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They always want to use Patrick as the bait.
“You’re just naturally the most delicious,” Joe explains, adjusting the collar of Patrick’s bike messenger jacket to ensure the rosary beads are concealed.
Patrick scowls and slaps Joe’s hands away. “Pretty sure that when you say that what you mean is I’m the fattest.”
“Juiciest,” Joe corrects. “Listen, the minute we start hunting creatures that hunger for good Jewish boys, I’ll be the one doing the helpless-in-a-dark-alley routine, okay? For now, the local body count suggests a vamp’s taken up residence in these woods, so stop complaining and ride your bike through them and pretend to fall down.”
“This is very degrading,” Patrick says, getting on his bike. He’s complaining mostly to cover up how freaked out he is. This is only the fourth time they’ve done this. The first two times were a bust—if there were any vampires, they hadn’t fallen for the clumsy trap. Last time, there was a vampire, and everybody totally fucking panicked and the only reason Patrick wasn’t turned into a fucking blood juicebox is because Andy’s style of panicking included jumping in the van, flooring it, very nearly running over Patrick’s legs, and hitting the vampire so hard the hood folded up like they’d hit a light post, the windshield spiderwebbed, and the radiator cracked. They hadn’t killed it, just stunned it long enough that they all ran the fuck away.
So anyway, they don’t have a van anymore, and Patrick is not feeling totally confident about their odds tonight. It is a definite possibility that he will be eaten. The thing is, at the rate the vamp gangs are spreading through Chicago, there’s a definite possibility he’ll be eaten tonight whether they go out hunting or not.
“Try to be extra sweaty,” Joe advises. His face betrays anxiety, too. “You’ll be more appetizing if you glisten.”
“I am not a ham,” Patrick says primly. Not the greatest last words in the world, but not the worst. Patrick kicks off and rides down the dark path into the creepy woods, to face his destiny.
, . . ,
Later, Pete will tell him that the reason Patrick makes such good bait has nothing to do with his sweatiness or his weight. (Both sources of some insecurity to Patrick, which Pete is too frustratingly supernatural and flawless to understand.)
It’s his smell, Pete will say. He will stand so close, so still. No heat will come off his body at all. Patrick’s skin will burn with the proximity anyway.
“There is—so much about you that compels,” Pete will say. He speaks very quietly. He holds his cool, open hand a fraction of an inch from Patrick’s cheek. Patrick will practically feel his heartbeat erupting out of him to meet it. “Your eyes, changing color in light and shadow both. Your impossible, lewd mouth. The way your skin radiates with the heat of life…”
Somewhere around this point, Patrick will forget how to breathe.
“But it is your smell,” Pete will say, and his voice will tremble though his body will not, “that puts you in such danger. You are… the best, most frenzying thing I have ever…”
Pete’s breath will hitch. Patrick, exhilarated aroused afraid, will tilt his head just enough to let his cheek brush Pete’s frozen fingers. For one second, they will create a circuit. Electricity will flow.
Then Pete will snatch his hand back as if the raw current has burned him. Gut churning with disappointment he will not fully understand, Patrick will turn away, grumbling, “So basically, I am a ham.”
, . . ,
Pete will not be able to explain to Patrick’s satisfaction why he joined them. “You’ll get yourselves killed without me,” Pete’s always saying, an argument which holds several flaws.
“You tell me daily what a danger you pose to me,” Patrick will point out. Patrick will be feeling ornery because the vampire stun gun he’s been tinkering with for weeks will have failed, yet again, to have any effect stronger than making Pete feel a light tickle. “Like, every other word out of your mouth is about how you’re probably going to lose control and eat me at any moment.”
Patrick will not even have to look up from his workbench to know Pete’s scowling at him. Pete has a very fangy scowl. Patrick has an enduring discomfort about how exciting he finds this. Patrick will probably never stop wondering if Pete hasn’t kissed him because he doesn’t want to or because he’s afraid he’d kill him. Because he’s afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop his mouth from taking more.
It is not a question Patrick knows how to ask.
Instead, Patrick will say, “I certainly hope you don’t think that broody Twilight bullshit is romantic. Because it’s not.” And without warning, Patrick will jab Pete with the stun gun and fire it again. This time, it will discharge. Patrick will find this very satisfying.
, . . ,
Patrick won’t mean to eavesdrop, but he’ll hear it anyway. “The cravings are getting stronger,” Pete’s saying to the preacher. “It’s harder to resist every day. There must be something else you can give me.”
“The cravings will get stronger until you feed,” the preacher will say. “That’s how it always is. We’ve tried everything I know, Pete. Sleeping side by side with temptation will not make it easier. If you keep setting harder and harder tests for your resolve, eventually it will fail.”
“He hardly sleeps in the coffin beside me,” Patrick will hear Pete grumble. Patrick’s heart will skip precisely three beats.
