Nothing better than home

The fight is over and the Santa Carla vampires are destroyed. But are they really? Who survived and who didn't? Will there ever be a pack of vampires again, with the hunters around? Would vampires really care? And may it be that some of them meet again?

I don't own the Lost Boys or any of its original characters. I only own my OC's and situations I'll put them into.

Many thanks to the dear people who follow and favor my story. Comments are welcome.

Chapter 17: A cold-blooded murder?

Hope awoke a few hours later than usual. There was no noise from traffic here in the cave or people talking loud at the bus stop in front of her house, and no alarm clock, there was only the sea thundering against the rocks.

At first, she was surprised that she woke up in a strange bed, but then she remembered the events of the previous night and she felt insecure. She sat up and wrapped the soft blanket around herself.

Of course, the vampires were awake and Hope watched them for a while. Paul was sitting in an old wheelchair with a magazine about metal bands. His long legs hung over one of the armrests. He had headphones on and his head moved to the beat of the music.

Dwayne was lying on one of the sofas, reading a book whose title the young woman could not recognize from the bed; it looked pretty worn out.

At some point, he noticed that he was being watched. He put the book down on the table, got up, and walked over to Paul. Dwayne pulled the headset from his buddy's head, who looked around in astonishment.

The dark-haired vampire pointed at Hope, who was now looking sheepishly down at her blanket. "Our daughter has finally awakened from her slumber," Dwayne explained.

The tall, blond vampire stood up too, walked over to Hope and stopped in front of the bed with his arms crossed over his chest. "Hello, little one," he said, smiling. "Did you sleep well?"

When he got no answer, he sat down on the bed. "Yes, I know," he explained. "The bed is not in best shape, and this cave is certainly not as clean as you're used to, but it's rent-free and inaccessible to people, so this place is perfect for us!"

Hope was angry. "I want to go home," she yelled at him. "Why did you bring me here?" Paul rolled his eyes annoyed. "Didn't you get it," he finally asked. "You are at home! That's the place you belong!"

His face changed, he showed Hope what he really was. She screamed and jumped out of bed in a panic. Paul walked around the bed toward the young woman, who backed away from him. After a few steps, she was stopped by the cliff that bounded the niche where the bed stood.

She was now trapped between the vampire and the wall and clapped her hands over her eyes.

"Look at me, Hope," Paul ordered. Hope shook her head and tears ran down her cheeks. "Look at me," he repeated more gently, taking her hands off her face. She just closed her eyes and shook her head again, sobbing softly.

"Damn, girl, open your eyes," Dwayne said, who was vamped out as well and stood next to his buddy. He didn't blame Hope for being terrified, but it did not help, she was part of this family and it was time she finally learned the truth about her background.

"Hope, look at us now," both vampires begged. She finally opened her eyes. Paul sighed with relief and let go of her hands. "What you see now," Dwayne explained, "is what you are. You'll never grow old, and you won't die, but you have to feed!"

Hope shook her head. "No," she whispered, crying. "I am not like you! I saw what you did to that poor woman, how could you?" Dwayne raised his eyebrows and his forehead curled.

"Poor woman," he replied. "You have no idea. That woman was bad. Every night she left her children alone while her husband was working. She drank up his hard earned money. For one drink, she wanted to have sex with both of us. Believe me, her family is better without her!"

Hope looked at him skeptically. "And so what, you're God who decides who will live and who will die," she asked. Dwayne sighed. "God," he replied contemptuously. "He's got nothing to do with any of this. I never believed in him. I'm just me. And I want to live, and I have to feed, that's how simple it is!"

Paul nodded approvingly. "Right," he said. "And the sooner you'll get it, girl, the better!"

"I don't want to kill innocent people," Hope yelled at the vampires. "Sure, you'd rather kill innocent animals and lie to yourself," Paul said. "What are we, Hope? And what do we eat?"

The young woman looked at him defiantly and shrugged her shoulders. "I know exactly what you are," she shouted. "Then say it," Paul yelled back. "Say it out loud!"

He was furious and desperate and wanted to go for Hope, but Dwayne held him back.

"Vampires," Hope whispered. "You're vampires." Dwayne nodded. "And what do we eat," he repeated Paul's question.

