by Phil Wohl
Daniel immediately went after Cal and Hartwell left Andrew unchecked because he knew he couldn’t be killed. The hunters took advantage of the opening as Sharon and Emily went after Belinda.
The ten seconds of fighting turned to super slo-motion as Daniel flipped in the air and was met with then butt-end of his father’s sword. The vampire absorbed the blow and used the long nail on his right index finger to carve a trail down Cal’s back, sending him screaming in pain.
Cal roared so loud that the volume intensified when he changed into an extremely angry grizzly bear. Daniel was feeling pretty good about the move but his arrogance didn’t precluded him from following up with a finishing blow. Cal moved behind Daniel as his sightline was full with his sister and wife - his girls - beheading an over-matched Belinda.
Hartwell was just about to ‘end’ Sharon with a simple swing of his hand, but he pulled up once the act was completed on Belinda, which signaled an end to the day’s battle.
Cal chose to ignore the formalities and moved closer to Daniel, while keeping the hated Hartwell in his sight. He literally got Daniel in a massive bear hug, as Hartwell saw the act and yelled, “NO!” while gliding over with sonic speed.
The grizzly bear smiled as Hartwell drew dangerously closer. The other surviving combatants were focused on the action, as they were amazed at was taking place.
Just as Hartwell was within striking distance, Cal popped his son’s head off like he was taking the top off a pineapple. His smiling grizzly face then thudded to the ground after Hartwell gained instant vengeance for the killing of his son. He then looked back at Thaddeus, who was standing near Garrison.
“That was flat-out wrong! He’s going to pay for that!”
Thad turned to Gary as Hartwell walked away and said, “I thought he just did?”
NINETEEN
The fighting escalated to a nasty and furious level after the night that Cal purposely crossed the line. If you asked Cal why he did it, he probably would have said, “Because I felt like it!”
But the real reason he did it was over jealousy of Hartwell’s relationship with Daniel, his son. He didn’t want to talk about it, either.
“What is bothering you?” Sharon asked Cal a few hours before the next battle.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he gruffly replied to his wife.
Sharon wasn’t in the mood to be placated with passive-aggressive thoughts.
“You don’t want to talk about it, or you don’t know what’s bothering you?”
Cal was all set for a quick dismissive retort, but he was surprisingly caught in his own web of indecision.
“I don’t know,” he said as he planted his head in his left hand. Sharon came closer, stroking his hair with the long fingers. Cal, feeling the weight of his parental burden, was looking for comfort in her magical fingertips.
Daniel’s death the night before stirred up more than Cal’s guilt, it also gave the illusion of loosening Hartwell’s grasp on sole male parental focus. Before the giant bear hug, there was never any talk about Daniel’s life with Cal before he disappeared. His mother Belinda wasn’t going to bring it up,
because in doing so it would have only brought up difficult memories for both of them.
Daniel only had revenge on his mind after being reborn that morning. He was lying in bed when his head, which was close to his shoulders,
fused back together and he was whole once again.
Hartwell was sitting on the floor across from the bed when Daniel re- awakened.
“What happened?” Daniel said with a full serving of confusion. “Cal popped your head off with his scary grizzly paws…” Hartwell
sarcastically replied, as he mocked Cal's action. “Don’t worry, it gets easier.”
Daniel was even more confused. “What gets easier?”
“Dying,” Hartwell replied. Daniel stood up.
Hartwell put his arm around his son as they slowly glided out of the room.
“Dying gets easier?” “Yes.”
They ran into Nicole in the hallway as she jumped to hug and kiss her husband.
“I have to go change the sheets.”
“Already did it,” the fastidious vampire interjected. Daniel shook his head in disbelief.
“When did you do that?”
“Somewhere in between the time your head fused into your neck and when you sat up.”
Daniel and Nicole couldn’t believe Hartwell’s level of efficiency. “What? Hartwell exclaimed. “There were a few spots of blood on the
pillow case,” Hartwell said, defending himself.
Daniel was still stumped on the ease of dying…
“So, getting back to this dying thing. How exactly does it get easier? That, back there,” he turned and pointed toward his room, “wasn’t easy.”
Hartwell pondered the question and subsequent statement. “Well, relatively easier.”
He looked at Nicole for some sort of confirmation.
“Yeah, relatively easier,” she concurred, trying to act like one of the boys for a change.
Daniel looked at both of them and stated, “I’ll take your word for it.”
Hartwell tried not to bring up Cal before the next fight. It was obvious to everyone in the house by seeing Hartwell’s focus, which seemed more intense than usual, that he would be going at Cal once the fighting resumed.
Hartwell always watched Daniel to make sure he was all right. But, from that point on he would have one eye on Daniel, one eye on his opponent and another eye on his nemesis Calvin Brewster.
The two sides didn’t even have time to line up and make their customary charge at each other. Hartwell was tired of observing protocol if the other side was going to ignore it entirely.
He zipped across the field and beheaded a basically defenseless Cal with one swipe of his mighty hand. The same series of events went on for a week until the rest of his team decided not to show up.