“There is nothing but a stake that makes a vampire safe,” says the preacher. “I am sorry.”
“I won’t hurt him,” Pete will say. “I won’t.”
He won’t sound like he believes it.
, . . ,
They’ll be out hunting one night and Patrick won’t be able to bear it any longer. He’ll grab a quaking fistful of Pete’s jacket and bring their mouths together so roughly Pete’s fang will cut his lip on contact. The surprise sting of pain will only make Patrick more desperate, swiping blood off his lips and between Pete’s with his tongue. Patrick will not be thinking as he does this. Patrick has never been able to think around Pete.
For a hot, hungry moment, Pete’s cool body will ripple and swell under Patrick’s hands, pressing against the length of Patrick’s own form as Pete kisses him back with devouring force. Pete’s lips will part for Patrick’s tongue and Pete will kiss so deeply, overpoweringly into Patrick’s mouth they’ll both be breathless. (Unless Pete’s always breathless. Patrick will make a note to follow up on that. Some other, less mouthy time.)
Then the sting of Patrick’s cut will grow. Pete will begin to suck, and Patrick will become aware of how truly visceral a sensation that is. A piercing starburst of pain where Pete bites down on, into, Patrick’s bottom lip; a blaze of dizzy venom spreading through Patrick’s veins. Suddenly, they won’t be kissing. Pete will be lifting Patrick as if he weighs less than the air, slamming Patrick’s body against the scraping alley wall, feeding, feeding at his mouth. The air will smell like car exhaust and Patrick’s blood. Pete will be eating. Patrick will be being eaten.
Patrick won’t say stop. Patrick won’t want to.
As the warmth and life drains out through Patrick’s perforated lip, leaving in its absence an unfolding bloom of cold, Patrick will moan out loud, a tattered sound of ecstasy staining the October air. He will shiver, pressing his throat into Pete’s cold iron hand, and slide his hand down Pete’s pants. Pete will suck with renewed vigor and his dick will grow hard with Patrick’s blood, under Patrick’s hand.
Patrick isn’t sure about the mechanics of vampire sex, but the way Pete’s hips start to rock in time with Patrick’s pulls, Patrick’s pulse, will suggest he likes what Patrick’s doing. Patrick will roll his throat against Pete’s hand, not knowing what he’s asking for but knowing that he wants it. Pete will not be touching nearly enough of him.
Pete will come quickly, suddenly, before Patrick’s remotely ready to be done. Patrick wouldn’t stop Pete from drinking the last drop of him, just now, to feel like this. All Patrick wants in the world is more. But Pete will break away from Patrick’s numb, swollen mouth as he comes, staring at Patrick with heavy-lidded wonder and the first hints of horror in his midnight eyes.
Patrick licks his lip again. It will feel wrinkled, cold as the inside of Pete’s mouth. This time there will be no blood.
“I thought I would kill you,” Pete will pant. “Once I tasted you I didn’t think I could ever stop.”
Patrick will extricate his sticky hand from Pete’s jeans. “I didn’t know if you would,” he will say, breathing hard with the tangle of fear and desire. “I didn’t know if I wanted you to.”
“I have to get away from you—far away. It’s the only way you’ll be safe,” Pete will say, voice wrenched with fear, horror, shame. Patrick will not be interested in any of these feelings. Patrick will feel very, very tired of always being so safe.
“You have to stay right here,” Patrick will say firmly. “It’s the only way we’ll get any better at that.”
That will shock the horror right off Pete’s face. “Better?” he will say incredulously.
“You know,” Patrick will say wickedly, “longer-lasting. More… interactive. Love, sex, death. Til there’s nothing left.”
“You’re saying that this near-death experience was over too quickly for you,” Pete will say in flat disbelief.
Patrick will guide Pete’s hand to the crotch of his pants, to feel the hardness there. Patrick is just the tiniest bit light-headed: whatever blood Pete didn’t drink is speeding to his penis, at the merry expense of his brain and all other organs. Patrick will find that he does not care at all.
“I’d like to get off while I’ve got blood left,” Patrick will say. Just as stupid careless as the first time, he’ll lunge forward and kiss Pete again.
, . . ,
“You know that every time we do this you risk your life,” Pete will say into his ear, sliding his cool tongue down the pulse point there, pushing into Patrick from behind him. Patrick will sigh with a deep satisfaction as Pete enters him, pushing back with his thighs to fit his ass more snugly into the hollow of Pete’s hips.
Patrick’s skin by this point will be gnarled and puckered with scabs, slow to heal because of the regular blood loss. Maybe he should start taking iron supplements. In any event, it hasn’t killed him yet. He figures Pete is worth a few scars.
