Page 1 of Blood Shadow: The Vampire Hartwell

Blood Shadow

  The Vampire Hartwell

  Phil Wohl

  Copyright 2015 Phil Wohl

  PROLOGUE

  My name is Thomas Hartwell and I am a vampire. Saying that after over a century as a blood shadow doesn’t make it any less shocking, even though I have spent more time on this earth as a blessed one than a mortal. The 100 years, or so, was pure torture, except for the random acts of bloodletting and violence that made me one of the most feared disruptive forces of my generation.

  My story and the story of my family has been told before, but I thought it was important to fill in the gaps of the journey from my perspective—an autobiographical look if you will—from the very beginning in San Francisco to the time I hit the shores of Beach Haven, New York.

  This account will serve as an extended therapy session for a creature purported to exist without a soul. But I will let you in on a little secret: we have evolved greatly over the years and now have a heightened sense of self-awareness and genuine care for others around us (if we like them). You know what happens to people who we don’t like, or threaten the very safety of family: they become little more than a blood snack in a long line of people whose veins have been opened by my razor-sharp fangs. I wish I was a pacifist, but that’s what comes with being a head of the household: protection is my gift.

  LOSS

  It was 1902, and the Barbary Plague—not-so-affectionately called

  The Black Death—was sweeping through Victorian San Francisco. The disease started in Chinatown and spread throughout the city like a raging wildfire. Four out of five people who contracted the disease died within eight days, while the survivors had to deal with being prime healthy targets for a mass of bloodthirsty predators.

  I was living in the lap of luxury in San Francisco with my wife Marjorie, or Maggie, as she liked to be called, and my eight year-old son, Nathaniel. It was a radical change from the destitute life I was experiencing before Maggie came into my life. Chasing riches in the competitive times that was the gold rush left me with few options other than dying in poverty or robbing a bank such as the San Francisco National Bank. In fact, I was casing the joint out for a few weeks because the gold thing didn’t appear to panning out.

  It became apparent to me in just a short time that the bank was most vulnerable just about closing time. All other times of the day there were two guards on duty, but at closing there was just one guard who liked to call it quits a few minutes early each day. I walked into the bank a couple of ticks before 5:00 p.m. one day, and saw a woman with her back to him me when I asked, “Excuse me ma'am, what time do you close?”

  This woman, this creature from the heavens turned around in all of her shapely, blonde-haired splendor and looked at the large-round clock with her huge blue eyes and replied, “Five-o’clock, sir.”

  I had never seen this woman face to face and when our eyes locked, I literally froze in my boots and finally saw my future standing in front of me. I was so poor that I slept wherever I could, which often meant outside, and my clothes and boots had many holes in them. I need money so badly but I quickly figured that a major hurdle to spending the rest of my life with this woman would be if I robbed her bank. I also thought that this was the first time she noticed me, but I must have been the worst bank robber of all time because she knew who I was and why I was there.

  This woman seemed too prominent, so important, that it was doubtful that she would fall for a reckless loser. She tried not to play into my trap by asking, “Is there anything else?” while she jiggled a ring of keys in her hand. “It’s closing time.”

  I looked deep into her big blue eyes and wanted to say, “I would like to take you out to dinner when I come into some money,” but I didn’t know when or if that would ever happen. I did look deep into Marjorie Carter’s eyes, she being my long-widowed, 26 year-old angel. Maggie had the blatant misfortune of going through a miscarriage and losing her husband in the same year. The shock of the cumulative setbacks left her basically dormant for six years, as she sorted through the emotional wreckage while working as a bank secretary At the San Francisco National Bank.

  “I am sorry I wasted your time,” I said and bowed my head in shame.

  She must have seen something in my eyes that resembled a decent human being because she replied, “I don’t think you could ever waste my time, Thomas, unless you came in here to rob us.”

  I’m still not sure how she knew my name, but I felt such a surge of energy from what she said that it propelled me to make a better life, and turn into the person she thought I could be, so we could be together. It was this renewed sense of purpose that made me pan through a gold in a site I had combed at least a dozen times, a body of water that was eventually tagged with the name Hartwell Brook. I had hit the jackpot only a month after everything seemed lost when I walked into that bank and a guardian angel saved me from taking a wrong turn.

  I became a millionaire just before the turn of the century, in a time when there was scarce few men of such wealth in the country. My relationship history before I became established was what you could call sparse, with only the most drunk of females sharing time and space with me. We settled down at the ripe age of 34, which is akin to about 54 years old in modern times. Of course, there were many women lined up to get a shot at my fortune, but I only had eyes for Maggie, and thankfully she felt the same way about me.

  We wasted little time having a baby once we were married a few months later, and were blessed with a strong son named Nathaniel. The eight years we spent together as an inseparable trio were by far the best of my life, as we traveled both north and south to view the magnificence of the Pacific Northwest and their southern neighbors.

  Years spent building a fortress of love and fulfillment all came tumbling down one day when news of a great plague filtered through our West Coast community. This blackest of plagues didn’t discriminate when it came to touching lives of both the rich and poor. People were dropping like flies and I started making plans to get out of the Bay area when Maggie came to me and said, “I feel a little achy and slow today. I’m having trouble getting going.”

  That same morning, Nathaniel was running an abnormally high temperature and was literally sweating through the sheets. Eight days later, my wife and son were both gone, taken by a disease that ate them up and spit them out. The whole thing left me in a bad dream-like state as I took to the cobblestone streets, demanding an explanation from the heavens for giving me everything and then taking it away. The pain and anguish I was suffering was far greater than any mental challenges I had experienced previously. While I probably should have been grateful for the time we all got to spend together, and how blessed I truly was to live such a life, I was dropped on the dark side and really saw no way to escape into the light.

  People were running frantically throughout the streets—some were escaping the disease, while others were trying to avoid the deadly bite of a creature just as devastating as any disease. I had other thoughts that centered on putting me out my misery and joining my family ion the next world. There was nothing left for me in San Francisco or any other place in the new world, or at least that’s what I thought.

  BRIDGE

  I can’t even remember how long I was out walking the streets. It had been a week since I had slept and I had gone more than a day since thinking of food or vital sustenance. I walked back on my house, somehow finding the place by muscle memory, and started to hallucinate that Maggie and Nathaniel were sitting on the coach talking to me.

  “Thomas, join us,” Maggie said. “We can all be together in this world if you choose to do what has to be done.” r />
  They both looked healthy again, so I asked, “How are you both feeling. You appear to have made a full recovery!” It was the most hopeful moment I had experienced in some time. “Are you back? Can we resume our wonderful life together now?”

  Maggie replied, “We are not really here, Thomas. We have passed on to next world and that is the only place you can be with us.”

  “You need to get that gun you hid in the back of the closet in the holster,” Nathaniel said.

  “How did you know about that?!” I asked worried for my young son’s safety. “Did you ever touch it?”

  “No, father. I am a good son,” Nathaniel replied.

  “Yes, you are a good son,” I replied and then walked over to touch and hug my family but they were gone. “What the…” I started saying because the image had convinced me that it was corporeal in nature.

  And then I heard Maggie’s voice in the distance, “Hurry, Thomas! You’re running out of time…”

  “Maggie! Nathaniel!” I yelled and there was no response, which led me to act instead of feeling sorrow for losing them again.

  I ran into my bedroom and dove into the far recesses of the closet’s top shelf, where my pistol was still holstered. There were no bullets in the gun, which gave me great comfort that I hadn’t put my son in harm’s way just as I thought. But then I realized that I was going to pick up the gun and aim it at my head, that I needed at least one bullet to accomplish this feat. It was my wisdom that made me place the gun and bullets in separate locations in order to diffuse the situation in case my wife and son found the firearm. My mind was so clouded that I hadn’t the foggiest idea where I had hidden the bullets, so I yelled, “Where are the bullets?!!!”

  My wife and son continued the hallucination by standing near a dresser set of drawers, “You put them in the back of your sock drawer, Thomas,” Maggie said as they pointed to the location. “Hurry!” Nathaniel added as the faded out again, much to my frustration. I ran over to the dark wood dresser and opened the drawer, throwing socks in the air behind me until I came onto the box of bullets. It had been a while, at least eight years, since I had loaded a gun, so I nervously and unsteadily tried to fit the bullets in a chamber with little success until a voice inside me said, “It only take one.”

  I must have been walking while I was trying to load the gun, and when I finally got one in the chamber I was standing near the front door. I lifted the gun toward my head without hesitation until I heard someone pounding on my front door, which temporarily stopped me from completing the task.

  “Please go away!” I yelled as I continued to raise the heavy gun until it was pointed at my head.

  “Don’t do it,” the voice calmly said from the other side of the door. “I have a way that you will be able to see your wife and son again.”

  Before that knock on my door, I felt that I had run out of options. But now I had a choice: either blow my brains out and potentially be with my family, or listen to the voice on the other side of the door promising full restitution. I decided to walk toward the door as I lowered the gun to my side, “How do I know you’re not one of vile things that bite people?”

  “I’m offended,” the man said. “How do I know that you’re not lousy with the plague?”

  I nodded my head in understanding, “Well, how can I get my family back?” I asked as I lodged the gun against the door.

  The man literally wasn’t born yesterday, “You’re going to have to let me in to find that out, Thomas Hartwell. What other choice do you have?”

  I chose to reflect briefly on the sordid events of my life and then looked over at the loaded gun. My decision was to open the door, “Okay, you can come in,” which unlocked my last seal of protection in the mortal world.

  I kept a tight grip on the gun as the distinguished-looking gentleman walked in slowly, hardly befitted the demeanor or aggressive tendencies of a savage beast. The man’s beige wool, three-piece suit, well-groomed mustache, and classic bowler hat that he removed and held in his hand, lessened my anxiety as it had for the hundreds of his unsuspecting victims. He then conveyed the mental message, “You can put the gun away. We are all friends here.”

  So I put the gun in the top drawer of my rolling desk and asked, “Can I get you anything, friend? I’m going to put up some tea.”

  The man reached down into his vest pocket and pulled out a gold pocket watch, which he had picked up along the way. He opened the engraved latch and realized that his window of opportunity was closing fast. The hunters were tracking his scent and would be closing in within minutes.

  I walked back into the room and was instructed to sit next to the man on the couch.

  “My name is Alexander Lowery and I am here to offer you eternal life.” Lowery thought for a moment and then decided to slightly alter his claim, “In any event, you can last pretty long if you eat people on a high fiber diet and do your best to avoid those persistent hunters.”

  I took in the information but wasn’t really caring about my well-being or life at that point, “What about my wife and son?”

  Lowery’s hair was slicked back and finely combed as he stroked his mustache before speaking in a dramatic tone, “Your boy shall rise again on the moon of the new century. Oh, and your wife should be along in another eight to 10 moons after that.”

  I was confused be the reference, “How long is a moon?”

  Lowery replied, “A moon is about a year in most circles, give or take a few months. In Germany…” he started before screams and heavy bangs could be heard in the street below.

  That’s when I first met Abraham Ellison, Lowery’s protector, a muscular fellow wearing a finely tailored suit who burst into the room, "My food fellow, you might want to speed things up a bit!”

