Right before a big storm, I used to go with my dad to the harbor…to look at the clouds…feel the air. There's an eerie stillness before the sky cracks open…a hush. You can feel the storm gathering…smell the flood on its way.
~Sally Malik
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"Stand still, Josh." I ordered as I drew a circle around him. I straightened up and faced him. "Auger de gomay. Auger de gomay. Ancient one of the earth so deep, master of the moon and sun, I shield you in my wiccan way, here in my circle round, asking you to protect this space and off your sunforce down. Mmmm…"
"Did it work?" Josh asked after a moment of silence.
"Hmm, I don't know. Cause we'll find out if you're dead or not after a vampire attacks you."
"But just in case," Aidan muttered from the couch and he handed a pile of stakes to Josh who threw them in his book bag.
"FYI, Josh, if you ever decide for whatever bizarre reason that you want to aim a stake at me, just remember that I will drop kick your ass before you even get to point it at my heart."
"You know, I feel really awkward walking around with a bunch of stakes under my jacket." Josh said, changing the subject.
"You'll feel a lot less awkward when some vampire's ripping off your face." Aidan said, putting stakes into his own book bag.
"Yesterday, one fell out, and I had to explain to a roomful of nurses that I was whittling. That I'd taken up whittling." I turned to laugh but when I turned to the right, I leapt over the couch at the sight of Sally.
"Holy Hell!" I exclaimed. The veins on her face crawled on her skin like tiny spider webs under skin. Her eyes were pure white and staring into nothing. She moved slowly like a zombie.
"Hey!" She moved over to the window. "Can we get you…anything?" She didn't acknowledge Josh. Josh crouched low to the couch to whisper to Aidan. "She looks like The Grudge."
"She looks a little rough." Aidan tried to be polite about.
"Rough?" I questioned him.
"Aidan, if we videotaped her and showed somebody, they'd be dead in three days." Josh said.
"She was almost exorcized." Aidan reminded us.
"She looks like she's going to eat our entails." Aidan gave an irritated sigh.
"It has only been a few days. She needs time to heal. She'll be back."
"As what?" Aidan got up, grabbed his sunglasses off the stand and walked out the door. "Don't leave me alo—" I phased and raced out the door just before Aidan closed it, leaving Josh alone with creepy Sally.
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Aidan opened the door to the steps that lead to the locker room for me and I walked down the steps first with Josh and Aidan behind me.
"Look, I'm sorry about Rebecca and Bobby." Josh said. "I know you're really messed up right now."
"Watch your words, mutt." I said.
"But if the Dutch are really as badass as you say they are, don't you think that Bishop has hightailed it?"
"He'd just go underground." Aidan said. "He hasn't left Boston."
"How do you know that? I mean, maybe he's gone back to Romania or Slovenia or Not Scary Farm."
"Boston is Bishop's. He spent decades ensuring that. He's not going anywhere."
"Maybe he's rebuilding. Maybe he's meeting with architects and interior designers and he's building a new green vampire liar and—"
"And Josh should really shut up now." I said.
"I openly defied him, Josh." Aidan said. "Hegeman, Marcus…Rebecca. If he is rebuilding, he can't do a single thing if he keeps me around. No vampire would follow him if he lets me live."
"Let's do an ego assessment." Josh suggested.
"Let's not." I said.
"Maybe we're thinking of ourselves too highly. Listen, if—if Bishop really does wanna kill you, why are we at work and not at home where he can't cross the threshold?" We stopped and faced each other as a janitor came down with a trash can on a cart.
"That's a brilliant idea. We'll just stay in the whole time. Grey Gardens for the supernatural. Don't worry."
"Whatever he has to throw at me, I'm ready." Aidan said. The janitor stopped behind Aidan and a piece of wood dropped from the trash can. In seconds, Aidan had a stake out and was holding the janitor up against some lockers, ready to stab him.
"Aidan! Stop it!"
"Aidan!" Josh exclaimed. "What are you doing?" I heard the man's heart beat frantically as he look terrified at Aidan.
