Author : WARFANG

Series : THE SAGA OF DARREN SHAN

Ownership: If I did, then this would be the story of their heroic overthrow of the evil lord, Desmond Tiny. Larten would fake a believable death. People still die. Plus, wolves and leopards would share the mountain. Done ranting.

Note- That is not the summary. This picks up where the books end (still not done reading them all, but hey, that's the internet) with a funny notion called the afterlife. And yes, there is some slight AU. Like the following…..

AAAG!

The resounding yell shook the apartment complex. Figures in the kitchen and adjoining living room glance around. The ones already outside hurry faster, wanting to escape the terror of one EX- Vampaneze Lord.

"CREPSLEY!"

The elder vampire snorts softly into his coffee. "I think someone found his pill box was missing."

The figure bobbing around the island and dishing out scrambled eggs turns to him. "And I wonder why he thinks you did it, Mr. Crepsley?"

"Possibly because you wouldn't, Darren."

Death hadn't been an all-bad experience. Sure, the body turned cold, and Darren had to wander back out of the Lake of Lost Souls, but everyone eventually got here. Well, wherever here was.

Footsteps thundered down the steps, into the first floor. The Foyer to go up into the Apartments was separated by a wall, the back entrance guarded by a pass code on the second level. Never mind that that was the only locked door in the place, and that the ground level was free access. At least Steve was coming down the right staircase.

The child that whipped around the doorframe and into the Kitchen threw everyone for a surprise- but only for a moment. Having more to atone for, Steve had wandered the longest in the Lake of Lost Souls, not to anyone's surprise. The side affect was that Steve's age reflected the mindset he was in, and rage tended to reduce him to a temper tantrum seven years old.

Seriously. Everyone remembered what he had done in the body of an adult with the one heck of a grudge.

"Yes?" Crepsley queried, seeing Steve stand there and glower at him.

"The pills are missing."

"You might have misplaced them."

"…..In the toilet."

Crepsley sat up straighter, laying the paper aside. Steve's body blurred until a sixteen year old firmed, showing he was highly upset, but believing that Crepsley wouldn't go that far, as evident by his surprise.

"&^$."

The human curse was bitten off, and then Gavner headed for the steps.

"I'll check the scene, and for any stashes. Steve, this could get ugly."

"Thanks." The voice was not curt, nor was it grateful. Steve was just polite to Gavner. He really…well to use the adage 'The past is set in stone.' Steve punished himself by never letting go of the past.

Darren sighed and moved on to the pancakes. Steve would sooner or later get over beating himself up and move on to being a regular terror. The kind that had, just last week, every vampire and Vampaneze gasping and crying from laughing so hard at a well timed dry witted remark.

Steve had smiled.

And then fled back to his room.

Now the present morning a week later with a situation set up for dire consequences. Steve sometimes had guilt trips. The kind that had him in a seizure. Not everything that happened in the past had been planned. Everyone had gotten a bad enough shock when Steve had finally showed up.

"You do realize that by the time the painkillers kicked in, I was dead."

"You're welcome, Mr. I-got-caught-by-the-enemy-and-have-to-die-now-whoops. I told you not to move until my signal. I was hoping that you were just having a drama queen fit."

"Nope. Just wanted to let Darren kill you instead. I sincerely believed that he would have hated me-even for the briefest instant- if I killed you instead."

"...Selfish prick. But I can relate to that."

The pills were just plain aspirin that kept his heart going for the day, until the drug was used up fighting the now infrequent seizures- that still happened after two months. Everyone else had been here four years.

Mr. Crepsley, was, understandably, denouncing Steve when Darren first arrived. Later inspection of Steve's life, however, was giving the fair minded vampire a harder time not to see an abused child.

The reunion of the vampires and Vampaneze was not unnoticed either.

The driving points in everyone giving Steve a second chance were the times in Steve's life where he forgot all about Darren. The orphanage, his time as a P.I., keeping in touch with Annie by letters and sending her five figure checks because they both agreed that they did not share couple love and each reminded the other of her DEAD brother so much that to be closer, they lived apart.

In Steve's own word's, Darius was to keep her company.

When the Vampaneze had seconded that Crepsley was drugged, they explained that Steve told them that one) you are getting tortured and two) losing feeling in your limbs and seeing the damage to them is a psychological effect.

Uh huh. Yeah right. Summed up the attitude of everyone after a closer scrutiny of his memories.

Steve sighed and wandered around the island, shooing Darren away so that he could start cleaning the dishes.

Well? What do you think?

If this is absolutely hated (it is not Steve-centric, the characters change, but if these are the only ones I know, well….blame the internet) then I can modify this to a oneshot and leave as is. But I really wanted to put them in a New Life, where everyone is dead and see them evolve. I was thinking schools and corporations and other dead people (not OC's, just, c'mon, everyone dies.)

Love it? Confused? Something so glaringly wrong you can't stand it?

Review.