Author's note: I've always loved Fright Night 1 and 2. Throwing a part 3 into the Lost Boys universe only seemed to make sense to me. This story takes place the same day Michael and his family arrived in Santa Carla, and clearly several months after the events in Fright Night 2.
"Santa Carla. Murder capitol of the world..." Alex read aloud as they drove past a garish billboard near the edge of the city. Charley smirked and glanced over at his fiancee, patting her knee comfortingly.
"Don't worry, I won't let anyone get to you, Miss Young," he teased as she leaned to her left and placed her head on his shoulder, smirking.
"Well, Mister Brewster, I think it's pretty clear I'm the one who's better at protecting you."
Charley smirked, grabbing a pair of sunglasses from the side of the driver's side door and sliding them onto his face.
"Don't tell me you're going to start wearing those again! Did you get bitten by another-" Alex joked, stopping when Charley stuck his tongue out at her and looked back towards the road. Six months after Alex's graduation, and three months after Charley's own, their lives were beginning to truly settle into something like domestic bliss.
Sure, they weren't married yet, but it was only the matter of a year at most before their wedding...whenever Alex finally decided on the right church. For the moment, living together was enough to keep them both happy. They'd even managed to find jobs near the beach. Sort of.
It was Alex's idea to invest in a private practice in a city with a high murder rate, insisting the challenges of clinical psychology were greatest in places like Santa Carla. As for Charley, well...he still wasn't sure why he'd pursued an English degree. Being his fiancee's personal secretary and transcriber wouldn't be so bad, while he actively tried to find a teaching job. Besides...it meant plenty of time to write his memoirs and disguise them as a fictional work.
"Do you ever regret choosing me?" Alex asked, watching the haze of the summer skyline as the sun had begun to descend and cast an orange-red glow about them.
"That's a silly question, Alex. I love you. You know that," he pecked her on the forehead and smirked, quickly looking back towards the road.
"What I wanna know is why you think setting up a practice before you've even had any real experience on the job, aside from your internship hours, is a good idea..." He trailed off, touching on a thought he'd had multiple times, and they'd rarely expanded on.
"I like the challenge, Charley. Plus, with that incident at the library still fresh on my record, not to mention breaking Peter out of that hospital with your psychiatrist's wallet in my person...god even knows how we managed to get out of jail after that one...finding a job without setting up my own practice would be the real problem. Even if they did find those body parts in Regine's hotel room, and evidence that she was just as much of a serial murderer as her brother..." She'd been practicing the explanation for quite some time, clearly. Her response wasn't filled with any sort of hurt feelings, or even irritation. Honestly, she was surprised Charley had taken so long to ask.
"Well then...I guess you put me in my place. You're right. I'm sorry for even bringing it up," he pecked her on the forehead again.
"Mister Brewster, if you don't pay attention to the road, we're going to get into a very nasty road accident," she playfully lectured, pinching Charley's arm.
"Ow! Okay, okay...I promise. I will not kiss you any-" he pecked her on the forehead again and looked back at the road, "-more."
Alex snuggled her head a bit more comfortably against Charley's shoulder and sighed.
"Starting a small practice as a Clinical Psychologist in a small town filled with troubled teenagers is far easier than dealing with vampires, anyway. So the hard part of our lives is behind us," she put a hand to her mouth and yawned sleepily. With the gentle purr of the car engine, and the relaxing warmth of her fiancee's fleece jacket...Alex felt like everything was right with the world. Together they could face anything.
'Victims in Santa Carla are often found with deep gauges in their throats, completely drained of blood. It is this author's suspicion that something more vicious than a mere serial killer is at work, my friends. I, Carl Kolchak, am more certain than ever that someone is bound to get to the bottom of it.'
Peter rubbed at his eyes and set the garish magazine aside, crossing his hands over his stomach and leaning back in his chair. He was still attending therapy sessions, even several months after the events in which he'd killed Regine. Thank god the police found out she'd been a murderer as well, owing his hysteria on the set to a mental breakdown after he simply made an 'unpleasant discovery' on the evening of her party and hadn't been able to rationalize it properly. That was what Alex had told him to say, and it really was the simplest way to go about it.
But...when Peter glanced over at the trashy tabloid magazine he'd purchased on a whim when he'd seen the name of the city his friend Charley was moving to splashed across the title, a wave of weariness overwhelmed him. Surely the same thing couldn't happen a THIRD time. If so, Charley Brewster had to have truly angered the universe to deserve such terrible karma.
"You can either do something about it, Peter, or you can simply be a coward," he told himself, grabbing the magazine and rolling it up in his fists.
"Clearly something has to be done before that poor boy gets himself into trouble. I mean...they did invite me to visit when they're settled in..." He continued talking to himself, as if he were a character in a dreadful rip-off of a Shakespearean classic.
Peter glanced towards the window and squinted at the sunset. After he'd been officially released from the hospital, he'd made it a habit to keep an actual hunting kit prepared and by his front door at all times...so packing up and paying them an early visit wasn't entirely impossible. Still, he had three sessions with his therapist that week.
"Perhaps I'll sleep on it," he finally decided, tugging at his robe collar nervously. Peter may not be a complete coward anymore, but he also didn't want to go rushing out if there was no real reason to do so. He'd wait for Charley or Alex to give him a call. Again, he reminded himself...surely the same thing couldn't happen THREE times. Surely!
"...Surely..." he mumbled, his head dipping low as he begun to nod off. "Surely..." Peter kept repeating, like some sort of holy mantra, until he was finally sleeping fitfully with images of dreadful monsters dancing in his head.
"I'm really looking forward to seeing this place," Alex gushed, sliding out of the car and brushing the wrinkles out of her plaid skirt.
"Yeah, the guy who owns the place said he'd been planning on having his daughter and grand kids move in for a bit, but apparently she'd decided to give it one more go with her old man? I dunno. I didn't even ask, and he just went off on a tangent about his personal life," Charley explained, closing the car door behind him and crossing to the side to begin untying a knot in the ropes latching their luggage to the top of the car.
"We're only renting our room for a few months, though, until we find a real place of our own...right?" Alex asked, untying a knot on her own side.
"Relax, I've got this all handled. I've been doing the budgeting, and I'm going to make a few calls around town. If we don't start small, we're going to burn through that business loan before we've even got our feet on the ground," he replied, loosening the rope after he'd finally gotten the knot on his side undone.
It was only a matter of about ten or so minutes before they'd managed to get their luggage unloaded from the top of the car. There was more in the trunk, but they could easily make the trip back after they'd brought everything else inside.
"So, it should be just up this walkway..." Charley grabbed the larger two suitcases and hefted one over his shoulder, while he tucked one against his hip and marched in the direction of the cabin.
"You don't have to narrate everything for me, Mister Brewster. I'm a big girl," Alex replied in a fake huff, following close after.
"Oh, I do apologize, Miss Young, I was just trying to accomma-"
"CHARLEY!" Alex shouted, dropping her suitcases and shoving past him. At the porch of the cabin they'd been approaching, a grizzly older man lay unconscious.
"...Oh...no..." Charley mumbled, dropping his own luggage to the ground and frowning. It didn't look like their romantic move to the coast was going to be quite so romantic as he'd hoped.
"Is he dead?" Charley asked warily, rubbing at the hand that had been holding the larger suitcase.
Alex knelt by the old man's side and pressed two fingers to his neck, an expression of both concern and fear plastered on her face.