"Aidan, let him go right now!" I grabbed his arm and tried to pry him away from the man. "Stop it right now! *Forever could never be long enough for me. I feel like I had long enough with you. Forget the world now, we won't let them see. That there's one thing left to do. That the weight has lifted. That love has surely shifted my way.*" Aidan's grip on the stake loosened and I snatched it away from him as Josh pulled him away from the janitor.
"I'm sorry, sir. I'm taking him back to the psyche ward right now." Josh pushed Aidan forward and we left the hallway.
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When you know you're gonna die a violent death, when that's the only way you can die…it's all about the waiting for the final storm…if the waiting doesn't kill you first.
~Sally Malik
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I walked down the sidewalk beside Aidan, my arm hooked around his. As we neared the house, a burning, gagging, gasoline smell killed my lungs.
"Aidan, do you smell something burning or is that just Josh?" I asked. Aidan sniffed the air.
"The house is on fire." Aidan said. We raced the rest of the block and Josh ran up the steps and stormed into the house with Aidan and me behind him. Heat clouded our vision as we saw the living room engulfed in flames. Sally, who no longer looked like a zombie, was standing in front of the couch while Danny was trying to get to the kitchen.
"What the hell?" Josh exclaimed.
"Sally!" Danny cried out.
"He's trying to kill me, again." Sally said casually.
"Aidan, it's Sally!" Danny tried to run past Aidan and out the door but Aidan grabbed him and slammed him back into a wall, letting him fall to the ground. Aidan and I stood over top of him as Josh ran to the close and grabbed the extinguisher to put the fire out.
"You know how long I've wanted to do that?" Aidan asked over the crackling of the fire. "Are you done, my friend?"
"Friend, my ass." I said. Josh put out the last of the flames and turned to Sally.
"Are you ok?" He asked.
"You can see her?" Danny questioned us. "Sally?"
"We can see her because we're like her.
"What?" Aidan crouched down in front of Danny and took off his sunglasses, revealing his black eyes and fangs. Aidan punched Danny across the face before shaking him before Danny went unconscious.
"No, no, no, wake up." Aidan ordered. "Wake up. He grabbed a fistful of Danny's hair and tilted his head to the side before looking up at me. "Lady's first."
"Awesome." I grinned and knelt down, my fangs flashing out. I leaned over and my teeth scraped against Danny's neck when Josh called out.
"Don't do it!" He yelled. I growled and rocked back onto my heels, Aidan still holding Danny in place.
"He deserves it!" Sally yelled back at Josh. "Doesn't he?"
"Sally, if you kill him he'll be here forever. He'll haunt you!"
"Please!" Danny cried. "I'll never come back!" Aidan punched him again.
"He's lying!" Aidan declared. "He will never leave you alone!"
"I know what it feels like to kill someone." Josh said. "You cannot live it down!"
"It doesn't matter!" Sally screamed. "I'm already dead!"
"You can have the house!" Danny pleaded. "I'll give it to you! Please!"
"We've all killed here, except for you." Josh tried to talk Sally out of it. "We've all killed someone. Do not do this. You don't want to do this."
"No one deserves to die more than you do." Sally said. "And nobody deserves to kill you more than I do. But I'm not like you." Sally crouched low to Danny and it was like she broke through the line between the real world and spirit so Danny could see her.
"Sally?" He questioned her existence.
"You didn't just get saved. What you're gonna get, you're gonna pray and cry and wish you were dead."
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"To our future couch…" Aidan declared, handing Josh and me martinis. I laughed. We stood in the bare, burnt living room. "brought to you by Sally, who is finally free." Sally laughed. "And to Dad, say goodbye to your life for the next eighteen years."
"Congratulations on knocking Nora up, man." I chuckled.
"Oh my god!" Josh breathed.
"Um, I don't even know what I'm gonna do with myself now that Danny's gone." Sally said.
