I would like to thank everyone who has been reading. I have reedited the entire story to increase readability. As my first story on fanfiction it took some playing with the editing feature to get it right.

A Dark Storage Building

Willow heard noises. They woke her up from her sleep. The urgent needs of her bladder screamed at her as did the bruises on her arms and legs. She silently teared up but listened trying to figure out who was out there.

Four voices spoke to each other. Willow couldn't make out what they were saying. Just as she tried to listen, they all went quiet.

A hand suddenly grabbed Willow's. She let out a scream that immediately died in her throat. She was looking into the face of the most handsome man she'd ever seen.

"I told you I heard a heartbeat, Jahquil!" The handsome stranger stated matter of factly.

The man had pale, white skin and longish red hair. His hair was parted slightly off center. Willow couldn't decide if his eyes were green or blue. She stared dumbly for a minute.

"Great just what we need!" Said another man.

He had to be Jahquil. He was a large black man with a bandana do rag. He wore a button up shirt and jeans and looked menacingly tough.

Willow's eyes darted about taking in the other two. Both were female. One looked like she'd crawled out of the urban, white trash ghetto. In her knit cap wifebeater and low cut jeans. The last was the most masculine woman Willow had ever seen. If her face had not been so definitely female she'd wondered at her gender. Her posture was purely male. Her large shoulders and broad hips combined with a covering of no nonsense muscle clashed with the large breasts that defined her as a female. her canvas shoes khaki pants and tee shirt where unisex and without trace of style.

The muscular woman spoke.

"Aubrey find out what she knows. We're in a hurry." She commanded.

"Aubrey. What a pretty name..." Willow thought.

The handsome man helped Willow out of her hiding place. He bent down to look her in the eye.

"Hello, little one. It looks like you were in quite a pickle. What happened here, child?"

Willow looked and was aghast at what she saw. Most of the bodies appeared as they were during the fight. The warped were still warped. Some looked ancient, however, like decades of rot had claimed them since they fell in the fight. Willow was quite confused. She was about to ask what was going on when a firm pair of hands turned her back to looking at Aubrey.

The questions seemed to melt away as she looked at him. In the back of her mind something told her this was very wrong but... if looking at this gorgeous man was wrong... Willow was not sure she wanted to be right. If she could get a picture of him, she'd be replacing her Jay Odele screensaver she got with her Sapphire Orchid Dreams CD.

"Don't look upon such ugliness. Look at me and tell me what you saw." Aubrey said with an an almost musical lilt to his voice.

"Umm it's really complicated. Some people kidnapped me, or I think they were people, they were really ugly. I mean REALLY ugly. Then these other people came bursting through that doorway. They were some sort of freaks. I just want to go home." Willow stated truthfully.

"...and so you shall child. We'll take you home." Aubrey assured her.

The large woman jerked her head in Aubrey's direction.

"The hell you will! You know what we have to do!" She hissed.

"She's just a girl, Janice, we are not doing that." Aubrey replied.

Willow tensed slightly.

"You don't have to kill me. I know when to keep quiet. If I was to talk about this I'd likely be put away. No sane people believe in monsters or that sort of thing." Willow asserted.

Aubrey looked down. Surprise registered on his face. Both Jahquil and the large woman, who it seemed was Janice, looked shocked. They both advanced, as if they were ready to do something physical. Willow's eyes widened as Aubrey pulled her close with one arm and pulled a pistol with the other. The woman who had yet to speak stepped forward.

"Let's not be hasty, now. Just ease up everyone." She said.

"Kaylee, you better talk that mother into putting that rod down or I'm going to rip his head off. No one pulls a gun on me " Jahquil advised threateningly.

"Why don't you convince me yourself Jah?" He said cooly.

Jahquil flexed his arm and seemed to be preparing to take action. Janice seemed to be eyeing Kaylee, ready to move if she interfered. Everything was set to break out into a very bad very violent end.

"Is there anyone more mature or perhaps a higher authority I can talk too?" Willow asked pleadingly.

Kaylee seized on the momentary confusion.

