Now That You're Back From The Dead

By Zee


Summary: Patrick kept noticing how the fangs changed the shape of Pete's mouth.  R, gen (FOB-centric).

Disclaimer: Several hops, skips, and jumps away from reality.

Notes: Third in the Weekenders series, sequel to And Keep The Things You Forgot, and begins right after the events of the 16 Candles music video.  This won't make much sense without seeing the video and reading the other two stories in the series.  Thanks bunches to Elle for the beta, and for the usual crew of lovely people for audiencing and holding my hand. Title from Lazarus by Placebo.  Posted July 17, 2007.
***
Patrick wakes up in pain. All over and all kinds, from a sharp stinging in his side to a dull ache inside his chest to the nausea building in his gut, but the worst is his neck. He can feel a slight breeze against the open wound and smell his own blood.

Before he can move to touch it and test the damage, he hears voices. "I don't care what you think you've 'earned.' I'm taking this one."

"You have the other three," someone else snarls. Female. "What, trying to collect the whole set? My girls are the ones who bit him, so he's ours."

Patrick stays still and doesn't open his eyes. The other three.

He hears feet shuffling around and someone coughs. "You can have any of the other humans we pulled in," another male voice says, and Patrick can't tell who he's talking to. "The holding cells are filled with 'em. Take your pick."

The female snarls and Patrick feels a tug of familiarity. "This is ridiculous! The only reason we didn't finish him off was to save him for later, and now you think you can just grab him yourself because, what? You're a fucking Dandy? Fuck *that.*"

Oh. She's one of them--one of the Punks that got one over on him and bit him because Patrick was a fucking idiot and tried to play hero. He's not sure whether she's the one who actually sunk her teeth into his neck or not; he doesn't remember much after going down in their arms. There were cops, maybe? Someone put cuffs on him and shoved him into a car.

And now he's here, wherever he is. With at least three vampires from at least two different gangs. Patrick is fairly certain that it's all the blood loss, and possibly a concussion, that's keeping him calm instead of afraid.

"He's awake," the Dandy says suddenly. Fuck it, then: Patrick opens his eyes and finds himself looking at a bare wall. Jail cell?

He hears more footsteps and a smooth, wrapping sound. He turns around slowly to look and it's the female, the Punk, with her hands curled around the bars of his cell, staring in at him. The Dandy is there, too, and oh shit. Patrick recognizes him now: it's the head, the worst of them, the one Pete hates so much. Patrick believes his name is William.

"Aw, you're hurt," the Punk says in a crooning voice. Like she's talking to a child or a baby bird. Behind her, Patrick can see someone in a cop's uniform.

William stares at Patrick with his eyes narrowed. "Of course he's hurt, you nitwit, you took a giant chunk out of his neck." The Punk turns and hisses at him; Patrick can see her teeth in profile.

Patrick doesn't really know what to say in this situation, so he just sits up and stares back. That makes him feel dizzy, and the pain in his neck spikes. Patrick wonders how much blood they took out of him.

They bit him. They fucking *bit* him. The horror of that is beginning to wake up inside of him, and oh jesus, did they make him drink any? He can't remember.

No, that's. It doesn't work that way, he knows that. If they had turned him into a vampire he'd be dead now, or he'd be waking up with a new body with no holes in it. That's the way it works. He's not going to get hysterical or panic about this.

When he looks at William again, William's smirking at him like he can feel Patrick beginning to get afraid. And maybe he can; maybe he can read Patrick's mind. They could never figure out exactly what powers he did have.

Patrick tries very hard not to think about the lockpicks tucked into his sock. They didn't think to strip him before throwing him into the cell, apparently.

"Don't look at him," the Punk says in the same cooing voice. "Don't let him scare you. My girls are going to take you home and we're all going to have a good time, you hear? A wonderful time."

Patrick doesn't turn away from him as William rolls his eyes. "You are deranged," he says to her. "I'm taking him so that I can kill him and the two others in front of the traitor. You can have the corpse if you're really that attached."

"Go to hell," the Punk snarls, and moves faster than Patrick's eyes can track. She's on William, shoving him back and up in his face William snarls too, pushes her back and slaps her across the face.

Patrick's hands clench. His neck throbs.

"Hey, hey!" The vamp cop moves in to break up the fight, and then another Dandy comes in, walking quickly.

"William, you need to--" he stops when he sees Patrick, staring. He's vaguely familiar: Patrick thinks he's one of the higher-ups in the gang. Maybe second-in-command. "Is that--?"

"Yes," William says, glaring at the Punk. "It is."

"Cool," the Dandy says, walking up to Patrick's cell. He's grinning like Patrick is the best thing ever.

"Did you want something?" William says, sounding grouchy. The Punk hisses softly, rubbing her cheek and glaring at William's back.

"Yeah," the Dandy says, turning away from Patrick. "Yeah, it's Travis. He asked to see you guys, dunno why."

William mutters something under his breath before nodding. "All right. We'll settle this later," he says to the Punk, and she bares her teeth at him. As they leave the room, William twists around to stare at Patrick again. Patrick looks away and lets himself shake deliberately, squeezing his eyes shut. No whimpering--that would probably be overkill.

The door clicks shut behind them. Patrick has to act fast: no way would they be stupid enough to leave him without a guard for too long, no matter how much of a helpless human they think he is. He digs into his sweaty gross sock and pulls out the lockpicks and stands up, ignoring the wave of nausea and dizziness he feels upon moving.

