Blood Shadow: Book of Ariel

dune buggy?”

  Gary turned to Hartwell and asked in a sarcastic tone, “Have I ever been in a dune buggy?” He then thought about it and really asked Hartwell the question, “Have I ever been in a dune buggy?”

  Hartwell searched his mental database, “Remember that time we were in Baja, California…”

  “Man, did I eat sand on that trip! How could I forget?” Thaddeus exclaimed. “Then dune buggies it is.”

  Daniel and Andrew were at the other side of the table comparing notes on their moves.

  “Your handle is weak! I can dribble circles around you!” Daniel said to Drew.

  Drew looked behind him, “My handle is week? You can’t even dribble with your left hand, and my handle is weak?”

  “There’s only one way to settle it,” Daniel said.

  “Then I’ll see you on the basketball court,” Drew replied.

  “You better bring that handle with you…” Daniel stated.

  “Yeah, don’t forget your left hand…” Drew countered.

  “I can cook with one hand tied behind my back,” Carla boasted to fellow cooking enthusiast Nicole.

  “Blindfold me and I can tell what spices are in a dish,” Nicole replied.

  “You call that chili that you make, a dish?”

  Nicole refused to stay down, “It’s better than your chicken pot pie any day.”

  “Oh no you didn’t! You know you can’t talk about my chicken pot pie unless you’re prepared to get your CPP cooked off,” Carla laid it down.

  “Then it’s going to be chili first and then CPP,” Nicole stated. “As long as we’re being perfectly honest, I’m not really found of your pies either.”

  “My pies? At least I don’t use pre-made crust in my recipes,” Carla shot back.

  “That’s not true. I make all of my pie crusts from scratch,” Nicole defended.

  Carla wasn’t having any of it, “Going to the supermarket and paying for a shell someone else made is hardly scratch baking…”

  “I can hold my breath under water for like 20 minutes,” Sharon said to Agent Blake, the self-professed center of the aquatic universe.

  “With scuba gear? Because I’ve never even seen you hold your breath for five minutes.”

  “What? You must be blind!” Sharon yelled. “How long can you hold your breath under water?”

  Blake didn’t have an exact answer, “All I know is that can hold it longer than five minutes.”

  Sharon looked at the unsure expression on Blake’s face and immediately challenged him, “No, you can’t!”

  “Yes, I can!” Blake said with all of the enthusiasm of a 10 year old.

  “You can’t knit a sweater faster than I can knit a scarf,” Emily said to Belinda.

  “Listen, I’ve seen you knit, Em, and speed is not one of your friends.”

  “I’m not that slow…” Emily countered. “At least I take my time and get it right the first time.”

  “Are you saying that I am careless and I make mistakes?” Belinda asked her former sister-in-law.

  Since it was playful banter, Emily chose her words carefully, “What I am saying is that I can finish a scarf faster and with fewer imperfections than you can with a sweater.”

  “You’ve never played pong!” Aaron roared at Maxwell.

  “Are you saying that I’m too young to have played it, or I have no idea what it is?” Max replied.

  “Both!” the tallest person in the house replied.

  Max tried a different tactic, “What do you know about pong?”

  Aaron almost had a conniption on his way to answering the query, “What do I know about pong? Let me just say that I once beat the actual inventor of the game.”

  Max nodded his head in appreciation of the feat. “Why, what do you know about it?” Aaron asked.

  Max smiled like true hustler, “Let’s just say that I know enough about it to beat the guy who beat the inventor of the game.”

  “We should go help serve food at the Beach Haven Soup Kitchen,” Maggie said to wide-eyed Kayla, who obviously had other ideas.

  “Yeah, that would be fine, but why don’t we actually make the food.”

  “Why don’t you go in that direction, and I will go in my direction, and we’ll see how many people we actually help by the end of the day.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Kayla replied, as the days of friendly banter and challenges were well underway.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The day after her birth, Ariel was now the size of a six year-old and her mother was scrambling to counteract the seemingly continuous expansion of her size.

  “Did I grow like this?” Valerie asked her mother Katherine.

