after...” he said, referring to her death.
“Lowery is bringing me back to the most dark and vulnerable part of my existence. I can’t lose you two again,” he said as he broke down and impersonated an ice machine while Maggie comforted him.
“You are not that desperate person anymore, Thomas. You are surrounded by a huge, loving family, and you will never be alone again.”
“You promise?” Hartwell asked.
“I promise,” Maggie replied.
Hartwell abruptly stopped bawling and his shattered demeanor changes at once, reassembling the fragments his confidence.
The vampire efficiently cleaned up the small mess, and everything was right again in his world.
“Let’s go get this guy and wipe him from our world!” Hartwell defiantly pronounced.
Maggie thought to herself that it was a good thing that Alexander Lowery existed in the first place. Without him, there would have been no Thomas in this life for her to come back to.
“You told him two months?” Lowery’s protector Abraham Ellison asked him.
“Why, is there a problem with that?” Lowery questioned, with just a splash of indignation in his voice.
Ellison looked around the large hotel conference room, and all he could see was vampires and protectors growing increasingly edgy.
“If you ask me, I think we have two more weeks, tops, before we blow the roof off this place.”
Lowery did his own surveying and then agreed with his confidant, “But, you know I like to play fair. I don’t feel like projecting myself cross-town again, can you just go over there and tell Hartwell that we need to make a scheduling change? Wouldn’t want to wait the extra time, anyway, just in case that kid decided to pop out early.”
Ellison was a gentleman, so he put on his best Sunday suit and semi-cruised over to Hartwell’s house. Full speed might have caused perspiration and potential creasing of the trousers, so he cut back a bit on the power, which increased his relatively short journey to five minutes from about two minutes.
Hartwell, Garrison, Thaddeus and Cal were sitting on the deck planning strategy for their training sessions, when Garrison get the sense that he was about to experience protector overload.
“I feel another protector approaching,” Gary stated as he diverted his attention away from the conversation.
“Yeah,” Hartwell concurred, as he also picked up the vibe, “and he’s extremely neat and well-dressed.”
Hartwell was already hovering above the ground, but the other three men stood up to properly greet Ellison, who they viewed as nothing more than an intruder.
Ellison glided into view and then stopped only a few feet from the men, which was an obvious ploy to disclose how confident the attackers were.
Cal was closest to the old-world protector, and would be the first to react after Hartwell, who looked at the man and had an instant flashback. He was lying on the floor in the parlor of his San Francisco house, when a sturdy man busted into the room just as Lowery was going to sink his teeth into Hartwell and turn him into a vampire.
Hartwell was on his last breath as a human, but could hear the man say “We have to hurry…”
When Ellison spoke again, it met with a different reaction this time around.
“I am here…” was all he could get out before Cal Brewster hauled off and decked him with a thunderous right hand to the jaw. The massive blow knocked Ellison down to the ground, as he was surprised to be struck without warning.
He was about to get up and stand in the same spot, but Cal quickly put an end to that, “If you get up and stand that close to me again, I’ll put you right back down on the ground, pal.”
Ellison laughed as he removed a white handkerchief from the pocket of his pocket and gently dabbed his bloody lip as he stood up. It had been some time since he had been struck in anger as a result his adversaries being buried in the bottom of the ocean. In a strange way, he kind of liked it. So, he stood in exactly the same spot he was before and the result was a left hook to the gut and a right cross to the jaw.
He groaned this time from the effective combination, and was about to get up and stand in the spot, when Cal said, “I’m gonna’ knock this bum out.”
This time, his father, Thaddeus, stepped up and put his arm out in front of him, “That won’t be necessary, Calvin. I think you made your point.”
Ellison was undaunted as he stood up and shuffled to the same spot.
Thad smiled and winked at Garrison and Hartwell as he reached inside of his pocket and fitted a pair of brass knuckles around his right hand. He then spun and struck Ellison with a furious right hand, which was further amplified by the knuckle enhancement. Ellison was out cold before he even hit the ground.
His longtime foe Garrison was impressed and took the opportunity to reminisce.