William wants to kill him and 'the two others' in front of 'the traitor': that means that Pete, Joe and Andy are still alive. And for a while, too, because William wants to kill them all together. Okay. That's good. That means Patrick can find them.

His fingers are sweaty and he fumbles the picks. The first two don't work with the cell lock, and Patrick starts cursing profusely under his breath but the third one does it. He feels a brief spike of exhilaration as he pushes the door open and steps out, before someone says, "Hey!"

Patrick's mouth goes dry. There's a short scrawny Dandy in the doorway, staring at Patrick. He opens his mouth to yell and Patrick doesn't think, just moves, running and tackling him clumsily before he can make another noise.

Wow, that was stupid, Patrick thinks as the vampire flips him over, punching him hard in the gut. He's even shorter than Patrick is and his arms are twigs but he's still stronger. Fuck.

But the Dandy doesn't seem to be much of a trained fighter, and Patrick manages to put up enough of a struggle to distract him from yelling for his boss. They grapple and Patrick ends up on top, straddling him with his forearm shoved against the vamp's neck.

When he opens his mouth to yell again, Patrick stupidly slaps his hand over the vampire's mouth to muffle him. Pain sears through his hand when the vampire bites down, and it's all Patrick can do to keep from screaming himself. Blood pours from his hand when he yanks it away, and the vampire takes advantage of Patrick's distraction and flips them over.

His fist connects with Patrick's jaw twice before his hands close around Patrick's neck. He's bearing down on him, face furious and it's clear that he's thinking about finishing Patrick off, not calling for help. His mouth is filled with Patrick's blood, dripping down to splash on Patrick's cheek and neck.

Patrick's vision is beginning to white out at the edges and his foot kicks out blindly, hitting the leg of the police-desk. There's a rattle and the cup of pens and pencils on the edge of the desk falls to the floor, rolling and scattering its contents everywhere. He can feel the vampire's fingers digging into the skin under his jaw, cutting off his air and grinding his teeth together. Hot, rank breath in Patrick's face and it must not even be thinking about feeding on Patrick--it's just working on the instinct to kill. It just wants Patrick dead.

Patrick struggles as much as he can, lashes out and manages to get a few good knocks in, but the vampire seems immoveable. Patrick can't breathe and can't breathe and can barely see and this is how he's going to die, not in front of Pete or at Pete's side or sixty years from now in a nursing home, but by the hand of a nameless blood-sucking minion on the grimy floor of a corrupt police station.

He flails out and his bleeding hand close around a pencil. It's all adrenaline and primal I don't want to die instinct as he plunges it into the vampire's neck.

It screams and lets go and blood is spurting fucking *everywhere,* over Patrick's fingers and down his arm and spraying on his face. He pushes the vampire off of him and scrambles away, but the vamp is too busy howling in pain and clawing at his neck. The pencil is sticking out at an angle, digging up into the vampire's neck, and Patrick has never seen blood flow so quickly.

Kill it, Patrick thinks, and he gropes for another pencil. The vampire is still strong and it's difficult to wrestle it flat to the floor, but Patrick is still running on adrenaline and fear and it makes him stronger. He tries to remember the training Pete made him do with Andy and Joe, how to find the heart, but everything's fuzzy and there's no time to get it right so he just stabs down as hard as he can through the center of its chest.

It screams again and it sounds different this time, choked and liquid and entirely animalistic. Patrick shoves himself away as the thing keeps screaming and bleeding, not moving or trying to get at Patrick at all, and oh thank fuck, it's dying. Patrick pants and stares as the screams stop and it twitches, then stills.

Shit. Shit. There's blood all over him. Patrick feels himself start to gag and tries to hold it in, getting to his feet. He needs--he needs to get out, away from this room. They'll have heard the screaming. His hand is killing him and he wonders how much blood he can possibly have left to lose.

He tries to avoid looking at the body as he gets out of the room, grabbing two fistful of wooden pencils on an impulse as he goes. And fuck, he can already hear hurried footsteps down the hall. He goes in the opposite direction, moving as quickly and quietly as he can and clutches his hand to his chest, trying to only drip a minimal amount of blood. He turns a corner and there, yes, a bathroom. He gets inside and locks the door behind him. He searches the stalls, but he's alone.

He needs. He needs to wash the blood off. He needs to find Pete and Andy and Joe. He needs a game-plan.

Patrick strips off his dirty, bloody jacket and stuffs it into the metal trash can. As an afterthought, he drags the can in front of the door. It's kind of silly, because it's not like it's a barrier that'll keep anyone out for long, but it's better than nothing.

He strips his shirt off and washes it off in the sink, splashing water up his forearms as well. So much *fucking* blood, and he has no idea how much is his and how much is the vampire's. He really needs to get as much out of his clothes as he can, though, because he's certain they can smell it.

When he's a little cleaner, he takes a look at the damage to his hand. It looks like at least one of the thing's fangs drove all the way through his hand. There's a messy hole. Patrick feels bile rise in his throat again.

He tears a strip of cloth from his sleeve and ties it around his hand as best he can. It's sloppy, but it'll do for now. He cleans the wound on his neck, too, and improvises some pretty shitty gauze with paper towels. It's still bleeding a little, but very sluggishly.

He braces his hands on the sink and stares at himself in the mirror. He's even paler than usual and there are bruises on his face and neck from the fight. His lip is split: he hadn't even noticed the bleeding because he was so distracted by his hand and the bite. He touches it gingerly. He thinks he can feel a tooth trying to work itself loose. There's dried blood in his hair.