  Lowery’s eyes transformed from brown to orange and razor-sharp fangs sprouted from the upper and lower portions of his mouth, as he ferociously bit into the right side of my neck. Conflicting emotions flooded my clouded brain, as I was horrified and totally intrigued at the same time. He must have put some sort of mind-whammy on me, because I thought my brain was telling my being to run but I sat motionless.

  The searing pain I initially felt was replaced by the euphoria of seeing my wife and son smiling and waving at me near a large back of windows to my left. As I started fading out, their images shifted from a form that I knew to another version of dress that I was not familiar with.

  Lowery quickly drained my blood and then opened the vein on his right wrist to keep me from dying, “No, not just yet. You have some work to do before you see them.”

  I instinctively drank the blood from Lowery’s wrist as if I was a baby and he was holding a bottle. Only this ‘formula’ was my bridge from mortality to immortality, from man to bloodthirsty monster.

  “Two other things,” Lowery said. “I dripped a little blood – clumsy me – on the couch, so you might want to treat that when you come to. And, the second thing is, and this one’s real important, so get your hearing shoes on – after you die 100 times you become mortal again.”

  There was a huge thump on the front door of the building and Lowery hastened to finish the job, as his ally rushed toward his side.

  “Good luck, Hartwell,” he said, as he removed his arm from near my mouth and then snapped my neck, all in one motion.

  “We have to go,” the Ellison said to Lowery, as I dropped lifeless to the floor. Lowery and his Ellison knew the front of the building would be blocked so they slipped out of an open window and into the sky, narrowly escaping a group of aggressive hunters that burst into the room.

  The San Francisco plague had taken its toll on the vampire population. By the time Lowery had me for dinner, the fanged ranks had been trimmed from thousands to mere hundreds. My turning was more a part of an informal drive to recruit new blood, than a merciful act performed by a compassionate beast.

  The Black Death, while lethal to mortals, also ha
d a significant impact on the vampire community. Death was an outcome seen in 44 percent of the vampires, but there were a few cases where vampires were killed for the 100th time and then contracted the disease, opening their intricate immune systems to the unstoppable force. There were also many instances when vampires lost strength, or two, such as chain-saw-sharp teeth or the ability to fly. It was definitely the worst of times in the City by the Bay.

  REBORN

  The hunters that were tracking Lowery burst into my house in San Francisco and found me dead in a pool of my own blood on the floor between the couch and the coffee table in the living room, or parlor as they called it at the turn of the century.

  The male hunter put his fingers on my broken and bloodied neck and said, “This one’s as dead as a cricket run over by a carriage.”

  The female hunter asked, “Do you think he turned him?”

    He moved his lantern close to my mouth and took a look inside, while also getting a good sniff.

  “His smell is everywhere, but there is no sign of blood,” the mountain- of-a-man said as he let my head fall to the floor. “I say he didn’t have time. Let’s get going before we get too far behind.

  So the hunters left the house and I lay dormant for another few hours before the darkness of the night permeated the room. At which time, the brute force and potency of Lowery’s blood coursed through my veins and worked to repair and upgrade my lifeless body.

  In the days before computers, I was essentially swapping my basic PC hard drive for the size, speed, and massive processing power of a mainframe computer. But the transformation was a gradual process, as I quickly found out when my eyes opened and the new world was simply black.

  My balance was askew, which made it difficult for me to stand up and find my way. After tripping on the oval wood table in front of me at least three times, I crawled to the bathroom where I was able to light a candle after struggling to find a spark.

  My world was so hazy until the faint light pained my crusty eyes as I rubbed them furiously with my fists to gain a clearer self-image in the mirror. My rebooted brain was still experiencing some rough patches and images of a beast with shiny, sharp teeth flashed across my mind as if that was the reflection I was looking at in the mirror.

  I grew excited as my pulse quickened, breathing heavier by the moment like I was running away from someone or something. When the frightening image faded and my vision cleared, although my eyes were still red and burning, it became apparent that my neck was severely cocked to the left side.

  I reached up instinctively with both hands and violently snapped my neck back into place. The dramatic body realignment combined with my still fragile state as a newbie caused me to pass out and collapse in a heap on the floor.

  Days came and went and I hadn’t moved from the same position – pancaked flat on my back. This time around, my inactivity was accompanied by breath, and breath was guided by a virtual training manual playing as the main feature in my mind.

  Scenes of unsuspecting men and women shockingly looking into the eye of a creature while it devoured them from the neck were interwoven with a life portrayed as one that was constantly in motion, constantly on the run.

  While the pursuer was never presented in a distinct manner, the ally was: the mammalian being was part man, part evolutionary wonder.

  My subconscious was treated to a lengthy reel of the evolutionary tract of cetaceans – from their early days as hoofed creatures with triangular teeth like wolves, to cat-like creatures, to early variations of the hippopotamus, to bottlenose dolphins and Orca, the killer whale, which is the largest species of dolphin. The hybrid mammal also had the ability to convert to a smaller aquatic mammal, capable of diving into water and hiding beneath the surface to avoid birds of prey.

  The images left me feeling safe and protected until I spent the last 24 hours viewing footage of his natural enemy, the hunter. Hunters had also evolved from Homo sapien warriors to beings capable of combating adversaries both on land and in the sky. The loop that kept playing over and over again was that of a man running through a forest clearing and changing into an angry pit bull, and then a powerful ram as it picked up speed, and then a huge grizzly bear with knife-like claws capable of running at speeds up to 30 miles per hour, and then the massive wing span of a hawk capable of picking up small animals with its hook-like talons.

  After each iteration, the ending image was one of the beach and more specifically, the ocean, and the word SAFETY flashing on the screen. The hunters were physiologically designed to combat the vampires, with their full set of evolutionary incantations, but they had not fully evolved. But years of being thrown through the rinse cycle were finally paying off, proving that through strife comes change.

  AWAKE

  I was always with my son and my wife, even if I wasn’t physically present in with them. You could say that as a vampire I was their blood shadow, because blood shadows are often referred to as ghosts of beings that give no physical indication of their presence but, corporeally, they are very much around.

  The next one hundred years-or-so were pure torture, except for the random acts of bloodletting and violence that made me one of the most feared disruptive forces of my generation.

  My life of vampirism started fairly innocently, as bloodthirsty creatures go. I was on my back and playing the part of the three-day download for days. Before the change, I had a daily ritual of taking a walk down the street every afternoon to fetch a newspaper from a local tobacco purveyor, and then I would stop next door at Mrs. Wilcox’s house for a baked good, or two, before heading home. Unless, of course, I was out of town traveling with my family.

  Mrs. Wilcox was 60 years old and had battling the early stages of Alzheimer ’s disease. To say that she forgot her own name some days would be an exaggeration, but there were definitely gaps in her life that went permanently missing from the memory bank. It had been two weeks since Thomas, as she called me, had stopped by and the scones were starting to pile up because Mrs. Wilcox had not stopped baking.

  It had been years since she had been in my residence, but one lonely afternoon she decided to see what was going on with her only friend. The truth was that even if she made it back on the street that night, it would have been a long shot if she had found her way home.

  A faint knock on the door got things started, but barely made a dent in my deep slumber on the bathroom floor. Repeated attempts from Edna Wilcox’s brittle and slightly discolored hands also went on deaf ears, so she looked for something more substantial to pound on the door. She managed to locate a five-inch-round rock but tried the civilized approach one more time before resorted to force.

  “Thomas? Thomas, are you in there? This is Edna Wilcox!” she yelled straining her lungs, which caused her to cough painfully for about 10 seconds. She thought about tapping the rock against the door with both hands, but it flew out of her grasp about mid-way to the door causing a loud “Thud!”

  The sound served as a spark that lit the fuse of a keg of dynamite. Edna Wilcox stood in front of the door admiring a dent that was her handiwork, as my eyes opened and burned a bright orange. I rose to my feet effortlessly, on a 90-degree angle without the use of my hands. I floated to the door without the use of his legs and said, “Who is it?” in my best big-bad wolf posing as granny voice.

  Edna nearly gave up and had turned her back until she heard a familiar voice. The door swung open as my mind was now analyzing her body temperature and optimal points of entry.

  She turned around and said, “Oh Thomas, you are home. I was starting to worry…” and then proceeded to prattle on as she basically described events that were now ancient history to a reborn son of the blood. My ears blocked out the infernal noise and my eyes focused like a lion waiting in the tall grass for an opportune time to pounce on my prey. While I was transfixed on her neck, my consciousness was scanning the street for mortal and animal traffic patterns.

  A l
ocal shopkeeper walked by and looked up at Edna talking to me and then looked down to see where he was walking, before picking up his head and seeing nothing but a closed door. It must have been only a few seconds between viewings of my doorway, and this piqued Burt Larson’s interest enough to stop by the next day. But my good neighbor only managed to be lunch for a vampire that was quite awake and had an insatiable appetite for beleaguered San Franciscans.

  CANDY

  I went unchecked for the initial segment of my vampirical existence, with these 18 years of on the house wild exploration taking me from one corner of North America to the other. I spent time in the state of Washington, Oregon, Vancouver, British Columbia, back through Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, for only a brief time, because people appeared to be experienced with his kind, making his job more difficult. Mexico was also a frequent stop-off because the tequila running through these people’s veins was purely intoxicating! It always gave me a bigger high when blood was mixed with other libations, versus just drinking alcohol from a bottle or a glass.

  Subsequent years were spent in the Midwest—perhaps my favorite place to dine because the people were so hospitable and never seemed to fail to invite me in. Apparently, it was against their DNA to be unwelcoming. I also experienced a similar dynamic with Canadians, who never seemed to grow tired of giving me their blood.

  These years felt like taking candy from a baby and left me with such a feeling of invincibility and superiority that I didn’t believe there was a creature on the planet that was anywhere close to me. There was the occasion that that I would run into a fellow vampire or two while on the road. The first time it happened was in Minnesota, right after the winter thaw. I usually tried to avoid extreme cold, because people usually had too much on and it was a hassle to open them up. Since I was already fairly cold inside, it helped to track my movements with the various warmer seasons. This served to help stabilize my body temperature.

  It was 45 degrees one spring in Egan, Minnesota and the people were acting like it was a beach day! No jackets, sweatshirts, hats, or scarfs to be seen in this northern igloo. My best spots for penetration was always a pub or bar, and this night proved to be no exception. I made contact with a couple of girls, because it was always more of a challenge to coordinate targets in pairs, and I had guided them out the back door of the salon for some quite reflection in a darkened alley.

  The three of us looked fairly normal just like a trio of drunken locals enjoying each other’s company. I must have gotten so good at blending into the crowd that I wasn’t giving off the “I’m here for your blood” vibe. I could sense that two gentlemen had been watching us for at least 25 minutes and I was hoping that they weren’t the jealous boyfriend types, although I figured it would be quite a thirst-quencher. I tended to prey on unsuspecting women for some reason… they were easier to coerce and I hate to admit it, but I’m just not that into guys!

