Disclaimer: Any characters you recognize aren't mine and neither is the world they live in.

A/N: As I promised, here's a decent update! I hope you all like it (and maybe it was almost worth the wait).

Wow! This story is getting long! I didn't realize that so much was going to happen. It started out as just Nicole's story, but Devon's seems to parallel it so well that I think they work really well together. Oh well, longer is better, right?

Now, on to the story...

~*~

Fritz turned and surveyed his new surroundings. He had spent most of the day scrubbing the house and now it looked a hundred times better. A loud crash from the next room meant that Devon had woken up. As if on cue, Devon's head poked around the door frame. "Oops."

"That's okay. It didn't sound like anything broke," Fritz said. Ever since he had saved Devon from Midnight, he had been wandering aimlessly throughout the house. He seemed to have lost any interest in leaving the relative safety of the house. Devon came into the mostly bare room and dropped onto the emerald couch. The furniture had been Alexia's doing. She had gotten money from Kiree and Gabriel, then taken Fritz shopping. He had been completely useless when it came to picking out most of the furniture. If he'd chosen it, every room would have been a riot of color. Instead, everything flowed well. This room would have the couch that Devon was currently occupying, two matching oversized chairs, and cherry wood tables. The couch was the only thing in the room until they finished cleaning and then painted. Devon wanted to get a big TV and some gaming console for the room. Alexia thought it was a great idea so that it would make them appear more normal. "Do I really have to go back to school?" Devon asked, interrupting Fritz's train of thought.

"Don't you want to make friends?"

Devon shrugged and stared at the ceiling. "Not really. They probably wouldn't like me anyway. Besides, after...being there school is meaningless. I want to help people so that they don't end up like I did. School won't teach me how to fight a vampire."

"That's not true," Fritz said, sitting on the edge of the couch. He paused for a minute, thinking. "Are all vampires that bad?" He asked softly.

"Oh Fritz, I didn't mean it like that! You and Gabe and everyone are great. I don't even think of you as vampires. And without you, I'd still be a slave. I want to join one of the guilds."

"The guilds usually don't accept people unless they've finished school," Gabriel said, entering the room. Devon jumped, he obviously hadn't heard the front door open.

"That's not what I heard. Neither of the girls that are competing for Bruja finished school. They're just like me," Devon defended his idea.

"Bruja?" Fritz asked.

"Yeah, they're the top guild. No one else is as strong as they are! If I'm a guild member, I can't be prey."

Gabriel shook his head. "Now you're sounding like Nicole. That was her argument to get Vitaliy to change her. Now she's starting to regret it. A guild is a little less permanent, but they're still hard to get out of. Maybe it would do both of you some good to sit down sometime and talk. And until then young man, we need to get you on a normal schedule and back into school. We can't have the authorities beating down your brother's door for having a minor who isn't in school. How old are you anyway?"

"Fifteen," Fritz answered. "He was thirteen when Jeshickah took me."

"When you ran away from her, she came back for me. The only reason she didn't take me first was that you forced her to take you instead," Devon's voice was hollow as he recounted those events, like he really didn't live them. Fritz understood. If everything happened to someone else, it was easier to deal with.

"Let's get this house cleaned up and then get Devon some new clothes. I'm sorry man, but those pants gotta go and you need to wear a shirt and shoes sometime," Gabriel changed the subject. He picked Devon up off the couch and propelled him into the other room. "Clean your room!" He laughed. Fritz smiled as he heard Devon join in the laughing. Maybe things would be okay after all.

"So, what's next?" Gabriel asked.

"Um..." Fritz did a mental inventory of what he'd already done. "The kitchen needs to be cleaned and then we can start painting. These grey walls need some color."

"Let's get started. You know, I never thought that I would be doing things like this ever again."

Fritz grinned and tossed him a sponge. "Neither did I, but here we are. Might as well get it done."

~*~

Devon stood in the middle of his room and surveyed it. He didn't have a bed yet, just a mattress and box springs on the floor. He had asked Alexia to let him decide what to do for furniture in this room. He wanted to build something, to make it his own. Instead of cleaning, he picked up sketchbook from the floor beside his bed and dropped onto the naked mattress. He hadn't been bothering with sheets. Since the room was small and had a fairly high ceiling, he thought that he would loft the bed. Not so high as some that he had seen, but enough to get it off the floor and put things under it. He thought that five feet would be the perfect height.

