A/N: Once again, thank you for all your lovely reviews! Your support keeps me writing! ^_^

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games or the plot of End of Days.

Chapter Three

December 29th 1999

Finnick knew how to be patient. He had been waiting a thousand years for the turn of the millenia and yet now, with only a few days to go, he found himself itching to find his gorgeous Peeta. He had treated his significent other to a particularly steamy dream the previous night, a taster to prepare the boy for that final hour of December 31st. Peeta had responded to it well, embracing the dream and the glorious euphoria it provided. He always did accept it, like his subconscious knew that there really was nothing to be afriad of.

The thing Finnick dreaded the most was the child bearing. He would obviously take Peeta back to hell with him to wait out the pregnancy there but, after watching the boy grow up, he knew he was in for a rough, extremely stubborn nine months topped off with the moodiness that automatically came with being pregnant. Peeta was not going to be an easy resident.

He tried not to focus on this, however, and instead tried to think of all the naughty endeavours and passionate nights that were to come. Sure, Peeta would be reluctant at first, but he was born for the position of Satan's partner, husband, lover, child bearer, whatever you wanted to call him. He would subject himself to the pleasure, willingly too. The cute little quirk as well was that the poor boy was still a virgin. How sweet of him, like he knew what his destiny was and saved himself for his one, true lover.

Peeta was everything Finnick could have wished for and more. He was perfect.

First things first, however, he had to take care of the bastard who tried to shoot him.

A police guard had blocked off the corridor leading to the ward in which Plutarch was being held in. Tall, middle-aged, not particulary striking in any way. The NYPD probably cleared out the whole ward just to hold one man, since he was a criminal, after all. The guard seemed surprised when Finnick approached the gate that cut off the corridor from the rest of the hospital.

"Sorry sir, this ward is closed off," he said.

Finnick nodded, feigning understanding. He leaned forward and the man instinctively mimicked the action, wondering what it was he was about to say. "The little boys you have seduced have left their scent on you," Finnick whispered, enjoying the moment where realization dawned on the guard and his face turned white as a sheet.

Without another word, the guard opened the gate and let him pass.

"See you in hell," Finnick thought as he turned the corner down into Plutarch's ward. The man's room wasn't hard to find. Just follow the laboured breathing and smell of blood. Finnick didn't need to look through the window to predict that the man was in critical condition. Oh, and he'd cut out his tongue, how cute.

Lighting up a cigar, Finnick entered Plutarch's room. The priest was asleep but that could be easily solved. "Plutarch," he sang, walking to the bed and giving the man a poke. "Plutarch!"

Plutarch's eyes fluttered open lazily. It took him a moment to get his bearings but as soon as his vision cleared and focused on Finnick, his heart rate moniter's readings spiked as the beat of his heart quickened. "Hello Plutarch," Finnick said, sitting on the edge of the bed and ignoring the man's panicked struggles. He was restrained to his bed to prevent escape and no matter how hard he jerked his body, he couldn't free himself. "It's lovely of you to remember me after all this time. How's my old pal the pope doing? Or haven't you been in touch since you lost your mind and started lobbing off limbs?"

Plutarch wasn't listening, he just continued to relentless struggle. It would be to no avail and subconsciously a part of him knew it but he kept trying none-the-less. Finnick watched with sick amusement, pulling the man's oxygen curtain out of the way and blowing some smoke into it. "You know why I'm here, don't you? I can't let you get away with trying to assasinate me and, besides, you've been trying to keep me away from my Peeta ever since he was born."

Panic was clear in Plutarch's eyes. The whites full and pupils dilated. He better be praying in his head.

He was going to need it.

~xXx~

"And he was found like that?"

"Exactly like that."

Cato stared at the photo Katniss had handed him in horror. He had came to the hospital to see if he could get anything else out of Plutarch-even though he had no tongue-but had been met by a gruesome sight of blood splattered floors and Katniss Everdeen yelling at people to hurry it up.

"I think I'm noticing a theme," Marvel pointed out. Plutarch had been found strapped to the ceiling above his bed, pinned by his hands and feet with pairs of scissors. He had been positioned with his arms outstretched and feet resting ontop of one another so it looked like he had been crucified. "I'm guessing this person isn't too big on religion."

"Or is too big on it," Cato said.

"Katniss!" One of the men inside called. "We got him down!"

They all squeezed into the one hospital room, all eager to find out what the hell was going on. The body now lay on the bed, eyes having been shut as a sign of respect. Nearly every available piece of skin was coated in blood and, true to what the picture had shown, there were puncture wounds in the hands and feet. Just like if he had been crucified.

One of the autopsy doctors beckoned Katniss forward. "Words has been carved into the chest with what I persume to be the scissors that was then used to string him up," the doctor explained. A pair of glasses were perched on the end of her bird-like nose but looked more for show that necessity.