“I remember the first time you hit me with a pair of those. I was in dreamland for at least 15 minutes.”
Hartwell laughed as he was now fully back from his flashback.
“That was about the time he hunted me down and separated my head from my body.”
Thad looked out into the brilliant blue sky with fluffy white clouds and felt at peace.
“Good times.”
The men returned about 15 minutes later with a bucket of water, which Cal was happy to douse the man's face with. Ellison shook his head from the shock of gaining consciousness, and then sat up while he removed the excess water from his face and straightened his short hair with his fingers. He had learned his lesson and would not stand up this time.
“While I appreciate the contact, I simply came here to deliver a message. Due to a scheduling conflict, we are going to have to move up our attack to two weeks from today, instead of two months from now. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”
Cal still wasn’t satisfied. The natural friction between hunter and protector was the strongest conflict he had ever felt, aside from his previous distaste for Hartwell.
“Sorry for the inconvenience?” Cal sneered.
This time, Ellison stood up and said defiantly to Cal, “You will get your chance, hunter. I will be happy to engage you in bare-handed fisticuffs once Lowery’s people descend on this plane like locusts. Our very numbers will darken the sky more than any plague this earth has ever seen.”
Hartwell said to his allies internally, “No my words, gentleman. Let this man free from our presence so we can prepare for this battle. We have not a moment to spare.”
Ellison sensed that his work was done and then zoomed back to Lowery.
“What happened to you?” Lowery asked at the sight of his disheveled and battered protector.
“Hunter times two.”
Lowery smirked, “Then you shall have first crack at those men once we arrive.”
Ellison smiled, “I was counting on it, boss.”
TEN
Two weeks was a lot shorter time than two months, but the urgency of the preparation remained a constant in the house of Hartwell. In reality, no amount of time could have prepared them for the massive onslaught that was coming their way, but it could have allowed for a higher level of creativity to take form.
Everyone was congregated in the main room of the house, and there nervous chatter heard from every mouth. The heat was always coming from Hartwell’s direction, only this time it was focused on him from an external source. When he finally heard enough of the widespread panic, he put his hands up and then spoke.
“Please. Please, settle down!” his voice hitting a crescendo.
“We don’t have a lot of time, and all panicking will do is get us all killed.” He turned to Garrison, “Gary, you round up the protectors and hunters and teach a crash course in swimming in the big pool we have in the backyard,” Hartwell said, referring to the Atlantic Ocean.
He then turned to Blake, “We next have to figure out where they have buried all of those hunters. Agent Blake, you’re obviously the man for that job.”
Blak
e nodded and smiled at Hartwell for the well-earned respect.
“Vampires,” Hartwell said, as Maggie, Daniel, Belinda, and Maxwell formed a two-by-two block in front of him.
And, just as Hartwell was going to speak, Kayla slid across the floor and stood behind the other four vampires; her belly the size of a watermelon in less than a month's time.
She was just as surprised as everyone else, “That wasn’t me. It was Samuel.”
“You have to get me out of here!” a desperate Samuel voiced internally to the crowd.
Maxwell was too emotional to act rationally in matters concerning his son, so Daniel stepped forward. He projected Samuel’s image in the middle of the room and went on to detail his grandson’s progress.
“Well, he’s coming up on four weeks old and almost the size of a four-year old. Thirty pounds in weight and all of his vital organs are functioning normally. Normal, that is, for a vampire of that age.”
People laughed with pride.
He then focused on Kayla, “Kayla is obviously a sturdy girl. At 5’ 10” and 175 pounds, 30 of that baby weight, she has reached maximum density whereas any more growth of Samuel might put her in danger.”
“They’ll be coming after Samuel,” Cal stated.
Kayla countered, “If they can find him.”
Hartwell pronounced, “Then tonight, under the veil of the moon, we will bring Samuel forth into our world.”
“Should I get ready to go to the hospital?” Kayla innocently asked.
All of the vampires cringed and Maggie cried, “No!”
“Those places are a germ nightmare!”