by Phil Wohl
noting that Daniel had sired him after he was already mortal.
Lowery stepped back in surprise and questioned Hartwell, “The first time?” as the heat-seeking missile that was Braden Lawrence zoomed through the air and smoothly moved his strike hand with his sword though the hitting zone.
The shocked look on Lowery’s face endured as his head rolled off of his shoulders and then tumbled into the pool.
Lawrence looked back and said to Hartwell, “That was not as dramatic or as satisfying as I imagined it."
Hartwell cocked his head and replied, “I know! Let’s go see what’s going on with your boy Ellison. Maybe that will be a little more satisfying?”
Thaddeus and Cal Brewster were in the parking lot before Hartwell and Garrison made contact with Lowery. Ellison felt their presence and, of course, Cal made the first move. While his first action was a lunge, his second action was a loud thud onto the parking lot concrete, courtesy of a Louisville Slugger baseball bat to the side of the head.
Ellison threw the bat aside and said to Thaddeus, “Now that we have dispatched of the preliminaries, it’s time to get to that bare knuckle fight we were talking about a few weeks ago.”
Thaddeus knew he could take Ellison, so he reached into his right pocket, grabbed his brass knuckles, and threw them to the pavement. “With pleasure.”
Both men removed their suspenders from their shoulders and let the straps drop below their waists. Ellison cracked his knuckles and then picked his hands up the fight ready position and Thad did the same.
“I was boxing champ at my local club five years running,” Ellison said as the two men slowly circling each other.
Thad landed a hard left jab to the bridge of Ellison’s nose and then followed it up with a right hook to the body and a left hook to the side of his head, sending Ellison down to one knee.
“I don’t like to talk when I fight,” Thaddeus said.
Ellison rose to his feet and replied, “Then silence it will be,” as he wiped the trickling blood from his nose and corner of this mouth. He then tried to fight back with a strong combination, which barely grazed Thad’s ear. Thad was letting Ellison get closer to him so he could be in range to deliver the most potent of his blows, the overhand right.
Lowery’s protector then landed a left hook the Thad’s kidneys and followed with a right hand that landed flush on Thad’s jaw. The blow had the force of a baseball bat and would have knocked out just about everyone else on the planet except for rock-jawed Thaddeus, who then delivered a series of lightning fast one-two, one-two body shots to a shocked Ellison, while loading up for his knockout punch. Thad cocked his right arm and fist just beyond his shoulder and then initiated the punch that Ellison never saw. Just as Thad’s knuckles connected with Ellison’s jaw, Lawrence had beheaded Lowery, which ended his life as an immortal. Lowery’s 100th death also signified that every associated with him would also become mortal. So that meant that the man that Thaddeus had just knocked out was now a mortal.
Hartwell, Garrison and Lawrence made their way over to the parking lot and Thaddeus saw them coming.
“Did I knock him out before he was mortal?” Thad yelled.
“Did you hit him with that right cross?” a knowing Hartwell asked.
“Hell, yes!” Thad replied.
“Then that was definitely a knockout. I’ll never forget the first time he hit me with one of those…” Hartwell said as Thaddeus walked over and picked up a groggy Cal.
“The next thing I knew it was the next morning!” Hartwell exclaimed as the men walked away in laughter.
Speaking of the next morning…
Ellison sharpened the blade of his favorite sword all night and paced anxiously by the pool after recovering from being knocked out by Thaddeus. He waited for Lowery to complete the painful process of reawakening to mortality, and there was no mistake to what he had to do next. While Ellison thought that slicing Lowery’s mortal head off would end his 150-year reign of terror, the hidden truth was that the wheels of revenge were already in irreversible and lethal motion.