"Hell, yes! Let Nines make the call, or heck were not far from Santa Monica. Let Therese do it." She said.

Aubrey uncocked his gun and slid it back into his pants.

"He has to have a hidden holster there." Willow thought.

Jahquil nodded.

"Alright. We'll let Voerman make the call. Come on get the girl in the car and let's finish what we came here for." He said.

Kaylee walked over and flicked out a switchblade. Willow had a split second of panic before she started cutting the ropes that bound her wrists.

"Come on kid let's go." She commanded.

Willow followed her out of the storage building to where a van waited. Willow rubbed on her wrists as she walked to help the circulation. She glanced, surprised, at her left hand noticing there was no mark where she was stabbed before with the needle. She looked back at the storage shed. She noticed the windows in the broken garage door we're not just painted over but had been boarded over.

"I really have to pee." She said.

She looked up with hope to Kaylee who sighed.

"Come on, this way." She said.

She lead Willow to the storage park's office.

"There should be a bathroom in here. Just don't wander." She warned.

Willow entered the building and went to the back. She was very relieved to find a bathroom. She'd learned to be quick about her business. She had to with sharing a single restroom with her brother and mother...unless she was purposefully trying to irritate Kashi. She thought she might have a slight bit of time before they'd wonder what happened to her. She hid the paper towels and wet her hands. If they asked she was looking for the towels. An alibi secure, she started to look through the other rooms as quickly and quietly as she could. She had to suppress a yelp when he came to the second one. Inside there was a dead security guard. It was likely he was the only one who was here at the storage park this time of night. He was very dead. His gun was in a corner, his phone shattered on the floor near him. He'd been clawed apart and his throat ripped out. However, there was very little blood.

Willow thought to herself. He should have about five quarts of blood as large as he was, but that's not but a few cups at most. She pondered where the blood went. As she did, her stomach felt like it sank through the floor as it dawned on her. No use denying she decided. She picked up the landline phone. She was unsurprised to find that it was dead. She put it down and started back toward the doors.

"Well... I don't think they are the teen novel vampires." She inwardly lamented.

Two Blocks Away

James turned. If the GPS on his dash was right, just two more turns and they'd be at their destination. Looking back up from checking the GPS James saw a windowless, white van being followed by a motorcycle speeding the opposite direction. Much the same way Kashi was following him. James blinked and did a double take when he glanced at the woman on the back of the motorcycle. She was extremely masculine.

"Hey, Lucy. I think there might be a Warlock or something at work here. There are just too many coincidences in this case." He spoke to the phone on his dash.

The cell phone sat silently on the dash. It took a minute to respond, but finally Lucy's voice crackled out of the tiny speaker.

"Because someone else is driving a motorcycle?" Lucy scoffed.

"Yeah, but did you see the woman!? She's very masculine. Kashi's very feminine." He commented.

After a pause, Lucy answered.

"Is that some latent homosexuality peeking out, kid? Because that guy following you is a well muscled stud." Lucy observed.

James flushed slightly.

"Well...he might look like that from a distance! But, up close, his face is just a tad on the girly side. If he didn't work out and play sports he'd be a girly as... "

James searched for a comparison.

"...as Jay Odele!" He declared.

"If Jay Odele was following you I still wouldn't agree it's coincidence enough for a Warlock. I mean you saw a large white van being followed by a butch woman. You're in a small pregnant roller skate being followed by a jock. Now, get your head back into the game, kid." Lucy said.

James sighed. He took the last turn and drove into the storage place. Kashi pulled up as he got out.

"I take back what I said about those old women you dragged me to see." He began

"You've realised what you said was really insensitive?" James hoped.

"Nah. I saw that dyke on the bike! I think SHE'S the most butch lesbian I've ever seen!" Kashi proclaimed.

With a sigh, James kept walking. There were multiple storage units on this lot. Each one almost virtually identical to the other. He stopped close to the building in the very back left corner of the lot. He stood eyeing the blasted door and twisted corrugated siding.

Kashi walked up and halted. He took in the building and looked around.

"Holy shit! Those people are dead!" Kashi exclaimed.

