I'm very sorry about the delay there! I know, that must have sucked for you guys, since I was able to get the previous chapter in at a good time, but this one came a lot later.

Anyway, here's the second chapter. A little less than half of it, at least a third of this chapter is my cowriter's writing. He liked this part when we made the storyboard, so he decided to most of the action for it. He's been doing less and less of the fic series as it goes on, so when he wants to do a couple scenes for this installment I just let him do 'em. However, he probably won't be doing any more big chunks until the huge fight scene at the end.

Speaking of which, I also just want to remind you that said big ending fight scene will be coming up soon. As I've mentioned before, I'm actually going to give you an alternate ending (tacky as that may sound).

P.S. Got some Mikey action in this chapter. Love the Mikey.

P.P.S. A hundred life points for you if you can figure out who this Joel is. There's a hint in this chapter.

Pete fiddled with his hands in the dark, trying to figure out how many patterns he could make by lacing his fingers together in different ways. It wasn't as hard as you may think to do this without a visual, but one also has to consider that Pete had become an expert on this kind of thing.

The only thing Pete was focusing on was the breathing/snoring/shifting about of his friends. For some reason, this gave him a sense of security. It didn't make any sense to Pete. He figured after having this for so long, he would have practically 'built up a resistance' to it. Good thing he was wrong.

To beat out the insomnia, that night, Pete had tried the following:

Sleeping with more blankets than before.

Sleeping with no blankets.

Sleeping with the TV on mute.

Sleeping with no pillows.

Sleeping with an extra pillow.

Sleeping on a different spot on the floor.

Sleeping with a light on.

Falling asleep by counting sheep.

Falling asleep after dunking his face in a sink full of cold water.

Sleeping with a pillow on his face (he's willing to try almost anything now.)

And none of the above had involved sleep.

Pete let out a shaky sigh and considered saying a weak "You awake?" to anyone who might be awake again (he had done it twice already and no one had been awake). But before he could do that, he heard voices.

"Oh wow. That's hilarious."

"Thanks a lot!"

Pete kept silent. They were out in the hall. Both voices sounded familiar, but he tried to clear the cloud from his head due to how tired he was.

"I can't believe he did that."

"Little bastard."

"Me or him?"

"Shut up."

The voice laughed in response.

Pete could figure out that the laughing voice was female and the other male. Which was a good start…

"You must be real happy, though. This is the first job mayor's let you lead."

"I know, right?! Fuck! He never lets me lead! 'Bout time! Ugh!"

"Oh, what? You should be happy! I'm still stuck in this dead end 'Welcome to Purity! How may I service you?' bullcrap."

Now he laughed. Then he stopped suddenly. "OH NO FRIKKIN' WAY. My nose STILL hurts when I laugh!"

"Ohhh! Ha! He must've really smacked you, or maybe you're a wuss!"

Pete placed the voices. It was the tour guide, Joel, and greeter girl, Rachel from yesterday. What are they talking about?

"So this is the room?" she asked.

He laughed. "Yeah. All three of them in one room. Convenient, huh?"

Is that OUR room? Nah, they're talking about three.

"What are you gonna do about the fourth? The vamp?"

"UH, kill him! DUH!"

"And we ambush the other three at dawn, right?"

"Right. They'll just die afterwards. No reason to make them join."

Pete heard himself gasp in shock. No way! Do they mean what I think they mean? Then he realized that when he gasped, they stopped talking. He was able to stop himself from gasping again when he realized they must have heard him.

Then, after a long pause, Rachel spoke again. "Whatever. See you in…" Another pause, possibly to look at a watch. "Wow! Twenty minutes! The night went by fast."

Pete waited until he heard both of them leave, then until he heard the ding of an elevator and the sound of a door opening and closing. He jumped up (fully clothed, which was how he slept) and turned first to Andy, shaking him. "Guys. GUYS. GUYS. GUYS. WAKE UP." He hit Andy on the head, and he finally pulled the sheets off his head.

"HEY! OW! WHAT THE- what are you doing?!"