Fangs will cleave Patrick’s skin, sinking into his shoulder, and Pete’s moan will rumble all through him as Pete begins to move within him. Patrick will feel so full, so ecstatically full of Pete. Patrick will be indescribably aroused by the idea that any heat he feels in Pete’s skin was sucked directly from him. In some ways, this second entry—Pete’s teeth into Patrick’s flesh, into the heart and heat and life of him—will be more intimate, more erotic, than the first. Patrick will never have been so thoroughly fucked in his life.
Patrick’s heart will beat to warm them both.
, . . ,
They will be overpowered, separated, and arrested.
Patrick’s face will be slammed with stunning force against the side of a Crown Vic while Pete is hauled away in the back of another. Pete will be the first to realize that they are too late to save their city: the cops are crooked. The cops are vampires too. Pete will realize this with horror as the car he’s cuffed in draws inexorably away. His cuffs hold fast against his superhuman strength, burning his skin—they’ve been blessed. The vampire cops will chortle in the front seat. Pete will be powerless to help anyone he loves.
Pete won’t know what’s going to happen to his friends, and he won’t even know what to hope for. That they’ll be drained, quickly and with relatively little pain? That they’ll be turned into monsters? That they’ll be kept alive and used as bloodbags? Which fate is merciful and which is cruel?
Pete will kill six cops breaking out of his holding cell in the town jail. Two of them will still be human. He hasn’t killed a human in a very long time. He won’t drink them, though he could use the strength—the last blood he tasted will have been Patrick’s. He will want to be able to imagine he can still taste it. In case he doesn’t get the chance to again.
He will neutralize another vamp, breaking its neck with a kung-fu kick, when he finds it guarding Joe’s cell. He’ll wrench the cell door off its hinges, in his fear and fury not caring how he burns up his strength. Joe will pat the groaning guard down for weapons and end up armed with his stun baton and ring of keys. “Where are the others?” Pete will ask, fangs out, breathing hard.
“Don’t know,” Joe will say, his racing heart lighting him up like an all-you-can-eat buffet for Pete’s predatory senses. The bad guys—everyone else—will hear and smell this kid through walls, from the next floor, from the next building. He’s so alive.
Pete won’t mind that Joe’s giving away their position, just by living. Let them come. Pete will kill every one of them, to get back Patrick, to get back Andy, to get back the only family he’s ever had that’s been worth anything. Pete will kill them all, to protect Joe’s terribly small, brittle, bright thrumming life. Pete will kill everyone, if he can save even one of his friends.
Patrick has asked him, over and over, why he’d stayed. “If we’re such bad hunters,” he said, one of those many times, “if you’re so dark, brooding, and dangerous. Why do you keep staying? Lots of people are out there, scared and half-assed, totally inept at hunting, risking death every night. You could help any of them. Why are you helping us?”
It is a question Pete still won’t know quite know how to answer. Because they’re close to the last age he’d ever been—the age he was when he died. Because they’re funny and talented and kind. Because, of everyone he’s ever helped, they were the first to say you don’t have to go. You can come in. Stay, if you want to. Because Patrick smells so damn good. Because they trust him. Because for the first time in decades, Pete found himself wanting to. Because they make him remember. Because they help him forget.
Because Patrick’s the only place that feels like home.
That’s what Pete will say, if he gets to see Patrick again. Whether or not Patrick asks. Because of you.
Pete will do anything for the chance to tell Patrick that.
“They took them this way,” Joe will say, breaking Pete’s angsty reverie. They will run down the long, dim hall of holding cells, kicking open containment doors, wending deeper into the warren. Some cells hold limp, unconscious bodies—drained drunks, by the look and smell of them. Some hold thrashing, ravenous new vamps, the furthest thing from human. One will hold Andy, and Andy alone.
Andy will be sheltered in the farthest corner of what Pete can only see as his cage, shirtless and cut up and smelling like bait. The vamps in the cell next to him are leaning so deep into the bars they choke themselves, flailing for him. One has dislocated its shoulder yet still reaches, snarling, slavering, like it will rip itself apart, grate its body to pieces on the unyielding bars before it gives up on eating Andy. They are new vamps—very new. Once they feed, it will not be long before they are strong enough to bend the bars. Andy’s life hangs on the dinner bell.
He will be appropriately pale-faced and terrified. Joe will open the cell door with the guard’s keys—no need to give the newbies any ideas about the relative strength of door hinges vs. bars—and Andy will be visibly struggling to force himself to step through, so near the grasping fingernails of the hissing predators. At last he will cross the threshold and barrel directly into his friends’ arms. They will spend (not waste) a long moment this way, all clutching each other, shaking with fear and relief.
Pete will have smelled so much blood today he will barely even be tempted by Andy’s hot blood slicking Pete’s cool skin, hardly even notice how much Andy smells life food, hardly even feel his stomach rumble from the high, tinny whine of Andy’s panicked heartrate. For this small mercy Pete will be grateful. There is only so much a person can endure. To whatever extent Pete still counts as a person.