Insecure she looked at the floor. "You drink blood," she replied. Dwayne nodded again. "Just like you," he remarked. Paul looked angrily into her eyes. "You know what," he finally said very quietly. "You're a hypocrite, just like your mother!"

The young woman looked at him shocked. Her lips were pressed together in a line. "You know my mother," she finally asked. The vampires laughed bitterly. "She wanted her Romeo, your daddy," Dwayne explained. "He could be very romantic, but she could not handle the whole package she got, his name is David, he was our leader and sire."

Hope looked at the silver bangle she always wore on her right wrist. Dwayne's eyes followed her gaze. "Exactly, the bangle was his," said the vampire, pointing to the jewel. The ring on your left hand is mine and the other one is our Goldilocks over there. The black skull dangling from your right ear belongs to Marko and the other earring had been a gift from your father. He wore the counterpart."

Paul watched her. "I would say, your mother just took our belongings, although I don't understand why!"

Hope looked thoughtfully at the floor. She was wearing stolen jewelry. She did not like that. She walked over to the vampires, who were now sitting on one of the sofas, and studied the two rings for a moment. She loved all the trinkets, as they were all Hope had from her parents, whom she did not know.

With a sigh, she pulled the garnet rings from her fingers and held them out to the vampires. They looked surprised at the young woman and smiled. Finally, Paul got up, took the two rings out of her hand and put his back on Hope's finger. The other he handed his buddy.

He took it with a smile and put it back to the young woman's finger as well. "They look good on you," he explained. "Besides, you are our child now!" He kissed her hands and sat down again.

"What do you mean," Hope asked shyly. "Easy," Dwayne explained. "You drank our blood last night. The bottle, you remember?" Hope looked at the two in confusion. "Why did you do that?" She asked after sitting down on a chair facing the sofa.

This time, Paul answered her question. "You were hungry and we had nothing else to offer," he said. "Besides, life in this cave will be easier now." "Hey little butterfly," laughed Dwayne. "There's a mental connection through the blood, you drank from Paul, and he tasted your blood as well, you should be able to hear his thoughts, but that's a bad idea sometimes, he's pretty crazy!"

The young woman grimaced and looked at Paul, who was grinning broadly. Hope winced when she heard his voice in her mind. "You're hungry," she finally asked.

The tall blonde vampire nodded. "Wasn't that hard, was it," he asked. His buddy got up from the sofa and walked towards the entrance of the cave. He stopped there and turned to Paul. Hope observed with fascination how the two seemed to have a mental conversation.

"Okay, it will work this way," Dwayne finally said out loud. "You go and feed now, and when you come back, I'll go. We can't take her for hunt yet, but we can't leave her alone. He sneaks around here every night."

Paul nodded with relief. "I'm surprised he lasted so many years!" Then the vampire grabbed his jacket and disappeared. Hope wondered who they were talking about, but she didn't get an explanation this time.

Hope looked after him and sadly thought of the man he would kill. A few seconds later he stood in the cave again and looked anxiously at Dwayne. "You'll be fine on your own," he asked.

His buddy looked embarrassed at his boots. "I haven't had memory lapses since we got to Santa Carla," he replied. Paul nodded and then finally disappeared. Outside he looked around and saw the neglected creature hiding in the shade of the trees. The vampire sighed and then flew towards the boardwalk.

Inside the cave, Dwayne had sat down on the armrest of Hope's armchair and stared at her. "This mental connection I was talking about is an important thing," he tried to explain. "It may save your life!" Hope looked at him anxiously and wanted to run away, but she knew she wouldn't get far, so she didn't even try.

"That's right," Dwayne said. "I can read your mind, but you can't read mine because you're not a real vampire. But if I drink your blood, it's a different story!" Hope jumped up horrified, but Dwayne held her by the wrist. "Relax, child," he reassured her. "I don't want to hurt you or kill you. A little bite, some blood, that's it. You'll wear my mark, and no other vampire will dare touch you. Besides, you can talk to me, distance doesn't matter ." He pulled the young woman onto his lap, stroked her hair aside and bit her. Hope sobbed, but she didn't fight back. When he was finished, he pressed a kiss on her forehead and held her for a moment.

