

Blood Shadow Book of Maxwell

Phil Wohl

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Phil Wohl

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One

Hartwell's blood was flowing into Daniel's shirt, as the son scooped up the father from the paved alley behind the Beach Haven Grill. On the way from the alley to Hartwell's house – which took a mere second in the vampire's domain but would have taken hours or days in the mortal world – Daniel managed to close his father's wound, thus giving him an opportunity to complete the desired transformation.

Daniel exposed his machete-like fangs much to the delight of Hartwell, who was gasping for air like a fish out of water. He furiously bit into Hartwell's neck and drank his blood until he could sense the injured party slipping away.
The beauty of a life on the edge did not escape Daniel at this

moment. He wiped his mouth clean of Hartwell's blood and then bit into his own wrist, while also using his powerful mind to pry open Hartwell's mouth.

Daniel's blood flowed through the body at rest and shot around

Hartwell's veins like he had ingested a case of energy drinks.

Seconds later, they both stood in the middle of the main room of Hartwell's house showing no signs of wear. The blood that had stained both of their shirts was gone – thanks to the vampires' trademark fastidiousness – and the wounds that Hartwell displayed from Cal Brewster had been fully healed.

"Wow! I feel great! I can't remember feeling this good last time!" Hartwell exclaimed. "Of course, that was over 100 years ago..."

Daniel's mother Belinda flashed into the room and said, "Danny! There you are!"

Both men smiled as Daniel moved behind Hartwell and forcefully snapped his neck, which was the final requirement for a successful turn.

Belinda was shocked at first until she saw Hartwell move on the floor. "I've upgraded the transition protocol," Daniel said to Belinda, who's

metamorphosis took a few days following a near-fatal car crash.
Hartwell snapped his neck back into place and then stood up. He then smiled at Belinda and hugged Daniel.

"Excellent job on the transitional protocol! I can't believe how fast I can download information now," Hartwell gushed, and he wasn't known for his gushing.

"I told you!" Daniel concurred. "You better go get your other half," Daniel said to his mother.

Belinda quickly returned with Agent Blake Wallace, her boyfriend and resident FBI agent.

Daniel added, "No, the other half."

Belinda left Blake standing across from Daniel and Hartwell with his pants around his ankles and a pair of Smurf boxer shorts.

"Well, that's an upgrade from those light blue cotton panties you had on the other day," Hartwell observed as he made Wallace get in touch with his feminine side.

Daniel and Blake agreed with that assessment, "Yeah."

"I have the privacy of a goldfish. Can't a guy go to the bathroom in peace?" Blake said as he picked up his pants and then buttoned and zipped his way to some sense of dignity.
Belinda returned with Hartwell's wife Maggie and said to Blake, "Sorry, I'll try to slow it down a bit next time and knock before I grab the merchandise," she said as she playfully poked him in the stomach.

Daniel gagged, "We'll all try to set aside the nausea of just seeing that and move on to the business at hand here."

Hartwell stepped toward Maggie and moved in real close. He put his hands gently around her arms.

"This is what we were talking about the other night. You hold the key to setting everything in motion, my love."

He stepped back and spoke to the group, "And triggering a chain reaction, the likes of which we have never seen. This will officially bind us all as family."

Agent Blake was happy to be fully clothed but was really elated to finally be included in the family after years of seclusion as a special agent. It would also finally give him a chance to clench his fist and punch Cal Brewster squarely in the face without fear of being snapped in half.

After the group exchanged warm greetings and words of encouragement, Belinda pulled Hartwell aside.

"Have you guys located Brandon?"
Hartwell diverted his focus away from the task at hand for a moment to feel genuine loss.

"It's like he fell off the face of the earth. Daniel checked the entire Eastern seaboard and there was no trace of either him or his girlfriend Valerie."

Daniel floated over to join the discussion and then the three of them realized they should share any and all information with the rest of the group.

Belinda addressed the group, "Our little boy, Brandon Justice, was lost today. Done in by the hand of Andrew Brewster."

She started crying as mini red ice cubes, which fell from her eyes to the floor, creating a pile that buried her feet.

"Mom, you better stop crying or you'll create the next ice age," Daniel stated. "We all miss the little guy."

The group came together and held hands as Daniel felt a warm feeling in his heart. "But we hope to be together one day as a united family."

The five bowed their heads and contemplated life for a moment, in the veritable calm before the storm. The reflective pause ended and Hartwell assumed his proper place in his leadership capacity.
"Let's get to work," he said. "There's no telling what we'll have to deal with by nightfall."

TWO

It was a mad scramble for the Brewster family once the chain of retribution was complete. Cal Brewster had concluded a memorable back- to-back feat and would be considered for the Hunter's Hall of Fame if there was one.

After being jailed in the bottom of the ocean by Hartwell and his protectors, Sharon and Garrison Phillips, he escaped after 15 years and made a beeline for Hartwell. It was the vampire's 100th death, a magical threshold that signaled the return to mortal life for connected beings such as vampires, protectors and hunters.

The second set of life-endings was a lot less logical and a lot more irrational than his initial romp to freedom. Taking Hartwell 'out' the second time was an act that was steeped in revenge. Actually, Cal was looking for any excuse to move on in his life without Thomas Hartwell, and the bitter results from the baby Maxwell's DNA test provided the necessary spark.
Carla felt confused and alone on her drive back from the park, until she realized that Kayla was sitting next to her in the front seat. She looked over at her daughter and suddenly felt a wave of calm wash over her. While Carla was experiencing her deep cleansing moment, the rest of the Brewster clan was deep in anything but calm.

Emily ran all the way home from town – about two miles – as her angst over watching Cal take Hartwell's life was aided by her high fitness level. She had been getting back to her long-distance running roots as of late, and she planned to run in a half-marathon in the spring and follow that up with the New York Marathon in the fall.

Sharon and Cal trailed her by a few minutes, as they walked in relative silence. In their case, love had truly scaled the divide between the heart and life's duty. She thought it was best, at least at first, to say nothing rather than to take her anxiety and frustration out on Cal.

Just before they reached the front door, the day's events hit Sharon like a ton of bricks.

"I can never go home again!"

Cal took a couple of extra steps and then stopped in his tracks.

"Is this going to be the part where your head tries to catch up to the rest of you?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.

He simply pounded his chest with a right fist that was used to pounding the human skin of others.

When Sharon realized that he was talking about their hearts, she knew this man would do anything to protect her. Anything that didn't stop her from trying to rationalize the day's events.

"This is your home now," Cal stated and then walked into the house.

Carla pulled into the garage with Kayla as Thaddeus and Andrew approached the house.

"You young punks have no respect. When are you going to learn that you're not Cal? You're not like him!" Grandpa' Thaddeus preached.

Drew walked some heavy steps and then came to a stop. "What's wrong with Cal? Who wouldn't want to be like him?" Drew said his piece and decided to walk around the back of the

house to get away from his silver-tongued grandpa' for a bit. He opened the wood fence door, as the respectful and elegant Thaddeus calmly walked into the garage to see if Carla needed help.

Carla saw Drew stomping off into the backyard and then stopped to greet Thaddeus.
"What's up with Andrew?" she said as Thaddeus bent down and unlocked Kayla's car seat from its base, but she was already loose.

"I don't think you want to know, dear," Thaddeus replied.

"Why don't you take Kayla inside for me, please," Carla asked and then walked back outside and through the backyard door that was still ajar.

Drew spotted his mother sitting on a hammock under a shady tree. "Tell me you weren't involved in all of this, Andrew?" Emily asked

even before Drew had any idea that his mother was alerted to his presence.

Carla came in from behind the play and yelled, "Involved in what, Andrew?" as both of the women resorted to calling Drew "Andrew" when they sensed he was the source of trouble.

Emily flipped out of the hammock as Drew was now sandwiched between his mom and his baby's mom.

Carla started, "Drew! Why didn't Brandon show up for our walk in the park? He has never been as much as a minute late for any of our appointments. Did you have something to do with that?"

Emily stepped uncomfortably close, "Yeah, did you?"
Thaddeus walked outside with Kayla with the top down on her little seat. He tried to make a U-turn to go back into the house, but something compelled him to keep walking outside.

Drew didn't know what to say under all of that pressure, but he was about to feel a lot stronger with his partner in crime walking through the house and out the back door as he heard the commotion.

"It was my idea!" Cal yelled as he made his way down the brick steps and headed toward Emily.

"I knew that!" Emily replied as she walked toward her brother. "I

knew you killed Hartwell, because I was watching you. But what happened to Brandon?"

Cal was happy to take the first bullet for Drew, but he knew his protégé had to stand on his own two feet eventually. He looked at Drew, and the younger Brewster was infused with a renewed sense of confidence and purpose – even if it was completely misguided.

"I killed him!" Andrew proudly stated.

"You did what?" an outraged and shocked Carla yelled. "Why would you do that?"

"For all those years he tortured you. He had it coming!" Drew explained.
"He had it coming? What kind of gangster terminology is that? We made peace with the whole torture thing," she said waving her hands.

"But I hadn't." Drew plainly stated, setting off another wave of anger and yelling.

Sharon Phillips was sitting on the front porch, trying to come to grips with everything that had just transpired. She heard the loud discussion and thought about leaving and going home, but this was her home now and those were her people, for better or for worse.

So, she walked across the driveway and then opened the seven-foot door to the backyard, where she was unexpectedly greeted by Emily's boyfriend, Aaron Driscoll.

He said, "After you," as they walked through the door and was not seen by the others just yet...

THREE

"Ready?" Hartwell asked Maggie.

She smiled with nervous excitement. "Ready!"
She pulled back her dark mane and exposed her neck. Hartwell knew the quickest and least painful method to turn her, but Daniel found a way to vastly accelerate the process.

Maggie was drained, fed and snapped, all within the course of a healthy seven seconds. And then it took another three seconds for her to download the vampire protocol to her hard drive.

"That wasn't so bad!" Maggie exclaimed as she opened her eyes and floated to her feet.

"You have to thank Daniel for that." Hartwell replied.

Daniel zipped into the room. Maggie kissed Daniel on the cheek and gave him a hug.

"It's important that we maintain physical intimacy even though we can attain such feelings in our minds," she said while they separated from the hug.

They walked into the main room where they were joined by Belinda, Blake, Nicole, Max and Garrison.

Hartwell looked at Garrison and the two old friends supplanting the language barrier as usual. Garrison shook his head "No" to indicate that Sharon would not be joining them.
"We're eight strong," Hartwell stated, as they gathered in a circle, Nicole and Daniel on either side of Maxwell.

"Four vampires, three protectors and our little Maxie," Daniel stated. "This bond between us shall never be undone," Hartwell said. "Let us

now join hands and complete this tribe."

Hands were clasped from the largest to the smallest, as intense energy spun around, stopping at the neophyte Blake and halting the aging process and fully restoring Garrison's capabilities.

Nicole's body sculpted away the effects of pregnancy and childbirth, and she was once again a protector in the prime of her existence. Albeit a protector who had to move forward without her mother by her side.

The arguing reached a fever pitch in the Brewster's backyard. Cal was going at it with Emily and Carla could not hide her disappointment and scorn for husband Drew.

Sharon and Aaron were planning on acting as peacemakers and they did just that when the floated through the air and hovered over the

bickering foursome. Thaddeus joined the floating duo and so did Kayla, who was playing with some dangling plastic toy in her portable seat.
"What the?" Carla gasped as she joined the floating quartet. Drew rose up into the air and instinctively clasped hands with Carla and then got a hold of Kayla, as both parents held her little hands.

Drew reached out to Thaddeus and then grabbed Cal's hand, who joined with Sharon. Emily floated up and held Sharon and Aaron's hands almost simultaneously and completed the circle of hunters.

"What's happening here?" Carla yelled as the wind picked up in the backyard, sending the group spinning.

"It's happening!" Cal yelled in a statement directed at Andrew. Cal Brewster had a theory that things weren't exactly as they

appeared, and he shared this hunch with his nephew when he started to plan the April Fool's Day attack.

"The whole thing is not right," Cal said one morning while pounding his lightly padded fists into the heavy bag at the boxing gym.

"What isn't right?" Drew asked while trying to coordinate a consistent rhythm on the speed bag.

"The whole thing with Hartwell," Cal stated and then grunted when he put together a left hook to the body and right cross to the chin combination. "I mean, you've seen him fight me. It's not like the guy would ever let me kill him, but now he's done it two times in a row, in between the time he
threw me a beating in the alley and the other time we beat each other's brains out in the ring!"

"So, do you think he's a vampire?" Andrew asked. "No, but..."

"But?"

"Someone else might be," Cal flatly stated. "Who?"

Cal looked over at Drew, "You're just a wiz with those one-word questions, aren't you?"

"Yes?" Drew panned.

"There's an obvious list of candidates," Cal said as sweat dripped from his body like a faucet. "Belinda, Sharon, Garrison... Daniel."

Drew started laughing, "It can't be Daniel. He can't even beat me at basketball."

Cal chuckled back, "But he could make you believe that you're beating him at basketball."

Andrew's pride would not accept another potential defeat to Daniel. This was shortly after the father of Nicole's child was disclosed and Drew's ego was about as breakable as a glass table in an elephant pen.
"Nah! It must be someone else. Do you think Hartwell changed that person before you came back?"

"The term is 'turned' my boy - he must have, knowing that his 100th death was imminent and he would return to mortality."

"It's either his mother – who got into a car accident and... and then magically disappeared from the hospital when she was on the verge of death. Where did that come from?"

Cal stepped away from the hanging bag and slapped his nephew on the back.

"It happens to the best of us, Drew. They made you forget. That is why you had to take care of Justice. He can never be allowed to terrorize your baby's mom again."

"Her name is Carla," Drew reminded. "I knew that," Cal replied.

FOUR

The circle at Hartwell's house was still hovering over the large area rug in the main room. The connective energy subsided and the group of eight slowly returned to the floor.
The conductive nature of the terra firma sent Blake exploding out of the front window, Garrison through the ceiling skylight and solar panel, Nicole screaming toward the kitchen window and Max toward the big- screen TV.

Daniel moved effortlessly over to head off Nicole and Hartwell grabbed his baseball mitt and Yankees hat from his room and then made a diving catch to stop Max from crashing into, and ruining, an excellent TV.

Belinda was still working the kinks out of her abilities. Blake slammed into her and they both crashed through the large bay window. Maggie tried to stop Gary's ascension but he had already taken off like a rocket through the tinted glass in the ceiling.

Daniel glided toward the front window after setting Nicole down. "We're okay!" Blake stated as he and Belinda stood up and brushed

the shattered glass fragments off themselves.

Garrison's flight ended in the water behind the house, but since he was a protector the landing was made easier. Everyone was standing in the back of the house except Max, who was being held by Hartwell.

Gary changed into an Orca killer whale and then made a huge splash when he entered the water. The spray extended on all sides and was
coming at the group until Daniel spun around like a top, creating a powerful vortex that redirected the water.

"Cool!" Max said internally.

"Did everyone hear that?" Hartwell said on the inside.

Everyone else gave a thumbs up, as Gary jumped out of the water as a dolphin and then changed back into his human form, as he landed on a vacant patch of concrete adjacent to the group.

"Yes!" he said with a big smile on his face.

The people in the circle a few blocks away weren't as fortunate because there were no catchers available. Cal was first to depart, crashing through the south end of the wood backyard fence.

Predictably, his accomplice in crime, Andrew was next to test his flying skills. It was tough to stay airborne without wings, so Drew splintered the north patch of fence.

Thaddeus was sent to his favorite spot on the roof and then fell straight through into the living room. Emily was hurled into a huge pile of dog food that was housed behind the garage. That left only Sharon, Carla, Aaron and baby Kayla still suspended in the air.
The newcomer, Aaron, wound up in the next-door neighbor's yard and Sharon, the turncoat, was sent to another stretch of roof sending her crashing – ironically – into Cal's Brewster's bedroom.

Carla simply floated gently to the ground, and Kayla followed her and landed in her lap. She looked around and wondered why she had been spared when everyone else was treated to a rude wake-up call. Carla then looked at Kayla's smiling face and discovered the answer to her question. But it was only a partial answer. Kayla was all about being a peacenik,

and she would never go out of her way to inflict physical pain on others. She had the power to protect only one person, so the choice of mommy was an obvious one.

Carla snapped the white carry-arm of the baby seat in place and took Kayla around with her to see if everyone was all right. Their initial visit was to Andrew, who was also the person that got up first.

Mortals involved in such crashes would either be hospitalized or carted off in body bags, but the recuperative powers associated with special powers made healing a snap.

"It feels good to be whole again," Drew said as he pulled a wood plank from his forearm. Carla wasn't in the mood to kiss him but did anyway at the bequest of her daughter.
"Are we good?" Drew asked trying not to be presumptuous.

Again, Carla's first answer would have been a solid "No," but peace was to be made on this 'changing' day. "As soon as you marry me."

"Let's go see how everyone else is doing and then we'll get married." Drew said and then kissed his smiling daughter on the forehead after taking possession of the seat from Carla.

One by one the family of hunters untangled from the rubble. Cal bounced up, reenergized by his return to his 'special' status.

"I'll go inside and check on the others," he said to Nicole and Drew. "Good to have you back," Drew said.

"It's good to be back!" Cal exclaimed as he opened the back door and walked into the house.

Cal then helped extricate his dad from the rubble in the living room.

"Are you all right?" Cal asked.

Thaddeus was expecting to feel achy, but that was not the case.

"I should be really, really mad at you. But I feel great!" Thad stood up and cracked his back as he straightened up.

"Mortality is definitely overrated," he added.

"I hear you," Cal replied and then was on his way to find Sharon.
He navigated around some errant debris in the hallway leading up to his room and the pushed aside parts of the fallen ceiling like a supercharged buzz-saw.

Sharon started to move under a pile of roof remains on Cal's bed. Cal was not as meticulous as his enemies the vampires, but he definitely had a keen sense of order - especially as a hunter. He spun around the

15'x12' room like an electric floor-waxer until the room was sparkling clean.

Cal's devilish smile indicated to an upright Sharon that his work in that room was not done.

"I feel great!" she gushed.

"Hold that thought," he replied as he closed the door and headed back toward the love of his life.

Emily woke up with a face-full of that dog food that didn't really taste so bad, at least not to a voracious hunter.

The only person in the group that was completely unprepared for being blasted out of a cannon and then waking up without so much as a scratch was Aaron. Emily realized that about her boyfriend after finishing her initial canine kibble snack.

"Aaron," she lightly called and tracked him down a few seconds later. She visualized his trajectory and then hunted him by his distinct scent.
He was face-down on the next-door neighbor's front lawn. They were at work, so nobody was home to witness a man falling from the sky and on to the middle of their finely manicured, green lawn.

Aaron was sitting with his arms folded around his bent knees, while looking toward the ground and trying to make sense of what just happened.

"Aaron! Aaron!" Emily yelled as she ran toward him.

"Are you all right?" she said as she jumped and then skidded on her knees a good 10 feet until she was near him.

"What just happened?" he simply asked as he picked up his head and put it gently against her head.

His sense of smell had become hypersensitive.

"What's that smell? What have you been eating?" he asked while sniffing near her mouth.

She backed up a little, "Oh, that's dog food." "Dog food?" he questioned. "Dog food." "Yeah, it's dog food."

His mood changed, "You got any more of that?" Emily stood up and helped Aaron to his feet.
"Is it me, or are you a lot stronger than you were yesterday?" the 6'4",

240-pound Aaron asked.

"You are, too," she explained.

He quickly tested that theory and scooped her up and lifted her over his head, and then did a few repetitions like he was lifting free weights in a gym.

"Interesting," he said as he set her back down on the grass.

"A lot more interesting than you know," Emily replied as they walked back to the house.

FIVE

The eight-on-eight nature of the new-age battle took on levels previously unexplored by the participants. The goal used to be to get at Hartwell, because the only aim was to end one of his 100 lives. This time, however, there were four targets, Belinda, Daniel, Maggie and Hartwell, and only one of their deaths was needed to be considered a "win" for the hunters.

"Do we attack tonight?" Andrew asked Cal as the group of eight hunters gathered in the living room.
"I'm gonna' sit this one out," Carla said as her daughter used her loving influence.

"All right. Carla's staying behind with Kayla. Are the rest of you up

for a little reconnaissance mission?" a supremely-confident and relaxed Cal asked the group.

Sharon was behind her man even if it meant going after her own people. She always wondered what it would be like to go at it with Hartwell in a battle to the death.

Andrew was as game as Emily and great grandpa' Thaddeus, and

Aaron was now the real big bear of the tribe.

"Let's go get 'em!" he enthusiastically said as he banged fists with

Cal.

Cal smiled and then looked at Emily, "I don't know where you found this guy, but I like him!"

"Aaron bought your old house. Paid twice the market value," Emily said.

"And I didn't get half of that in the divorce?" Cal asked. "Did you even get divorced?" Emily asked.

"I thought I did?"
Sharon clarified the issue, "You officially died before she could file papers, which meant all assets became her assets."

"So, there was no divorce?" Cal asked.

"No," Sharon replied.

"We'll get that money back," he said looking at Aaron. "We should play 'guess the vampire,'" Emily said to Cal.

"It was Belinda," Cal said as if he held the answers to the universe in his palms.

