Chapter Text
Sam paced around their bedroom, chewing on his nails. He pulled on a hangnail and winced. Michael said he was going to take care of everything. Mike always took care of everything. He was fine. He could handle anything. Except it was already 10am and he wasn’t home, yet. He should have been home. Even if he was still a half-vampire, he should have been home before dawn. What if he decided to fight the vampires by himself? What if they ate him? Could vampires eat half-vampires?
Sam picked up the phone receiver and stared at the buttons. Mike told him to stay. He told him not to involve his friends. But surely he didn’t take into account if he got in trouble. Mike never thought about backup plans. He just fought his way out. Sometimes that didn’t work out so great, but he always made it home. This was vampires. A whole band of them. It didn’t matter how tough Mike thought he was, he couldn’t fist fight them all and expect to get away. They could fly.
That was it, he was going after Mike. He just needed reinforcements. Thankfully, they picked up on the first ring.
“Guys! I think the vampires kidnapped my brother.”
“You sure?” Edgar’s gruff voice asked.
“Last night, he said he was going to take care of everything. He still hasn’t come home. They have to have him somewhere. Maybe they are going to force him to drink. We gotta save him!”
There was a tussle on the other end of the line, then Alan took over the call. “We’ll be right over. We have been working on narrowing down prime vampire hideouts.”
Sam felt a bit better. They were absolutely going to find where those vampires were sleeping and save Michael. Right. He needed to get stuff together so that they could plan. Markers, maps, should he grab the missing posters and put them on the map? No, that was too much. And he didn’t have any way down to the boardwalk to grab them all off the board. He felt queasy. Maybe a ginger ale until the Frogs came.
The front door banged open, swinging back when it hit the doorstop at full force. Sam nearly spilled his ginger ale all over the kitchen floor.
“Okay. We’ve got flashlights, stakes, holy water –”
“Did you bring a list of places to look?”
Alan dropped his bag on the floor and pulled out a rumpled paper map of Santa Carla. He spread it out on the coffee table and tried to smooth it out as best he could. There was some suspicious staining on one corner. Sam chose not to think too hard about why it was sticky.
“So, we’ve circled the spots that are abandoned.”
“And we’ve marked the places where the most bodies are found.”
Sam tried to make sense of the color and numbering scheme, but was coming up empty. “Do you have a top ten list? Maybe a top 5?”
“This isn’t the Billboard Top 100, Phoenix. We need to keep all our options open.”
Sam sighed. “We have only so much time before the sun goes down and my brother is dead meat. If he isn’t already. If we’re going to save him from an undead rock band, we need to narrow this down to only the best options.”
Alan hummed to himself and pulled out a black sharpie. “Most of the bodies get washed up on the beach. Everyone says it’s sharks. But, it’s definitely vampires. So, it’s probably somewhere near the coast.”
“Santa Carla is a beach town. Everywhere is near the coast.” Sam felt a headache coming on. Is this how Michael felt about him? He needed to apologize for every time he said something redundant. Once they found him.
Edgar pointed at Hudson’s Bluff. “Look, there’s an abandoned hotel on the cliff here. It’s super dangerous. Probably a good choice to check out.”
“Why an abandoned hotel?”
Alan answered, “It fell into the ocean like a hundred years ago. And the rest of it fell into a cavern. People who go in there, never come out.”
“So, a dangerous cave where people could probably drown from high tide. Aren’t vampires supposed to burn from water touching them? That seems a little wet.”
Edgar nodded and crossed it off. “Good point.”
Alan pointed at the next derelict option. “There’s the Coronado Ironworks. Also damaged in an earthquake. Lots of people died. I think only security guards go down there once in awhile.”
Sam perked up at that. “Didn’t a security guard just go missing?”
Edgar pulled out a stack of missing posters and started flipping through them. He pulled one out and slapped it on top of the map. “Yep! Last known location: the Coronado Ironworks.”
“Bingo!” Alan jumped up and did a shimmy. “Grab the stakes, holy water, and we are outta here!”
