Blood Shadow: Book of Hartwell Read online

  Nicole purr, “We should probably go find Drew.”

  Andrew’s apprehension switched to outrage upon visually confirming the forms under the blinking light. Outrage shifted into anger and blind rage, as he stormed off and morphed into his pit bull form and quickly disappeared into the woods behind the softball field.

  “What was that?” Nicole asked as she heard Andrew bark at the three-quarter moon.

  An elated, yet feeling Daniel replied, “I think that was Drew.” “Let’s go after him,” she stated.

  Daniel gently held her arm in a subtle restraint, “No, we’ll never catch him. I’ve seen him when he’s angry and it’s almost impossible to track him.”

  “Then we’ll stop by his house on the way home,” she countered.

  It was an hour until the end of the dance and their scheduled pick-up, so Nicole called her mom and asked her to pick them up. Daniel texted his mom and told her that he had the ride home covered.

  Hartwell was always nearby, so he went along for the ride to cloud

  Daniel and Nicole’s interpretation of Nicole’s mother.

  “What do you think happened?” Hartwell asked Sharon.

  Sharon slyly smirked because she knew Hartwell already impacted at least half of the story. “You were there, why don’t you tell me?”

  “The boys were with Nicole. Fast music changed to slow. Andrew ran off to the bathroom. Then I let nature take its course.”

  “So, you spiked the kid’s drink,” Sharon stated.

  Hartwell smiled, “You could say ‘spiked,' but I choose to say that I did that boy a favor. Kids these days have no sense of right and wrong.”

  “Are you saying that you weren't with anyone between your wife and me?” Sharon asked the loaded question that Hartwell had no patience to answer.

  “What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?” he bristled.

  “I’m just saying that we all have ‘flirted’ at one point or another with the other side.”

  The evil in Hartwell emerged, “I’m not saying that I haven’t thought about going a few rounds with that bitch Emily, even though she’s young enough to be your…”

  Pride motivated Sharon from letting Hartwell complete his thought, “Younger sister?”

  Hartwell wasn’t buying it, “I’ll give you niece.” Sharon smirked, “I’ll take it.”

  They pulled up to the back of the high school and Daniel was excited to see Hartwell in the passenger seat.

  The back doors swung open and Daniel beamed, “Wow, you finally get to meet my friend!”

  Eight years of almost daily contact and Daniel had absolutely no idea what his wise, older friend’s name was.

  Hartwell didn’t even bother to turn around as he created a simulcast of his influential voice for the back-seat paring and an eves-dropper in the front seat.

  “The name is Hartwell, Thomas Hartwell, and I was your father a few generations ago.”

  Tears welled up in Daniel’s eyes as he and Nicole sat frozen and utterly confused.

  Hartwell added, “Oh, and by the way, I’m also a vampire.”

  The teens’ brains were running out of the car but their bodies were glued to the seat.

  “It felt so good to finally get that out!” he exclaimed.

  The remainder of Hartwell’s oratory was delivered with the speed and blandness of a disclaimer in a TV ad.

  “That being said, both of you will forget that I just said that,” and smiles returned to their faces.

  “You will also forget that I was here and Daniel, you will see the same woman driving the car as you did on the way to the dance.”

  He looked over at Sharon and said, “Anything else you want thrown in there?”

  Sharon thought for a moment about including a ‘hate Drew’ clause, but she thought better of it. It was still too early to let be known what would be naturally understood in a few years.

  “They both don’t sleep enough,” Sharon said.

  Hartwell went back into their heads, “Now close your eyes and rest deeply until I wake you. Your beds are made up of soft clouds and you feel warm and safe. When you awake, you will feel completely refreshed and rested.”

  The car then drifted to the other side of the two lane road and

  Hartwell nonchalantly took control of the vehicle without physically touching

  anything. Sharon’s head was reclined back against her headrest and her mouth was wide open.