"You mean whoever did this carved him out alive?" asked Katniss.

The doctor nodded. "There is no way to be sure but I'd say so."

"What's been written?" Cato asked. The autospy doctor unbuttoned Plutarch's shirt and showed them. The angry, red, puss oozing letters didn't seem to go together or make sense. From what Cato could make of it anyway. "That's not english, right?"

"No, it's latin," the doctor answered. "Ut thousand annus es universa, Diabolus ero privatus ex suus carcer."

Cato stared at the doctor in confusion. "And that means?" Marvel prompted.

"When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison," the doctor answered. She frowned. "What do you think that's supposed to mean?"

"It's from chapter twenty, verse seven of the book of revelations," said Cato. He felt proud of his bible knowledge but all he got was incredulous looks all round. So much for faith in humanity, these guys couldn't even believe it when he knew something they didn't!

"Up here near the chest, however, is english. See?" The doctor pointed out.

Along the curve just below Plutarch's collarbone, a name was sawed into his flesh. Cato had to twist his head at an awkward angle to try to get it to make sense or actually look like an actual word. "Pee-ta Mel-lark," he announciated. He looked at the doctor for guidance. She nodded.

"Peeta Mellark," she confirmed.

Katniss frowned. "I vaguely remember the name. I think that's the son of Damien Mellark. He died two years ago and left his house and wealth to his wife and son. You don't see the Mellarks around too often anymore. I don't think I've even ever seen the son's face myself. Things were never really the same since Damien's first wife Eileen was killed by a toaster."

"Suicide?" asked Cato.

"No," Katniss replied.

"Tried to get her crumpet out with a fork?" guessed Marvel.

"Nope."

How many other ways were there to get killed by a toaster?

Cato nodded thoughtfully. "Well, it looks like you've got things covered here. Marvel and I will just get out of your hair." He slinked to the door, trying to seem casual that, judging by Marvel's snickers behind him, obviously wasn't going very well. Katniss gave him a funny look but seemed glad to be rid of them, not protesting at all when they slipped out.

"Where are we going?" asked Marvel as they made their way out of the hospital.

Cato tried to slow down for Marvel's sake but found it very difficult. "I'm finding the closest yellow pages and finding out where Peeta Mellark lives."

~xXx~

"Buona sera, sir, vi saremmo grati se poteste mostra dove il bagno?"

Peeta listened to the phrase repeat itself twice befre having a stab at it himself. The headphones covering his ears blocked out any sound from the outside world, helping him concentrate only on the Italian phrases and nothing else. Himself and Alma were considering moving to Italy for a year and if they were going to he was going to have to learn some key phrases.

"Buona sera, sir, vi saremmo grati se poteste mostra dove il bagno?" Peeta repeated. The tape was turned up so loud he couldn't even hear his own voice most of the time. "Buona sera, sir, vi aremmo grati se poteste mostra dove il bagno?" He lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling as he did this, having nothing better to do than admire the paintwork while reciting Italian.

Static began to filter through his tape player. Peeta picked it up off his bed and gave it a shake, not entirely sure what to do to fix it. Did that mean it was broken or needed tuning or . . . what? The static cleared for a moment before filling the headphones again. Rolling his eyes, Peeta let his head fall back against the pillow and listened for the next phrase. If he concentrated hard enough, he would be able to hear it.

"Ut thousand annus es universa, Diabolus ero privatus ex suus carcer."

Wait, that didn't sound Italian. It sounded more like . . . Latin? Peeta didn't know a lot of Latin himself-it was more of Alma's thing than his-and couldn't understand why there was Latin on his Italian tape. Maybe it was a mistake. What did it mean, though?

"Patefacio vestri oculi quod inviso mih."

Again, Latin. How cheap was this thing exactly? Pawning off some of the Latin as Italian, Alma must have gotten the tape from a bargain bin. Not that that would have been a bad thing, except for the fact that there was Latin being used instead of Italian.

"Peeta."

Peeta jolted upright and ripped his headphones off. He stared at the tape player in horror, half expecting it to grow teeth and bite him right there and then. He snapped it open and gave the tape an extra shake before slipping it back in and replaying it again. Since he couldn't resume from where he left off, he had to forward it back to where he had been.

"Peeta."

Yup, that was definitely his name. But why? What was going on?

His thirst for answers won out and he pulled the headphones back on to hear what would come next.

"Peeta, I am what you have been waiting for your entire life," the robotic voice was long gone, replaced by the languid purr of the man that haunted Peeta's dreams. The man who he could temporarily kill with a couple of pills. The man who didn't exist. "Give in to me and you will experience things you have only dreamed about until now."

A wave of drowsiness washed over Peeta and he lay back down on the bed, too entranced with the voice on his recorder to take his headphones off. The air in the room had changed from cool to humid and within seconds he was sweating. Why was it so warm? Peeta sank further into the bed so his chin pushed against his chest. God, was he tired. It had came over him all of a sudden.

