Mako's Message: ... -sigh- I have no problems with this chapter. It's pretty much everything I wanted. But after all the time I spent working on this, seeing that word count...

Oh well.


I don't know about Todd sometimes.

I mean, he's a nice guy. He's fun and I like hanging out with him, but sometimes... Sometimes I don't have the slightest fucking clue what is going on in that skull of his.

I dunno. Maybe it's my fault? It's not like we talk to him about "business" after all. Why would he think there was anything dangerous about it? We should really hang out with him more than our weekly meet-up at Atomic Comics. Or find him a job or something. I mean really. This kid has too much time on his hands.

Maybe a girlfriend. That'd keep him busy.

Anyway, at least Marty still hangs with him pretty often, otherwise who knows how long it'd have been before we found out about his latest idiocy.

So Marty calls me, and tells me "I need to meet you and Dave at Atomic Comics right now," and to sit in the back corner if we get there before him.

We did, so we're sitting there waiting for Marty and wondering what the hell he needs to meet us there for since he didn't bother to say why he needed to talk before hanging up, when the door is practically kicked open and Marty frog-marches Todd in and back to our table.

Todd says, "Dude! What the hell?" as Marty shoves him into the booth.

Marty sits down next to him and says, "Tell them."

"Dude, what are you talking about?" Todd says, looking at us out of the corner of his eyes.

Marty punches him in the shoulder, making Todd yelp(Which I snickered at because I bet Todd is the only person he could have hurt with a punch like that.), and said, "Tell them."

"Okay! Jeez. So, I made some friends online...and they invited me to a party this weekend."

Dave and I both sat there looking at him, like, "and?" while Marty actually said, "AND?"

"And it's a vampire party."

And suddenly the conversation turned interesting!

Dave squinted at him and said, "What do you mean by 'vampire party'?"

"It's this vampire club I'm...kind of a part of. It's just this group online they talk about all sorts of stuff. Mostly vampire stuff, but ya know, whatever we feel like."

So I asked, "What kind of 'Vampire stuff'?"

And Todd shrugged and said, "Ya know, books, movies, what we think it'd be like, what we'd do with eternity, what celebrities might be vampires," Then he paused and looked at Marty who looked like he was going to hit him again, "And our Queen."

And that's when I went from suspicious to knowing exactly why Marty dragged us all here.

Dave asked, "What do you mean 'your Queen'?"

Todd kinda shrunk away on that, cause Dave started to slip into his Kick-Ass voice, but he said, "I didn't even think she was real! It was just something they said around the group, ya know? 'The Queen is not pleased by this.' 'Do it for the Queen!' stuff like that. It's not like she tells us to do things or anything. But apparently this party could be my chance to be part of the Inner Circle, which I DID believe in, I just..never realized it was as serious as it is. I thought they were just the moderators and the more popular members. So, if I became part of the Inner Cirlce I'd actually get to meet her." Then he paused and seemed to add, like it was some sort of justification(and I guess for him it is), "She's supposed to be really hot."

Dave is leaning on the table with his head in his hand at this point and he says, "Todd, do you follow the news? At all?"

Todd gets all shifty and says, "Does hero stuff count?"

"No."

"Then no."

Dave covered his face with both hands at that, so I took over, "Todd, for the last few months, there's been a serial killer cutting peoples hearts out. They thought they caught the guy, but they found him dead in in his cell with his throat torn out and no witnesses. They are literally being called 'The Vampire Murders'. Why didn't you mention any of this before?"

"It's just a stupid online group!" he said, starting to look paniced, "Nobody is...killing anyone. We just...talk about vampire stuff..."

Then Dave said, "Yeah, well, your group with it's 'Inner Circle' and 'Queen' sounds like a cult. A cult they think you might be interested in."

So Todd pushed away from the table and said, "Okay, so, I just wont go. And I'll stop talking to them."

And as soon as he said that I realized that that was exactly the opposite of what we needed him to do. Yeah, getting involved with these guys was pretty stupid, but If these ARE the people we're looking for, then this could be just the break we need. So I told Todd, "No, don't do that. Not yet at least. Let me tell Marcus about this and we'll see what he says." Then I got him to give me the name of the group so "he" could look into it.

Now, I AM going to tell Marcus about this, but I don't expect him to be able to do anything. So what I'm going to do is get a feel for the group and then see if I can talk Todd into taking me along with him. Then maybe if I can get myself into this Inner Circle or whatever I can see if these are the guys we're looking for or if it's just a group of emo idiots.

Either way, I'm excited to finally have something to do about this. This has just been sitting on the back burner waiting for us to get some sort of lead on these killings.

And I kinda miss going over this stuff while eating take-out Chinese with Marcus.