Blood Shadow: Book of Samuel
Page 29
possible?” the old-school hunter said as he was surrounded by nothing but new a new age of species.
Cal replied, “Evolution.”
“But I still get to kill that bastard Lowery, right?” an impatient Lawrence asked.
Hartwell looked at Thaddeus and Cal for confirmation and they nodded in approval.
Thaddeus still had a chip on his shoulder about Ellison, though.
“Just as long as you leave that protector to us,” he said, referring to him and Cal.
“Ellison?” Lawrence questioned. “You can have him. I’m been thinking of nothing but ending Lowery for 25 years now.”
Cal looked at Hartwell because he had spent the better part of 15 years in a similar position. And when the hunter was finally freed from his underwater prison, he went right at Hartwell and registered the vampire’s 100th death.
He smiled, “I understand,” and then he looked at Hartwell with a certain level of accomplishment and satisfaction.
As usual, Hartwell was equal to challenge, “Looks like we’re going to have to visit that boxing ring again when this is all over.”
Cal flashed a devilish smile, “I thought you’d never ask.”
Every kind of meat that could be grilled was grilled that night, and all of the people at and around Hartwell’s house were fully fueled for the big battle. The action was much slower and less festive at the Beach Haven Inn, except for the insides of Abraham Ellison, which had been percolating all day since he was awoken from a dead sleep. It had been a quarter-of-a-century since he had woken up with a cold sweat after images of Lowery’s hunter scanned through his dreams. But, on this morning, Lawrence was once again the main attraction and Ellison knew the hunter was coming.
Instead of alerting Lowery of the impending siege – like any respectable protector would do – he simply kept the information to himself as all of the other drunken and hung-over protectors remained in the dark. Normally, these protectors would have been alerted to the presence of their vampire’s hunters, but Daniel was able to put a block up around the house, much in the way that he and Hartwell veiled the existence of the house for years.
The connection between Ellison and Lawrence was too strong, and Ellison could finally see a righteous end to all of Lowery’s madness. Ellison stayed out of the house all day and tried to focus his mind because he knew that his favorite hunters, Cal and Thad, would be coming to try and permanently punch his lights out. Since Lowery stopped Ellison from getting a proper revenge, he was completely jacked up to finally be getting an opportunity to at least even the score.
THIRTY-SIX
Midnight was closing in, which meant it was fight time! Samuel and Kayla would be included in the Lowery battle for the first time and they were excited. She planned on utilizing her rolling protection during the battle, and he would be a vital cog in filling in gaps in numbers during the fight.
Hartwell addressed his family on the inside before they went outside and rounded up the hunters for the battle.
“The only thing that matters is that we do this together, no matter the outcome,” he said simply.
Everyone banged their swords and feet on the floor in support of his words.
“To family,” Cal said, and everyone shouted in support, “To family!”
Hartwell then addressed the thousand hunters outside, “It doesn’t matter if we live or die tonight, because tomorrow we will all be free!”
The roar from the crowd melted into chants of “FREE-DOM! FREE-DOM!”
Everyone knew their place in a siege that Maxwell the historian entitled, “The Trojan Horse.” All but five members of Hartwell’s army would be heading out to the park, while the other five people would be routed to the Beach Haven Inn to spend some quality time with some old friends.
A group of 16 originals from the House of Hartwell strode on to the great lawn of Beach Haven Park, signaling to Lowery’s army that it was time to ‘get some.’ The karaoke would be focused on the Detroit Motown era and the drink of the night promised by Lowery was the old standard, the Boilermaker. What Lowery’s army didn’t know, at least until they breached the confines of the field, was that the hunters were effectively positioned in just about every tree throughout the perimeter of the lawn and were ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. The other major thing that they didn’t count on was that each and every one of them would perish on this night without so much as taking the life of one of their opponents. They would be waking up the next day as mortals, completely stripped of their vast powers and abilities, which made for a rather surprising evening.
