flinch at the sound and smell of his now greatest rival and former sire, Alexander Lowery. On his way to the sun room, Lowery stopped at a nearby, hidden location within the house and picked up an item that he knew would infuriate at least one person in the house.
“I brought one of our good friends along to witness the correct way to kill the unkillable vampire,” Lowery said as his former protector – who was also the person that ended his previous life – walked into Hartwell’s frame and said, “Hello, Thomas.”
Hartwell was still staring straight ahead and gave the appearance of being in deep meditation. He was feeling quite vulnerable following Billingsley’s reemergence in his wife’s life, and it was uncharacteristic of him in his run as a vampire to throw his own pity party.
It was about this time that all of the other arranged meeting were wrapping up and the effected parties were about to survey the debris that was their lives. Calls for emotional help started going out for the members of the House of Hartwell from their loved ones. It was quite the scene at the back room of the Beach Haven Diner. Daniel fielded all of the call for help and sent Aaron to Emily and Carla and Kayla to Andrew at Beach Haven Burger. He then dispatched Valerie to be with Brandon at the Beach Haven Library, and Belinda to go to Blake and pull him out of the dumpster in the alley behind Beach Haven Sporting Goods. Finally, he looked at Samuel and Ariel and said, “Go home and take care of my dad. He needs your help!” as he grabbed Maxwell’s hand and they zoomed to Nicole’s side.
Back at the house, Hartwell was internally debating whether he should break out of his perceived trance and kick the crap out of the two so-called men in front of him. The advantages of this would be:
Lowery would finally stop talking and the shrill of his voice would be out of his head.
He could break out of his self-induced coma.
He could find out what other annoying people Billingsley had brought out of permanent retirement.
It would be nice to kill someone that he genuinely disliked for a change.
But while Hartwell was going over these various scenarios in his head, Lowery kept taunting his non-responsive subject.
“So you’re going to just sit there in a rather poor lotus position and let me cut your head off without fighting back?” He looked over at Braden Lawrence and said, I can live with that!” as he lifted the heavy sword he was dragging on the floor with his left hand and baseball-gripped the handle with both hands and swung through the hitting zone, slicing Hartwell’s contented head clean off as it rolled from his shoulders to the far left corner of the room.
“That got a much better roll than I thought!” Lowery exclaimed as Lawrence was about to respond in agreement. It had only been a few hours since Lowery was brought back from his shallow grave behind the Beach Haven Inn.
“I want to thank you for bringing me back,” Lowery said to Billingsley, who was flanked by Brenda Vinson.
He then looked long and hard at Brenda Vinson and asked, “Do I know you from somewhere?”
Lowery’s vampirical memory was about as short as his stay in the netherworld.
Brenda had been waiting to confront Lowery for years, “Yeah, you knocked up my daughter!”
Lowery still despised anyone going against his authority and lifted his hand like he was going to strike her down, but Gabriel said, “Freeze him,” so Linda lifted her hand and did just that.
They then turned toward each other and talked it out while Lowery, with his face looking angry and his right fist cocked and clenched, was frozen in mid punch.
“I don’t think it was my intention to being him back here to mess with your family,” Gabriel stated. “We need him to focus on Hartwell and only Hartwell. I have to keep that vampire busy while I make the moves on my ex-wife,” he said and then did a little dance move.
“Might want to update those dance moves before you take her for a night out on the town,” she replied.
He kept asking for things and Brenda kept delivering, so he continued, “Can you update me with the latest and greatest?”
She loved to make up spells and see how they turned out, “We’ve had Travolta and Astaire, but now Gabriel needs to dance to today’s fare.” She then twirled he right fingers in order to complete the visual and then said, “You might want to give it a few more seconds to complete the download. Sometimes the transfer can be slow when there are other people on the network,” Brenda joked as Gabriel was popping and locking and then quickly-spinning on the floor.
He jumped up to his feet and smiled, “That will do. Now take care of this big ape so he can focus at the task at hand.”
