The world was dark still, but sounds and voices surrounded Taylor.

The front door opening. Then closing.

"Is she still out?" Michael.

"She woke up for a bit, and then David changed on her and she was out again." Sam.

The front door opening, then closing again.

"What the hell did you all do to her?" A man's voice, one she didn't recognize. "Michael said you fed in front of her? Really, I thought I raised you boys better than that."

"She was with the surf nazis," Marko said, as if that was an excuse. "We didn't know it was her until..."

"Until Michael pulled her off one of them, topless." David snickered, emphasizing the last word. "She tried to run back up onto the boardwalk with nothing on her."

Although Taylor couldn't see Michael or her mother, she heard disappointed sighs from both of them. At some point, one of the boys must've put her shirt back on her.

"I thought I was running for my fucking life, excuse me if I didn't pause to get redressed. And besides, that's really the topic at hand here?" Taylor said, sitting up slowly as her vision came back.

She was surrounded by them, just as she imagined she'd be when she first go there - all of them, together in one room, sitting around and catching up. And now, now circumstances were so different.

The Lost Boys were all shockingly handsome, so much so that she was surprised she didn't see it earlier, on the beach. It wasn't just David - they were all masses of harsh lines and firm muscles, sharp jawlines and piercing eyes. Her brother, she recognized, was similar to them in that way too.

Max wasn't nearly as coldly handsome as them, but he had an air about him, one of self-assured confidence and, surprisingly, warmth. But Taylor had been here long enough now to sense that it was a false warmth, one that her mother similarly wore.

Lucy was so...different. Her hair was still cropped and at first glance she looked the same but there was something new about her, something shiny. Lucy had always been average, in the way that children always see their mother not as beautiful or ugly exactly but just as Mom. Now, her beauty was undeniable - the type that would turn heads as she walked. But her beauty, like the boy's, was sharp and dangerous.

Taylor deliberately did not look at her mother, the woman who hadn't called for three weeks, or managed to check her answering machine, or be around after her daughter had hitchhiked hundreds of miles for her. If she stared at Lucy too long, she'd start to cry, so she avoided her eyes.

"I want an explanation." Taylor glared first at Sam, angry that nothing was said earlier, then at Max - who had, presumably, made them all this way. "So you all are...vampires?"

"Not me," Sam piped up, clearly proud of the fact that he'd survived in this nest for so long and still remained human.

'Obviously.' Marko mouthed to Paul, and Paul hit him on the shoulder jokingly. The boys were ignored.

"Sam's not a vampire yet, but the rest of us are." Max confirmed. "I'm Max, your mother's new husband."

Taylor was relieved that, at least, he hadn't referred to himself as her stepfather.

"Even that kid, Laddie? So when I saw him earlier, and he ran at me..." She looked at David for confirmation, and he nodded.

"But he's perfectly safe," Dwayne defended Laddie quickly, who was the only member of Taylor's new family not present at the moment. "He just didn't know who you were or what you were doing in his house."

"How did you become...this way?"

"It's kind of a love story," Marko teased, looking pointedly at Michael, who didn't bother to hide his pout. "Your brother over here fell for a girl who hung around with us, her name was Star. We met him, we liked him, and then Max met your mom there and hatched a plan so that we could all be - "

"One big happy family!" Max continued, beaming slightly as if this, all of this, had gone exactly to his plane.

"Star skipped town, of course, that's why you haven't met her." Michael continued. "She couldn't handle this...she didn't want it."

"She was a mistake," Max said in a tone that was both gentle and condescending at the same time. It almost dared you to cross him. "She didn't understand that what we gave her was a gift, and she treated it like a curse."

Taylor shuddered - it was a curse. Having to kill to survive; and not only to kill, but to torture. The Lost Boys didn't put their food out of their misery, no, the pain made it taste so much better. They drained their humans while they were still breathing, Taylor had seen it.

"I don't think I can be here." Taylor said abruptly, rising from her spot on the couch as quickly as she could, and rushing for the door to the back porch.

At first, no one followed her, and Taylor used the opportunity to lean over the edge of the railing and empty her stomach into the bushes below. She wondered, momentarily, if that Ken guy had slipped something in the beer she'd gotten from him - LSD, Molly, a hallucinogenic. Something that would explain this, without it meaning her family was totally lost.

But then Michael came out onto the back porch, alone.

"I've only been away for two months," Taylor sighed. "but it seems like it's been eons."

"It hasn't always been like this, Taylor." Michael sighed, sitting down next to her. "In the beginning, you're not a full vampire yet, you're a half. Back when I was a half, both Star and Laddie were too, and we were like you - we didn't understand, we didn't want to understand. We didn't want to kill, Taylor, not at first. So we didn't feed, and that kept us at half, and Sam met these guys down at the comic book store and the six of us came up with a plan to kill the head vampire, which would turn all the half vampires he'd made back to human. Except - "

"Except Max was the head vampire, and he'd already turned Mom."

"And Mom accepted it so easily, had already killed and everything. If we killed Max, we'd kill Mom, and so his plan just fell right into place. Then I fed shortly after that - it gets hard, you know, you get so hungry and everything becomes so confused. Then Laddie gave in, and Mom and Max got married and bought this place. It was really hard to live with Grandpa after everything, because he hates vampires, so Mom moved us out as fast as she could."

"Michael," Taylor said softly. "What happened with Star?"

For a moment, he was silent.

"She just up and left one day." He sighed. "David got Laddie because he thought it would be easy to use him to get her to feed. Like maybe if she saw this little kid doing it, she'd do it too. But then she wouldn't let Laddie feed and the two of them went hungry for so long, before I had even met them. It's hard to be hungry for that long, it wears you down. Sometimes, I think maybe she just lost her mind, and other times I think she was too proud to give into it in front of all of us, that if she was going to feed, she was going to do it on her own."

"I'm sorry, Michael. I can tell she meant something to you."

"Yeah, well, obviously I didn't mean something to her." He huffed. "Anyways, there's something you should know."

Taylor perked up.

"Sam hasn't been turned yet because he wants to wait til he's older, and Max is okay with that. But you, Taylor...they want to turn you, too."

"Mike," Taylor scoffed. "I don't even eat meat. I can't even deal with a dead chicken, what do you think a dead person is going to do to me?"

"It's different when you're like us, trust me. Besides, Sam and I told them you wouldn't want this."

"And?"

"They said they'd find a way to bring you around. They won't listen for long though, Taylor."

The sun began to peek over the horizon, just ever so slightly, and Michael sat erect. Silently, he turned his back to her and went inside, pulling thick curtains over the glass of the door.