He has no idea what the fuck he's doing.

He squeezes his eyes shut and rests his forehead against the mirror. Pete, Andy, Joe. They're alive, or they were, and if Patrick managed his own clumsy escape maybe he can help them. Maybe they can get out of this hellhole intact. Maybe they can go somewhere.

Less than a year ago they were playing shows. Patrick was still singing. He didn't know the best ways to kill and immobilize vampires. He doesn't want to do this anymore, he wants to give up, give in, he wants to go *home.* He wants to go back to fucking Glenview.

After a few more moments Patrick steps away from the mirror. He grabs his pencils and--going out into the hallway is too risky, there are probably vampires pretty close. There's a window, though, and if he can climb up onto the sink and get it open he can get out that way. And then he can figure out how to come back for the others.

***

Pete fell asleep in the car on the way to Milwaukee. He slumped away from Patrick, let his forehead press against the glass of the window and when Patrick glanced back over at him, he was snoring lightly.

It was too weird. The fangs, the yelling about vampire gangs, the sudden reappearance after Pete left their lives for most of the spring--none of that felt real, so Patrick found himself staring incredulously at Pete because he had fallen asleep in maybe a minute. Patrick had spent a lot of time with Pete in vans and hotel rooms, and he knew the extent of Pete's insomnia; knew that Pete never fell asleep easily.

Too fucking weird.

Andy was driving, and Joe was staring out the window, his palm rubbing back and forth on the arm rest. Andy met Patrick's eyes in the rearview mirror, his eyebrows arching up. "So what are we telling my cousins?"

"Um," Patrick said. "Surprise visit? There's a show in town we want to see and we need crash space?"

"I guess we can book a room someplace else if they say no," Andy said calmly, his eyes sliding back to focus on the road.

Yeah, they could. Patrick looked back over at Pete, whose cheek was now smooshed against the window. His mouth was open enough that Patrick could see the hint of a fang. "He's out like a light."

Joe snorted in the front. "Blood-sucking really takes it out of a guy, I guess." Patrick started at that, because whoa, are they joking about this already? He didn't get the memo.

Andy looked at Joe with his brow furrowed and Joe seemed to be surprised at his own words, too. He scratched the back of his neck and added, "We should probably just let him sleep though, right? I mean."

Andy shrugged and switched lanes, speeding to pass the 18-wheeler in front of them. "Sure. He looked tired before."

He hadn't looked tired, he'd looked like a vampire, but whatever. Patrick leaned against his own window, staring out at the highway markers instead of at Pete, and didn't think about how there was a whole seat's worth of space between him and Pete--unusual for whenever they're in the same vehicle. Pete used to pass the time during the boring driving part of tours by finding new inventive ways to invade Patrick's space.

The thing was that Pete had been missing, and Patrick had really fucking missed him, and had lived with a constant panic in his throat at the thought that his best friend was gone, and now that Pete was back Patrick's brain felt like it was getting a 404 Error message. Because Pete was here, he was alive, but everything else--

Patrick found himself shifting in his seat again to keep looking at Pete. He and Joe and Andy didn't talk much for the rest of the trip to Milwaukee; after a while, Andy turned on the radio. Nothing good was on, though, mostly just commercials.

***

Patrick gets out and then gets as far from the police station as he can before stopping and pausing for breath, leaning against a brick wall and breathing hard. It's fucking cold out and the sun won't be coming up for a while, even though it's probably almost six AM--fucking winter. Patrick clenches his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering and tries to think.

Daytime, obviously, is the time to go back and attempt a rescue mission and probably get himself killed. Will they be expecting him to come back and thus tighten security on Pete, Andy and Joe or will they actually send people out to look for him? Patrick wouldn't have thought that he'd be worth the trouble, but then. The way William had looked at him and his insistence that Patrick be his to kill. From what Pete's told him, Patrick knows that William has a flare for the dramatic and is also stubborn as hell, so William could be pretty attached to his idea of killing Patrick in front of Pete.

Patrick wonders if going back to their basement and salvaging as many weapons (and anything else he might want to take with him, because if he survives they're sure as hell not staying in Chicago) as he can would be worth it. There's time before the sun rises, but he feels ill at the idea of waiting to go back for them. Pete, Pete is probably safe for a while longer, but William could decide the hell with it and kill Andy and Joe at any time.

It wouldn't be worth it.

He can see a figure walking at the end of the block, illuminated under a street lamp. It stops at the corner and turns its head, looking in Patrick's direction, and Patrick can make out the police uniform and hat. He feels suddenly even colder and presses back further against the wall, ducking into the shadows behind the building and creeping quietly away until he has the confidence to run for it.

As if Chicago cops weren't creepy and corrupt enough without the supernatural, fuck.

He makes himself stop running again, even more winded this time. Shit, fuck, hell, he has to go back. And he needs a plan, right? A plan would be good. Okay. Okay.

He realizes that he's still clutching his fistful of wooden pencils.

He laughs for a second, loud in the peculiar quietness of not-quite-dawn-yet, and gets an odd look from a homeless man sitting across the street. Patrick just shakes his head at him.

Patrick is only one little guy, and even if he's been learning about vampires and training himself and fighting for six months this is still just. Ridiculous. He escaped tonight because he was lucky and because of a fucking pencil.  He escaped tonight because he was lucky and because of a fucking pencil. Rescuing the others probably isn't going to work whether or not he comes up with a flimsy plan ripped off of action movies, so fuck it.

