For my sister, newly married. May the happiness in your marriage have the longevity of an immortal.

"Scent and a sound, I'm lost and I'm found, and I'm hungry like the wolf."

Chapter 6

MISSY

The damp sand stuck to the blood on her face as Marko leaned his weight onto the arm that was covering the back of her head, pressing her cheek harder into the wet sand. Sand tumbled in the corners of her mouth when she screamed reflexively, and she felt someone, Marko, she assumed, squeeze her hand hard to make her breathe, but she couldn't seem to stop screaming. Her ears were ringing, and the adrenaline flooding through what felt like her stomach, coupled with the sight of the bald vampire turning inside out like a tube of toothpaste, made her feel like if she had anything at all in her stomach, she'd throw up. "What. Happened?" She screamed. Marko's hand awkwardly half-petted the back of her head. "What happened?"

"Shut up and keep your head down," David said, barely lifting his. Missy raised her head just enough for Marko to slip his arm under it so her chin was propped up on it instead of buried in the sand. It was hard to look at the dead vampire —what was left of him on the sand seemed so much smaller than he'd been when he was alive. She turned her head as much as Marko's weight on top of her would physically let her, away from the dead vampire.

The little boy vampire was lying flat on his stomach in the cold sand with his jacket flipped up over his head, he looked even younger with his little pale face half hidden in the sand, frightened and frailer.

The girl vampire rolled away from the big vampire's gooey corpse, but didn't get up, staying down on her hands and knees. Missy could see how tense her jaw was from where she was. She stuck her hand deep in the pile of red jelly that used to be her friend. Her hand made a quiet squelching sound like someone sticking their foot into a bowl of mayonnaise when she pulled it out, and Missy shut her eyes, gagging. She pulled out two arrows and held them up so they could all see them.

Missy squeezed the arm that belonged to the hand that had grabbed her roughly earlier so tightly that her own fingers hurt. She didn't realize it was David's until she counted how many hands Marko had and realized that he suddenly had three. She let go of David's arm, shoving her hands in the sand beside her and making fists. She felt like she was hyperventilating and holding her breath at the same time.

She also felt like she was choking on sand.

"Marko, let me up."

"David," Marko said, choosing instead to ignore her, so she elbowed him in the ribs, which worked just as well as asking him to let go did.

"Raymond," the girl vampire said, holding the arrows up so he could see them.

The little boy vampire glared and angrily flipped his jacket back off his head. "Yeah, I saw them, Lydia." He got to his knees carefully, brushing sand off his cheek. His remaining companion reached over and grabbed his arm to yank him back down.

"Raymond," she said, not quite yelling, but Missy could tell that this was probably as close to panicked as she ever got.

"He's gone," Raymond said. "get off me." He stood up, but he was the only one.

"Are you sure?" Missy could barely hear anything over her own heartbeat at this point, let alone whoever killed the big vampire, but she tried anyway, holding her breath to force her heart to slow down. Raymond turned and looked at her directly over his shoulder.

"What do you think?"

Missy didn't hear it anymore. "I don't hear anything anymore."

"That's because he's gone." Raymond said, scratching the sand that had stuck to his friend's blood on his cheek off with his thumbnail. "He was gone after the second shot." He grimaced down at the dead vampire and kicked his body gently. He sighed "damn it" under his breath.

Paul was on his feet before any of them could stop him, lunging at Raymond and grabbing him by the lapels of his coat. "You asshole!"

"Paul!" Missy shouted. Marko and Dwayne stood up, almost simultaneously. Missy did too, but half-vampire or not, she wasn't getting in between Paul and Raymond.

Raymond, to his credit, didn't make it worse by pushing Paul, reaching up to scratch the side of his face tiredly, picking bits of blood and sand off his skin.

"Paul, let him go." Missy said. David put his elbow in front of her stomach and slowly pushed her behind him. "It's not his fault." Made all the more obvious by the fact that it was his friend lying dead at their feet and not one of them.

"This little piece of shit led him right to us!" Paul said, his face inches from Raymond's.

