by Phil Wohl
First Daniel whisked past a tree and snapped a branch off so he could be the tributary between the wood and his son’s behind. The branch was actually a bulky tree limb, and Daniel used it like a huge, unrefined baseball bat to swat Max high in the air and toward the water.
Max regained enough of his composure to prompt a switch into a dolphin, but Daniel caught him with his bare hands before aquatic impact. The senior vampire then touched the back of Max’s dolphin head - just in the right place - facilitating a switch back into his human form.
“How?” Max wondered out loud.
“Next time you decide to challenge me, think again!,” Daniel calmly but forcefully said to his son as he dove deep into the ocean to put his son through the rinse cycle.
Twenty minutes later, Daniel walked back inside and was not
followed by his son. Max stayed outside facing the water for hours until the day turned unto the night. He cried for the first section of time, then was angry for a decent stretch, and then just became exhausted in the rapture
of understanding.
Hartwell and Daniel walked outside and the son said, “I got this.” “Yes, you do,” Hartwell replied as he walked back inside.
Daniel wasn’t sure what he was going to say when he approached Max, but had an idea that it better be short and sweet. He almost started talking until Max turned around. It was obvious that he had been crying, and not those tears that turned into ice cubes, as he was too young to turn salty water into a drink condiment.
Maxwell stood up and started to cry and Daniel spread his arms wide and hugged his son.
“I’m sorry, dad. I…” Maxwell sobbed.
“There’s nothing more important than respect, Maxwell. Especially with us,” meaning the family.
Maxwell nodded in acknowledgement as the two broke the hug and started walking, not gliding, back to the house.
“You’re fast,” Max said.
And after a laugh, he asked, “Do you think mom can take Aunt
Carla?”
“Aunt Carla,” Daniel thought. Maybe it was strange that Max called his cousin’s wife “Aunt” but that’s what she was.
“I wouldn’t want to fight her,” Daniel stated. Max gave a scared look like, “Me, neither.”
SIXTEEN
“You going back?” Andrew asked his wife.
“Wouldn’t you?” Carla countered. “I just wish we all could be closer. Like Kayla always wants.”
Drew was in disbelief, “She punched the kid in the face, twice!” “But she was going to kiss him,” Carla stated.
“Don’t remind me! I’m trying to forget about that!” Andrew exclaimed.
A dapper Cal walked into the kitchen and asked Carla, “You going back by yourself, or do you need backup?” He continued before she could answer, “Because if you need us, I’ll have to cancel our dinner reservation.”
So much for the backup…
“No, that’s okay. I think I need to handle this one by myself,” Carla replied.
Cal was already dressed and ready to go out. Sharon walked down the hallway and Cal met her mid-way.
“Ready to go?” she asked, kissing him and looking all nice with makeup and a new dress.
They walked toward the front door as Cal motioned to Drew with his pretend cell phone hands, “Call me if you need me,” and then he pumped his fist for Carla, “Go get ‘em, tiger!”
Being the accuser rather than the accusee carried a lot more steam for Nicole. She had been pacing for the floor for hours and had barely spoken a word to a soul. No one made the mistake of asking her if she was going back, because the answer was obvious from her call-out and subsequent surly demeanor.
The only person that noticed her leaving the house was Maxwell. He watched everything she did, except when she had ‘alone time’ with Daniel in their room. Grown-up time was definitely off limits and had a high probability to illicit nausea.
Max and Kayla were undergoing so many physical and mental changes that it was putting a definite strain on their spanking-new relationship.
The door to Kayla’s room was closed for the night after Carla kissed her goodnight at 9:00 p.m. About a half-hour later, she awoke in a pool of sweat, feeling that the balance of her world was askew.
“Mommy!” she yelled before emerging from her room. “Don’t panic,” a familiar voice said entering her thoughts. “What? Who said that?” she frantically replied.
“It’s me.”
Kayla calmed, “Maxwell?”
Before Max answered, he realized that only the people in is family called him by his given name, Maxwell.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“What are you doing in my head?” Kayla questioned.
“Trying to stop you from making a big mistake.”
“What mistake? Where is my mom?” Kayla asked, almost saying the uncool and child-like ‘mommy.’
“They went to meet each other in the park,” Max stated. Kayla knew her next move.
“Meet me there in five minutes.”
“I can be there in two,” Max replied.
“I need five,” Kayla countered, so she could get herself together before seeing him.
Maxwell knew he wasn’t supposed to leave the house after his bed time if he wasn’t accompanied by an adult - standard protocol for one year- olds - but he wasn’t going to let his mom be out there all alone.
The two near-tweens arrived at the park just as their moms were meeting.
“You have it all wrong,” a stationary Carla said to an advancing
Nicole, trying to reason with her.
The truth was that she was flirting with Daniel, even though she had no intention of taking it any further.
When she saw the deathly look in Nicole’s eyes, Carla panicked and blurted, “It was harmless!”