“Where’s Patrick?” Pete will ask. It will be the first time he’s allowed himself to ask it. They will stand embracing each other, gripping each other’s skin like they can’t possibly be real, holding on as if to anchors, as if to let go would be to float away into anoxic nothing and be lost.
It will have been kind of a crazy day.
Andy will sound small and grave as he says, “They said prime rib didn’t belong in a deli case. They said they’d bottle him and toast their Mistress’s health. They said… something about an Exsanguination Chamber.”
Pete’s skin prickles, aches, burns with prolonged fear, with pain and battle and not knowing. Last night, when he drank from Patrick and Patrick tasted all of him, will feel longer ago than the whole of his mortal lifetime.
Pete will feel tired of being so afraid.
“I know where the Chamber is,” Pete will say, “and I know what they do there. They won’t kill him—not before they’ve farmed him for every drop. It can take… a while.” Joe and Andy will be looking at Pete in a way that makes him hope they do not ask him under what circumstances he arrived at this knowledge. Pete hasn’t always been one of the good guys.
“Still,” Pete will say, “I think we’d better hurry.” More than just Patrick’s life stands to be lost, if they do not.
, . . ,
They do hurry. They will stop at their base, which has been ransacked, and salvage whatever gear they can. Joe will end up with a gasoline-powered chainsaw. Andy will end up with three sharpened drum sticks and a grenade. Pete will end up a monster, same as he’s been for the last quarter century.
They will call this good enough.
Pete knows exactly where the Exsanguination Chamber is located. He would rather not say why. It is in the basement of the Mayor’s office, with a direct elevator, for purposes that should be obvious.
Pete will find himself in the position of desperately hoping that Patrick’s blood is so ridiculous, delicious, sweet, smoky, tantalizing, euphoric, that they will hesitate to kill the source. Well. Sort of. Pete will sort of hope this. The other part of Pete will be utterly preoccupied fantasizing about the murders he will do to any and every one of them that’s dared taste Patrick’s blood.
Pete will put his hood up to cast his distinctive outlined eyes and shock of straight black bangs in shadow. Joe and Andy will lock their hands behind their backs, pretend to be his prisoners. They will infiltrate the Mayor’s office without breaking any windows, triggering any tripwires, or alerting any guards. Everything will go smoothly that, were it not for the twinned tinny echoes of his friends’ racing hearts in Pete’s ears, he might forget they were infiltrating anything at all. It will be nothing like what heist movies have led him to expect. There will not even be suspenseful music.
As they draw closer to the Chamber, though, music will permeate the air. Pete will hear it first, being a vampire. It will be brassy Big Band with the distinct, mahogany richness of vinyl press. Pete’s heart will go colder in his chest. He’ll know, even before he nods to give the signal and Andy kicks in the gold-leaf French doors, what is waiting on the other side:
Vampire dandy William Beckett and his grinning gang, lounging like rapscallions, rakes, and sons of privilege in lushly upholstered armchairs, swirling champagne flutes spilling the scent of Patrick Stump.
Pete’s sire. Smiling redly at him. Drinking Patrick.
For a hideous, endless, drowning moment, the space of one of Andy’s breaths or one of Joe’s heartbeats, the space of one dead man’s absence of biological units of time, Pete will freeze with fear. He remembers Brendon and Spencer holding him down, mesmerizing him with their beautiful eyes, eyes that made him want to rip out his own veins to serve them through spurting straws. He remembers William’s fangs, piercing him as he had never been pierced. He remembers having no choice but to want it.
He remembers dying young, against his will.
He remembers fear.
Then, Pete will remember fury.
There will be a fight.
, . . ,
If they were in a movie, Pete’s standoff with Beckett would be dramatic, conclusive, satisfying—vindication, vengeance, a triumph of Pete’s will. It would hit all the right narrative chords, tie up the loose ends neatly, cement Pete’s feeble attempts at atonement as a true-blue redemption arc.
But it wasn’t a heist movie and it’s not a creature feature either. There will not be a resolution. Pete’s allies stand to be mesmerized and murdered, and no matter how much Pete will want to personally decapitate anyone who’s dared taste Patrick’s blood, Pete won’t actually be a match for his sire in strength. Not after taking so many beatings today, burning up so much of his strength; not when he hasn’t fed in a day and a half; not with so few minutes left til sunrise.
The fight will actually go like this:
“I will fucking kill you,” Pete will snarl, always the poet. But before he can even move, Joe will be barring his path with a crucifix and a Star of David; while Pete was busy having a recap of rage, Andy was lobbing his grenade into the middle of the parlor. The dandies, who largely predate the tools of modern warfare, will not even with their superhuman reflexes react fast enough. The blast will knock Pete back, where he will fall on top of Joe and the holy symbols will sear his flesh. This will be preferable to what is happening to the dandies, some of whom are burning.