"Fall asleep and I can make you feel good."

Peeta's eyes fluttered as he tried to fight sleep. If he slept during the day then he'd be awake all night and it would begin an endless cycle . . .

"Fall asleep."

His head lolled to the side and his eyes gave in. What harm would a few minutes rest do anyway?

"Asleep."

Peeta had just dipped into the first lazy moments of sleep, a sensation that felt like hands cupping his face and pulling him in overcoming his senses, when his bedroom door knocked and the butler, Thom, came in. The presence of someone else in the room broke the spell and Peeta snapped to attention, blinking away thoughts of sleep and quickly pulling his headphones off.

"Yes, Thom?" he asked.

"Alma wishes to meet you for lunch at the White Rose," Thom said. Peeta hated the formal manner in which the butler addressed him with but no matter how many times he tried to get Thom to stop, he wouldn't. Old habits die hard, he supposed.

"Okay, thank you Thom. Tell her I'll just have a quick shower and meet her there in half an hour." Despite having already convinced himself that he had fallen asleep while practicing Italian and started dreaming about the dream man's voice being on the tape, Peeta was still somehow unexplainably sweaty.

When Thom left, Peeta quickly tugged his clothes off and hopped into the shower in the en suite bathroom. He washed quickly, not wanting to have to leave his step-mother waiting too long, and was out again in no time. Once dried off, he pulled on a pair of fresh underwear and set about sorting the tangle of knots that was his hair out. Everything was fogged up, the air filled with steam, and Peeta could barely see two inches in front of himself.

On his way out, Peeta stepped on something wet. He looked down with a frown, confused as to why the floor had a puddle. He was completely dry and the shower cubicle didn't leak, so where did it come from? Peeta's blood ran cold when he saw that he had stepped into a pool of watery red liquid that seemed to be spilling from around the corner, at the part of the bathroom that exited out into Alma's room. Peeta was afriad as it what he might find but investigated anyway, cautiously padding around the corner to see where it was coming from.

His stomach bottomed out when he saw Thom's body lying in the filled bathtub, a giant slit across his throat. His eyes were open but unseeing. Peeta didn't have to check his pulse to know he was dead. He felt sick. Who would do this? And why to Thom? A horrible thought made the illness churning in Peeta's stomach almost force its way up his throat.

Where they still here?

As if to answer the question, a bald man dressed in black suddenly lurched out from behind Alma's shower curtain. He yelled, battle cry style, and tried to wrap his arms around Peeta's waist to grab him. Peeta screamed in surprise, jabbed his elbow into the man's ribs and stamped on his foot, slipping out of the man's grasp and fleeing from the bathroom as fast as he could.

Oh God, oh God, oh God, what was happening? Peeta could barely hear his own thoughts over his pounding heart. He stumbled into his room and slammed the door shut, dragging his chest of drawers across the floor and pushing it up against it. He ran around his bed to quickly barricade Alma's side of the bathroom as well when two more men came in through his bedroom door.

Peeta lunged at the first thing he could find, tearing a lamp out of its socket and weilding it like a baseball bat. He jumped onto his bed to give himself some height, ready to globber either of them if they tried to touch him. This simply amused the two men and they advanced on him fearlessly. Not liking how close they were getting, Peeta took a swing with the lamp at the nearest man, which he simply ducked out of the way of it.

The second man grabbed the lead of the lamp when Peeta tried to swing it again and yanked it out of his hands. The force caused the younger boy to stumble forward a little but he regained his footing and dived down, grabbing his tape record player and smacking the first man across the head with it. Once, twice, a third time. A small gash broke out on his temple but he barely noticed, finally giving up on trying to be gentle and rugby tackling Peeta onto his back on the bed.

Peeta screamed again and lashed out, trying to land as many punches and kicks as he could onto his attacker's body until he tired. The man holding the lamp fired it out the window, the glass shattering to create a lamp-shaped hole. Peeta struggled helplessly but the men were too strong for him. They pinned his arms to the bed, holding him in place on the mattress.

The bald man from the bathroom rushed in-persumably having escaped through Alma's room-and quickly sat ontop of Peeta on the bed. "Get off me!" Peeta yelled, trying to unseat the fat man from his hips.

The bald, fat man did the sign of the cross over Peeta's body-wait, was he blessing him?-and started chanting something under his breath. Peeta strained to hear but couldn't make it out so he continued to kick out, hoping he could make the jerk lose balance and fall on his fat ass.

At the exact same time, Cato was walking along the sidewalk with Marvel, discussing what had happened Plutarch earlier in the hospital. It hadn't taken them long to find the Mellark address and with the help of Marvel's van they were now just a couple of metres away from the 'manor' as the yellow pages called it.