His eyes darted among the bodies wildly searching. Thankfully, however, Willow was not among them.

James eyed the bodies as well.

"These weren't people...they were vampires." He declared.

Kashi turned to him.

"Huh?" He asked.

"They're vampires. You can tell in a multitude of way. However, usually the most telling is that vampires remains 'age' the length of their undead existence when they are slain. The years these were dead didn't cause the bodies to turn dust meaning they weren't that old."

Kashi eyed James wondering if he'd been following a lunatic around.

James pulled a pen out of his pocket and walked over to a body. He lifted up a lip on one of the corpses revealing a sharp, white fang.

"Holy shit!. Holy shit, dude! He has fangs!" Kashi exclaimed incredulously.

"I told you, they're vampires." James said.

Kashi was not sure what to think about all of this. His mind whirled. He looked at the rest of the room before he spied something. He ran over and picked up a small pair of shoe laces. they had to be his sister's, judging by the pop star logos running along the laces.

"Hey! Willow's shoe laces!" He exclaimed.

Kashi stood up and sniffed.

"Hey, do all vampires corpses smell like this...like gas?" Kashi asked.

"Hmm...yeah it does smell like gasoline..." He said idly.

He then whirled around in a panic. He checked the room, seeing a small device sitting in a bowl. He tensed slightly before bolting toward the exit.

"RUN!" James yelled as he dashed off.

Kashi, utterly bewildered, followed.

"What's going on?" He asked.

"The warehouse is rigged to blow!" James yelled.

"What?!, Seriously?" He asked in a dismissive tone.

He looked back at the warehouse and then looked at James with a raised eyebrow.

"There is an ignition device in a bowl of gas!" James panted.

Kashi snorted.

"Have you ever hung around anyone who works on cars?" He asked

"No, not really... I mean I take my car to the shop and stuff." He said.

"Liquid gasoline doesn't burn. It's the vapor that burns." Kashi explained.

"Look, vampires fear fire. If they have to use it they tend to use something that starts the fire once they are long gone. Maybe it won't start the fire 'til that bowl evaporates or something... Or maybe the top of it will spark that's sticking out of the gasoline..." James reasoned.

Kashi sighed and rubbed his temples.

"I'm going back in there." He declared.

He turned to make good on his word. When he got about halfway there the shed shot with flames.

"Well... I was expecting more of an explosion than just flames but still..." James said.

Kashi eyed James and sighed.

"Okay. I'll give you a bit more time. If Willow was here how do we track her now?" He asked.

"Well...they didn't walk." James said.

He looked down at his phone.

"This way! There's a truck" He pointed.

James lead Kashi to the side of the storage park, where indeed, there was a black truck covered with a sheet. Kashi ripped the sheet off. James tested the door. It was unlocked so he climbed inside.

"It has a GPS! We can find where they came from!" He said proudly.

However, Kashi's mind had suddenly drifted to other thoughts.

"Who the hell do you keep texting on that phone?" Kashi wondered

The soccer star started eyeing the surroundings.

"You can't be that popular." He observed.

"I told you! We have people all over. They phone me with info!" James defended.

"You just happen to have people wherever we stop? I don't think so. Someone's following along with us, aren't they? Get them out here! I don't like knowing people are following me." Kashi huffed.

"That's not going to happen." James stonewalled.

"Damn it! I have had about enough of this super secret bullshit!" Kashi raged.

"Just - look...just bear with it. It's better if someone else is watching us, that way they don't know we have backup. Here...we have an address now lets get out of here before the firemen show up." James said.

Reluctantly, Kashi followed James back to his car, hopped on his motorcycle, and followed him out.

A Few Streets Back

The 'Cowboy' had been following, out of eyesight, checking his phone now and then to be sure he was still a few blocks behind the Hunter. He was very surprised when he saw something else come onto his screen. The girl! He watched, with despair, as her dot on the map went right past the Hunter's dot.

"Oh for God's sake! I pointed you right at her!" He said with disbelief.

If they hadn't dragged about so much they'd have her! They missed by minutes! With disgust he turned his bike and started to follow the girl.