A Little More Kill Bill
Band(s): Fall Out Boy, The Academy Is..., Panic at the Disco, mentions of MCR
Pairing(s): Pete/Patrick, Brendon/Ryan, Pete/William
Word Count:
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, swearing and explicit sexual language.
Author Notes: This is a Sixteen Candles verse AU. I changed one major thing from the video - I made it so Patrick was not out on the street with them during the big fight. If you've read Sunshine by Robin McKinley, you'll notice a piece of her world-building that I snatched, because it seemed right. Thank you for the beta, universeunfold (unable to leave it alone, I messed with it some more, so any remaining mistakes are completely mine), and to katya23 for hand-holding and icon-making.
Summary: Pete only has two things to live for: Keeping Patrick alive and killing as many vampires as he can.

Bonus Tracks/Enhanced Content
Fanmix:
Epic! Vampire! Saga! Mix by swanpose (THANK YOU, swanpose!! :D

Pete remembered the night he'd been turned in snatches. He didn't like to think about it, so his memories never got clearer than those bright flashes of image. Even after he'd seen him again, found out who he was, his name, (William, though what a human name for an inhuman thing) Pete didn't really remember, and he thought that was for the best.

He could guess, roughly, what had happened. William was very good-looking, and Pete-the-human was easy, friendly. Definitely friendlier than he should have been, and that had already gotten him into some bad situations, though of course, the last was the one that got him killed.

William probably hadn't even had to try. Pete'd probably followed him so willingly, making lame jokes and smiling bright and self-conscious, but arrogant enough to cover it up.

He would have expected a good fuck, maybe a night of not feeling quite so alone and empty, and instead he'd gotten a rough bite in some alley, only to wake up the next morning, weak and anemic and changing into this awful thing. It had taken him weeks to come to terms with what had happened, and even after, he was just barely hanging on to sanity.

He felt like he was living underwater, half-unconscious, feeling mostly hunger and guilt, until the night he'd killed another vampire. It hadn't been premeditated--he didn't wake up one night and decide to become a vigilante vampire hunter.

See, once he'd figured out (a little) what was happening to him, he'd gone back to the place where he knew he’d met William, intent on finding and killing the motherfucker the very second he saw him. If there was nothing else this new frightening strength was good for, it would help him do that.

Instead of William—who no one at the bar remembered at all—he stumbled over some vampire sucking every last drop out of a kid in the alley behind the bar, and his rage at everything that had happened took him over. He barely remembered slamming the vampire down onto the shards of a broken table leg, jutting out from beside a dumpster. The kid collapsed on the wet alley concrete, bleeding into a puddle of dirty rainwater, and Pete left him there, almost running away, unable to trust himself to get near a still-bleeding human for fear of crossing some line he wouldn’t be able to uncross. The kid—the most probably dead kid—was just another image that lurked in the back of his head, haunting him.

After that his days sort of started to blend together. He fed—he couldn’t stop himself—but he hated himself for each person he killed, even if he made sure they were murderers or rapists or murdering rapist pimps, or whatever. A homeless junky or two when he was almost delirious from hunger, but he hated those. They were half-dead anyway and they tasted like it, and the second-hand drugs did fucked up shit to his mind.

He staked each one afterward, left the bodies in a place that would get morning sun, no matter how out of his mind he was—no new vampires would come from him.

And when he could, when he was sane and not starving, he stopped other vampires from killing.

*

He met the vampire hunters when he was wandering around one of the city's most popular make-out spots. They were grim-looking kids who didn't know what they were doing. He thought they were pretty fucking pathetic, pretty fucking likely to get killed any second. Even with their help, he couldn’t save everybody, couldn’t stop the exponential expansion of undead. But the hunters were also the only help he was likely to get.

In spite of the vampires he'd been stopping every night, sometimes dozens of them, he knew he was only making a tiny dent in the rising vampire population.

These little hunters were untrained, using badly-coordinated teamwork to scrape through each battle. They wouldn't have lasted much longer if he hadn't come along.

Except for Patrick. Patrick might have. Patrick was something different altogether. His genius might have kept him alive. He was the one who later invented the elixir that kept Pete's hunger under control. He was the one who demanded Pete help them set up a training course to figure out how vampires were likely to attack and best killed, and who created a database of known vampire attacks, population statistics drawn from the news reports and from their observations, with an eye for prediction. He tracked movement and kept records of how many had been turned, who had been turned. He hacked into the city morgues, the hospitals, the government sites. He planned.

Pete talked to him on late, late nights when they were all recovering from hunts—too wired to sleep, but too beat to move. Pete told him everything he remembered as a human, like it would some how be safe if Patrick heard it and could remind Pete if he lost those memories, if he forgot how important they were.

Pete told him everything he'd been like—his shitty words and his shitty bass-playing. His perpetual unhappiness, and his parents and his life. Patrick never shared much in return, always just a little wary of Pete, always knowing Pete was something other, and Pete couldn't blame him for that at all. But Patrick listened. And once, in spite of obvious misgiving, he kissed Pete just slightly left of his mouth after Pete told him about his aborted suicide attempt, maybe offering human comfort to someone who wasn’t. Pete thought there might be a little bit of goodness left inside himself if a gesture like that could effect him as much as it did.


*

It had started as a regular reconnaissance mission. Dirty was taking surreptitious photographic evidence among the occupied vampires. Pete and the others were following Dirty in Patrick’s old car, ready to swing in and pick him up if he got in over his head. Patrick was back at ‘home’, compiling the information, adding each face to their database.

Pete's neck had been crawling the entire night, the short hairs perpetually raised in alarm, ever since sundown when Patrick had woken him. He'd tried to shrug the unease off, had thought maybe not drinking live blood was starting to fuck with him. The elixir sometimes required adjustment.

It was way too late when he realized it wasn't 'just' a feeling, it was some sort of weird vampire sense, one he’d never felt before, and for a good reason: never before were there hundreds of vampires closing very slowly around him, like little black holes in his consciousness, miles away at first, but coming closer. Hundreds of vampires concentrating on him, coming gunning, impersonal, but focused. He got a general sense from it that vampires didn't tolerate those who prayed on their own. As divided as the vampires were, they could agree on that, and they were coming to put him down.

When Dirty was attacked, the rest of them pulled up and piled out, ready. Pete fought until he didn't have to think, and he used each vampire he killed to feel a little more human. He didn't see Dirty go down, but he knew, knew that his friends weren't getting out of this alive, so he thought Have to cut the head off and started looking for William.

