by Phil Wohl
Carla said to Drew in the most indignant and disrespectful tone she could muster.
Daniel was angry at Carla for talking to his wife in such a tone, at least at first.
“Why are you talking to my wife like that?” he said, before he shifted gears and turned his focus toward his wife, “And, why are you talking to that hunter?”
“Hunter? Hunter!” Drew yelled at his cousin and part-time best friend. “How dare to you refer to me in such a disrespectful way?”
Nicole was confused, “What’s wrong with calling you a hunter? Because you are a hunter, right?” she said as she moved closer and inflected in a flirty tone.
Carla did not play that kind of game and wanted nothing to do with Nicole approaching her man. She started walking toward Nicole, but was quickly intercepted by Daniel, who initially grabbed her by the arms and then held her around her waist pressing their bodies together.
Daniel had never been that close to Carla and definitely had a different perspective on his cousin’s wife as they were standing on top of each other. He mumbled under his breath as they ground against each other, “Well, that doesn’t suck.”
Nicole was furious when she saw her husband grinding against some ho, so she ran over and grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away and out of the house, “We have to go get dinner, now!” She looked back at Drew and winked, “Hey pimp, have your ho make the side dishes and we’ll get the turkey!”
Nicole was still enthralled with Daniel until she saw the wink, “I’m gonna’ close that eye later!”
Andrew watched Nicole as she cleared the doorway, “It’s gonna’ be an interesting meal. Let’s get busy with the candied yams,” he said to Carla, who put up her left hand in his face signaling that all systems were now on ‘stop.’
Carla left the room and Sharon took her place.
“Did someone say candied yams?”
Andrew turned and said to Sharon, “We have to make yams for our turkey dinner,” before he left the room.
Agent Blake walked in and said, “Turkey? Doesn’t that make you all tired and sleepy? Not the best food to be eating before a fight.”
Sharon used to look at Blake with the same loving eyes when she was a teenager and coming New England beaches. She had fallen in love with Blake the lifeguard and they were married, much to the chagrin of her father Garrison, who knew how tough it would be to let an outsider into their vampire protecting world. Gary’s worries came to fruition as Blake was so frustrated at being an outsider in a world that he was not a part of, that he left one day not knowing that Sharon was pregnant with their baby, who turned out to be Nicole.
In Sharon’s altered mind, Blake was once again the blond-haired ripped lifeguard patrolling the beach. Sharon was the best swimmer he had ever seen, primarily because she was able to utilize her protector skills to change into dolphins and Orca killer whales on command. They were the perfect physical match and this symmetry was on display in the kitchen as she moved in and kissed him passionately. There were no other thoughts at the moment in Blake’s head other than Sharon at that moment. In his mind, she was the only person on the planet at that moment.
“What the…” Cal said as he walked in to the main room and spied his wife kissing her ex-husband.
His only thought when he saw the act of infidelity was to break up the smooch and then bust Blake’s lip. But his progress to accomplish that goal was thwarted by Belinda, his ex wife, who was following up the play. Cal and Belinda had also experienced great love early on in their relationship before the obvious strain of hunting Hartwell swallowed them whole. It also put a sizable strain on the relationship, which had produced Daniel as an offspring, that Cal had fallen in love with Sharon and was having an affair with her, before Hartwell put an end to that by burying in the bottom of the ocean for 15 long years.
Belinda spun Cal around and then did the only thing that was on her mind: kissing the lips that made her knees weak when they first met. Cal transitioned from punching Blake in the lip to kissing Belinda’s lips, and the familiar feel of her touch made him fall in love with her all over again.
Hartwell and Maggie glided into the room and were stopped in their flow by the sight of the mismatched couples.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Maggie asked her husband.
Hartwell rubbed his eyes to make sure that the vision was not a mirage.
“That depends. What are you seeing?” he countered.
She was flabbergasted, “Chaos. What I’m seeing right now is pure chaos.”
Hartwell grabbed hold of Cal and Blake and escorted them outside so they could clear their clouded heads with some fresh air. Maggie did the same with Sharon and Belinda, but their destination was the chi room, which was a place she would go often for some mental realignment.