Since he had a king-sized bed, maybe they could put a low couch under it on one end, hidden by a desk along the front, and put some shelves on the other. Maybe for a TV. Then he could hang some curtains to hide the rest and have his own little hidden space. It would almost be like a cave. The initial plans didn't take long, but when he was finished he had a great plan. Now he needed tools and materials. He left the room to go find Gabriel and his brother. They were sitting at the kitchen table, having long since finished cleaning. They stopped talking when Devon came into the room. "Am I interrupting anything?" He asked.

"No," Fritz replied, "We were just talking. I was thinking that I might need a job and Gabriel was giving me some ideas."

"Oh. Hey! Look what I thought up," he slid the open notebook onto the table between them. "Can I do this to my room? Please?"

Fritz was smiling as he looked at the sketch. "I think we might could manage this. What do you think Gabriel?"

"I like this idea. We can probably do it," Gabriel said.

Devon smiled for the first time in a very long time. He was happy that they liked his idea and wanted to help. Maybe he and Fritz would get some more time to talk. He hoped that they could go back to just being brothers, but that seemed almost impossible. Too much had happened in the last three years. "When can we start?" He asked hopefully.

Fritz's face broke into a wide grin. "Why don't we go get what we need and get started?"

Gabriel cleared his throat. "I hate to ruin the good mood, but we really should clear everything out of the room and get it cleaned up before we start anything."

Devon and Fritz both reluctantly agreed that it was the best thing to do and the boys went to work. It only took a few minutes to clear the room of Devon's possessions: the mattresses, a handful of books, a lamp in the corner, and a box of clothes that had been recently bought. What took some time was scrubbing years of grime from the walls and giving the wide floorboards an even more thorough treatment.. The window panes were cleaned with ammonia so that the late afternoon streamed brightly in. Before they could build anything, they would have to paint. Devon's plans had said that the walls would be a deep shade of blue. He still wasn't sure what color he was going to make the bed, but a glossy black would probably look really neat. Especially if all the trim in the room was painted the same black. When they were done cleaning, they realized that the home improvement store was closed. They would have to wait until the next day to get everything.

"Hey Devon?" Fritz called from the other room after Gabriel had left.

"Yeah Fritz?"

"Would you hate me if I asked you to at least try going to school next week?"

"I guess you and Gabriel are right-- I do need to go back. But I still need some more time. Two weeks?" He tried to compromise. Fritz came to the door of the living room where Devon was sprawled on his bed, finalizing the plans for his room.

"Two weeks is fine. If that comes around and you're still not ready, we can talk about it then. Okay little brother?"

Devon smiled at Fritz; his second genuine smile that day. "Okay."

~*~

Nicole left Vitaliy's house later that night and went home. She forced herself to sit in the kitchen with her mother and talk for a while. She had to admit, it was nice to be "normal" again even if it was just for an hour or so. She floated upstairs to her room around eleven and changed into her pajamas. Then she pulled her script from her bookbag and began to study her lines. Since she had skipped out early, she didn't have any homework. Just as she had gotten comfortable, a small figure padded into her room through the bathroom that she shared with the twins. It was Angie. "Hey Nikki?"

"Yes?"

"Why are you so sad lately?" Angie asked as she crawled into bed with Nicole, uninvited but welcome all the same. The five year old girl picked up Kali and hugged her before snuggling up to her big sister.

Nicole didn't answer at first. How could she explain everything to her sister? "Well, Vitaliy and I got into a fight, and there is a girl at school who is being really mean to me," she finally answered.

"No, it's been more than that," Angie said. "Ever since you went away for a few days. You're different."

"How am I different Angie?"

"I don't know. Mary thinks so too. We don't want you to be sad Nikki. We love you. Can you be happy again for us?" Angie's big blue eyes looked straight into Nicole's core. She couldn't hide anything from her sister.

"I'll try, okay? Hey, I have an idea. Why don't me and you and Mary go to the creek on Saturday and have a picnic. Just the three of us and nobody else."

"Well, there is one other person that can come," Angie said mischievously.

"Oh?" Nicole asked. "And who is that?"

"Vitaliy! Me and Mary think that you two needa get married. We want him to be our big brother."

Nicole had to grin at that. Somehow Angie always knew what to do to cheer her up. "We can ask him if he wants to come. Maybe I can get him to come home after school tomorrow too. Would you like that?"

