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“David, please come see me at the store. Now.”
Max’s voice had echoed through his mind barely minutes after David had woken up for the night.
Now, he strolled into the store, hands tucked in the pockets of his coat. Behind the counter, Chelsea—an all-too-serious high schooler with neatly pressed clothes and the personality of a wet paper towel—frowned at him from behind wire-rimmed glasses. David grinned back at her.
“Evening, Chels,” he chirped. Her frown somehow deepened.
“I’ve told you not to call me that.”
David pouted exaggeratedly and leaned against the counter. “But it suits you so well.”
Chelsea crossed her arms, giving him a disdainful look. “What are you doing here, David?”
David straightened back up, pushing himself away from the counter and holding his hands up in mock surrender before pointing toward the manager’s office in the back of the store. “Just here to see Max.”
As if he’d heard him (he likely had), the office door opened, and Max leaned out.
“Thank you, Chelsea,” he said, smiling kindly at the girl. It made David’s skin crawl. “I can handle it from here. David, come in, please.”
David flashed Chelsea another grin, winking before strutting back to where Max was holding the door open.
David stepped through, into Max’s office, and turned to face the door as Max pulled it closed and—in a move that didn’t go unnoticed—locked it behind him.
“You wanted to see me, Max?” David kept his demeanor blasé, making sure his body continuously faced Max as he moved from the door to his desk on the other side of the room.
Rather than sitting down, Max stayed standing; he leaned back against his desk and folded his arms. “Take off your coat, David; I promise the temperature in here is quite pleasant.”
David raised his eyebrows at the unexpected opening line. “I’d rather keep it on, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind, actually,” Max replied evenly. “My office, my rules. Take off your coat.”
David felt the command hiding beneath the request, and he didn’t fight the way his body moved on its own; he shrugged his coat off and laid it over the back of a nearby chair.
Max nodded his approval—as though David had actually listened to him of his own volition rather than because Max’s power told him to.
David crossed his arms, unused to the feeling of the bare skin when not onstage or in the hotel, and shrugged in a silent “so?”
“Tell me, David,” Max tilted his head to the side slightly, “where is Laddie?”
So that’s what this was about.
David shrugged, “Can’t say I know.”
“And why is that?” Max asked.
“Because he was gone when we woke up,” David answered smoothly, “kid must’ve slipped out during the day.”
Max looked as if he were considering the answer, his gaze distant like he was imagining what it might’ve looked like, before his focus returned to David.
He sighed. “Do I ask too much of you, David? Of all you boys?”
David’s shoulders dropped, and he instinctively averted his gaze from Max’s expectant expression. “No, sir.”
Max hummed in agreement. “No, I didn’t think so either. So, why is it that I gave you until tonight to turn the boy, and not only have you not done what I asked, but you’ve managed to let the boy escape?”
“I don’t know what you’re implying,” David replied, quicker than he should’ve. Max smiled coldly.
“Oh, I think you do, my boy.”
David felt the invasive pressure of Max’s presence in his mind, pushing aside his mental walls so he could sift through David’s memories.
A young boy sat on a rock, his face illuminated by the fires that lit the hotel. He pushed his shoulder-length hair out of his eyes; his small frame seemed swamped by the blue military-style jacket the Lost Boys had given him.
The slight crunch of boots on sandy ground sounded louder in the quiet hours just before dawn, and the boy looked up as David knelt down in front of him.
“Hey, little man, how’re you doing—you still cold?” He kept his voice low. Laddie shook his head silently, tugging at the jacket.
David smiled, a little awkwardly; he was far from the softest of the Lost Boys; the other guys had been far better with the kid than he had—especially Dwayne.
But David had to be the one to do this.
“Good, yeah, it’s a pretty cool jacket….listen, Laddie, how would you like to go home?”
The boy’s gaze snapped to meet his, eyes filled with something that might’ve been hope, and David couldn’t help but laugh.
“Yeah. Yeah, I thought so. Okay, I need you to listen. You know how the boys and I like to sleep during the day, while everyone else is awake?” Laddie nodded, and David continued. “And you know how you have your own bedroom to stay in while we’re sleeping?” Another nod. “Right now, it’s almost morning, and my brothers are back there getting ready to sleep; after this, I’m going to go join them.”
David paused again, this time for an almost comically well-timed yawn.
“Today, though, I'm not going to make you go to your room. You can stay here, you can do whatever.” He waved his hand dismissively, then pointed toward the cave entrance they used to reach the hotel. Laddie’s eyes followed the gesture with rapt attention.
“As soon as you see the sun come up, you can leave. It’s a bit of a walk back to the boardwalk, but you can make it—just go as fast as you can. Find a police officer and tell them you got lost; they’ll help you get back home. Did you get all that?”
Laddie thought for a moment, then nodded, his hair swinging with the movement. David nodded back and stood back up to his full height, now looking down at Laddie.
“Remember, don’t leave until the sun comes up—blue sky, alright?”
With those last instructions, David turned to head into the depths of the hotel.
“David!” Laddie’s usually soft voice called out to him, and before he could turn around, small arms wrapped around his waist from behind, hands linking in front of him. He froze as he felt the boy's head pressing against his back.
“Thank you,” David’s coat muffled the words. He patted Laddie’s clasped hands gently.
“Good luck, kid.”
David scowled as Max finished his prying, raising his eyebrows like a parent who’d caught their kid in a lie.
“He was a child, Max.” David wasn’t sure why he was trying to appeal to reason; it had never worked before.
Max nodded like that had been the whole point. “Precisely—a little brother for you all, to look after, to take care of.”