It is unlikely this will kill them. They are old, glutted with unwilling blood, and more than capable of executing stop, drop, and roll. But, Pete’s wishes aside, they don’t need to be dead. They just need to be out of the way, because on the opposite side of this room, there is a vault door that leads to a stone tunnel that leads to a dark clammy room with chains in the wall and drains in the floor that leads to Patrick. And Pete and Andy and Joe are gonna fucking rescue Patrick.
The spilled smell of Patrick will be so strong, so tantalizing, that it will be almost more than Pete can manage, not running into the fiery wreckage to lick the burnt drops of it out of smoldering throw rugs. Joe and Andy will each seize one of his arms. They will all but drag him across the room, around the outskirts of the blast crater, the shrieking vampires who burn within it, and through the vault door. It will be open: probably the dandies wanted easy access to refills. Pete will not know if he’s sick with rage or hunger, thinking of Patrick tapped like a keg, draining out his life into their hungry fucking mouths.
Once they are running, feet echoing frantic, down the grim, underground tunnel, Pete’s head will clear of rage and hunger both, at least enough for self-propulsion. They will be near enough the Chamber now Pete will be able to hear fragments of a whimper on the air. It is a moan that will be both familiar and hardly recognizable, a mocking facsimile of the breathy sounds Patrick has made in Pete’s ear. Pete will almost, almost be able to smell the real, living Patrick. The commingled, congealed scent of the blood of the many, many humans harvested here before him will bury it.
Pete will be getting hungrier with every footfall. The smell, the blood, his anger—he will be close to losing control. Close to being exactly as dangerous as he always tried to convince Patrick he was. But what choice will he have? They have Patrick. One foot after another, he’s going to keep running.
They will burst into the Exsanguination Chamber without ceremony. Andy will get there first: Pete is checking his speed to stay with his friends, his team. It will be important to Pete that they do this together. It will be important to Pete that there is someone there to stop him, should he stop being the rescuer and start being the threat.
Patrick will be chained high up on the wall, dangling like a marionette with crimson tubes hanging off him, needles in the crooks of his elbows, the backs of his hands, the yoke of his neck, the web of his toes. It will take a beat for it to really register, that the tubes are not crimson: the tubes are clear. Patrick’s blood is the thing that’s red.
The tubes will drain into an open trough. The smell of it will be so overpowering that Pete staggers, when it hits his nostrils. He will begin to lurch towards it without a decision, without a thought. Only years of training in self-restraint will stop him stumbling forward.
Pete will train his eyes on Patrick’s face, which is slumped forward into his chest, pale and bruised with hollows in the low light. His eyes will flicker weakly as he tries to lift his head. Fear will be pouring off him, nearly as heady and intoxicating as the blood itself: he will think it is one of the vamps, come back to torture him.
“I can’t,” Pete will spit through gritted teeth. He will be paralyzed. He cannot allow himself to move a muscle, because if he does, he will fly to Patrick, and not to save him.
Joe and Andy will not need him. They will run past him, go to Patrick as Pete cannot, leaving him frozen in a battle with himself. Love, sex, or death? Pete will only get to choose once. Patrick will not have much blood left.
Without the benefit of Pete’s strength, it takes longer. They will struggle to get Patrick down off the wall, to remove the needles without tearing skin or spilling any more of Patrick’s life. Patrick will make soft sounds of pain at their clumsy movements and suddenly, Pete will not be able to stand a second longer of his suffering. Pete will move all at once, sinking his fangs into his own arm to suck out the few, feeble clots that rot there, tasting of ash and nothing, just to give himself something to bite; he will cross the room faster than human eyes can track and use his other arm to pluck Patrick off the wall, using his fist to pulverize links of Patrick’s chain.
When Patrick is limp in his arms, cradled against his chest, with the last of the tubes removed and thin streams of his remaining blood wending down his flesh and seeping warmly into Pete’s clothes—the bastards will have dosed him with blood thinner, with anticoagulant—Pete will unlock his jaw from his own arm and look to his friends, panic writ across his face.
“What do we do?” Pete will ask, desperate. “His heartbeat is so weak. They’ve taken so much. I—I don’t know if I can get him to a hospital, without…” Pete will not quite be able to say without killing him myself, so instead he will say, “And human means will be too slow.”
“If you’re asking my permission to kill one of my best friends,” Andy will say levelly, “you don’t have it.”
Joe will step up to flank Andy, arms crossed over his chest. Patrick will be so light and nearly lifeless in Pete’s arms. The worst part will be that the drainers’ IVs will have gone in just between puncture wounds Pete left there himself. The worst part will be that Patrick was weak already, without much blood to spare, because he always lets Pete take too much, too often.
All of it will be the worst part, really. The whole fucking thing will be the worst.
“Will it save him? If you turn him. Will he still be Patrick?” Joe will ask.
