Blood Shadow: Book of Ariel Read online

the ground and then to the right, effectively clearing the path for his offensive. The boot on his right foot then headed straight for Gary’s chest, sending the protector flying backwards and to the ground after impact.

  Andrew and Daniel had been in and out of their relationship ever since they became reacquainted when Daniel moved to Beach Haven in grade school. They appeared to be natural enemies back in those days and were competing for the affection of one Nicole Phillips, even after learning that they were first cousins. The boys were inseparable for part of high school, at least before the dance when Daniel kissed Nicole, and then were still friendly a few years later before they graduated high school. That was, until Daniel revealed to Drew at the beach that he was a vampire, crushing Drew’s hopes that the two would fight vampires side by side for all eternity.

  The boys loved to play the game of ‘pirates’ growing up, with Drew always assuming the role of a law-breaking desperado and Daniel assuming the character of the sea captain trying to bring him to justice. The first day of this renewed family-against-family battle was no different, as Drew wore an eye-patch over his left eye and a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball hat and Daniel tied a royal blue sash around his waist and a Kansas City Royals baseball hat backwards on his head. In these characters, Drew was prone to throw elbows, toss dirt in Daniel’s face, kick him, pull his hair, and do virtually anything that a gentleman like Daniel was portraying would refrain from doing.

  Drew started the fight by bowing to his cousin, which he knew would give him an immediate advantage. As a gentleman, Daniel was required to return the bow as a gesture of good faith. Andrew took the opportunity to break from his bow and then load up his right hand to deliver a jarring uppercut upside Lord Daniel’s prone head, propelling him back-first toward the dewy turf.

  Equally as riveting was the fight between the boys’ wives, Carla and Nicole. Mortal and immortal enemies turned knitting buddies, they knew how to get under each other’s skin as much as they could be supportive and loving. Nicole hated having her hair pulled, heck she was even sensitive to people touching her hair. Carla obviously knew this about Nicole from trial and error, and had to decide early in the fight if she was going to employ the tactic. A pull of the hair would draw rage out of Nicole, but it would also blind her in pain for a second or two. It must have been something about the sensitive nature of her root structure that sent shockwaves of agony throughout her central nervous system.

  Former in-laws Belinda and Emily never saw eye-to-eye, but they did on this night when they gazed deeply at each other for some hidden meaning. Any remnants of deep thinking went out the window when Emily hauled off and slapped Belinda across the face. Belinda was shocked but reacted in the only way she knew how. She rubbed her face in the spot she was slapped and then returned the slap in kind across Emily’s face. Open-handed slaps turned into close-fisted punches, and before long the two women were rolling on the ground kicking, biting and scratching each other.

  The big guy and the fish had become good friends in recent days because of their shared fondness of sea shells. Aaron and Agent Blake would head to the beach in the late afternoon and comb the sand for interesting looking shells, which apparently made it easier for Blake to sucker-punch Aaron as he made the giant look at a shell in his left hand. Blake new from his days in the FBI that size wasn’t everything in hand-to-hand combat, but it had to be neutralized immediately. The iridescent shell diverted Aaron’s focus for the time it took Blake to clench his right fist and hit Blake with everything he had across the jaw.

  The matchup of Maggie and Sharon was probably the least contentious of all of the pairings. The pair had sort of a big sister, little sister thing going, but that did little to deter Maggie from trying to seek the equivalent of a four move check-mate in chess. Hartwell’s queen was seeking a quick end to a simple conflict, and the only thing standing between her and a night-one victory was a former protector turned hunter who was like her husband Cal in the way that she didn’t like to lose.

  The last of the eight duos was recently married couple and parents, Maxwell and Kayla. It would have been difficult for anyone, let alone the newlywed couple, to visualize a physical fight between these two. Kayla was such a peacenik that no one would even imagine them having a verbal confrontation. But that all changed when Claire rolled into town. Max unfurled the long nail on his right index finger to reveal his intentions, and his wife picked up her sword, which she had never used before. The shiny exterior of the silver blade reflected off the rays of the moon as she readied to make the first move. It was a good thing she was ready because Max hid his left hand behind his back and extended the index finger of this hand, too.