Everyone looked for confirmation from Sharon, who finally had the full attention of the room and was about to earn her first stripe as a hunter.

"It was Daniel."

"Daniel?" Cal exclaimed. "My son, Daniel?" "No, Hartwell's son Daniel," Sharon clarified. "You should all sit down for this one," Emily said.

"Let me make some popcorn," Carla said and then returned five seconds later with seven bowls of popcorn, refreshments, and a bottle for Kayla.

"Thank you, dear," Emily said and then the others voiced their thanks.
"It was the early 1900s in San Francisco..." Sharon began as she recounted the story of Hartwell, Maggie and their son Nathanial, who was now the modern-day Daniel.

"I knew that kid was never mine," a short-sighted Cal stated after Sharon finished recounting the story. "Even when I came back, I knew something was wrong."

A few minutes later they were ready to go out, so Cal said to the group, "Let's keep a tight formation and always remember..." he looked at his star pupil Drew for the answer.

"Always stay away from water!" Drew proudly stated.

Cal then looked at Sharon and said, "Remember Flipper, you're not a fish anymore."

She nodded and then replied, "I never was."

Cal appeared confused, so Emily broke it down, "She was always a mammal."

Cal didn't care, but Sharon nodded in thanks to Emily, who was starting to open up to Sharon.

"You think they'll come at us tonight?" a somewhat apprehensive

Daniel asked Hartwell.
"One can always dream!" Hartwell beamed as he sought to calm down his young charge.

Daniel was the most sensational vampire to come down the pike in some time. His capabilities were unrivaled, but his lack of experience was obvious. He had never participated in a full-scale battle before - at least not one that he had completely remembered.

There were many battles before Daniel turned 18 and became a full- fledged vampire, but he thought those were dreams and not just a training ground for things to come.

"You want to walk around and see what kind of trouble we can find?" Hartwell asked.

Daniel was an upbeat individual but the devil in him emerged, "Definitely."

The babies stayed home with their mothers, although Max tried to convince Hartwell and Daniel that he should tag along.

"Maybe next time, Maxwell. We have to see what's going on out there first," Hartwell explained to a newborn that should have been crying over a full diaper, instead of preparing himself to throw down.

The eight-on-eight matchup would be reduced to six-on-six with experience squarely on the hunter's side, as they walked in with four
veteran members - Cal, Emily Thaddeus and Sharon - while the vampire/protector group only had two warriors with experience, Hartwell and Garrison.

It was after midnight and the sleepy town of Beach Haven was deathly quiet. All of the shops were closed and the only remaining open business was the bar on Main Street, which was in the process of closing its doors.

Hartwell's group decided to hit the park a little early to retrace the steps taken by their fallen comrade Brandon Justice.

"Mom, are you okay back there?" Daniel asked, as he knew his mother would be emotional over the loss of her second son. There was a solid sheet of ice forming behind her trail of tears, which then melted from the 50-degree temperature.

"My nephew's gonna' get a real spanking when I see him," Belinda said.

"What do we do if they come after us?" Blake asked.

Before either Hartwell or Daniel could reply, Max downloaded a battle schematic to everyone's hard drive.

"Wow, he's good," Daniel stated.
"I can't imagine what he's going to be like in a few months," Hartwell panned.

The hunters, as usual, were a few minutes behind their targets, as a casual stroll quickly turned into a serious pursuit. While walking through town, Cal turned to Emily and Thaddeus and said, "It's good to be able to smell him again."

Everyone knew that Cal was referring to Hartwell. Thaddeus took the tracking lead.

"They just walked through here and..." he took a deep breath, "They are headed that way, toward the park," Thad stated, pointing due East.

Cal's strategy was always, "Let me at Hartwell and you guys figure out the rest." In the early years he had a special connection with Emily - their bond as twins made them nearly impossible to stop as a seamless combination.

Thaddeus walked out front with Cal, Andrew and Sharon followed closely behind, and Emily and the mighty Aaron patrolled the rear end of the formation.
"Their coming," Daniel said to the team after he got a personal message from Maxwell.

It was apparent that Max had the special gift of geography, topography and global positioning.

"Tight formation. Two-by-three rows," Max stated to the group. "Alpha's in the front, tree-trunk in the back" he added, referring to Aaron.

Thaddeus took a deep inward breath and then exhaled. "There are six of them. Four vamps and two protectors."

Garrison was Hartwell's protector and Blake was Belinda's backstop; Nicole was Daniel's protector and Maxwell was Grandma' Maggie's alter\- ego, meaning that Maggie and Daniel would be vulnerable and the team would have to compensate for it.

The vampire/protector group was at a disadvantage before each battle even begun. In order for each fight to end, either one vampire had to die or every hunter would have to be eliminated, which was the price the vampires had to pay for being protected.

"Bowling ball!" Max roared, as his six soldiers morphed into round rolling objects that the hunters didn't see until they were steamrolled and splattered all over the park turf.
Being organized was definitely providing the vampire group with the early advantage.

SIX

"What the hell just happened?" Cal yelled as he came back to life in the field at the park the morning after the first fight.

His five hunter mates shook off the cobwebs and slowly rose to their feet.

"I've never seen that one before," Thaddeus stated.

They all looked at Sharon for some kind of clarification on the strategy employed by the other side.

"Don't look at me! I've never seen that one before, either." "They mowed us down, Emily stated.

"I didn't even see them coming," Aaron interjected. Andrew took it all in and then put his two cents in.

"I think they bowled us down," almost half-believing what he just said. Cal was intrigued, but still furious, "What do you mean?"

"Like they were all bowling balls and we were pins."
The group tried to digest Drew's revelation, but let out a collective

"Nah!" as they began to walk home.

Meanwhile, back at the vampire's lair - otherwise called Hartwell's house - the euphoria of the pinpoint victory the previous night melting into the sobering thoughts that welcomed the new day.

"It's too bad that we don't get to count their deaths, too," Agent Blake

Wallace observed while at the breakfast table.

"Hey, are you still working at the bureau?" Max asked. "Yeah, why?" Grandpa' Blake internally replied.

"Can you get me one of those cool badges? You know the one's in the wallets?" an excited Max asked.

Blake reached into his pocket, pulled out his credentials, and then flipped the wallet across the table toward a reclining Max.

Max didn't move, primarily because he was a baby with limited motor and hand-eye coordination skills, other than playing with his ears and feet. But his mind was sharp and he stopped the wallet just before it skidded off the table, and then floated it up so he could observe it.

"Cool! Thanks, grandpa'! Dad, did you see what Grandpa' Blake just gave me?"
"Yes, Max." Daniel smiled and then looked at Hartwell, because he was amazed at what his son had just done.

"I know," Hartwell beamed.

"Is it always that easy?" Belinda asked as she placed a bottle in

Max's mouth, even though he could have technically fed himself.

Garrison was working on a New York Times crossword puzzle and didn't bother to even pick up his head.

"Here we go..."

Hartwell was ready to break out into a speech, but there was nothing to say.

"Yes, that was pretty easy!" he replied as everyone laughed. "My first fight, I wound up being skewered on the limb of a tree courtesy of my new friend Thaddeus Brewster."

Maggie shot him a look and then eyeballed Maxwell, telling him "Not in front of the baby."

"Cool!" Max exclaimed. "Did it hurt grandpa'? Did you get him back?"

"Yes, it hurt Maxwell. And I did get him back... eventually." "You know they're going to figure it out," Daniel stated. "Eventually," Hartwell replied.
"What did you guys do last night?" Nicole asked as she entered the

room.

There was only one person in the room who knew how to answer such a thorny question.

"They went bowling!" Max proudly stated internally.

Cal was in denial for months, as the vampire group's precision was truly a sight to behold. It got so one-sided after a while that the hunters decided to take a break - a vacation if you will - from the beat-down.

The hunters had suffered through a multitude of thrashings as payback for the callous treatment Hartwell endured at the end of his first tour of duty as a vampire.

"I can't believe they did that to me," Hartwell said to Daniel, Max and

Garrison.

"To be honest boss, you didn't put up much of a fight," Garrison said. Hartwell was willing to accept that, but still shot Gary a look.

"C'mon, Gar! The daily soup special at the Beach Haven Diner?" "What does the diner menu have to do with killing someone?" Max

asked.
Daniel smirked and then played a five-minute montage of the week- long soup run in the middle of the room.

The week started with split pea soup, and the strategy worked so well that Emily Brewster returned to the Beach Haven Diner to see what the

daily soup special was - the top of the inserted, typed page read, "Squash

Puree."

Emily devised a special stacking strategy that would incorporate both the soup special and Hartwell's weakened state, including his inability to fend of the hunter trio. The vampire's blood levels were low, because he was helping Daniel make the transition to vampire, and his protectors were also ill-prepared when the hunters showed up in the parking lot of Hooters at 2:00 a.m.

Gary was making small talk with Sharon.

"I hear they have good wings here," implying that he had frequented the glorified strip club in a purely culinary capacity.

Before the protectors could even react, Thaddeus the bear had pinned Hartwell down. Hartwell struggled to move, but his lack of strength made him an unwilling spectator. Emily jumped on her father's back - also as a bear - and Hartwell was feeling the pressure of more than 1,000 pounds of hairy bear on top of him.
By the time Sharon and Gary picked up their heads and realized the fight had already begun grizzly bear Andrew had climbed up a nearby tree and was already airborne to his bear-pile destination.

Gary looked down at Hartwell and then eyed a descending Andrew and restated the obvious, "Ugh, that ain't not good."

Andrew hit the pile with such force that Hartwell exploded - well, for our dining purposes, he pureed - in a 50-foot radius all over the parking lot pavement.

Soup was served on Hartwell the next three nights... he was cracked like a lobster, shot full of silver bullet holes like a bowl of Texas chili, and finally had his lifeless body dropped to the bottom of the ocean like a matzoh ball. It was a long week for Hartwell, who was busy protecting Daniel from any potential attack before he turned.

SEVEN

"Are we ever gonna' get back out there again?" Drew asked Cal as

the senior hunter sat on the couch dipping potato chips into a can of French onion dip.
"You know, I can eat this stuff all day," a glazed-over Cal replied, superfluous to his nephew's comment.

Cal missed his mouth and a huge glob of dip plopped on his already\- soiled t-shirt.

"You already do," a disappointed and frustrated Andrew mumbled. Cal fetched another chip from the oversized bag and then scooped

up the dip from his chest and ate it.

"When was the last time you washed that shirt?" Drew asked.

It took Cal a few seconds for the snotty tone in Drew's voice to resonate in his core.

"Are you trying to piss me off?"

"If that would get you to move off that couch, then yes!" Drew defiantly answered.

Cal had thoughts of teaching Drew yet another lesson, but those were squashed by a bag of chips and a zesty dip that wouldn't stop calling his name.

Drew gave up and turned away while saying in disgust, "Fat ass." Cal had a chip loaded and it was halfway in his mouth when Drew's

words finally bit.
The bag of chips scattered all over the room as the dip was ejected into the air from Cal flipping over the table in anger.

"Fat? Fat?" Cal yelled as Drew smiled at first and then feared for his life as Cal the raging bull was on his tail. Cal picked up Drew and then hurled him through the front window, an act that would have caused major damage to a mere mortal.

Emily ran into the foyer and looked through the window. "What did he do to deserve that?"

"He called me a fat-ass!"

Emily couldn't resist, "Those chips must have stopped calling your name for a minute."

Cal was so angry that he picked up his twin sister and threw her through the window space, landing next to Drew.

Thaddeus witnessed the abuse first-hand and swung his foot, making solid contact with the swollen butt in question, sending Cal hurtling toward the front lawn next to his two victims. He then shook his head and looked around, "You're all useless," and then got up and walked away.

Cal's pride might have been hurt, but a swift kick to his posterior had awoken his senses and given him a fresh perspective. While he was flying through the air, new realms of possibility were downloaded to his brain.
"We should get back to doing what we do," Cal said to his father later that day.

"Apology accepted," Thaddeus replied.

Cal never apologized - at least he would never utter the word 'sorry'

unless it had a negative connotation.

Thaddeus knew his son, and it had become painfully obvious that Cal was sulking from losing so much. The only thing that would put an end to the pity party was his foot having a meeting with Cal's butt.

"How do we stop them from killing us every night?" Thad asked, seeing that Cal's brain was now in overdrive.

"I've detected a common theme in all of our defeats." "What is that?" Thad questioned.

Cal moved in closer as if imparting top secret information. "We need Carla."

Carla was the only member of the hunter party that had not participated in any of the fights, aside from baby Kayla of course. It had been a lonely life for her and the baby since the battles started. The family would leave in the evening and not return until she awoke in the morning, because it took that long for the regeneration process to complete.
"Carla, we need you," Andrew said after he talked to Cal and

Thaddeus.

"What's the matter? Did Kayla spit up? Does she need to be changed?" she replied.

She was so focused on the baby that her mind had basically formed around the little one.

"No, no. You need to come with us to the next battle," Drew clarified. "Oh, I guess that's okay," she said with some hesitation.

Kayla was in her crib taking a nap, so the veil of peace had temporarily been undone.

"Don't you want to go?" Drew asked, because he wasn't convinced by her passive tone.

As the seconds passed, Carla became more in-tune with her hunter brethren.

"Yeah, I'm in," she stated in a more confident tone.

Kayla drank a few more bottles and took a few more naps by the time her mom was ready to go out that night. The family drew straws and, ironically, Aaron picked the short one, which meant he would be staying behind to watch Kayla.
Carla put her daughter to bed and it was safe to say that Kayla had no idea of her plan that night. Twenty minutes later, however, she had a dream that her mother was out patrolling in the park and she screamed, "Mommy!" internally.

Carla thought she was hearing things but replied, "Go back to sleep, Kayla. Everything is all right."

Kayla wasn't convinced, so she acted on her instincts even while sleeping.

"They're out tonight," was all that Maxwell said to his vampire team members.

It had been over a month since their last victory, yet the mood was still upbeat. In the modern-day vampire/protector world, there was no reason to walk around the streets at midnight unless someone was looking for you. There was no sense in being a sitting duck, because vampires always loved the action.

"I wonder what he's going to come up with tonight." Blake said to

Belinda as the others started to gather.

Nicole came out of her room, but before she did, she said to Daniel, "I

want to go tonight."
Daniel didn't know what to say to his wife, so he decided to let the group decide her fate.

"Nicole wants to fight tonight," Daniel said to the group. Hartwell was hesitant to comply with the request based on

superstition. He then deferred to Garrison, who stroked his gray beard while pondering the question.

"Tough to break up a streak," but then he looked into Nicole's bright blue eyes and, as usual, she got whatever she wanted from her grandpa'.

Garrison gracefully bowed out in order to watch his great grandson, as the other six people headed out to Beach Haven Park. Speaking of Max, he was back on his game this night.

"They have six: fresh mom subbing for sequoia tree," he said referring to Karla fighting in place of Aaron.

Nicole angrily muttered, "Carla."

"Stay in formation," Cal whispered. "They have been coming at us from all angles."

And come at them from all angles they did...

Max barked out the plan as the group approached the target. "Swan dive!"
The vampire group took to the air in unison and then the protectors, Nicole and Garrison, turned into super-sized Orca killer whales, while the vampires hovered over them to clean up anything that wasn't pressed into oblivion.

Carla never saw the other group coming, even when the full moon cast a shadow over the descending whales. But she instinctively spun out of danger and then did a few forward rolls along the grass while reaching for her long, silver sword, which was secured at her waist.

The wins had come too easily for the vampire group. While Hartwell knew from adversity and losing a few, Daniel had no comprehension of what it meant to lose, even back to his days on the Beach Haven High School Volleyball Team with Nicole and Drew. The 'Three Slamigo's' never lost a match and barely lost more than a few points in an afternoon.

Daniel obviously got too close to the action when Nicole scaled back from whale-self to human-self. The quick count of flattened hunters totaled five...

As Max said, "Still one in play," Carla emerged from the shadows and fended off an advancing Belinda with a spinning backhand fist to the jaw, while she continued to spin. The blade of her sword reflected off the moon
as it glided clean through Nicole and then Daniel, separating their heads from their bodies.

Carla looked at Hartwell, not knowing the protocol of the fight. Hartwell placed his right fist against his open palm, shuffled his feet together, and then bowed to the skillful warrior.

Carla eased the adrenaline rush and then mirrored Hartwell's action by bowing in respect back to him. She then cleaned the blood off her sword by wiping it on her shirt under her arm, and then put it back on her hip as she walked away. Hartwell picked up Daniel's head and body and Maggie collected Nicole's affects as they all flew off.

Carla slept like a baby that night, feeling satisfied and relaxed after a successful fight. The next morning, she checked on Kayla and then took a long, hot shower before dealing with her little girl for the day.

Aaron was still asleep as the ladies were sitting in the kitchen. After a few minutes, the fallen hunters started trickling in from their overnight stay

in the park as worm food.

The group was not happy, to say the least, and were led by Cal who was completely frustrated.

"She didn't make a difference, I was wrong!" he said to Drew and

Thaddeus as they strolled in wearing dirt, grass and blood-soaked clothing.
Sharon was the first to see a clean and seemingly rested Carla sitting in the kitchen feeding Kayla.

Cal had already made the right turn from the foyer to his bedroom but Sharon said, "Cal," but he didn't react. She then called him a little louder, "Cal!"

Calvin Brewster was on the worst losing streak of his life and he wasn't in the mood to be talked down off the ledge.

"What?" he replied in an annoyed tone.

Sharon wasn't having any of that lip as she aggressively grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him into the kitchen, so he could get a better vantage point.

He was not overly surprised to see Carla, but he was surprised to see her looking so clean and rested.

"What are you doing here? How did you get back so fast?" Cal asked

Carla.

Carla turned from gazing at Kayla and revealed a smile as wide as the mighty Mississippi.

Andrew was the first to react, "She did it! She did it!" he yelled while grabbing Cal's arms.
A celebration ensued as Cal found a quiet moment and happily reflected, "She did it!"

EIGHT

"That girl was in the zone," Hartwell said after Daniel and Nicole came back to life again the next morning.

For the first time in months, it was the vampire-protector crew trying to chase all of the unknowns.

"What happened?" a freshly showered Daniel asked his son.

"I said there was still one in play," Max replied internally while gurgling outwardly.

Nicole was the ever-protectant mother, "He did say that," while looking at Daniel.

"Can you give us a replay?" Hartwell asked Daniel.

Daniel was reluctant at first because it could potentially be embarrassing, but he was convinced that it would be an excellent learning tool for the group.
He cast the 3-D image into the middle of the room as usual, as the team went airborne in search of another quick ending to a one-sided confrontation.

Daniel had the image on hyper slo-motion with multiple angle capabilities, as Hartwell stepped into the image and rotated it 180 degrees so they were behind the hunters and facing themselves.

"Wow, that is cool!" former beach king Blake Wallace said as Nicole and Garrison morphed into their whale-self's.

"They didn't see us coming," Gary beamed.

As Nicole and Gary neared the contact zone an aura, for a lack of a better word, surrounded Carla.

"Did you see that?" Belinda pointed and exclaimed. "What is that?" Maggie asked.

Daniel froze the action and Hartwell touched Carla's image with his finger so he could focus on her and enlarge and sharpen her image.

"I didn't know you could do that," Daniel stated.

Hartwell looked really closely," I think it's some sort of protective field." "I didn't feel any resistance when I hit the ground," Garrison stated

and then he turned to Nicole, "Did you?"
She didn't know what to say other than, "So much blubber... I didn't feel hardly anything except the ground."

The group laughed at her honest, yet sophomoric confession. Hartwell let the frame continue as he backed the image up to wide-

screen.

Carla roll-dodged free from Nicole the whale and then rose to her feet as Belinda advanced toward her after Max gave the alert.

"I had a clear shot at her but something stopped me from getting too close," Belinda said.

The video advanced and it showed that Belinda would have finished

Carla off if she wasn't restricted.

Hartwell froze the frame, "How is this possible?"

Maggie put her hand on his shoulder and said, "You know, things are a lot different this time around."

Hartwell laughed, "You can say that again." "Something definitely protected her," Garrison said.

"Do you mean physically?" Blake asked.

"No, I think he means corporally," Maggie interjected. The group looked over at Max.

"Why are you looking at me?"
Hartwell stepped back and pulled Garrison with him. "We have to set up a meeting."

"All right, I'll get it done," Gary replied.

Garrison always saw Thaddeus in town and the two would even acknowledge each other on occasion. On this day, however, Gary was going to make sure to stop and talk to Thad.

Thaddeus was coming out of Beach Haven Bagel and Garrison made a point of timing his entry to his counterpoint's exit.

"What time?" Thaddeus said to Garrison with no level of surprise in his voice whatsoever.

"Isn't it great?" Gary replied. "I knew you where you were once, I left the drug store."

"Yeah, I picked you up somewhere in between the whitefish and the drug store," Thad kidded and then they both laughed.

"How about six o'clock at the diner?" Thad asked.

"Let's do five. We have the kids and the dinner crowd to contend with."

"I thought we gave up the Early-Bird Special?" Thad asked. Gary looked at Thad in amazement.
"It's turkey dinner night." "$10.95?"

"$10.95," Gary affirmed.

"Yeah, I'm up for that... they have that inspiring cranberry sauce." "And that stuffing is divine," Gary added.