"Get up. You get Patrick up. I'll get Joe."

Andy, obviously fearing a bomb threat, darted out of bed and over to Patrick. Pete turned to Joe.

"Joe, get up!"

"Go away…"

"I'm not kidding! Get up! I have to talk to you!"

Joe turned away from him. "I'm not a psychologist… talk to Patrick."

Pete hit him lightly on the shoulder, but Joe didn't do anything. Pete let out a growl, reached down, and yanked Joe's mattress out from under him, sending Joe tumbling off the bedframe and onto the floor on the other side of the bed. Unfortunately, Pete didn't realize where he was pulling the mattress, and it hit the wall, cracking the plaster.

"Holy cuh-RAP, Pete!"

"What is it? What's wrong?" Patrick pulled a pair of jeans over his boxers as he tried to shake the sleepiness away from his head. His black baseball hat was lopsided.

"I heard those two outside the door! That tour guide guy and the girl from when we just came in the town!" Pete gestured to the door.

Patrick nodded.

"They said they were gonna kill us!"

"Kill us?!"

"And… missions! No, jobs! They were talking about doing jobs. I don't know what that means! I don't…" He trailed off when he realized he must've been sounding a little dazed and confused.

"How long has it been since you slept?" Joe asked.

"Did you have a nightmare?" Andy asked.

"No, wait!" Patrick held up his hand. "Go on."

Pete stared back at him, eyes wide as he suddenly wondered if he had dreamt the whole thing. "Huh? I… don't know." Then Pete crossed his arms and looked down as an awkward silence made everyone more uncomfortable by the second. Eventually, Pete marched over to his floor-bed. "I'm going back to bed." Relief flooded his body when the others, possibly too tired to do anything else, all returned to their beds. But the relief faded away when a new worry crossed his mind. Now do they think I'm crazy? Am I? No. There's no way I just imagined that whole conversation. It's TOO weird. It doesn't make sense. I could NOT have imagined that. I couldn't make that shit up if I tried! Right? Right. Right? YEAH. Do they think I'm crazy now? Patrick didn't. He believed me. Right? Yeah, the told me to continue.

These thoughts darted across Pete's head with feverish speed as he curled up on the hotel's quilt rather than wrapping himself in it. The only thing to interrupt was a few thumping noises and more voices outside. They were unable to place the voices, but the thumping sounded a lot like footsteps. Many footsteps…

"What the hell was that?!" Andy asked out loud.

Patrick wasted no time in turning on a light. In fact, he was already putting on his shoes. "I'll go check. It was in the hallway."

"Don't go out there alone. What time is it?" Pete grabbed his shoes, too.

"4:50 P.M. Still light out."

"I'm coming out in the hallway with you anyway. Knowing this place, they probably have EVERY window boarded up tight."

Joe had just woken up for the second time. "What? Where am I?!" He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around in shock until his eyes met Pete's and he remembered what was going on again. "Wait. What are you doing?"

"Going out in the hallway with Patrick."

"Why?"

Pete ignored him and went over to the door. Patrick followed, and they opened the door.

Joel the tour guide and about ten vampires stood by them. They were huddled around him in a half-circle; he must have been giving them orders.

Joel exchanged glances with one of the vampires, then looked at Pete, then at Patrick. "I have to admit, I wasn't expecting you to do that." He laughed.

"What IS this?" Patrick demanded, frozen in shock. Andy and Joe had joined them out in the hallway, only to stop dead in their tracks.

"It's about to be lunchtime!" Joel smiled.

Pete recognized a look in Joel's eyes. It was completely different from the forced enthusiasm he saw earlier. It was the same look he had seen in the faces of all the gangs of hungry vampires back when their town was a hellish haven for their 'type': lust. It was the same look on the face of every vampire in the room.

Joel's crew was a motley one. Among it were males, females, teenagers, a preteen maybe, a woman in her sixties, vamps more in their twenties or thirties.

"Can I give you a piece of advice?" Joel offered.

"No," Pete growled.

