Blood Shadow: Book of Ariel Read online

some light on why he would come to our house?”

  The lively banter in the room subsided as all of the attention of the house had been funneled to the breakfast bar and why a recent enemy was now in their midst?

  Maggie placed a steaming cup of hot tea in front of Ellison and asked, “Do you want any honey or lemon?”

  Cal had seen enough of the overbearingly-accommodative talk, but it would his father Thaddeus that stepped up and put an end to it.

  “No disrespect to you Maggie, but I would have knocked the tea on the floor if you hadn’t such served it to him.”

  Even though Maggie was a vampire and could probably kick Thaddeus’s butt, she took a few steps back and let the master hunter proceed with his investigation.

  Thaddeus stepped around the breakfast bar so he could be face-to-face with Ellison and also be seen by everyone in the room.

  “So, why would you show your face around here today, mate?” he asked, using language that harkened back to his brief stint in the navy.

  Ellison was playing it for all he was worth, as he took a sip of the tea and then nodded toward Maggie that it was enjoyable. He put the tea down and started talking.

  “As we all know, it was a long night and was an even longer morning. Once I awoke from my extended slumber, courtesy of my fellow protector…”

  “The name is Thaddeus,” Brewster sneered.

  “Thaddeus,” Ellison said as he extended his hand as a gentleman in greeting. And when Thaddeus rebuffed the handshake, Ellison simply continued, “Perhaps we’ll get to that later. I then walked toward the pool area, where Mr. Lowery had been lounging ever since we entered this town. He wasn’t in his usual lounge chair because someone had killed him for the 100th time.”

  “Do you know who that someone was?” Thaddeus asked, trying to lead him into the juicier section of the information.

  Ellison thought it was rude to talk while his back was to everyone in the room, so he took another sip of his tea and then asked, “Is it all right if I stand up and address the others?” fearing that if he disrespected the hunters there would be a fist in his face before he could react.

  Thaddeus was loathe to agree to anything Ellison, but he complied with the request because he didn’t want to seem overly unreasonable and lacking grace.

  “Thank you,” Ellison said as he paced to the end of the breakfast bar and then faced everyone before continuing.

  “I have a real good idea that it wasn’t any of you.” He then looked at Hartwell and stated, “Even you, Mr. Hartwell, although you had every reason to put an end to Lowery.”

  Hartwell digressed, “But without Lowery none of this would have been possible,” he said as he looked around the room at his large family.

  Ellison let the warm moment fill the room before he continued, “So, you knew about the list of all of the people Lowery sired, and how he started at the top and eliminated each person. The first 50 were relatively routine, being that we had buried all of the hunters in the spots in the bottom of the ocean and around the world.”

  He looked at Hartwell in a “Bet you never tried that one…” glance.

  Cal stepped forward and said, “Atlantic Ocean, 15 years.”

  “How did you get out?” Ellison asked.

  “The same way your boy Lawrence got out, “Thad replied as he looked over to the aquatics team who had changed into their alter-egos of dolphin, shark, whale, mermaid, merman, and Belinda. They waved with either their fins, tails or, in Belinda’s case, her long fingernails.

  “Impressive. Nice grouping.” Ellison said.

  “So, you knew that Lawrence got out?” Thad asked.

  Ellison turned to Garrison and asked, “Would you know if he got out?” motioning to Thaddeus.

  Gary smiled, “I am aware of where he is at all times.”

  Thad smiled back but he was a bit creeped out in a stalkish kind of way.

  “Why didn’t you tell Lowery?” Hartwell questioned.

  “I couldn’t bear to let this go on anymore!” Ellison said as he flung his arms in the air in frustration. “Although I had the prospect of eternal life, it was no life if I had to live like that! I hadn’t done my job of protecting in 25 years! I felt more like a bartender making frozen drinks… did you hear that he liked to sing really bad karaoke?”

  Hartwell had seen enough from a man that appeared to be broken, “Daniel and Drew, can you take him to the chi room for some realignment.”

