Author's Note: This is a complete overhaul of my story Devil Inside. It was my first fanfiction and I wrote it when I was about 14. Re-reading it now is actually quite embarrassing, especially since The Lost Boy's in my favorite movie. The overall theme is the same, you don't need to know anything about the Chasing Yesterday series to enjoy reading this story, but if you do happen to know it, it just makes it that much better. So…that's it. Hope you guys enjoy!
Disclaimer- I don't own anything related to the Lost Boys or Robin Wassermann's Chasing Yesterday.
Chapter 1
It was the lights that stopped her.
The steady thud thud thud of her ratty Chuck Taylors hitting the uneven ground got slower and slower before stopping completely so she could stare in awe at the spinning, twinkling lights in the distance. She swayed on the spot, a dizzying calm coming over her and for a few brief moments, she was at peace.
Then the feedback pierced through the silence.
Flashes. She could see them, in front of her eyes. One after the other, each one like a blow to her already pounding head. A fire, a red door, a surgical table, and a boy. They all hit her in one staggering rush and she fell to her knees, a strangled yelp escaping her throat. The images came faster and faster until they weren't images at all, just swirls of light and color that burned through the backs of her eyelids. It was all too much, and through the confusion she could feel a small undercurrent of a different emotion slowly coming to the surface.
Pure blind rage.
Her fingers clutched at her unkept hair, pulling at it violently in equal parts of anger and frustration. Her mouth moved, but only garbled sounds came out. She tumbled forward, her hands leaving her hair to break the fall. Gritting her teeth and screwing her eyes shut, she gathered all the raw emotion and pushed.
The feedback quieted and the images stopped.
Panting, she eased the tension in her arms and let her body slowly meet the ground, startling slightly when it gave underneath her weight.
Sand. She was laying on sand.
That was the last thing she remembered.
Several miles down the beach, the sand under ones feet would get rockier and rockier until finally, they'd reach the base of a bluff.
Up on top of the bluff, you'd be greeted with several danger notices issued by the state of California.
If you ignored these signs, you'd come to the mouth of a cave. A cave that housed the remains of The Hotel Santa Carla.
For the most part, the inhabitants of Santa Carla stayed away from Hudson's Bluff. But the occasional drunk Surf Nazi or curious tourist did wander in from time to time.
But the Lost Boys took care of them.
David, Dwayne, Marko and Paul. The infamous biker gang of Santa Carla. No one knew much about them, but just enough to know they were bad news should be avoided at all costs.
Of course there were always those who were naïve, stubborn, or just plain stupid enough to ignore the bad vibes the four of them gave off and approach them. Most of the time, this led to a nasty fate…depending on the boys' mood.
Because the Lost Boys were vampires.
And at the moment, they were hungry vampires. So at David's signal they got on their bikes and rode off the boardwalk and down to the beach, hoping to find a nice bonfire party to crash.
And this is where the story gets interesting.
The field is lush and green, spreading out in front of her like a blanket. She reaches down and grips the stem of a white, puffy dandelion, yanking until it snaps and she can bring the flower up to her face. The white fibers are fluffy against the soft skin of her chin and she can feel herself smile. She inhales a lungful of fresh, clean summer air and blows; watching as the tiny seeds float and flutter through the wind and back down to the ground.
A throat clears behind her and she straightens up and squares her shoulders. She tilts her head back and closes her eyes, languidly raising one hand above her head.
There is a shrill grinding noise, followed by a crack.
A helicopter falls from the sky. Flames spread and eat through the grass. There's indistinct shouting in the distance. Metal screams, plastic melts, and then finally there's an earth shattering boom. She can feel the heat from the explosion on her face and she scrambles backwards a few paces, the acrid smoke burning her eyes and causing her to double over and cough. A hand rests on the small of her back, rubbing reassuring circles.
"You did it"
It's a statement, not a question and there's no accusation behind it.
There's pride.
"You did it." The man speaks again. She opens her eyes and catches sight of his black leather shoes, with gold bars instead of laces.
Panic.
Slowly, she straightens and turns to look at the man, the fear in her gut becoming more nauseating as the smoke clears to show his identity…
She wakes up before she can see his face.
Her mind is clearer now and she feels strangely calm despite her dream. There are no visions, no shrill noises, no man with weird black shoes, just the warm flickering of firelight against the darkness.
Flames eating through the grass, metal screaming, plastic melting, inferno, explosion…
She gasps, the dream hitting her like a ton of bricks and drawing the attention of the people sitting around the bonfire.
"Told ya she was alive! You owe me twenty bucks, Brad." A bleach blonde girl wearing too much makeup and not enough clothes crows from her spot next to a muscled bald guy with tattoos.
"Ah, shut up! I don't owe you nothin'" Another man shouts at her from the other side of the bonfire. His hair is long, shaggy and streaked through with green.
"What's a little girl like you doin' out here? Didja lose Mommy and Daddy on the boardwalk?" The blonde jeers at her, her smile as fake as the rest of her.
She opened and closed her mouth a few times, but no sound came out.
"God, Jess! Don't be so mean. She's obviously lost and she looks like she's freezing." Another young woman with short black hair and olive skin got up and walked over to the girl in the sand, offering her small smile. "Come on over by the fire. Your face is gonna freeze off out here."
She stares blankly at the woman for a few seconds before taking the offered hand. The girl led her over to the bonfire. She sat down and stared blankly into the flames, knees drawn up to her chin. She jumps every time the wood snaps.
"What's your name, little girl?" The bald man asks.
She says nothing. Still lost in her dream
"You did it"
She shivers and subconsciously shifts closer to the girl next to her, who doesn't seem to mind. Her shifting reveals the skin of her wrist and the plastic lined bracelet around it.