Pete’s stomach will turn. The smell in here. Fucking Count Dracula himself couldn’t think clearly with the thick, golden smell of Patrick clogging up the air. “He will be a monster,” Pete will hear himself say. “I don’t know if he will still be Patrick.”
“We’re running out of time,” Andy will say.
“You’re already out,” someone will drawl from the door.
Pete will whirl to face the doorway, cursing himself for being so careless as to leave it unguarded. He will be surprised he did not smell the rank stink of burning wool, fur, and hair sooner. Too addled by Patrick’s blood.
Beckett will stand in the door, though he supports himself with the doorframe, some of his clothes and skin blackened and burnt. He will look weak, smears of ash on his wan face, his hollow yellow cheekbones. His eyes will shine with mesmer nonetheless.
Beckett will not be alone. Pushing past him through the doorway will come the master of them all: the Vampire Queen of Chicago. Her leather stilettos will lace up to her knees. She will wear a platinum blond bob that stinks of a human’s scalp, a great mantle of white fur, and a black dress as tiny as it is expensive. Her power will hit Pete like a wave, making him stagger. Joe and Andy will be hit with it too; they will collapse to their knees.
She will glide past them, her stilettos making the smallest, most delicate clicks against the stone, and dip her hand into the trough of Patrick. She will make a cup of her palm and sip his blood from it. She will stare directly into Pete’s eyes as she licks up the remainders with her tongue, dragging it down her wrist after an errant drop. Her fangs will shine like opals in the torchlight.
“Have you come to beg forgiveness of your maker?” she will ask, her voice hoarser than her appearance would suggest. “Have you brought your own contributions to our feast?”
Out of the very corner of his eye, Pete will see Joe move. They have been hunting together long enough that Pete will know, without having to know, what Joe is planning.
Pete will have to act fast.
The smell of Patrick, like a blood empanada in his arms, will be too much. “I can’t do it anymore,” Pete will say. Beckett and the Mistress will tilt their heads slightly to one side, mirrored listeners. “I tried to be good. For years, I tried to be good. But this is what I am: a monster.” He will lean his head over Patrick’s neck and lick softly at the weak stream of blood that runs there. It will taste so good, so amazingly good, that Pete will fight himself all over again not to bite down. “He is my relapse. I’m as addicted as I ever was. There’s no cure. I… have no choice but to come back to you. To come back to where I belong.”
The Mistress will be looking at him archly, like she doesn’t believe for a minute what he’s saying. But that’s okay. She won’t need to believe him. She’ll just need to be looking at him.
The chainsaw will roar to life on the first try, a small blessing. When Patrick wakes up they will be buying him so many drinks to toast his tinkering skills. If Patrick wakes up. One problem at a time.
The Mistress turns with lightning speed, whirling to face Joe just as the chainsaw pierces her midsection. Black ichor will spray everywhere, painting the room in a foul arc, hitting Pete full in the face and mercifully spoiling his appetite. Her red mouth will be shaped in horror and indignation as her torso falls to the floor, her spine severed. Even injured, Beckett will be on Joe in less than a second, pinning him to the floor. Andy’s fastest run will look like it’s happening in slow-motion, drumstakes in his hands, Joe struggling to hold Beckett off his chest with the equally deadly chainsaw.
“Go!” Andy will scream at Pete, although nothing about this situation suggests that it is being handled. “We’ve got this! Get him to the hospital!”
And Pete will have no choice. Patrick’s life is dripping out onto the Chamber’s floor, wasting, wasting. His first friends will be facing off against his greatest nemesis and, despite all he’s taught them, they are probably outmatched. There are at least two other injured vamps in the parlor and an unknown army of reinforcements in this building, this warren of basement tunnels.
“You have to save him!” Joe will yell, instead of oh god oh god I’m going to die.
Pete will clasp Patrick to his chest, wrestling all the time with his own treacherous hunger. He will turn his back on his friends. With all the unnatural speed bestowed to him, he will run.
, . . ,
Later—much later—they will be on a rooftop, overlooking their city, which is still overrun with vampires, politicians who literally suck blood, and a civilian populace that is realizing pretty quickly that daytime crime is laissez-faire, since most of the police force is incendiarily allergic to sunlight. It will be beautiful anyway: lit by the moon and the skyscrapers, the glittering lake to the left of them, the Ferris wheel incandescent on its shores.
Patrick will be crabby, despite all of Pete’s efforts at a romantic location. “I still don’t understand why, when presented with like, a perfectly good reason to grant me immortality, you decided you’d rather let me grow old and die instead,” he will complain.
For all the grump in his voice, his hand will be warm in Pete’s cool one, and his skin will rush and thrum with his blood. Pete will only just be able to smell it, where the scab from Patrick’s most recent bite has not quite healed. Pete had trouble accepting Patrick’s consent, when Patrick was first released from the hospital—until Patrick bit open his own tongue and kissed Pete with it. That was sort of the end of that. Pete is still pretty impressed with his restraint on the night of their showdown with the vampire leadership of the city. He hopes he’s still getting, like, cosmic credit for that, because it basically used up every ounce of restraint intended to be distributed over the rest of his eternal life.