Sam waved Alan down. “If we are going to get my brother, we need something to bring him back. He isn’t going to fit on the back of a bicycle.”
Edgar and Alan shared a look and shrugged. “If we kill the vamps, he’ll be human. He could just walk home.”
Sam wanted to beat his head against the nearest hard surface. “I’m not making my brother walk home from the Ironworks after being rescued.”
“No offense, dude, we don’t have a car.” Edgar patted Sam on the shoulder, trying to help him feel better about Michael having to walk home several miles.
“Not necessarily.”
“What do you mean? Your mom took the car to work. Your brother’s bike is still gone. Can you drive a motorcycle?” Alan asked.
“No. I’d never drive that death machine. But, Mike took me out in the desert and was teaching me how to drive.”
“Okay? Still don’t have a car.”
Sam scratched the back of his head. “Not true. Grandpa’s old convertible is in the garage.”
Driving the 1957 Ford Fairlane was not quite as easy as their mom’s SUV. It was still manual, so that wasn’t so bad. But, the gears were in weird places on the shifter. After nearly wrecking it into the fence, Sam got it together and tore off down the road.
Alan was in the front seat with the map flapping in the wind.
“You gotta take a right on – on – shit, can you put the roof up?”
“I don’t know how!”
Some how, some way, they made it to the Ironworks. It was a massive steel building that had partially collapsed in on one side. The chainlink fencing surrounding it was covered in signs that read: Keep Out, Danger, Hazardous Materials, Exposed Wires: High Voltage. Sam watched as Edgar and Alan ignored the signs entirely and slipped through a hole in the fencing. He reminded himself that he was doing this for Michael, and followed. It took awhile to find a door that actually opened, unfortunately it was a dead end and only went to a defunct electrical room.
Sam shut the door behind them and continued scanning the massive complex. “There has to be an underground entrance somewhere.” Everything was the same rusted steel color. Any paint that might have indicated a main building entrance had long since eroded away.
Edgar was staring up at the sky, frowning.
“What’s going on, man?”
“Well, they wouldn’t be coming in the way we do, right?”
Sam shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“Vamps can fly. Who's to say that the entrance is on the ground floor.”
“That’s – a really good point.” Sam started looking up at some of the other door options. “How would a half-vampire get to one of those?”
Alan answered from several feet away while clambering over a concrete barricade. “Pretty sure they can fly, too.”
Sam snorted. “Not well.”
Edgar and Alan both turned to Sam, temporarily forgetting their search in light of new intel.
“He said he saw our Dad and was swinging a baseball bat around like a maniac. I went upstairs and locked him out of our bedroom. He flew through the window. Mostly it was a crash. Fell on the floor in a crumpled up ball. I don’t think he meant to fly.”
“Huh. I thought it was all instinctual.” Edgar went back to looking for possible entry points.
Sam shrugged. “The flight part was instinctual. The coordination after lift off, not so much. Definitely not landing.”
Alan kept moving through the minefield of debris and eventually called out, “There! There’s a door that’s kinda open and stairs going up to it.”
Edgar grabbed his flashlight and tightened the straps of his backpack. “Let’s do this.”
The three of them stuck close together as they climbed up to the second story landing and filed in through the thick door. The sunlight cast a narrow beam down the stairs and ended before the bottom. Everything else was inky black. Their flashlights didn’t do much. The narrow beams went deep into the darkness, but it felt like the building was swallowing up their light.
Sam gripped the back of Alan’s vest. He could feel Edgar gripping the back of his jacket. Together they crept down the metal stairs.
It took everything in Sam to leave the last bit of light and continue down. Thankfully, it wasn’t very far. Only another small flight of stairs. The floor was bare concrete. He swore everything echoed, even his breathing. He half expected a ghost to rise up from the shadows. Slowly, he swung his flashlight around and landed on what looked like a living room setup. It was oddly misplaced. A couple of beat up chairs, a coffee table covered in junk, a small TV with knobs on it. A large sofa sat slightly askew, but looked just as dingy and beat up as the rest of the furniture. It was clearly third or fourth hand before it ended up at the bottom of the Ironworks.