He makes his way back to the police station. The sun is almost up and it looks quiet from the outside, or at least normal. Not like it's crawling with the undead, at any rate. The holding cells are in the back.

As he gets closer, Patrick starts to hear yelling. And then there's a scream, and it sounds like--

He breaks into a run, and then there's glass shattering and he sees two shapes, hard to make out in the darkness, fall from a second story window. Patrick flattens himself against the wall, throwing an arm up to shield himself from the falling glass, and narrowly avoids getting hit by the people falling.

The people hit the ground and roll, and Patrick hears a few nasty crunching sounds. But then they're up on their feet again and yelling and still fighting, and in the dark Patrick can't quite see, but he thinks--

No, he knows, one of them is Pete. Patrick dashes forward to help just as Pete gains the upper hand, throwing the other vampire to the ground. He gives its head a vicious kick and its neck lolls to the side--unconscious, not dead.

Pete looks up and meets Patrick's eyes. Patrick can see something dark and sticky trickling down the side of his face.

"They told me they killed you," Pete says.

"Punk's not dead and neither am I," Patrick says, and it's totally weak but it surprises a painful-sounding laugh from Pete.

"Andy and Joe are still up there," Pete says, and Patrick nods. They rush back into the building together.

When Patrick and Pete get up the stairs to the second floor, it's immediately apparent that Andy and Joe are only alive because there's too much else going on for anyone to bother to kill them. There's chaos everywhere: two overhead lights are out, a few power chords have been cut and are swinging overhead, showering sparks, and the vampires are at each other's throats. Patrick can recognize the leader of the Dandies in a vicious fight with two--they look like Punks, and they're fighting so fast that Patrick can't even make out what's happening. Joe and Andy are struggling with a few thugs, but the vampires are overwhelmingly at each other's throats instead of paying attention to them, and the cops look like they're hitting anyone within reach.

Pete throws himself at the two biggest vampires and Pete ducks underneath the swing of a cop's billy club, weaving around the carnage until he gets to Andy and Joe. A skinny vampire with a blue mohawk is on top of Joe, and on an impulse Patrick stabs him in the back with one of his pencils. It splinters but goes all the way in to the eraser, and the vampire gives a watery scream before falling to the side.

"Fuck," Joe pants as he takes Patrick's outstretched hand and gets to his feet.

Andy dispatches his own vampire and joins them, a bloody knife in his hand. Patrick wonders who--what--he got it from. "We've got to get out of here while they're still fighting each other!"

"No shit," Joe says, and Patrick looks around for Pete.

His stomach drops. Pete is fighting their leader, the--William.

"Get Pete--" Andy says, and Patrick doesn't wait. Andy moves at William, slashing his arm open with the knife and Patrick and Joe grab Pete by the shoulders, hauling him back and away. Pete struggles in their grip, snarling to get back at the other vampire, and Patrick hears a yell from William and a nasty-sounding thump.

Andy. Patrick turns around, his fist still clenched in Pete's shirt, in time to see Andy grab one of the swinging, sparking chords and push it in William's face. Then everything explodes.

The force of the explosion knocks Patrick away from Pete and into the stairwell, and he falls down the entire flight. He feels several sharp pains to his back, neck and shoulders, and when he reaches the floor, for a few dangerous seconds he can't get up.

Then he hears banging and more footsteps on the stairs, and two pairs of hands grab his arms, hauling him to his feet. He struggles before realizing that it's Pete and Andy, Joe beside them, dragging him out of the burning building. Patrick shakes himself free of them when he can run on his own feet, and he doesn't think about what started the explosions or why the vampire gangs were fighting each other or what they're going to do now. He can see Joe and Andy running up ahead of him and Pete, moving faster than he realized they could.

Patrick can see a group of six or seven policemen on the road ahead, closing in and cutting them off. They've got their bully clubs out and Patrick thinks that, that is just fucking hilarious, vampires fighting with nightsticks.

"Fuck!" Pete yells and lets go of Patrick's arm, speeding up. Pete hits the vampires first but the rest of them don't stop running. It's a collision and Patrick doesn't know what's going on, he just tries to keep his momentum and hits what he can see.

Everything is chaos and then he feels something connect hard and painfully with his knee and goes down, hits the asphault and then there's a cop on top of him. Patrick feels fingers around his throat and knows that it wants to break his neck. Patrick does the first thing he can think of, grabbing a fistful of gravel and shoving it in the vampire's face. By luck he gets its eyes and grinds in and it screams, letting go for a second and giving him the leverage he needs to throw it off. As he scrambles to his feet he sees Pete lunge forward, getting it in the heart with a jagged piece of wood, broken off from one of the clubs. It stops screaming.

"Any more?" Joe says, his voice strained. Patrick can see his shoulder hunched at a weird angle--dislocated, probably.

"No," Andy says. He's got a billy club in each hand and catches Patrick's eye, tossing one to him; Patrick accepts gratefully.

They start running again but no more vampires come, and then the sun is all the way up. They duck under a highway, crawling into the dirtiest space with the most shadows as Pete cringes away from the light.

Patrick catches his breath and feels his hand throb. His makeshift bandage is bloody and gross, but when he gingerly touches the wound in his neck, he just gets dried blood and some scabbing--that at least seems to have stopped bleeding. He's probably getting very infected right now.

"Shit," Joe mutters and Patrick sees him holding his shoulder, his jaw clenched. Andy moves to kneel behind him, and Joe swallows and looks up at the concrete highway ceiling above him.

"How does the riff to Enter Sandman go?" Andy says, putting his hands on Joe's shoulder.