"He was coming here with or without me," Raymond said. He huffed quietly. "I just wasn't expecting to still be here at the time." He grabbed Paul's hands on his lapels and pried them off. "And I don't plan on sticking around either, so get off me." He shoved Paul away from him, and Marko and Dwayne caught him before he could do any more damage.

"Why did he stop?" Marko asked. "Why waste two shots on your friend instead of one of us?"

Missy glanced at the dead vampire over David's shoulder, swallowing audibly. "He was the biggest target." The full vampires all looked at her, even Lydia. "Maybe he was the most afraid of him." Raymond scoffed. "And he missed," she pointed out. "The first arrow missed his heart."

"Bolt," Lydia corrected her automatically. "Arrows come from bows. These came from a crossbow."

Missy glanced sidelong at her but didn't comment. "If you hadn't called his name, he wouldn't have moved." Raymond looked at her, but didn't say anything.

"So why stop shooting at all?" Marko asked, letting go of Paul now that he seemed to have calmed down.

"What, did he only bring two arrows?" The latter asked.

"Bolts." Lydia said again.

"Whatever."

"Believe me, if he wanted to kill all of us, he wouldn't have brought a crossbow." Raymond said. "He'd have used a Molotov." He added. "He just wanted to send a message."

"Which is?" David asked.

Raymond glanced sidelong at him. "That he's here. He wants you to know that he's here, and none of you will be spared." He wiped his hand on the back of his pants and then through his hair. He sighed. "So that when you're all being picked off later you'll know that the only reason you were left alive tonight is because he wanted you to be."

Missy reached sideways and Paul grabbed her hand without even having to be asked. She squeezed his hand and he gave her a rare look of concern. At least for him it was rare.

"You want my advice?" Raymond asked.

"Not really." Marko said absently.

Raymond held his hand out to Lydia and she wordlessly handed him the arrows. "Leave town. Leave the country, leave the planet, because that's the only way you'll ever be free of him. And do it tonight, because it might take two years, or twenty, but he'll catch up to you eventually. Maybe if you're lucky you can avoid him for the next few decades like I did and he'll die of old age. But I wouldn't hold your breath. So to speak."

"So that's it?" Missy asked. "We're all just going to die?" She never wanted to be a vampire in the first place. Until recently she thought that the boys would be the death of her, Patrick very nearly was. She couldn't make it through all that just to die here, now. Even God wouldn't be that cruel.

Raymond scoffed. "You've clearly never read the good book." He slapped David in the chest with the arrows. "Good luck. Lydia," he added, turning to walk away. She immediately followed him without so much as glancing at their dead friend.

"You know," Paul said, letting go of Missy's hand and stepping forward again. This time no one stopped him. "Why the hell did you even come here if you were just gonna fuck off and leave your shit," he indicated the dead vampire by kicking his corpse hard. "for us to clean up."

Raymond stopped and zipped his jacket up, sighing. "I came here, against my better judgment, I might add, so stow the attitude, because I was told to come here. That's all." He glanced over his shoulder at them, and Missy met his eyes tiredly. "You've been warned," he looked away, adding quietly, "you're on your own. If I were you, I'd go home, not all at once, and not together. Forget safety in numbers, he's not afraid to try and kill you in front of people, you might as well stay here and wait for sunrise if you make yourselves this obvious."

Missy found it hard to believe that anyone would be suicidal enough to take on four full vampires in a fair fight. She'd experienced first hand what happens when you try to kill a vampire, she was just lucky her eye had healed. Of course, maybe if she'd had a crossbow that would have been a different story.

She still couldn't believe the big vampire died like that. She could feel the sand sticking to the blood on her face. She'd seen two and a half vampires die now, Patrick, Eden, and Luther, and seven people total if you counted the four girls David and the boys killed in front of her, and even though she wasn't totally human anymore, it never got easier. If she had any food in her stomach at all she would have thrown up by now. It was almost a blessing that she didn't.

She didn't understand when she said it then how right she'd been about Patrick, about vampires being afraid to die, even more than she was afraid to die.