  Also, I really missed Maggie and was not willing, at least at first, to give myself in that way to another woman. I rationalized it that the blood thing was purely a survival mechanism, not a sexual act in any way, although the flow of blood often left me aroused. I could smell the sweet blood aroma of Scandinavian ladies even before I approached them for extraction. But, just as I was about to make a series of moves that would lead to their near-death, these two dudes appeared and crashed my party in the alley.

  Let me backtrack for a moment. Even though I was out of control and hopping for state to state in search of able blood donors, I thought it foolish to either drain my target fully of blood or turn them into the type of creature that would spend all of their days in search of blood. I was still hurting from the loss of my family but that didn’t mean that I had to take my angst out on others and ruin their lives. Besides, I had a few customers that I tapped multiple times during those first 18 years. And since I had a special reason to become a vampire, the reuniting with my family, I didn’t think it would be fair to cast another person into a life that they didn’t desire. Believe me, the life wasn’t for everyone… it was tremendously isolating and shallow if not exhilarating at times, especially in the early days when the hunt was so new.

  There I was in all of my glory, about to walk two young women to the border of life and death, when these two guys followed us outside. I could hear their thoughts amid my single-minded blood focus, and it confused me at first. I initially thought it had gone too long without refueling and was starting to hallucinate. I heard the one guy say to the other, “Let’s wait until he opens them up and then we’ll make our move.”

  As I moved closer to the two women, I could sense these two closing in on us so I played it cool for as long as I could. “Let’s go!” the other guy said as I whispered to the women, “Why don’t you take a little nap. I’ll get back to you in just a minute.” And they fell into a deep sleep as I gently set them on the ground.

  “You guys don’t want to do this,” I instructed who I thought were two mortals.

  “Do what?” one of the guys replied.

  I smirked, “Get your blood drained. I’m pretty thirsty and starting to get a little light-headed, so if you could just move along I could get back to what I was just doing. Unless you two want to be dessert?”

  One guy looked at the other and asked, “I didn’t think he was a vampire, did you?”

  The other guy replied, “No, I had no idea!” Then he turned to me and said, “We’re sorry! We’re sort of new at this—we were just turned last week—and didn’t mean to step on your toes.”

  “My name is Hartwell,” I said as I extended my right arm and open palm in greeting.

  “The name is Byron,” one said and the other offered, “Ryan.”

  I later ran into Byron and his new running partner Brian and thought the exchange of personnel was a good trade.

  I was in a sporting mood and said as I picked up one of the girls, “I’ll give you guys one if you promise to not kill or turn her.”

  They looked at each other in confusion as Byron, the more curious of the two, asked, “We don’t know anything else other than killing and turning.”

  I handed him one of the girls and then picked up the other so I could teach a blood-based tutorial. I bit into the girl’s neck and then drank a little before talking again. “The key is to take just enough to satisfy the urge without eliminating the source. If we continue to use up all of the resources, there might not be enough for the next time we are in need.”

  This was obviously the earlier days of my green ways in recycling. I drained half of my girl before giving it to Ryan, while Byron also followed my instructions.

  “So, if we come back here in six months we can do this again?” Byron asked.

  “Exactly!” I replied.

  PAYBACK

  A little background: every vampire has a cosmically assigned hunter - who is a natural enemy - and a protector, who is a constant ally. It takes 18 years from birth for both individuals to attain full maturity and understanding, with most of the growth occurring in the subconscious until then.

  With that being said, I was in Pennsylvania one night when I decided to go to a bar for a late-night drink. It was just after midnight and many of the patrons had exceeded the legal blood-alcohol limit in the days when it was legal to drink and mount a horse. I had taken a few unsuspecting drunks for a leisurely stroll in the alley for a little puncture and drink, and was focusing on a third pigeon when I was surprisingly impeded by an unfamiliar face.

  “You don’t want to do that,” the man-child said with confidence. I stepped back to get a good look at this baby-faced kid that dared to challenge me, because I had been previously undefeated when it came to confrontations.

  “You should go home, junior, and help your mommy knit a quilt,” I replied with all of the cockiness of a predator in the prime of my death.

  The man was focused on the “impending danger, not my pointed word
s, as he yelled, “Duck!”

  Normally, I listened to no man but my intense hearing was telling me that the directive was accurate.

  Thaddeus Brewster stood across the room with a silver-tipped arrow cocked in his bow, and released the vampire-killer toward my core.

  Garrison Phillips stood calmly erect and reached out his thick leather-gloved right hand and caught the arrow an inch away from my slowly-pumping, cold, heart.

  “We have to go,” Gary said as he clutched my arm and exited the bar with Thaddeus in hot pursuit.

  “Flying would be good!” Gary yelled and jumped on me as I unfurled my wings and took flight. Thaddeus immediately took flight in the air in his human form and transformed into an oversized hawk.

  I looked back at Gary and asked, “When did I get these?”

  “Do mean to tell me that all this time you didn’t know you had wings?” Gary replied in disbelief.

  Thaddeus the hawk came speeding by and shredded Gary’s back with one of his huge talons.

  “Aahhhhhhhhhh!” he screamed and then composed himself and said, “Do you mind going a little faster, big guy?”

  We continued the back and forth battle through Pennsylvania until reaching the border of New Jersey. My limited flying experience was no match for Thaddeus’ proficient use of wind currents and advanced obstacle-avoidance methods. A few more vicious swipes of the talon and we were grounded. The 400-yard, full-speed fall would have crushed any mortal, but Gary quickly helped me up and I naively said, “Maybe we lost him.”

  It was 4:30 a.m. and the nearly full moon was still shining brightly. I was facing Gary and a huge shadow consumed both of our forms.

  “Not in this lifetime,” Gary said as I turned and looked straight in the belly of a massive grizzly bear.

  “Run!” I yelled trying to utilize a sophisticated tactic I utilized often as a mortal. But Gary, playing the part of the ultimate protector, stayed behind to try to slow the angry creature down. He changed into a wolf and literally howled at the moon before jumping at Thaddeus’ furry neck, jaw clenched on its target. The wounded bear roared in anger and pain and attempted in vain to shake the determined Gary off of him. Thaddeus regained his thoughts long enough to swipe his lengthy upper claws and puncture the body of the wolf like a pincushion. Gary yelped in pain and then Thaddeus effortlessly tossed his limp body deep into the forest brush.

  I was so confused by the turn of events that I ran as fast as I could instead of gliding, teleporting, or flying away. Although I had received three days of comprehensive information when making the transformation from mortal to vampire, it had been 18 years and I was desperately in need of a refresher course.

  Thaddeus the bear roared and the ground shook as he started running in my direction. I must have had a good 30-second head start on Thaddeus but the speedy bear quickly made up the stagger, shocking me, and I was scared for the first time in my life as a vampire.

  I muttered, “What in god’s name…” as I turned around to see the bear lumbering toward me with the speed and wildness of a runaway locomotive.

  Thaddeus made up the stagger, grabbed me from behind and wasted no time ending the first of our many battles. He picked me over his head and then impaled me through a long, sharp branch of an adjacent tree. My back was to the tree, I had a four-inch-wide tree trunk running through my back and most importantly, my heart, as I dangled five feet off the ground.

  But before I died, Thaddeus turned back into his human form and walked up to me and said, “That’s one,” as he waved the index finger of his right hand.

  It took an hour for life to reset, with Gary coming to first as a wolf and then morphing back to his human form. He slowly rose to his feet and then followed the tracks and scents that led him to his greatest nightmare: his vampire impaled on the massive tree branch.

  He climbed up a few branches and pushed me from the back, freeing me like a piece of meat from a skewer. I landed solidly on the ground and Gary said to himself, “We have to work on that landing.”

  He walked quickly over to my body and helped me up, although I had still not come back to life. Gary swung his fist and pounded my chest a few times until I gasped as if he was being held under water and was close to running out of oxygen. I then doubled over and coughed violently as I sought to regain his equilibrium.

  Gary patted me on the back and I bristled, “I’m okay! Just give me a “minute! It’s been a while since I’ve died. Well, at least, technically.”

  I slowly straightened my body and scanned Gary from toe to head on the way up.

  He looked confused, “Who are you, and why are you naked?” I asked.

  Gary started to explain, “Because…"

  “Hold that thought big guy,” I interjected as I took off my long trench coat and handed it to Gary.

  “For god’s sake, man! Cover yourself up! Sorry, but I don’t make it a habit of talking to naked men in the middle of the woods.”

  Gary couldn’t answer right away, and then replied with a blush on his cheeks, “This is my first.”

  “Oh great! A forest virgin! Why do I always get stuck with the forest virgins?” I exclaimed as we started walking together.

  “We have to get to the ocean,” Gary stated. “And my name is

   

   

  Garrison, but my friends call me Gary.”

  My memory of the early training was sparse, but I did remember the picture of the beach and the word SAFETY.

  “Let’s get airborne to safety then,” I replied.

  Gary moved behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Just make sure you keep your boys behind the material. I’m going to have to get a new coat,” I stated.

  Gary shrugged off the seemingly endless stream of insults and said, “I hear Maine is nice this time of year.”

  My resolve and frustration softened as my wings unfurled, and then we took to the air. “Maine it is,” I said, “But I’m going to need a refresher course."

  LEARN

  It took Gary and me a few long years to figure out how to stop being killed by Thad. It would have appeared by the numbers being on our side that we had a distinct advantage, but the opposite was true. While Gary and Thad were fairly sharp after just finishing their prep/downloads, my ineptitude and blatant lack of care proved to be an insurmountable disadvantage, at least at first.

  “You do realize that you’re only allowed a certain allotment of these,” Gary said to me as he waited for me to become reenergized and reborn from the sun’s healing rays one morning after another loss only hours before. This was one of the few occasions when he didn’t perish along with me—it seemed that Thaddeus was gaining strength with each battle and now was starting to toy with us.

  “You have to start taking this seriously!” he yelled in a rare display of emotion and, at least I thought, disrespect.

  These were the early days when he hadn’t realized that I could hear what he was saying when I was between worlds. He must have felt an air of superiority being that I was a little less than all that I could be after the adjustment in my lifestyle. Eighteen years is a long time to do anything, let alone be the big beast without rival. I was definitely drinking a cocktail of shock and denial in the first six months, but my allotment of 100 deaths until mortality was about a quarter of the way used and I had to wake up and get back on track.

  The sun rose in the east and we were right there on the coast to absorb its first rays. There was a certain sense of peace that went along with not being with the living or dead. It felt like taking the most deep and restful slumber, only to be wrestled out of it and awakened to pain akin to being hit by a locomotive… a speeding iron horse!

  This was about the time that I started to practice meditation without even knowing it. Even thought I could hear Gary, my mind was at ease and all thoughts had been emptied. And then sun opened the sky for the train to steam through a stop signal and run r
ight over me on the tracks. My eyes opened and I gasped like I hadn’t taken a breath in hours, which was actually the case.

  The early deaths were so much more painful and traumatic than the later instances. While I thought I was getting stronger and more invincible when I was alone and drinking everyone, the reverse was actually the case. I wasn’t really using all of my skills to full advantage and had suffered a sort of vampire atrophy if you will. I had virtually no muscle memory and my senses had to be reinvigorated and retrained.