David shook his head. “No one should be that young forever,” he argued.
“That wasn’t your decision to make.” Max’s voice was starting to take on a harder edge.
“It is when I’m the one doing it. If you wanted it so badly, you could’ve done it. The bottle is your blood anyway,” David snapped.
Max considered him silently for a moment before straightening up and walking to the other side of his desk as he spoke.
“You know, I had a customer, a while back–,” he began, disappearing from sight as he crouched behind the desk. David could hear the sounds of something opening, smaller objects moving around inside whatever had been opened, then something being closed again. When he stood, he set what looked like an insulated water bottle with a handle sticking out on his desk, followed by a large water glass. “–Who was telling me about this new dog he’d just adopted—an adorable, healthy, Golden Doodle—just the most amazing dog; except for one thing. He chewed on everything: toys, furniture, paperwork, clothes, even cords. So this customer tried everything to get him to stop: high-pitched sounds, treats, yelling, even one of those so-called dog whisperers—but nothing seemed to work. Until one day, when the dog was chewing on one of his work shoes, and he took the bottle of water his wife used on her plants and aimed it–,” he mimed pointing a squirt bottle at something low to the ground, “–right at the dog. And you know what happened when he sprayed it?”
David stayed silent as Max unscrewed the cap and, holding the bottle by the handle, filled the glass to the top with water.
“The dog got so startled, he dropped the shoe!” Max laughed at the thought as he traded the bottle for the cup and walked back around the desk so there was once again nothing but a few feet between him and David.
“It took a few weeks for the dog to really get the message, of course: every time you chew something you’re not supposed to, you get wet. But after ending up with soaking wet fur enough times, he eventually started to behave properly.”
Max’s head stayed level, but his gaze dropped to the glass of water in his hand, then lifted back to David, head angled in contemplation.
“But I trust it won’t take more than once for you to learn your lesson.”
And that was the only warning David received before Max thrust the glass forward, keeping his grip tight as the water was flung out, splashing across David’s face and soaking him from head to toe.
It took less than a second for David to realize what Max had just done.
The Germans had used a new kind of gas during the First World War.
There were many things from his life that David had forgotten over the years since he’d been turned.
His first encounter with what would eventually be called mustard gas was something that would never make that list.
The yellow-y tinge in the air, the faint smell of mustard and garlic that gave it its name—the mad scramble in the trenches for gas masks, and the thin layer of mist that settled onto their uniforms.
The way it took hours for the burning to start and the blisters to appear—just when they’d thought the horrors of the day had passed.
This was nothing like that.
This was so much worse.
The pain was immediate and all-encompassing.
If the gas in Europe had felt like a hot iron on his skin, this felt like being doused in gasoline and set on fire.
His skin wasn’t just blistering; it was melting, disintegrating, the water carving trenches in his skin as droplets ran down his face and arms, and leaving craters like shell holes where it seeped through his clothes in patches.
It was agony so intense that it stole the sound from David’s screams before they could escape his throat, leaving his mouth parted but silent, with nothing to come out.
His eyes were squeezed tight reflexively, as if they could keep the pain out of at least some part of him.
Max tutted like a school teacher. “Uh uh uh, eyes open, my boy—since you so willingly closed them for Laddie.”
David felt his eyelids pulling apart, moving in response to Max’s words despite every primal instinct fighting to keep them closed. He could feel the air against his eyes for just a moment before the water dripping down his face followed it, and a whole new wave of pain washed over him.
It was unlike anything he’d felt before, and yet he knew—somewhere in his failing brain—what it was.
Holy water.
Max had thrown holy water on him.
And now the only thing that existed was this torture. David didn’t know how much time had passed; he couldn’t tell if his eyes were still open or if he’d closed them again; he wasn’t sure if he was still standing or if he’d collapsed to the ground; the only thing telling him he still had a body at all was the feeling of the water burning across it, eating away layer by layer, like acid.
Faintly, he wondered if this was it. If he’d finally done something Max considered unforgivable enough to kill him over.
Not just kill him, though—no, if Max just wanted to kill him, he could’ve put a stake through his chest and had it over in seconds. Holy water was cruel.
Holy water destroyed every nerve it touched; it burned and prolonged all the pain it caused.
Suddenly, something else managed to cut through the haze of anguish that David’s world had been reduced to.
Something soft and dry touching him—gently pressing down on burned skin, soaking up holy water, blood, and sweat—drying him off. David was pretty sure small, broken sounds had started to work their way past his lips, and his lungs were trying to drag in air they had forgotten they no longer needed.
Every stuttering rise and fall of his chest pulled at ruined flesh.
Every involuntary twitch or spasm caused more pain than he knew what to do with.
Every sound around him was distorted and far-away, like it had been shoved under layers of cotton.
A low, muffled voice said something to him that he felt more than heard; he might’ve groaned in response—he honestly didn’t know.
Everything was black.
Some amount of time—maybe seconds, maybe hours—passed before a man’s voice spoke, this time so crystal clear that it could only have come from within his own mind. Someone he was linked to.
“Boys, if you’d be so kind as to come get David from the store, I’m sure he’d appreciate the help. I’m afraid he may have some trouble finding his own way home, and I’d hate for him to get caught in the sunrise.”
Instantly, three voices responded at once—each with an accusatory, concerned, and confused tone.
“Why can’t he get home?”
“Max?”
“David? Can you hear us?”
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“David?”
The other Lost Boys’ voices called out across their bond, but any coherent response David might’ve given normally had been burned away by the water; he didn’t have it in him. He was tired. So, so tired.
He let himself drift.