Of course, that only served to add a few more logs on the approaching inferno.
Nicole started charging, changing into a hippo as Carla barely had time to react before she was about to get trampled.
“Oh, hi Maxwell,” Kayla said as she held up her two hands and then slowly clenched her fists.
The two moms froze in their tracks only steps away from impact. “Cool!” Max exclaimed. “I didn’t know you could do that?”
They walked toward their mothers and Maxwell stepped closer to
Nicole and put his index finger on the back of her neck.
“Watch this,” he said as his mom changed from a hippo back into her human form.
“Wow! Where did you learn how to do that?” Karla asked.
Max flashed back to the butt-whipping his father gave him and then snapped out of the beat-down rewind long enough to respond.
“Ugh, it’s just something I picked up along the way.” Kayla was impressed, but had other ideas.
“I think you should put her back the way we found her. Don’t want them getting suspicious that we were here.”
“Oh yeah,” Max replied in a pleasing tone and then changed his mother back into a hippo.
Kayla lovingly looked at her mom and Max knew what she was thinking. They started walking back into the shadows when he said, “You have to let them fight.”
Kayla stopped and turned toward him.
“I don’t believe in violence, Maxwell, and neither should you.”
That was couple-speak, and the developing mind of a wunderkind instantly avoided such talk.
“You have to let them fight, Kayla.” “Why?” she protested.
Max was starting to understand the complexities of relationships. “Because they have to get it out of their systems. Because the battle
will never end if they have hate in their hearts.”
Max took a deep breath, as the truth finally caught up to him. “Because we will never be together…” he smiled, inferring to the two
of them, “the family, if you protect her now.” Kayla could not argue with such logic.
“I think we should go home then. T
hey will know we were here otherwise.”
They started walking out of the park, before breaking out into a speedy run, while their mothers were still frozen.
“Don’t you have to unfreeze them?” Max asked. “I’ll do it when we’re out of range,” Kayla replied.
They held hands while in motion and then released when they branched off to their respective houses. Kayla clenched her fists and then softly released her fingers into the air, exhaling to fully cleanse the act.
“It is done,” Kayla said to Max.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Maxwell said as he smiled.
“I’ll be sure to answer my head,” she replied in a playful tone.
Nicole and Carla had a history as protagonists. Being wives of two men so close, yet so far apart, definitely had its confusing moments.
But as long as Carla and Nicole stayed on their respective sides and didn’t cross the line, everything remained stable. That was, until, Nicole caught Carla flirting with her man. She would have ‘thrown down’ back at the diner if she had seen that first flirty glance.
Hartwell and Maggie knew it was only a matter of time before Nicole caught on. But while many hoped this day would never come, Maxwell
knew it was a necessary evil to have the mom’s battle it out, being that they were the driving forces within the families.
SEVENTEEN
Daniel had the ability to tune into the fight and show it to everyone in the house, but he was too nervous to watch. He went in to check on Maxwell just to take the edge of his anxiety.
Max tried the old ‘pillows stacked under the covers’ trick to make it look like his body, but Daniel quickly scanned with his see-through vision and detected only fluff. The newbie vampire tried to be all slick and slide into bed undetected. He didn’t sense his dad right away, because his powers of detection hadn’t fully formed.
“You know, I can see you under there,” Daniel said in a soft tone, as he stood quietly in the shadows of Max’s room.
Maxwell got so scared that he kicked the covers off. “Dad! I didn’t know you were there.”
Daniel glided in from the corner of the room.
“Where have you been, Maxwell? Running around with that Brewster girl?” he said in a tone bathed in negativity.
Max tried to stem the blood flow with a mild counter-attack. “Isn’t she your niece?”
Daniel wasn’t going for the slight-of-hand.
“Maxwell Thompson, are you testing my authority and disrespecting me again?”
Max thought back again to the last time his dad taught him a lesson, and there was no joy in reliving that beat-down again.
“Hell’s no,” Max said, not even realizing what had come out of his mouth until it floated through the air and permeated Daniel’s ears.
“What did you just say?” “Sorry. I mean, no, dad.”
Daniel stayed on the offensive, “No, you didn’t disrespect me, or no, you didn’t go out behind my back after curfew?”
Maxwell wasn’t sure at first how to answer such a double-pointed question.
“No disrespect. I was out trying to help mom.”
Daniel transformed from stern parent into interested spectator as he sat on Max’s bed.
“How was she doing?” he asked.
“We left before it all started. Kayla wanted to protect her mom, but I told her that it would be best for them to have it out. Hippo-mom was getting ready to flatten her anyway.”
“What was Carla wearing?” Daniel’s errant thought crept out, but then he quickly re-centered. “I mean, it’s about time she took down that Carla.”
As Kayla unfroze the combatants, Nicole the hippo plowed straight through a stunned Carla, who was expecting a much smaller foe.