Emily and Aaron walked in to the empty room and then decided to split up to see where everyone was hiding. He walked deeper into the house and she stepped outside on the off-chance that anyone had ventured beyond the friendly confines of their hallowed walls.
The main room of the house was once again vacant, until two familiar eating buddies strolled in to see what was happening.
“What’s for dinner?” a jovial Thaddeus asked to the empty room.
“Doesn’t look like there is anything on the menu,” a disappointed Garrison stated.
“You want to go out and grab a bite to eat?” Thad asked.
Gary mocked, “With you?”
“Yeah with me, you Neanderthal!” Thad replied as they went back to the garage and drove Thad’s 1964 ½ Ford Mustang Convertible into town to meet their new lady friends for dinner at The Beach Haven Diner. Gary thought about associating with the dreaded hunter and then succumbed to the power of food, which appeared to be superseding any heated rivalry. It was also the tie that bound them together beyond any mind tricks by Claire Vinson.
TEN
Aaron innocently walked into the chi room where Maggie had corralled Sharon and Belinda to cool off from the apparent house-wide estrogen explosion. It was as if he had walked into a work of Greek mythology and was a demigod being confronted by a group of seductive and deadly sirens. He knew the minute he stepped through the barrier of the hallway and into the room that there would be no turning back.
A similar dynamic was occurring outside in the waning sunshine, as Emily pulled up on a group consisting of her brother and Blake, being restrained by Hartwell. She tried to avoid the rampant infestation of testosterone but did little but exacerbate the situation.
“What are you doing to those men?” she confronted Hartwell, who was usually at the head of any problem or confrontation.
She then talked to her brother, because she really wasn’t too concerned what was happening to Agent Blake.
“Are you okay?”
Hartwell turned around and the light of the setting sun must have hit him just right, because Emily was instantly smitten. The vampire looked at Emily and saw much of the physical qualities he lusted after when they were sort of an item for a brief time decades earlier. They instantly met in a heated embrace, which caused Cal to say, “Yuck! What is that?” as he walked away in obvious disgust and disdain.
Blake was right behind him and talking to himself, “Good thing I saw that before dinner,” as he and Cal helped Drew and Carla bring food in from the car to the house.
Meanwhile, in the chi room, energy was flowing between Aaron and the ladies, but his appearance had a dazzling effect on one lady in particular. Maggie was so focused on calming Sharon and Belinda down that she didn’t notice Aaron’s entry into the room at first. But, when they finally did calm down, she turned around and then tuned out everything else that had been going on within the dimly-lit room. She stood up from the pillow-lined floor and glided over to Aaron, and then rose up a foot or so she their lips could be aligned.
“No way,” an astonished Sharon softly said.
“Now I’ve seen e
verything,” Belinda added.
Belinda knew that Armageddon would ensue if Hartwell got an eyeful of the love of his lives kissing the big guy, so she extracted Maggie away from Aaron after only a few seconds of intense lip-locking. Maggie reached back to reconnect with him, but Sharon was at the ready and holding him back.
It was Lowery’s wish to not only bring pain to Hartwell and all of his extended family, but to also destroy everything that they cherished and was near and dear to them. Through Claire he was able to find a conduit after his passing that would be an unstoppable force at first destroying the tribe, and then turning on the offspring of hunter and a vampire. The revenge would not be finalized until Samuel first knew true love and then left the world feeling nothing but the ultimate betrayal.
The fight that night was probably the weirdest few hours ever witnessed in the history of vampire/protector and hunter battles. Yes, it was even more off the beaten path than the bash therapy the group experienced at the end of the last battle against each other.
The walk out to the Beach Haven Park great lawn that night was one of eager anticipation, but not the usual type of eager anticipation. This excitement found its origin in the loins, not the guts, and was more like a first date kind of anticipation then a fight to the death kind of anticipation. Bonds between loved ones had been severed and the pendulum of interest had shifted from the core to the unknown, with
