by Tate Jackson
“I hope so.”
***
A few minutes later, Potter was back with the twins.
“We didn’t do anything,” Tiarnán said to Beck when they got to the porch.
“I know you didn’t. That’s not why you’re here.”
They stared at her curiously.
“How would you two like to stay here with us?”
“Really?” Seanán asked. Tiarnán inquired, “We can do that?”
“Yes, you can do that, but you have to follow the rules: No fighting, and if you break anything…,” she was saying.
“Then we have to move out,” Tiarnán said, cutting her off. “What? No, you won’t have to move out. I was going to say, if you break anything, then you have to fix it. You’ll be living here with me and Richard like a family. We would never make you move out.”
“So, you would be like our parents?” Seanán asked. Both he and Tiarnán were smiling.
“Yes, but like I said, there are rules; no fighting, especially in the house…no breaking anything.”
“No touching the car,” Richard said.
“Keep your room clean, no leaving the property without asking first and telling us where you’re going.”
“No touching the car,” Richard said again. “You will be home for dinner at 6:00 p.m. everyday, and be in bed by midnight every night.”
“And under no circumstances are you ever to touch the car,” Richard stated firmly.
“Do you think you can follow these rules?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they said together. “If you break the rules, we will ground you and start taking your stuff away until you can act right.”
Seanán snickered. “That won’t take long. We don’t have any stuff.”
“You do now,” she said. “Come on, and I’ll show you your room.”
“We have our own room?” they asked, again in unison.
“Didn’t you have your own room at your house?” Potter answered before they could. “No. They shared a big room with Declán, Keith, and Liam.”
“Well, you’ll have your own room here,” Beck stated, opening their bedroom door.
Together, they said, “WOW!” and Beck looked at Potter.
“They do that a lot. It must be the twin thing,” he said about them speaking at the same time.
They stared around the room with excitement. The room ran the length of the back of the house, with one set of furniture on either end of the room. The chairs were in the middle of the room facing the T.V. on the wall.
“This is our stuff?” Tiarnán asked in disbelief.“It is, so take care of it,” she told them. “These are yours, too.” She handed them each a laptop. “You will study for two hours a day. I don’t care what you study, as long as it’s educational.”
They set their laptops in the chairs and hugged her.
“Thanks, Beck,” they said in tandem.
“You’re welcome,” she smiled, hugging them back.
Richard had been following and watching, he’d disappeared for a few moments and had just walked back into the room.
“These are yours too,” he said, and handed each of them the puppies. “Cool! Dogs!” they said as they took the puppies. Richard told them firmly, “You have to clean up after them and take care of them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, you have to name them,” Beck reminded them. “We get to name them?” Tiarnán asked, again stunned. “Of course you do. They’re your dogs.”
“Awesome!” they replied.
She led Richard and Potter out of the room and closed the door. They’d walked back to the porch before Potter asked Beck, “You do know that these two boys are exceptionally deadly hunters, don’t you?”
“They have, on their own, killed half of the vampyres that have come our way,” Richard said
“Really?”
“They took it upon themselves to learn Aikido, Bando Thaing, Chanbara, Gatka, Jeet Kune Do, Judo, Karate, Kendo, and Muay Thai,” Potter explained.
“Jeet Kune Do?”
Potter smiled. “They love Bruce Lee.”
“Most of those martial art forms are weapons-based.”
“Yes, and they have the weapons, all of them made of silver,” Potter told her. “They are amazingly lethal. They could take on any vampyre or hunter here, and kill them with little to no effort at all.”
“Can they beat you?”
“Me? Oh, hell no, or Richard, but any of the others wouldn’t be a problem for them.”
“Speaking of fighting, why did Gunner stay on the ground so long yesterday?”
“I pulled his hip out of its socket,” Richard said, pulling her down into his lap in the rocking chair he was sitting in.
“So?” she asked.
“Our bones heal in a second or two, but if you pull one of our joints out of socket it’s excruciating until you pop it back in. As long as I had him in the hip lock, there was no way for him to drive it back into place.”
“Sounds painful.”
“Popping it back into place is just as painful. That’s what took him so long to get up,” Potter explained.
She looked at Richard. “I saw you beat the crap out of Potter. You weren’t fighting to the best of your ability with Gunner.”
“That’s okay. Don’t worry about my ego,” Potter mumbled. Richard told her, “I was supposed to fight him. That doesn’t mean I had to make him look bad. I actually considered losing.”
“What changed your mind?”
“You were watching.”
“I can’t believe you were worried that he would lose,” Potter laughed. She slapped Richard lightly on the knee. “I can’t believe he told me to hush.”
“My favorite part was when he told Harley to take you away. Did you see the look on Harley’s face when you dared him to touch you? I’ve got to start carrying a camera,” Potter laughed again.