A couple of months ago, she would have said dying was the worst thing she could imagine, even if that wasn't how she really felt. Staying with Renee would have been worse. Losing her mom and dad, that was worse. Seeing Patrick kill Eden right in front of her, feeling like she was going crazy, not even knowing, still, now, if Eden was ever really on her side (or if it was all Patrick from the very beginning), being haunted by a psychotic vampire ghost, being set on fire. Knowing that in less than a month, she'd either be dead or a murderer —all that was worse.

Almost dying and being half-dead really put a lot of things into perspective, mostly dying. She thought about her death a lot since she came to Santa Carla, more specifically, since meeting the boys. She hoped it wouldn't happen, then just that it wouldn't hurt, that it would be quick, and then while Patrick was torturing her, just that it would be over with.

She had no illusions about any of the boys being good people —they weren't even technically people, but the fact that the dead vampire's blood on her face could have just as easily been any of theirs, that it was that easy to kill any one of them, despite how strong and how fast they were, made her sick to the very pit of her stomach.

"Splitting up is a bad idea," Missy said. Maybe they were easier to pick out of a crowd when they were together, but they were no better than fish in a barrel on their own. Maybe that was an overstatement. She didn't doubt that David and the boys could take care of themselves, but she barely felt human these days —and not just because she was a half-vampire. She could barely get out of bed at night anymore for how tired and sick she felt all the time, let alone fight.

Raymond looked at her critically.

"Someone always suggests splitting up in horror movies and they usually die first."

Raymond scoffed. "This isn't a movie, sweetheart."

"Oh, no," Missy said dryly. "because this is real life and we're vampires."

Raymond briefly raised his eyebrows as if to say "point taken". "Oh," he held up one finger. "since we've established that you're all determined to be stupid and die, in that order, here's another free piece of advice for you not to listen to: stay away from Max." For Missy, that made sense. Max was the head vampire, it wouldn't do for them to lead a vampire hunter right to him. "Or don't, lead the Reverend right to him, what do I care?" He glanced at her, taking a visible albeit unnecessary breath quietly. "And if you care about her at all, don't leave her alone."

Despite her acidic expression, Missy's heart still skipped a beat. "I'm not even a vampire yet," she said petulantly.

Raymond shrugged unhappily. "Close enough."

You are who you hang with. Figures David would be the death of her even if he wasn't the one killing her.

"What are you going to do?" David asked, though Missy largely suspected he already knew.

"Take my own advice," the childlike, if only in appearance, vampire said. "get out of town. Put an ocean between us if I have to."

Missy wiped her face with the back of her hand, looked at it, then wiped her face again vigorously. "Is it safe, do you think?" She asked quietly. "For us to leave?"

Raymond raised his eyebrows softly and sighed. "Safer than staying here."

Missy didn't disagree. Right about now all she wanted to do was go home, pretend this, like everything else in her life, wasn't happening, and sleep until it actually wasn't. But she didn't know if she'd ever be able to sleep again after tonight, not knowing that there was a vampire hunter walking around Santa Carla right now, which wouldn't have made a difference to her if she and most of the people she cared about weren't half and vampires respectively. "What if he's still out there?"

"He is," Raymond replied automatically. "But there's nothing you can do about that. You can't stay here all night. Well, you can." He indicated Missy with his chin. "But those are your options, take your chances, and Dutton will probably kill you, or stay here like cowards and the sun definitely will."

"You have a lot of nerve talking about cowardice," Missy said. "you're running away."

"I never said I wasn't a coward," Raymond said hotly. "I'm just a dumb one. If I was a smart coward, I'd just stay out here until sunrise and burn."

"I guess you're not that much of a coward after all." Missy said.

"I guess not." Raymond said thoughtfully. He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked quietly at the dead vampire on the ground. There was almost nothing left of him at this point, his skin had dried out and tightened against his bones like shrink wrap. He probably weighed less than she did now. She didn't know him at all, she didn't even really remember his name. Raymond didn't seem that broken up about his passing either, but she couldn't help but ask: "Is there someone who we need to...tell about him? Family? A girlfriend?"

Raymond scoffed. "You know you really don't have to tell people how long you've been a half-vampire."

Missy's eyebrows and jaw tightened simultaneously.

