by Phil Wohl
would do, and then he moved a bag of blood toward Daniel's lips and let him take a drink.
Belinda took Samuel and placed him on Kayla's chest. Max put his arm around his girlfriend and his son and said, “Mr. Winters, will you do us the honor of marrying us? He then turned to Kayla and asked, “That is, if you will marry me, Kay?”
He produced a ring, and she said, “Of course I will marry you Maxwell.”
All of this drama was not lost on Samuel who asked, “Did you get me anything, dad?”
All of the sudden, Max knew what it was like to be a dad. He looked at Daniel and shook his head in disbelief at the self-centered natured of his newborn son. Daniel looked at Hartwell and then Cal, and they all shared in a warm fatherly moment.
The only people who knew the answer to that question were Aaron and Blake, who had assembled a bike for Samuel only minutes before the gathering.
Blake said, “There is a new bike in your room.”
Samuel bounded off of his mother’s chest and zoomed past the crowd and into his room, once he located the bike.
Aaron added, “Be careful. I’m not sure that we put it together right. There were a few extra parts.”
Samuel came flying out on the bike, and first the front wheel came off and then the back wheel jettisoned. He crashed into the center island in the kitchen and then stood up unharmed, all 50 pounds of him.
“Again!” he yelled, before doing something that completely astonished a room of people that were not easily astonished.
“Let me make just a few modifications,” Samuel said to himself as he worked on the bike. He flashed from the main room, to the garage, and even into town to the local bike shop, but that wasn’t the eye-opening part. The crowd witnessed Samuel morphing in and out of the various facades of his gene pool. First he was a vampire removing the chain on his bike with his sharp, extended finger. Then he went through the series of protector fronts: cat, wolf, bottle-nose dolphin, Orca whale, and hippopotamus. Finally he transitioned through the hunter series, pit bull, ram, grizzly bear, and then as a hawk flying thought the air with the keys to his new dirt bike in his talons.
Once he hit the ground he was Samuel again, the boy that was just born a few moments earlier. The crowd of loved ones looked on in amazement, but Samuel was clueless to what he had just accomplished.
He looked around and felt the strange energy, “What? You don’t like the color?”
Maxwell felt his inner hawk rising and also probably felt the need to show off a little.
“Just make sure you ride that outside.”
“Can I do it now?” Samuel asked.
Max looked back at Kayla, who was more interested in getting married than impeding the flow of her son’s progress, and she nodded that it was all right.
“Just stay around were we can see you!” she firmly stated, as full-throttle Samuel zipped out of the front door with his new toy.
Max cleaned up the floor as a vampire and then flew back to the gathering as a hawk, before settling back on his own two feet as himself.
“I didn’t see that coming…” Cal said.
“How long have you known that you can do that?” Kayla asked.
Max smiled, “About 15 seconds ago. Now, let’s get married.”
Kayla smiled, “Gladly.”
Everyone turned to Joe Winters, who said, “Friends and family, we are gathered here tonight to celebrate the union of Maxwell and Kayla…” as Samuel rode his one-of-a-kind dirt bike and experienced real, unfiltered joy for the first time in his young life.
THIRTEEN
The wedding was blissful and the spaghetti with meatballs sublime, as the inhabitants of the house of Hartwell took a brief moment to enjoy life before focusing fully on the task at hand. It seemed that with age came a certain confidence from being through the wars, the battles, and coming out the other end all the wiser.
“We have to get some sort of strategy pieced together,” Hartwell said to Daniel, as Max joined them.
Max had survived the birth of his child, and reveled in his marriage to Kayla, and still only had two actual years of life to show for it. But this lack of real-life experience did little to deter him.
“The only strategy we need is, don’t get either Kayla or Samuel killed.”
Daniel tried to focus his son, “It is Samuel I am worried about.” And then he saw the look of puppy love in Maxwell’s face. “Let me clarify that… by all appearances, Samuel has about three weeks – from my calculations – before he turns 18 in our world. Until then, we have to protect him at all costs because he won’t have extra lives like Kayla.”
He then turned to Hartwell, as an idea flashed through his incredible brain.