There were more vampires than Patrick estimated - how could he have known, though, that every vampire in the city had put aside their own problems to take care of Pete and his barely-trained hunters?

He killed and he killed, so many of them, but each nearly instantly replaced, until—

He knew William the moment he saw him. Knew him with something deeper than memory. Stolen blood called to blood. Monster to creator. He wanted to puke, from fear, but also because what he really wanted to do was crawl to William; crawl and be rewarded by a pat on the head, a kiss on the mouth, a bite.

Those images fueled him with enough rage to run, knocking away the canon-fodder vampires that tried to distract him, until he felt free and angry and ready to drive a stake right into William's motionless heart.

All he got was a handful of fur, and a trip in a police car, and the horrifying feeling of having failed to save anyone. Dirty, Andy, Joe. They had to be dead. He wasn't sure why he wasn't.

*

He dreamt of William that day. In the dream he felt human, and William did not, and he liked every nasty, good-bad thing that was done to him, that he did to William. When he woke up at dusk, face down on a jail cell bench, he refused, through sheer will power, to remember the dreams at all.

All that long night, no policeman touched him, no one came near his cell. He heard the vampire policemen down the hall--they had the same smell as the ones who had taken him--but they never came closer. He spent the entire night pacing, looking for a way out and thinking futile thoughts of revenge and despair. Maybe they were going to starve him.

But the second night after he’d been ‘arrested’, he woke in Patrick's basement, familiar dirt around him, and Patrick tugging open the cellar doors so the night air and the weak moonlight could flood in.

"How?" Pete walked quickly up the stairs and stood in front of Patrick.

"Friends in the station. The day shift," said Patrick.

"The others?"

Patrick looked away quickly, his face shadowed by his hat. "The Priest came back." The Priest and no one else went unspoken, but loud, like it had been shouted.

"Is it just half the police force or the whole fucking world?" asked Pete, harshly. He knew if he could cry, he would, but it didn't seem to be a vampiric option. Patrick turned and headed inside the house, and Pete, after a moment, followed. Patrick started talking as soon as they were inside.

"They can't take the whole city government because the officials need to be seen in daylight too often, and they've got to keep the humans mostly in the dark or they'd evacuate and the vampires would have nothing to feed on. But they've got a growing handful of people behind the city council, and maybe even the mayor. As far as I can tell, the mayor hasn't been seen in daylight for a week." Patrick turned to his computer and hit some buttons. He stepped aside to reveal a photo of William. Pete wasn't even aware of the growl reverberating in his throat until he noticed Patrick's wary look.

"He's my--" Pete stopped. "He turned me." If it had been anyone else besides Patrick Pete would have kept silent, but he always found himself willing to say more Patrick, to try to reassure, try to keep that look off Patrick's face. "I hate him."

"His name is William Beckett," Patrick told him. "He's as close to a leader as they have in this area and he’s old enough, active enough, that he’s been written about." Patrick's expression turned hesitant, as if he were afraid Pete might not want to hear the next part. "William almost never turns anyone himself. He lets the others kill and turn all they want, but he usually only feeds, draining a human like livestock and drinking their blood separate, so he doesn’t turn them. People he turns tend to come back...strong. Like you. Usually young men. Usually good-looking." Patrick swallowed and looked away. "He has a history back into the 1600s."

"How do we kill him?" asked Pete. He didn’t want to know anything else about William. Patrick looked surprised.

"As far as I know, he's vulnerable to the usual things. If you can get close enough, which, considering how many guards he probably has...."

"No. He's not. Not vulnerable."

"How can you be sure?"

"I had a stake pointed at his heart, but when I jumped him, he disappeared. I drove a stake through his fur stole."

"Oh." Patrick blinked. "Oh. Well that's just...fuck, that isn't a vampire power I've ever heard of." Patrick scrambled for his keyboard. "Not even one of the powers that turned out to be myths. We've got bats, black dogs, flying, invisibility, hypnotism, supernatural strength..." Patrick trailed off but his frantic mouse-clicking continued. "Shit. This is not good."

Pete left him in order to go make a double dose of his elixir. He was starving and he knew he needed to do something about that now before his gaze started lingering on Patrick. The wary look would be back for days if he did that. They couldn't afford days.

At about midnight, with Patrick still muttering over his keyboard, carefully researching and cross-checking and firing off emails to experts, Pete decided to go out.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” asked Patrick.

“To kill as many vampires as I can find.” Pete zipped up his vest and pulled his hoodie over it.

“You should stay in for tonight, at least,” said Patrick, an odd gleam in his eye. Pete shook his head, put his hood up.

“If I don’t—”

“They’re looking for you, Pete.” Patrick’s voice was quiet. It was weird, because usually Patrick argued loudly, face flushing darker the more determined he got. Pete used to argue with him just to watch, just to torture himself a little.

“I know,” said Pete, and left.

The vampires wouldn’t dare riot again so soon, not if they wanted to keep some semblance of docility and ignorance among the rest of the human population, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try very hard to kill him if they saw him.

But Pete knew that every night he wasn't out there fighting, the next night there would be a dozen, two dozen, exponentially more vampires.

*

The clubs were at full capacity, and there were plenty of people on the streets. Pete thought it might be a holiday, there were so many of them. He could see vampires, biding their time, waiting, laughing on the street with crowds of humans or leaning in dark shop door ways. Different hunting styles. So Pete prowled down alleys and lesser streets, and kept his eyes open, listening for a muffled scream or the sound of a struggle. He circled a little further from the main clubbing streets. Out there he stopped seeing vampires and instead could sense them, tucked behind windows or doors or above him, watching for straggling club kids.

Suddenly, in contrast to all that unnatural silence, he heard loud male voices. Pete came out of an alley onto a mostly-deserted street and found himself walking toward three guys. They were laughing and arguing, voices made just a little too loud by alcohol or maybe just by exuberance.

"You fucking liar!" said the thinnest one, hair curling over one eye. He grinned and gave one of his friends a shove.

"You don't have to believe me," he said, smooth face smug, even as he stumbled from the shove. "But it's true."

"You really met him, man?" asked the third. He scratched his beard and looked skeptical. "Like, tonight, or a while ago?"

"Tonight, when I came out of the bathroom."

"Why didn't you come get me?" said the skinny one.

"Because you guys were already out the door!"

They looked up at Pete, in passing, sort of met his eyes, and the bearded one gave him a friendly nod. Pete continued walking and ducked into an alley just past them.