  The pain of rebirth and also realizing that Thad had defeated us again obliterated all of that relaxation and nirvana. While I was simply too scared to defend myself in the beginning it was starting to sink in that I had to put my big boy pants on and start being the being at the top of the food chain again.

  I was instantly enraged as I replayed Gary’s pointed words in my head. My body leaned to the upright position as he shoved Gary, sending him hurtling through the air from the shore and into the surf, where he splashed down and then changed into a bottlenose dolphin and playfully flipped into the air and then back under the water.

  Perhaps I was a bit too sensitive, but I followed him into the water and then chased him up and down the East Coast for the better part of the day until I caught him in the Carolinas. Man he was fast! He toyed with me until I realized that anger was not the way. Losing my family was a shock that I hadn’t dealt with in almost a few decades, preferring to throw myself into the pursuit of blood and all of its subtle and not-to-subtle intricacies.

  Needless to say, I was angry, frustrated and thoroughly confused. One hundred years didn’t seem like such a long time especially when the alternative was never seeing them again. At first, I thought that my time would have gone quicker if I remained free and easy, but then I realized in a flash that is was a blessing that Gary was by my side and that was pursuing me.

  I grabbed Gary by the tail and then flew him to shore. Well, actually I tossed him to shore where he transformed into a hippo before he thudded on the beach. Once he safely used the extra blubber to cushion the fall, Gary changed back into his human form.

  The intense look on my face indicated that he was in a great deal more danger than what was actually the case. I sped to the beach and then landed smoothly on the beach as my vast wings collapsed and then disappeared into the back of my body. I reached my hand out and Gary grabbed it even though he wasn’t sure what would happen next. I easily lifted him to his feet and then we started walking on the beach.

  “I guess I should be thanking you for…” I started but wasn’t sure how to finish at the risk of sounding soft.

  And then I remembered how he had talked to me when I was still down and yelled, “But if you ever talk to me that way again I’ll break you in half before you can utter another word!”

  Garrison was feeling good for a second, like he had done something right, but then realized that I wasn’t kidding.

  “Seriously? You heard that?!”

  I smirked, “I also heard all of those times that Thaddeus hovered over my body and taunted me with the count of how many times he had killed me!”

  Gary thought, “I was wondering when you would finally get angry and grow a spine!”

  I stopped walking and turned to him, “My good man, I can also hear what you’re thinking.”

  “You can?” he questioned. “That wasn’t in the training manual!”

  I laughed, “I’m starting to discover that all of this stuff we’re experiencing is things we have to learn on the fly. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of losing!”

  “Definitely, boss!” Gary replied.

  “Then we have to start working together instead of you just trying to stop Thad from killing me.”

  “So we use our numbers to our advantage instead of creating a series of one-on-one match-ups,” Gary stated.

  “Exactly!” I exclaimed. “We were put together for a reason. He’s not supposed to kill me that easy, or the life of a typical vampire would be less than 19 years.”

  We looked over at each other and confusion set in.

  “What is the average age of a vampire?” he asked.

  “Let’s hope it’s more than 100 years,” I replied and then we kept walking on the beach.

  THADDEUS

  We trained on that beach for the better part of a week before Thaddeus found us. He had been the big beast since coming on line as a hunter and was now steeped in overconfidence. It was like one of those tired games of hide-and-seek where the person is conducting a half-hearted search.

  Thaddeus wasn’t stupid. He realized that the quicker he attained the hunter’s goal of 100 kills, the more expediently he would have to return to his ho-hum life as a mortal. In only a few months as a hunter he had hopped from state to state and seen things he had never known existing or had only heard musings about. He was born Thaddeus Montague Brewster more than 18 year earlier to a mother who was a school teacher and a father who was a shoemaker. In fact, his mother was his teacher from the time he crawled into his first classroom until he finished up his education only a few months before changing.

  While it appeared that most of the hunters and protectors came on line in a random fashion, the opposite was actually the truth. They usually came from a long lineage, which served to fortify the line and strengthen the bond between the generations.

  Thad had never been out of his small town of Ogunquit, Maine, or so he thought. In actuality, the family had moved a handful of times before he was four and then settled into the lobster haven. He worked in his father’s shop full time now that school was over and expected to be making and fixing shoes until the day he died.

  Thad’s father, Virgil Brewster, was a man of few words, but when he did talk it was a really good time to listen.

  He was hammering in the sole of a shoe and had a few nails in his mouth, “There is something we need to discuss.”

  Thad was used to his father’s grumbling with various pieces of metal, lace and leather in his mouth, so he heard his father loud and clear. Thad’s initial reaction was that his father was going to school him on something he was doing wrong, but he was surprised by what he heard next.

  He hammered the last two nails from his mouth into the sole of the shoe and then put his hammer down for one of the rare times in his life. This wasn’t a shop where employees got an hour for lunch and were afforded a few breaks during the day. Work was steady and persistent and endured from sunrise to sunset, because the family had little money to subsidize natural light.

  Thad kept hammering because he wasn’t going to be the one to call a halt to the workday.

  “Put your hammer down, Thaddeus,” Virgil said in perhaps his most human and vulnerable tone to date. “We have to discuss some family business.”

  Thad was in mid strike, so he recoiled his mighty right arm and then set the crude hammer down on his work table.

  “You’re going to turn 18 during the next moon and…”

  Thad grew embarrassed and interjected, “I know all about the birds and the bees, dad!”

  Virgil rolled his eyes and stared down his son with a “If you don’t let me talk, the next thing you hear will be dull thud of my hammer upside your soft head!”

  Embarrassment aside, Thad quickly entered listen-only mode.

  “You will be off leaving town and eventually start your own family,” Virgil said, as his momentary bout of anger turned to genuine care for his son and sadness that his apprentice would be gone within days.

  Thad was not prepared for the words, which he had neither the capacity nor the nerve to consider. While he had wondered many times what the world had to offer, he never really considered leaving his parents and this life.

  Virgil could see that his son was confused, so he decided to show him a thing or two after he took a few steps back from the open door and the watchful eyes of a tight community.

 
“When I do something, I want you to think really hard and do the same thing,” Virgil stated.

  He figured he would start small and turn into a pit bull terrier, which startled Thaddeus at first until he felt his form adjusted to the stimuli. Virgil then transformed into a powerful ram, followed by a massive grizzly bear with sharp claws and then a large hawk capable of picking up swopping up both animals and foes alike with its hand-like talons. Thaddeus kept up the pace and changed into everything that he saw and felt, flying behind his father as he exited the small barn.

  The two men soared for the better part of the next half-hour in what would easily be considered their best moment as father and son. They returned to the workshop and then transformed back into their human form. Thaddeus was so excited that he forgot about what his father had said before their short journey. And then it hit him like a ton of bricks and his eyes welled up with tears.

  “I don’t want to go!” Thad cried as he had finally hit an apex with his father and would do anything to stay home.

  Virgil put his arm around his son and said, “I didn’t want to go either, Thad, but look what life has brought me.”

  They sat down on stools facing each other and Virgil continued, “I was able to meet your mother and watch you grow from a young man into a man ready for the hunt!”

  Thad obviously had a few questions, “We are hunters?”

  Virgil nodded and said, “Yes.”

  And then Thad realized that if he were a hunter, then he would have to be hunting something or someone.

  “What do we hunt?”

  Virgil could have tried to explain what vampires were to Thaddeus, but he thought it would be more effective to just show him. The obvious choice would be to bring him out later that night and be properly introduced to his fanged friend. But, that event would be too risky because Thad was still a mortal and could be killed without recourse before his 18th birthday. So he just touched the temple of his head to his son’s and started the projector in his head for a short film.

  The old school film of a vampire transforming into its various forms or terror certainly had its impact on Thad, who had a fascination for monsters but had no idea that they really existed.

  The film ended and Virgil stayed close to reassure his spooked son.

  “Everything I’ve done since you’ve been born has been training for this day.” He held his hands and turned them over, palms up. “Your hands are weathered and strong, perfect to wield a sword to separate the creature’s head from his body.”

  He reached behind him and picked up a sword and then flipped another one to his son, who caught the weapon and then knew what to do with it instinctively. Virgil approached Thad and swung his sword at him as Thad deflected the blow and then went on the attack. They went back and forth for a few minutes until Virgil called a stop to the byplay so no suspicion would be aroused.

  Thad didn’t realize what he had done until the action stopped and then said, “How?”

  “Because you are my son and you have a higher purpose in this world other than clothing people’s feet.”

  Thad realized his true destiny in that moment and replied, “I will make you proud, father.”

  Virgil replied, “You already have, Thaddeus.”

  GARRISON

  On the surface, Gary was Thad’s polar opposite in every way. His family structure was shattered at the tender age of two when his dad was no longer present. He had heard stories of valiant death fighting in some war that he later discovered existed, but was fought on a foreign soil the likes of which his father never occupied.

  Since his father was not present, Thad and his mother June settled in rural Virginia and lived and worked the same farm his entire life. His life was grounded in hard work from sunup to sunset and he had no time or inclination for trivial pursuits. June marveled at how her son was always on task from the time he could walk.

  “You always had a real sense of purpose that most boys your age didn’t have.”

  Gary’s laser-like focus was a function of his steadfast insistence to resist mental contact with anything of real emotional significance. He sensed that something big was hovering over his being, but his lack of maturity and emotional insecurity prohibited him from asking questions and digging deeper.

  “What would you like for your 18th birthday?” his mother asked him only days before he was scheduled to officially enter manhood.

  His first thought was this response, “I want you to tell me what really happened to my father, because I’m going to scream if you recite that tired and sad story that you have been telling me for years!” But, once he calmed his thoughts he said, “I have everything I need right here.”

  June Phillips knew of the possibility that Garrison’s 18th birthday could turn into much more than just a sedated landmark event. She knew what her husband was and also what he wasn’t. George Phillips was an undyingly loyal person and it crushed him to have to leave his family. And since he was so loyal, George was not allowed to be a family man because his wife did not want to move from place to place in order for her husband to complete a ridiculous rite of passage that she did not believe in.

  Gary was in the field at the end of the day before his birthday when a man that he felt he knew, but was not aware he had met previously approached him.

  “Excuse me,” the gentleman said. “I wonder if I could have a moment of your time?”

  Gary looked him over and then returned to tending to his crops. “We don’t talk to solicitors.”

  George knew that if he talked to his wife first, she would do everything in her power to keep him from Garrison. “Just a moment of your time,” George repeated, knowing his bull-headed son wouldn’t appreciate his persistence.

  Gary turned around and grabbed his wood-handled hoe in his strong right hand. “Now, I asked you nice the first time, so this time isn’t going to be so nice.” While he wasn’t prone to violence, there were a handful of times when Garrison had to defend his mom and their land over the years and this left little doubt that trespassers would be properly thrashed. He walked toward George, who was so proud of his son that he smiled broadly. Gary took this as a measure of either overconfidence or some form of insanity, but that did little to deter his advance.

  He took a mighty swing at what he perceived to be a man, but as he looked back all he saw was a cat on the ground below. Gary then tried to wipe the crust from his eyes, believing that he might be suffering from some sort of heat stroke. But when he refocused a snarling wolf was in front of him, causing a moment of pause. George turned back into his mortal form and said, “Why don’t you play along, son?”