They shook hands and smiled. "See you later," Thad said. "Later," Gary replied.

NINE

"Table for 16," Garrison said as they arrived at the Beach Haven

Diner at 4:59 p.m.

Predictably, the hunter party was less than a minute behind the vampire group, because it was their legacy to always be in pursuit of their foes.

The female maître di looked like a little girl that was let loose on her mother's makeup. But she could see over the raccoon-like usage of mascara that there were eight people standing in front of her. Well, seven
people standing and one sitting in a baby seat, and then she walked them back to their table.

"Party of 16?" she said to the hunters upon their arrival. "That gets you the special, private back room.

Cal looked at Hartwell as he entered the room, knowing full-well that the mind trick was his doing.

Hartwell returned the parental glance with a devilish smile, which inferred that he had gotten away with something. Cal sat across from Hartwell.

"You know, they usually have cameras in this room, too." Hartwell stated.

Cal gave an inch finally, "That I didn't know," and nodded in appreciation for the privacy.

"The main thing is that we never fight around the children," Hartwell said casually, knowing that his baby was a strategic mastermind. The hunters still didn't know that Kayla possessed powers of protection, so they were definitely dealing from an imperceptive point of weakness.

Nicole and Carla wanted nothing to do with each other, so they sat at opposite ends of the huge rectangular table, with their babies on one side and their husbands on the other.
"Let's talk business later," Thaddeus said.

"Yeah, let's eat!" his contemporary, Garrison concurred.

On one side of the table were the hunters, from left to right: Aaron, Emily, Thaddeus, Sharon, Andrew, Carla and Kayla.

Kayla was sitting in her detached car seat placed on top of a wooden highchair turned upside-down, just beyond the edge of the table.

Across from Carla sat Belinda, and from right to left Blake, Maggie, Hartwell, Garrison, Daniel, Nicole and Maxwell.

Garrison felt awkward in his own skin for the first time in decades, sitting across from his daughter Sharon, who was now literally sleeping with the enemy.

Sharon looked ahead trying to make eye contact with her father, who was undoubtedly disappointed in her. Gary looked down at Hartwell, because Hartwell was telling him internally to acknowledge her and get it over with.

He turned and locked eyes with Sharon, as she saw the pain and burden of the generations in his eyes. He, in turn, looked in her clear, sparkling eyes and realized that the only choice for his daughter was love. This revelation made him feel better, even if that partner in love was the dreaded Calvin Brewster.
What appeared to be a large family gathering was actually a meeting to hash out the articles of war. Food was ordered as if the group was anticipating an extended stay in an underground bomb shelter. Max was busy playing with the hanging plastic rings on his seat when he heard Thaddeus say, "My great-granddaughter Kayla is a big girl."

"Kayla? Who's Kayla?" Max asked his group.

"That's Andrew and Carla's baby," Maggie said. "She was born a few minutes before you."

The waitress came swinging through the doors of the private room about ten minutes after her first appearance, and was accompanied by a team of three helpers, all holding silver trays stacked with as much food as they could humanly carry. With everyone's attention on the baked, fried and grilled offerings, Maxwell decided to venture out on his own and take a peek at the newest Brewster.

Max detached his seat from the upside-down high-chair and floated toward the area behind the hunters. He then unhinged Carla's seat and had her take a similar journey.

The two car seats rested softly on the carpet facing each other, as

Max knew he had only a small window of time for them to get acquainted.
"Hi, you must be Kayla," Max said trying to be all suave and sophisticated.

"What? a confused Kayla replied. "Where's my mommy?" "Hold on there, little lady," Max said trying to calm her down. "Please put me back. I think I'm going to cry," Kayla said in a

moment of panic.

Max didn't want to get noticed, so he calmly floated Kayla's seat back toward her base. Her confusion subsided, and she finally took a good look at Max for the first time and smiled.

"See you later," she said as her arm sort of rose up and waved to him.

Max was so smitten that he almost forgot to get back to his spot before being noticed. He clicked back into place as the conveyor belts of food had settled in their temporary resting place.

He thought he had gotten away with it until Nicole looked at him and said, "She's cute, isn't she?"

Maxwell would have blushed if that was within his physical capabilities. Instead, he humbly replied, "Yes, she is."

Carla had not established communication yet with Kayla, primarily because she had no idea she could do such a thing.
"Mommy, why does that boy's mommy and daddy have rings on their fingers and you and daddy don't?"

Carla heard the voice in her head and naturally went to answer

Kayla's question out loud.

"Well, honey..." Carla started saying, and then realized she was answering a question from a newborn.

"Did you say something?" Drew leaned over and asked.

She whispered in his ear, "I thought I heard Kayla talking to me." Drew pulled back and replied, "You gotta' get out more."

Carla looked at Kayla, who was gumming her right fist and drooling all over it, shook her head in disbelief, and then went back to eating her delectable chicken parmesan.

A few seconds later, it started again.

"Mommy! Didn't you hear me?" Kayla invaded Carla's thoughts. Instead of talking out loud, Carla tried a more inward approach. "Kayla, is that you talking to me?" she asked while looking at her

baby.

"Yeah, can I have a piece of what you're eating?"

Carla went to cut a really small piece of her flattened chicken but then looked at Kayla's lack of choppers.
"Soon. Would you mind asking your father the same question you asked me before?"

"The one about the rings?" Kayla asked. "Yes, the one about the rings," Carla replied.

"Daddy! Why do that boy's parents have rings and you and mommy don't?"

Drew went to answer Kayla and then looked at his wife, who was giving him the evil eye.

He had a huge bite of burger that hadn't cleared the throat's horizon yet, and it became lodged in his windpipe. He couldn't speak but Carla didn't realize it.

"Aren't you going to answer your daughter?"

Drew pointed to his windpipe and was lucky that Daniel was still connected with his cousin and had better-than-bionic hearing. Daniel flew around the table and performed an upgraded version of the Heimlich maneuver on Drew even before anyone could move. The two-inch slab of burger dislodged and headed across the table at Hartwell, who calmly took his napkin off his lap, caught the flying piece of meat, smiled, and then placed it covered on the table.
When the commotion calmed down and Daniel was thanked properly for his good deed, Drew pulled him aside and asked, "When did you get married?"

"Well, we've done it twice now. The first time was just before Max was born in the hospital, and then again last week on the beach in Maui.

"Next time give me a head's up," Andrew stated.

Daniel looked at him like, "Dude, we're not exactly on speaking terms."

Drew and Carla had their baby and did not get married initially, because they were waiting to see if Nicole's baby was his. Then the fighting started and Drew got swept up in all of it. Carla always knew Drew would marry her, but he hadn't even asked yet. It was almost like they had made a business deal and sealed it with a handshake.

Andrew knew he had messed up. He neglected to take care of the one person that loved him the most in the whole world. Daniel could see the look of pain and desperation on Drew's face and, although they were now supposed to be enemies on opposite sides of the aisle, he still had love for his cousin.

Daniel left the room, saying that he had to go to the bathroom to wash his hands, which appeared to be a logical excuse for a tidy vampire.
Instead, he sped into New York City to a diamond guy he knew on 47th

Street. Daniel did all of the craftsmanship on the ring himself, adding

'diamond designer' to his list of extensive competencies.

He was back in the private room at the diner within 10 seconds and nodded at Drew to come out of the room and talk to him. Andrew was still a little standoffish as he rose from his chair and walked out of the room, even though Daniel saved his life a few moments earlier.

"What's up?" a coy Drew asked.

Daniel was diplomatic as usual, "I know this isn't the way you planned it, but if you don't do it then it will probably get real ugly real fast." He

pulled a small blue suede box out of his pocket

Drew took possession of the box and then opened it, "What the... Danny! What am I supposed to do with this?" a flustered Drew stammered.

Daniel put his arm around Drew and walked him to the small window that gave a view back into the room.

"Go back in there, get down on one knee, and then ask that goddess to marry you."

Drew's knees were knocking as he followed his cousin back into the room.

Hartwell looked over at Daniel and smiled a proud fatherly look.
Nicole asked, "Is everything all right?"

Daniel watched Drew walk slowly toward his end of the table. "We'll know in a few minutes."

Andrew sat back down and looked at his daughter before resuming his meal. He was moving food around on his plate more than actually eating, while getting more and more anxious by the second.

"Are you okay?" Carla asked him, while putting her hand in love on his forearm.

Drew lifted his locked gaze off the destruction occurring on his plate and looked deep into Carla's eyes.

"Carla-bear, there's something I have to ask you."

And just as he was going to drop down on his left knee, the team of table cleaners walked in and started removing plates.

"Are you done, sir?

Andrew was going to be all dramatic and reply, "No, we're just beginning," but he wasn't a corny guy by any stretch of the imagination.

"Yes, you can take it," Drew said about his shockingly half-eaten plate. Even though Drew was petrified, he was still a voracious eater at heart.

"On second thought, you can wrap that up. Thanks."
The waitress came in a few moments later and took dessert orders. She used up two order slips and then departed, leaving Drew with the opening he coveted. Instead of making a grand public gesture in order to gain the favor of the other diner-goers, Drew put his hand on Carla's arm and motioned for her to come closer so he could whisper in her ear.

He moved his chair back and dropped down on one knee, while securing the ring from his pocket.

"Carla Perkins. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?" Andrew asked simply as he revealed a massive diamond engagement ring that must have improved the reception throughout the diner's TV monitors. The satellite-dish-sized diamond almost blinded Carla as non-emotion changed quickly into shock, which then transformed into a combination of pure joy and love.

She started crying and mouthed "Yes," while nodding her head.

"That was a yes?" Drew said out loud as he attracted the attention of everyone else at the table.

He slipped the ring on her left-hand ring finger and then they kissed while clapping and congratulations echoed throughout the room.

"We'll need a few bottles of champagne," Thaddeus said to the waitress, who reentered the room when she heard the excessive noise.
"What's going on?" Max asked as he detached his seat from its base and was going to float to the other side of the room to take a closer look.

Nicole was quick to act, "Stay down, little man. I'll tell you what happened later."

What you weren't privy to was the 'soft' articles of war negotiations over dessert. Everyone was in such a good mood that fighting became a mere afterthought. The standard conditions of no fighting during the day and never in someone's house, especially with the babies being born, were still in play.

Everyone was saying their goodbyes when Carla waited for the exact moment when Andrew cleared the doorway with Kayla in hand, to look

back at Daniel and gratefully mouth the words, "Thank you!" knowing that he was the Cyrano behind her man's romantic action.

Nicole was busy gathering Maxwell's stuff and readying him for the trip home, so she didn't see the flirtatious gesture, but Hartwell and Maggie did.

"Oh boy," Hartwell said.

"That can't be good for business," Maggie added.
"Are you going to talk to Daniel?" Maggie asked, as she was inexperienced with such matters of peace and war.

"I don't think it's a good idea to bring attention to it," Hartwell replied. "So, your strategy is to just ignore it?"

Hartwell countered his wife's challenge with a straight faced, "Yes. If

I bring attention to it, he's going to start thinking about it."

"But that look on her face said a lot more than just 'thank you,'" Maggie stated

"Let's hope not, or we're all going to be back to square one," Hartwell replied.

TEN

The story of Brandon Justice was definitely a journey of extremes. On the one hand, he was a bloodthirsty vampire that enjoyed toying with his prey, but, on the other hand, he learned to love as a respectful, mortal teenager.

The vampire Brandon had become fed up with his abusive parents and decided to bury them in the Pacific Ocean. So, maybe he had a lot more to atone for when Andrew Brewster took his life that day in the park.
It made sense that Hartwell sired Justice at a young age, because at the rate he was going he wasn't going to make it very long. Charles Darwin would have enjoyed the young lad, who was as unfit as he was intelligent.

The day in question - Brandon's last in Beach Haven - started rather innocently with a car-ride to school with his girlfriend, Valerie Winters.

"If you had to leave here and never come back, where would you go?" she asked, even before she said good morning and kissed him.

"Good morning! Can I kiss you before I answer such a weighted question?"

She obliged because the answer, while not completely necessary, would help clear her head on a day when she had to be at her best.

"Not that I plan to go anywhere, but you know how much I love the

West Coast,' he finally replied.

Victoria smirked and Brandon noticed. "Why do you ask?"

"I'm just thinking about colleges," she calmly stated. He knew what she was thinking, "Stanford?"

"Yeah, either that or Cal Berkley."

"Sounds like a plan," he said. "So, the East Coast is out? Kinda'

thought I would go to school near the family."
Valerie gave pause, "That's what I was thinking."

Valerie also had a great deal of intel about the day that everything changed. The day when Hartwell and Brandon were supposed to meet their makers. She was upset when Brandon decided to meet Carla in Beach Haven Park during their lunch break at the high school, mostly because she loved him and had an obvious aversion to watching him in pain.

Their association had a long history, but Valerie was the only one who knew about it.

"I see that boy as a suitable match," Joseph Winters said to his wife Katherine while the family was vacationing in Portland, Oregon, when Valerie was only 10 years old.

Katherine also had the ability to see what was to come and replied, "He will experience many changes in his life. That will help him adapt when the time comes."

Valerie watched as Brandon left the school that day. In fact, she had watched him for quite some time before they officially became boyfriend and girlfriend.

The Winters' family was neither hunter nor vampire, but they did consider themselves protectors of a sort. Valerie thought about so many
things on her way to the park, trailing Brandon and the rest of the procession at a safe distance. She had never fully tested her skills against anyone other than her family and the aged oak tree in her backyard, which definitely was the worse for the wear.

She was fast, but how fast? There was only one way to find out... Valerie hid in a dense section of shrubs just off the shaded path, but

a good 75 yards removed from the action. She spotted Thaddeus and made sure that he would always be good mile in the distance.

Brandon was walking, as she sped ahead of him in the latter stage of his walk, and then Andrew followed moments later with a look of malice

and painful intent on his face.

Drew then made up ground on Justice and closed in on the kill as

Thaddeus and Valerie continued to hold their positions.

There were no grand gestures made by Drew, no sage words, just violent and finite revenge. Revenge on a vampire who turned mortal, after he had mentally tortured his Carla. And, although they had reconciled and were now friends, it really didn't clear the muddy slate for Drew... and Cal made sure he didn't forget.

Thaddeus was watching Andrew's every move up to the point when he plunged his knife into Justice and then stepped back from the fallen
body and flipped the bloodied implement into a thicket of brush nearby. Thad focused on the evidence clean-up and took his eye off Brandon Justice's body for a split second, and that's all it took.

Victoria galloped through the path, scooped up Brandon, and then flipped him on her back as she ventured further into the shadows of the deeper woods.

Thad retrieved the knife, cleaned up the crime scene, and then briefly wondered where Brandon was before scurrying away. He wasn't going to say anything about the missing body, because that would have led to even more unresolved issues for Cal and Andrew.

Blake arrived shortly after Thaddeus departed. He knew that Brandon's life was hanging in the balance and had probably not been extinguished yet. He was a master of forensics and could tell from his brief analysis that the body had been moved before expiration.

Brandon's breath became increasingly shallow as Valerie sped him away from the crime scene, which would have been the spot of his last breath if not for her. He opened his eyes for the last time and thought he saw his girlfriend amidst an unrecognizable, blurry backdrop.

"Val? Is that you?" he faintly asked.
She was too busy navigating the grueling, varied terrain to answer at that moment.

"Is this heaven?" he asked. She smiled, "Not yet, BJ."

"BJ?" he said with his last conscious breath, recalling the nickname that his parents tortured him with. He would have continued to say, "Don't call me, BJ!" but he passed out.

Brandon was out for hours while Valerie and her family completed the last touches of preparation for the transformation process.

Katherine and Joseph Winters came from a long line of family that had both mystical and mythical qualities. Being a hybrid creature definitely had its advantages but being widely accepted by society wasn't one of them.

With Brandon's breath on its last hales, the family, which included fraternal twin 10-year-olds, headed out to sea to complete the ritualistic transformation.

Joseph scooped Justice up and walked from the sand of the beach into the surf, changing into a merman as the water surrounded his lower body.

He looked back at his family and declared, "It's time to go."
The six of them disappeared under the water - two mermen, three mermaids and Brandon - and sped to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. They reached the ocean floor and stood together while Brandon slipped away, his last breath signified by a small stream of bubbles escaping his mouth and floating upward.

Joseph looked around, stopping at Valerie and he nodded. She was happy and sad at the same time. Of course, she was excited that her boyfriend would finally be joining her family, but she couldn't help being sad that he had expired. She didn't want to see that again for another couple of centuries at least.

Time was of the essence, so Joe and Valerie sped to the shore, followed by mom and the twins, Bryce and Cheryl. Joe made sure that water covered him up to the waist - the part that separated his human self from his aquatic self - and then he extended his arms while still holding Brandon above the water.

He again nodded at his daughter and she took a deep-cleansing inhale and then bent over and surrounded his lips with her mouth and blew the air of the seven seas in through his open mouth and into his inactive lungs.
The breath of the goddess healed dead cells as it cleansed Brandon's inner organs and radically altered his DNA. The genetic vampirical code was overlaid with a calmer, less fastidious substitute, creating a more peaceful reentry into the world for Justice.

Brandon started breathing a few minutes later, his lungs circulating air causing his chest to gently expand and contract. A few more minutes passed and Brandon's eyes gently opened as he looked around as his new family encircled him in the water.

"Vic," Brandon said calmly. "Mister and Misses W, B and C," he then said to the twins.

He then looked at Valerie and Mr. Winters for clarification. "You're with us now, son."

While Brandon enjoyed his vampire family after a complete disaster with his birth parents, he finally felt a sense of inner peace that had been lacking.

"It's good to be home, sir."

Valeria bent down, hugged him and exclaimed, "Let's go!" as she dove into the water, her tailfin making a splash when she impacted. Brandon stood up, backed out of the water, and then ran back to the surf going airborne, changing into a merman as the saltwater made contact
with his lower body. The saltwater felt like a magic potion, healing all mental wounds, as the family followed them and headed west.

ELEVEN

With Andrew and Carla finally married, most of the stale air had leaked out of the rivalry balloon. There was a three-month gap between the group meeting at the diner and another 'chance' encounter between Thaddeus and Garrison in town.

"Garrison, my friend!" Thaddeus greeted Gary as he stepped out of

Beach Haven Bagel.

"How are you, Thad?" Gary replied with an air of being carefree. Thaddeus looked around and then replied simply, "Edgy." "Edgy?" Gary questioned.

Thad moved in close, "Edgy," and then pulled back. Garrison nodded in solidarity, "Edgy."

They continued to talk and decided to have the families meet at night for a little game-style battle. It would be similar to their usual fights, but without much of the usual loathing and animosity.
The babies were now four months old and, miraculously, walking. Kayla and Maxwell were also twice the size of 'normal' children in their age category. Nicole and Carla brought Maxwell and Kayla to the same pediatrician, Dr. Miller, so it was easy to make him believe that the kids were normal sized and weren't speaking in complete sentences.

The first battle back after such a prolonged absence would take place at the Beach Haven High School football field. They picked this location because it would be easy for the kids to sit up in the stands with minimal adult supervision. The elder statesmen thought it would also be cool to

play under the lights for a change.

"Are you going to tell me who you're going to freeze tonight?" Max asked Kayla as they sat in comfortable beach chairs on opposite sides of the field's chain-link fence.

She smirked, "That's for me to know and you to find out." "Really?" he said loving the challenge.

It wasn't a far mental stretch for Max to assume that Kayla would protect her mother, because she would always protect Carla above others.

Max continued to talk to his team members internally, because yelling out the game plan would have removed the element of surprise.
Both groups started at opposite end-zones of the green synthetic-turf field. They both broke into a run, at between 50 and 60 miles per hour, seven across until they reached the 49 1/2 yard-line.

"Dad," was all Kayla said, signifying that Andrew was the hot protected player for the hunters. Drew stopped on a dime and spun on his head like a break-dancer, holding his blade firm in his hand as his Aunt Belinda drew closer. She exposed her massive fangs and swiped at him, a blow that would have normally severed his head clean off.

Belinda's talons collided with a hard, unforgiving surface about three inches from Andrew's neck. The shock of her nails being extricated from their comfy beds distracted her focus and made it impossible to mount an acceptable defense.

Andrew was still spinning like a top, picking up speed with every revolution. Belinda lost her balance and was angling closer to Drew's blade, like a superhero being pushed to imminent doom by a villain.

The hero-villain debate had raged on for centuries between the vampires and the hunters. The hunters contended that they were societies' protectors, while the vampires professing hat they were doing their civic duty by ridding the earth of its weaker inhabitants. They felt as if it would
be no different if they were an animal in the wild preying on the weakness of other beasts.

Andrew was spinning so fast that the naked eye could no longer detect any movement. He and his blade were completing seamless revolutions, and the efficiency of sharp circle was truly an immortal sight to behold.

Belinda continued to yield toward gravity and was headed toward the turf, where so many student-athletes had previously fallen. The blade of Drew's sword made first contact with the nape of her neck and then continued on the diagonal across her body and clean through her hip.

Drew's torque combined with the sharpness of the blade made the ease of the act like a scissor cutting through paper.

"She didn't protect her mom," a stunned and inexperienced Max said internally.

Kayla wore the smile of victory as she smugly looked down at Max while walking toward the field.