Joe starts on the the opening melody, tapping his finger on the concrete to the beat. "Dun, duh-duh-duh-dun, dun, dun, dah-duh--gyaaahh," as Andy wrenches his shoulder back into place. Patrick winces in sympathy.

Pete is slumped beside him, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Fuck," he says into his sleeve, muffled, before dropping his hands. "The fucking cops. The Dandies and the fucking cops."

"How long do you think that's been going on?" Patrick says. "And if--I mean. What else do you think they're involved in?"

"Could be anything," Joe says. "They took over the city's police right under our nose. They could take over--shit, I don't know. They could be taking over Chicago's criminals, politicians, postal workers, teachers..."

"I don't know why they'd want to make schoolteachers vampires," Andy says after a moment.

"Do you think they've infiltrated the cops of the entire city or just the ones in the South Side?" Patrick doesn't want to think about a whole city turned against them or how this is all proof that trusting anyone is a thing of the past.

"Does it matter? What's stopping them from getting the entire city? We sure as fuck didn't put a crimp in their plans, apparently," Pete says.

They don't have the car anymore, so they have no way of traveling with Pete during the day, but staying here until night falls would be suicide--Pete will be able to travel freely, and so will every other vampire.

"Just get back to the basement without me," Pete insists. "I'll follow after dark."

"Don't be a moron! Every single gang is going to be out and they'll kill you in no time flat," Joe says, his voice rising in anger.

"Fuck 'em," Pete says. "Whatever, I'll be fine--"

"They probably won't kill you, actually. I'll bet anything that they'll have orders to take you back to William." Pete turns to stare at Patrick as soon as he says it, and Patrick meets his eyes. Pete knows he's right.

They finally decide that Patrick and Joe will go back to headquarters and Andy, being the least injured of the group, will stay with Pete. They can, maybe, borrow Dirty's car and come back--Patrick has a key and has driven it before, and it makes him feel nauseous at the thought of stealing his dead friend's car, but. His *dead* friend's car: Dirty won't be needing it anymore.

Patrick isn't sure what hurts worse, Dirty's death or Father McLynn's betrayal. He has neither the time nor the energy to really let himself feel for either, so he just wraps his good hand around Joe's elbow and nods goodbye to Pete and Andy before taking off with Joe. His feet are beginning to hurt and it's a long walk back to their basement.

***

Andy's two Milwaukee cousins lived in a big punk house that they rented out with four other roommates, and they didn't bat an eye when Andy showed up with three other dudes asking to crash. Patrick could see that it was just that kind of place: there were already four other people, friends of Andy's cousins' roommates, staying in the house who didn't live there. The house was crowded and messy and there were no animal products to be found in the place. One of Andy's cousins had a barbell through the bridge of his nose.

Patrick was just grateful they were too stoned to ask questions. He and Pete and Joe got put in a tiny room in the attic, but one of Andy's cousins gave Andy a futon on the floor of his room.

Patrick couldn't help but notice that Pete was getting more and more pale, and that he kept staring at people's necks.

Joe immediately begged a shower from their hosts and Andy went off to talk with his cousins and Patrick turned to Pete. "Are you okay?"

There was a bunkbed in the room and a futon on the floor and that pretty much took up all the floor space--no room for Pete to pace, but he tried anyway and ended up staring out through the tiny, grimy window. "That's a really fucking stupid question, Stump."

"You look." You look worse. "You look like you kind of... like you could use..."

"I vant to drrink uir blood," Pete said in a terrible accent, puling his lips back from his teeth in a smile.

"Um," Patrick said. Pete had started to shake. "You really--you do, don't you? You need. Um."

"I'm not going to," Pete said, his tone light and conversational. "I'm not going to bite anyone or anything and I'm not going to feed. I'm not going to drink blood ever again. Not now that I'm away from him."

Patrick did not ask who he meant. "Okay. Okay, but you're. You're a vampire." It sounded so fucking stupid to actually *say* that. "Don't you kind of need to?"

"Yep."

"Pete."

Pete closed his eyes. "Patrick. Leave me the fuck alone."

"Fuck *you.*" Patrick found himself crossing the tiny room and grabbing Pete by his collar, yanking him away from the window and closer to Patrick, making Pete face him. "Where have you *been?* What, what the fuck happened to you, who's the gang that attacked us, you owe me some god damn--"

Pete grabbed his hand and pushed Patrick back suddenly, forcefully and Patrick stumbled and hit the opposite wall. It hurt, and Pete had never been that much stronger than him before.

Pete had retreated to the corner furthest away from Patrick, glaring and hunched. "Don't ask. Don't ask, just leave me--"

"I'm not leaving you alone," Patrick snapped. "Forget it."

Pete's mouth opened and his jaw worked but he didn't say anything. His line of sight once again drift to Patrick's neck.

"I just want to know what's going on," Patrick said, trying to make it come out calmer and less accusing.

Pete slid until he was sitting on the floor with his knees bent in front of him. "Then you're asking the wrong person. I never knew what was happening."

Patrick held his breath because that, that sounded like Pete might be starting to talk about what the past spring had been like for him. But Pete just let his cheek rest on his knee and--it sounded like he was humming. A song Patrick didn't recognize, possibly jazz or blues.

"If you need--um, blood--we can find you, um. A rat or something?" Patrick didn't know how he was going to find a rat for Pete to eat. He also didn't know if that worked outside of Interview With A Vampire.

"I told you, I'm not drinking blood ever again." Pete's voice sounded far away and high. Childish, Patrick thought.