  George morphed into a series of creatures that Garrison had never seen in person: a hippopotamus, bottlenose dolphins and an Orca, the killer whale, which was actually the largest species of dolphin. The whale was so big that Gary surmised that it would be easy to strike it, although he wasn’t sure what kind of damage he could do to such an enormous creature with layers of protection. George took the opportunity to transform into his last iteration, a smaller aquatic mammal, and then dove into a small pool of water and hid beneath the earth’s surface.

  George reappeared out of another small pool of water a few yards away, further startling his already-mentally decomposed son.

  “This must be some sort of dark magic!” Gary yelled. “I must ask you politely to leave these parts!”

  “You’ve always known that I existed,” George said as he walked toward his son and then cycled through his protector changes, spurring his son to do the same.

  “What is happening?!” Garrison exclaimed as he had lost control of his body contour.

  “You are taking your rightful place in the universe!” George replied amid a bit of a windstorm surrounding them.

  George turned back into a man and so did Gary, who looked over the person in front of him and felt real emotion for the first time since he cried
for a bottle as a baby.

  “Dad, is it really you?”

  “You know it’s me, Garrison,” George replied and then hugged his son, who was hesitant at first and then gripped his father tight. “I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long, but that is the way your mother wanted it.”

  They broke the hug a few moments later and Gary asked, “What are you?” And then he quickly corrected when his father looked at him as if he had to modify the question to better align with reality, “What are we?”

  “We are protectors,” George replied.

  “Of what?” Garrison asked and then got more specific, “Who do we protect?”

  George stuck out his anvil of a right arm and touched it to Gary’s forehead, treating him to a similar highlight reel that both Hartwell and Thaddeus had also seen.

  “What is that?” Gary asked.

  “It’s a vampire,” George replied. “Your only job now is to protect your vampire.”

  Gary thought, “Protect him from what?” and his father heard him loud and clear, as they were now on the same frequency. “You have to protect him from being killed by the hunter. If the vampire dies 100 times then you will lose everything and return to being a mortal that will expire in time.”

  “Do you mean that I can’t die if I am a protector?” Gary asked out loud.

  George laughed, “Oh you’ll die, but then you’ll wake up as good as new the next morning!”

  Gary smirked, “I think I’m going to like this.”

  “I always knew you would,” George replied.

  DEPRESS

  I had been killed more than 40 times by the end of the 1920s, mostly because Thaddeus had slowed down from initial fast pace. The ride of being a supreme being was not supposed to be a short journey of just a few decades, it was to be savored and enjoyed over centuries.

  “You guys have definitely made it tougher on me,” Thaddeus said one day before we prepared to battle.

  “Did you hear that the stock market crashed yesterday?” Garrison said while trying to avoid the subject of his previous ineptitude.

  I had pretty much taken what he wanted in my years as a vampire to this point, but was instantly intrigued by the financial markets. I had been very poor to the point of being homeless in his life and had no plans to go back to such a vagabond lifestyle. The reverse was also true, I had also been quite wealthy as a mortal and definitely preferred a more privileged lifestyle.

  “We should probably go to New York and see what’s happening,” I stated.

  While Garrison was used to listening to me, Thaddeus had always been the big beast in our relationship and usually walked to the beat of his own song. While he lived alone and he had taken a number of days to visit his parents and travel the country. While there should have been pressure on him to always be thinking of Gary, and me Thaddeus used most of his time and energy to become one of the greatest bank robbers of all time.

  Thad hesitated at first to respond to my request because he had plans to rob a local bank after the nightly festivities were completed. That was, if he survived the nightly festivities. While I had a cap on my deaths at 100, both Thaddeus and Garrison could perish as many times as physically possible. The nightly fights ended when either Thaddeus or I were eliminated, but on this night it was highly questionable if anybody was going to die. The battles had slowed to a crawl and were often replaced with all-night bar-hopping and carousing.

  I looked at Thad and then added, “You can’t rob a bank if there is no money in the vault.”

  Thad looked at me and smirked, “You got a point there, Thomas.”

  So we went to the heart of the big city because it would surely be an initial sign of what was to come.

  I flew into Manhattan with Garrison in tow, as Thaddeus the hawk flew next to us. We hit the ground and I had an immediate flashback of the chaos that ensued in San Francisco around the plague that took my family away from me at the peak of our existence.

  Thad and Gary kept walking and then they noticed that I was frozen in the middle of a cobblestone street with a horse and carriage bearing down on me—not that it would have done me any real harm anyway.

  “What’s wrong with him?!” Thad asked, having never seen me like this before.

  “Oh, boy!” Gary exclaimed and then rushed over to move Hartwell away from pending danger.

  Thad joined Gary as they helped me sit on a nearby stoop, away from oncoming traffic.

  “We have to let him ride this out,” Gary said to Thad. “He’s thinking about his family again.”

  Thad had been so intent on strategy and maneuvering for years that he hadn’t bothered to ask how we all got there in the first place. Gary and I spent so much time together that we were able to fully discuss our lives before meeting each other.

  “How come we have never had this discussion before?” Thad asked Gary as they walked through the frenzied streets of lower Manhattan as I glided next to them. No one even noticed that my feet weren’t hitting the ground.

  “Because I didn’t want to talk about it,” I said as I snapped out of it. We walked to the Battery, or Battery Park as it is now known, and stood near the water facing the Statue of Liberty.

  “I’m sorry I brought you both into this,” I said to Thad and Gary, “this was only meant to be a means to see my family again.” To say that I dropped into a great depression along with the rest of my surroundings would have been an understatement. It was potentially the most pathetic I had been since my final days in San Francisco.

  I could sense that Thaddeus was still confused and needed to be updated on what started this whole thing, so I stretched my left arm and rested my hand on his forehead. I then looked over at Garrison who knew the story, but he still wanted to view the moving pictures, so I reached over with my right arm and rested my right hand so he could partake as well.

  I didn’t think that I wanted to see what they saw at first, but then found myself closing my eyes and experiencing it first-hand like it was happening to me all over again. My theory was that it would be therapeutic and produce some closure, but all it did was make me miss my people even more!

  I thought back to the time when I had the gun in my hand and was about to take my own life while Thad and Gary finished up their little movie. Maybe it would have been better if I had thought about my decision in the years leading up to this day, but it wasn't like I had so many options at the time! My choices were:

  (A)Blow my brains out

  (B) Take a chance and potentially see my family again

  (C) Continue to wander the streets aimlessly and then eventually be devoured by a vampire

  (D) Wait until I eventually got the plague and died

  B was the only option where I actually had a chance to continue to exist. Lowery never mentioned the term "vampire" when presenting me with the idea, so all I really heard was "see you family again." Honestly, I wasn't even sure if he was telling me the truth. He could have just taken all of my blood and left me dead in my house for all anyone knew, and I would have been in the same place I would have been if I pulled the trigger myself.

  It was all about them! It always had been and always would be! Life wasn't really worth living, either as a vampire or a mortal, without my wife and son. Being alone would have been pure torture, so I guess I had Gary and even Thad to thank for keeping me busy.

  The playback finished with Lowery turning me into a vampire and Thad exclaimed, "I didn't know!"

  I must have been looking at both of them with a loving gaze, or something positive they hadn't seen before because he added, "What? Is there something on my face?"

  "Have I ever told you guys how much I appreciate you?" I said with a heavy dose of vulnerability.

  Thad looked at Gary and mouthed, "Is he okay?"

  Gary mouthed back with his palms up, "I don't know? Never seen him this way."

  And thus, I fell into a decade-long depressio
n along with the rest of the country. I wouldn't feed and somehow Gary and Thad kept me alive through making me drink the blood of many living things. Thad had no thoughts of killing me during this time and he probably would have been passive even if I were at full strength. He was a family man through-and-through and he appreciated my sense of loyalty, even if I had misguidedly become a vampire.

  WAR

  A funny thing happened in the midst of my depression: the country became preoccupied with not one, but two world wars. Gary and Thad took me on a vacation to Europe just before the Second World War to try and cheer him up. I must admit that I always liked to sample the European nectar, but I even noticed despite my fragile state that something was different this time around.

  "Is it me, or is something weird going on here?"

  Gary was surprised at first that I initiated a conversation, "Oh, did he just talk?" he asked Thaddeus.

  "Yeah, he talked. Did you feel that weird vibe?" he asked Garrison.

  Gary had been so focused on me and cracking my protective shell that he became shielded to the powerful force that was engulfing both the U.S. and all of Europe. We happened to be in middle of Paris, France on June 2, 1944.

  Garrison closed his eyes and then pointed due northeast.

  "Wow! I don't think I've ever felt this much rage since we first met you," he replied to Thad. "It's coming from over there."

  I then stepped up in front of the other two, my extended bought of depression now over, and said, "Wölfe unter."

  Thaddeus wasn't fluent in German but he sort of understood what I was getting at. He still looked at Gary for clarification.

  "There is a wolf amongst us," Gary stated, as he and I had already zeroed in on the target.

  While Thaddeus technically had no skin in the game, being that his sole purposed in life was to kill me and eradicate my kind from the planet, the presence of a being far worse than his sworn enemy was quite unsettling.

  "We have to go there. We have to go to Germany," Thad said.

  Garrison was about to respond because it had been some time since I had stepped up and acted like the lead dog. But, then he felt a mountain of energy rising and smiled, knowing that things were about to get back to normal.

  "We need to get to the beach," I firmly stated as Thaddeus backed up both mentally and physically. While water was a safe place for both Garrison and me, it was a point of extinction for land mammal Thaddeus.

  I turned back toward Thad and walked toward him, putting my large hand on his shoulder, "Don't worry brother, we got your back," and we made eye contact and I kept walking.

  Thad was shocked as he looked at Gary for confirmation.

  Gary put his hands up, palms to the sky, and replied, "What he said," and that was good enough for Gary. Besides, even if we double-crossed him and gave him a water nap, he would still wake up the next morning renewed, and as good as new.

  We took our time getting to the beach over the next few days, following a trail of energy that accurately reflected months of wartime planning. The Allied forces were about to hit the beach at Normandy with great ferocity, but it appeared their strategy was a tad misguided.

  "It's gonna’ be a blood bath," Gary said as he and we stood down the beach where the siege would begin.

  Thaddeus looked toward the stronghold that the Germans and their allies had established facing the entry point.

  "It's almost as if they know all about it before it happens. Sort of makes it unfair, don't you think, Thomas?"

  Thad and Gary turned their attention to me as I thought about what our next move would be, if any.

  "I've given this some thought, in all of the few hours that I've regained consciousness, and I've come to the following decision. In the past I've always thought only of myself, and you guys have let my actions usually dictate what happens between us. This wasn't the way it was in my previous life, where everything I did was for the benefit of my family. First, we have to stop whatever is going here because I don't want to be eating bratwurst, sauerkraut, and Bavarian beer for the rest of my vampirical existence. Second, and definitely more important in the world order, once we are done I want you two to leave here and go back to the states to start a family. There will be a day in the future when my family will return and I want you both to experience the joy of having families of your own."