“Gladly,” she replied and then concocted the next spell while waving at Lowery, “You are here to settle a score, and for you Hartwell will be nevermore.”
Brenda and Gabriel then moved over to the side as she unfroze Lowery and the momentum of his aborted thrust sent him to the ground.
He looked up at Brenda and she said, “Balance is sometimes an issue when you first come back.”
Revenge was the only thing on Lowery’s mind now, “I have to go get Hartwell, but could you bring back my protector to help me track him down?”
This should have revealed to Brenda and Gabriel that Lowery was not all the way under, but they were too busy playing with the ex-vampire to notice.
After Lowery sliced Hartwell’s head off, he spun toward his former protector Braden Lawrence and his head was soon rolling into the corner next to Hartwell’s. He felt the presence of others coming toward the house and said to fallen Lawrence as he dropped the bloody sword on the floor, “Now we’re even” before bolting out of the house just before Samuel and Ariel whooshed in.
They both felt the heat coming from the sun room and Samuel stood in the doorway in shock as he gazed at the remains of his great grandfather on the floor near another body. The neophyte had never seen anyone in his family die before and was new to the ways of the tribe due to his rapid acceleration to manhood. Going from birth to 18 in only less than a couple of months had its advantages, but one of them wasn’t the development of an advanced coping mechanism.
Samuel’s internal anguish sent out a powerful signal to all of the people in town, which overrode anything they were about to deal with.
Daniel looked at Nicole, Max, Sharon and Garrison and said, “We have to go home. Samuel and Ariel are in trouble.” Everyone heard Daniel’s message and the sun room, which was a picture of meditative peace only five minutes earlier, was now completely full of confused and emotionally-charged people trying to untangle the mess.
FOURTEEN
“Who did all of this?” an outraged and angry Cal Brewster exclaimed.
It would hard to imagine such an emotional outburst from Hartwell’s greatest rival only months earlier, but the two had become very close in recent days.
Daniel was about to step forward and simply replay the action, but an unexpected source stepped forward. Samuel was unexpected because he had never been in a position to do anything either for or with the family in terms of their battles. Daniel watched proudly as his grandson picked up the sword in his powerful right hand and said, “I can get a positive identification off the fingerprints.”
Samuel released the sword into the air in front of him and the extremely sharp object floated about five feet off the ground before an image appeared and grabbed onto it.
Thaddeus’s mind was still at Beach Haven Burger and seeing his wife again after all of these years. For some reason, the word ‘fingerprints’ slapped him across the face and brought him back into the task at hand.
He focused on the floating object and then the object of his wrath, “Is that my sword? And what is an image of that blowhard Alexander Lowery doing near my sword?”
The term ‘blowhard’ was so dated that it sounded funny, providing a much-needed laugh for a group that was under constant pressure and attack. After the giggling subsided, Samuel reached down
and touched the fingertips of Braden Lawrence’s body and his image came up, complete with his name and the title Deceased Protector.
Garrison remarked, “Well, that was predictable. I bet Thomas didn’t even lift a finger.”
The group looked over at Samuel and while he could have replayed the images of the brief skirmish, he looked over at youthful-looking Grandpa’ Daniel to provide the playback. Daniel nodded to Samuel in recognition of the fact that he deferred to an elder even though he could have completed a task.
Everyone sat down on the floor as Daniel set the track and then returned moments later with popcorn and frozen drinks for everyone. He thought of how Claire Vinson would react to her father being back in town, or just being alive for that matter.
“After all of the eating we just did I’m amazed that I’m still hungry!” Andrew stated and then said, “Thanks, cuz.” And everyone else said thank you to Daniel as he rolled the tape.
After everyone viewed the scene, Carla asked “The real question is what do we do with Lawrence?”
Kayla had formerly acted a peacemaker and family protector, but she was about to reveal one of her new capabilities with the help of Valerie and Brandon’s daughter, Ariel.
The group had been previously unable to hear thoughts from the spirit world, but were now about to be dialed in.
Kayla’s face became altered and she morphed into Hartwell as her