Raymond kicked a little bit of sand on the bald vampire's body. "This is what we are, and this is what happens to us when we die." He lightly stepped on Luther's back and one of his arms snapped off on its own like a dry branch. "We disappear, and the only people who mourn us are monsters, or dead. No family, or friends. People like us don't get either."

Missy's heart still physically hurt when she thought about Edgar and Alan, and to a lesser extent, Renee. There was no love lost between her and her step mother, but David had effectively taken away any hope of that ever changing by making Renee forget about her. They'd be on bad terms forever now, because as far as Renee knew she was dead, and that was the way it had to stay. She wasn't mad at David, not for that anyway, but she knew his motives were largely selfish for doing what he did, so it was hard to be grateful to him.

It started to rain, water dripping down between the cracks in the pier and hitting her eyelashes, making her blink repeatedly.

Raymond stared at her, blinking through the rain that he was standing directly in. "I meant what I said." He tilted his head back so the rain slicked his hair back from his face. "I know this man. This only ends one way."

Missy tucked her hair behind her ears with both hands. She shook her head and Raymond looked at her before she even spoke. "I can't believe that," she said. She shook her head sadly again. "It's not fair, and I know I say that a lot, but this—this really sucks. I didn't even want to be a vampire in the first place, but I am now, and after everything I've been through" her mom and Renee besides, she was tortured a few weeks ago, she almost died, she was turned into a vampire against her will, and forced to have a scary dinner with the head vampire.

She hadn't had a break in seventeen years. The closest she got to one was almost dying. "I'm not giving up now." She sighed with her mouth closed, furrowing her eyebrows. "I'm not. I can't." She didn't get set on fire just to die now.

Raymond huffed in amusement. "I probably won't be, but I kind of hope I end up being wrong about you."

Missy hoped so too.

Raymond grabbed the collar of his jacket with both hands and pulled it up so the rain wouldn't run down his back. "Good luck. Let's go, Lydia."

The rain started to pick up and Missy looked at the somber faces around her. Paul looked like a wet sheepdog. "What are we going to do now?" She asked.

David glanced sidelong at her. "Marko. Dump the body in the ocean."

Marko nodded, but didn't say anything.

David looked at Paul. "Paul."

"Yeah, I got Missy." Paul interjected, but David ignored him.

"Paul, take Missy home."

"Right." Paul grabbed her elbow, but Missy didn't move.

"Paul?" David raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah?"

"Straight home."

"Wait," Missy pulled on her elbow. "what are you going to do?" She asked.

David looked at her. "I need to find Star and Laddie."

Missy's heart dropped into her stomach when she remembered that Star and Laddie were out here too. "David, they don't know what's going on, they're not safe out here."

"I know, Missy."

"You have to find them!"

"I know." David said again. "Paul, take her home. Now."

"Wait," Missy pulled on her arm again. "what about Dwayne?"

Missy could see David's patience wearing thinner than the soles of her thrift store sneakers. "Don't worry about him, Missy, he has his own job to do." David didn't elaborate.

"Be safe." Missy said, chewing absently on her lip.

"Careful, Missy." David said. "Someone might think you care about us."

Missy glared at him. "Shut up and be careful." She finally let Paul pull her out from under the shelter of the pier and into the pouring rain. Her hair flattened against the sides of her face and neck instantly. It was freezing cold even though the night was still unbearably hot.

She could feel her breath catch in her throat as they walked. Even with Paul holding her arm, she felt incredibly exposed and alone, surrounded by the sound of her own erratic heartbeat, fear sitting in her empty stomach like a brick she swallowed whole. She felt like she had a target on her back, even though the vampire hunter already had a chance to kill her tonight and hadn't. Every hair on her body felt like it was standing on end, like when you were outside during a thunderstorm and there was a lot of electricity in the air.

She pulled her arm up so Paul's hand slid down it so she could hold his hand. It made her feel marginally better, at least temporarily.

Missy laughed breathlessly when she saw Paul's bike. Like making it to home base in a game of tag, she already felt safer. But Paul's bike wasn't the only reason she felt so relieved.

"Star!" She was standing next to Paul's bike, holding her jacket closed with one hand on her chest.