For Hope, it felt like a fatherly embrace, at least that's how she imagined it. Dwayne sat down on the sofa again and closed his eyes. "Paul, really," he murmured as he saw it in his mind. "You just can't let it go, can you?"

Paul's loud laughter in his mind was the only answer he got. The young woman looked at him in astonishment. She had so many questions. Wasn't that why she had come back to the cliffs? But now she didn't know what to start with. She looked at Dwayne, who was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed, and found that the vampires weren't bad after all.

It was true, the vampires had scared her last night, but neither of them had seriously hurt her. The two had answered all the questions. "What happened to my parents," she asked and waited eagerly for an answer.

"To be honest," he tried to explain, "I do not know, we found your mother back then, who ran away from home, David liked her and we offered her a place to sleep. Your father was romantic and he also had charisma and he was very convincing, they became a couple, your second name, Jones is his name."

Dwayne got up and got two cans of beer out of the fridge that had not worked for a long time. After giving one of the cans to the young woman, he continued to talk. "As I mentioned earlier, she refused to seek her first victim, from the day she knew we were vampires, she retired, and we were amazed how long she remained a half-vampire, despite her abdominal cramps. We did not expect this to happen, you know it for sure and know what I'm talking about?"

Hope looked at him sadly and nodded. "Your father made the mistake of giving her Max' blood," Dwayne continued. Max was David's sire, what Paul and I are now for you. Maybe he would have had more influence on her if she had drunk David's blood."

"He could have manipulated her easier then, you mean," Hope interrupted his story. The young woman noticed a draft and suddenly Paul was standing right in front of her, covered with blood from top to bottom.

"Did I miss something," he asked amused when he saw Hope's horrified face. Dwayne looked the blonde vampire up and down. "It seems you had a nice dinner," he remarked dryly. "But I think your sight scares our little butterfly!"

Paul looked from Dwayne to Hope, then grabbed the young woman who was trying in vain to escape his grip and pressed his bloodied lips to hers. Then he let her go and pushed her back into the chair. Hope looked at him startled and protested, but finally, she licked the blood from her lips. She had never tasted anything so delicious. The two vampires watched with a grin. "That's what you need to survive," Paul finally commented.

Then he said the word to his buddy. "I let the little one go. I've found something much better. Must have been the young lady's lucky day. Well, she wasn't my type anyway. I had priests for breakfast!" Paul projected a picture into Dwayne's mind, and he laughed out loud.

"What, he's become a priest," Dwayne finally asked amused. Paul nodded. 'Guess who he was working with,' he communicated telepathically. "You should have seen his face when he recognized me," he said out loud. "It was divine!"

The vampires made some jokes about the priest, that were not very nice. They did not notice that Hope was watching Paul hungry. Her fangs came out and her yellow glowing eyes followed every movement the blonde vampire made. Before the men could react, she jumped on Paul and bit into his throat.

The surprised vampire laughed loudly, put his arms around Hope, who drank greedily from him, and dropped onto the sofa next to his buddy. "You could have asked too," he said grinning, and like Dwayne, he watched her amused.

"See, kid, I tried to explain that to you," the dark-haired vampire finally noticed. "Wait and see how good you feel after you've had your first victim!" He looked at Paul smiling. "Maybe she's not as stubborn as her mother," he remarked dryly. "Speaking of victims, can I leave you alone for a while, I'm starving?"

Hope didn't even notice he had left the cave. She was completely out of it and felt better with every sip she drank. Paul stopped her when he started to feel a little weak, but he was satisfied. He would later look for another victim, but at least he had fulfilled his obligation to take care of his first child, and that made him happy.

Hope slowly regained consciousness. She noticed that she was sitting on the vampire's lap and she realized what she had done. She had been guided by her instincts. She jumped off Paul's lap and looked down at the floor with shame. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean..."

"I'm not sorry," the vampire interrupted her. "I've never been sire before, and I'm telling you, it feels damn good. Hey, don't look so horrified, kid. You're not ready for your first victim, so it's our job to help you! You'll see, it's not that bad!"