Richard looked at Beck. “I can’t believe that you started a fist fight.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“I’m not. I don’t have any tolerance for a man that would hit a woman like that,” Richard said. “In some situations, it can’t be avoided. I have had to kill female vampyres before, but I would never just hit a woman like he did.”
“I know. You’re such a gentleman.”
“Now, I haven’t eaten all day. What’s for dinner?”
“Potter, what has he eaten today?”
“Burger King and Subway,” Potter answered without hesitation. Richard kicked him, “Traitor!”
***
“Where’s the back porch?” Leso asked when he returned home a few days later.
“I had to tear it down to build a new room.”
“Why did we need a new room?” he asked, curious. “For our children.”
“Excuse me?” Leso sputtered ‘Your what?”
Richard caught Leso up on everything that had happened while he was away.
“Let me get this straight. When I left, Beck was human, and you were a vampyre. I come back six days later and you’re both hunters, Jonathon and Gabryel are dead, and you have children? I don’t believe it!”
“Believe it. It’s all true.”
“You know those boys are going to tear the house down.”Richard laughed. “That’s what I told Beck, but they’ve been here for three days and haven’t broken a single thing yet.”
“It’s a miracle,” Leso said. “Where are Seanán and Tiarnán anyway?”
“Beck and Bev took them to buy shoes.”
“Damn! I wanted to see Bev.”
“They should be back soon.”
“Did they take any guards with them?” Leso asked, sounding worried. “Yeah…They took Tiarnán and Seanán. They are hunters, remember?”
“Right, I knew that,” Leso said. “You’ve got me thinking of them as kids.”
“They are kids. They’re just not like other kids.”
“That’s an understatement,” Leso commented dryly. “She’s go
ing to have them spoiled. You should see their room.”
“Did she buy them that trampoline?”
“Yes, I thought it was a waste, but the boys love it,” Richard said, watching the car pull back into the driveway.
Bev jumped out of the car before it had completely stopped. “Leso,” she screamed, running and jumping on him.
“I missed you so much,” Leso said, kissing her and carrying her into the house.
Beck was yelling hen she opened the car door. “I don’t care why you did it! Don’t you ever do anything like that again!”
She marched up onto the porch with the boys trudging along behind her. “What happened?” Richard asked. “Go ahead, Tiarnán. Tell him what you did.”
“We went shopping for shoes.”
“He knows we went shopping for shoes. Tell him what happened after we left the shoe store,” she snapped.
“We were getting in the car, when this dickweed whistled at Beck,” Tiarnán said.
“And?” Beck prompted impatiently. Tiarnán looked down at his feet and said nothing.
“So, Tiarnán picked the man up and tossed him over two cars!” she finished for him.
“Good boy!” Richard said proudly. “That’s not helping, Richard! That man might have really been hurt. I wouldn’t know though, because we had to leave! How would I have explained that if someone had called the police?”
“I don’t know, but I bet that man won’t be whistling at anybody else,” Richard said.
“Yes, that’s such a good lesson for them to learn! Tiarnán, go to your room. I don’t want to see you again until dinner. And no T.V. or video games for three days!” she yelled after him. Directing her attention to Richard, she fumed, “What is wrong with you? You’re supposed to back me up.”
“But I don’t agree with you.”
“How can you possibly not agree with me? He threw a man over two cars!”
“Look at it from Tiarnán’s point of view. A strange man in a parking lot made a pass at you. If I had been there, I would have done the same thing. Besides, compared to what Tiarnán was capable of doing to that man, what he actually did was pretty mild.”
“That still doesn’t make what he did alright.”
“Maybe not, but you have to keep in mind that they’re not used to interacting with humans. You have to give them a chance to get used to it.”
“How many people do you think they’ll need to chuck over shit before they adjust?” she asked sarcastically.
“You know what I mean. You just have to give them time.”
“I’ll try.”
“Maybe you just shouldn’t take them out in public for a while,” he suggested.
“I can’t do that. I promised I would take them to Kentucky Kingdom tomorrow.”
“You did what?!”
“They’ve never been to an amusement park before.”
“Are you crazy?! You can’t take them there!” he said, shocked. “Why not?”
“Do you have any idea what those boys could do to one of those rides?”
“Only if they get scared, and I don’t think an amusement park ride is capable of freaking them out, do you?”
“No, probably not, but still, they’ll be surrounded by humans.”
“I’ll talk to them before we leave in the morning and give them some ground rules. They’ll do fine,” she said as she headed toward the house. “I’m going to go wash up and make dinner.”
Richard sat thinking for a few moments. She had to be nuts to take them to a place like that! Now he would have to spend the next day making sure that those two, barely controllable, violent, vampyre hunting, twin teenagers acted human. Wonderful!
***
Leso, Bev, Potter, and Jenny went with them to the park the next day.
“Remember what I said: No tearing up the rides; no jumping in front of people in the lines; don’t do anything that humans can’t do; and under no circumstances are you to hit or throw anyone,” she warned before they got out of the car.