Joel ignored him. "Give up now. It'll be quick and painless. For your friends, at least."

"Give up? Oh, hell no."

"Are you sure?" He almost looked sympathetic. "Come on, man. You don't know how many people have given us that phony 'I'm never giving up! I'm a fighter!' crap and died anyway"

"So you've done this before?" Patrick interjected.

"Done this before?!" He looked at Patrick in disbelief. Then he laughed. "DONE THIS BEFORE? Are you stupid? This is my life! Tricking humans! How do you think this town functions?"

Patrick rubbed his chin in an intellectual fashion. "My guess would have been that you're farming humans."

"Well, we are, but that doesn't provide quite enough blood yet. So we get a little income from tourism."

"Soooo…" Joe held up his hands. "Just to make sure I have this right." He pointed to Andy, then looked at Joel. "Valuable?"

Joel nodded. "Valuable!"

Joe pointed to Patrick.

Another nod. "Valuable!"

Joe pointed to himself.

"Valuable!"

Joe pointed to Pete.

"Dead weight!"

"Hey," Pete muttered. Then his eyes scanned the other vampires before landing on Joel again. "Well, you know what? I think that is the most disgusting thing that I have ever THAT WAY!" He turned on his heels and ran down the hallway, powered by adrenaline, fear, and gratefulness that the reflexes of Andy, Joe, and Patrick were honed enough that they were able to keep up as he led them to the stairs. But the thumping feet of the other vampires, powered by hunger, followed.

---

"WHOA whoa whoa whoa…" Sorel said. He was in a tight circle with Gerard and Mikey. They were surrounded by about twenty vampires. "Can we talk?"

Rachel shook her head. She was armed with a no-nonsense silver stake. "Hey, I was willing before. I said you should leave."

"And I said I wasn't done with my beer, dammit!"

"I'm still thirsty," Mikey said threateningly, drawing a strange-looking longsword from a sheath on his back. "You wouldn't like me when I'm thirsty."

"Mikey, I told you not to say stupid shit like that," Sorel said. He gestured, and a bottle of beer flew out from behind Rachel and into his waiting hand, before uncapping itself. Sorel chugged the beer, tilting his head back, and a male vampire of about forty charged Sorel with a silver knife. Without looking, Sorel telekinetically brought out his own sword and smoothly lopped off the man's knife arm. The man stepped back and began screaming and clutching his wound as Sorel lowered his head, the beer bottle now empty. "Shut UP!" Sorel slammed the bottle's top deep into the man's left eye, causing him to stop screaming and fall over. "One last chance to resume serving us," Sorel said, "because I'm feeling so generous tonight."

"I knew it," Gerard muttered to Sorel and his brother. "Town consisting of all vampires is suspicious enough, but when they're actively hostile towards other vampires despite obvious signs of a tourist trap…"

"It doesn't take a genius to figure this out, Gerard," Sorel growled. "So, you guys aren't going to serve us?" Rachel took a tentative step forward, eying him warily. "Guess not. Boys… do as you will."

"YYYAAAH!" Mikey ran forward, his sword at his side. An older vampire tried to stake him, but Mikey dodged the wooden spike and disemboweled the older gentleman. The man fell with a series of unpleasant noises, and Mikey stabbed his blade downward to finish him off. In this time, three more vampires charged Mikey armed with stakes. Gerard teleported onto the shoulders of one, a middle-aged woman, and snapped her neck. He then transformed into a wolf and jumped from the limp form of the woman, landing on the chest of a fat woman and ripping her meaty throat out. Although these injuries wouldn't kill a vampire, it was quite hard to move while missing a windpipe, jugular, or spinal cord, so Gerard could stake them later at his leisure. Meanwhile, Mikey had sunk his sword into the final vampire's chest and dragged it out diagonally, piercing the heart in the process.