Pre-vampire Pete might have struck up a conversation with them. He would have smiled and charmed his way into their group and fifteen minutes later they all would have known each other's life stories, and they would have promised to come see his band’s next show. Now Pete tried not to associate with humans. They smelled too good. Like sex and a buffet walking right toward him, and that made him feel guilty and sick. It was worse with younger ones, too. They were the vampire equivalent of good porn and every fresh fruit he could no longer keep down. It was easier if he just stuck to saving them and getting the hell away after.

So he followed them, careful to stay far enough that they couldn't hear him, but close enough that he could sprint to their aid in seconds. It wasn't even a question of if, it was when. There were so many vampires in the city now that for three young guys wandering around at night, it was mostly a matter of time. And now that he knew the police and some of the city council were in on it, he knew there would be no real news stories or warnings or police patrols.

Four vampires came out of a building toward the three humans. They walked deceptively slow, and they looked subtly wrong, but normal enough on the outside. The guys barely appeared to notice them.

And then the vampires weren't moving slow any more.

By the time Pete started running, a vampire had the skinniest one by the hair, his teeth sunk into his neck, one hand clasped over his mouth while he struggled.

Pete killed that vampire first, yanked the kid away and sent him flying at his friends while he staked another. When he turned, the three humans were trying to fend off the remaining two. Pete ran over and sent one sprawling with a kick. He staked it and then leapt to get the last.

Then he stood, about to melt away, when he noticed the skinny kid was dripping blood, from his mouth and his neck. It was slowing, but there was a lot of it and he was leaning on his friends, using one arm to wipe at his face and his mouth.

"What the fuck!" said the second one, savagely. "Ryan, are you okay? Can you breathe?"

In response, Ryan took a deep breath and then coughed up some blood. "Yeah," he managed.

"Fuck, you are not okay." He looped Ryan's arm around his neck. "Jon get his other arm." He focused on Pete. "Hey! Will you help us get my friend out of here?" If they had been anywhere else, Pete would have left. But he could already feel more vampires closing in, attracted like vultures. Attracted like he was, by the smell.

Silently, he came in close to them, made sure he was doing his best impression of a human, and said, "You have a car?"

*

It wasn't his plan to lead them back to Patrick, but that's what happened.

When the second kid (who had introduced himself tersely as Spencer) pulled up to the emergency room door, Pete found himself saying, “No, stay.”

Every official that Pete could see was a vampire, and he could sense hundreds more inside. He felt like he’d taken a surprise punch to the stomach. He turned to Spencer and said, "Not here. They're all--" and cut himself off but Spencer seemed to understand. He considered, and then he turned out of the car circle and back onto the road. A minute passed, maybe two, the only sound Ryan's uneasy breathing.

"Where, then?" Spencer asked, quietly, his eyes were on the road and the hard, blank expression over his face directly contrasted with how young he looked.

So Pete took them to Patrick. And hoped that all Ryan needed was a little first aid.

*

Patrick's face was expressive, but he didn't argue. And Ryan needed more than first aid, but he was lucky—the Priest was there, renewing their supply of holy water, and he knew how to stitch a bite.

Pete and Patrick stood off to the side, out of the way, watching as Jon and Spencer held Ryan's hands, watching Ryan try to stay calm.

"Why did you bring them here?" asked Patrick. "Why didn't they go to Sacred Heart?"

Pete looked at him and he could see Patrick guess before he even opened his mouth. "The whole place was turned."

"Everyone?" Patrick's voice was incredulous and a little panicked.

"Everyone I could see in a medical uniform."

"Fuck," said Patrick, so savagely and so uncharacteristically that everyone, even the Priest, glanced up at him.

The Priest did all he could and left, other mysterious business to attend to.

When Ryan was sitting slumped against Jon on Patrick's old couch, dozing on painkillers, Spencer stood on the other side of Patrick’s desk and turned his sharp gaze onto Pete and Patrick. Pete was leaning over Patrick, who was hacking into Sacred Heart’s records.

"Will one of you please tell us what the hell is going on?" he demanded. He shouldn’t have been able to sound so hard, liked he’d lived a rough decade longer than he had.

Pete looked at Patrick and Patrick sighed, rubbed his eyes under his glasses. Pete wondered if he’d slept during the day at all.

It occurred to Pete, suddenly and violently, that even if Patrick managed to survive every vampire that came his way, he was still going to die, and Pete, if he survived, was effectively immortal. Pete wanted to panic, wanted to slam himself into another fight just to get rid of that thought, but he knew that now it had occurred to him, it would never leave.

After a blank moment of fear, he managed to push it away enough to focus on what Patrick was saying to the boys.

Jon looked like he might flip out or start yelling and Ryan looked vaguely worried, but not terrified, so whatever the Priest had given him to make the bite and the stitches stop hurting must have been pretty powerful. But Spencer had the best poker face Pete had ever seen. He could hear Spencer’s heart beating quicker than Jon’s or Ryan’s, but there were no other outward signs of worry.

“You saw what happened,” said Patrick. “And I’ll bet you can guess what’s going on. I’ll bet a bunch of people you know have gone missing. And I’ll bet you’ve heard rumors.”

"What about him?" asked Spencer, transferring his gaze to Pete, when Patrick had fallen silent. “He’s a—. But he stopped the other ones.”

Everyone looked at Pete. Patrick sighed and said, "He’s not like the others." Patrick paused. "We kill them."

*

Pete didn't see the three boys leave because they sensibly waited until morning and by then he was in the cellar, dreaming of William. Having nightmares of William. Being an unwilling participant in his own dreams.

But they came back three days later, after school, Patrick said, although Pete didn't know they’d come until after sundown. Ryan was pale and sweating and sick and Pete realized what was happening with a lurch somewhere in the vicinity of his not-beating heart.

"How do we fix him?" demanded Spencer.

"We don't know," said Patrick, a little helplessly. "No one knows how to reverse it and if cleaning the bite in holy water didn't work the other night, he already had vampire, uh, germs, in him."

"But what about you?" Spencer asked, echoing his question from a few days ago, looking at Pete. "You're a...vampire," he stumbled over the word like he couldn't believe he was saying it. "But you somehow didn't turn out like them."

“I don’t know,” said Pete. That was all he was going to say, except they all kept looking at him, like they expected him to say more, to impart some secret.

"I don't know. I don't know!" said Pete, suddenly erratically angry at everything. This was not how the world was supposed to work. "I got bit by this evil fuck in an alley and I woke up like this and all I think about is killing the one who bit me, except I can't even fucking find him!"

Well, that wasn't all he thought about. He glanced at Patrick and then quickly away. But it was close enough.