"Missy?"

"Star!" Paul let go of Missy's hand and jogged over to her, impulsively throwing his arms around Star. "Man, I'm happy to see you."

"Paul?" Star tried to back up, but Paul's arms were on top of hers, pinning them down. "Missy, what's going on?"

"It's too weird and hard to explain right now, but we're all in danger. David's out looking for you." He was, to clarify, not the reason they were all in danger.

"Where's Laddie?" Paul asked.

"I don't know." Star replied. Missy didn't have to be a mind reader to see that Star's was racing. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to lead with "we're all in danger", but this was literally a life or death situation, if she couldn't be a little dire now, when could she? "He had to go to the bathroom," Star went on. "I thought he'd be okay, but I only left him alone for a few minutes." Any other night, Star probably would have been right, Laddie would have been fine, Missy only hoped that she wasn't actually wrong. "When he didn't come back out, I went in to check on him, but he must have wandered off." Star wrung her hands nervously. "What did you mean, 'we're all in danger'?"

Missy didn't know how much she was allowed to tell Star about what happened tonight. She'd find out the whole story eventually, there'd be no way for her to protect herself if she didn't know the truth, but David hadn't brought Star or Laddie with them to talk to the other vampires for a reason, for the same unfathomably David reason he made her come. "I can't explain, not right now we need to find Laddie first."

Paul grabbed her by the back of her jacket preemptively. She could feel her heart pounding under Paul's fist where his hand was bunching up the denim. "Are you high?" he asked. "David'll kill me."

Missy didn't much care just now what David would do or wouldn't do, not if Laddie was even a little bit in danger. She jerked her right shoulder forward but Paul's grip was like Aqua Net: it held. "Paul," she said, inhaling tremulously. "don't be stupid. It's Laddie. I don't care what David said." At this point that should have been abundantly clear to all of them, not least of all David. "We have to go look for him."

"He's a half-vampire, Miss, he's not completely helpless." Paul said. "And I didn't say we were just gonna leave him out here."

"Then let's go," Missy looked at Paul over her shoulder and raised her eyebrows expectantly, but he didn't let go. "Paul," she said. "let go."

Paul shook his head, pressing his tongue hard against the inside of his cheek. He scratched the stubble on the side of his mouth with his long thumbnail. "You gotta stay here with Star, she'll protect you." Missy would have laughed if it didn't feel like she would throw up at the same time. "I'll find Laddie. Don't worry."

Missy worried. "That's not fair," she said. "and we'll have a better chance of finding him if we're all looking. We should go with you." She looked askance at Star, who hadn't chimed in one way or another. "Right?"

"I can't watch you two and look for him." Paul said. "and you can't even read minds yet. I'll be faster on my own."

Missy didn't really have an argument for that, but she couldn't just stand around and do nothing. She scuffed her foot petulantly. "David said not to let me out of your sight." She bit her lip. Paul's expression went slack, and Missy could see that he was trying to decide which would be worse for him, leaving her here to try to find Laddie and her wandering off to look for him herself, or David finding out he let her brow beat him into taking her with. Losing track of her and still not finding Laddie would definitely be the worst case scenario. Missy felt his grip loosen and realized this was the only window that was going to open for her on its own tonight. Without thinking too much about it, Missy pulled both of her arms out of her sleeves and ran.

For all the good being a vampire did him, it couldn't compete with a pothead's reaction time. Paul couldn't grab her fast enough, but she was pretty good at running from vampires at this point.

"Missy!" She heard Star yell after her, but she didn't dare look behind her to see if Paul was running after her.

"Laddie!" Water splashed up and hit her knees as she ran through a puddle. Her hair was beaten down by the rain, she kept slicking it back so she could see but the water ran down from her hairline and into her eyes anyway. "Laddie!" She blew the water out of her mouth and yelled again. "Laddie!" Her heart was like a slug coming up the back of her throat every time it beat. She held her wet hair back from her face and looked around at waist height for Laddie's identifiable gray coat. There was no way he got on any of the rides by himself, he was too little, but there were too many other places he could be. She was only just now realizing how stupid it was to go running off half-cocked. He could be anywhere, and now she was completely alone.