Sam almost collapsed with relief. Michael was asleep on the couch. There was a ratty blanket over his shoulders. He was face down and his left arm was dangling off the edge, fingers trailing on the dirty, concrete floor. He was perfectly fine, just passed out in the worst possible place imaginable. Sam was going to kill him. Later. After they got out of this nightmare inducing health hazard.
He carefully stepped around the random junk and trash that had fallen off of the table, trying to be as quiet as possible. They hadn’t seen any sign of the vampires, yet. But, he knew they had to be around somewhere. “Mike. Mike.” Sam shoved at Michael’s shoulder, but only got a soft grunt for his troubles.
He turned around and waved his flashlight at the Frogs. “Hey, I need your help. He’s out cold.”
Edgar and Alan nodded and started to step down. Edgar’s grip on his flashlight slipped. He could feel it about to drop onto the metal stairs and bobbled it several times before catching it. The boys breathed a sigh of relief. Until they saw what the light illuminated.
Edgar started to scream, but was cut off by Alan quickly slapping a hand over his mouth.
Sam looked directly up and into the sleeping faces of four vampires hanging from chains. He covered his mouth, trying to stifle the sound of his own panicked breathing.
Alan was the first to recover. “We can probably reach the one closest to the landing. Take one of the bloodsuckers out.”
Edgar pulled one arm out of his backpack straps and swung it around to grab a stake.
“Guys! We need to get my brother to safety first. I’m not leaving him behind just so you can kill a vampire.”
Edgar pointed the stake at the vampire nearest to him. “One less vampire is going to make the world safer.”
“I swear to God, Edgar, if you don’t get down here and help me carry my brother out of here, I’ll feed you to the vampires myself.”
Alan glanced between the vampire and Sam. “We can come back and get them later. We know where they sleep, now.”
Edgar grunted and nodded. “Operation: Rescue the Half-Vamp can take priority for now.”
Sam sagged in relief. “Okay, Alan, help me with his arms and Edgar, grab his legs.”
The trio tied their gear tighter to their backs and grabbed the still unconscious Michael. Sam and Alan walked backwards towards the stairs. It was awkward with Michael dangling between them, but Edgar did his best to guide them as they went. “Step. Step. Step. Okay, we just gotta turn to the right. No. My right, your left.”
They managed to climb several more stairs. Sam and Alan were safely in the sunlight. One more step. Light fell on Michael’s arms.
Fire.
Sam and Alan screamed and let go.
Michael woke up screaming, burning. He rolled down the stairs when Edgar dropped his feet. Edgar lost his balance and fell down the stairs with him.
Roaring came from overhead.
Alan started to run down the stairs. “Edgar!”
Sam grabbed him around the middle before he left the only thing protecting them from a pack of very pissed off vampires.
They heard boots slamming on the ground below.
Sam could just make out Michael’s form at edge of the light. He was crumpled on the ground, holding his arms to his chest. “David. It hurts! It hurts so bad.”
Edgar was laying on the ground next to Michael and groaning.
The bleach blonde vampire jogged up the stairs and knelt next to Michael. “It’s okay. It’ll heal.”
Sam took one step back down, staying just on the border of the shadow. “Mike?” He didn’t want it to be true. His brother was still half when he last saw him. “Mike? You – you promised. You said that you’d fix everything. You can’t – Mike, tell me you didn’t kill someone? Michael, please. You’ve never broken your promise to me before. Please tell me you didn’t hurt someone.”
Sam felt everything in him shatter when his brother looked up at him from the dark. His cheeks were covered in tears. He looked so upset, so ashamed when he looked back down. His arms were already healing from the burns. Sam felt his knees give out beneath him. He barely managed to sit on the stair he had been standing on, nearly eye level with Michael. “Why?”