the neck.
She looked over Drew’s shoulder and said to her good friend Nicole, “I had no idea it would be a dance!” she laughed with a red face as she dropped her sword on the ground and Drew slowly removed her extensive padded armor.
Carla had to deal with the ghost of Nicole Phillips in the early years of her relationship with Drew, but the two women had come to really like each other after airing out their differences in several battles.
Hartwell and Manuel looked on and Manuel asked, “If this is possible, what else can be accomplished?”
TWELVE
“What do you mean?” Hartwell asked as they left the friendly confines of the Beach Haven High School gym and were back to their cloudy transitional phase.
“Why do you always have to talk in riddles?” Hartwell further questioned.
“Well, why do you always have to ask so many questions?” Manuel countered.
“Because I really don’t know what you are talking about?”
Manuel transported them back to the Beach Haven Boardwalk on a bench facing the ocean.
“Ah, that’s better!” Hartwell sighed as he closed his eyes, put his clasped hands behind his head and extended his long legs to rest on the iron rails in front of him.
“Why must everything be about you, and why must you control absolutely everything around you?” Manuel asked in a tone that reeked of annoyance.
Hartwell smiled with his eyes still closed, “Look who’s asking all of the questions now…”
He then thought about what Manuel said and the upturn in his face neutralized.
“Wait, what are you saying?”
“I don’t think you give all of the people around you enough credit,” Manuel explained. And before Hartwell could keep the tables turned and ask another question, Manuel changed locations. However, once they reached the destination, Hartwell dipped back into the well.
“Why are we in Gary’s backyard?”
Just then, Daniel flew in from points unknown in the sky and pounded down to the ground like he hadn’t completely gotten the hang of the landing thing just yet.
“Smells like fresh vampire to me,” Manuel surmised.
Hartwell took a deep breath and concurred, “Yes, he’s only minutes old.”
Daniel used his mind to alert Nicole via text message that he was in the backyard. He then removed his own phone from his pocket and flipped the useless device into a garbage can some 30 feet away.
Perky Nicole bounded out of the back door of the house and said, “Lucky shot!”
She hadn’t seen him in weeks because he was making the transition to vampire, so she jumped in his arms and hugged him tight. Daniel leaned in and inhaled the intoxicating scent of her fruity hair and closed his eyes.
“Can you freeze this is a second?” Hartwell asked and then Manuel obliged, as two heavenly bodies were melted into one.
Manuel anticipated the next question by giving a suitable answer.
“Because your son had just become a vampire, yet he was still thinking about the others around him and how best to protect them.”
Hartwell acknowledged the dead-on guess with an affirmative nod.
“I don’t know if we were so level-headed in our first steps of the brotherhood,” Manuel added.
While Hartwell heard every word that Manuel just said, he was transfixed on the word “we.”
Manuel smiled because he knew what he just did.
“See, I’ve been so good up to this point! But I have to concede that you sort of won that bet back there at the gymnasium.” And then he turned less jovial, “Yes, it’s “we,” Thomas.”
Hartwell’s eyebrows rose at first, but then he wasn’t sure if he should feel comfortable in the presence of a vampire, or threatened by the possibility that another vampire in his line was trying to plot against him.
Daniel exhaled because he sensed like-beings close by. And before Nicole could react, he froze her and then walked across the backyard toward the two men. He was locked in on Hartwell.
“Is this about me or you? Because I’m not sure that I’m enjoying reliving all of these events that caused me pain?”
Instead of answering, Hartwell again turned to Manuel for clarity.
“What were you about to do?” Manuel asked Daniel.
“I was about to break up with her because I didn’t know what I was capable of. The only thing I knew to do was protect her.”
Manuel countered, “So, you didn’t know that you were trying to protect the one that was sent to protect you?”
“No,” Daniel replied. And then he switched gears, “Do you mind if I talk to my father for a second?”
“Of course not,” Manuel replied to the boy that he now considered his great grandson, not having kids of his own when he was a mortal—at least not ones that he knew about.
He walked over to Daniel and put his large hand on the kid’s face, “You’re a good boy, Daniel.”
And in that moment, looking deeply into Manuel’s eyes, Daniel realized that this man was family, not foe. He leaned in and whispered, “Thanks for coming, Pop Pop.”
He then walked with Hartwell, “What was that all about?” a paranoid Hartwell asked his son. “Do you think this guy is good or bad?”
“He’s definitely good.”
“He is? How do you know?” a surprised Hartwell asked.
Manuel could sense that Daniel was about to spill the beans, so he pulled Hartwell out of the backyard and back to the boardwalk, where Daniel’s voice could be heard saying, “Because he’s one of us.”
THIRTEEN
Daniel was a few paces away from where the two men were sitting, having a real heart-to-heart conversation with his cousin and best friend, Andrew.
The original conversation centered on Daniel telling Drew that he was a vampire, which meant that he wasn’t a hunter and was now the enemy.
“If you hadn’t broken up with Nicole, she never would have asked me to come over! If you had waited a few more hours I would have been with Carla in Portland!” Drew yelled in frustration.
“But I’m not mad anymore that the two of you were together,” Daniel replied as the two men in their current age took over for the emotional teenagers.
“It was something that just happened,” Daniel said diplomatically.
Drew smiled, “That’s easy for you to say now! Being that Maxwell wound up being your son,” referring to a time when the father of Nicole’s child was still in question.
Daniel laughed and the two guys walked and sat on the bench just to the right of Hartwell and Samuel.
“Who’s the other vampire?” Drew said internally to Daniel so Hartwell wouldn’t hear him.
“I think we’re related to him somehow,” Daniel replied internally in a rather conservative and basic response, even though he already k
new who the man was.
They all watched as teenage Daniel told Drew that he was a vampire and not a hunter, as they both had surmised.
“I’m not going to fight you. We are brothers,” a confused Drew stated.
Daniel was less brotherly than usual on this day, “We are going to have to fight eventually.”
Drew never backed down from a fight.
“Just not today,” he stepped closer to Daniel and angrily clenched his shirt collar, “Not today!”
“You really crumpled my shirt,” modern-day Daniel said to his cousin. “I had to get up into the atmosphere just to get the crease out,” as fellow-fastidious vampires Manuel and Hartwell smiled in understanding from the next bench.
The Daniel that was being confronted by his cousin left the scene and zoomed up toward the sky, while his blindly enraged cousin was left to deal with the destruction of his life himself.
Drew was so angry that he flew toward the sky in his hawk exterior and then splashed into the ocean as a hammerhead shark until he crashed his head on what he thought was the bottom of the ocean. He kept up this pattern for the better part of an hour until exhaustion finally broke the chain of anxiety.
“Can you see now that your actions not only set of a chain of events, the events themselves are also connected?” Manuel asked Hartwell as he phased Daniel and Drew out of the conversation, sending them back to the house.
Hartwell thought about it for a moment and then replied, “Because Drew was so mad that he banged his head against the rocks and that, in turn, freed Cal.”
“Exactly,” Manuel said. “And then what happened?”
Manuel and Hartwell moved a few hundred yards down the beach where Cal had washed up in the darkness and awaited the