Pete turned to leave, thought killing a few vampires would make him more personable, ha-ha, since he wasn’t planning on sticking around to watch a human turn.

But when he swung the door open, the Priest was standing in his way. Pete hadn’t even heard him approach.

"I might be able to help," the Priest said.

*

It was a really long night. They laid a delirious Ryan on the floor of the practice space and everyone else scurried to do whatever the Priest asked. Ryan sweated and shook and made low, wordless noises. Pete wondered if this was what it had been like for him, shut up in his apartment with blankets hung over the curtains before waking up finally, knowing he was not the same.

Spencer paced and his poker face got more brittle, but it never precisely cracked. Jon did not look all right, his face bunched into a grimace of worry, but he kept his shit together and was the one handing the Priest all manner of arcane paraphernalia. His voice wasn’t steady, but his hands were.

Spencer was the only one permitted to hold Ryan down, when the need arose.

In the end, near sunset, Pete lifted Ryan and carried him down into the cellar with him, Spencer's eyes on his back. He hoped he wouldn't have to kill Ryan, next sundown.

*

Ryan was strong. Not as strong as Pete, but stronger than a newly-risen vampire usually was. Pete had killed more than enough of them to know.

Ryan was on top of him when he woke, hissing, and so Pete threw him against a wall, some old shelves crashing down along with Ryan. Pete was on his feet before Ryan could untangle himself.

Then they both just stopped.

"Hey, you're--" said Ryan, straightening away from the wall and looking surprised. He hesitated, ran his tongue over his new teeth. "Sorry.” He brushed his hair away from his face and an awkward moment passed before he said, “Where's Spencer?"

"Upstairs."

The cellar door creaked open and Patrick called, "Pete?"

Pete went towards Patrick, heard Ryan follow.

"Is he...okay?" asked Patrick.

"Maybe," said Pete. He glanced at Ryan. “There’s only one way to find out for sure, though.”

Ryan followed them into the house, blinking and pale and just as thin and fragile-looking as he'd been before, but Pete knew differently.

Spencer and Jon sat on the couch, looking anxious.

"Ryan!” They both jumped to their feet, coming toward Ryan. Pete stood close, ready to intervene.

“Are you...uh, Ryan?" Jon clearly didn't know how to phrase it any better than the rest of them. 'Are you evil?' definitely lacked a certain subtlety.

"Yeah," said Ryan. He looked down at his hands, and then back up. "I just feel really weird. But I'm not, like, out of my mind. And I don't want to, uh." He swallowed. "Suck your blood or anything." And Spencer threw his arms around Ryan and Jon was only a split second behind.

Pete ignored the touching reunion hug in favor of starting his elixir. Sundown hunger was worse when there were two more humans than usual in the room.

*

Ryan didn't come hunting with him until a couple weeks later, and only then after Spencer and Jon had wormed their way into Patrick's regard and began training. Patrick had tried, repeatedly, to send them home, but they refused, saying rightly that there was nowhere to really hide, especially if the number of vampires was growing as fast as it seemed.

Pete never tried to send them home—Patrick had been quiet about Andy, Joe, and Dirty, had tried to go on like all that mattered was killing vampires, but Pete knew that was a fucked up way to deal with it, knew Patrick must be sick inside, if Pete felt their loss, and he wasn't even human. He just had no idea what to do about it. But he had the vague idea that having other humans around would help.

"We’re going to help," Spencer said, the day Patrick gave in, "We can’t just sit around and ignore it. Even if we wanted to, Ryan can’t."

Spencer didn't back down, and Patrick didn't resist him for very long. Jon just smiled a lot and made Patrick laugh. Anyone that made Patrick laugh was okay with Pete.

So when Ryan started hunting with him his tactics got a little more sophisticated. There was more opportunity for ambush and planning. After a couple nights of hunting, they got so good at taking out vampires—sometimes even before the vampires had actually attacked anyone—that they got a little cocky.

Ryan was being bait. He was good at it, and because he'd been so recently turned and had never fed off of an actual human, he didn't quite smell like a vampire yet. He smelled almost, but not quite, like a young human. Pete followed him in the shadows as they made their way toward a part of town known to have a higher vampire population. It was confusing enough that a lot of new vampires fell for it.

The Three came so quietly, their feet keeping perfect time with each other, that Ryan didn't notice them until there were only a few feet separating them, and Pete was already running, thinking of the night Ryan had been turned.

"Brendon," Ryan said, surprise making his voice crack a little.

"Hello, Ross," said the vampire who Pete presumed was Brendon. He was grinning a supernaturally charming grin, his eyes bright and friendly. Pete came to an abrupt stop a little behind Ryan. This was not good. If the vampire formerly known as Brendon was one of Ryan's friends, he doubted Ryan would be amenable to staking him as soon as possible.

"Brendon. We thought you were--" Ryan stopped and shifted his stance uneasily.

"Dead?" said Brendon. His mouth twisted in amusement. "I'm not." He put a hand out and stroked his fingers lightly down the side of Ryan's face on the pretext of moving his hair out of his eyes. "Were you worried about me?" His voice was infused with warmth and humor, enough to fool any human, and almost enough to fool Pete.

With a start, Pete realized that Ryan and Brendon were now somehow less than six inches apart and both of their mouths were just slightly parted and if Pete didn't know they were both blood sucking vampires, and one of them was almost definitely evil, he would have sworn they were about to kiss.

A kind of intensity came off of Brendon in waves. He stared across at Ryan with extreme concentration as if he were reading a book in a language he only half-knew and his eyes seemed larger and darker every second. Ryan, for his part, stared unblinkingly back, his expression shuttered.

It was then that Pete noticed that one of Brendon's companions had sidled up beside him, fangs out. That one obviously had less finesse than Brendon and whatever stealthy, suggestive powers he had were not working on Pete.

Pete staked him.

Ryan and Brendon both turned to look, inhumanly fast, and the spell was broken.

Things went downhill quickly after that. Brendon hissed at Pete and his other companion was gliding toward Pete like some sort of snake, half trying to hypnotize and distract, and half trying to get close enough to attack. Pete knocked him down via a kick to the head, knelt on him, and staked him. Then Ryan and Pete turned as one to face Brendon, who produced a thin sword from the cane he’d been carrying and brandished it at them.

Pete sent Ryan a look, and they split and circled Brendon. Pete rushed him, took a sword to his armored vest, and turned on the electricity, sending enough of a shock down the sword to make Brendon jerk and stumble back. Pete kicked the sword out of his hand just before Ryan knocked Brendon down. Both of them fall to the concrete. Ryan pinned him, crouched over him.

