Connor's eyes flew open. He didn't recognize the ceiling. He leapt to his feet, only to immediately regret it as he doubled over and vomited.
Had he been roofied? Also, what was a roofie? He wasn't sure where that word had come from. It didn't matter. He really needed to find a bathroom and rinse his mouth out. One glance around the room told him this definitely wasn't the Hyperion. He stood stock still and listened. He could hear people next door moving around, talking, and laughing, but he appeared to be alone in this particular apartment. He slowly pushed the door open and peered cautiously into a tiny hallway.
Connor spotted the bathroom immediately and made a stealthy dash toward it. He shut the door behind him and quickly splashed water into his mouth and over his sweaty face. God how he loved running water.
As he dried his face on a nearby towel, he heard noise. His first instinct was to climb out the window—but it appeared this bathroom had no window. What kind of idiot chose a home without proper escape routes?
"Connor?" the noisemaker suddenly called, and he froze in his tracks. "Connor, what are you doing in there? You know what, I don't even want to know."
Connor cracked the bathroom door open a tiny bit so that he could try to catch a glimpse of the person. Luckily, the apartment appeared to be quite small, and he got a direct view of someone hunched over, prowling around in the refrigerator.
"Just a minute," he quietly replied after much debate. He'd had to clear his throat twice before he could get any words to come out.
"Did you go to class today?" the intruder demanded. Or was Connor the intruder? Perhaps Connor was in this person's home, because he certainly didn't live here. But the man knew his name—or at least, the name the vampire had given him—so he must have let him in willingly.
"Well, did you?" the man asked again, still rummaging through the refrigerator. "God, please tell me you made it to school. If you missed your classes again, your dad's gonna skin you alive! And then I'll somehow get blamed for it, too."
Connor had no idea what this man was going on about, or if it was a literal or figurative skinning alive he could look forward to, but he decided he had to come out of the bathroom. He crept silently across the cold tile floor and leaned his back against a counter in the kitchen to watch the man, who was still halfway into the refrigerator.
"What do you want?" Connor asked briskly.
"That's a fine how do you do," the man chided, rising from the refrigerator with a plastic container of something in his hand. He had the most ridiculously fake blond hair that Connor had ever seen.
"What do you want?" Connor repeated.
"Probably not this," the man said, popping the lid off the container and making a face. "Don't you ever clean out the fridge? I don't even know what this used to be. Besides, I thought you said you were gonna get some blood in here?"
"Blood?" Connor asked, feeling his heart rate pick up.
"Yeah, blood," he replied, giving Connor a curious look as he tossed the container, offending former food item and all, into the sink. "You feeling all right, mate? You're lookin' a little green."
"Where am I?" Connor suddenly asked, no longer wishing to continue this conversation.
"Er..." the man said, looking very concerned and on guard. "Maybe we should go see your father."
"Father?" Connor asked.
"Yeah," the blond said. "You know. 'Bout yay high, hair a little higher than that. Giant forehead. Answers to the name Peaches?"
"He doesn't want to see me," Connor said, his mouth going completely dry.
"What are you on about?" the man asked. "Of course he wants to see you. He wants to see you every day. He'd move you in with us tomorrow if he thought you'd go for it."
"Us?" Connor asked. "You don't live here?"
"No," the man said slowly. "You live here. And you're obviously not well. I'm calling Angel."
"No," Connor said, shaking his head frantically. He wished the man would move so he could get to the sink. He was about to be sick again.
Connor couldn't wait, suddenly rushing toward the sink, and the man quickly stepped back out of his way and let him be sick. While he was vomiting, Connor finally put two and two together and realized that this strange man must be a vampire friend of Angel's. When he'd emptied his stomach, he threw open the drawer beside the sink and pulled out a wooden spoon, brandishing the handle end toward the vampire.
"Hey, whoa!" the man said, holding both hands up in the air, and clearly offended. "What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?"
"You come any closer to me, and I'll stake you," Connor threatened.
"Connor, we need to go see your dad. You're sick or something, mate," the man said, for all intents and purposes sounding quite sincere. But vampires were skilled at lying.
"You're not taking me to that monster!" Connor yelled.
"No one's gonna hurt you, mate," the man said, trying to calm him with his words. "Put the … spoon … down, and we'll talk about this, all right?"
"I'm done talking to you, vampire!" Connor spat, lunging toward the demon, fully intending to stake him and be done with it.
"Stop it!" the man shouted sternly, reaching forward and knocking the spoon right out of his hand before he could even think of plunging it through his chest. "Stop this nonsense right now, Connor!"
Connor thought he could probably take this vamp in hand-to-hand, so he continued forward undeterred, hoping to take out some of his frustration on him before finishing him off. He was caught off guard by a sudden wave of nausea, however, and felt a horrible pain in the side of his head as he collapsed onto his knees. Right before he blacked out, he had the fleeting thought that he rather welcomed death.