  While all of this action was going on in the park, Clair rested comfortably on Samuel’s chest sleeping in the bliss that was family control. As long as the two sides were fighting in the House of Hartwell, all would be good in her Lowery-inspired, revenge-seeking world.

  Lowery’s spirit was quite active between the time he was killed for the 100th time by his hunter Braden Lawrence and the time he woke up as a mortal the next morning. Even out of his corporeal state, Lowery knew that it would be unlikely that he would survive once his full transition to mortality was completed. While his ego told him that his scores of minions would still be faithful, it was the dark and onerous energy of his closest ally Abraham Ellison that was especially troubling. The vampire that had sired more than a thousand other vampires was so outraged that Thomas Hartwell had gotten the best of him, that all he could think about was revenge for the few hours he was in between physical states.

  His energy was powerful and it was solely focused on the one living person that could get back at Hartwell. He also did so without fully knowing that his stream of angst would arrive on Claire’s doorstep, since he didn’t know that she existed for the first 18 years of her life. It wasn’t until he walked through the door of vampiracy and was on the doorstep of mortality that he became aware that he had a daughter.

  Lowery was seconds away from waking as a man for the first time in more than a century and-a-half at the side of the pool at the Beach Haven Inn. Ellison was standing behind him with gripping the handle of his razor-sharp sword and waiting to end his life once he came to. The pain of the transition was eased momentarily be a feeling of calm, peace and tranquility that he had never experienced in either his mortal life or his extended time as a vampire. A genuine feeling of accomplishment and fatherly pride overtook him like never before, making all of those years of siring recruits seem like an exercise in futility. Lowery awoke to the sunshine of the new day and smiled as he greeted that day… a day that would include his life as a father. The first thing he was going to do was find his daughter and reconnect with her, but that plan was short-circuited by Ellison, who’s blade cleared the contact zone and efficiently separated his head from the rest of his body. This disconnect would make it especially difficult for him to pursue his new dream, as his head rolled down his body and proceeded to continue its short journey into the chlorinated depths of the pool.

  While it appeared that Lowery’s life had come to a tragic end, the joy that he experienced in that brief moment was more than most people experience in an entire lifetime. The vampire was chasing immortality for most of his vampirical existence by shielding himself with sired vampires that had been manufactured out of his desire to see forever. But he could have lived forever and never seen the real reason why he was placed on earth in the first place. Although Lowery had no knowledge of who was the mother of this child, because he had many trysts in his time as a vampire, he was nonetheless quieted by the fact that he had produced the single greatest thing the planet had ever seen: a daughter.

 

  SEVEN

  It was now closing in on one o'clock in the morning and the first battle of the renewed era of fighting between the vampires/protectors and the hunters were still going strong. Individual fights that started within close
range of each other had spread out over the expansive landscape of territory on Beach Haven Park’s Great Lawn. It was the longest any of these fights had lasted in some time, primarily because the matchups were designed with symmetry and prolonged anguish in mind.

  Hartwell and Cal had just started the equivalent of the 15th round of their epic boxing match. Cal had penetrated Hartwell’s defenses and was now making significant progress to wearing him down. Of course, the key to the entire battle was Hartwell’s status, as a victory for the hunters would be achieved only through the vampire’s death. Conversely, every hunter had to perish if the vampires and protectors would exit the pitch with a win. In such an even battle, the odds were obviously with the group of eight hunters.

  Cal could have simply picked up his swords on several occasions and put an end to his fight with Hartwell, but something was stopping him from completed the task. He had sliced the vampires head off and skewered his heart so many times that it wouldn’t have take much effort to simply pick up his sword and slice away. But the fight remained between Cal and Hartwell’s fists, and