"Oh, me neither, because, you know, that saga occupied a lot of my free time." Aidan said. "I guess I could start making up to Glaceon of the mistakes I've made to her." I smiled up at him.
"I'm gonna go back to med school." Josh announced. "Part time."
"Ah…" Sally awed.
"I can do that. I wanna do something for this kid. I don't want him, or her, to think that Dad is a bed pan refresher, you know?"
"I do." Aidan said. "And that's awesome. But, please, drink your martinis before they evaporate."
"Cheers." Aidan, Josh and I said before I took a sip and flames licked my throat. I looked up from my drink and gasped when I saw a gigantic white door behind Josh.
"Holy Hell." I muttered.
"Oh my god…" Sally gasped. "How long has that been there for?"
"You did it." Aidan told her.
"Um, that's not exactly what I thought it would look like, just hanging there. Is that crazy? Like, Tony's door was just in the middle of the cemetery, which was also weird. But this is like—"
"Sally." Josh said.
"I know. It's just all so sudden. I'm not mentally prepared."
"You've been waiting for this." I said. "You've earned it."
"I mean, how many ghosts even get justice, right? Except for that chick from The Lovely Bones. I wish I could take you three with me."
"I guess we all go eventually, right?" Josh asked. "See you in sixty years. Give or take." Sally slowly walked forward before turning back to Aidan.
"Do you know what's there? On the other side?"
"See us pictures." Aidan smiled. She gingerly reached for the knob. Her fingers didn't even brush against it when glass shattered behind us. Sally scream and we covered our heads with our hands. Aidan grunted and fell to the ground. I straightened up to see Bishop vamped out, stabbing Aidan in the chest with a stake. The skin on his face burned from the uninvitation. He screamed and ran back out the window.
"Oh my…Oh my god!" Josh crouched next to Aidan. "Aidan!" I dropped to the ground above his head and brought his head in my lap in took his hand in mine. "Oh my god! Oh my god! Aidan!" I watched the light slowly fade out of his eyes, his hand growing cold and stone like in my grasp. Every single second I shared with him passed across my mind. I couldn't make the tears stop and all my regrets about when I didn't see him when I could have kept jumping out at me making me feel guilty. I could not comprehend that he was fading away. I couldn't bear the thought that I would most likely never again see him all happy and giggly or even drunk off his ass. Never again would I see that smile. I could not comprehend that she wasn't still in there and this wasn't just a sick joke. In my mind, I kept seeing him open his eyes and yell at me for crying over him. "Oh my god! Hang in there, man! You're gonna be all right! You're gonna be ok!" As I openly watched my boyfriend die, I could feel my heart gain weight. Tears came streaming down my face and didn't stop like a waterfall. Then I became sentimental and remembered all of the good times and bad times we have had. I also grieved on the bad things and remembered his voice. "Aidan! Aidan! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Stay with us! Come on, man! You're ok! You're ok! You're ok! You're ok!" It was like he was slipping through my fingers. I could see the body but there was nothing there, like his soul had been emptied from his head. He was deathly cold and it becoming more and more hard to process the thought that I would never hear my lover speak again, smile at me again, laugh again. I would never see him do anything again. It was like he was a fragment of my imagination and I grasped onto my memories of him, but the memories seemed like dreams. My life experiences that includes him flashes before my eyes. I keep my hand on his face and when it also becomes cold, it becomes frightening. I think he'll wake up any minute and tell me to stop crying but he never does. "Aidan! Aidan! Aidan!" It felt like there was a whole weight on my heart and I was just letting him slip away. It hurt even more when I looked into his eyes because it didn't hold that sparkle or personality it used to have. My heart felt like it was sinking. Then it felt like nothing was gonna get better and there was nothing to look forward to. The world seemed to be darker than it was before. I could hear his voice and his image imprinted in my mind. I felt like I didn't exist. I felt empty. I felt upset. I felt confused. I felt angry. My emotions were all over. "Aidan!"
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A/N: The song Glaceon sang to Aidan was Marry Me by Train.