Blood Shadow: Book of Hartwell - Blood Shadow, vampire series, #1

This is the first book of the Blood Shadow new-age vampire series.

It is early 20th century San Francisco and the Black Death has taken over the city. Thomas Hartwell loses his wife and young son to the plague and is ready to take his own life, until someone knocks on his door and says, "Don't do it. I have a way that you will be able to see your wife and son again."

The story flashes forward 100 years to the town of Beach Haven, where Hartwell hopes to reunite with his reborn family.

In order to reconnect with his son, Thomas Hartwell must inject the young boy with his own vampire blood. Daniel Thompson spent the first eight years of his life shuffling from one doctor's office to another, guided by a mother that made him a walking catalog of allergies and ailments. That was, until, he moved to the suburban community of Beach Haven, New York, where he was gradually exposed to a world of vampires, hunters and protectors.

As each vampire is sired and when they comes on-line, a hunter and mammal protector are allocated. The hunters and protectors are both capable of morphing into various iterations – protectors taking the evolutionary tract of a dolphin, and vampire hunters capable of interchanging hawk, pit bull, ram, and grizzly bear.

Throughout the formative years of the three young adults – Daniel, Nicole and Andrew – we see various aspects of their supernatural personalities starting to take hold. Hartwell spent almost every day with Daniel as a projection of his imagination, free from being observed from the outside world. Daily tai chi sessions blended in with training exercises in order to hone Daniel's skills, and have him ready to assume his vampirical destiny once he turned 18 years old.