  Katherine shook her head in disbelief, “From what you tell me, I don’t think that Samuel grew like this!”

  Ariel was acting just like a typical 6 year-old with a minute attention span.

  “When are we going to New York?”

  Valerie was suddenly thrust into the role as parent, but seemed to be warming to the task.

  “Two more days.”

  “Then we will go to New York?”

  Valerie looked at her mother, who had been through the child wars three times.

  “Yes Ariel, then we will go to New York,” Katherine Winters said in a soothing voice.

  Back in the quaint town of Beach Haven, New York, the usual midnight battle was changed to an all-day format. Now that hostility was no longer present in the house, it was safe for the inhabitants to compete freely in more open and public spaces and fully blend in with the town’s population.

  Hartwell and Cal headed over to Beach Haven Games for a three-day marathon of leisure sports that included ping-pong, pool and bowling to rap the competition up on day three. If you were to handicap the events, a decided edge would be given to Hartwell in ping-pong because he did actually train with a master player in an Asian country. Pool has always been the sport of hustlers, and Cal Brewster was the consummate hustler, so he had the decided advantage on day two. The final challenge was American bowling, which both men had played in various forms. Whether you called it Candle Pin or Duck Pin bowling, the two men had experience but it definitely wasn’t their strong suit. But, if the competitive history of these two men was any indication, then the victor would likely be crowned in the 10th frame of the last game.

  The same could be said for Daniel and Andrew, who had competing against each other since they were boys and would now finally be enjoying the back and forth for a change after years of bitter opposition. The day one competition including some unfinished business on the basketball court, as Daniel often let his image lose to Drew, who thought he was actually beating his cousin.

  Day two would be a rousing game of tennis, a sport that both guys really enjoyed and often played as teenagers, while the third day would place them where no man dare tread before the onset of winter, the golf course. While the Beach Haven Golf Course was still open, the fee to play an entire day of golf, or the equivalent of about 72 holes, was about the same as filling up the average car with a tank of gas.

  Again, handicapping the three days was fairly straightforward: Daniel had a slight edge in basketball, even though he hadn’t actually beaten his cousin in years, Drew’s ground strokes gave him the advantage in tennis, and it was anyone’s guess who would emerge victorious – or with a full set of clubs – at the end of the 72-hole golf marathon.

  In the battle of the car buffs, there was no clear favorite in the category of passion for automobiles. Both men were out in the garage working on their cars after breakfast, because they were going to pick up a couple of dune buggies from a local dealer and then race without touching the vehicles. Gary was working on his Mustang Convertible and Thad was pouring over his Chevy Camaro, as day two would feature these two classic cars on racing at various venues throughout Beach Haven. And on day three the men would transition to motorcycles, Thad with classic Triumph b
ike and Gary with his Harley Davidson chopper.

  This was perhaps the tightest of all of the confrontations to call. Both men had so much experience with cars, except for the dune buggies, that you could have flipped a coin and felt assured that you still had no clue who would win the days.

  The cook-off between Nicole and Carla would be the only competition that would be decided by the other members of the household. They would cook all day and then have the other 14 people would eat the food and vote in a blind taste test, so not to show bias by knowing the origin of the dishes.

  Day one was a chili cook-off, day two was chicken pot pie, and day three continued the pie theme to a more conventional level, where both women would make their versions of both apple and pumpkin pies. The smell in the house was going to be intoxicating!

  Carla had the advantage in the chili cook-off because of her years being around the freshest ingredients in Portland, Nicole lived and died with her CPP, and the pie bake-off would be interesting especially if Nicole was able to perfect her crust recipe.

  Sharon and Blake both loved being in the water so much that they really didn’t need a competition to get excited. They would hold their breath in a series of challenges on day one, swim from Beach Haven to Connecticut and back on day two, and see who could find the most valuable stuff on the ocean floor on day three.

  Day one was up Sharon’s alley, day two was all about Blake and his days as a lifeguard, and day three was a complete crap-shoot with no clear winner to choose from. With a full collection of boots and anchors on the ocean floor, it would take all day to find buried treasure