Patrick didn't know what to say. He didn't even know what questions to ask, not really. Where the fuck was he supposed to start? What did he actually want to know? It was pretty obvious what had happened to Pete, in a nutshell.

"Seriously, just go," Pete said after a while. "Or you can--sleep or something, I guess," he added, gesturing at the bunkbed, but Patrick had rarely felt less sleepy in his life.

He hesitated. "No, I'll--I'll go hang with Andy's cousins, I guess. Bye. Try to...." He couldn't figure out how to end the sentence, so he just turned around, reaching for the door.

Pete was singing softly to himself, something about coffee, and Patrick turned over his shoulder as he was leaving. "Pete?"

"Mm?" Pete looked up.

"It's good to have you back."

***

Across the street from their old headquarters, Patrick and Joe sit down on the curb.

"They knew where we were. Do you think they came here after they arrested us or during the fight?" Joe says, staring at the charred remains of their building.

"Don't know," Patrick says. The recipe and the ingredients for Pete's blood-lust-be-gone had been in there. And the weapons, and the journals, and his guitar, not that he'd played in months. Still, it was the principle of the thing.

"How did they know where we were?"

"Father McLynn." Not Bob anymore. "He was with them, I saw him laughing with the main Dandy. I don't know if he was a vampire or not."

Joe takes this in stride. "So why wait until now? Why didn't they overwhelm us and burn our home down until last night?"

Patrick shrugs. "It just worked out to be good timing for them, I guess. I don't know."

Joe rubs idly at his shoulder. "Well, we might as well see if anything's salvageable."

Next to nothing is. There are a few knives undamaged, the blender's okay, the guns are in pieces but one of them is un-burnt. Patrick finds the cover to the first journal he started in tatters.

Miraculously, though, Patrick finds the spare key to Dirty's car, ashy and hidden under the rubble. They find it parked around the corner and Patrick had half-expected to find it in pieces, too, or rigged to explode or something, but it jumps to life just fine when he turns the key in the ignition.

Dirty had had this old bucket for years. It's steeped with memories and events and stupid crap Dirty did or used to do and it makes Patrick claustrophobic. He rolls down his window all the way and turns the radio to an alt-rock station. He really doesn't want to hear the news.

That song 'Closing Time' is on, and Patrick shakes his head incredulously. "Didn't this come out in like 1995? And wasn't it overplayed *then?*"

Joe shrugs. "Yeah, I've noticed stations doing that more and more, pulling back old singles from the 90s. Probably to play up the nostalgia factor for people in their 20s, you know?"

Sure enough, when the song ends and the radio station jingle starts, the booming recorded radio voice tells them it's the hour of "songs you made out to in high school! Stay tuned for more throwbacks!" Patrick switches to the pop and hip-hop station and listens to Fergie sing about her lovely lady lumps.

It's not even eight AM and they're not in a big business neighborhood, so the traffic isn't too bad, but it still feels like the drive to pick up Pete and Andy takes forever. They can see the streets where the fight took place last night in broad daylight now, and there's wreckage everywhere--bodies, even. Patrick wonders how the hell the cops are going to explain this, and then he realizes that they might not even bother with an explanation. If they don't even care enough to get vampire victims out of sight, maybe they're so completely done with hiding that they won't bother trying to cover up what happened; maybe they're ready to go public all the way. Patrick feels cold.

When they turn the corner and drive closer to the overpass, the first thing Patrick sees is bodies on the ground in the shadows under the highway. Joe notices them too, sitting up straight suddenly and swearing, clutching the arm rest. Patrick speeds up and pulls over erratically, the tires squealing, because he can't tell who it is on the ground, he has to see--

Andy steps out from the shadows, billy club in hand. "It's okay," he says, and nudges one of the bodies into the light. Up closer Patrick can see that it's three cops, and that they're alive.

Patrick swallows hard and gets out of the car with Joe, who's still swearing and now crouching over the unconscious cops. "You were attacked?"

Andy nods at Patrick. "Humans, though. They were under orders, didn't actually know who we were, they were just trying to bring them in. We tried to.... not-hurt them as much as we could."

"They have guns," Pete says suddenly, stepping more out of the shadows where he'd been lurking. Patrick does *not* jump. "We could use those."

Patrick so does not like the idea of stripping city policemen of weaponry and leaving them under a highway, but Joe is already taking one of the cops' .45's from its holster and checking that the safety is on. Patrick doesn't suppose they have a choice.

Not that guns will kill vampires, of course, but it's better than pencils.

They tell Andy and Pete about what happened to their place, and Pete snarls and punches the wall of concrete; Andy drops his head and then crouches, his elbows resting on his knees and his hair falling to obscure his face. After a second he brings a hand up to cover his eyes, and Patrick leans back against the car door and stares up at the sky. Joe moves on to strip the other two policemen of any weapons they have.

"So what now?" Andy says to the ground after a few moments.

"We have to go back," Pete says through his teeth. "Back to the station, or we find the Dandies' headquarters, or we could maybe even start with the Punks, they seemed weakest--"

"Are you a fucking idiot?" Patrick says--yells, actually, and he hadn't meant to be so loud but he doesn't rein it in. "We have to get out of here! They've destroyed our home, they have the police, all of the gangs are going to be after us as soon as the sun goes down. We don't have a chance in hell!"

"So you just want to run away?" Pete yells back. "We don't have anywhere to go! At least we know what we're dealing with now, we can--"

"Patrick's right," Joe says, standing up along with Andy. "We need to get out of Chicago."