“Maybe we could mask Samuel the same way you concealed the look of this house for years?”
Maxwell was confused, “What is dad talking about grandpa’?”
“Do you want to do the honors?” Hartwell asked his son.
“By all means, you take this one,” Daniel said, deferring to his father.
A split-second later, the three men were standing in musty and dirty abandoned warehouse, which gave Max the instant urge to clean.
“Before you clean anything, let me explain,” Hartwell said.
“Who turned off the water?” Aaron yelled from an adjacent bathroom as he was taking a shower.
Daniel took the lead, “Let me localize that,” as he kept the warehouse look in the main room and returned the rest of the house to its actual condition.
“Thank you!” Aaron yelled.
“You’re welcome, big guy!” Daniel countered. “Got to keep the big man happy.”
Maxwell then discovered a whole new world of powers that he never knew existed. He first brought a 3-D image of Samuel into the middle of the room, “So, how do we hide a kid that simply won’t sit still?”
He was about to disguise his son as a tree stump or a fire hydrant but, instead, his mind transported his corporeal body cross-town, where he was viewing the mass of vampires and protectors assembled at the Beach Haven Inn. Maxwell then brought his father and grandfather along for the ride.
Daniel said, “Whoa! That’s a new one.”
Hartwell added, “It was just a matter of time before the magic kicked in.”
“There is something really big here that we haven’t examined,” Maxwell stated. He used his index finger as he telestrated various things throughout the room with complicated mathematical and scientific formulas that floated above its subjects.
“We have two different forces at work here. On the one hand, we have Alexander Lowery…” Max lists Lowery’s life stats as he pulls Lowery in for a closer look. “He has procreated the race like no vampire either before or after him.” He sighs, “Problem is, that each successive strand of life, or death as it were, becomes progressively more deficient than the last. This might very well disprove the theory that there is real strength in numbers.”
Daniel was flabbergasted, “First of all, holy crap! I thought that I could do some cool stuff.”
The fact that Daniel would still be just below the legal drinking age in real years did not escape Hartwell, who had been around more than five times as long as that. What he lacked in new-age skills, he more than made up for in life skills and real-world knowledge.
“Thanks for that astute observation son, but are you saying Maxie that Lowery’s minions experience a progressive weakness with subsequent iterations?”
Max smiled, “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“So where am I on the chain of death?” Hartwell asked.
Max pulled up a seemingly endless strand of vampire lineage and scrolled through the faces from bottom to top, from the more recent to the earliest people that Lowery sired. He moved through the listing at the speed of light, stopping only when he sensed Hartwell’s face coming into view.
Hartwell was taken aback by the
image, “Who took that picture? Is that the best picture they could find of me? It looks like I was in a police line-up.”
Maxwell adapted to the obvious request for a reshoot.
“Say cheese!” Maxwell exclaimed as he flicked off a flash for the effect, as a new image of Hartwell replaced the crime scene photo previously inhabiting his spot in the Lowery Sire of Fame.
“That’s better! Thanks, Maxie.”
“No problem, grandpa’.”
Max then scrolled above the new and improved Hartwell image and all he saw was red Xs.
“There has to be more than 50 vampires that came before me…” Hartwell started until he could feel his grandson ready to pounce with the actual number. “What is it, 53?”
Daniel and Max stated in unison, “52.”
Hartwell laughed, “You two are funny. So, answer me this, what do the red Xs mean?”
Max was quick to respond, “Maybe they’re no longer vampires.”
“Could it be possible that they’ve all reached 100 deaths and are mortal?” Daniel guessed.
Hartwell mulled the two scenarios and then rolled up one of his own, “Or maybe, just maybe, all of these people are dead, and that’s why I’m next on the list.”
“Are you saying they just died?” Max asked.
“Or were they eliminated?” Daniel countered.
“Why would Lowery kill the vampires with the greatest strength?” Hartwell inquired.
“Maybe he doesn’t know what we know… maybe he just assumes that vampires that were around the longest are the biggest threat to him?” Daniel said.
Hartwell and Maxwell mulled the Daniel’s astute observation and