  Hartwell shook his head in disbelief, “Forgot to turn that speaker off.” But then he thought she could probably use the rest, too. He pulled the car up to the curb across the street from the Brewster residence, which he had only physically been near on a few occasions when he had made out with

  ‘that bitch Emily’ a couple of times, years before when the kids were at school.

  Hartwell gets inside our heads, “Hey, don’t judge me. It’s lonely and confusing to be me sometimes. Besides, that girl has excellent bone structure.”

  To say that it wouldn’t be prudent to be so close to the hunters would be an understatement – especially when they were within striking distance. That was part of the reason why Hartwell got rid of Cal and waited for Thaddeus to exit the house before approaching Emily, who he knew had a crush on him just by hearing her heartbeat. He had a way with the ladies and was in a playful mood on this night.

  It had been well over a year since his last death, and the Brewster’s kill ratio had plummeted since Cal's disappeared nearly eight years earlier. Before Cal unexpectedly found his watery grave, a stake to the heart had

  found its mark registering Hartwell’s 90th death. With only 10 lives left to mortality, Hartwell and the Phillips’ family decided they needed to take drastic action in order to avoid a normal life, a life they had never known together.

  Hartwell exited the car and told his three sleeping beauties that it was time for them to wake up from their ‘power’ slumber.

  “Wow! I feel great!” Sharon said as she stretched her arms.

  Nicole and Daniel already had boundless energy, and the nap only heightened their keen sense of awareness.

  “I was dreaming about you and me on the beach,” Daniel said as he raced over and opened Nicole’s door.

  “Me, too,” Nicole replied.

  Only they exchanged thoughts without actually speaking out loud. Their cosmic connection was unsealed with a kiss much in the way Sharon and Emily’s thoughts were accessed by Hartwell after they first kissed.

  “Now we’re talking,” Hartwell said as he tuned into their frequency. Nicole and Daniel walked up the path to the Brewster’s front door.

  Nicole opened the glass door and then gently knocked on the solid oak front door.

  Emily Brewster wasn’t expecting her son home for another hour, and was in the basement with a blow-torch and wearing a protective welding/soldering helmet. Thaddeus was half-asleep in a recliner in the den with the TV and moaned, “Door!”

  Emily removed her head-gear and turned off the flame of the torch, before setting it on the work table. She zoomed upstairs and was at the front door within a second, a route that would have taken the average mortal at least ten seconds to complete.

  Most people would have exhibited caution before opening the front door after 10:00 p.m., but Emily feared no man. The door swung open and she was greeted by Daniel and Nicole.

  “Oh, hi Mrs. Brewster,” a chipper Nicole said.

  Emily was immediately thrown off-guard at the sight of the couple, which was one Drew short of ‘The Three Slamigo’s.'

  “Is Drew here?” Daniel asked, barely getting the question out to a now-distracted Emily, who was peaking her head past them out of the doorway.

  She smelled vampire and he was close, real close. There was no mistaking the musky, woody scent of a dead person in heat. Emily was so blinded by loathing and passion for Hartwell that she changed into a hawk

  and flew past Nicole and Daniel, who were supposed to stay out
of such business until they were 18.

  Emily then changed into a pit bull and closed ground on her way to changing into a ferocious grizzly bear, as she took a huge swipe and chunk out of the tree with her right paw. All hell then broke loose when Sharon exited the car and raced to defend her vampire, first as a wolf.

  Daniel and Nicole were initially shocked and then instinctively got involved by going after Sharon – Daniel gliding over to Hartwell’s defense and Nicole watching a huge blur of a ram charge out of nowhere and literally lower his head and spear Daniel. Hartwell saw the action from the

  top of an adjacent tree and realized that he would have to end the madness before his boy perished for good.

  Hartwell came down and stood right in front of Emily the bear as her eyes widened before she took another swipe targeted at Hartwell’s neck. As she connected with a horizontal strike, a furious Nicole changed into a hippo and charged at Andrew the ram, who was grinding a prone Daniel into the ground.