"Well, I wouldn't say completely."

Oh, please not now. She closed her eyes and sighed through her nose. When she opened them again, Patrick was sitting on a bench in her peripheral vision, his legs crossed with his ankle over his knee. His dark brown hair was wet and slicked back from his face, just like hers, but she knew rationally that it was because her mind expected him to be wet, so he was. He wasn't actually there, which she told him, for the umpteenth time.

He clucked his tongue but didn't argue. "So how's the search coming?" He asked brightly. He rested his arm along the back of the bench. "I hear missing kids are a real problem in Santa Carla. Well, you'd know."

"Shut up," Missy bit back without really looking at him. "I'm not talking to you. You're not really here."

Patrick huffed in amusement. "Neither is your little friend, Lordy. And you're burning night light." Missy ignored him. "Have you thought about what you're gonna do if you can't find him? Open or closed casket, I mean." He added snidely.

"I said shut up!" Passersby looked over at her, and Patrick grinned.

"Your friends are in over their heads," he said. "they have no idea what's coming for them."

Well, they had some.

"Don't you think I know that?" Missy replied absently, much more quietly.

Patrick was quiet for a moment, water sticking his eyelashes together when he blinked. "Do you know where vampires go when we die?" He asked. "Max didn't. I always wondered."

Missy shook her head. "Hell?" She shrugged, because it seemed the most likely.

Patrick smiled grimly. "That's what he told me. If only."

Missy furrowed her eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

Patrick shrugged mildly. "Where we end up is a lot worse."

The rain started to let up, but the thunder was still incredibly close and ominous. She tucked her hair behind her ears with both hands and asked: "What's worse than Hell?"

Patrick regarded her impassively. If it hadn't have been for the fact that he was a figment of her imagination, Missy might have thought he was ignoring her. He tilted his head back, letting the now gentle rain hit him directly in his face. "Nothing," he said, after a while.

Missy thought about hitting him, and he smiled. She'd just break her stupid hand on the bench if she tried. "Just go away," she sighed. She turned her head and wiped her cheek on the rough, wet shoulder of her shirt just so she'd have an excuse not to look at him.

"You wanna know what I'd do if I were you?"

"You are me," Missy snapped. "and no, I don't."

Patrick fluffed up his drying hair with both hands and sighed warmly. He tilted his head, the remaining water in his hairline running down his temple and into his eye, but he didn't blink. "Then you already know what I'm gonna say."

Missy clenched her jaw unhappily. "I'm not running away."

"Ugh," Patrick said, leaning back against the bench. "you know this whole unfounded loyalty you have for them, I just don't get it."

"That's what unfounded means." Missy said absently.

Patrick sniffed. "Everything bad that's happened to you is their fault."

"Some of the bad things that have happened to me are their fault," Missy said. "some of them are my fault —most of them are your fault," she added bitterly. Much of what had transpired had been beyond her knowledge or control, namely David's manipulation of events, and everything Patrick did before that night, but she'd made her fair share of bad choices along the way. The person she blamed the most besides Patrick and herself was Dwayne. If he hadn't done what he did, she wouldn't be in this mess right now. Sure, she'd be dead, but beggars can't be choosers.

"You're better off alone," Patrick said suddenly. "you always have been."

"Now I know you're just my subconscious talking," Missy said. "I was never better off, I was just alone." She and Renee might have lived in the same house, but they were both for all intents and purposes very much alone in their misery. Being a half-vampire was bad enough on its own, she couldn't imagine going through it alone too. Her self-imposed emotional isolation notwithstanding, at least she wasn't actually alone.

"This guy doesn't care about you," Patrick said mildly. "you're just a half."

Missy furrowed her eyebrows again. "Why do you want me to leave so bad? You tried to kill me when you were alive, why the sudden change of heart?"

Patrick raised his eyebrows softly and shrugged, but didn't answer.

Patrick was dead, whether the version of him she was seeing was genuinely his ghost or just her imagination remained to be seen, but if it was the former, maybe Patrick's spirit or whatever could only hang around as long as she was alive.