"We've got to bring him back," said Ryan, looking up at Pete. "See if the Priest can fix him like he did for me, even after..."

"Patrick will disown us both," said Pete.

"There's nowhere else to take him. If I took him to his parent's house, he'd probably kill them."

"Ryan, it's me," said Brendon, struggling to get up. Ryan gave him a hard shove and ignored him.

"Not to Patrick's," said Pete. Their one safe place—his sleeping place—was not getting compromised on the off-chance that some fucker who had once been Ryan's friend in life was still in there somewhere. "Let's get out of here before anyone else shows up. C’mon."

Between them, they managed to march Brendon away. The important thing was, Pete quickly learned, not to look at him. Every time Pete did, it required a supreme effort of will to look away again. And whenever he wasn't looking, he wanted to look.

Even worse were Brendon's words, pouring fourth in an unending stream of infinitely reasonable and seductive half-truths.

“Ryan, I missed you so much,” and “Did you replace me in the band? I think I’d cry,” and earnestly, “I want to see my parents, just to tell them I’m okay. They’re probably so worried.” He could sound convincingly young and scared one minute, seductive the next.

Pete glared ahead and wished he could shut his ears.

*

"What is this place?" asked Ryan, He looked like he wanted to prowl forward, but he held back and kept the implacable grip he had on Brendon's wrist.

They were both ignoring Brendon who was sort of sulking, if vampires could sulk, and who seemed to have toned down the hypnotic effort for now because Pete didn't feel an overwhelming desire to stare at him. It had faded to more of a vague notion in the back of his head. Pete steadfastly kept his eyes forward has he threw back the door and led the way in.

"I used to stay here sometimes,” Pete said. “Before I met Patrick."

The walls were damp, but the floors were dry, and there were no windows. The one door bolted from the inside. It was the basement of an abandoned building, maybe even someone's idea of a bomb shelter, and Pete was pretty sure there had been other vampires squatting in it before.

"This is good," said Ryan. "We'll stay here. You go get the Priest."

"I don't know how."

"What?" Ryan looked up at him in surprise.

"No one knows how to find the Priest. He comes and he goes and he doesn't let any one follow him." Pete crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. "Besides, Spencer would fucking stake me if I left you alone with...him." They both risked a glance at Brendon.

Ryan quickly jerked his eyes downward, letting his hair fall forward.

"I can handle it," he said, quiet but firm, which pretty much described Ryan all over, anyway.

Pete risked another glance at Brendon and found him already looking back, smiling a little ferally.

"Fuck, I don't like this." Pete had his back set against the un-bolted door.

"Well, what else are we going to do?" said Ryan. "You won't take him back to Patrick, and I'm not just going to leave him. He's one of my best friends."

"He was one of your best friends," said Pete. He was a little pissed, and his misgivings were a mile wide, but he had other vampires to be staking, and he wasn't going to fucking sleep here. "Don't you dare let him get to you, or I will kick your fucking ass when I come back."

Ryan flashed him a little smile and said, "Find the Priest."

*

Pete had been right, Spencer was pissed. Pete knew that if he wasn't a vampire, with all the perks of uncanny vampire strength, Spencer would be punching his head right now. It was really disconcerting to see a look so terrifyingly angry in a slightly baby-faced boy.

"You shouldn't have left him," said Spencer, and for once his voice wasn't calm, it was rippling with emotion.

"He wouldn't leave Brendon, and we couldn't take Brendon back here." Pete might have showed a little fang to make him step down if Patrick hadn't been standing a few feet away, impassive.

Jon, standing beside Spencer, put a hand on his shoulder. "Spence," he said, and Spencer subsided a little. He looked down and took a deep breath and then his poker face slid back into place.

"Fine, we'll go stay with him."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Pete hissed. "Brendon would suck you dry in the worst possible way if he woke even a split second before Ryan."

"What's to prevent him doing the same thing to Ryan?"

"Ryan's a fucking vampire. He’s way stronger," Pete countered.

"Not when it comes to Brendon," Jon supplied.

"What do you mean?" asked Patrick.

"They were, uh--" Jon paused.

"Fucking," supplied Spencer.

"--Before Brendon disappeared," said Jon.

There was a contemplative, slightly uncomfortable silence before Patrick asked, "Pete? Do vampires...I mean, can you--" He stopped. "Do you even want--"

All eyes turned to Pete. He shifted uncomfortably against the wall, shrinking into his hoodie a little.

"I haven't--" he started hesitantly. Then he stopped and went on the offensive, "I've been killing vampires, not picking people up for a quick fuck!" He didn't want to tell them the truth—that they all smelled delicious, way better than the murderers he'd survived on pre-elixir. And he certainly wasn't going to tell them how when he'd first met Patrick he'd had to stop himself from actively trying to seduce him. The thought of drinking him and fucking him at the same time was enough to make Pete dizzy. He didn't think Patrick would appreciate the sentiment.

They were still all staring at him. He sighed. "Maybe."

"Well, fuck that," said Spencer, and started pacing. "They were all over each other when they were normal humans. If vampires can have sex, I doubt that will change.

"The Priest said he’d come tomorrow night to give us supplies," said Patrick. “We'll just have to wait until then."

Jon and Spencer pulled out sleeping bags and went to bed down on their cots in the training room--Pete had no idea what they'd told their parents, but he didn't really care, either. Pete decided it was time to get himself into the cellar. He didn't really want to. William would be waiting. But the closeness of dawn dragged on him like a physical force.

When Pete went out the door, Patrick fell into step beside him without a word, and they walked around back to the cellar doors. But before Pete could descend, Patrick caught his arm.

"Thank you for not bringing him back here."

Pete smiled a little, close-mouthed, and it felt weird. A smile had become foreign territory. "Your place is safe. It should stay that way."

"They'll find us eventually," said Patrick, smiling back wanly. "The statistics say we're losing."

"I'll kill every single one of them before I let them get y—this place," said Pete, maybe a little more savagely than he should have. And suddenly Patrick was hugging him. He smelled so good. A deep breath of cooking food to a person who'd been living on bread and water. Pete's fangs sort of...ached, and he was much too close to Patrick's neck and he couldn't stop himself from rubbing his nose over the slightly prickly skin under his jaw.

"You're--" said Patrick, sounding a little strangled. And, oh yes, Pete was hard. He'd barely noticed in the struggle to keep his mouth closed. Patrick moved against him, just a little, tentative or involuntary, or both, and Pete's mouth dropped open of its own accord, inches away from Patrick's neck. He shoved Patrick away, covering his mouth and retreating down the cellar stairs fast.