"What's this?" The black-haired woman asks, lifting her arm to she can see better in the fire light.
"Central County Hospital, Doe, Jane…Oh my God! You're that girl! The Jane Doe from the news!"
At the name 'Jane Doe' She finches away, stumbling off the rock they were sitting on and getting unsteadily to her feet, hands clenched into fists at her sides.
"Don't call me that!"
They're the first words she's spoken since she woke up and her voice sounds foreign to her ears.
"How did you get out of the hospital?" The black-haired girl presses
The hospital
She can remember it dimly, the hospital bed. She wakes up. She's strapped down. She screams. Men run in, men with needles. She screams louder. And then she was running.
Her brain raced a mile a minute as things began to get clearer. Lying on the asphalt, smoke, can't breathe, shiny leather shoes with gold bars for laces.
Her breathing quickens, but she still fumbles through her broken memory.
Sirens, and then the EMT pressing the mask to her face and asking the most basic question.
"What's your name? Do you remember your name?"
She didn't.
"Is everything ok over here?"
The voice is deep and smooth and jerks Jane Doe out of her thoughts. A man with white blonde hair and cold blue eyes is looking at her with indifference and the smallest amount of annoyance before his gaze flits over to the young woman she'd been sitting with. She's half off the rock, standing with her arms outstretched towards the younger girl, looking ready to grab her. Gasping, Jane Doe stumbles backward, away from the woman and into something warm and solid. Tipping her head back, she sees the something is a someone. Another guy with curly blonde hair, who was biting on the thumb of his black glove and smiling a too big smile.
"Everything's fine. Faith was just babbling about some girl on the news." The blonde girl, Jess replied, her voice taking on a flirtatious edge, making her bald boyfriend grip her waist tighter.
"That girl is the one they're all talking about! From the explosion in Nevada! The one who can't remember anything!" Faith protested, her voice taking on a hysterical edge.
"The Girl Without a Past" Another newcomer, a man with bronze skin and dark hair spoke from his place behind the shaggy haired guy, Brad.
"So, what do you care about that? You the one that lost her, babe?" The last man, this one with long, wild blonde hair and crazy eyes drawled from behind Jess and her boyfriend.
They're boxing us in.
She didn't know how she knew that, but the voice in her head sounded sure. And somehow she knew she should trust it.
"They're probably looking for her! We might get a reward if we bring her back!" Faith babbled excitedly, starting towards her again.
"NO!" Jane Doe shrieked, trying to run, but was hindered by the curly-haired guy snaking an arm around her waist and spinning her around, using his free hand to press her face tightly against his chest
"No ones going anywhere." The white-blonde haired man spoke again, his voice firm.
Then the screaming started.
She tried to squirm out of the man's arms, but he held her fast, laughing at her struggles.
"Don't worry. It'll be over soon."
He leaned down, pressing his nose to the skin of her neck, nuzzling in a parody of affection before he opened his mouth and bit down.
The teeth that broke her skin weren't human.
She whimpered at the odd sensation taking over her body, not quite sure if it hurt of if she wanted him to keep going. The word for what these men were bubbled up in he back of her mind but she couldn't grasp it while her life was being drained out of her neck.
She didn't realize she'd stopped squirming until she felt the man's tight grip on her waist loosen. She wanted to run, she needed to run but she was too weak to do more than think about it. Panic gripped her and with it came a pins and needles feeling that crawled up her arms from her fingertips, spread across her shoulders, down her back, and settled at the base of her spine. instinctively, just as she had done in the dream, she raised her arms from her sides and settled them against the man's chest and shoved.
His fangs were ripped from her neck, causing her to shriek and blood to spray across the sand. The guy hit the ground several feet away from her, but was already moving to get up. She started to run, but stopped dead at the bloody carnage that laid at her feet. The four young adults had been ripped apart, some quite literally as limbs were detached and lying in random places around the fire. Flesh had been butchered, bones had been broken and throats had been torn all to get to the blood that lied underneath.
Dizzy from both the sight in front of her and the still leaking wound on her neck, Jane Doe was only able to stumble forward a few more steps before her legs gave out and she was at the feet and the mercy of four men who were probably going to kill her.
"Vampires."
That was the word she'd been looking for. They were vampires
For the third and possibly the last time, Jane Doe blacked out.
David waited until the girl's heart slowed to the point of near death before he sighed and approached her prone figure. Kneeling next to her, he turned her over to expose the angry wound on her neck. Leaning down and trying to ignore the temptation of fresh blood, he rasped his tongue over the wound a few times until the bleeding stopped.
Vampire spit couldn't heal wounds good as new, but it could speed up the clotting process or even act as a novocaine. The girl – Jane Doe – would live.
For now anyway.
Considering her massive popularity with the media, the girl didn't look like much. She'd was a bit shorter than Marko and looked like she'd weigh 120 soaking wet. There was no way she was more than 14 or 15 years old. Bruises and small cuts littered her skin; probably from the explosion she'd been found near. Her short, reddish blonde hair was unkept and her clothes were too thin, too small, and childish even for a girl her age.
As much as he wanted to leave her here, he couldn't. She barely touched Marko and still sent him flying 6 feet away from her. That wasn't normal.
So with another sigh, he hooked one arm under her knees and the other around her back and lifted her off the sand.
"Let's go." He said to the others.
Dwayne and Paul already tossed the remains of their meal into the bonfire and were working on kicking the bloody sand around to make it less noticeable.
Marko had gathered himself up off the ground and was staring at the girl in his arms with an unreadable look on his face.
When they finished hiding the evidence, the boys got on their bikes, David carefully maneuvering the unconscious Jane Doe in front of him, and headed back to Hudson's Bluff.