That was a horrifying thought if it was true, because if this vampire hunter didn't kill her, she was looking at an eternity of Patrick haunting her.

Before she could dwell too long on her bleak outlook, something made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. For a split second after she turned around she expected to see Marie standing there, if not for the fact that she hadn't seen her mother, in her nightmares or otherwise, since the night Patrick died. But it wasn't her.

"You know those friends of yours don't hear so well." Raymond stood diagonally from her with the collar of his coat turned up around his ears and his hands in his pockets. The little pale face sticking out of his subtlely too big jacket looked drawn and incredibly young. He looked askance at her, but Missy was sick of the prepubescent vampire's judgmental looks, and turned around. Patrick was gone, and the place where he'd been sitting was wet all the way through.

"I thought you were leaving town," she said.

"I am," Raymond said. "shortly, believe me."

The wind hit the back of her head half-heartedly, barely moving her hair. "So why are you still here? I thought you'd be halfway to Florida by now."

Raymond scoffed. "I'm waiting for Lydia to bring the car around," he said.

Missy knew he was lying, and not just because there was nowhere to park a car on the boardwalk. "Why did you come to Santa Carla? You clearly didn't like Patrick, and if you're as scared of this reverend as you say you are, why take the risk for us? You don't even know us."

Raymond sighed shortly through his nose. "I owed someone a favor," he said. "this makes us square."

"Who?" Missy asked. "Max?" If Raymond was surprised that she knew about him, it didn't show.

"Max and I have some mutual acquaintances whose interests momentarily aligned with me coming here, that's all." That if anything raised way more questions than it answered, but Missy imagined she'd have better luck getting milk from a steer than she would getting answers from Raymond.

"And your interests don't align anymore, is that it?"

Raymond scoffed. "My interests align with not getting an arrow through the heart," he said. "if you were smart, yours would too."

At this point it should have been obvious to anyone looking, even Raymond, that she wasn't smart. "I don't have anywhere else to go." Not just because she was a half-vampire, though that was largely true. She didn't know the first thing about how to be a good vampire, or if the two were mutually exclusive. Maybe she didn't even get credit for trying and she was damned regardless.

"Well," Raymond said. "look on the bright side."

"What's the bright side?" Missy asked carefully.

"You'll probably be dead soon anyway." Raymond shrugged.

Missy's nostrils flared as she breathed rapidly through her nose. "Do you really think he'll kill me even though I'm not even a full vampire yet?"

"Yes," Raymond said without hesitation. "He'll probably try to kill you first, you or the other half-vampires, just because you're easier targets."

Missy huffed sadly, inhaled, and exhaled again shakily. "If it's hopeless, why bother warning us? If there's nothing we can do to save ourselves, why did you even come?"

"Because what you don't know can hurt you, and this way, at least now you know." The wind blew his hair back from his face, and Missy was struck again by just how young he was. How could anyone do that to a little boy? It was impossible to tell exactly how old he was. He looked about twelve, but he was smaller than he should have been, like his growth had been stunted by something other than being a vampire. He could have passed for even younger if he didn't talk, but his face was where the resemblance to an actual child ended. He didn't talk like Laddie, but it was his eyes that really gave him away. They were too old for his face, and Missy suspected that he was at least twice as old as he looked.

"Your friend's dead," it wasn't that long ago that she had his blood all over her face, but that didn't seem to slow Raymond down even a little. "and apparently so will we be soon, but hey, at least we know, right?"

Raymond clenched his jaw and sighed almost inaudibly. "Look," he cleared his throat. "let me give you a little free advice."

"I've had just about all the free advice I can take tonight," Missy said. "and I'm not leaving."

"Loyalty is a rare quality these days. I'm sure your friend David holds it in very high regard," Raymond said sarcastically, then seriously: "but it'll get you killed. Probably in the next few days."

"You think having friends is a bad thing?" Missy asked.

Raymond shrugged. "Even if you do survive this, not all of your friends will, and you need to make peace with that."

Missy didn't reply. That had already occurred to her when she was laying face down in the sand with a mouthful of vampire blood.