"You smell too—, I can't—" Pete swallowed. "Shut me in."

"But—" said Patrick, looking a little dazed, and worse, making no move to shut the door.

Pete launched himself back up the stairs, grabbed Patrick by the shirt front and hauled him in. Pete made sure to kiss him plenty hard enough so that both his fangs and his erection were unmistakable. Patrick, a split second later, moved into it, against him, twisting his mouth to better fit Pete's. Purely by accident, Pete nipped Patrick's lip just a little, just enough to get a tiny taste of him, and it was wrong, wrong, wrong, but so blindingly good that he couldn't think for a second, and fuck.

He hissed and shoved Patrick back hard. "Close the doors," he said.

This time Patrick did as he asked. The last thing Pete saw was his face looking sad and a little grim. Now that he'd practically attacked him, he wondered if Patrick would let him out at sundown.

*

Pete slept hard that day, but he could see that the others weren't so lucky. They looked worn out, and Spencer was strained, though Jon whispered something that got him to crack a very small smile.

As soon as Patrick let Pete out, Spencer was on his feet, poised. "Let's go get them," he said.

Pete looked at Patrick for confirmation. "We're taking him to a church. The Priest chose it." Patrick sighed. "He said he'd try. With Brendon, I mean. But he said it's never been done after first blood. But we're going to try."

Patrick drove, Pete slouched in the front seat, keeping a sharp eye out for things that looked wrong. It was harder to tell now--there were police barricades throughout so much of their part of the city. More trash than usual. More deserted buildings. But he directed Patrick back to his former refuge easily enough. Spencer and Jon talked quietly in the back, huddled together in the middle of the seat.

When they stopped, Spencer was the first out of the car, but Pete used a little supernatural speed to step in front of him. "I go first," he said. Spencer didn't look happy, but he obviously saw the logic in that.

Pete banged on the door and it echoed, solid but metallic. "Ryan," Pete called.

A silent second passed, and it was just enough to make Pete think maybe he'd made a mistake, but then there came a click and a slide as the bolt on the inside drew back and the thick door moved easily inward, pulled by one of Ryan's thin arms.

Brendon stood just behind him, and it was a damn good thing that the others couldn't see very well at night. For a human, the streetlights wouldn’t illuminate much except for Ryan's front, dimly, but Pete saw much more. They looked wrecked. Hair sticking up, mouths swollen and bloody, fang marks on every visible stretch of skin. And—he hadn't even known that vampires could bruise, but he saw something that sure looked like one stretched across Brendon's cheekbone.

Fuck. Pete pushed them both back, slipped inside and shut the door, ignoring the protests from outside.

"Explain," said Pete. "Do it quick. And try to heal those fucking bite marks before the others see." He finger combed Ryan's hair for him and saw Brendon start to do the same.

"Well," said Ryan, his voice just as even as it always was. "How did you think I was going to handle him all night?"

Brendon actually hissed a little, but Pete couldn't tell if it was a displeased hiss or maybe a hiss over fond memories of what Ryan had done to him, or maybe it was just that he was trying to accelerate the healing of the vicious fang marks at the base of his neck. Ryan saw Pete looking at that.

"I'm stronger," said Ryan, no hint of satisfaction in his voice. "He fought me at first and I had to take enough blood to make him stop." He straightened his clothes with sharp, precise jerks of collar and cuff. "Is the Priest here?" he asked, even as he turned to survey Brendon's appearance. Brendon stared back at him, eyes dark, a small smile at the corners of his mouth, and he held supernaturally still under Ryan's careful fingers.

"We're going to see him. He came during the day, like he knew we needed him, and told Patrick where we could take Brendon tonight." Pete was silent for a moment and then asked, "How did you make him like this?"

Ryan didn't try to side step the question with any cute sexual innuendo, as Pete maybe would have. He just leaned in toward Brendon, eye to eye, and kissed him gently, almost chastely and Brendon shuddered all over.

"I don't know, really," said Ryan, when he'd pulled back. "I just did what felt...natural." The sharp laugh that followed sounded anything but joyful. "I think I may be stronger than I thought I was." Ryan paused and turned to Pete. "It was like I was in his head and it was easy to--" Ryan stopped. "It's hard to explain, but I found the place where he was William's and I...changed it."

Pete was silent. He had no idea if this was a 'normal' vampire power or something only Ryan could do. But he was suddenly on the verge of asking--maybe begging--Ryan to do that to him. Get William out of his head so he wouldn't dread lying down every day break.

Someone pounded on the door. "Ryan?" Spencer called out, his voice high and a little ragged.

"We should go," said Pete. "The Priest is waiting."

Pete led the way, then Ryan, then Brendon. At the sight of Brendon, both Spencer and Jon stepped forward, their hope and hesitant joy almost palatable. Brendon smiled and started to move until Ryan held up a hand and commanded, "Stop!" Miraculously, everyone did. Pete sidled up to Patrick, where he could hear Patrick's heart beating faster, smell that his adrenaline up just a touch. His hand was poised on the crossbow, covering Brendon.

"Are you okay, Ryan?" Spencer asked, carefully.

"Yeah," said Ryan. "But Brendon's not. He's--um. He's mine now, but he's still not like before. Don't--don't get close to him." Brendon grinned at that. An utterly charming, utterly sweet smile.

"Hi Jon, hi Spencer," he said, lightly. And the only thing that gave him away as the evil thing he was the decidedly predatory way he licked one fang.

"Let's go," said Patrick. Everyone shuffled into the car, slightly rearranged. Jon sat shotgun, Spencer squished against one window, next to Ryan, then Brendon, and then Pete on Brendon's other side. They weren't taking chances no matter how eerily focused Brendon became whenever Ryan addressed him or touched him.

It was only a ten minute car ride, but Pete was very, very glad he'd made Ryan and Brendon heal their bite marks. Spencer asked, first thing, "What did you do all day?" and he eyed Brendon's slowly fading bruise.

"We slept," said Ryan, calmly. And Pete thought Ryan's poker face was even better than Spencer's.

It was a dilapidated church in what had been a poor neighborhood to start with and now was just a deserted slum. Pete could hear exactly two heartbeats in the vicinity that didn't belong to his companions and both of them were weak, maybe elderly or sick.

The church itself was Baptist according to its half-broken sign, and the front doors were missing. Inside, Pete could see orderly rows of pews, leaves and trash littering the aisle, but otherwise undisturbed.