"What kind of kid doesn't protect their mom?" he muttered.

Daniel cleaned up the blood like a Hoover vacuum and both he and

Blake picked up the pieces of Belinda.

"Same time next week?" Thaddeus shouted across to Garrison.
Garrison looked over at Hartwell, who he entrusted with making any and all decisions. Hartwell had barely broken a sweat - not that vampires sweated anyway - and he gave what amounted to a half-nod in passive disgust.

"Okay," Gary replied, as Thaddeus ran toward Kayla and playfully scooped her up.

TWELVE

Maxwell was still under the assumption the following week that Kayla had enough mojo to protect one person, but he wasn't going to take any unnecessary chances.

As they approached the field, Max said to the team, "Let's get aggressive. Grandpa' Blake, Papi G, referring to Garrison, and mommy."

They stood on opposite goal lines and waited for Kayla and Max to settle into the bleachers. Kayla sat first on the first two center rows, but

Max decided to walk a few paces to his right and sit alone, because he was still feeling the sting of the previous weeks' loss.

While his brain was academically and technologically advanced, his human emotions were still very much a work in progress. He and Kayla
were so in sync that he knew she wasn't revealing the entire truth. The smirk on her face the previous week revealed the joy of victory, combined with the knowledge that a secret had been safely kept in the vault.

Kayla, for her part, was going to 'ride the horse' that got her there until it broke down. Selecting her parents as the chosen one's was an obvious strategy, only if there was knowledge of the availability of two safe zones.

The teams were moving at top speed toward midfield when Kayla barked out internal instructions to her crew.

"Cal, Thad, Emily, take out everything in front."

The way that Maxwell planned to attack wound up being in direct correlation with Kayla' move. It looked like a well-rehearsed ballet when both teams broke their rows and folded into tight columns. Cal took out Blake, Thaddeus halved Garrison like an everything bagel, and Emily ended Nicole.

Hartwell had his eyes set on clearing some of the debris, so he sideswiped Sharon and his way toward Carla and Andrew. Daniel battled it out with Aaron, who picked him up and then slammed him down, momentarily stunning the teenage vampire. Aaron went in for the kill,
raising his sword over his head with both hands and he was about to plunge the blade through Daniel's chest and the turf.

Daniel regained enough of his senses, picking his right arm up off the ground and extending it in the air. Aaron thought it was a feeble attempt to stop the power of his sword, so he admittedly let up a little. Daniel had noticed in recent weeks that his nails had become increasingly elastic, so he immediately went for full extension. The nail on his index finger scaled out over two feet as it stopped any and all movement of his attacker.

The vampire rose up on a 90-degree arc as Aaron went to the ground, being skewered through the throat by Daniel's deadly nail. Daniel retracted his nail from the lifeless body and the meticulously cleaned the affects off until there was no trace of Aaron left.

That left Emily, Cal, Thaddeus, Carla and Andrew on the hunter's side, versus Daniel, Hartwell, Maggie and Belinda.

"Go after Drew," Max said, trying to keep his composure in the wake of his mom's surprise death.

"The gate is open. I repeat, the gate is open!" Kayla said with some urgency to the remaining hunters.

Hartwell was heading for Carla but he figured she would be protected, so he flipped backwards over Emily and then snapped her neck
after taking a sip. It was four on four until Daniel grabbed Thaddeus by the foot and spun him around until he got bored, and then threw the elder\- statesman toward the other side of the field, impaling him on the right top- side of the huge yellow goalpost.

"Shoot, missed it," Daniel panned as if he was trying to make a football field goal.

Cal took the opportunity to make a play for Maggie, a move which he knew would infuriate Hartwell. He was behind her and figured the element of surprise would be in his favor, but her ultra-sensitive hearing picked up his increased breathing pattern.

It was her inexperience, not her awareness that made the ultimate difference in this fight. Cal was an expert swordsman capable of carving a turkey from five paces with the edge of his blade.

Maggie was playing defense from Cal's first strike, as her nails extended a few feet to block his attempts. Sparks were flying as Maggie continually backed up across the field. Hartwell had just ended his former charge Sharon's game participation and had his back to the fight as he glided toward Andrew. He turned around as Cal moved closer to Maggie, and he knew the end was near because it was a similar strategy that Cal had employed successfully against him.
Before he could turn and help, Maggie raised her hand to swipe Cal in a move she was sure would end the battle. However, much to her surprise, only a split-second earlier, Cal had adeptly swiped his sword through the killing zone and made a cut so clean that she barely noticed.

Maggie's right hand was still in the striking pose, as her head listed to the left and rolled down her shoulder and was sent spinning to the ground. Her body was directionless without the hard drive and fell forward to the turf as Cal stepped back to avoid contact.

The fight was over. Hartwell glided over to his dead wife and surveyed the damage that he had both seen and created in his lifetime. Normally the carnage would have barely registered with his emotional barometer, if at all, but this was obviously different. He hadn't seen his wife die in over a century, and the loss was sending painful flashbacks through his mind.

Hartwell bent over on one knee, gathering pieces of his wife as the others gathered up their fallen comrades. Cal was tending to Sharon and he looked over at Hartwell, who was obviously having difficulty with the

loss. It was one of the few times in all the years that Cal saw emotion other than rage, scorn, or sadistic joy come across the vampire's face.
Tears instantly turned into ice, and then ice cubes, as Hartwell mourned his wife's loss all over again. Luckily, Maxwell came waddling over to comfort his grandfather.

"It's okay Grandpa'. She'll be back tomorrow." Hartwell replied, "I know, Maxie."

He then picked up his grandson and hugged him extra tight. Daniel came over and put his arm around his dad.

"Let's go home."

Hartwell looked over at Cal, who was also having difficulty putting the emotional pieces back together while kneeling over Sharon. He had spent his life fighting Hartwell, and that left little room for love. Extreme like of Sharon turned into all-out love for Cal that night. It was the most conflicted he had been in his entire hunting career.

THIRTEEN

"Did you grow this fast?" Belinda asked Daniel as if he would remember.
Daniel, or course, had no clue, being that he was a toddler at the time. It was also years before Hartwell infused him with his high-octane vampire blood.

So, they turned to Hartwell, who always had a catalogue of Daniel's accomplishments on the ready.

Max jumped off Nicole's lap and made a huge thump, as his Nike's hit the recycled material floor. She rubbed her leg as if pained by the experience.

"How old is he now?" Hartwell asked the group. "Eight months today!" Maxwell proudly beamed.

Daniel zipped into the kitchen and returned with the yard stick that was wedged between the refrigerator and the lower cabinets. Daniel vertically rested the wood stick on the ground as Maxwell inched closer to it. He was still a few inches from the top but lifted himself on his tippy toes to try to meet the end of the stick.

"Three feet!" Max exclaimed.

Daniel placed his massive right hand on Max's head and stated, "Not yet, little one."

"Don't be in such a rush to grow up, Maxie," Hartwell stated.
"Yeah," Nicole added. "We want to enjoy you small for as long as we

can."

Max wasn't buying it.

"I want to be able to do what you do," Max said to Daniel and

Hartwell.

"In time," Hartwell replied. "In time, little squire."

As time progressed, Max went from sleeping in a crib to a bed faster than it takes to potty-train most toddlers. After he broke 10 beds in successive nights, Daniel decided to get the group together for a little video session.

"He's obviously dreaming of the battle," Daniel said as his six compatriots stood around Maxwell's virtual bed, which was displayed in the main room.

Max started with the wings of a vampire, flying around the room for a few minutes, knocking over a stack of clothes and a few pair of shoes.

He then gradually went through the evolutionary tract of the protectors. First as a wolf, hopping around on four legs around the room. Then as a cat, rubbing himself at the end of his bed after jumping down off the dresser. His dolphin-self spun in mid-air changing into a hippo mid-
revolution, and then an Orca killer whale upon impact on the bed, smashing it to smithereens.

Good thing Max's bedroom was on the ground floor of the expansive ranch house, or he would have surely broken through to the lower level.

"I think he's both," Daniel said at the end of the discussion after Hartwell opined, "Could it be possible that he testing his heritage?" referring to Daniel's vampire DNA and Nicole's protector genes.

"Both of what?" the now one-year-old Max asked as he walked into the room, all five feet of him.

"Did this kid grow again?" Hartwell asked the group trying to change the subject.

"The best of both worlds," Daniel said diplomatically.

Maxwell knew something was fishy, so he went on the attack. "When am I going to be able to fight?"

Nicole was the consummate protector, "When you're 18!" Max needed clarification.

"18 in real years or in 'Max' years?"

Daniel looked around the room and then smiled. "He's got a point there."
"The way he was he's going, that may be next week," Garrison stated.

Grandma' Belinda wasn't buying into it. She glided over to Max and eyeballed him, as the group looked on in great interest. Belinda surrounded her chin with her left hand, in the thought pose, and then gave her best guestimate.

"Two years."

Max again needed clarification.

"Two years from now, or at two years old?"

"One year from now, at two years old," Grandpa' Blake the marine biologist/FBI agent said. "You are roughly a nine-year-old right now. No body or facial hair, bone structure still developing," he said showing a detailed view of Max's body.

"Voice still on the high side. Reproductive organs still relatively undeveloped," Belinda said while using a laser pointer to circle the appropriate areas.

"Whoa!" Blake exclaimed as all of the men became uneasy. Maxwell became even more confused.

"Is she talking about my..."
Nicole put her hand over Max's mouth and said, "No need to talk about this anymore. I can still put you over my knee, Maxwell. So, you better not use any foul language."

Max tested all boundaries, except for the one that was still a threat to put her hand upside his butt.

"Yes, mommy," he obediently replied.

The men started chuckling, partly from ribbing Max and partly from straight-up fear. She pointed at them as if to say, "You're next!" so they piped down.

Belinda turned to Maggie and said, "She's good."

"Speaking of good, that boy is growing up way too fast for his own good," Maggie stated.

FOURTEEN

The battles had slowed over the previous few months, mostly because the families wanted to hide the radical growth of Kayla and Maxwell. The fights leading up to the break lacked a certain punch that was present in the old days.
After viewing Maxwell's bed-breaking transformations, the vampire- protector team was inspired to utilize some of their iterations against their foes. However, it mattered little because they still hadn't figured out the key to beating the hunters.

"Let's try the squeeze play," Max said to the team as they were walking toward the great lawn of Beach Haven Park. After suffering a string of defeats at the high school football field, Gary asked Thad for a change of venue.

Usually, Cal would resist such a request on the grounds that he was loathe to break up a winning streak. But he was in love, and not solely focused on disposing of Hartwell for a change. He and Sharon had just come back from a long weekend in Las Vegas, where they were married at least once. The first time was sober and memorable, although subsequent trips to the altar were under the influence and much more humorous.

"Somehow, I get the feeling we've done this before," Sharon slurred, barefoot and scantily clad in a pair of tight shorts and a bikini top.

"Maybe we were here in a previous life?" a drunk Cal countered, trying to feebly tap into whatever depth he had left.

The justice of the peace turned to his faithful assistant and said, "They were here three hours ago. And last night, too."
He nodded, "We're not here to judge the bounds of love, my dear." She replied, "They must like being married."

The vampire-protectors still were trying to assess Kayla's methods. She was now able to shield three of her people, which almost made it impossible for the vampires to break through. It was a good thing for the vampires that life was going so well and nobody really cared about the outcome of the game.

Kayla even suggested that they play with plastic swords so nobody would get hurt, but that 'soft' request fell on deaf ears.

"Plastic swords?" Max mocked as they took their usual spot on the sidelines.

"Why are you always picking on me?" she asked in an upset tone. "Because you think you're better than me," Max replied without

hesitation.

Max reached over and pulled Kayla's long strawberry-blonde hair. "Ouch!" she yelled. "No violence, Max."

He was not in listen-only mode, so he did it again and she retaliated in the only way that her hunter mind would allow.
Before Max could react, and god knows he was really fast, Kayla clenched her fist and socked him in his right eye, sending him falling off the bench.

Max had never been in a fight, so the sting of the punch was both painful and exhilarating.

Daniel and Carla happened to be in the area.

"Kayla Bailey Brewster! Did you just punch that boy in the face?" Carla said immediately challenging her daughter.

Daniel helped Max off the ground - not that he physically had to - but to offer some moral support.

"Oh, he probably had it coming," Daniel said to Carla. "He always calls me names!" Kayla yelled.

Max rubbed his injured eye. "She's ugly!"

Kayla broke free from her mother's grasp and punched Max in his other eye, sending him to the ground again.

"Kayla!" Carla exclaimed as the others started walking over from the commotion.

"Are you going to do it, or am I?" Hartwell said to Daniel, implying that

Max had to be talked to.
Daniel looked over at Carla, who returned the acknowledgement with a friendly glance.

Nicole saw the whole thing and angrily said, "Oh, hell no!" as she re- routed her path and was instantly in a fight-first, talk-second mode.

Carla had been completely off limits since Kayla always protected her. But, in the commotion, Kayla did not have time to re-focus on her usual assignment. Without warning, Nicole hauled off and decked Carla with one punch.

Daniel grabbed Maxwell by the scruff of his neck and was saying, "You don't punch girls" when he heard the majestic thud of Carla hitting the ground.

The 'squeeze play' would have to wait for another night. Carla got off the deck and readjusted her jaw.

"Oh, it's like that?"

Nicole was incensed, "It's like that."

"Kayla, let me do this," Carla instructed her daughter.

"Everyone go sit in the stands," Nicole said. "Even you, girl torturer!"

she yelled at her son, whose eyes were healing with each passing second.

Kayla was so angry that she bumped him again as they walked to the three rows of benches under a bank of shade trees. Maxwell had learned
his lesson this time, though. He put his hands over his eyes and did what amounted to a game of peek-a-boo to Kayla, showing his completely healed eyes. Instead of getting angrier, she was impressed with his abilities and then let off a welcoming smile similar to the one her mother had just displayed.

Nicole rushed Carla, turning into a wolf and exposing her fangs as she jumped into the air toward Carla's neck. Carla instinctively turned into a huge grizzly bear and swatted Nicole away with her huge right paw. Nicole went flying through the air and had the presence of mind to change into a tabby cat, landing safely on her four padded paws.

Meanwhile, the making of a brawl was breaking out in the stands. "She wasn't coming on to him," Thaddeus said in an annoyed tone to

Garrison as they sat next to each other.

"Wait! Who was coming on to whom?" Andrew asked as he got wind of the conversation.

"Your wife was coming on to Danny," Belinda said, looking at her nephew.

Maggie also chimed in as his mother, "She was definitely giving him the eyes."
Emily took offense to the comments, "Carla would never cheat on

Drew."

"No way! Not her," Sharon backed her up.

As all of these dissenting points sprouted up, Cal looked over to the other side of the small bleachers where Hartwell was sitting. Love had clouded their vision and put an iceberg in what was always a hotly- contested rivalry.

He smiled at the vampire who returned the look, signaling that it was

'on' again. Cal ticked his head toward the field and flew out of the stands as a hawk. Hartwell had his own wings and caught Cal in his mouth and then flung him into an adjacent bank of trees.

Cal landed as a grizzly bear, which sent a huge vibration across the field and into the stands where the fight continued.

Combatants paired off: Drew vs. Daniel, Emily vs. Belinda, Sharon vs. Maggie, Aaron, vs. Blake, and then Thad and Gary figured they should tussle, as the battles spilled from the stands onto the open field, as Max and Kayla sat virtually unaffected in the front row of the makeshift bleachers.

Kayla blushed and stared at Max's completely healed face. "I'm sorry I got angry," Kayla the pacifist stated.
"That's okay. I probably deserved a pop or two for teasing you." Whales and wolves and rams were flying everywhere, yet the one

year-olds continued to talk like they were the only people in the park. "Why do you think we're growing so fast?" Kayla asked.

"Well, it has to do with the acceleration of our molecular..." Kayla wanted a less clinical answer.

"Oh," Maxwell said, stopping his scientific hypothesis. Then he went for a more direct approach.

"I think we're just special."

Kayla felt things that she hadn't experienced before. "You think I'm special?"

Max nodded and replied, "Yes," as Kayla inched her hand over and clasped his hand.

Nicole as a hippo ran at Carla who was rumbling at her as a ram. Since the hippo outweighed the ram by something like a gazillion pounds, Carla was butted across the field, where she landed about ten yards from where Kayla and Max were sitting.

Kayla had turned to Max and puckered her lips while closing her

eyes. He thought about running at first, but then figured, "Why not!" So, he closed his eyes, puckered his lips, and then moved in for his close-up.
That was just about the time that Carla stood up and saw the development of the pending kiss - a site that only could have been rivaled in horror by her thinking of Andrew as the father of Nicole's child.

"One down, one to go," she thought.

She sped over to the bleachers in her human form and yelled, "Not today, Kayla!" as she separated the two children.

"We're going home!"

Carla clenched her daughter's hand and dragged her away from the field, as Kayla looked back and waved at Maxwell.

She then yelled over to Nicole, "Be back here tomorrow!"

The battles then continued for a few more seconds before they petered out.

"Well, that was unfulfilling," Hartwell said.

Cal, bloodied but charged up, replied, "Tell me about it," as the two sides retired to their separate lairs for the night.

FIFTEEN

"Why would you kiss that boy?" Carla questioned her daughter when they were first to arrive back at the house.
"I like him," Kayla simply and sweetly answered.

Carla couldn't believe it... she was so worked up on the way home that she couldn't speak.

"You like him?" Carla asked. "You really like him?" Kayla nodded and said, "Yes."

Carla took a deep breath and wiped some of the half-dried blood away from her mouth.

"Oh my," she muttered as she walked away.

A similar dynamic was unfolding back the vampires' house. "You were going to kiss her?" Nicole asked Max, as the men

collectively cringed from the young boy's pain.

"She held my hand. What was I supposed to do?" Max replied. "What does that mean?" Nicole questioned.

Maxwell looked toward his male counterparts for support. "I've seen things."

It took Nicole a few seconds to connect the dots. By then all of the men had scattered, except for Daniel who had to back up his son.

"No more Internet for you, mister!" Nicole exclaimed. Max was a punk with a capital 'P'.
"Internet? I didn't see that on the Internet," Max defiantly proclaimed. Daniel glided toward the pairing and said to Nicole, "He didn't get into

that stuff. I've put guards up against that," trying to be discreet.

"I saw daddy hold your hand and then you kissed him," Max said in his sweetest, most innocent tone of voice.

Nicole was still buying that voice - after all, Max was only one year's old in chronological terms.

She gave him the "Oh that's so sweet" face and then kissed him on the forehead.

"Good boy, Maxwell," Nicole said completely forgetting about why she was yelling at her son in the first place. She walked away as Daniel and Max had one of their father-and-son, non-speaking but fully communicating moments.

Daniel initially thought that Max had been blocked from seeing graphic images that were not age-appropriate for him, whatever actual age he was.

Max's smirk of insolence was one of the few times he would ever challenge Daniel. Hartwell saw a look in Daniel's eyes that he had not seen previously. Usually, the docile vampire was calm and composed, preferring to let his hunter foes and others blow off all of the emotional steam.
The one-year-old in the body of a nine-year-old saw the look of a thousand daggers and started running, and gliding, out of the back door.

"I'll be right back," Daniel said to Hartwell.

Hartwell laughed, "Take your time!" as Daniel moved off into the distance.

Daniel chased Maxwell – well it wasn't much of a chase; more like an extended beat-down!

Max didn't have all of his powers yet and with his lack of experience, he was still considerably less skilled than Daniel.

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 bedtime 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. They 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 counterattack. "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 cobwebs 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 the 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 counterattack. 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.

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 of 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

pillowcase," 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 bloodsucker 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 homing 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."

TWENTY-ONE

The battle that had lasted for over a century was about to take on a whole new dimension and be lifted to the next level. The vampire/protector group was taking it old-school in their pursuit to overcome new-age obstacles.

"The plan is to go for the non-protected members," Max said as if he was in control of the game plan on this night.

The kids were now about 20 months old, in chronological terms, or about 15 years of age in their years.

"Does he know?" Blake asked Daniel.

"No. We thought it would be better for our chances if he was kept in the dark," Daniel replied.

Agent Blake warned, "He's going to be pretty steamed when this is all over."
Daniel nodded, "He'll be all right. My son cares more about us winning than his personal feelings."

Hartwell smirked, "You hope."

The guys grunted and then they all gathered with the ladies. "Maggie, Belinda and Nicole, you three stay in a tight circle," Blake

instructed, taking the lead with the family for the first time. "So, we go after the non's first?" Belinda asked.

The men looked at Blake, because he was instrumental in devising the aquatic-based strategy.

"Change of plans. The kid's off the grid tonight, and we..."

He then went on for the next few minutes detailing a strategy that was designed only with victory in mind.

On the other side of the field were the victory-drunk hunters. They made a semi-conscious decision months earlier that they would continue with the same strategy until it met with defeat.

"All right. Let's do this," Cal confidently stated as the hunters slapped hands and revved up for what they thought would be another hard-fought, yet routine victory.
The beach was only a stone's throw away from the park, which made it easier for the vampire contingent to fly 'home' to safety. The nightly dash toward collision was on and, just before impact, Hartwell, Daniel, Belinda and Maggie found their marks in the protected one's – Carla, Andrew and Thaddeus - and Belinda got a hold of Sharon, just because she had it coming, and jetted off with them toward the ocean.