Once Hartwell killed Cal, he stood motionless with his arms extended as the hunters made quick work of him. His team picked him up and brought him home the first six days, but left him in the field by himself on the seventh, trying to not-so-subtly let him know that the one-man crusade would have to come to an end.
When the senior vampire awoke in the dewy grass of the field, instead of on his bed next to his wife, the reality of the situation had taken
its desired hold. While he was no less angry at Cal and the hunters, he would have to ‘play nice’ with his family and go to war with them from now on.
TWENTY
Months passed and the hunters continued to frustrate the vampire/protectors with Kayla’s protectionism. They were close a few times to cracking to code but always seemed to be one death short of breaking loose.
Kayla and Maxwell were now virtual teenagers and had been dating for about five months, which in their first two years translated into about four years in their world.
Maxwell constantly skirted the line with his inside informational abuse of the trusting Kayla. His family was hurting and their only string of
victories occurred when both kids were stricken with strep throat for a week. The protective shields were down, making it prime season for the vampires to feast on the hunters.
The victories were tainted, but provided a brief burst of confidence for
Daniel and the crew. But it also signaled that their only victories came
without the assistance of Maxwell, and Daniel was not about to let that trend continue. He watched hour after hour of ‘game’ film, breaking down the key moves and then he stumbled upon what he thought might open the elusive door.
He went back to one of the first battles that Kayla and Max participated in. While his focus had always been on the fighting, because of its hypnotic effect, he moved the screen with his mind by accident as a
pesky mosquito got near him. Daniel could not resist the little blood-sucker and when he returned to the video, it was centered on his niece
, Kayla Brewster.
She seemed disturbed after a few of her family members were lost in the battle. Daniel could do just about everything but read Kayla’s mind, when she waved her arms back and forth to try to gain the attention of her parents and grandfather.
Daniel rewound the action and focused on the series of events and how they might be related. When Hartwell put an end to Sharon, Daniel waited for the moment when she expired to rotate the screen to a group of potential reactors, including Carla, Andrew and Thaddeus.
The only problem was that Daniel wasn’t sure what he was looking for, aside from a general lack of protectiveness. He spent the better part of
an hour honing in on each potential, and his search ended with Andrew
Brewster, at least initially.
When Aaron perished by the hand of Daniel, the watching vampire smiled and then shifted his focus to Carla. His smile grew wider, not as seeing Carla - because that brief flirtation had to stop - but at the sight of the key to halting the family’s frustrations for all of those months.
Hartwell glided into the room and saw that Daniel was viewing old
‘game films.’
“You at it again?” It’s a beautiful day, you should…”
Hartwell was going to say “be outside playing with your son,” but he saw the ‘cat eating the bird’ grin on Daniel’s face.
Grandpa’ Hartwell immediately thought of Max’s extended losing streak and how happy the now-teen would be to finally take a spin in victory lane.
The precise timing to actually pull off the victory did not come together that night, or for a few more moons after that. Knowing was one thing, executing with pinpoint precision was another. The early losses after scoring the accurate intel, were somehow easier to take than the confusing and frustrating setbacks of the earlier days.
“We were so close tonight!” an excited Daniel said to his family the morning after they were a hair away from victory, only to have Andrew Brewster decapitate him.
“And you’re right,” Daniel said to Hartwell and Nicole, “it is getting easier.”
It took a few seconds for his words about dying to make sense. Daniel then added, “Only because we have a chance to win.”
Later that day, Garrison and Hartwell got together with Daniel and
Agent Blake on the back porch facing the ocean.
Blake spent his life either in water or close by, so he extended a simple observation.
“If water is safety, then why have we gone away from it?” Daniel was too inexperienced to fully understand the question. “What do you mean, we’re sitting right in front of it?”
The question hit both Hartwell and his life-long protector Garrison at the gut level. Blake looked at the elder-statesmen and they knowingly- smiled. He then turned back to Daniel and asked, “Why is every battle either in the park or at the high school football field?”
Daniel was quick, probably foolishly quick, to respond. “Because that is…”
Then the truth stormed his brain with the force of a hurricane. “Oh!” he simply exclaimed as the other men smiled in hope.
“We’ve all been thinking about other things than the battle since the kids were born,” Hartwell said. “Gentlemen, I think it’s time we bring that fight back to our turf.”
The hunters were beginning to think they were invincible, and with invincibility invariably comes complacency. Kayla’s actual impact on the battles was dwindling with each successive fight. Her protective legacy was eroding to the point that she would eventually have no other recourse but to hope for peace.
“Let’s meet at the beach after the battle tonight,” Daniel said to Kayla in their daydreams, which was more along the lines of early-evening dreams.
“My family doesn’t go to the beach,” she bluntly replied. “What's the matter can't swim?” Max unwittingly quipped.
“I don’t think so,” she stated, unsure of what the actual truth was. “Have you ever been in the water?” Max simply asked.
Kayla’s silence spoke volumes. “Kay?” Max followed up.
“My family won’t even let me take a bath.”
Maxwell processed the information and then stated, “Well, we'll have to do something about that.”
Joe Winters wondered if this was an end to the battle, or would the next generation carry the fight to a higher plane?