Pete had no problem with churches. He drank holy water in his elixir every sundown, and Ryan did, too. But Brendon hissed and paled, if it was even possible for a vampire to get any more pale and he hung back, even when Ryan commanded him to follow.

The Priest appeared in the doorway. Pete had heard him coming, but the humans hadn't, and Pete felt Patrick twitch beside him. "He won't come on his own," The Priest said. "You'll have to take him inside."

Ryan crooked a finger and Brendon, with a strangled noise, went to him. "Pete," said Ryan. "Help me."

Between them they half-carried, half-dragged a struggling, whimpering, almost pathetic Brendon into the church. It didn't stop when they'd crossed the threshold, either, though he did seem to lose a little strength. Pete could tell it was distressing for Jon and Spencer, though they said nothing.

The Priest led them into a side room that was cleared of all furniture and missing its door, but flooded with candle light.

"Hold him in the center of the room," said the Priest, even as he snapped open his Bible. Ryan and Pete complied, though Brendon struggled even more fiercely. The center consisted of a small circle of chalk, a cross sketched inside of it. They lifted Brendon to stand in the center and forced him to hold still, though he twitched in their grip and slurred half-words at them, hissing between his fangs.

Jon and Spencer clenched hands, and Patrick covered the door, only glancing at the proceedings from time to time, most of his attention focused out into the dark church.

Pete had never had a very good concept of time, and since he’d changed he only knew the movement of the moon and the slow turn of the earth, and what it felt like when day was approaching, but he thought it couldn't have taken more than half an hour before Brendon slumped between them, seeming smaller and more disturbingly human than he had in all the time Pete had seen him. He sagged, their grip the only thing keeping him from falling to the floor.

"You can let him go," said the Priest. "See if it took." They let go, Brendon's arms bruised where they'd held him, but the bruises began fading almost immediately. He dropped to his knees and retched, dry-heaving at the floor with nothing coming out.

"When's the last time he fed?" asked the Priest.

"Sundown," said Ryan. "On--my blood." He carefully did not look at Spencer, Pete observed, even after Spencer made a sharp noise of protest.

"Do you know what you're doing?" the Priest asked him. It wasn't said with antagonism or with even a touch of reproach. It was just a question.

"Not really," said Ryan. "But it felt like something I had--." He paused. "Not because he was hungry. Because he was mine."

The Priest nodded once and closed his Bible, slipping it into some hidden pocket. Then he stepped forward and Brendon rocked back, sprawling on his ass, his hands bracing himself, as he looked up at the Priest.

"Do you know the Lord's prayer?" he asked.

Brendon nodded, his neck movements jerky, missing most of the vampire grace he'd had before.

"Say it," he said.

Brendon's voice started raspy, but it deepened with every word, until he sounded almost normal toward the end, "... deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen."

The Priest nodded in satisfaction.

"How?" asked Jon, quietly into the silence. "How did that fix him? How can you know for sure?"

The Priest turned and cracked a very rare smile. "It’s funny to describe. It’s not like this exactly, but think of it as a communicable disease, a sort conscious disease. What superstitious ancient folks used to call a demon. I fought it down to a manageable level. The part inside that makes him Brendon is back in control. Every person killed by it is still hunkered down inside, pushed out of the way."

"But, I’m pretty sure that was an exorcism,” said Spencer, who looked supremely skeptical. “He’s not even religious any more. How would that cure a disease?”

"Don't matter if he's not religious and as I said, it’s not quite a disease.” The Priest began tucking his other things things back into his coat, blowing out candles. “And I'm not talking about God, because these days I doubt he exists sometimes myself. But there's some old worth in the trappings, in this book, whatever you want to call it. It wouldn't work on every vampire. Sometimes the thing is too strong. But I reversed them. The diseased part will still be inside until he's killed, again. It just won't have total power over him."

The Priest paused and seemed to realize that he'd said more just now than he'd said to any of them in all the months they'd worked together, even when he offered advice or listened to an informal confession.

"Boy's got a feisty soul," he said, glancing down at Brendon. "It's why he could gather people in without touching them. The disease was using the fact that his soul was trying to struggle free to reel people in, let 'em see a glimpse of humanity and suck them dry."

Brendon shuddered hugely and Ryan dropped to his knees beside him, putting a leg bent at the knee behind his back, and both arms around him in support, and pushing his face to Brendon's temple. That was the most emotion Ryan had shown in Pete's presence since he woke up turned.

A moment later, Spencer and Jon stepped hesitantly forward, and when no one cautioned them back, they dropped to their knees and wrapped around Brendon, too.

Pete stepped around them to join Patrick and the Priest.

"You know more about vampires than you've told us," said Patrick.

The Priest nodded his head. "It's—" He hesitated for the first time.

"What?" asked Pete.

"It isn't just us," said the Priest. "Chicago. It's everywhere. Every major population center. They think now that vampires have been rising for hundreds of years, but they've only recently been strong enough to give us a run for power."

"You mean this is just the beginning?" asked Patrick, sounding like he might cry. Pete forcibly stifled the urge to reach out to Patrick, try to make it better, but then he remembered that he was part of the fucking problem, no matter which side he was fighting on.

"Afraid so," said the Priest. "You're not fighting alone. New Jersey has a few vampires who turned like Pete, here. But it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. If it gets better. And soon it won't be just vampires. There're other things emerging. Most of them aren't evil. The world is changing."

"Other things like what?" asked Pete.

"Like you," said the Priest, a faint humorless smile on his face. "Half-peri with an evil thing locked down inside you. You're lucky for that half. It kept it locked down from the first night, though some don't have it strong enough to do that.

"And him—," The Priest glanced at Brendon, pale and tired-looking. "He's got the slightest of touch of what they used to call incubus. Not enough to kill any one. Just enough to take a little energy in like one. He won't die right away without blood." The Priest took a step out of the room. "Most everyone has got a touch of something, these days. You can learn to notice."

"What about you?" asked Patrick.

The Priest looked back at them from under the brim of his hat. "Small part Angel," he said, almost like he was embarrassed. And then he moved off into the dark. Pete heard him leave the church a few seconds later, out the back alley.

"Peri?" said Pete, faintly.

Patrick glanced at him. "An old word for 'fairy'," he said, gruffly.

Pete felt a smile—a real smile—curve over his mouth and it made him feel strange and almost sick because it had been so long since he'd wanted to laugh that he almost couldn't handle the emotion.

"People have been calling me that for years," he said.

*

They'd gotten back in the car without mishap. Patrick had parked it backed up to the sidewalk in front of the church so they could get away quick if they needed to.