Cal thought about changing into a hawk and chasing the flying vampires, but he had his hands full with a highly skilled Blake, who had been under the tutelage of Hartwell for the past six months.

"You don't become an expert swordsman overnight," Hartwell grunted after another tough loss months earlier.

Blake took the constructive, yet pointed criticism to heart and replied, "Then let's get to work."

By the time Cal was seizing the upper hand against Blake, the vampires had deposited the very-much-alive bodies of the four hunters in scattered locations at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Before Belinda dropped off Sharon she asked, "So, how is everything going with you and Cal?"

Sharon smiled and said just before surface impact, "Oh, it's really great. Thanks for asking."
The hunters stood on the bottom of the pitch-back sea alive but in an increasingly weakened state, while the vampires spun dry and then flew back to the park to complete the second stage of their three-tiered plan.

Hartwell and Daniel knew there would be some mismatches back at the park's great lawn but hoped that Nicole, Blake and Garrison could hold off Thaddeus, Cal and Aaron long enough until they got back.

The plan called for the following matchups:

Blake vs. Cal Garrison vs. Aaron Nicole vs. Emily

Garrison, for all of his advanced age, more than held his own against giant Aaron. By the time the vampires returned, he even had the upper\- hand in the fight. Aaron was still getting used to all of the things he could change into and has just scratched the surface to the force he could become. But, the hunters had little time or need for training with all of the winning they were experiencing.

Three kills were all the vampire/protectors needed to 'sink' the hunters on this night. Sharon had a lot of time to think while she was
standing on the bottom of the ocean. She initially tried to summon her inner fish from her protector days, but realized it wasn't that simple. She then used a powerful force called love to summon powers to reinvigorate her strokes.

In the end, Cal was just too strong and too skilled for the agent they called Blake. While Wallace put up a formidable fight, it was Brewster's precision and blatant disregard for his own life, as well as the life of others, that concluded both he and Blake's evening.

Cal felt the shadow of the vampires raining down from the sky and knew he only had a second or two to finish what he started. He changed into a hawk to distract Blake, who responded by changing into a large cat, leaping into the air at the hawk. Cal morphed back into his human form, picking up his sword from the ground and made a feline-kabob out of Blake.

Belinda headed straight for her ex-husband and severed his head clean-off before he even had a chance to look up.

She yelled, "ONE!"

Hartwell raced toward Aaron, but Garrison said, "I got this!" Aaron confidently smiled and said, "Bring it on, old man."
Gary wasn't fond of being referred to in such a chronologically- demeaning fashion, so he did the only thing a man of more than a century would do... he removed his teeth from his mouth and flung it at Aaron, impaling it in his throat and cutting off his air supply. Aaron tried to fight it for about a minute, but then made a thunderous impact on the ground.

"Those are some sharp choppers!" Maggie exclaimed.

Gary walked a few steps toward Aaron and fetched his teeth. He turned around toward the group and smiled with his blood-soaked teeth back in place.

"Never had a problem chewing through steak."

The last active fight was Nicole versus Emily. Daniel and Hartwell would have loved to let this one play out, but time was of the essence to complete their plan. Hartwell pointed to his left wrist, but Daniel was confused.

"What does that mean?"

"I was pointing at my wristwatch," Hartwell explained. "But you're not wearing a watch," Daniel countered.

Hartwell was about to go into further detail but decided to get back to business instead.
"You want to share this one?" thinking about the sheer beauty of a synchronized kill.

Daniel nodded in agreement and within a second, their sharp right index fingers had crossed at the nape of Emily Brewster's neck, giving a much-needed time-out for her brain and body.

"Awwwww!" Nicole yelled. "I could have taken her!" Hartwell said, "Next time."

"Yeah, we have some unfinished business to take care of,' Daniel added.

"Can I come?" Nicole asked, being that she and Gary were the last of the survivors.

Hartwell cleaned up the bodies of the hunters and the other vampires scooped up their own - Daniel and Nicole, Belinda and Blake, and Maggie and Garrison, until Hartwell took over mid-flight.

With the hunters' guard finally down, it was time for the vampire/protectors to claim a long overdue victory. Before they left the field, however, warriors turned into parents and grandparents for the moment.

"Are you okay, honey?" Belinda asked Kayla as she stood in stunned silence on the right side of the field.
"Maxie, you make sure that girl gets home with her family," Hartwell said to Maxwell as he stacked the hunters bodies like plates ready for cleaning in the sink.

"Okay, grandpa'," Max replied. "Where are you going?" "We have to go to our safe-place to finish this."

Max needed clarification. "The ocean?"

"Yes, the ocean, Maxie."

Kayla asked Belinda, "What just happened, and where did you take my parents and Grandpa' Thad?"

Although the kids were growing up so fast, they still were kids. And as newbie's, they were prone to being easily confused when the stimuli in front of them was altered materially.

Belinda put her arm around Kayla and tried to let the teenager down easy.

"All I can say is that they'll be back in the morning. If you are nervous about being alone, you can stay with us."
While Kayla was upset at losing the battle and, more importantly, losing her entire family, she felt the warmth from Max's family that she long coveted.

She hugged Belinda, which surprised the mother vampire at first. "Thank you, Mrs. Thompson," she gushed.

"You're welcome, Kayla."

Max was walking toward Kayla and his grandma, but he stopped in his tracks at the sight of the embrace.

Belinda looked over Kayla's shoulder - well, it was more like she looked under the underarm of the sprouting 5'9" girl - and could sense Max's heart rate speeding up and blood rushing to his beet-red face. She thought to herself, "Our Maxi's in love with this beautiful girl."

TWENTY-TWO

The vampires, plus two, left Max and Kayla as they flew to the beach to finish the job. As they approached the water, Daniel spotted what he thought were a few people floating on the surface of the deep water.

"Over there," Daniel said, being the only one that spotted the activity. "Where?" the usually eagle-eyed Garrison asked Daniel.
Instead of responding, Daniel led the way toward Sharon and

Thaddeus.

The losing streak had been long and had become an exercise in humility for the vampire/protector group. Daniel was about as surly as he could be, and there was no hesitation in his actions. He swooped down and easily grabbed Thad's water-logged body away from a distraught and confused Sharon, who didn't have long to grieve because her father took out his paternal frustration out on a daughter who had little to do with the outcome.

Daniel also had some paternal issues of his own and used every ounce of his strength and focus to literally break his grandfather in two. He barely thought about the separation of Thad's upper and lower halves and dropped the remains of his absentee grandpa' in the ocean.

Maggie and Belinda dove into the water to complete the task. Belinda went after Carla and Maggie was tasked with the elimination of Andrew.

Since Drew was found first, he was also the one to die first. Maggie didn't hesitate, she simply separated Drew's head from his torso. He had been so stunned by being put in the bottom of the ocean, that he forgot he was armed with advanced hunter capabilities. It had been nearly two years
since he took the plunge in anger and loosened Cal's rock wall with his hammerhead shark nose.

The next morning when the sun appeared over the horizon, Drew's head and body floated to the surface and then reassembled. He opened his eyes in relief and then realized he was in the middle of the ocean. Normally, in these types of situations, the hunter's survival instinct would kick in and they would stay above the water until the tide took them into the shore a few hours later. But Andrew had never been in the middle of the ocean, at least that's what he remembered at first. The elation of being alive quickly turned into confusion and then exasperation.

Drew was flapping in the water so wildly that his manic energy forced a change into a shark. His fins splashed the water until he realized he was fully buoyant, and then a wide, toothy smile spread over his face. Andrew then used his sonar to detect the others and they rode back to shore on his back, although they were quite scared and confused at first.

Back to the end of the fight the previous night...

The vampire/protector family was only a few breaths away from a much-needed victory.
Belinda didn't know much about her nephew's wife, but she was about to cram everything she needed to know about Carla into a few meaningful moments.

Belinda dove down to the depths of the ocean and then stopped in front of a pale and defeated Carla. There was no fight left in the young hunter. She had never experienced water in these depths, or anything deeper than Kayla's little portable bath, or the sink when she was really young.

While Belinda had a fierce look on her face, Carla did the only thing she knew how, she smiled.

The gesture struck Belinda as odd, being that she was down there to end Carla and the fight, an outcome that the water-logged hunter surely must have been aware of.

Instead of instantly attacking, Belinda moved in closer and reached across her body and clasped Carla's pruney right hand. The two women understood each other at that moment - warrior to warrior, mother to mother. There was class and humility in the battle after all.

Belinda made the final stroke of victory quick and forceful, and then carried Carla's body back to the light of the water's surface.
Max and Kayla walked to the beach from the park after the battle ended that night.

"Do you know where they took my family?" Kayla asked as they strolled on the Beach Haven Boardwalk.

"I have no..." and before he could say "idea," he had an idea.

She noticed that he had stopped talking, so she let go of his hand and stopped walking.

"What? What do you know?"

Max was reluctant to come forward with the information, but he figured she would find out in a few hours, anyway.

"I think they were taken here, to the ocean."

Kayla believed him at first until a feeling of betrayal came over her. "You knew all along!" she accused Maxwell.

"No, I didn't!" Max replied, while the two stood on the deserted boardwalk.

"I don't believe you! You used me to find out our strategy, and you used me to discover our weakness!"

"I would never use you!" an upset Max replied. "I love you!"

"Prove it!" Kayla challenged, obviously in the early stages of her climb toward womanhood.
"Prove it?" Max thought. "Prove it?" he said out loud until the solution came to him.

"Okay. I'll prove it. The strategy I suggested was nowhere near what we wound up doing. I had forgotten that water meant 'safety' for my family and danger for you family."

It didn't take long for Kayla to mood-shift.

"Okay," she said as she bounded toward him and planted a big kiss on his surprised, but relieved lips.

They stood facing the ocean, Max with his arms around his girlfriend. "I have to teach you how to swim."

"What?" a stunned Kayla questioned.

"C'mon," Max said. "I'm gonna' teach you how to swim, so we're both comfortable in the water."

Kayla struggled to break free of his grasp, but he eventually calmed her down.

"Kay, I would never let anything bad happen to you." She hesitated out of pure fear and unfamiliarity. "Kay!"

Kayla spun toward Max, as he loosened his grip. Love was deep in her eyes as she confidently replied, "Never?"
He smiled, "Never. So, let's go have some fun."

TWENTY-THREE

The fighting went on for months with the teams trading victories and defeats, as strategy adjusted to the ever-changing competitive landscape. The volume had been jacked-up on the emotional meter and the participants were at the top of their games, with no sign of an end to this century-old battle.

Theoretically, it could take years for the struggle to be concluded, being that the four vampires amassed 400 lives, or deaths, depending on your point of view, between them. The battles had become so intricate and emotional that the combatants started losing themselves in the struggle.

This was the perfect inflection point for some intervention from a guiding force outside of the groups. In the months leading up to Maxwell and Kayla's second birthday, which also marked the countdown to the 18th year in their internal clocks, the dynamic between the families underwent a dramatic, yet slow and painful transformation.
The force in the shadows was an agent for good, for peace, with a history and a future among the clan. Generations of fighting had added layers of hatred and resentment to a naturally contentious relationship.

"The plan is to isolate their thoughts and then let them naturally matriculate," the male leader of the outsiders said to his agents of change. Each of the individuals were assigned to a group of four people,

which were mixed between the two sides. The task was simple, yet the results were far from certain.

Dreams of peace were implanted in the minds of the 14 senior members of the families, with Kayla and Maxwell certified to be on-board after the outsiders played 'dream-to-reality' with them.

Kayla was walking through the park on her way home from town, when the two elder members of the outsiders softly abducted her. Before she even knew what was happening, the male had her sleeping deeply and resting comfortably, in order to act like a sponge of incoming information.

"Kayla, when you rest your head tonight, you will have a choice whether to walk on the side of war or on the side of peace."

He was all set to go on to make a few other fringe comments but was interrupted by something he had never seen before.

Kayla struggled to get her words out.
"I choo....

The man was astonished that someone had actually talked through his methods.

"What did you say, my dear?"

"I choose..." she said a little more clearly.

Then she broke free of the outsiders spell and jumped to her feet. "I choose peace!" she yelled and then looked at the two people in

front of her, somewhat apprehensively at first, and then the look of concern turned into a broad smile once she realized that help had finally arrived - that there really was a legitimate chance for the families to coexist in harmony, after all.

Maxwell's road to peace was mostly paved with dirt and rocks in the beginning, because he had become so locked into the battle. He knew that his girlfriend Kayla cried for peace, but in the next breath she was across the field at night implementing battle strategy for her family. So, you could see how he was easily confused by love and war.

And the fighting got more vicious before any peaceful thoughts permeated the scalps of the combatants. There were no more secrets as far as strategy was concerned for either side. Kayla's protection of three family members became somewhat of a shell game for the
vampire/protector squad to solve. She even became adept at shifting the security during one fight in particular.

Maxwell and Kayla were approaching their second birthdays, which also meant that they would be turning the magical age of 18 in the non- mortal world.

"But you said we could do it once we turned 18?" Max prodded his girlfriend.

Kayla hesitated, suggesting that she was indecisive on the topic. "I'm not saying it won't happen..."

Max was agitated, "And you're not saying that it will happen!" She turned off the defensive stance and went at him.

"Maxwell Thompson! You're only two years old and already you want what you want!"

Max might have been a walking Einstein, or two, but he was still relatively inexperienced with the matters of the heart, proving that there are never any shortcuts, or cliff notes, when it comes to love.

"Don't you love me, Kay?"

Mixing love and the physicality's of love is tricky, especially for two people that normally would just be getting used to walking, talking, and eating by themselves.
"Of course, I love you! What kind of question is that?"

Max was a teenager and his mind was firmly based on a single track. "Because if you loved me, there would be no question about the next

step."

Kayla was furious - at least that was the way she felt inside. Outwardly, she looked more like a lightly roasted marshmallow.

"This conversation is over! I don't want to be pressured into anything, Maxwell, by you or anyone else."

She walked toward the other side of the high school football field and Max realized that pressure was not going to get the job done. But that didn't lessen all the internal commotion, as he was starting to feel like a shaken-up bottle of soda.

TWENTY-FOUR

The battle the night of Max and Kayla's disagreement was one for the ages. Watching them strategize was akin to viewing a legendary game of chess.

The vampire/protectors had been on a roll since uncovering the safety strategy, but Kayla had become adept at her own version of the
rolling safety net, where it was difficult to uncover targets that could be eliminated.

"Keep knocking until you find someone home!" Max barked as the battle started.

"Keep on your toes. We're using the big wave tonight!" Kayla countered with her family.

Normally, the hunters abhorred water references, but they detested dying more than her simple play on words.

The line of vampire/protectors rolled through all seven hunters with no success. But, on the way back through the line, Max said, "Let's put some weight into it."

Garrison led the charge, turning into an Orca killer whale as he literally sat on Aaron, much to his surprise. Kayla had to keep protection on Aaron at least for the time being, until she was fully able to exercise her plan.

Nicole followed her grandfather by changing into a whale, the size of which most mortal women have nightmares about. Carla was her target, and Kayla went along with the scheme and protected her mother from being flattened.
Next on the conga line of Orca's was Special Agent Blake Wallace. His assignment was to sit on the fiercest hunter, Calvin Brewster, who obliged by being taken peaceably.

Kayla waited for the three protectors to be super-sized and occupied, and then looked for the exact moment to roll out the second and third levels of her master plan. Her focus was extra-sharp on this night, as the one- track-mindedness of Maxwell made her internalize the hurt and frustration she was holding, in an attempt to diffuse any ill-feelings, she had toward

him.

On the other side of the field, Max's confidence was growing with every action. The next part of his team's strategy was to split the remaining four members of the hunter clan: two if by land and two by sea.

Daniel and his mom - at least his mom from his first life, Maggie - picked up Thaddeus and Sharon and were headed to the water, even though Sharon had rediscovered her will to swim.

The plan was actually to separate the hunters' heads from their bodies once out of sight, long before they reached the shore. The idea was just to produce an illusion, but not actually be gone for any stretch of time.
While under their protective bubbles, Cal, Aaron and Carla were playing a game akin to rock, paper, scissors, by changing into different animals in their hereditary chain.

"Ram beats hawk and pit bull!" Cal said proudly at his happily- disappointed teammates.

Carla giggled as she said, "Okay, ready? Ram, hawk, pit bull, now shoot!"

Cal turned into a hawk, Carla a ram, and Aaron a pit bull. The game was so amusing, and transfixingly-stupid, that the whales became so focused on the game that they took their eyes off the action unfolding in front of them. They were acting as virtual placeholders - that was, until, there was no longer a place to hold.

While Max shifted gears and was readying for the two-on-two confrontation between Hartwell and Belinda versus Andrew and Emily, Kayla had her finger on the button she thought she's never press: sacrificing her mother for the greater good.

Hartwell immediately went at Andrew, but the now 20-year-old Brewster was more-than-capable of holding off his charge. About 15 yards behind them, old friends and in-laws Belinda and Emily were stoked to rekindle their association.
Just as the two battles were becoming quite heated and the beach- heading vampires were about to split up their parcels, Kayla pulled the most timely and dramatic switch perhaps of all time.

Cal waited for Kayla's instructions as Hartwell was busy holding off Andrew, who had become adept at changing his form to adjust to the fight. Hawk countered the wings of the vampire; pit bull rose to the fierceness of Hartwell's exposed teeth; and ram held off the head-long dash of the charging vampire.

Meanwhile, Emily Brewster used her experience and agility to counteract the advances of Belinda Thompson.

"Experience can only take you so far, Em," Belinda stated as she attacked with her sword-like fingernails.

Brewster was holding a sword in each hand and effortlessly denied

Belinda's attack.

"I'm still here!" Emily defiantly yelled back.

Sparks were flying off the blades of Drew and Emily's swords as Kayla assessed the timing of the big transition. Daniel and Maggie were a split-second away from turning two bodies into four pieces, so Kayla yelled, "Roll!" through the hunters' internal communications system.
Cal complied with the request and started rolling from one end of the

20-foot protective sphere to the other. Kayla closed her eyes and let symmetry, not emotional loyalty, guide her thoughts. She removed the safety bubble from under Garrison and Nicole, causing the massive weight of the killer whales to instantly puree Aaron and her mother Carla.

Moments before the surprise splash-down, Carla said to her

daughter, "Don't worry, Kay. It won't hurt, even though the lack of pain was a bit of a stretch for a mother who was trying to remove all guilt from her daughter's mind.

"Okay, momma," the good daughter replied.

Kayla transferred the remaining protection from Cal to Thaddeus then Sharon, who slipped from the grasps of Daniel and Maggie and sped to safety on the ground.

"Safe!" Thaddeus yelled. "Safe!" Sharon then added.

The third and final part of the plan moved into effect as Kayla transferred protection from Thaddeus and Sharon to Andrew and then Emily, who said, "Not that I need it," under her breath.
At the same time, Cal's bubble momentarily burst as he efficiently rolled from under the weight of Blake the whale. He kept rolling on the ground, gaining speed until he approached Belinda.

It was at that moment that he rose to his feet, protection now surrounding him like a warm blanket on a cold winter's night and made the power move.

Hartwell had attempted one unsuccessful swipe at Drew and could see Cal rolling out of danger and toward Belinda.

"Duck!" Hartwell screamed internally to Belinda.

Belinda did just that as Daniel and Maggie were now en-route back to the fight. But it was still two vampires against semi-protected hunters.

With Daniel and Maggie on the way and the three whale-sitters converting back into their human forms, the sides were about to slide to seven to three for the vampire/protector squad until Thaddeus and Sharon came back.

Belinda attributed Hartwell's impatience, and the distrust in the abilities of others, as an erosive force that had been eating away at the team's confidence since the children were born. She believed that he had used half of his 100 lives up on his vanity and low-risk maneuvers, all in the name of thinking he was the only straw that stirred the drink of blood.
"Hold the line!" Daniel yelled, trying to keep Hartwell in front of Drew and only focused on that.

Love was what propelled Hartwell into protecting his family at the cost of his own life. From Belinda, who he had seen as merely a conduit when she brought Daniel into the world, to Maggie, the love of his lives, he was the papa bear that felt a duty to protect all that inhabited his den.

TWENTY-FIVE

Kayla held on to her single cell of protection and was effectively distributing it between Cal, Andrew and Emily until Daniel and Maggie returned. All the vampire/protectors had to do was kill one of the remaining hunters and the protection would be neutralized.

Upon his return, Daniel guessed right and sliced an unprotected

Emily, leading Kayla to yell to her teammates, "I'm out!"

Seven against two turned into seven versus four as Thaddeus and

Sharon returned.
Hartwell literally stabbed Cal in the back as he was facing Belinda, weakening the alpha hunter further and dwindling any strategy his family had left.

"Coward! You stabbed me in the back!" Cal screamed at Hartwell. He then lunged at Hartwell, but Maggie slowed his progress by also

stabbing him through his back until her long nail was visible in his front. He looked down at his chest and said, "Ain't that a bitch," as Maggie retracted her nail and Cal's lifeless body made a free-fall to the ground.

Thaddeus never liked to see his boy get killed, so he jumped through the air as a ram and violently jerked his head sideways, severing Blake's head clean off with his razor-sharp antlers. He then turned back into his human form and forged the blade of his sword though Garrison's heart.