  FAMILY I (Thad)

  We pared back the Nazis to a more workable foe for the Allied troops, who were able to capture the beach and then the war. Thaddeus and Garrison returned to the states, while I stayed behind the clean up what was left of the Third Reich. While some criminals escaped to South America and Scandinavia, others were not as fortunate. I bled them dry with no hope of continuing their torturous ways as vampires.

  It was difficult at first for Thaddeus to turn off his tracking and hunting instincts as it concerned me. He landed in New York and then moved as quickly away from the ocean as he could toward the middle of the country, where he sought refuge on a farm in Kansas. There was no people, water or life around for miles and Thad enjoyed this lifestyle until he realized that he was alone and his directive was to shack up with a mate and start a family.

  So he ventured out to the budding metropolis, the gateway to the west, St. Louis, Missouri. Thad had been to just about every corner of the world with Gary and me. Our special powers enabled us to get to and from places much quicker than even airplanes and trains could travel. He always found people in the Midwest and South to be impediments to his work, because they always seemed utterly clueless to everything going on around them. If it wasn't about barbecue or guns, Thad thought that it wasn't of interest to them. Vampires could be flying around and sinking their teeth into people, but none of this seemed to faze these war-happy constituents.

  "The war is over," Thaddeus mumbled to himself as a group of drunk veterans were hooten' and a hollerin' about "Killin' some Jap's!"

  He was surprised when an unfamiliar voice said, "Don't you love your country?"

  Thad turned around and calmly replied, "Are you questioning my patriotism, miss?" being that he was much older than her on a chronological basis, but still looked like he was in his mid-20s.

  "Did you fight in the war?" she asked.

  Thad thought back to our elimination of hundred of Germans and then seemed annoyed as he walked away, "You ask a lot of questions for someone I don't know."

  Mary O'Donnell was not going to go down that easy. She had spotted her diamond in the rough and was about to go mining to secure the asset.

  "You're not from around here, are you?" she asked as she trailed a surprisingly fast walking Thad, or so she thought. She had seen many people who could walk fast on the farm, but none with such a sense of purpose and drive as this man.

  Thad rolled his eyes and then realized why he was in St. Louis in the first place. There was an actual woman showing interest in him, albeit a probing, flirty kind of interest, and he had been playing pretty hard to get. He slowed his roll and turned around, expecting the woman to be at least five paces behind him. But, what he found was a woman that attached to him like Velcro, in the days before the loud, adherent strips were invented.

  Mary looked deep into Thad's eyes and they both knew what time it was. "You walk very fast," he said, as she had the intent of a lion tracking a water buffalo in her gaze.

  "Stop talkin' and start kissin’,” she countered, which was quite aggressive for the times, even for a farm girl.

  Thad, although he didn't know it until this moment, was quite the ladies' man. Plucked at the tender age of 18 to basically chase after me and cut me down to size, he had never experienced the passions of the flesh first hand. He had spent all of his time as a shoemaking apprentice and, although he had noticed the opposite sex, he hadn't made the move to actually date.

  The first kiss between Thad and Mary was one for the storybook. She felt like she was floating off the ground and she was actuall
y was, until he realized that it would probably be best if she was kept in the dark about his life as a hunter, at least for time being. But, that's the thing about secrets: the longer you hold them, the less likely the truth is to come out.

  After a steamy weekend, Mary accompanied Thaddeus back to the biggest and most fertile farm Mary has ever laid eyes on. She happily said "I do" to both him and the farm, and they were married on six months after they met in St. Louis, in what could be termed a shotgun wedding in those parts. The O'Donnell's were an old school clan who believed that kids had to be raised a mother and father joined in holy matrimony. Thad and Mary were all-too-happy to tie the knot, as they had been too busy farming and doing a variety of in-house activities to even notice that they weren't married.

  Five months after the joyous wedding, Mary gave birth in what could be termed as a "difficult" delivery. While she had been carrying like she was going to give birth to a litter of babies, Dr. Jones said on many occasions "You got one strapping boy in there that is raring to get out and farm!"

  There was so much activity on her stomach that Mary would joke, "We should let him milk the cows and chase after the hogs."

  I could sense that my world changed the minute that Calvin and Emily Brewster entered the world two minutes apart. It was the classic case of one baby coming out and everyone relaxing and rejoicing for a moment until Dr. Jones exclaimed, "Hold on! There's another one fixin' to get out!"

  FAMILY II (Gary)

  This was about the time that I was going to pay Gary a visit, because it was the first time since we met abruptly that the sides were not in our favor. With one hunter going to be joined by another two in 18 years, we would be one person short of a fair fight unless Gary had followed my instructions. Truth be told, he usually did, although don't tell him that or he will get a big head.

  Garrison always loves to tell the story how he and Eloise Walsh met. He, unlike his polar opposite Thaddeus, opted to live in Virginia Beach after he returned from Europe. He heard it was a place for lovers, which obviously increased his chances of finding a suitable and passionate bride.

  He was skipping shells across the ocean's surface one night at sunset after weeks of unsuccessfully connecting with the opposite sex. Gary cocked his arm and was about to sweep his arm through the throwing zone when he felt a slight impediment. He always liked to complete tasks, so he completed the throw and then turned around to fetch another shell when he realized that the "impediment" that he felt was a human skull, a female one at that.

  "Are you all right?!" a shocked and disturbed Gary asked the person even before he knew she was a woman.

  Eloise was groggy from taking a blow to the head from a super-human being, which obviously had forgotten that he had such strength. It's true that Gary doesn't know his own power, his brute strength sometimes. It took her a few minutes to come to her senses and realize what planet she was on.

  "What happened?" she asked as she tried to focus on the two Garrison's in front of her. Eloise explained it this way in subsequent years, "He had sort of a glow around him, well, both of him, and I thought he was an angel sent to me from heaven."

  It was lucky for Gary that I was doing a little soul-searching and his wife-to-be was on the prowl for a mate, so the bump on the head only accelerated what was problem going to occur. Gary has always been the strong, silent type but when he needed to talk he talked, just like when we first met and he yelled at me to duck when Thad was trying to shoot and arrow between my eyes.

  This time, Gary was loaded with a simple directive, "I like the beach. It is a safe place. We should live here."

  She smiled and replied, "Okay, I like the beach, too."

  They were married six months later and Eloise gave birth to Sharon within hours of Mary Brewster squirting out up the twins. I felt a certain vulnerability when Cal and Emily were born, and then more secure when Sharon entered our world, because the sides would be even whenever we resumed out activity again 18 years hence.

  LIT

  After leaving Europe so it could rebuild its physical and mental framework, I meandered around the other continents, hanging out and hunting with lions in the plains of Africa, enjoying the friendly and adventurous people of Australia, and dancing and drinking with the passionate senors and senoritas of South America. And, when my elevated mood started to deflate, I realized that I had been afloat an iceberg in Antarctica, so I left there and went to Asia to try to rebuild my shattered self, my damaged psyche.

  I spent a few years at a commune in Tibet, completing a vow of silence over the first year - which, if you know me, was tough to complete - and then went into even deeper thought my second year. Those monks were pretty savvy for a group that didn't get out much. There was one monk in particular that appeared to have a sense of consciousness above all others. This young man's was Tenzin, but everyone called him Dalai. In later years, I came to realize that this 20-something was the 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama.

  "You have been quiet and you have been noisy, but always noisy inside," he said in a calm, but confident voice as he pointed toward my head and then my heart.

  I had thought for some time that I was ascending to some higher level of being, but all I was really doing was biding my time until the eventuality of my being would come to fruition.

  "Nothing can replace family," I simply replied. I not only missed my son and wife terribly, but also Gary and Thad as well, as the three of us had become an extended family of sorts.

  He smiled. In fact, it always looked like he had a permanent smile and glowing grin on his face. I often wondered during those years of reflection how one man could be so happy, so content with his lot in life? He must have been aware of something that I had failed to grasp!

  He looked at me for at least 20 seconds, but it seemed like time had ceased to exist. Was it possible that he had gently entered my soul and was collecting pearls for next iteration of wisdom?

  His face turned serious for perhaps one of the few times in his life, as I surmised that he might have learned something about himself while foraging around in me.

  "Love in here," he said as he rested his hand on my chest, "not here," he added, as he touched my bald head. It was strange not having hair, but it definitely cut down on the daily maintenance.

  And then, the last thing the Lama said to me, before I saw him years later at a Pearl Jam concert was, "Family in here, not here," repeating the same gestures he previously employed. I didn't really see him at a Pearl Jam concert, it actually was a philharmonic concert at the White House. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention!

  So, I nodded to his most excellent and then walked out of the monastery, and kept walking - figuratively - until I returned to the last place I had been with my family, San Francisco. The old place had changed considerably since the war ended and the baby boom began. Families had sprouted up everywhere, and one was living in my house, or a structure that resembled my old house, which was damaged in the massive earthquake of 1906. It wasn't enough that the plague took most of the people a few years earlier, then most of the people who were "fortunate" enough to survive the scourge of disease and vampires, they were finished off by a catastrophic ground shake and subsequent aftershocks.

  I glided into the two-story structure without knocking or alerting anyone of my presence. It wasn't necessary to disrupt this family of three - mother, father and son - which sent me into a deep flashback of my life back in the more charmed days of my mortal existence. We were happy, really happy! Me, Maggie and Daniel, although we named him Nathaniel in those days, were a cohesive unit, and I thought our bond was unbreakable!

  But, just as my life had appeared to be an unchangeable impasse before I met Maggie and then after she left me, it had become painfully obvious that nothing really lasts forever.

  I started sobbing, which meant my tears instantly froze and turned into ice cubes as they hit the air and then tumbled to th
e floor. While the parents could not see me because I didn't want them to, the young boy became intrigued by the ice that appeared to falling out of the air.

  As he ran closer to me, my form became apparent to him. I didn't know whether to run, hug him, or drink him for a snack, so I decided to try something else. He said to me internally, "Don't cry, mister."

  I stopped crying and whispered a suggestion in his ear, "Enjoy every moment with your family."

  He smiled at me and then bounded over to his parents, who affectionately gave him a hug. I looked down at the puddle of water near my still-bare feet and cleaned it up, because nobody likes leaving a mess, especially a vampire.

  I left the house and never wanted to return since that October day back in 1958. My heart was broken again, like it had been so many times since my family passed. Time had not healed my wounds and I needed to get away for a little while and burn some more time to bridge the gap between the past and future, when I hoped that Lowery's pronouncement that I "would see my family again," would come to fruition.

  I searched for the most desolate and least populated area I could find in San Francisco and stopped at the junction of Haight and Ashbury Streets, where I proceeded to squat in a vacant house after cleaning it up and refurbishing it. I then crawled into all of the cannabis and other natural remedies of escape I could find.

  My clothes became tattered as my hair grew back and facial hair developed into a spirited and unseemly beard. To say that I spawned a generation of hippies might be a bit of an understatement, now that the cloud has lifted and I have a little perspective. I was so lit for that six-year period that I didn't realize how crowded the neighborhood had become until the light of a network TV camera shined in my eyes and awoke me from a drug- and family-induced haze. It was time for me to get back to the East coast and leave all that smelly, filthy nonsense behind!