"I'm not giving up!" Pete roars.

"What do you expect us to do?" Patrick snaps. "We have--we have Dirty's carit and Dirty's--"

"Shut the *fuck*-" Pete moves forward, lunging at Patrick but Andy catches him, holds him until Pete shoves himself away, teeth bared but not violent anymore. Patrick takes a step back despite himself; it's been almost 24 hours since the last time Pete took his blend.

"It doesn't have to be giving up," Andy says, glancing between Pete and Patrick.

"Of course not, I never suggested that," Patrick says, because no way in hell. He's not going to just walk away from these monsters--none of them are.

"We could just leave for a while," Joe says. "You know, get--get stronger. Lick our wounds and stuff. And then come back and fight when we can."

"Where--" Andy says and stops, meeting Patrick's eyes, and Patrick knows what just occurred to them both.

"Jersey," Patrick says. "We've all heard the stories about what's going down there, about Gerard Way."

"Just stories," Pete says, still glaring at Patrick. "You want to run away across the country just for a fucking *story?* He's probably dead by now."

"It's not just a story. My cousin knows someone who fights with him, he can tell us where we need to go, and then we can get together with him and keep fighting," Andy says. All of their eyes are on Pete now.

"This is bullshit," Pete says. "We have to stay and fight, we can find somewhere else to stay, we'll build from scratch. We're staying here."

Pete had never exactly been their leader; they had looked to him because they were used to it, because even after a month and a half's absence and a preference for type A they still thought of him as the frontman. But Pete hadn't led them so much as sulked and shouted a lot, and his talent for business and marketing didn't translate to a talent for planning attacks and training. But he was stronger and faster than any of them, and he had the most information about what they were fighting at the start. He also thought that he had the most motivation, the biggest stake in what they were fighting for, but that was where he was dead wrong: Pete didn't know what it was like to watch your best friend suffer and change and want to die, and know all along exactly who was responsible--exactly who to make pay. Pete didn't know what kind of dreams Patrick has been having.

But Patrick didn't feel any need to follow Pete in a direction that was ludicrous and bound to end in nasty death, and he knew Joe and Andy weren't going to blindly trust him either. "We'll have a much better chance of defeating them if we team up with other hunters," Joe says.

"I don't need to team up with anyone," Pete says, stubborn with fists clenched at his sides.

"We've lost Chicago," Patrick says. "The streets where we fought last night? It's a fucking war zone, Pete. There are bodies everywhere. There's not a human to be found. And they burnt our whole building down without a single fire truck showing up to stop it."

"There's got to be--"

"No," Andy says, his voice rising. "We've lost. We have to--we have to go away, we have to figure out how to come back and finish them off. We're dead if we stay; we're not even a threat to them."

"Fine!" Pete yells again. "Fine, you guys go, get the fuck out of here, but I'm staying. I'll kill them myself."

"No! That's fucking suicide, Pete, you idiot." Patrick moves forward before he can think better of it, yanking at Pete's hoodie. Pete yells and grabs Patrick's wrist, squeezing hard and Patrick sways, but holds his ground. "You're coming with us! We're going, and I'm not going to leave you to just kill yourself without taking out William first!"

"Get *off* of me!" Pete shoves him hard to the ground and Patrick reaches out automatically with his hand to stop his fall. Pain shoots through his damaged palm and he hisses, clutching it to his chest. His bandage is slipping off, and fuck, he thinks he just re-opened the wound.

"I'm sorry," Pete says immediately, stepping forward with guilt written across his face. "Oh, shit, your hand." He kneels on the ground, and Patrick can tell that his self-hatred is kicking into gear.

"It'll be fine," Patrick says. He grabs Pete's hand with his own bloody one. "We all want to fight. We all want them dead more than anything. That's why we *have* to go."

Pete doesn't meet his eyes. "They got Dirty."

Stupid, silly, funny Dirty who'd wandered back into their lives only a few months ago, changed after a vampiric encounter of his own and eager to help. But he was still himself and he still managed to make Pete laugh, something Patrick had barely managed since Pete came back to them. Dirty hadn't even had a chance.

"Yeah," Patrick says. "Yeah, they did. But they didn't get us."

Pete gives his hand a squeeze and looks up, finally. "How are we getting to New Jersey?"

***

When Patrick and Joe went back to the bedroom at the end of a day mostly spent faking laughter with Andy's cousins' roommates, Pete wasn't there.

"Do you think--" Joe started to say, and stopped.

"He probably just went out for a walk," Patrick said, and wanted to laugh at how childish his voice sounded.

"Needed to catch some fresh Milwaukee air?" Joe said. "Because we're staying in such a scenic part."

They were staying in the part of Milwaukee that a bunch of anarchist punks could afford to set up a commune in, so they were pretty much surrounded by slum lords. Patrick had a sudden flash of worry that Pete was alone out there and feeling self-destructive, but then he remembered the muscles in Pete's forearms flexing as he held that girl like a doll right in front of Patrick before biting down.

"He'll come back eventually," Patrick said.

"That's what I'm worried about," Joe said, and Patrick glanced sharply at him. Joe met his eyes, and Patrick didn't know whether he'd been sarcastic or not.

"Whatever," Patrick said. "I'm going to bed. 'Night."

Pete didn't wake them up when he came in, whenever he came in, and when Patrick woke up slow and groggy the next morning Pete was asleep on the futon, his back to them. The curtains were drawn over the window.