It was Thaddeus, Sharon and Andrew versus Nicole and the four vampires: Daniel, Hartwell, Maggie and Belinda. All the hunters had to do was kill one of the vampires, while the trio of hunters had to be eliminated for them to lose.

"Double-team Maggie," Kayla excitedly said, trying to get her team to focus on a vampire of lesser strength than the others. All three hunters turned to pursue Maggie, because Kayla's instructions did not specify the team members to be involved in the attack.
That left Sharon exposed to the first wave of counterattack, and she was ended by Belinda, who was on the spot to clean up the errant move.

It was five against two until Thaddeus took out Nicole, as he turned toward the onrushing mob of vampires. Then, a combination of Daniel and Hartwell felled Thaddeus with high and low cuts.

The four vampires then circled Drew like they were Native Americans surrounding a lone stagecoach.

"Lay your sword down, Andrew. It's over," Hartwell said to Drew, although the young Brewster would never quit. If his uncle and grandfather taught him anything, it would probably be fight until the battle was over.

Like Custer on his last stand, this army of one was outnumbered and had no realistic chance of surviving the battle.

Kayla's mind went blank on the sideline. She was willing to end her mother's life for what she thought was the greater good, only to be faced with her father now surrounded by a quartet of the fiercest fighters on the planet.

Looking down the barrel of a disgraceful death, Andrew decided to gut it out and he refused to lay down his sword and surrender. Four single index finger nails were extended toward Drew and the fight, whatever there was of it, was on.
Although Drew was fighting his butt off, the four vampires hardly broke stride.

"How long do you think he can keep this up?" Hartwell asked Daniel, who grew up with Drew and was very familiar with the hunter's capabilities.

Daniel looked down at his left wrist and said, "When does the sun come up?"

Hartwell laughed, "You see, I did teach you something," referring to the mock wristwatch move.

Belinda yawned, "Can we end this?"

The usually-patient Maggie also chimed in, "I'm thirsty. Would you guys mind if I had a drink?"

"Wouldn't it be better if we all shared?" Daniel interjected.

"Okay," Maggie conceded. "One Andrew Brewster sippy box, coming up!"

Maggie flashed out of the field and then flashed back in, thrusting four long, sharp straws around the base of Drew's neck. The vampires quickly gathered around him, as Hartwell threw the hunter's sword to the ground.

It only took a few seconds for all of the blood in Drew's body to collect toward the straws, and he was just about to expire when the unthinkable happened.
Peace-loving Kayla's mind had finally snapped. She watched battle after battle and had finally seen enough... too much bloodshed, too much pain and loss.

Kayla didn't even realize that she had moved off the sideline, or she would have certainly come to a standstill. But she had made a move - one that would be the most aggressive, hostile gesture of her young life.

Andrew was barely alive, yet he was the only one to see his daughter coming. The vampires were too busy enjoying their middle-of-the-night snack to notice there was a world still spinning around them.

Drew's pain was dulled by the sight of his daughter speeding toward him, stopping briefly to fetch a bloody sword from the ground. He smiled as she swung the long, sharp object with all the power of the mighty Babe Ruth, although she had never so much as picked up any weapon in her two years of life.

Hartwell just happened to be the target because he was closest to her on the sideline. The senior vampire had no time to react, or produce any kind of emotional response, as his head was sliced clean-off and then sailed some 30 yards down the field.

The flow of Drew's blood had stopped, and he then fell lifeless to the ground. I his last moment of life, he looked at his daughter and lovingly
smiled. Kayla was so worked up, however, that she was about to go after the remaining three vampires until a voice behind her said, "Kay, stop!"

She was so blinded by loyalty that she spun around and was about to put a huge crimp into Max's night.

"Whoa!" Daniel exclaimed, as he used some of Drew's explosive hunter blood to rocket in front of Max and stop the force of Kayla's blade with his bare hand.

"That wouldn't be prudent," he said calmly as Kayla snapped out of her temporary rage.

She looked around and saw a headless Hartwell and then Maxwell crouched in defense behind his father.

"What have I done?" she painfully stated as she collapsed, sobbing to the turf with her head in her hands.

TWENTY-SIX

Involving participants under the age of 18 is a tricky and unnecessary proposition in the world of vampires, hunters and protectors. While all of the of-age fighters lived to see another day, unless it was a vampire that hit
the magic number of 100, the death of an under-aged person is what would be called "permanent."

"There would be no coming back if she killed you!" a disturbed Daniel said to his son once back at the house that morning.

"But she didn't kill me!" a thoroughly frustrated Maxwell replied.

"Who almost killed you?" a revived Nicole said as she emerged from her and Daniel's bedroom.

Just before Daniel was going to answer, because his son surely wanted no part of starting that discussion with his mother, the rays of the morning sun reinvigorated Hartwell and he also strolled into the main room.

"All this talk of killing. I just woke up and it's a little disquieting." Daniel wasn't going to let it go, as Blake and Garrison joined the

impromptu discussion with Belinda and Maggie already in the room.

Maggie zipped over to Hartwell and properly greeted her husband. Belinda also swarmed Agent Blake.

"Let me handle this," Maggie said to Hartwell.

"Why don't we all sit down and get a little food in our stomachs before we get into this."

Hartwell wasn't very good at taking instructions, even from his wife.
"Something just dawned on me..." he then glided over to Max. "Did your girlfriend cut my head off last night?"

Max didn't want to answer such a pointed question.

"Because the last time I counted, they were down to Andrew, and he wasn't in any kind of shape to do anything but fall to the ground."

Maggie shot Hartwell a sarcastic "Thanks!" look, but he had already opened up the can of worms.

Nicole had her arm around Daniel until she heard what Hartwell was saying. She then stepped toward her son and started laughing.

"Are we talking about peace and love, Kayla?" She then tuned back to Hartwell. "That dove cut your head off?"

Daniel was his father's son.

"And then she nearly put an end to Maxwell!" Nicole could not believe what she was hearing.

"What? You can't see that girl anymore!" she frantically yelled and then she looked around the room. "What happened?"

"She lost it," Daniel stated. "I had to step in and stop her from using the same sword on Maxie."

"Then what happened?" Nicole asked.
Belinda interjected, "She fell to the ground and cried, and cried, and then cried some more."

"I can't believe we lost that one!" Nicole exclaimed. "I know!" Hartwell agreed. "It was almost too easy."

Maggie still couldn't believe that such a sweet girl could do what she did.

"What made her do it? I still can't believe she came after Maxie."

All eyes were on Maxwell as his face turned a lovely shade of tomato red. He put his arms out and his palms up and replied, "I don't know," in a completely unconvincing tone.

The men and women in the room processed the information and then exchanged looks of understanding about what had taken place between

the almost 18-year old's.

Kayla was all alone in her house - at least as a living, breathing creature - until the sun cleared the eastern horizon. As fate would have it, the last person to die was also the first person to enter the dining room/living room area where Kayla had prepared a full breakfast spread.

"Good morning, sunshine!" Andrew beamed as he greeted his daughter.
Kayla wasn't sure how she was supposed to act following her first on- field action, but she didn't have to think much as her father walked over and gave her a big hug!

"Morning, daddy."

Drew backed out of the hug and exclaimed, "You were awesome last night, Kay!"

"What did she do?" Carla asked as she followed a few steps behind

Drew into the room.

Thoughts of being stabbed twice in the back reemerged for Cal as he walked in and got ready to strap on the feed bag.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but there was no way in Beach Haven that we won last night."

Andrew beamed at his young prodigy of a daughter. His essence swelled with pride, making it fairly obvious to her mother what had happened.

"Kay?" Carla said both astonished and simultaneously ashamed that her wonderful and pure daughter had been pushed to violence.

Kayla was slowly losing it as her family trickled in for breakfast, but the look on her mom's face and her desperate tone of voice sent her over
the edge of the waterfall. She ran over to her mom and almost collapsed in tears in her arms.

It took the hunters the better part of a half-hour to calm the young charge down and try to make sense of the battle's end.

"Can you tell us what happened, Kay-Kay?" great grandpa' Thaddeus said with his arm around her.

Kayla was still having trouble calming down.

"Mom got squished. Then Uncle Cal...." She blew her nose and trumpeted to the room that the end of the story was potentially near.

"Then dad was surrounding by the vampires..."

"All four of them?" Cal asked with a tone of surprise in his voice. "Yes. And then they had long straws and were drinking dad."

Kayla was serious but when Drew started laughing, he commanded the room's attention and then finished the story.

"And then, just as the last of my blood was being sipped, I saw Kayla, like a blur from the heavens, coming at us with a look of utter determination and drive. She reached down and picked up my bloody sword," Drew said, acting her moves out. "And then she swung with such force that Hartwell's head flew in the air 20 or 30 yards down the field."
Drew continued proudly, "Then I died, so I have no recollection of what happened next."

Everyone's attention shifted back to Kayla, who would have been elated if the storytelling stopped there.

"What did their faces look like when you did that?" Emily said, living through her granddaughter.

"Before, or after, I almost killed Maxwell?" Kayla shyly slated.

The jovial mood in the room instantly turned dark. Carla didn't think it could get worse, but it just did.

"Did you say that you tried to kill Max?"

"He came from behind me and I guess I was still pretty dialed in..." Kayla explained.

"You do realize that if either one of you dies in the next month, there will be no second chances?"

"Yes," Kayla replied.

"We don't need that," the usually combative Cal stated. "No, we sure don't," Thaddeus added.

Sharon interjected, "What brought this on?"

Emily stepped in, "Her parents were being killed right in front of her."
The peace-brain therapy administered by the outsiders must have been doing some good, because the conversation turned non-typically rational.

"Yeah, but she's seen that happen a number of times," Sharon countered.

Emily would have usually been ready for a fight, even if Sharon made sense, but she thought about the statement first and then responded.

"Yeah, what about that, honey?" she asked Kayla. "It's not the first time you've seen that."

Kayla waited to respond, and the more that people agreed with the observation, the redder her face became, just like Maxwell's moments earlier.

Silent knowledge was passed around the room until Cal said, "Well, I'll be dipped in..." as their little girl was growing up way too fast.

TWENTY-SEVEN
The outsiders stepped-up their efforts over the next few weeks to accelerate the battle-stoppage implementation. Both sides could not trust their youngest members to stay planted on the sidelines and wanted to head off any chance of a fatality as a result of the heat of the battle.

It was at this point that one of the members of the outsiders decided to step out of the shadows and make himself visible to select people from each side. He did so without the counsel of his elders, who knew that contact with his loved one's was inevitable and would bring closure to a productive two-year absence.

Belinda might have been a vampire, but she still loved to get a manicure and pedicure every week. Of course, she could have done it herself perfectly in about two seconds, but it was the Korean salon's attention to detail, plus her thorough cleansing of the shop when she arrived, that made the experience always pleasurable. As mother hen of the family, it was nice to be pampered by someone else every now and then.

She was sitting back in the big, comfy chair while her feet were being treated to a massaging whirlpool bath when a strangely familiar voice said, "Can I get you a green tea cooler, ma'am?"
First of all, there were no male workers in the salon. And, secondly, "Holy crap! Is that you, Brandon? Is that really you?" Belinda gushed as her long-lost and presumed dead, pseudo-son, Brandon Justice was sitting in front of her with a drink in his hand.

She hugged him and he didn't expect to have the same feelings for her, with the lifestyle change and all.

"I missed you so much," he whispered without even realizing that he was saying it. The instinctual response obviously came much more from nature than nurture.

There were tears in Belinda's eyes as they broke from the hug but, of course, the water froze and fell to the floor as ice cubes.

"I missed you too, Brando!"

Brandon brought Belinda into the back of the store, where the Korean ladies usually talked behind her back, but only soft enough so she couldn't hear them, or so they thought. Belinda was fluent in Korean and just about every known dialect ever spoken on the planet, and even a few extra- terrestrial languages, and she also had more-then-bionic hearing.

When Brandon finished telling Belinda about his new family's plan, he pleaded with her.
"You can't tell anyone you saw me! I'm not even supposed to be here!"

"I'm not really good at keeping secrets," chatty Belinda replied. "Well, if you want peace then you will keep this quiet. Do you want

peace?"

The he pulled his ace out of the hole. "Mom?"

Belinda thought to herself, "Mom? What a nice boy," and hugged her adopted son until he had to tap out from being squeezed so tight.

"Sorry," Belinda said, "I don't realize my own strength sometimes." Brandon felt fairly confident after his first stop that a second stop

would be no less detrimental. So, he ventured to another nail salon, as fate would have it, on the other side of town.

The second recipient of the Brandon Justice "Hello I'm back and, by the way, I'm very much alive" greeting was Carla Brewster.

"Your baby got so big!" Brandon exclaimed.

Carla was sitting at a small table getting a manicure, when she heard the voice from behind her.

"Why thank you!" Carla replied to the familiar voice.
A mother of a two-year-old would normally want to scope out anyone that was watching her child and even though Kayla looked like an 18 year\- old and could handle her own business, Carla probed deeper.

"When did you last see her?" still not seeing the man who was talking about Kayla.

"I saw her yesterday and just a few minutes ago," Brandon stated. Carla still did not see this person and had heard enough to be on

guard. She made sure the nail stylist was between strokes and then stood up to confront the person, but all she got out was "Who the...?"

"It's just me," Brandon said as he was eye-to-eye with his good friend and one-time enemy.

"Brandon?" Carla shockingly said. "Is it really you?" "In the flesh! Well mostly flesh..." he replied.

They hugged and Carla's tears of joy remained just that, as they streamed down her cheeks.

"Do you have a minute? I have to talk to you about something."

All Carla had was time, so she followed him to the back room as the Korean nail ladies gossiped about the married lady and her young-looking boyfriend.
Brandon finished his speech and Carla asked, "Who else knows about this?"

"Just you," Brandon tried to say with a straight face to conceal his conversation with Belinda.

Carla looked at him like he was Kayla's age, which he almost was. "You spent all those years torturing me so you could die and

disappear, only to return to Beach Haven to torture me some more. Now tell me what's really happening!"

Brandon once had the upper hand in the relationship when he was a vampire and Carla was a young hunter. But those days were long gone, since the time when they both were powerless and she and Drew enacted their revenge.

Brandon gave up, dropping his head and then coming clean. "I just came from talking to Belinda."

Carla was a mom and she understood.

"She was more of a mom to you than anyone."

Carla put her arm on Brandon's shoulder in a sign of support. "You know, there's nothing my daughter wants more than peace." Brandon nodded his head, "Yeah, I know."

Carla mood shifted, "You know? How do you know?"
"I talked to her," Brandon quickly replied without really gauging the impact of his response.

Before Carla could start a fight, Brandon touched her shoulder and a peaceful feeling coursed through her veins.

"How did you do that?" a now-calm Carla asked.

"We come in peace, and Kayla is the reason why we have a chance of pulling this off in the first place."

"I understand. She almost killed Maxwell a few weeks ago." That was information that Brandon had not been exposed to.

"What? Wow, that was a close one. I thought she had her emotions under control?"

"The vampires had Andrew surrounded and were drinking his blood with straws," Carla stated.

Brandon tried not to laugh, but his days as a vampire were impossible to run from.

"That brings back some interesting memories..." Carla wasn't going back there to those dark days. "I'm sure it does..."

TWENTY-EIGHT

It took a few weeks for the next fight after Kayla almost killed Max to unfold, partially because of the cautionary stance the two sides were taking and partly because of the calming impact of the peace-seeking outsiders.

"We fighting tonight?" Thaddeus asked Garrison outside Beach

Haven Bagel one afternoon.

Gary was one of the original three, so his fight reflex was still strong. "Yes," he replied, unwilling to back down from a challenge.

They shook hands and went their separate ways, off to impart the news of the day to their respective families.

"We're fighting tonight," Thaddeus said to Cal after he arrived home. "Good," warrior Cal replied. The air has been getting pretty stale

around here."

The reaction was similar across-town as Garrison spread joy to

Hartwell.

"We go tonight, my friend."

"Good," Hartwell grunted, but his insides were forging the war of the century. The vampire within was being slowed, not stopped, by the white dove flapping effortlessly inside of him. The longer the time on earth, the harder it would be for the peaceful conversion to make a dent.
"All we can hope for is to neutralize the elders," the head of the outsiders, Joseph Winters, said to his family.

He added, "It is doubtful that they will ever feel peace, real peace, in their lives."

"What about the others, like Daniel and Andrew?" Brandon asked. "There is hope for them. But our mission is really focused on Kayla

and Maxwell. For in them, we can forge a new generation of peace and trust."

"Without the little ones, we could not have returned," Katherine

Winters stated.

Victoria, Brandon's now wife, was always the cynical one in the group.

"Yes, but it's not like we missed this place over the past two years." The little twins were also at odds over which ocean was better. "Pacific!" Bryce yelled.

"Atlantic!" his fraternal twin Cheryl shot back.

"They haven't stopped bickering since we came to Beach Haven," Katherine said as she turned around toward Joe.

"You know, for a peaceful bunch we have our share of disagreements," Brandon observed.
As usual, Joe had the wisdom at the ready. "Without conflict there is no progress."

The group collectively let the prudence of the statement massage their brains.

Brandon attempted to spin his own knowledge quilt.

"And without family we are but a sole paddle without a force to move." The group also took a moment to gather Brandon's intended pearl. "Nah! That took too long to develop," Victoria panned.

Katherine put her arm around Brandon.

"That's all right, honey. You'll get it next time."

They started walking out of the park and Joe said, "Could have gone with 'we are in a boat without a paddle."

Then he looked at Brandon, who agreed with the revision.

"Let's start paddling family. We're almost to shore!" Joe said as they were close to putting the finishing touches on a fluid plan.

The day before the battle, Brandon and Victoria met with Kayla and

Maxwell.

"You guys try to play it natural," Brandon stated.
"Yeah, and just play along with the flow of the battle like you normally would," Victoria chimed in.

"How will we know when it's over?" Max asked.

Kayla was appearing to be apprehensive, but she was so excited at the prospect of peace that she couldn't speak.

Vicky looked at Brandon, smiled and then turned to Max and Kayla. "Don't worry, you'll know."

"Happy birthday to you two in advance!" Brandon beamed. Kayla started crying from the joy and relief. She was quickly

comforted by Max and then joined by Vicky and Brandon - the one-time, peace-hating vampire - in a good-vibes group hug.

A few minutes later, Max and Kayla walked through the park hand-in- hand, only a day away from fulfilling their limitless potentials and uniting

two historically polar opposite bodies.

TWENTY-NINE

Weeks elapsed between battles, yet only a few members from each family were itching to fight. Cal and Hartwell would always be available to
go at each other no matter how much their brains were manipulated to tolerate each other.

"You guys ready to go?" Cal asked enthusiastically, as only a few of his teammates trickled into the main foyer.

Sharon was always on his side and she was ready for action no matter what her husband's agenda was. She believed in him unconditionally and he mirrored all of that love back at her.

Cal's dad, Thaddeus, was also one of the first in line for the brawl, being that he and Hartwell started the whole struggle initially. Also, in the hallway was Emily Brewster, who was Cal's twin in every way, and Carla, who always enjoyed battling with her counterpart Nicole.

Aaron and Andrew slowly walked into the hallway, appearing more ready to go to dinner at the Beach Haven Diner than to throw down at Beach Haven Park.

"You okay, big guy?" Cal asked Aaron.

Aaron rubbed his eyes, undoubtedly still shaking the cobwebs from a peaceful nap.

"Yeah, let's do this," he replied in the most dulcet of tones.

Cal was confused by Aaron's reaction but decided to press on. He put his fist out toward Drew and said, "Thunder!"
And Drew yawned and then countered, "Lightning."

Cal shook his head in disbelief and mumbled, "This is going to be a long night," as the hunters shuffled through the front door and into the chill of the early spring night.

The story was similar at Hartwell's house. Daniel and Garrison were ready to go, and Nicole followed her man into the main room. Belinda then entered, leaving only Blake and Maggie as temporary holdouts.

"We're ready to go," Hartwell transmitted to Maggie, who got dressed, put on makeup, and was standing with the others within seconds.

"Can you check on Blake?" Garrison said to Belinda, who zipped into their room and saw Blake huddled over his wide-screened computer.

Blake looked up and saw Belinda, "They're rescuing this humpback whale and returning it to safety."

"What's got into you?" Belinda thought and then said, "Are you coming?"

Blake stared at the screen and then said, "Yeah, just let me get dressed."

Belinda replied, "No time," as she dressed him and then was in the middle of the main room on the next breath.
Blake expected everyone to begin walking out until the room was blanketed with laughter. He was standing there with his pink boxer shorts outside of his pants. Belinda was the last person to get the joke and seemed annoyed that she had made such a mistake, so she extended the nail of her right index finger and swiped twice on each side of Blake's waist.

The shorts fell to the floor and Blake stepped away from them saying, "Liberating."

Belinda scooped up the shorts and threw them in the trash on the way out.

The two sides almost always used their feet as a mode of transportation to get to the battle as a way to loosen up. The vampires would also extend their wings and glide, and the hunters got their hawk and bear on to practice the transitions.