Hope looked desperately into Paul's eyes, still not knowing if she could trust the vampires. "It just confuses me," she finally said with tears in her eyes. "I've always been an outsider. That's why I decided to do the social worker's job. I wanted to make sure that other young people didn't have the same fate as me!"

Paul looked at her smiling. "You've taken on a responsible job," he replied. "We've been watching you. You've done your job very well, but now is the time to think about yourself. You cannot hide your true nature forever and animal blood would not satisfy you in the long run. Maybe at some point, you'd attract other people's attention and they'd hunt you down and kill you. To be alone is dangerous for our species!"

Hope looked at him thoughtfully and shrugged her shoulders, whatever should she have answered. Hope looked around the room and noticed for the first time how beautiful this cave actually was.

Parts of the sunken hotel were clearly visible. The floor was covered with black and white tiles, which were arranged like chessboards. Large parts of the floor were complete. On the walls, which were still preserved from the reception room of the hotel, there were wallpapers with gold borders, which once must have been very expensive. At different places, there were still ornate candlesticks hanging on the walls, which of course didn't work, because there was no electricity here.

In front of the sofas and armchairs lay carpets. All these things were mixed with the things the four vampires had once brought into the cave, like the large red toolbox and the decorations the four had made from starfish, shells and other things themselves.

During the last thirty-one years, when nobody had lived in the cave, many things had broken down and a thick layer of dust lay everywhere. The rest had been removed by the humidity, which was normal for caves of this kind.

After all, in the past three decades, there has been no one who would have provided any warmth with cozy fires in the metal barrels. The barrels themselves were also destroyed and had holes caused by rust. Paul and Dwayne had bought new barrels in the last few nights and used the old chests in which they had once stored their clothes, which were also unusable after all these years, as firewood.

The vampires had also burned their old jeans and shirts and bought new clothes. Paul recently loved chequered flannel shirts, which were pleasant to wear and very easy to care for. The vampires could wash their clothes in the laundromat, but iron them - no, that would probably go too far.

"Have you always lived here," Hope asked into the silence. Paul smiled thoughtfully and looked at the magnificent chandelier that had fallen from the ceiling at some point and was now lying in the old fountain.

"Come to sit with me, child," he finally asked and patted on the sofa next to him. Hope complied with his request and looked at him with excitement. "What did you talk to Dwayne about," asked the tall blonde vampire and put his arm around the young woman's shoulders.

"He told me about my parents," the young woman replied and reported on the exact content of the conversation. Paul nodded. "Okay," he said. "We were originally four, your father David was the oldest, then came Dwayne, then Marko and I have been the youngest. I don't know exactly how long the three had been in Santa Carla, but David said he could use someone who knew the city well and I had no place to sleep. I liked them, especially Marko, he quickly became my best buddy. Your father told me that they were vampires and that I could become one. I thought the three of them were kidding me, of course, but they showed me the truth. That was nineteen hundred and eighty-two, I was twenty-three years old at the time. I've never regretted joining them. We had a great time together. A few years later your mother joined us and a little later we found a little boy on the Boardwalk. His name was Laddie. By an unfortunate accident, he also became a half-vampire. Your mother, as I said, refused to kill. She distanced herself from us and took care of Laddie. Finally, she met another man. She betrayed us and took Laddie. It almost cost our lives. Unfortunately, we don't know what happened to Marko and David. Dwayne and I woke from our sleep of death twenty-one years ago. Somebody had buried us. Well, we've been alone since that night. We left the city then and returned only a few weeks ago"

Hope thought for a moment. "And your victims," she finally asked. "Have you no pity for all the people you have to kill every night?" Paul didn't get to answer her question because Dwayne flew into the cave. He held a dilapidated, wriggling male figure in his arms, which he dropped in front of the old fountain.

"Tell us, Paul," he shouted amusedly, dropping himself on the sofa on the other side of the young woman and also putting an arm around her shoulders. "Do you pity them?"

Paul laughed and shrugged his shoulders, then he pointed questioningly to the figure in front of the fountain. Dwayne frowned. "Don't you think he suffered long enough," he asked. Then he looked at Hope smiling. "I brought your older brother home!" The figure in front of the fountain just growled.

Meanwhile, three men stood on the old paddock on James Marten's property looking at two empty graves.