Lydia walked up to them and stood next to Raymond without saying a word. Thunder cracked above them, and the rain hit them suddenly on their faces and shoulders. "That advice I was gonna give you," Raymond said over the sound of many feet trying to get out of the rain all at once.

Missy suddenly wished she was deaf. "Yeah?

Raymond tilted his head back a little so the rain was running his hair away from his face instead of into it. "Stay out of the Reverend's way, let him kill the one who turned you, and then go home, live the human life you were supposed to live. He'll stop hunting you once you're human."

"Are you joking?" Missy choked out.

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Raymond said mid-sigh.

"I can't do that." As far as she was concerned, letting Dwayne die just so she could be human again would be no different from staking him herself, and whether or not she liked his motives, Dwayne had saved her life. Whatever was left of it.

"They'd let you die." That was where Raymond was wrong, at least. Dwayne had already had the chance to let her die and he didn't take it. Maybe that was giving Dwayne too much credit, he said it himself, he didn't do it for her. David would definitely let her die to save himself, but Marko and Paul wouldn't. Two out of four wasn't bad. Raymond huffed. "Of all the heinous things a person can be in this day and age, naive is probably the most criminal."

"Maybe," Missy said. "but when I die, which will probably be soon, there aren't that many people who will even notice. And the only other people who might have missed me hate me right now." Probably forever. "But I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for David and the boys." It was anyone's guess how she felt about that at any given moment. "They saved me, I killed Patrick for them. I'm not leaving them." Even if she had somewhere to go, that just wasn't an option. "If I could survive being tortured by an insane half-starved vampire as just a human then I have to be able to make it through this as a half-vampire."

"Maybe," Raymond said. "you know if there was gonna be someone I'd put money on it'd be the human who kicked a flaming vampire with a broken leg," he said wryly.

"It was a dislocated knee, but thank you."

"Who knows?" Raymond inhaled hopefully. "I believe in miracles, and I've been wrong before. I hope I am now. For your sake, I really do." The rain weighed her hair down, dragging it slowly into her face so that she could barely see him. "Take care, kid."

"You too," she replied.

"Laddie!" The sole of her shoe skidded on the wet boards under her feet when she turned and her heart lurched into her throat for a second when she thought she might fall. She instantly felt stupid for panicking. So what if she fell? Laddie could be dead and she was worried about getting a little bump on the head? Her face felt hot, and she didn't need to look at herself to know that her cheeks were getting all splotchy.

She looked around at the few people that weren't running away from the rain, none of them Laddie, and felt hopeless.

Missy was seventeen years old (seventeen years, ten months and twenty seven days to be exact). She'd be eighteen in June —would be if she lived that long, and she had almost died four times. And not missed-a-step-going-up-the-stairs almost died, either, really died. Am-I-wearing-clean-underwear almost died. Come close enough to call it a near-death experience, anyway. Half of her close calls had been vampire in origin. But when you keep that sort of company, what can you really expect? The other half was almost drowning and almost drowning again, respectively.

At the rate she was going, she half-expected the next attempt on her life to be drowning by vampire.

If she had any luck at all she'd slip right now and hit her head on the ground and die instantly.

Here lies Melissa Van Buren —finally.

After so many near misses, death had to be getting impatient, maybe that was why he sent a vampire hunter to do what David, Patrick, and her mother couldn't do. But from where she was standing, it wasn't even the almost dying that was the worst part, it was the bodies that kept dropping around her.

Her mom.

Her dad.

Eden.

She didn't want to lose anyone else she cared about. What was the point of living forever if everyone you cared about was dead?

David will think of something, she told herself, you're just a stupid half-vampire anyway, what can you do?

Find Laddie. She nodded a few times and raised her chin. "That's what I can do." She was going to find Laddie, and somehow they'd deal with this vampire hunter, and everything would work out. Somehow.

Maybe if she really believed it for once it would actually happen.

Thank you for reading.

In case anyone is interested, I created an official West Coast Vampires Saga tumblr which can be found at missmelpcmene dot tumblr dot com. I will be sharing gif sets that I make, chapter previews, answering questions, and whatever else I can think. I encourage you to share fan theories, send in your burning questions, or just bug me for a new chapter!