  Mother and son – Emily and Andrew - were standing back-to-back when ‘the moment’ happened. Sharon the wolf went for Emily’s jugular

  with a mid-air leap, while Nicole rumbled toward Andrew, picking up momentum with every stride.

  In an instant, Sharon clamped down on Emily’s bear neck, changing her back into her human form as Hartwell’s head was severed from his body, and Nicole slammed into Andrew, wedging him against the tree, as Hartwell’s head fell to the ground. Nicole was also injured from the recoil, and Emily had fallen on Sharon before she changed, killing her wolf ego.

  Thirty seconds later, Thaddeus awoke from his slumber, slowly rising from his recliner and then walking toward the door. Initially, he thought the noise that had awaken him came from the TV, but upon opening the front door and seeing six either expired or unconscious bodies strewn across his lawn, he said, “Why do I always miss the good fights?”

  Thaddeus scooped up Emily and then Andrew and walked them back into the house, Emily on the couch and Andrew in the shower and then in his bed. Sharon’s eyes opened the next morning and were greeted with Hartwell’s head obviously waiting for her to wake up.

  “A little help here,” he said. “Well, that didn’t go according to plan.” She put his head back on his shoulders and the vampire instantly

  healed and fused back into his body. Sharon understood why Hartwell had

  ‘taken one for the team’ and the two didn’t discuss the matter further. Only

  she knew his soft spot for Daniel might present protection problems in the future.

  They scooped up their kids and plopped them into the back seat of the car for ‘debriefing’ and sleeps that would make everything seem like a dream, at least for now.

  TEN

  It was a long night and an even longer morning. The satisfaction of the kill quickly faded for Emily once her teenage son woke up. It was a Saturday morning and Andrew was feeling the residual effects of being squashed by a stampeding hippopotamus.

  Andrew walked into the kitchen and rummaged through the cabinets for a decent box of cereal that didn’t include the words ‘bran’ or ‘fiber’ in the description.

  It was noon and Andrew’s mother and grandfather had been up for hours. Thaddeus sat back in his chair, obscured by the lengthy expanse of The New York Times. Emily was less unwound, to say the least. Tapping her left index finger on her empty coffee cup and bouncing her legs up and

  down under the table gave every indication of her apprehension related to

  Drew’s arrival.

  Drew filled a huge bowl with Corn Pops and then reached into the fridge and poured some milk over the yellow nuggets. He then grabbed the bowl and sat down across from Thaddeus, and to Emily’s right, at the large oval-shaped white table.

  After a few heaping tablespoons-worth of cereal, Andrew groaned and said, “Did either of you get the license plate of that truck that ran me over last night?”

  Thaddeus stopped pretend-reading a paper that he had consumed four hours earlier, and lowered it so he could see his grandson. Emily’s knees stopped bouncing because she feared that an impossible conversation was in the offing.

  Andrew took a few more bites and then said, “Some jerk must have spiked the punch because I don’t remember much after going to the bathroom.”

  Grandpa’ went back under the paper, and Emily felt relieved that they had avoided the twin disasters of a broken heart and a family secret revealed.

  Andrew gobbled down another two bowls of cereal and was waiting for his mother to ask the question he knew was on the tip of her tongue. After the fourth bowl, he shot her a look that was saying, “I can do this all day!”

  So, Emily dipped her toe into the dreaded water, “Did you have a nice time last night?”

  Thaddeus was his usual supportive self and promptly excused himself from the table for the greener pastures of anywhere else in the house.

  As usual, Drew wanted to play with his mom before going for the kill. “Yeah.”

  “Did you guys get along okay?” Emily prodded. “Yeah, we danced, ate, and drank together until…” Emily was hooked, “Until?”

  “Until the music slowed down and I had to run to the bathroom.” Emily turned away and muttered angrily, “Hartwell!”

  “Did you say something?” Andrew asked. “I said, so you didn’t feel well?”