There was this one time in the early days when Agent Blake accidentally changed into a whale in the middle of a usually busy intersection inhabited by a single car on that late night. Hartwell swooped in and picked up the car before it hit Blake and moved it in front of the gigantic Orca whale.
"You shouldn't be drinking and driving!" Hartwell said to the man, as he smelled alcohol on his breath.

"I only had one glass of red wine!" the middle-aged man yelled as the other family members banded together and cleared bloated Blake from the scene.

THIRTY

It was decided before the battle that one person from each family would keep the children company, so there was no chance the kids would react and rush to get involved in the fight. Only hours from their 18th birthdays - and to a large measure, of safety - Kayla and Max would not be afforded the opportunity to be human, at least not on this day.

"Who's it gonna' be?" Cal said to his family, trying to illicit a volunteer to sit out.

Nobody said anything, but Aaron's behavior was screaming "Bench me!"

Thaddeus elbowed Cal and then said, "Hey big guy, you look like you're in pretty deep over there."
Emily was mortified, as she embarrassingly slapped Aaron's right hand, which was connected to the long index finger that was embedded in his right nostril.

"Aaron, please take Kayla by the hand and bring her to the sideline," Cal said.

Aaron extended his right arm and Cal acted quickly on his niece's behalf.

"No, the other hand!"

It wasn't exactly the explosive start the hunters were looking for...

Hartwell, in contrast, wasn't looking for volunteers. Any opportunity to spare his wife from pain was about as welcomed as the warm smile on Maggie's face.

"Maggie and Maxwell will be doing battle over there," Hartwell stated pointing to the bench across from the hunters.

"And the rest of us will be doing battle over here," he said extending his left wing toward the field.

What the two sides didn't know as they stepped on the dewy pitch that night, was that their individual matchups had been predetermined by
the Winters' family. Joseph, Katherine, Victoria, Brandon, Bryce and Cheryl were hidden in a nearby brush, watching the fruits of their labor unfold.

Subliminal suggestion had been implanted before the fight, and Max and Kayla had also been briefed on the optimal matchups that could potentially forge peace.

Joe smiled as he ushered in the evening's festivities. "Let our session of bash therapy begin!"

Brandon beamed, "I wouldn't have missed this for the world," as he held Vicky's hand tight.

Katherine passed out tubs of popcorn and drinks for the group.

"Do you smell popcorn?" Daniel asked Nicole on their way out to the field.

"The Beach Haven Bar & Grill is probably popping that late-night popcorn again."

"Then we have to stop by once we're done with this." "Deal!" Nicole replied as she slapped hands with her man.
Many things had transpired since the families had come back on-line, greeted some new members and ushered in a new era by welcoming the next generation into the world. But the one thing that hadn't changed was the mountain of unresolved issues between rivals across the field.

Max and Kayla usually waited until the last second to impart their strategies for the night, leaning on spontaneity to give the team an immediate advantage they hoped would carry them through the entire battle. Sometimes the initiative would be offensive, and at other times the plan would be defensive in nature. The blueprint for this night would rely more on an open-ended architecture than a finite schematic.

Max took the lead.

"Grandpa' Blake, you go against Andrew, Grandpa' Hartwell you're matched up with Thaddeus, Grandma' Belinda you're battling with Emily Brewster..."

Kayla mirrored Max's first three picks and continued with her strategy on the hunter's side.

"Aunt Sharon, you'll be going against Garrison, Uncle Cal is taking on

Daniel Thompson, and mom, you're versus Carla."

Aaron gave a thumbs-up and a smile to the team from the sideline and then tried to shake free of the remaining nasal residue. Booger-free
Maggie held Max's hand as the action was about to start. She noticed that Max's heart was beating at his resting rate, but just figured initially that the kid literally had ice water in his veins.

THIRTY-ONE

The concept behind the bash therapy was fairly simple: the participants beat the heck out of each other until the physicality's of the battle faded, leaving only the more rigorous mental battle in play.

That's the one thing about concepts, sometimes they work and other times they don't work. But Joe realized that the matchups would create confusion in that the combatants would be so blinded by the emotional hurricane that they would virtually block out everything else that was transpiring around them. The other key was that the fights would be so even that they would last longer and longer...

It all started over a century ago with Thaddeus impaling Hartwell on the pointy end of a sharp tree, so it was apropos that this battle was kicked off with Thaddeus breaking a tree limb and swatting Hartwell across the field. One of Thad's greatest qualities as a hunter was his relentless thirst for the pursuit. His pallet was only quenched by Hartwell for most of those
years, but he learned to appreciate the taste of pursuing Daniel, Maggie and Belinda, too.

Agent Blake Wallace studied the marine world his entire life and had become an expert over the past 20 years on the anatomy and tendencies of the hunters. He still hadn't buried his animosity toward Andrew

Brewster, who knew that his daughter Nicole was in love with Daniel, yet he still pursued her out of vengeance.

It was a great relief to finally realize that Daniel was Max's father, not Drew. Blake had always favored the protectors over the hunters because of Nicole, but that didn't mean he was fond of Hartwell and the vampires... at least, not at first.

Once Blake got to know Hartwell, however, he realized the man's brilliance and his undying commitment to his family. Well, actually, Hartwell did die so he could see his family again, so he must have had a 'dying' commitment.

Andrew - flat-out - had no respect for Blake. He often teased him with nicknames as payback for acting so relieved that Daniel was Max's father.

"Hey, frog man! Not gonna' give me warts by touching me, are you?"
Blake always told himself to ignore Drew's taunts, and he was usually able to stay at least luke-warm, but that went all by the wayside on this night.

Instead of charging at Drew, Blake simply picked up his left foot and then picked up his right foot and walked methodically and purposely toward Drew. The confidence and purpose by which Blake walked had a hypnotic and paralyzing effect on Drew, who stood perfectly still while his rival advanced.

Blake stopped just short of Drew and paused momentarily for the affect. He then did something completely out of character, behaving like Lifeguard Blake for a moment.

"Ribbet!" Blake exclaimed and then mightily slapped Drew across his surprised face, sending him spinning down to the ground.

Drew gathered himself and yelled, "Bad, froggie!" as he hurled though the air as a hawk and then changed into a mighty ram, butting Agent Blake through the air as a whale, because Blake had morphed a split-second late upon Drew's approach.

Belinda Wallace, formerly Thompson, never really liked Emily Brewster, going back to the days when they were sisters-in law. Cal was the common thread between them, albeit a thin, flimsy thread at that.
They squared off several times over the years as vampire and hunter, but nothing could prepare them for what was about to occur.

"You're mine!" a usually aggressive Emily shouted at Belinda as they locked arms at the outset like two Greco-Roman wrestlers. The two antagonists were engaging in a life-long struggle of physical and mental wills.

"All talk, no action, Em!" sly vampire Belinda replied.

Historically, Emily was the alpha dog in the relationship, and she showed her fangs by disengaging from the Hungarian death grip and converting into a pit bull terrier.

Belinda smiled as rabid canine Emily went airborne, headed unimpeded toward her jugular vein.

Emily zipped over to a local newsstand and returned with a bunch of rolled up newspapers.

"Bad doggie!" Belinda yelled as she swatted Emily on the snout. Emily yelped and returned to her human form as her pained butt slammed on the ground.

"Oh, it's going to be like that?" Emily defiantly stated. Belinda's perma-smile could not be denied.

"Yeah, it's gonna' be like that!"

Speaking of daddy issues... Sharon was now face-to-face with Garrison. It had been a few years since they talked - since they really talked.

If you were a bettor handicapping the fight, it would be difficult to pick a winner. Under normal non-peace circumstances, they would kill each other without even blinking. But this was the door to a new era of peace and all of the issues that had been stuffed down were about to reemerge.

They were face-to-face and had not registered a single blow, although others around them already got cracking.

Gary started the therapy portion of the night. "You abandoned us!"

Sharon was about as succinct as she could have been with her answer.

"Abandon this!" and she punched her father in the jaw with a massive right cross. She quickly changed into a ram and bucked him with her head on his way down.

The matchup quickly transformed from hurt feelings to hurt body parts as Sharon continued venting her frustration on her father, who was doing a lot more taking than giving out punishment for a change.

Perhaps the most bitter, yet even, matchup of the night was Carla Brewster against Nicole Thompson. They had so much in common - you know, almost having the same baby-daddy and everything.

"Why did you have to call him over that day?" Carla asked. Nicole was usually as nice and as pleasant as a San Diego

afternoon, but Carla seemed to bring out her bitchy side. She stepped as close to Carla as she could and whispered in her left ear.

"Because I could."

Two highly skilled warriors instantly reduced to two jealous teenagers in the schoolyard.

Aaron stood up from the bench and exclaimed, "Ooh! Cat fight!" Hair-pulling, scratching, clawing, yelling, kicking... the

hunter/protector fight handbook was basically thrown out the window.

Kayla was amused, even though her mom was in the middle of the action.

"So, that's what a cat-fight looks like."

THIRTY-TWO
The main event of the night would also be the most difficult web to untangle. There had been a disturbing-quiet period between Daniel and Calvin Thompson since the father returned from his extended stay on the bottom of the ocean.

Only a few casual attempts had been made by family members to talk to Daniel about his non-vampire dad, mostly by Maggie trying to make sure that her son was all right. She knew that living amidst denial was no way to live a few centuries, even if Daniel was an extra-special vampire born with more tools than the average supernatural being.

Cal, conversely, was adept at stuffing what he termed "fuzzy" feelings deep within the recesses of his being. There wasn't a person in the hunter clan that questioned his ability to focus on the task at hand and shut down lesser distractions. That was, until, Sharon Brewster was putting some folded socks into Cal's top dresser drawer one afternoon. She felt like a world explorer coming aground on a major discovery. Under a pile of socks in the very back of the left corner of the drawer, tucked under a pile of seldom-used dress socks and hidden in the dark, was a small wooden box with the name "DANIEL" carved into the lid.

Sharon knew that Cal was out boxing at the gym and that he wouldn't be home for at least another hour, so she investigated further. She
somewhat nervously opened the lid and then gently placed it, top-down, on the top of the dark maple wood dresser that Cal and Thaddeus made from a felled tree in their backyard.

There was a small square of a light blue cloth that Sharon removed first and then studied.

"It's Daniel's baby blanket," she said to herself.

Also, in the box was Daniel's first tooth, which was obviously extracted by the tooth fairy, a silver rattle, and a folded item that sent Sharon running for a box of Kleenex.

She unfolded a picture to reveal a younger Cal - which Sharon knew from the other side in those days - hugging and kissing a two-year-old version of a loved and elated Daniel.

Sharon carefully replaced all of the items in their original locations, closed the box and then set it back in the shadows of the left, upper corner of the top drawer. She did so with tears clouding her eyesight but not her judgment, which had been clear ever since she fell in love with Calvin Brewster.

Back at the field, it was apparent that the bash therapy would have to start in the bash region, because neither Cal nor Daniel had a clue where a
civil conversation would begin. So, they let their frustration come through their fists, not their mouths.

The real impact the peaceful outsiders had on the group was that the fighting was turning more conventional, and less morphotic, as the night pressed on.

As Daniel and Cal squared off in their boxing stances, Cal used the opportunity to throw the first verbal jab.

"Did your father teach you that?" Daniel was equal to the task. "Yeah. At least the one I knew."

Cal then landed a left jab to Daniel's right eye. "Did he teach you how to take a punch?"

Daniel countered with a right hook that surprised Cal. "No, but he taught be how to punch!"

Cal absorbed the blow and then wiped a trickle of blood away from his mouth. He was ready to fight but would not say Daniel's name out lead at the risk of bringing his emotional guard down.

"You've been asking for this for a long time," Cal said as the two boxers squared off and circled each other.

Daniel was defiant in his response.
"I never asked you for anything."

"Can I ask you a question, grandma?" Max questioned Maggie. "Sure. Anything, Maxie!" Maggie replied.

"What was grandpa' like when you first met him?" "Do you mean the first time around or the second?" "The first time," Max countered.

Maggie went into flashback mode, producing a picture bubble of activity over her head for Maxwell to see as she narrated the action.

That kept Max busy for a little while and reinforced everything he already knew about his beloved grandfather.

"He was a little desperate when he met me," Maggie stated after the

Hartwell retrospective was over.

"Robbing a bank? And then he struck gold! Wow!" Max marveled until the vampire in him came out.

"They didn't shower a lot in those days?" Maggie laughed.

"My clothes were always dusty and impossible to keep clean."

"That's not a place for us..." Max concluded and it was confirmed by a nodding Maggie.

THIRTY-THREE

It had been a few hours since the battle had begun, yet there was no foreseeable end to the action in sight. The individuals on both teams were having difficulty finishing fights off and registering the ultimate 'kill shot.'

With the impact of each successive blow weakening for most, the participants were becoming more frustrated and in-tune with their feelings.

Young-ins Bryce and Cheryl Winters were taking turns yawning as the clock struck 2:00 a.m.

"Try to stay awake for this kids. It looks like were starting to make progress," Joe Winters said.

"How much longer?" Bryce whined.

His sister echoed his mood, "I'm tired!"

Joe looked at the others and said, "We're probably a few hours away from the real serious stuff."

By the time Joe said the word 'stuff', his two youngest charges were already fast asleep on each other.
"I'll have to remember that next time I'm struggling to get them down at night," Katherine Winters stated. "It seems that the sound of your voice is quite soothing."

Joe rolled his eyes and laughed, "At least it's good for something."

A few hours later, true to Joe's prediction, Nicole and Carla were locked together in an arm and leg grip that showed no signed of releasing.

"You gonna' give up?" Carla asked, trying to sound like she was somehow in charge.

"Give up?" Nicole replied. "Why should I give up? You give up!" Both women were exhausted, frustrated, and in need of a time-out. "You are always in my way!" Carla screamed.

"Believe me, that's not my intention!" Nicole countered. "Then what is your intention?" Carla asked.

Nicole was a little confused by the question.

"What do you mean? I didn't think I had an intention. I just want to be a good mom and wife," she grunted.

Carla finally let her hair down. "With Drew?"
Nicole was prepared to come back with a "What about Drew?" but her female sensitivity took over and she eased up.

"I don't have any intention toward Drew."

Carla loosened up her upper and lower grips on Nicole's limbs and started to cry.

Nicole didn't know what to do at first - roll on out of there or move in for the kill, so she did neither. Instead, she sat up and faced Carla, who was embarrassingly covering her eyes with her scratched, dirty and bloody hands.

"I thought I lost him," Carla said, proving that three years had not dulled the pain of the event.

Nicole was now at a loss for words. It was the first time since

Maxwell's birth that she thought about she and Drew together. "Why did you do that?" Carla asked.

Kayla stood up and said softly to Aaron, "Cats not fighting anymore." Aaron replied, "Good thing they have nine lives."

"I thought I lost Daniel," Nicole replied as she reached down with her left hand and clasped Carla's right hand.
Carla wiped her tears away with the sleeve of her left arm and replied, "Lost Daniel?"

Nicole explained, "Daniel had just found out that he was a vampire and didn't want to expose me to his issues, so he broke my heart in so many pieces that I wouldn't love him anymore. My mom consoled me, kept me supplied with boxes of Kleenex, but I needed to feel something more familiar. Drew and I were so close before that dance... I just needed to feel love."

Carla understood, "So you texted Drew."

They locked eyes as Nicole displayed tears of true sorrow and regret. "I texted Drew."

Carla sat up and hugged Nicole in a "you're forgiven" embrace. They broke the hug and Carla looked around at the other fights that

were still in full flight.

"Let's go take a walk. All of this fighting gives me a headache." Nicole stood up and then helped Carla stand via her glad hand. "Let's go. They won't even notice that we're gone."

THIRTY-FOUR
Sharon and Garrison were also closer to therapy than bash, although there was still a little physicality to get through. She was wearing down and he appeared to be gaining strength from her presence.

"How long can you keep this up?" Gary asked.

He was usually quiet as a mouse during battles, preferring to save his energy for the intricacies of the fight.

"As long as I'm alive, old man!" a defiant Sharon replied.

Gary saw the end in sight, thinking like a skilled chess player planning ahead for a certain checkmate. So, he instinctively positioned himself for the kill.

Most of the fighting that night was done in the human form, except for the final move of this one. Gary picked Sharon off the ground and held her above his head, akin to a professional wrestler, save the Speedo.

He then focused all of his energy on the downward motion and slammed an almost-lifeless Sharon on the ground, creating a thunderous impact.

Sharon barely moved as Gary got her in a choke hold, and she whispered, "Finish me."

Gary was so into winning the fight that he removed all feelings that the person's life he was about to end was his daughter's. Choking would
have taken a few more seconds, so Gary changed into a wolf and exposed his spiky, white and frothy fangs and opened his mouth to fit it around Sharon's neck.

Just as his teeth were about to sink into the soft skin of Sharon's neck, Gary had a rational thought. A peaceful thought amidst a sea of total chaos and blind rage.

"What am I doing?" he thought as his daughter's flesh and blood had awakened his humane senses.

He morphed back into his human form as his daughter slumped against his chest, beads of blood trickling from her punctured neck. Her sad, watery eyes telling an all-too-familiar story of family estrangement.

Garrison ripped off the sleeves of his shirt and was about to wrap it around Sharon's neck.

"I'll help you with that!" an enthusiastic Maggie said as she zipped in and used her mouth to clean up the blood like a vacuum as she held huge Maxwell on her hip.

"Thanks, Mags," Garrison said as Maggie and side-car Maxwell receded to the sidelines and dad administered the tourniquet to daughter.

Sharon felt better with each passing second. She looked up at Gary with a loving gaze and said, "Thanks, daddy."
Gary hugged his daughter and replied, "No problem, pumpkin," the nickname he had given her when she was a child for her affinity toward everything Halloween.

No matter what Andrew Brewster did, it appeared that Agent Blake Wallace had an answer for it. It was like Blake had taken up residence in Drew's brain and wired his hard drive to relay any and all planned attacks.

"Get out of my head, whale!" Andrew yelled at Blake.

While it was true that Blake could turn into an Orca killer whale, the nickname had coined years earlier when Blake was carrying a few extra pounds.

Blake slid on the ground and took out Drew's legs from under him. He then anticipated Drew getting up quickly and said, "I own you," as he extended his right arm and pummeled Drew with a vicious clothesline.

Respect for others had been a rare commodity in the Drew arsenal pre-Cal. Having powers that seemed to be enhanced almost daily did little to slow this classic alpha-male down.

Drew was on the hedge of general disrespect before the night of the spring dance his sophomore year of high school. He basically did what he
wanted around the house and his best friends, Daniel and Nicole, were the light of his life.

A large chunk of Andrew's remaining humanity died that night, as he stood motionless as his best friend was kissing his girl. His best friend, Daniel, also happened to be his first cousin, further complicating matters.

When he bounded off as a pit bull into the darkness of that night, it was the first time that he consciously changed into one of his hunter options. Everything he experienced before that was in a dream-like state once he fell asleep at night.

There were times during this fight with Blake that Drew wished he was asleep, and the reality was that he was fighting like he was in a deep sleep. Drew was taking the beating of his life but he still refused to quit.

"When are you going to learn?" Blake asked as he used his massive lifeguard thighs to wrap them around Drew's midsection, effectively cutting off his air supply.

Drew's face was turning red but he still managed to force out a few words.

"What do you have to teach, Willy?"

"Oh, now it's Willy? What are you gonna' do, free me?" Blake said in a disgusted tone and then kicked Andrew out of his grip of death. Physical
threats either made Drew stronger or it killed him. The way to get to Drew was through some sort of caveman logic/prehistoric reasoning translated into the current language.

Drew caught his breath, but he was so exhausted that he remained on the ground.

"What is your problem, man?"

Blake couldn't believe his ears, so he tapped them and said, "Testing, testing! Is this on?" to make sure he wasn't hearing things.

"What is my problem? My problem? Drew, do you realize that there are other people in the world besides you? a teed-off Blake exclaimed.

"And you never respect the dead!" Blake yelled, finally getting to the heart of the matter.

Andrew sort of agreed with the observation, because he was a self- centered prima donna just like his Uncle Cal, but he had some difficult processing the latter barb.

Renewed energy fueled by anger surged though his body. Drew stood up and yelled back.

"What? Respect for the dead? You're crazy!"

Blake walked up to Drew, with Brewster putting his hands up fully expecting the fight to continue. Instead, Blake took the index and middle
fingers of his right hand and jabbed them firmly on the right temple of

Drew's head.

In a little trick he had learned from Daniel, Blake was about to give

Drew a graphic and direct feed into his world of disrespect.

Scenes of severing heads with his sword and then subsequently kicking the head down the field like a soccer ball into netted goals were shown to Drew. A few times he even opened mouths and putted golf balls into it.

Continuing on the sports theme, Drew would often take a severed head and shoot baskets with it. Although he realized fairly early on that dribbling would prove difficult.

Blake removed his fingers and screamed, "I woke up the next morning tangled in the net of the basket, for god's sake! It took me 20 minutes to untangle my ears! Have you ever tried to get out of anything without hands or feet? It took my body even longer to find my head without eyes to see where it was going!"

Andrew absorbed the absurdity of his actions and the struggle of his foe, and was just about to issue a direct, if not half-hearted, apology. But the strangest thing happened...
Agent Blake intended for his ventings to be serious and constructive. When he actually heard the words and then processed the actions in his head, however, the imagery of his body stomping aimlessly through the field like Frankenstein looking for his head produced an obvious reaction.