It took a few moments for Carla to shake off the cob-webs and then she transformed into a grizzly bear, fully expecting another head-on collision. Nicole obliged her with a telegraphed request, and started charging in her hippo skin.
Carla wasn’t thinking clearly, because even as a powerful grizzly she was still at a sizable disadvantage to the four-ton hippopotamus. Nicole the hippo smirked as she plowed through Carla, this time sending her furry
body hurtling half-way across the 200-yard field.
The injured bear knew she had crossed the line by flirting with Daniel, but it was so difficult to navigate the strange dynamic between the families. The Thompson’s and Brewster’s were enemies by duty, but were linked by blood in a strange association between vampires and hunters.
The hunter kept getting up even though she knew that there wasn’t a prayer she would emerge victorious. The pit bull versus wolf matchup was probably the most even showdown of the night, at least on paper. That was before Nicole jumped over a snarling Carla as a nimble cat and then changed into an Orca killer whale, trapping the struggling dog. Carla inched out enough to change into a hawk, but the relief of freedom was soon squelched by an airborne bottleneck dolphin making a brilliant diving, open-mouth catch.
Nicole initially thought she would chomp on the beaten carcass and consumer her foe, but she honestly preferred sea food over wild game. Digesting the hawk and then passing it would have added more salt to an already angry wound. So Nicole changed back into her human form and carried the limp hawk back to the Brewster’s house and placed it gently on the welcome mat under the back door.
Andrew had been up all night pacing the floors, waiting for his wife to come home. It was a strange dynamic for Drew not to be front-and-center fighting the battle, instead having to wait anxiously at home for the result.
He moved to the back window when he sensed activity, and Nicole looked at him and he nodded and then she nodded back. Cal was also
restless as he changed into a pit bull mid-way through the kitchen and jumped on the counter, lurking dangerously in the shadows of the night.
Cal growled and was ready to pounce, until a calm but determined Drew stuck out his firm hand and said, “Down boy. Don’t worry, we will get our chance soon,” as Cal transformed back into his human form and stood proudly next to his young charge as Nicole walked away.
EIGHTEEN
The process to fuse the families would be a lot more complicated than the brains of Kayla and Maxwell could conceive. While they could upload the personality and physical characteristic profiles onto their brain drives, there was no way they could account for the deep-rooted, warehouse of animosity that had developed over the years.
It all got going the night after Nicole dropped Kayla’s limp hawk body on the Brewster’s back porch. Drew picked up his wife and carried her into the house and into their bedroom. Cal followed closely and touched his thumb to the back of the hawk’s neck, and it changed back into Carla’ human form.
“Whoa!” Andrew exclaimed. “I’ve never seen that one before.”
He then tried to replicate the move, and before Cal could say “Wait!” Carla turned into a grizzly bear and the bed collapsed.
Drew glared at Cal, “You might want to try that outside from now on.” Drew nodded his head, that he received the message loud and clear. “I’m gonna’ tell grandpa’ to contact Garrison and arrange a battle for
tomorrow night. We can’t let this go on.”
Cal finished talking and then stuck out his right fist, and Andrew pounded his right fist to his uncle’s.
“Let’s go.”
The next night the teams assembled at the park at midnight, just about the time that everyone in the town was sleeping. Kayla and Max had been talking all day about the impending battle.
“I don’t like all of the fighting!” she exclaimed. “I thought you said that it would be over once our moms fought last night?”
“I’m sorry, Kayla, but this is going to take more time than I thought.” Kayla was obviously on the cusp of entering her emotional years. “Well, I’m not going to listen to you anymore and leave my mother
unprotected.”
Max’s eyebrows rose as this was th
e first time that she had ever talked about her powers of protection.
He hugged her and said, “Everything’s going to be all right, Kay,” reassuring her and simultaneously trying to use his strategic powers to read her mind.
Kayla was thinking in bubbles and these protective orbs were surrounding her parents and Grandpa’ Thaddeus.
“I’ll talk to you later,” Max said trying to conceal his joy at discovering the hunters’ pattern.
He walked the opposite side of the field to complete the partiality illusion. Once the teams were in place, Max gave instructions to his team.
“She’s protecting her parents and Grandpa’ Thaddeus. I repeat parental units and first generation hunter.”
“So, what does that mean?” Daniel questioned his son as he picked up his hands in confusion and looked at Hartwell, who was equally as dumbstruck.
Maxwell processed the question and blurted, “Go after the other hunters!” as the opposition was closing in.
It was a haphazard start to the start of months of battles that would take on a chippy, renewably-angry tone.
Knowledge of the protected one’s did little to further the vampire’s counter-attack. The hunters did away with Nicole first as payback from the previous night. Cal and Drew combined to have a ‘meeting of the swords’ at Nicole’s neck, propelling her spinning head to the ground like a blonde bowling ball.