  “No, I didn’t feel well at all,” Andrew said as his mother could sense that his anger was gaining strength with each passing breath, as details from the night were replayed in his head.

  “That’s odd. You haven’t been sick for so long,” Emily stated.

  “Yes. And what’s even stranger was that when I finally got out of the bathroom, Daniel and Nicole was nowhere to be found.”

  It was a good thing that Andrew had no idea he changed into a bear in the locker room, because the conversation could have gone in a completely different direction.

  Andrew stood up and tossed his bowl into the sink, shattering it into pieces. He paced back and forth, continuing to recount the previous night’s events.

  “So I walked around the gym… you know, to clear my head and possibly get some air in my lungs,” he said with a sadistic smile on his face.

  “The light was out above my head and then I looked across the way to the stoop outside the boy’s locker room, because the light over that door was flickering and was probably going to burn out at any minute.”

  Emily was about to get up and try to calm her son down, but he was too far gone to reason with. Besides, the only way to really contain him would be to call on her powers, and that would be unacceptable.

  “Sit down mom!” Andrew ordered as he was about to push her back down in the seat. “Don’t you want to hear the rest of my story?”

  She nodded her head and started softly crying, not from fear of her son but of genuine sorrow knowing that her son’s heart was broken.

  “I saw two people standing close together, but initially couldn’t see who it was, until I heard a familiar voice speak in a tone of voice that I had never heard before, “We should go find Drew.”

  Andrew was now completely ‘en Fuego,' on fire, “To my surprise, my friends snuck outside behind my back and decided that kissing each other would be appropriate!”

  He walked over to the microwave, which was housed in a built-in section of the cabinet wall, and ripped it out of the wall and then turned and hurled it through the large, glass bay window over the sink – complete with a furious grunt. The microwave crashed in a bank of trees across the yard of the half-acre property.

  Sharon stood up and stared at the gaping hole, not knowing to be hard or soft, angry or sympathetic. She chose the latter, although neither tactic would have had much impact.

  Drew had a weak moment and Emily stepped toward him to be of comfort. But he quickly erased any remaining fragments of humanity as he

  changed into a hawk after jumping up on the counter, and then flew out the window.

  Thaddeu
s entered the room just as Drew flew off, and said, “Was that

  Drew?”

  Emily was drained of her energy and plopped down on a cushioned, swiveling chair, “What’s left of him.”

  “He’s changing too early,” Thad stated. “That could be dangerous, or quite helpful.”

  The family had suffered more than just emotional heartache after Cal’s disappearance. The thriving family business was like a well-oiled machine with Cal and Emily in tandem, and a younger, more energetic Thaddeus filling in the gaps.

  The Brewster’s became fast millionaires but needed large sums of money to support their huge monthly food expenditures. With Cal gone, the family lived off the wads of cash managed by its money and wheel man, Thaddeus.

  After Andrew literally ‘flew the coop,' Thaddeus and Emily sat down to have a talk they had been dreading for months.

  “How many months do we have left?” Emily asked.

  “The way that kid eats, we’d be lucky to make through the end of the

  year.”

  Emily wasn’t in the mood for jokes. She wanted real answers, so she looked Thaddeus dead in the eye and asked the question again, “How many months?”

  Thaddeus understood the gravity of the situation. It wasn’t as if they could run out of money and then hit Hartwell up for a loan.

  “Three or four,” Thad replied and then further clarified his guesstimate. “Three. We got three months left.”

  Thaddeus knew that Emily had to initiate the next step because it definitely required a mother’s approval. Emily realized that once Andrew started ‘changing’ during the day, the reality of his night visions could not be restricted to only dreams. That he would learn to control his power, or suffer the ultimate consequence of death.

  Unlike the mature hunters and mammals, the death of a ‘candidate’ before their 18th birthday, and preceding one of Hartwell’s deaths, would prove fatal. However, there were activities that Drew could participate in that wouldn’t necessarily be life threatening… at least right away.