"Yeah! That would be cool!" Angie's face lit up.

"Okay kiddo, I'll see what I can do. You need to go back to bed so you can go to school tomorrow. Do you want to take Kali so she can protect you?" Nicole helped Angie climb off the high bed.

"No, I think she needs to protect you tonight." As Angie got to the open door, she turned back towards the bed. "Nikki? Why are your eyes black? I don't like them that way."

Nicole had forgotten that she had dropped the illusion earlier. "Oh! I forgot that I had put some contacts in today to see what they looked like," she said, thinking quickly.

"Well," Angie said matter-of-factly, "They don't look good. I like your eyes better the way they were. You should keep them that way."

"I'll do that. I don't think I like these either. Now, get back to bed you little sneak before mommy catches you!"

That threat was enough to send her little sister scampering back to her bed. Nicole put her script on her bedside table, all interest of studying it gone for the night. Tomorrow would be soon enough for that. Now she had to think about a nice sunny afternoon spent with her sisters and Vitaliy.

~*~

Gabriel parked his truck in Alexia's driveway. Her little Toyota was pulled off to the side. He stretched his senses and was relieved to find that neither Kiree nor Kaeli was home. Not that he minded being around them, but right now he just wanted to be alone with Alexia. They hadn't really had a chance to be together since Nicole had gotten abducted. She was busy with school and he had been spending most of his time with Fritz and Devon. He snuck upstairs and managed to get into Alexia's room unnoticed. Her long hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she was wearing sweat pants and an old T-shirt. She was sitting cross-legged at her computer. The sound of her fingers dancing across the keys filled the room. She stopped to consult the open book in her lap. Alexia never noticed that he was there until her covered her eyes with his hands. "Hey there sweetie," she said, and looked over her shoulder at him.

"Hey sexy. How's the paper coming?"

"Well enough to take a break for a nice long while," she answered, setting the book next to her computer and giving him a hug. They started kissing and ended up on the bed without Gabriel knowing how they got there. It was really nice to lay there with her with nothing to worry about. "Now, where were we when your brother so rudely interrupted a very long time ago?" Alexia asked between kisses.

"I don't know. Why don't you remind me?" He asked as innocently as possible.

"Oh, I think you remember," she replied coyly. "There was something about you wanting to see what was under my nightgown. And I recall a similar comment about a bra. Does that jog your memory?"

"Ma-aybe. I think actually seeing it might jog my memory more," he replied.

"That might be a little difficult."

"How so?"

"I'm not wearing a bra."

Ooh, he said. It was easier to talk with his mind while they were kissing. It was less work that way. So do I actually get to see what it under it now?

"MmmHmmm," she answered happily. "That is, if you still want to."

I'd be crazy not to. I love you.

"I love you too."

~*~

Across town, India was sitting on her front porch. She had finally gotten back home twenty minutes earlier. She wasn't in a good mood. Not only had that guy gotten in her way, but he had abandoned her in the middle of the woods. It had taken her a while to regain her bearings. Actually, it had taken her a fourty-five minute walk in the wrong direction to figure out where she was, but she wasn't going to tell anyone that little fact. She had refused to call Jack or anyone else to come pick her up. She never would have heard the end of it. Every hunter knew better than to go into an unknown situation and pick a fight with a vampire. And to top it all off, she had basically come right out and told him her heritage! It was all Nicole's fault! If she hadn't become a leech, none of this would have happened. She and Jack wouldn't be fighting, she wouldn't be on the verge of loosing everything, and life would be so much better. She would make sure that Nicole paid for destroying her life, one way or another. India decided that she would do something about Vitaliy and Alexia as well.

Even though Alexia wasn't a leech, she might as well have been one. After all, she was always around them. She was probably one of those people who was addicted to vampires. It probably made her feel important to have them as friends. For all India knew, she might even be dating a vampire! That thought reminded her of something she had heard Alexia and Vitaliy talking about. Alexia was dating Vitaliy's older brother. The vampire she had argued with said that he was Vitaliy's brother. What was that girl thinking? All India knew was that she was nuts and a pain in the ass. India would have to do something about that. With a new resolve, she rose and went into the house. Her parents were probably wondering where she was by now.

~*~

End Part IV.

I hope you liked it. Even if you didn't, that "review" button looks awfully lonely. Click on it and let me know what you think!