Pete took shotgun again and let the other four tangle in the back. They were subdued, but radiating relief.

Patrick was tense beside him, but Pete didn't bother speaking until they were back at Patrick's, safe behind bolted doors and reinforced windows and he and Ryan and Brendon had each drunk a batch of elixir. The boys had taken over Andy's old room at some point and disappeared in there to talk, barely letting go of each other long enough to get through the door.

And that was when Patrick crumpled onto the couch, sprawled, his eyes closed and his hat knocked completely off.

"I don't know how much longer I can do this, Pete," he said, and Pete hated the defeated quality of his voice. Patrick's voice should never sound like that, ever. But he didn't know what to say to make it go away. It seemed like ever since he'd been turned, all the words that used to come so easily had dried up.

"I thought--," said Patrick, rubbing a hand over his eyes, under his glasses. "I always thought that if it got to be too much, we could retreat. Get out of Chicago and recuperate. But now it's everywhere. There is no place to go. We're trapped. Sitting around, putting off death. I'm so fucking tired."

Pete sat next to him but tried not to touch him too much. They sat in silence.

"Maybe..." said Patrick. Then shook his head.

"What?" said Pete. "What can I do?"

"Maybe you could just, uh, hug me." He avoided Pete's eyes as he said it, embarrassed. "Pretend you're still human for a couple of minutes." He paused. "If you can't that's—that's okay."

Pete knew it was a horrible, horrible idea for him to even be this close to Patrick But Patrick was also the only thing Pete had left aside from an overwhelming desire to kill William. He was what was keeping Pete sane, and Pete had no illusions about that. Also, if loneliness had a smell, if despair had a smell—that was what was coming off of Patrick, over top of the usual one that made Pete want to hold him down and suck every drop of blood out of him. He needed Patrick to keep it together or Pete’s whole world was going fall the fuck apart. So yeah, he was going to play human for a few minutes if it fucking killed him. It might.

He carefully fitted both arms around Patrick, one squished between the couch and Patrick's back, and one around his middle. He tilted so that Patrick could lean his head Pete's shoulder and he laid his cheek against Patrick's hair.

Patrick smelled, if that was even possible, better from here. Pete swallowed hard, like that would keep his fangs hidden and thought, I am human, human, human, and that helped a tiny bit, but not really, because that just meant he wanted to coax Patrick closer and line their hips up, kiss him and worm his way between his legs until they were pressed tight together. But Pete remained perfectly still, and continued remaining still when Patrick slumped into him and drew a shuddering breath that sounded like it could be a sob.

He didn't move when Patrick wrapped both of his arms around Pete in return and pressed his face into Pete's neck.

He didn't move when he felt Patrick's mouth at his neck.

He didn't move when Patrick's hand crept under his shirt.

But when he felt the tiniest nip from Patrick's all-too-human teeth, he jerked away quickly. His wobbly control was about ready to snap in half.

"Patrick," he said, half-warning and half-plea. Patrick hadn't let go.

"Turn me," Patrick said, instead, his eyes deadly serious behind his glasses. "It will be better this way, not waiting for it to happen."

"Fuck no," said Pete, revulsion swelling up in his whole body and thankfully temporarily eclipsing his other desires. "No, Patrick. No, no, no!"

"Why not?" he asked, arms still tight around Pete, and Pete could throw him off with barely any effort, but he could dislocate Patrick's arms that way, too.

"You have no idea how it feels," said Pete. He had to make Patrick understand this. "It's dirty. I feel like the lowest most horrible thing in the universe. I feel unclean, Patrick. All the time. All the time. The only reason I haven't staked myself is that I can't die--I'm not allowed to die when there's William and there's--you. I can't, I can't--" Pete twitched away when Patrick tightened his hold, and he couldn't make his mouth stop, now that the words had flooded in.

"Every time you're within ten fucking feet of me, you're in danger, and it's worse danger than when we're hunting because here you're relaxed and I could kill you at any time. I need you, and I hate that I'm a threat, but you smell--you smell like." He stopped and then the words came ripping out of his throat, subtlety gone.

"I want to sink my teeth and my cock into you at the same time and I want to drink until every last drop is inside me, until you come all over us, until I can't drink any more of you, until you're dead, Patrick, and then I would have to kill myself because I wouldn't be able to do this anymore after having killed you."

Patrick didn't budge, but his heart was beating quicker, and the smell of despair had shrunk away in the face of arousal and fear. "Please, Pete." But his voice was more uncertain than it had been a moment ago.

"I'm not going to turn you," said Pete. "We need someone to go out in the daylight, if no other reason works for you."

Patrick jerked away from him, frustration in every line of his body.

"It's going to happen at some point!" he yelled. "What if you don't get to me in time? What if the Priest is dead by then? What if I start killing people with my soul still somewhere inside having to witness it? That can't happen, Pete."

Patrick was shaking and it was even more awful than usual because Pete could smell his anger and fear and lust and it made the predatory demonic part ripple through him, try to take control.

A bang sounded from their little kitchen area. They both jerked around to look. It was Brendon, standing shirtless, his pale chest showing a handful of fang marks. The noise had been him slamming the blender on the counter. He smiled cheerily at them and it unnerved Pete because the creepy seductive predator that he had been seemed gone.

"Will one of you teach me how to make more of the elixir? I'm so starving I could eat an entire sorority." When they both just stared at him, he said, "Kidding, guys. Kidding."

"We were having a private conversation," said Patrick, a little stiffly.

"Loudly," he muttered, and then, "Look, I couldn't help but overhear your dilemma." Brendon was no longer looking at them; he was chopping garlic with surprising skill. "True love versus vampirism. Romantic. Why don't you just drink a little bit and then fuck him?"

There was a significant pause before Pete found his voice. "I don't think I could stop."

"Even if you were full first?"

"Yeah, even then," said Pete, not looking at Patrick, though he could feel Patrick looking at him.

"Huh," said Brendon. "I could always stop. But maybe that's because I always liked sex more than blood, and if you drink all the blood, there's no more sex."

"I'll help you not kill yourself with that elixir if you stop talking about this right the fuck now," said Pete and got up to help him ration the holy water. Brendon shrugged. He felt more than saw Patrick retreat to his own room, the door clicking quietly shut and Pete felt weak with relief.

"There's something else I want to tell you," said Brendon, eyes on the knife as his hands worked.

"Then say it," said Pete.

Brendon’s hands were steady, and his voice was low and serious. "I know where William Beckett sleeps."

Part 2