"So why do you think this kid's name was carved into Plutarch's chest?" asked Marvel.

"I don't know, but you saw the picture in the book. It's the same boy from the photo in the jar," Cato replied. "It all has to be connected somehow." It was a cool afternoon but the sun was down low, causing everything to sparkle with an unnecessarily bright light. The picture of Peeta in the yellow pages had been a lot more clear than the photo in the jar had been. The boy was extremely attractive, with a smile that lit up his entire face, sharp features and gorgeous long eyelashes. For a brief moment Cato had wondered what the boy's relationship status was but quickly dismissed the thought.

As Cato and Marvel approached the house, Cato immediately knew something was wrong. A lamp lay shattered on the sidewalk and a window was smashed to pieces on the upper floor. Cato stopped in the middle of the street and held his hand up for Marvel to be silent. When the noise had settled it became clear that someone was screaming inside.

Cato yanked his gun out of the holster on his hip and ran up the steps, kicking the door in with one almightly kick. The mahogany frame groaned and splintered but he paid no notice. The screams were louder now and obviously coming from upstairs. As he ran up, a goon appeared to block his path but Cato shot him in the kneecaps and he went down like stones.

"Marvel, cover the downstairs!"

"Got it!"

He ran up the stairs two at a time and was immediately mowed over by another henchmen. "No!" the attacker roared as they hit the floor. "He must perform last rites!"

Cato decked the guy, blood spurting from his mouth and jaw dislocating instantly. Cato kneed his groin and rolled them over so he was on top of him. Shoving his gun under the guy's chin, he yelled, "What do you mean last rites?!"

When the goon didn't answer, Cato knocked him out with the butt of his gun and follwed the screams to a bedroom at the end of the hall. He arrived just in time for a stout, bald man to declare, "Amen!" and raise a dagger above his head. The boy underneath him-who Cato realized was Peeta Mellark-screamed, squeezing his eyes shut to await the blow.

Cato lunged towards the man and grabbed him on the way down, bringing him to the floor instantly and sitting ontop of him just like he had just done to Peeta. He turned to the startled boy and shouted, "Run!" Peeta didn't need to be told twice and fleed the room as quick as he could.

"Who are you?!" Cato shouted at the bald man. "What do you want with that boy?!"

"You don't understand what you're doing!" the bald man shouted back. "I almost did it! I was almost there!"

"You almost took a life, which counts as attempted murder," Cato replied, sticking the nozzle of his gun against the man's flabby neck. "Tell me why!"

"I performed last rites, his soul would have went to heaven!" the crazy man barked back angrily. "You had no right to-You have no idea what you have brought upon us you blundering cretin!" Cato growled and had half a mind to squeeze the trigger when something came to mind. Last rites . . . Heaven . . . Souls? More religious junk.

In his moment of pause, the fat man punched him in the face, knocking Cato off of him so he had room to scramble away. Cato tried to grab and pull him back, but only grasped the chain around his neck which snapped off into his hand. When the crazy man reached the window, he climbed out and disappeared. The other two goons vanished too, probably having ran off with their boss.

"Peeta?" Cato called wearily, exhausted. He pushed himself to his feet and exited the room out into the hallway. "Peeta, where are you?"

The younger boy revealed himself at the top of the hall, standing nearly completely naked and trembling like a purse puppy. Cato tried not to stare the smooth, milky complexion of Peeta's skin and focused at the problem at hand. "Are they gone?" he asked.

Cato nodded. "Yes, they are."

"You're a good guy, right?" Peeta asked nervously.

"Yeah, I am." Cato glanced down the stairs, at where Marvel stood with gun still in hand. He was staring up at him in avid curiosity. "He's a good guy too."

Peeta stepped forward, his approach slow but careful. "Who were those guys?" he asked.

"I have no idea." Cato opened his hand and looked at the necklace he had ripped from the neck of the man who was about to stab Peeta. There was a charm looped through the chain. It was a heart, encircled by thorns, with a knife through the top of it. It must have been a religious thing. Wasn't the thorns a symbol for something?

Peeta peered at the charm, keeping a weary distance between himself and Cato. "Is that the sacred heart?" he asked.

"What's the sacred heart?" Cato asked back.

"I can't be sure but I think it's a religious thing," Peeta replied. He looked up at Cato and said, "Now that I think about it, I think I saw a dog collar on that guy who was about to stab me's neck. He also did the sign of the cross and murmured the last rites."

Why was all of this to do with religion? Was it some sick joke? And why were all these priests in dog collars committing such random acts of violence? Peeta took the charm and held it up to the light, the chain wrapping itself losing around his fingers. "I don't have a good feeling about this," he murmured.

Cato shook his head. "Neither do I."

A/N: What do you guys think? Priests gone wild?

Please R&R! :D