I write stuff

Dwayne’s eyes snapped open. He smelled blood. He heard a heartbeat. It was barely an hour after sunset and some summer-house asshole had already snuck down into the fallen hotel on a dare. Or for the thrill. Or, hey, maybe they had a camera with them. It didn’t matter. These were Dwayne’s favorite kinds of nights. When dinner just seemed to waltz through their door with what smelled like a scraped knee and a sliced open hand.

He grinned and dropped from the ceiling, then looked up. Marko was gone. He was usually up early to tend to the birds and hit an arcade game or two before the real hunt started. But not tonight. Tonight he was just. Gone. David was out early, or at least he wasn’t here. Dwayne couldn’t blame him. He’d been switching up the routine ever since that whole incident with the Emersons and Max. They’d all been lucky to escape with their un-lives that night. Dwayne instinctively looked over to the bed that Star and Laddie usually slept in, but they were gone too. Laddie had gone home, and Star was staying with Michael. Paul, of course, was still asleep.

Dwayne rolled his eyes and picked up a pebble, chucking it up at Paul’s head. He smiled at the animalistic features that surfaced as he woke with a start, then faded to just plain annoyance. Paul landed next to Dwayne, giving him a shove that didn’t do much. If there were any two members of the Lost Boys that roughhoused the most, it was Paul (unstoppable force) and Dwayne (immovable object). Again, the older vampire rolled his eyes.

“Do you smell that?” He asked at a whisper. It only took a brief inhale for Paul’s face to light up.

“We’ve got a tourist in the lobby,” Paul answered with a cool grin, ever the bloodhound of the group, “hurt themselves on the way down. And there’s something a bit…familiar, too.”

“Familiar?”

“Yeah. What? You don’t smell that?” Paul smiled, “I hope it’s one of those Frog brats. I’ve been waiting for a chance to-“

“If it’s one of them, we’ve gotta wait until David gets back,” Dwayne said simply, “it’s probably not, though. Those assholes wouldn’t come here at night,” he walked towards the crumbling doorway that led to the main room, “I’m willing to bet it’s some kid on summer break who wants a good story.”

“Well, we’ve got plenty of those,” Paul walked right past him, into the more open space. It was completely dark. Dwayne took the lighter from his jacket pocket and worked on getting the bonfire lit up while Paul approached a huddled form in the corner.

Dwayne raised his eyebrows, but kept his opinions to himself. Not wasting any time tonight. A familiar voice however, turned his head immediately.

“Get the hell away from me!”

The cave lit up with an orange glow as he tossed a lit torch into the fire pit. He rushed towards the frantic voice and the smell of blood.

“David?”

David looked different. His hair was a much darker blond and less viscously styled than it usually was. On top of that, his clothes were different. He was wearing brown work pants that were stained with dirt and blood and a white button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up. They’d never seen him look so shaken up before. Never seen him look so human.

“How do you know my name?” David asked quickly. He reached down to his belt and drew a pistol. “Where am I?”

Paul glanced sideways at Dwayne. “What’s wrong with him? Why the hell does he have a heartbeat?”

“I don’t know…” Dwayne looked at David, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

He could see the wheels turning in their (former) fearless leader’s head. That much hadn’t changed. He was hurt, and human, and scared, but still calculating the risk and reward as always. “I was leaving. I’d just made dinner for Be—“ he broke off, eyeing the two suspiciously, “for my little sister, and then I had to go to work. And I was outside, saddling the horse, and then…”

When he trailed off, Paul cocked his head. “Then what?”

“I don’t know, suddenly I felt a pain in my chest. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I was here.”

Paul nodded slowly before turning to Dwayne with a lowered voice, “This is some Time Bandits bullshit.”

“I’d really love to tell you how stupid that is but…”

“What are you talking about?” David was still holding the gun. He’d let down some of his guard, but he stayed alert. “Why do you two act like you know me?”

His patience was wearing thin, Dwayne noticed—something that rarely happened with the David they knew. It was easy to be patient when you had more time to kill. This version of him, however, had somewhere to be. A family he’d never talked about before who seemed to be counting on him.