If he didn’t kill Patrick then, though, when the room stunk with his blood and he lay all limp and juicy in Pete’s own arms, when Pete was weak and overwhelmed and so, so afraid—if he didn’t kill Patrick then, he never will. Probably.
Pete will nuzzle his face into the crook of Patrick’s neck, nestling up against the heartbeat there. It is one of the best places in the world. It is the closest thing he has to home, and he wants for nothing.
“It’s because I’m just using you for your heartbeat,” Pete will hum, smiling fangy, into Patrick’s sweet skin. “Once you stop producing blood, baby, I’m out.”
“You’re saying I’m basically a juicebox to you.”
“Or a ham. Whichever. Take your pick.”
Patrick will punch him in the arm without real force. His eyes will shine the city lights back at Pete. “Will you turn me, though? One day? Because apparently you’re, like, this huge danger to me in my mortal state.”
Pete doesn’t want to answer this question, so he will turn Patrick’s head and kiss Patrick’s impossible mouth instead. “This won’t always work to shut me up, you know,” Patrick will say. Then Patrick will shut up, and kiss Pete back.
“I am not willing to face eternity without you,” Pete will say, when they come up for air. Well. When Patrick comes up for air, anyway. Pete breathes more out of habit than need. “I don’t know what that means yet. Is that enough?”
Patrick will complain, “I’m just tired of always being the bait, you know? And ever since the fight with Beckett, since you turned Joe—”
“Joe was medically dead when I—”
“I’m just saying, I’d prefer not to wait that long!” Patrick’s cheeks will flush, as they always do when his temper rises. It is one of one thousand very best things about him.
“Andy will be the bait next time,” Pete will promise.
“I bet Joe would turn me.”
“Would you prefer to be on this rooftop with Joe?” Pete will raise his eyebrows and give Patrick his most alluring moody vampire eyes. “No? Then stop talking, and let me kiss you.”
Patrick will.
And they will all live happily ever after.
, . . ,
It starts like this:
Andy is the bait. It is their fifth hunting trip; Sweaty Bike Messenger Falls Down and Can’t Get Up Again was a terrifyingly effective set-up. They staked the vamp, but yet again, it was nearly at the cost of Patrick’s life. This time he has straight-up refused the bait job. “Someone else can be the fucking ham this time,” he keeps saying. Anyway, his bike was trashed by the last vamp, so that gimmick’s out.
This time, Andy’s in a car with a girl he knows, parked at a notorious make-out overlook, trying to exude the scents of sexiness and danger, neither of which comes super naturally. At first it’s not working; then, out of nowhere, vamps are slamming up against the windshield, denting the hood, peeling back the roof of the car like it’s a cat food can. The rate at which they are going through vehicles is frankly alarming, Patrick thinks, because it’s easier than thinking about all the ways he and his friends might die.
Patrick and Joe burst onto the scene, their weapons seeming inadequate as three full-grown vamps bear down upon them. At least they drew the aggro off Andy and his friend; maybe after eating Patrick and Joe, the vampires will be feeling bloaty and peckish, and Andy will get away. They have barely survived their run-ins with one vamp at a time. Patrick is absolutely certain that, faced with three, their options are limited to a) running, b) dying, and c) trying to run but actually ending up dying.
Faster than his eye can track, the odds change. The vamps are ripped off the hood of the car, thrown back like they are hollow, weighing nothing. A blur of chaotic combat ensues, and at the end of it, there is a panting red-scarfed vampire standing behind him, fangs bared, scowl on his face. Patrick is very aware, in his highly sensitive state of terror relief oh-shit-I’m-alive-after-all, that it is a handsome scowl on a handsome face. Patrick is simultaneously aware that the face belongs to a vampire, a blood-sucker, a man-eater. A treacherous part of Patrick’s brain suggests that Patrick should probably volunteer to be the next man sucked and eaten.
“You call yourself hunters?” the new vampire demands, looking at their motley assembly in disgust. “You’re going to get yourselves killed. Let the professionals handle this from now on. Come on, kids, I’ll walk you back to grandmother’s house so the Big Bad Wolf doesn’t eat you on the way.”
They trudge homeward, coming down off the adrenaline of near-death and feeling humiliated. There is something unspeakably embarrassing about vampire hunters being rescued by a vampire. Their escort is careful to stand upwind. “You smell like a suspiciously cheap all-you-can-eat buffet,” he comments, wrinkling his nose. This is pretty judgmental for a guy who keeps looking at them like he’d like to do nothing more than tear out their throats and gorge on their spurting heartsblood, Patrick thinks privately.