  TURN

  It was almost 18 years to the day that Eloise Phillips and Mary Brewster gave birth to three children in separate, but extremely related births. I remember the day we departed and the confused, yet elated, looks on the faces of Thad and Gary. I never wanted to be a burden on anyone, let alone two people who I never met before we filled the roles of a vampire triangle of hunter and protector.

  While Mary and Thaddeus Brewster had their hands full with their energetic twins, Calvin and Emily, Eloise Phillips had a fairly low maintenance teen in Sharon Phillips, who had blossomed and was much more mature than her high school classmates.

  "I don't want to go to the prom!" Sharon shrieked at her mom when chided as to why no one had asked her. Not a sole in her Virginia Beach High School graduating class of 324 had stepped up and popped the question for fear of being shot down. Not only had Sharon developed into quite a beauty, she also had broken a few noses and arms of male classmates who thought they could take liberties with her over the years. It was the mid-1960s and women's' rights were starting to take hold.

  "Maybe you've been a little too rough on the boys. It's not very becoming for a young lady to act this way," Eloise said as she braided her daughter's hair. She started winding the hair too tight, which caused Sharon to be transported into a different dimension to defray the pain.

  It was a good thing that Garrison had exited his La-Z-Boy recliner to go to the bathroom, because he sensed a surge of energy in his daughter's room and sped in there quick enough to intercept a clenched fist that was stopped about an inch from the side of his wife's head.

  "That would have left a mark," he mumbled.

  Eloise was so focused on her braiding that she didn't notice the speedy fist heading her way.

  "Oh, Garrison! What did you say?" she asked.

  "I have to take this child for a walk in the park," he replied as he clenched his daughter's hand and led her out of the room.

  "Well be back in time for dinner. Is there anything you need me to pick up?"

  Eloise completely trusted her husband, even though she appeared oblivious to all of the special energy around her.

  "Some seafood would be great," she smiled, as her husband had always been able to fill her desire to eat fresh lobster even though the lobsters swam up the coast in New England.

  Gary and Sharon walked outside and then they released hands as she waited for near the passenger side of their perky Dodge Dart.

  "No, not today," Gary stated. "We don't need a car where we're going."

  Gary sped past his daughter at a velocity only he and his daughter could witness. She had never seen her father move in such a way, since he barely moved since passing on the gardening duties to her a few years earlier.

  "What the..." she said and then got on her high horse to catch up.

  After about 25 miles he had left her in the dust and she wasn't even sure if she was moving in the right direction, although the beach was in sight. And then she heard a voice inside of her head that she had never experienced before.

  "You don't have to see me to know where I am," Gary said internally to his daughter, who might have been more confused after the message than she was previously.

  Gary could sense that his daughter wasn't catching on so fast, so he added, "Stop thinking Sharon, and just be. Focus on the heartbeat, not the location of physicality.

  Sharon went into deep thought, and before she knew it she was standing on a rock formation on a beach in Maine with a couple of lobsters in her hands.

  "Who are you?" she asked me as I stood in front of her, the heartbeat of which she had tracked only hours before her 18th birthday and her rebirth as a full-fledged protector.

  Garrison had been tracking both me and his daughter all the way up the coast. In fact, he started tracking me the previous month when he could sense an increase in more core temperature and intensity.

  "No my dear, I the more pertinent question is, "how someone so lovely is in my midst?" I said and then kissed the top of her right hand like a respectable gentleman.

  She was smitten as our eyes met, even thought I was about 80 years her senior, but looked about 20 years or so older.

  Garrison's first instinct was to protect his daughter, but the only person he was cosmically sworn to protect and serve was I, so he let the harmless flirting proceed.

  "I am Hartwell. Thomas Hartwell."

  And then I looked over at Gary and winked at him, trying to reassert any bravado I had lost decades ago. There was a huge shift in energy amassing in the middle of the country and I needed to be at the top of my game, which I was still trying to reach without the support of my family.

  "We should bring all of this fresh seafood back to your home and have a beach cookout," I suggested to Gary who replied, "That's a great idea!"

  "We have much to discuss my friend," I said internally to him.

  I'm not even sure what happened to me in the days leading up to the kids' 18th birthday. It was as if all that anxiety and aggression that had been storing up inside of me was bubbling at the surface and was about to explode!

  "We have to get ready," I said to Gary after dinner as we sat in front of the blaze on the beach. He was always so focused on me that he had become oblivious to outer sources of energy. He didn't even realize that I had made his wife believe that I was his daughter's prom date.

  "She will need some training, but we have the numbers now," Gary said about his daughter Sharon, and then had a weird sensation toward his Western exposure.

  I could sense that he was now feeling what I had already been experiencing for weeks, as the presence of Thad's kids was now apparent to him.

  "He had two?!" Gary questioned, as the sides were now even at three. "And they're quite strong!" he added.

  "Yes, they are," I conquered.

  "Could be time to move unless you feel safe here?" I asked.

  "They'll be coming," Gary replied. "It doesn't really matter where we are, so we might as well start here. Knowing you, we'll be moving before long anyway."

  Thi
ngs were a lot different in the middle of the country for the Brewster family. Mary Brewster always felt like she was in the middle of a twister she could not control.

  "Why do I always feel like a referee with a striped shirt?" she asked her husband Thaddeus.

  "Let them play!" Thad implored like he did since they were young enough to go at each other. Thad watched them intently like any doting parent, and wondered if he could harness all that collective energy and turn the duo into a cohesive unit. The "changes" were about to start forming as their abilities came on line and then they came aware of my presence. While Thad had let his tracking of me go for a number of years, I could feel that he had reconnected with me months earlier and would be leading a search party of three to come get me.

  "Why do they always have to live near the water?" Thad grunted as he focused on the activity in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

  Emily and Calvin stopped wrestling for a second and she said, "How come we've never been to the beach?"

  Cal snapped, "Because there ain't no beach to go to!"

  "We should probably teach them to swim already," naive Mary interjected.

  Thad thought, "Oh, they'll learn how to sink soon enough!"

  It was a Thursday night, and aside from the surf pounding the shore it was quiet, way too quiet for my tastes at the time.

  "It's been a while," I said to Garrison. "Do you still know how to do this?" I asked, wanting my protector to start doing just that.

  Gary ignored my barb and explained, "We have to kill all three of them, but they only have to kill you to end each fight. I'll occupy Thaddeus and you go after those rambunctious twins. Use their enthusiasm against them."

  I then looked out into the distance and asked, "What about your daughter?"

  "The only way she'll learn is to get killed a few times."

  I asked, "When are you going to have the talk with her?"

  And before he could answer me, Sharon had zipped over and interjected, "The talk about what? Mon already gave me that talk!" she huffed, trying to make me believe that she was mature and ready for anything.

  We both weren't in the mood to make a big deal about it, so Gary replied, "You are a protector, and we have to protect Mr. Hartwell over here, who happens to be a vampire!"

  I played my part by revealing my fangs and wings, which caused her to gasp and step back at first, but then she wondered about her father and asked, "What can you do?"

  Gary rolled his eyes, almost resenting being treated like some carnival freak. So he stood up and revealed his evolutionary tract: wolf, hippopotamus, Orca killer whale and bottlenose dolphin. He turned back into his human form and then sat down on an Adirondack chair and challenged, "Now you."

  All of the confidence and false bravado drained from Sharon's being as I was able to see her for who she really was for the first time, an inexperienced teenage girl.

  Her face turned red after a few seconds of holding her breath and trying to force a turn to one of her other personas. Gary was about to stand up and play the part of the instructive, yet impatient parent, but as usual, I took the led.

  "Attack me!" I said to Gary internally over and over again, but he refused to comply. I pushed him and yelled, "Attack me!" again and he finally understood what I was doing, so he came at me with a clenched fist. His aggression must have caused some kind of instantaneous chemical reaction, because Sharon turned into a snarling wolf and then jumped into the air as a dolphin and poked him away from me with her nose. He obviously wasn't appreciative of the deflection, although part of him was proud to finally have another member of his lineage in the family business.

  Gary turned into a whale and rested on top of his dolphin daughter until she realized that she could also turn into a whale, thus producing a protector stalemate. Gary turned back into his human form and the so di Sharon, as they sat in the sand.

  "That was fun,” she exuberantly yelled.

  Gary looked at me and said internally, "Just wait and see how much fun she has at the end of a sharpened blade in a few hours!"

  And I thought to myself, "It will happen so fast that she probably won't even remember her first time!"

  Meanwhile, down in the farm in Kansas, Thaddeus was trying to summon the strength to tell his wife that they had to move from their 30-acre haven.

  "The kids can work a farm like no 10 people I have ever seen!" Mary Brewster gushed as she folded some laundry, there was always dirty twin laundry.

  "We have to move!" Thad blurted out, as the pressure of the moment finally percolated.

  Mary laughed as she continued to fold clothes she had just removed from the line.

  "You've been out in the sun too long!"

  And then she noticed a serious look on his face, which was a similar look on her father's face before he went off to war.

  A chill ran down and back up her spine, "Is there a war that's about to start that I don't know about?"

  Thad showed no external reaction to that question, because a war was about to hit the play button after years of being on pause, and their kids would be enlisting right behind him.

  "I found out this week that we have an abundance of chemicals in the soil that could be harmful to our health."

  Thad was telling the truth, but it was something he had known for quite some time. He had knowingly put his wife's health at risk because he knew that he and the kids were in no immediate danger.

  "Oh my gosh. What are we going to do? We have just enough money to live on, but not to move," she stated as the family's bookkeeper.

  While Thad and his counterpart Gary appeared to spend much of their time reclining, Thad had taken up robbing banks while Gary sold lobsters and other seafood to local restaurants for immense profits. This creating accounting produced some impressive off-balance sheet financing.

  Short of telling Mary about his very lucrative late-night hobby, Thad had to bring her to the shallow end of the pool with swimmies.

  "My new employer, a hospital, is going to pay for us to move."

  Thad couldn't believe he said the word "hospital!" His first thoughts were builder and then bank, but then he thought about blood and the word "hospital" breached his lips.

  Mary cocked her head and questioned, "A hospital? What are you going to do in a hospital?"

  This time, Thaddeus said the first thing that came into his mind, "There are opening a new blood bank and they want me to manage the operations."

  Mary was going to question her husband's credentials to manage blood abut remembered how calm and efficient he always was around it. She continued with small talk as she became more comfortable with the idea.

  "Remember that time I bumped my head in the barn and blood was everywhere? You were so calm and even stitched up the gash in my head. What is a blood bank?"

  "It's like a regular bank with blood," Thad replied and then went a little deeper. "People of all blood types put blood aside for other people in need of a transfusion."

  Now, this was in the days before the internet, which made it much easier to find jobs in different areas of the country and world.

  "How did you even know of the position?"

  "A friend of mine on the East Coast sent me a telegraph specifying his interest in having me manage the clinic. I once stitched his head up, too."