“It’s a long story,” Dwayne said, “you’re just gonna have to trust us.”

He only half believed his own words. He certainly wouldn’t trust himself. It seemed like David shared the same sentiment. “Trust is earned. And so far you’ve been nothing but vague, and your friend here,” David sent a glare in Paul’s direction—which Paul instinctively stepped back from, “practically jumped me. I thought I was getting held up, and I don’t even have any money on me!“ he let out an incredulous laugh, which turned into a pained cough.

David put his hand to his side and winced.

“And somewhere along the way, I cracked a rib, which is just…” he looked at his hand, at the nasty slice in his palm, and grimaced, “wonderful.”

Dwayne’s eyes widened. He put an arm out in front of Paul just in time to catch him stalking any further. The blond’s eyes were locked on the blood still dripping from the wound. He grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away. “Go. Get to a pay phone. Call Star.”

It took Paul a few seconds to pull his eyes away from the blood. “Star’s with Michael.”

“Then call Michael.”

“But-“

“I don’t care,” Dwayne glanced back at David, “He’d be more pissed about you biting him than anything else.”

Paul nodded. “Okay…yeah, I’ll go. But are you gonna…tell him?”

“He has a right to know.”

“Won’t he freak?”

Dwayne held back a scoff, “Come on. He’s still David. David doesn’t freak.”

-

Once again, Dwayne stared down the barrel of a gun with a bored expression and a hunger that clawed at him. David’s hand shook just the slightest bit and his jaw remained clenched to high hell. After explaining everything—well, almost everything—David’s resolve had fractured like a pane of glass meeting a pebble. Dwayne wondered if this is how the young man looked when Max first came to him.

“Vampires,” he said shakily, “Vampires?”

“I can prove it if you want-“

“No!” David quickly collected himself, “No, that… you don’t need to do that,” he paused for a moment, looking around, “So, your friend…Paul? Is he also…”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d he go?”

“He went to get help.”

“Help?”

Dwayne sighed, “It’s not safe down here, not with the way hunting has been going for us for the past few days. And you’re bleeding in two different places. Paul isn’t the best at restraint.”

David looked thoroughly disturbed. “Well at least you seem…better at it,” his eyes scanned the crumbling hotel lobby, “Are you the leader here, or something?”

He laughed, “Actually, you were. Will be. Still not sure how this works.”

“That makes two of us,” he said, “How do I know you’re not lying to me?”

“About what?”

“About being…uh, restrained,” David gestured with his pistol for emphasis. Dwayne raised his eyebrows. “How do I know this isn’t some sick joke?”

“Yeah, of course you’d think of that,” he muttered. Who else but David to fabricate a hilariously sadistic plot? And who else but David to immediately suspect that he was the victim of one? Dwayne walked across the room to one of the broken tables they’d all shoved into the corners. He grabbed the leg and quickly snapped it off before stalking back to David and holding it out for him to take, “This will do more than a bullet.”

David looked at it carefully, then looked at Dwayne. He slowly holstered his pistol and took the makeshift stake with his uninjured hand. “What now?”

“Now we wait.”

-

Sam Emerson was sat on the couch with a bag of pretzels and a Batman comic when the phone rang. He poked his head up over the cover. Mom was at work (somehow able to keep her job at the video store under new management), and Michael was asleep. It was nice to know that his brother could finally sleep in the night again. Sam, however, was taking a bit longer to get there after everything that had happened.

He groaned and got up to answer the phone. “Hello?”

“Hey,” an eerily familiar voice said, “Which Emerson am I talking to right now? Sam?”

“Yeah…Who is this?”

“Can I talk to Star?”

Sam’s blood went cold. He gripped the phone tight. “If you think we’re gonna let any of you vampire freaks near her, you’re dead wrong.”

The man on the other line sighed. It sounded like half frustration, half exhaustion. “I’m all the way across town right now, but I could be crashing through your window again in less than five minutes,” whichever vampire he was speaking to gave a pause, “but I won’t, cause I haven’t eaten in days, and I don’t wanna make a mess I’ll have to clean up myself.”

Sam didn’t say anything.