As they near their block, Andy stops and crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m pretty sure I’d rather take my chances with the last five minutes of our terrifying, suicidally dangerous walk home than with leading a vampire to our front door,” he says.
“I don’t drink humans,” the red-scarfed vamp shoots back. “Maybe you couldn’t tell, but I went out of my way to keep you alive back there.”
“We can hold our own,” Joe says imperiously, although it is obvious to all of them that they would have died tonight without this vampire’s intervention. It’s an occupational hazard of vampire hunting. None of them are expecting to live all that long. Short lifespans are something you come to terms with when you’re living in a vampire-ridden dystopia.
“Fine! Get yourselves killed. I won’t waste my time next time.” The vampire turns his back and starts to melt away into the shadows.
“Wait!” someone says in a voice that could not possibly be Patrick’s. Joe and Andy’s blood-spattered faces turn to Patrick, writ with twin incredulity. “Come with us. If you’re such a pro. Teach us to not get killed. Help us take back the city.”
The vampire blinks at him, his face shaped into (handsome) astonishment to match Andy and Joe’s. If Patrick had two heads, he would use the second one to gawk at himself in just the same way. “You want me to stay?” he says.
“Um… yeah.” Patrick can feel his face getting hot with blood as he blushes. The vampire is watching the progression of his blood with nauseated fascination. Patrick wonders how long, exactly, it has been since he fed on a human. Patrick wonders if it gets harder to resist, the longer you’re… sober. Patrick wonders how many times this vamp’s relapsed. He imagines there’s a bit of a learning curve. He’s never met anything but the ‘soulless bloodsucking fiend’ type of vampire before.
“You really are going to get yourself killed,” the vampire says. Before their eyes, he seems to dissolve into the night, the shadows sliding over his face and form until he’s disappeared.
“Have you lost your goddamn mind?” Joe asks him.
Patrick shrugs, studying his feet. He’s embarrassed and disappointed both. “I just… I kinda liked him, okay?”
“Your taste in men has officially become actively suicidal,” Andy says. He slings an arm over Patrick’s shoulder and starts marching him towards home. “Come on, fangbait. Let’s get you inside before you offer your sanguinary virginity to anyone else.”
Two hours til sunrise, Patrick’s still awake. He can’t get the night out of his head. It’s not that he’s never been close to death before. It’s that damn vampire. It’s the idea that maybe not all vampires are pure evil. It’s opened a whole moral quandary for him. It has nothing to do with smoky eyes or the burning weight of the vamp’s gaze upon him or handsome fangs that make Patrick’s skin prickle as if longing to be pierced. It has nothing to do with any of that. Patrick is just… very intrigued by dilemmas of morality. That’s all.
A knock at his window rips Patrick out of bed, sending his heart rate rocketing. He fumbles for a stake or vial of holy water or something defensive at his bedside table. The most dangerous thing he finds is a hardback book. He brandishes it menacingly and edges over to his window.
Cast in green by the streetlights, the vampire is perched on his windowsill, peering in between the boards Patrick has hammered pell-mell across it.
“Hey,” the vampire says.
“Uh, hi,” Patrick says. He still brandishes the book. He is thrown off by how casual the vampire is being about this whole situation. He wishes he was wearing more than a too-small Cubs t-shirt and boxers. With this much skin showing, he feels very… ham-like. If he’s going to be partly naked with this ridiculous, condescending, hot vampire, he’d like it to be in a more alluring way. If that’s not too much to ask. Universe.
“I was thinking,” the vampire says, “about your… foolish invitation. And whether it still stands.”
“When I asked you to join us? To help us fight?” Patrick asks. He’s stalling for time. His brain keeps blanking out every time the streetlight reflects on the syrupy smooth brown of the vamp’s eyes.
The vampire is poised on the windowsill, waiting. Patrick’s brain is still buffering. He’s having Thoughts about Fangs and finding them upsettingly erotic, honestly. Nothing in his short life or career as a vampire hunter has prepared him for this experience.
“I’ll go,” the vampire says after a moment. “I shouldn’t have—”
The idea of this vamp leaving again, melting away into nothingness and out of Patrick’s life, startles him into action. “It still stands!” Patrick blurts. “You don’t have to go. Stay, if you want to.”
A look Patrick cannot read constricts the vampire’s face. It’s almost hope, almost despair. “If you want me to,” he says. “You’ll have to invite me in, though. And there’s always a chance I’ll go berserk and eat you.”
“I want you to,” Patrick says. He does not clarify which part of the vampire’s statement he was addressing. He feels dizzy and blood-rushed with near-death and insane lust. “Um, come in.”
“My name is Pete,” the vampire says at last, staring at Patrick in a sexually exciting mix of wonder and hunger.
“My name is Patrick,” Patrick says. He opens his window.
Pete comes in.
They begin.