  While it was true that Thad had once stitched up my head, because he was so drunk that he forgot that I would self-heal in minutes, the rest of it was hogwash. I was my way of poking Thaddeus with the blood-infused joke. Only days earlier, we had a meeting of the minds as I sensed he was having some trepidation about moving his family.

  "You know you're going to have to move once they turn 18, because there's no way I'm going to live in Hooterville," I said internally to Thad as I walked on the beach.

  "Hartwell, is that you?” he asked as he rode on his tractor in the field.

  "Yes, it's me Thaddeus. Are y
ou riding a tractor?"

  He laughed, "Its' actually quite pleasurable. At least for the first hour or two."

  Thad then paused before asking, "What am I going to tell her, Thomas?"

  I didn't hesitate, "Tell her that an old friend offered you a job at a blood bank on the East Coast."

  "A blood bank?!” he questioned. "Of all the things, why a blood bank?"

  "You are good with blood," I replied, reliving a few moments when Thad had done me in with his sword.

  Thad obviously was clued into the same highlight reel, because he smiled and replied, "I can't argue with that! Will I actually have to do the job?"

  This time I laughed, "We both know you don't need the income! Besides, you can tell her that you work the night shift and then sleep the whole day."

  Thad nodded his head in approval, "That is brilliant! I barely get to sleep with all of the activity on this farm. How do you think my kids will adjust?"

  The question was two-fold, so I attacked one part at a time.

  "There are plenty of great colleges on the East Coast, and I think they'll adjust in no time. Those two appear to be fairly adventuresome. I think we will be the ones have the bigger adjustment, not you. Besides, there is an abundance of financial institutions with a lot more money that those rural banks you withdraw from."

  Thad replied, "Man's gotta' make a living and provide for his family. We all do what we have to in order to survive."

  "No, doubt, Thad! See you when I see you," I said in order to extract myself from the conversation and any remaining emotional ties before the battles resumed. It was impossible to go 100% when your were fond of the opposition.

  "See you soon, Thomas. Thanks for the job referral," he stated.

  MOVE

  Thaddeus found a proper colonial house a safe distance from the beach and just down the street from a blood bank where he was supposedly working. It was also adjacent to three banks that had a quite liberal withdrawal policy.

  "When can we go to the beach?!" and excited Cal asked his father.

  Thaddeus wasn't responding, because all he could think was "You'll be there soon enough, and you probably won't like it!"

  Emily noticed that her father was not responding to her brother, so she decided to whine to her mother instead, "Mom, it's so hot! Can we go to the beach?"

  And then the twins smiled and said in unison, "Please!"

  Thaddeus looked at Mary and she knew he wanted nothing to do with the outing, so she said, "Okay, get your things and we'll go."

  Thad knew the kids would be fearful only hours from their 18th birthday. What they didn't know was that a battle would take place that night, which would probably land them back on the beach in an unfavorable position. The skillful hunter followed his family to the beach in order to conform his suspicions. Mary sat in the sand near the shore while Emily and Cal frantically removed their t-shirts and shorts. They ran to the water, but stopped short as a wave pushed water closer to them. Instead of dipping their toes in the ocean they did what any prospective hunter would do, they ran away!

  Thaddeus smiled as his wife yelled at her kids, "What's wrong with you two? The water won't bite!"

  Mary backed up her claim by getting up and walking right into the water, which splashed up to her knees.

  "See, it's absolutely refreshing!"

  Cal looked at Emily and she returned his petrified stare. Thaddeus had never seen fear in the eyes of his children and thought the new emotion was a welcomed change from their usual non-stop advancement. They were so frightened and unsure of themselves that they ran all the way home. Thaddeus walked up to the beach and handed his wife a towel to dry off her legs. He turned around and picked up his children's t-shirts and shorts and then put his arm around his wife, "Looks like we get to spend a lot more alone time on the beach."

  Like so many sleeping beach towns in the 1960s, downtown Virginia Beach went dark after midnight with the surf revealing the only activity. That was, until, I stood in front of my modest beachside home and was soon joined by Garrison and his daughter Sharon. All Gary had to was to say to Sharon, "We gotta' go," and she excitedly followed him like a puppy dog. Eloise Phillips was usually asleep by 10:15 p.m. and nothing short of a natural disaster could interrupt her slumber.

  I nodded to Gary and he looked ready, but his daughter had a broad smile on her face, which told me that she would be an interesting ally for years to come.

  Across town, where the spray of the ocean could not be seen or heard, Thaddeus was having a more difficult time convincing his kids that they would not be going anywhere near water. His wife was also a heavy sleeper, as fate would have it, so he was able to speak freely without worrying about the need to explain himself. I never talked to Gary and Thad about it, but they never talked to their wives about was going on after midnight in all the years we were together. At least as long as the mortal women were alive.

  "We are not going back to the ocean," Thad said to the twins even though he knew that wasn't the absolute truth.

  "Are you sure?" Emily asked.

  "Yeah, that water was really cold!" Cal complained, in a rare display of weakness.

  I thought for a few days about the location of our first battle, and then sent internal instructions to Thaddeus after coming to a decision.

  "Meet us at the town square."

  The town square had multiple access points and an old fountain in the shadows of the adjacent area.

  "Hey, we're going to the town square," Thaddeus said to his kids.

  They followed s Cal asked, "Is that where we went to the fair yesterday?" as he did a mental scan of the area and said to his sister internally, "Watch for that old fountain at the Northeast edge of the square."

  Thad was amazed at the transformation of his kids from scared children to cold-blooded vampire hunters. But he also knew that if would take a while before they could match wits with me. He knew I was going to let Garrison occupy him while I battled his inexperienced kids, but he also realized what I already knew: one day they would no longer be experienced and pose a significant roadblock for my way of life. I looked over at Sharon and hoped that she could stem the tide and let me focus on the male twin, whatever his name was. I knew his name and he knew mine, but it was always all business when we fought.

  Nature then took its course as we all jogged then sprinted on our way to the town square. Not another word was spoken during the 30-second fight, which was on the shorter duration of all of our encounters. We hit the square and my plan started to take shape - Garrison immediately locked up Thaddeus and headed right for the twins without any awareness as to where Sharon was.

  Calvin had this look on his face that said, "Punch me!" so I did just that as Sharon and Emily clashed for the first of many occasions. I drove Cal into a bank of trees and then followed the path of his trajectory. Thad and Gary had become good friends in the years they were my caretakers, and used the opportunity to catch up after a nearly 20-year break.

  "How are you, my friend," Thad said as they gave the appearance of fighting. I learned in later years that the two had become experts at giving the appearance of genuinely disliking each other, even though they were really two peas in a pod doing the same job on opposite sides of the battle.

  "I am well," Gary replied. "But I can't believe you had twins!"

  "I know! What were the odds of that happening?" Thad replied. "Good thing, though, we couldn't let you have that much of an advantage."

  "We knew this day would come," Garrison stated.

  "And now our lives are no longer our own," Thad said. "At least for now," he added.

  Emily and Sharon unsheathed their swords, probably because they weren't too confident about their changes yet. They went back and forth until Sharon surprisingly gained a noticeable advantage, which caught Cal's eye even though he was about to get his lights put out by me. He jumped in the air and changed into a hawk
, speeding through the air toward his sister. He neared the pile and changed into a fierce grizzly bear, and his roar stopped Emily from delivering a fatal stroke. She looked up at the bear and was frozen in time as he swept across with his right paw and cleanly separated her rather pleasant head from her shoulders.

  Emily was not pleased, "Awww! Why did you go ahead and do that! I could have taken her!"

  Cal's actions set off a series of reactions that quickly ended the battle for the night. Garrison was genuinely disturbed at the sight of his daughter being killed, so he said to Thad "Excuse me old boy" and then zipped over to Cal and put an end to his sister with the blade of his sword while he looked on in terror. The sight of seeing his daughter terminated moved Thaddeus, but his son was not moving, which put him at a distinct advantage.

  Thad realized on the way over to me, Gary and his immovable son, that his twins held the key to reasserting dominance in the battle. If they were able to become a force then maybe they had a shot to avoid taking nightly dirt naps. I also realized that nightly confrontations would only make them stronger, so it was incumbent upon me to stretch the time out between fights.

  Gary was in a different realm when he put the sharp edge of the blade through Cal's back and heart and then squared off against a charging Thaddeus as Cal's limp body feel to the ground. I could tell by the velocity of Thad's heartbeat that Gary's night was about to be over, so I closed my eyes and for the first time in my existence as either a mortal or vampire, I meditated.

  Thad jumped in the air as a ferocious pit bull terrier and Gary was about to slice him down until he changed into grizzly and swiped his head clean off. He then set his sights on me, swinging his blade toward the center of my body. I focused on the breeze and felt a sudden shift ion the air flow, so I clasped my hands together and surrounding his blade. I then extended my nails on both hands and thrust them into Thad's chest in one motion, much to his surprise.

  My first thought was to clean up the bodies and the mess, because it wouldn't have been good form to have the five bodies strewn in the middle of town before the dawn reinvigorated them. My first thought was to dump them all in the ocean, but I decided on a scatter strategy instead: Gary and Sharon in their backyard with a decidedly Eastern exposure, Thaddeus on his back porch with Emily, and Calvin, well Calvin, he needed to be taught a lesson and wake up in the one place that he didn't want to be. So I dropped him in the ocean and his body sank half-way down before it floated to the surface and then washed up on the shore just before daybreak.

  I slept like a newborn baby that night. In fact, it was probably the best night sleep I had in years! And while I peacefully slumbered, the sun was rising on a crystal-clear summer day. Cal's waterlogged body washed up on the shore and he was the first out of five to receive the healing rays of the sun, because of the unimpeded view of the sky on the beach.

  The rays of light flickered on the ocean, making its way to the shore and Cal's being. Water started pouring from his insides as the process of repairing a dead soul was in progress. Recovering from the first death was always the hardest, whether you were a vampire, protector or hunter. Cal's eyes opened but he still couldn't move, as the searing pain had an immobilizing effect. He sat up a few moments later and screamed despite his tremendous threshold for pain. It was a new sensation that he would eventually become accustomed to.

  From that moment of rebirth on, all Cal could think about was killing me. His sister Emily, who really didn’t like me at all and was happy to share anything with her brother, did not share this thirst for my blood. She woke up next to her father on their back porch and experienced a similar kind of intense pain upon revival, sans water, but did not let out an audible shriek despite her vociferous ways. Thaddeus calmly arose from his slumber feeling just as rested as Garrison and me. It appeared that the more you died, the more restful your time became between the afterworld and the living. There were times we actually looked forward to dying, just so we could get a little rest.

  Conversely, Sharon had a difficult time reemerging. It was lucky that the light hit her before her father, because water started flowing from her body just as it did for Cal. We never made the connection between her and Cal until much later in time, but it started to form on that day.

  BURIED

  Cal and his fraternal twin sister were so connected that we could never tell who was coming and who was going. As advertised, Emily usually set Cal up for most of their kills by distracting me enough to leave an opening – a neck, a leg, my heart.

  “We have to get rid of him,” I said to Sharon and Gary after a particularly gruesome be-heading.

  “What did you have in mind?” Gary asked.

  I smiled, “How are you two at gathering rocks”