“Y’know, I can hear your heartbeat through the receiver. I know you’re still there.”

“What?!” He heard a bark of laughter on the other end of the call. “That’s not funny!”

“Go get Star.”

“She’s sleeping.”

“Then get Michael.”

“He’s also sleeping.”

“Then fucking wake him up!” The tone of voice got more aggressive by the second, “There’s someone in the Atlantis, we need them out by morning.”

“Don’t you kill people? I mean, I’m not condoning it or anything, but isn’t that your usual solution?”

“Sam, every word out of your mouth makes a trip to the Emerson household sound more and more appealing-”

“I’ll go get Michael.”

Sam set the phone down on the table without hanging up and then ran up the stairs. He stood in front of Michael’s room for a good thirty seconds before deciding to knock. Last time he barged in, he and Star were doing god knows what (he screamed and ran away quicker than he could actually see anything). He heard the slow creaking of the bed and watched the doorknob wiggle a bit before turning fully to open.

Star stood in the doorway wearing a pair of Lucy’s old pajama bottoms and one of Michael’s t-shirts. She was rubbing the sleep from her eyes and her hair was a mess of bed head.

“Sammy? What’s wrong?”

His mouth hung open for a bit as he floundered out an apology. Sam tried to be as nice to Star as possible in the past couple of weeks. It was mostly to make up for the whole threatening her and Laddie with a stake thing, but also because he knew she’d just walked out of the world’s shittiest situation, and into his grandfather’s creepy taxidermy television-less murder house. He knew what that felt like (to a certain degree).

“Sam, seriously. What’s wrong?” There was a growing concern on her face.

Sam sighed, “someone’s on the phone asking for you.”

“Me? Who would be asking for-“ Star stopped talking as soon as the realization hit her. Her lips pressed into a thin line. “I knew we should’ve staked the rest of them when we had the chance…” she muttered to herself as she gently pushed past Sam and sped down the stairs.

Sam ran after her, only half catching whatever Michael was muttering from the bedroom as he slowly but surely woke up. By the time they were both downstairs, Michael was trailing behind, making his way down. Star practically threw herself at the idle phone.

“What do you want?” She demanded.

“Star!” The voice on the other line sounded delighted, “I thought you were getting your beauty sleep. Then again, you never needed much-“

“Cut to the chase, Paul.”

Michael immediately stood at attention at the mention of the name. He walked up behind Star, close enough to hear what was being said, and put a hand on her shoulder. Sam stood back, only catching half of the conversation.

“It’s about David. He’s…changed.”

“And why is this our problem?” Michael chimed in.

“Mike! Wow, the whole family’s here. Is Mrs. Emerson present? Or should I hit the video store after this-“

“Stay away from her!” Star and Michael yelled at the same time. Sam jumped a bit. He didn’t want to know what that was about.

“Jesus, fine. They never have the good stuff there anyway.”

“Paul,” Star said, pinching the bridge of her nose, “David. You were talking about David.”

“Right. How do I say this?” He paused, letting out a long sigh, “David’s human,” Star and Michael shared a look, “and sort of…deprived of all post-vampire memories—we think it’s some kind of time travel body swap situation.”

Star let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh, “Paul, you did not just wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me that David’s been back to the future’d.”

“Come on, Star. Vampires are real. Who knows what else is possible.”

“Okay, fine. What does this have to do with me?”

“He can’t stay at the Atlantis. It’s not safe.”

“Why don’t you just turn him?”

“We don’t know what would happen if this ever got reversed,” Paul said, “Plus, he’d be so pissed.”

She nodded, “He would, wouldn’t he?”

There was a long pause, “You don’t have to think of it as helping David, or…or helping us. I know things are weird. Just think of it as helping a stranger on the boardwalk,” His voice sounded a lot more solemn. It pulled at Star’s heart. Just a little bit. “I mean, he is practically a stranger now. He came from a completely different life. I want our David back, but this one shouldn’t have to hang around in a cave while we figure it out.”

Star lowered the phone a bit and looked at Michael. They shared a series of looks that Sam could only describe as a sort of teen sweetheart telepathy.