It took a second for Patrick to remember everything, and then he wanted to go back to sleep.

Pete didn't say a word to them the entire day. Patrick kept checking in on him, but Pete was either asleep or pretending to be asleep the entire day. It lodged a hard ball of anger in Patrick's throat and he wanted to shake him, yell at Pete until he got some answers, but he always just left the room and left Pete to himself, closing the door behind him.

They spent three more days at Andy's cousins' house and Pete didn't say a word more to them the entire time. If he left the room at all it was at night, and Patrick tried and tried to stay awake and catch Pete leaving to go with him, but each night he drifted off before Pete moved from his futon.

Patrick kept wanting Pete to announce that he'd fixed everything, it was all okay again, there was shit going down but it's over now. Things are okay, I'm okay, let's go home, and hey Stump, here are some lyrics I wrote about the whole thing. Patrick dreamed that he and Pete were playing guitar in Pete's parents' garage. He dreamed about Fall Out Boy's very first show.

When they drove back Pete kept staring around at all of them and at the car like he'd never seen anything like this before. Patrick kept noticing how the fangs changed the shape of Pete's mouth.

"Whoa," Joe said when their apartment building comes into view.

"I told you," Pete said, and Patrick didn't know what Pete thought he'd told them, but it wasn't this.

They didn't try to get through the police tape, and later in a motel room they found out that there was a murder in the building, one of their neighbors found dead in *their* apartment. The police wanted to question them. They didn't want to be questioned.

"Fuck," Joe said. "So what do we do now?"

Patrick looked up and Andy met his eyes, and Pete didn't have an answer. Pete wasn't really talking much. He kept getting paler and more unfocused, and Patrick wanted to ask him if he was eating.

After a few days of staying in the motel Andy told them that he'd found them a place. The house had no air conditioning or any real heating, it had a huge basement, and it was in the same neighborhood as the house where they'd been reunited with Pete. Patrick's mom would've been worried about him, wringing her hands over him living in a 'bad neighborhood,' if she knew where it was. Patrick couldn't really picture what she'd say if she found out he was best friends with a vampire.

As the days went by, Pete spent most of his time in his room. Whenever he came out he tried to slip out into the night unnoticed, without speaking to any of them. Patrick caught him one night at three am, grabbing his arm as he opened the front door.

"Pete, hey, hey. Can you talk for a second?"

Pete shoved him off. "I'm going out."

"I can see that." Patrick didn't grab him again but didn't step away, either. He didn't want Pete to think he could keep Patrick at arms' length. "I'll go with you."

Pete didn't move to walk out the door. "I need to eat."

"So that's what you do whenever you come out of your room, you go suck blood? Do you have to do it every night? Do you attack people?"

"Fuck you," Pete said, turning away, but Patrick moved to stand in between him and the open door.

"Have you ever killed anyone?"

Pete stared at him. "What--I--"

Each word came out tasting bitter and twisted, but Patrick spoke anyway. "You don't talk to any of us. You haven't given us any real explanation. We don't know what you're doing for blood. You could be a serial killer for all we know."

Pete stepped back. "I don't think I've killed anyone."

"You don't *think*--?" That was not the fucking answer Patrick had been hoping for.

"There's--" Pete growled deep in his throat and stepped away from Patrick, walking further back into the house. "There's some. Space. In my memory. I don't remember everything that happened to me this spring, I don't even--fuck, I don't remember half of what I've done at night since getting back to you guys. It's all--" He laughed and looked at Patrick, and his eyes were shining. "I could be a serial killer. I totally could."

Patrick shut the door behind him. "Do you think you are? Just--tell me, Pete, fuck. Talk to me. Tell me what happened this spring, tell me what you remember, just."

Pete put his fingers to his mouth as if he knew what Patrick thought every time Patrick looked at him, he traced the puffiness around his lips and pushed his index finger inside to press against one sharp tooth. "I don't remember anything."

"You don't?"

"No," Pete said, shaking his head with a dull look in his eye. "I just remember leaving a party with--with one of those vampires, and then I remember looking up during that attack the night I met up with you guys. Nothing in between."

Pete was a really good liar, and Patrick felt like it was a bad sign that he clearly wasn't even trying--that Patrick could see through him immediately. "Okay. You don't--okay."

Pete stuck his chin out and wrapped his arms around himself. "They must've had me hypnotized or something, I don't know."

"Okay." Patrick didn't know how much to push, didn't know if he should try and give Pete a hug, didn't know if he should just let Pete go.

"I've been eating rats," Pete said after a few moments. "It's really gross but it works. I don't think I've attacked anyone, not since getting back together with you guys."

But if there were holes in his memory, then he didn't know. Patrick's thoughts must have showed up on his face, because Pete looked at him and smiled tight and bitter like he agreed.

"What do we do now?" Patrick said, asking a question they'd all asked before because that was what it all came down to.

Pete just shrugged, but Patrick realized that he already knew the answer. He was going to stick with Pete--he was going to do his best to keep Pete from believing he deserved to eat rats his whole life. He was going to learn more about vampires and he wasn't going to let any of them catch him again. He wasn't going to let what happened to Pete happen to him.

"I really hate them," Pete said, almost conversationally. "All I can think of is destroying them. It's all I want, it's--" Pete stopped and looked at the floor, and Patrick knew he needed to get Pete to tell him the truth about this spring eventually.

"I know," Patrick said. He thought about crossing the room and hugging Pete or something, but he didn't. Instead he opened the front door and moved aside to let Pete go out.
***
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