Lowery's gang hit the field and went straight at the seemingly feeble row of fighters. But the smile across each and every face gave an early indication that either and an ambush was in the offing, or the group enjoyed dying a great deal more than anyone could imagine.
Just as Maxwell sealed off the area, he gave the signal through a high-pitched shriek, which that took out half of the windows in town, that it was time for the hunters to exact some revenge before becoming permanently retired. Twenty yards before the thousands crashed into the few, hunters found their vampires and Samuel kept the associated protectors busy by fighting them with an exact hunter clone. He did this after imagining that the broken windows were in their original form and then he restored them.
Hartwell’s people joined into the fight, too, as Kayla used her rolling protection of three people while picking up a sword herself and keeping a bunch of protectors occupied.
Lowery's vampires and protectors had never seen protection before, or even the vast abilities of the family members to change into a full spectrum of body images. It became quite disconcerting when Daniel altered the DNA sequences of the hunters and gave them the capability to change into the full spectrum of protector facades, including wolf, cat, hippo, bottlenose dolphin and Orca killer whale, in addition to pit bull, ram, grizzly bear and hawk. There was one sequence in particular that was memorable involving all of the members of the team.
The action started with Kayla, who used one of her protection on Maxwell, as another vampire came his way. Max sliced the vampire in two and then used his crash course on martial arts to use a spinning back kick and break the back of an oncoming protector. Max then spun out of the protection and transferred it to his father, who punched his fist clean through the body of another vampire and then used his sword-like fingers to slice through a protector from both sides. Daniel then catapulted his cousin Drew in the air and a protected Drew came down with two swords in each hand and sliced a vampire and his protector in four pieces. Drew flipped the protection through Kayla to Nicole, who changed into her new favorite animal, the grizzly bear and sliced up a few protectors while Carla as hippopotamus then went airborne and thunderously squished the unsuspecting targets.
Aaron was pretty scary in his human façade, but he was even scarier as ram as he head butted three members of Lowery’s oncoming army right into Belinda’s extended nails. Emily then got into the act as a bottle-nose dolphin, flipping protector after vampire after protector to Blake, who utilized some of his new sword skills to distract the chain of bodies long enough to have Sharon the shark end their night. Meanwhile, Joe and Valerie were assisting Brandon Justice, who had been waiting for days to break out his full vampire arsenal and put aside any and all of his hybrid changes. Valerie as mermaid enchanted men in their tracks while Joe used the hind legs of his Minotaur façade to kick over the bodies to a slicing Justice. At the end of all of this was Maggie keeping an eye on Samuel, but the reverse was actual more of the case. Samuel was able to change into anything he wanted to, and it appeared that he could change into, and replicate, anything that came into his head. He took out two hundred vampires and protectors at once when he changed into a cruise ship; he liked the word ‘cruise’ so much that he turned into a cruise missile and blew up another large group. It was apparent that Team Hartwell was very much on their
way to completing the rout, but there was still much work to do for the other five people at the Beach Haven Inn.
Lowery was sitting on his lounge chair at the pool and sipping a beer, while Ellison waited in the vacant parking lot for his suitors. Hartwell walked into the light and the shimmering caught Lowery's eye.
“Why hello, Thomas,” he coyly stated without looking at Hartwell. He stood up and continued, “I was wondering when you would show your face here.”
Hartwell had Garrison by his side, “I can see you brought your protector. I would summon mine, but I don’t think it will be necessary.”
Lowery glided over to Hartwell and then tried to order Gary to move away with his mind, but Gary would have none of that.
He looked at Hartwell and said, “I’ll wait over there.”
Lowery came real close to Hartwell, trying to intimidate him before acting.
Hartwell moved in even closer and said confidently, “You have no idea who you are dealing with. If it was up to me, I would do you right here, myself.”
“You don’t have it in you, Thomas,” Lowery defiantly stated. “Remember, it was me who sired you.”
Hartwell smiled, while alerting his new friend Lawrence that it was show time. He then delivered the set-up to Lowery by saying, “At least the first time,”