  Even though Ellison was on the brink of a nervous breakdown, he still managed to anticipate Hartwell’s next question. He turned around to face the group with Daniel and Andrew on either side of him and stated, “I was up all night waiting for him to wake up. The sun was coming up, and I knew that all of the hunters and protectors in the field would awaken and instinctively head back to the Inn before heading out. I must have sharpened the blade of my seldom-used sword for hours in anticipation of that moment when the sun ascended over the top of the building and infused Lowery with life again.” He looked around the room and then said, “I couldn’t take the chance that someone somehow would sire him and this whole thing would start anew, so I skillfully separated his head from his body and felt real peace for the first time in a long time.”

  TWO

  A peaceful existence was not the way you would characterize Claire Vinson’s life. She was separated from her parents as a baby and only knew her grandmother as her caretaker the first 18 years of her life. She was told of a mother who died of pneumonia and a father that had a rare blood disease, but only one of those stories had a shred of truth to it.

  Claire awoke on the early morning hours of her 18th birthday in a cold sweat. She had been dreaming all night about creatures of which she had never seen or thought of before, and jumped out of bed just when the moon was still high in the sky. She then had a vision about where her next step should be, and quickly took a shower and was out the door.

  Brenda Vinson knew that her granddaughter’s 18th birthday would bring with it a lot of changes, the biggest of which would be her search for her heritage beginning and ending with her father and mother. So she let her go without any warning or explanation of what was to come. Eighteen years of nurturing the child ending in the blink of an eye, but the elder Vinson knew that in order for Clair to return one day, she would have to let her go to fulfill her destiny.

  Claire was on the trail all night, crossing the border of Pennsylvania and entering into New York as she headed southeast toward the north shore of Long Island. While she had no idea why she was heading in this direction, there was absolutely no question in her mind that she had to be there. She moved with speed that she had never known before. Being a life-long asthmatic, she was usually limited in her physical activities and her puffer was never more than arms-length away, even when she was in the shower.

  She entered the water and swam until she flashed on an abandoned warehouse, which flickered back and forth from its dilapidated form into a luxury home. Claire ascended out of the water after the sun came up and hid behind a row of bushes as a man knocked on the abandoned warehouse door, which opened briefly and then shut in his face before it reopened and he walked inside. Her clothes were tattered and dirty and she wore no shoes, but there wasn’t a scratch, bruise or cut on her entire body.

  Claire then located her puffer in her pocket and realized how obsolete the device now was. She stood up and walked around the warehouse, looking for a receptacle to through the device into, and she no longer feared being seen. Samuel had no interest in hearing the adults speak, so he walked outside and was testing out a few new facades. First he changed into a Volkswagen Beetle convertible, then a bald eagle. He soared through the air and then landed on the grand in front of Claire, as she threw the puffer in the air and it settled into the bottom of a garbage can. Samuel analyzed the object during its air flight and the changed into a five-foot puffer.

  “What?” Clair simply said in a
stonishment.

  Samuel was equally as astonished as he was extracted from his safe little word by the sound of another being. He quickly changed back into his human form and was instantly captivated by 5’10” beauty who also tossed her thick glasses into the garbage because they were no longer of us to her.

  He would have changed into her form but he had the feeling that this wasn’t the time for experimentation. Samuel was familiar with the female form and its differences from his human male form, but he had never felt all warm and fuzzy like this before.

  With Ellison cycled through the main room to begin his detox period, many of the remaining inhabitants of Hartwell house were talking about his arrival and the apparent end of Lowery. But all of that chatter was stopped by the sight of Adonis-looking, 6’4” Samuel walking through the door with a red-haired beauty that no one had ever seen before.

  “Who is that girl?” Kayla asked Maxwell.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before,” he replied.

  “That’s not the kind of girl you would forget seeing,” Garrison added.

  Claire Vinson had lived a forgettable life before this day, and would have been voted “Most Likely to… whatever!” by the senior class of her high school if there was ever such a vote. She had grown five inches overnight and her hair turned from jet black to red, only she was oblivious to the changes. Her body also transitioned