Blake exhaled most of his angst and anger in a powerful chortle, which was much more visually pleasing than a simple laugh. Drew was initially caught off-guard by the sudden mood-swing, but he was quick to jump on board the more light-hearted train.

"I was just thinking about what that might have looked like," Blake said and then pulled his shirt over his head and stomped around the field.

Drew followed Blake, who pulled his shirt back down and then put his arm around Drew while getting him in a playful headlock complete with nuggies.

"I would have paid money to see that!" a gleeful Andrew said after being released from the play-fighting.

They kept walking and still-laughing Blake added, "I was yelling at my body from the basket, but it couldn't hear me!"

THIRTY-FIVE
The family reunion continued with the bitter battle between Emily and Belinda. There was always a natural rivalry of sorts between the two women that always seemed battling for Cal's affection and attention.

"Even when he was yours, he was mine!" Emily grunted and threw punch after punch.

Belinda was a vampire now and was used to sucking the life out of people instead of others doing it to her. She had also refined the art of defense via her accelerated study of the Asian martial arts.

"Opportunity presents itself through other's aggression," Hartwell would say as he helped Belinda master her movements.

"That's your brother, you sicko!" Belinda replied and then slapped Emily across the face, leaving four three-inch scratches from her hairline to her chin on the left side of her face.

Emily was unfazed by the blood staining her white shirt. She hauled off and punched Belinda in her kidneys with a vicious left hook to the back.

Belinda dropped to one knee and Emily stepped forward and rammed her knee into Belinda's face, sending her to the ground.

"You were never good enough for him, anyway!"
Belinda appeared to be dizzy with pain but she was actually dizzy with plan, as she waited for her ex sister-in-law to fully bring her guard down.

Emily's usual move would have been to finish Belinda off, but the permeation of peaceful thoughts were disabling such actions. She turned her back on her fallen foe, who unfurled her wings whilst still on the ground in preparation of flight.

They were in the air before Emily even knew what hit her.

"Let's take a little spin to the beach, shall we?" Belinda said in her evil voice to a now-worried Emily.

Emily knew that her only chance of survival would be to change into something the vampire couldn't hold. She tried the most obvious choice, the grizzly bear, but Belinda scoffed, "Cuddly little teddy bear. You're so cute," she said as she nuzzled close to the tenacious animal.

The pit bull elicited a "Nice puppy!" response, and by the time Emily went all ram and hawk, they were already approaching the shore.

There was absolutely no intent on Belinda's part to kill Emily. She simply wanted to have a real conversation away from all of the fighting, where Emily could potentially let her guard down a bit.
Once over the ocean, Belinda realized that it would take a little more persuasion than "Let's talk," so she transitioned to a simple, but effective dunking strategy.

Fifteen up-and-downs later, Emily's guard was beaten down and it was time for a little meet and greet. Belinda propped up Emily on a wood and stone bench that was bolted to the Beach Haven Boardwalk facing the ocean.

"You calm now?" Belinda asked a water-logged Emily. "Because we can keep doing this until you're civil."

Water gushed out of Emily's mouth, along with a few small fish, but she was still quite defiant.

"You know I hate seafood!"

Belinda smiled and kept looking straight ahead at the moon's glow on the rolling surf.

"I also know you hate talking... especially to me."

They looked at each other and acknowledged the truth of the statement.

Belinda continued, "Why did it have to end this way, Em?"

"What way?" Emily replied, fully knowing what Belinda was asking.
Belinda tried to hold back her anger, "By all of you shutting me and

Danny out."

While Emily was regaining her physical strength, she decided to take the only road she knew.

"What were we supposed to do?"

The response rang hollow to Belinda. "Treat us like family!"

Emily was in full denial. "You're not family!"

Belinda took a deep breath.

"You know, if I wasn't thinking about vanilla-scented potpourri, I would have snapped you in half from that remark.

"Yes! Vanilla-scented potpourri! Where can I get some of that?" Emily exclaimed, finally coming back to life and standing with Belinda on common ground.

"They have it at Beach Haven Drugs and I've smelt a bunch of it at the mall," Belinda replied.

She then got back on topic.

"If you had no feelings for me," she said softly, "how could you turn your back on Cal's son... your nephew?"
Emily had buried much of her feelings with Cal when he disappeared and was gone in the watery abyss. But all of those feelings resurfaced despite part of her wanting to keep it locked away.

She started crying, "I couldn't live without Cal. You two thought he was dead but I knew different. I knew where he was and I couldn't do anything to help him!"

Belinda swiped a left-behind towel from the beach and made sure all of the sand was extricated from the surface.

"Here, use this," she handed the towel to Emily who wiped her wet eyes.

"Thank you. I'm sorry, but I had to let you two go." "Why?" Belinda questioned.

"Because every time I looked at Danny, I saw Cal!" Belinda finally felt Emily's pain after all of those years.

"I'm sorry he left you out in the cold and cheated on you," Emily admitted. "That was wrong of him."

Although Belinda had moved on from her days with Cal, thanks to her wonderful relationship with Blake combined with being a basically sole-less vampire, it was still nice to hear the words of empathy and female

solidarity.
"Thanks, Em," Belinda said as she rested her forehead on Emily's forehead.

"No problem, B," Emily calmly replied.

THIRTY-SIX

The Winters' family also realized that if progress were to be made, it would have to come in large part from the two sides' eldest members.

"These last two will be the foundation for any peace we might achieve with these families," Joe said in a teaching moment to Brandon.

"The two oldest warriors - the root of all conflict - and an estranged father and son," Brandon said. "Daniel is a great guy, but he's never gotten over being abandoned. Hartwell did anything he could to make Daniel feel loved by a father."

Joe took the opportunity to check his own paternal status. "And me?"

Brandon did not disappoint.

"You've been everything I could ever want and more, dad."

Of course, that wasn't completely truthful for either man. Joe had three beautiful children and definitely appreciated Brandon, but more from
a father-in-law capacity. And Brandon, well he felt the same. After all, it was Hartwell and Belinda that he thought of as his parents, and how he had looked forward to returning and being with them again!

It was Great Grandpa' Thaddeus versus Grandpa' Hartwell for another go-round on the battle wheel. These two warriors had fought so many times that most strategy was futile and the winner would be determined by stamina more than skill.

Their competition might have lacked the edge that a Cal/Hartwell or Carla/Nicole matchup presented, but it displayed the enduring qualities of class, honor and skill on the battlefield. That was, until, this fight...

The conflicting feelings of peace and rage were most evident in this fight. The channeled rage it took to go at each other could never be neutralized by feelings of peace, not after more than a century of the pursuit to 100, times two.

One hundred kills was what it took for the game to end and for all to return to mortality. It had happened once, with Cal doing the honors after returning from Hartwell's watery grave. Thaddeus never said anything to his son, but he was not pleased that Cal had stepped in front of him and ended the conflict. After all, he registered the first kill and he should have
been afforded the respect of putting a sword through Hartwell and putting a bow on number 100.

Hartwell was half-way to 100 this time around and tried to get into

Thaddeus' head any way he knew how.

"Half-way to mortality, Thad," he said amidst a rigorous sword-to-nail exchange.

Thaddeus loved being a hunter and couldn't see going back to mortal and aging again.

"Not if I can help it!"

"You going to let that psychotic son of yours do the honors again?" Hartwell asked hitting on two sensitive subjects: Cal and the 100th kill.

The blood in Thad's usually cool body started to boil and his pale face turned beet red, signally to Hartwell that his words had connected with their intended target.

"How many times have I cut that head off only to have it come back and make my life miserable?" Thad said as he gained the upper hand in the swordplay.

"I would kill you for the next 50 days straight if it meant that you would no longer be my reason for living!" Thad yelled.

Hartwell was always quick with the comebacks.
"You wouldn't live very long if you did that, my friend."

Hartwell stopped fighting for a moment and so did Thaddeus, as they both sought to continue the intellectual battle. However, that didn't last

very long. Thad instinctively swung his sword across Hartwell's body, tearing open his shirt and his chest.

Before Thad could recoil his sword, Hartwell caught the tip in his hand and then looked down at his torn shirt.

"This is one of my favorite shirts!" Thaddeus took exception to the comment.

"Who wears a favorite shirt to a fight? That's like wearing a new pair of shoes or a leather coat into a rainstorm!"

Hartwell didn't like being censored, so he forcefully yanked the sword away from Thaddeus and snapped it in half over his knee.

"Hey, that was my favorite sword!" Thaddeus exclaimed.

"Who brings their favorite sword to a fight?" Hartwell mocked and then handed the broken sword back to Thad.

"Bring that to me tomorrow and I'll fix it," Hartwell stated, although he wasn't sure at first why he said it.

Thad was also confused at first.

"Did you just offer to help me repair something that I use to kill you?"
Hartwell thought about the question as if it had some hidden meaning.

"Yes Thad, I think I just did."

"Okay, I think I'll take you up on that then," Thad replied as they started walking together. "We use straight heat to forge the weapons."

Hartwell smiled, "You know I'm all about the cold."

THIRTY-SEVEN

One battle remained, and it just so happened to be the most difficult pile of neurosis to untangle.

Not a word was spoken between Daniel and Cal after their initial barbs over the first four hours of their fight. They were easily the two most capable fighters of the two families, due to being in the prime of their abilities. While Thaddeus and Hartwell were certainly the most experienced, they couldn't match the sheer power, athletic ability and control of Cal and Daniel.

Cal's incredible boxing ability was neutralized by Daniel's knowledge of every other form of fighting and defense the world has ever known. He
was a student of movement and counter-balance and was every bit of Yin to Cal's Yang.

Neither man would back up in this toe-to-toe slugfest. With all of the blows to the head that Cal had taken over the years, he probably would have been brain-damaged and eventually incontinent if not for his supernatural hunter status. The tremendous healing powers of these adversaries made the fighting that much more sensational and battles that mortally would last for minutes, stretched into hours.

There had been a kinder and gentler time for Cal and Daniel in their relationship. Nobody was prouder and more connected with Daniel when he was born than his father Cal. Daniel had no idea that this was his second go-round as son, because Hartwell did not emerge until years later after he skillfully removed Cal from the picture.

The special connection between father and son was never more evident than through Calvin Brewster and Daniel Brewster, who had his surname changed to Thompson by his mother before she registered him for school in Beach Haven.

Once Sharon stopped coming to see Cal in his ocean tomb, Cal's thoughts were squarely focused on his son and how they would be reunited one day. This undying focus, this burning desire, made the pain of losing
Daniel to his arch nemesis, Hartwell, that much more traumatic. It was more shock than anger in the early hours after his return, as his sister and father broke the news to him.

After all of the joy of Cal's return transitioned into the calm of the late evening, his thoughts shifted toward his real priority. The hero's welcome followed the 100th kill of Hartwell and the obvious loss of everyone's powers, including a return to mortality.

Cal was standing in the kitchen with Emily and Thaddeus and innocently asked a question that he deep-down must have known the answer to.

"Where's Danny?"

Thaddeus looked at Emily with a kind of tense gaze that cried, "Oh, boy!"

"We have to sit down to discuss this," Thaddeus said as he tried to guide Cal toward a room he hadn't repaired lately. He looked at the new kitchen window and could imagine his son picking up a chair in anger and throwing it clean through the window and onto the back patio.

"C'mon, dad! We're big boys. This isn't high school! Just tell me where my son is?" Cal said in a slightly agitated tone.
Thaddeus wasn't going to let his daughter Emily take that bullet, at least not at first. Emily knew she had to tell her twin brother everything, and she had to do it quickly. She stepped toward Cal, placed her left hand lovingly on Cal's rejuvenated right forearm and said, "He's with him."

Drew unknowingly walked into the room and said the first thing that came into his mind.

"Hey, did you hear that Danny's a vampire now? And that freak

Hartwell is his dad," Drew said to Cal.

Drew looked at his mom and his grandpa', who were obviously not pleased with the insensitivity he displayed.

"What?" Drew exclaimed in defiance to his authority figures. He then walked up to Cal and said softly, "I'll be your son, Uncle Cal. You wouldn't like what he's become, anyway."

Cal hugged Drew and the two became inseparable after that night. But as much as Drew became a spitting image of his uncle, he still wasn't the son that literally slept with the enemy. Cal never got answers because he buried all of the questions and moved on. Still, part of him needed the son he had loved so many years before.
Daniel didn't even bother to unfurl his nails and Cal left his sword on the ground as they traded blows for the equivalent of 100 boxing rounds.

Cal might have been a more skillful boxer, at least at the outset of the night, but Daniel learned every movement and was Cal's equal after about 98 rounds.

Cal jabbed with his left hand and then tried to follow it up with a right cross, only to have Daniel block it with his left hand.

"Ah, you're learning!" Cal exclaimed, breaking over four hours of silence. He obviously took a little paternal pride in the obvious upgrade in Daniel's skills.

"You can't teach me anything!" a determined Daniel defiantly replied. The two fighters picked up the pace with every jab, cross and

uppercut until their movements was no longer visible to the human eye. They were becoming so lost in their movements that they ascended to another plane of consciousness that neither man had experienced before.

Daniel's usually icy blood was warming to the task, which set off an unprecedented chemical reaction. Cal's insides drove right past calm and peace and triggered a switch to his preference of violence.

The punching slowed as the boxing marathon appeared to be coming toward the end of its final round. Cal's inner mechanisms pushed the
hunter to morph into a ram as he backed up and gave himself more room for a run-up. Daniel had ceased being Daniel the vampire and had to pause a minute to deal with the violent changes occurring in his core.

He screamed toward the lightening skies as the DNA of the hunter finally consummated its delivery and altered his gene sequence. Daniel took a few steps back and continued screaming as he changed into a ram.

It was like Cal was ready to charge as he started dragging his hoof on the ground in fury. The two juiced-up rams charged at each other from 30 paces in a cloud of light dust.

As focused as Cal was on the march toward impact, he had a sobering though a split-second before impact.

"Danny's a ram."

The euphoria was short-lived as Daniel crashed into Cal and sent him airborne about 100 feet back past his original starting point! Cal hit the ground and kept sliding another 20 feet on the dewy grass as he changed back into his human form.

Daniel was so keyed into his new form that he kept charging at Cal, who watched his son coming at him.

"Danny!" was all he got off before Daniel lowered his head and plunged his left antler through Cal's midsection. Once he came to his
senses and noticed the polarizing look of love on Cal's face, he quickly morphed back into his human form.

"Dad?" Danny exclaimed, finally realizing what he had done.

Cal was on his last breaths and made the last seconds count. He reached up and cradled Daniel's face with his left hand and proudly said, with tears rolling down his cheeks, "I love you, son."

Daniel held Cal as he died, crying from the pain of losing him and the joy of finding him again. A few minutes later, the sun peaked out from the east horizon, renewing Cal's life force and enabling the reunion to continue.

Cal opened his eyes and said, "Good timing," as Daniel hugged him and then helped him to his feet.

"How long was I out?" Cal asked as they started walking.

"It was only a few minutes," the elated son replied to his father. "Good to have you back, dad," Daniel added as he looked at Cal. Cal put his arm around Daniel.

"Good to be back, son."

THIRTY-EIGHT
The morning sun was making its presence known, signaling a renewal of life and the human spirit. All of the fighting was over and conversations between the sides had reached levels that they surely could not have dreamed of.

All of the team members gradually filtered back toward the big lawn at Beach Haven Park. Once the 16 members of the families congregated together in one big lawn party, it was time for the outsiders to finally make their move.

Joseph and Katherine Winters led the way, followed by Bryce and

Cheryl, with Brandon and Victoria making a grand entrance in the rear.

Hartwell smelled Brandon at least five seconds before he saw his second son. He whispered to Maggie, "Is that Brandon?"

"I believe it is," she said upon visual conformation.

Hartwell zipped across the field and wrapped his arms around Brandon in a massive bear-hug. He then looked at the more-mature Justice, now Winters, and exclaimed, "Is that you? Is it really you?"

It was one of the more emotional moments for Hartwell, who must have received a shot-or-two of estrogen when he wasn't looking.

"My son," an elated Hartwell whispered.
Brandon was so happy to be back with his sire and mentor that he affectionately replied, "Dad!"

Brandon was warmly received by the members of the vampire/protector family. Joe Winters had a slight twinge of jealousy while viewing the family-like familiarity and interaction but was happy for Brandon. He quickly realized that there was strength in numbers and was no room for ill-feelings if this new and improved tribe were to thrive, if not survive.

Brandon had already seen Carla, and Victoria Winters knew it. The smell of that lascivious hunter was all over Brandon when he returned home after seeing her at the nail salon.

She was willing to accept a simple greeting, but anything additional would be grounds for action. It was like spontaneous combustion when Carla acted like a love-struck teenager and flung her arms around Brandon. The move was primarily meant to tick off Vicky, but it also struck another competitive target.

"Hey, BJ!" Andrew yelled trying to get Brandon off his woman. Vicky turned toward her mother and removed her hoop earrings. "Hold these. I'll be right back."
Brandon's father used to call him BJ, and Drew knew it was a term of severe disrespect. He moved past Joe Winters and then was on top of Drew before he literally knew what hit him with a big right hand. But Drew had a jaw of steel and always had some fight left in him for Brandon Justice.

"Is that all you got, BJ?" Drew defiantly said as he got up and then decked Justice with a huge right hand to the face.

Joe Winters started walked toward the fight to break it up and act like, of all things, a peacemaker, but a few new friends had other ideas.

"Whoa, Joe! Hold on a minute..." Hartwell said as he and a new ally extended their arms to stop Joe's progress.

"Yeah, let's see how this turns out," a smiling Cal Brewster added. Joe finally realized that he had probably taken a bigger bite of the

meatball hero then he could chew. He looked at the two alpha males and formally replied, "Okay, gentlemen."

Cal said, "Five bucks on Drew and your girl." "I'll take Brandon and Carla," Hartwell replied.

Joe Winters tried to resist the temptation of being a competitive guy. It had been so long since he had been released into mainstream society.
Cal and Hartwell knew the peer pressure would help break down some of Joe's walls and aid his Beach Haven integration.

"That kid looks big and strong. I'll take my daughter and Andrew." "Yeah, that's more like it!" Cal exclaimed as he and Hartwell forcefully

patted Joe on the back.

He rationalized that a last spate of violent behavior was a logical extension of the night's events. Joe thought to himself, "It looks like bash therapy has four more customers."

Another hour of bash therapy was followed by hours of showering and relaxing before everyone was going to meet for dinners that night at the Beach Haven Diner.

Brandon definitely got the best of Drew for three-quarters of their fight, but somehow Drew got stronger as the fight went on and he even managed to pummel Brandon before the two started talking.

A similar dynamic occurred in the ladies portion of the bash, although Victoria was the one who assumed control after a slow start. She had visualized what it would be like to punch Carla's face repeatedly, and now she finally had a chance to see that plan come to fruition.
Carla had a least four inches on the small and scrappy Vicky, who became the crowd favorite with her guts and determination. Hartwell could see the tide of the fight shifted toward Vicky and commented to boxing aficionado Cal.

"You sure you didn't fix this fight?"

Cal smirked and replied, "Wouldn't be the first time."

Although Vicky had undergone much training - to her chagrin - this was her first actual fight and it showed early on. But she caught on rather quickly and then thanked her mom and dad when she not only survived the fight but was considered the consensus winner by watchers at lawn-side.

The three families went back to their respective houses and returned to the diner at 5:15 p.m. The back room was large enough to accommodate the party of 22. In fact, that room was capable of holding about 50 people, or the equivalent of about 5,000 cheeseburger platters.

The Winters family arrived first at just a shade after 5:00. Joe was a bit jittery, but in an excited schoolboy kind of way. He had been the king of his domain for so long but it was time to share the stage with a slew of kings and queens.
About ten minutes later, Hartwell and his clan arrived and were escorted to the back room. Less than a minute later, Cal and the hunters predictably trailed the vampires, proving that old habits were hard to break.

What everyone didn't know was that Maxwell and Kayla had slipped away for about 10 minutes the previous night without anybody knowing. Both teenagers told their respective watchers - Aaron and Maggie - that they had to go to the bathroom.

It was a happy birthday for the kids as the darkness gave way to the light of the new day, their 18th birthdays.

Hartwell raised a glass of vodka and said, "I wanted to welcome our new guests and thank them for all they have done to make this family whole."

Glasses were clanked and warm words were exchanged throughout the long rectangular table.

Emily then stood up and exclaimed, "I also want to make a toast to Maxwell and Kayla on their 18th birthdays! May the day bring you great joy."

Most of the attention was focused on Max and Kayla, who were sitting next to each other in the middle of the table. Max put his right hand
on Kayla left leg and whispered in her ear, "It already has," as an excited shiver rolled down her spine causing her arm to show goose bumps.

Much alcohol was consumed and the meal was winding down when

Joe Winters idealistically said over birthday cake to Hartwell and Cal.

"I'm just glad the fighting is over and we can be together in peace." The statement might have been a bit premature, being that Joe had

never really charted the long-term impact of bash therapy.

Cal and Hartwell looked at each other and Hartwell said, "For now,"

as he and Cal bumped fists and laughed uproariously,

Joe Winters wondered if this was an end to the battle, or would the next generation carry the fight to a higher plane?