“Yes, ma’am,” they said. She could feel their excitement and had to smile.
Richard added, “And you are to stay with us at all times.”
“Yes sir.”
They got out of the car and walked to the entrance gates to join the others. The kids had a blast. They rode all of the rides at least twice. They played all of the games, winning almost every game, and giving their prizes to smaller kids. They acted like such kids themselves that it was hard for her to believe that they were actually over two hundred years old.
They ate food that they’d never had before, but their favorite was cotton candy.
Beck worried aloud, “They’re eating way too much junk.”
“It doesn’t really matter what they eat. We don’t really need the nutrition. We eat for the taste and to not feel hungry,” Potter said. “They could eat nothing but bags of sugar every day, and it wouldn’t make a difference.”
“Still, I would prefer that they don’t eat so much junk.” Bev laughed. “You sound like their mom.”
“I am their mom now.”
She didn’t know that the boys could hear her from where they were, but they both looked at her and smiled.
***
It had been a good day. They didn’t have a single problem until they stopped at a gas station on the way home that night. Potter, Jenny, Leso, and Bev had come in a separate car and hadn’t needed to stop. Richard had gone in to pay for the gas, and Seanán had gotten out to pump.
Beck was talking to Tiarnán and hadn’t noticed the truck that had pulled up on the other side of the pump until she heard a man’s voice say, “What are you looking at, you little punk?”
Seanán did not respond to the man.
“I’m talking to you, boy,” the man said menacingly.
“No, don’t,” Beck told Tiarnán when he made a move to get out of the car.
She was about to get out of the car herself when she saw Richard coming out of the store.
“I wasn’t looking at you,” Seanán said.
The man came between the pumps, grabbed Seanán by his shirt, and slammed him against the car. She didn’t have to feel this man’s emotions to know that he was mean and liked to bully people that he thought he could intimidate.
“Don’t touch me, sir,” Seanán told the man as respectfully as possible.
She had to bite back a smile. Bless his heart. He was trying so hard to be polite and not break the rules.
“What are you going to do about it, kid?” the man asked, slamming him against the car again.
“Get your goddamned hands off of my son!” Richard roared.
“You gonna save him?” the man sneered.
“Actually, I was trying to save you.”
The man just laughed, still holding on to Seanán.
He was as tall as Richard, and built like a lumberjack. He must have assumed that Richard would back down, as she was sure most people did.
“I’m not going to tell you again,” Richard warned.
The man slammed Seanán against the car a third time.
“This is going to hurt like hell,” Richard told the man before he kicked him about twenty feet across the deserted parking lot.
The man screamed when he hit the ground, and Richard went after him.
“No, please don’t,” the man begged.
“Oh, now you don’t want to fight? Too late. This is why you should never put your hands on another man’s child. You never really know what might happen to you.”
She watched as Richard broke the man’s arms and legs. He came back and hung up the gas nozzle. He and Seanán got back in the car, and they drove out of the parking lot.
“Now do you see why we don’t mingle with humans?” Richard asked her as they pulled back onto the interstate. “I’m starting to.”
“Most humans tend to keep their distance from us, but something about us seems to provoke some humans. We may go years without having a problem, and then we ru
n into a human like that. A human who thinks they can do whatever they want to people and get away with it. Then they run into someone like us, and they get hurt.”
“If you were human that man would have beaten your son in front of you.”
“He would have tried. Even human, do you think that man would have been much of a challenge for me?”
“My point is this. That man deserved what you did to him.” The twins didn’t speak the rest of the way home. When they got out of the car, they went straight into the house and to their room.
“They’re mad at me,” Richard told Beck later when they had retired to their own room.
“No, they’re shocked that you stood up for Seanán like you did,” she explained.
Surprised, he asked, “Why?”
“I don’t think they thought you liked them very much.”
“I didn’t think I did either until I saw that man slam Seanán against the car. I know Seanán could have taken care of it very easily, but it made me mad anyway. What I really wanted to do was tear that man’s head off for touching him.”
“And you were so sexy taking up for your kid like you did.”
“How sexy?”
“Come here, and I’ll show you.”
***
Beck and they boys were in the front yard the next morning with Potter, Damon, Jeff, and Jenny. The boys were jumping on the trampoline and telling everyone what had happened the night before. Richard had just walked out of the house when Seanán got to the part of the story where the man had grabbed him.
“Pop told him to take his hands off me. When he didn’t let me go, Pop kicked him across the parking lot. It was totally awesome!” Seanán said, doing a back-flip off the trampoline.
Richard had frozen to the porch. She walked over to see what was wrong with him.
“What’s up?”
He turned around and walked back into the house. She followed him into the kitchen, where he took a set of keys off the wall.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“They called me Pop.”
“Yes…I noticed that.”
“I’ve got to go,” he said turning to leave. “You’re leaving because they’re calling you Pop? I can tell them not to do that if you don’t want them to.”