Sorel sent his sword spinning through the air toward Rachel, and then turned to deal with three vampires running toward him. He kicked a barstool towards the closest attacker, snapping her stake and halting her advance, and then turned to the next one. "This is for ruining our drinking," Sorel snarled, uppercutting him into the air. The third attacker, a boy with glasses who looked to be about fifteen, grabbed him from behind, pinning down Sorel's arms. Sorel teleported behind the boy and picked him up by the hair. "And THIS is for ruining our beer!"

"We didn't do anything to your beer!" The boy cried.

"THIS is for ruining our beer and for correcting me!" Sorel turned and hurled the boy into the wall behind the bar, shattering bottles of beer, vodka, and other alcohol. The first vampire came at him, wielding the same barstool he had knocked toward her, and swung it down toward him. He dodged it and countered with a hook across her jaw, knocking out several teeth and dazing her. The second vampire came at him with a stake again, and Sorel telekinetically pulled the stake out of his hand and into the heart of the vampire whose jaw he'd just shattered. He then kicked the vamp's feet out from under him and stomped his chest until he heard several ribs break. "Who's left?"

Gerard returned to human form, his fingers and face now soaked in undead blood. "Just the woman, sir." Rachel had grabbed the sword in a pair of bar towels, and was furiously wrestling with it.

"Good, then this will be-" Sorel stopped as he looked at the chase occurring on the other side of a line of windows. The other side of the windows wasn't on the outside of the building; the windows allowed people in the bar to see people in the lobby, and vice versa. He watched as four disturbingly familiar young men ran out of the stairwell, flanked by over a dozen vampires. They ran toward the center of the lobby, only to be surrounded by at least twenty more vampires. "Are those Pete and the boys?"

"Yeah, I think so," Mikey said. "Who would've thought? Sure is weird, seeing them out here. Well…" and he began using his sword to stake vampires Gerard had incapacitated, "I guess those people will kill them and save us the trouble."

"Now, that's just not right," Sorel protested. "I have the exclusive right to kill Pete, Patrick, Andy, and… that hairy guy! I did not give it to these hotel-running PUSSIES! Let's go!" He pulled his sword back to his hand and ran through the door, flanked by Gerard and Mikey, leaving Rachel trying to awaken the other couple of vampires left un-staked.

"Get them! GET THEM!" Joel yelled. "You've got them surrounded! There's no way you can screw this up! Make sure everybody gets a drink, but KILL THE GODDAMN VAMPIRE!" Vampires rushed forward and swarmed the four, who defended themselves as best they could. Joe kicked or punched anybody who got to close, and drew a pair of stakes, both as a threat and as something to hold while he punched people to increase the impact. Andy slashed any vampire who got close, keeping a wide arc in front of him clear. Pete broke a few noses, but the fact that they were cornered in the center of the room meant everybody was protecting Patrick as he fired crossbow bolts over their shoulders. This meant they couldn't jump around, which especially limited Pete's range of attack.

"Damn," Pete snarled. "They aren't bad. Almost as good as the Dandies. Not up to the level of Sorel's gang, though."

"Damn right they aren't!" Suddenly, a few townsfolk flew into the air and zoomed off in random directions, crashing into walls or decorative furniture. Gerard leapt over Patrick and the others in his half-wolven form and dropped onto a vampiric young man, tearing into him. Mikey appeared next, beheading a few vampires while running. The fact that he never stopped moving kept the other vampires from landing a single blow. Finally, one man (who had grabbed Joe's arm and was about to sink his teeth into it) was suddenly jerked high into the air, where he was shaken around a bit before being dropped right onto the point of Sorel's outstretched sword. "Pete, I'm really disappointed. I mean, I send a whole team of the best crazy mercenaries in the country, and here you are, getting yourself killed by a common tourist trap! It's like you don't care how I spend The Baron's money at all!"

"What're you guys doing here?" Patrick asked fearfully. "Are you with them?"

"Hell no! They stopped giving us beer ten minutes ago! We're here because only I get to kill you!" A bunch of vampires dogpiled Sorel at this point, and he collapsed under their weight. However, there was screaming from near the middle of the pile, and it didn't sound like Sorel.

"Isn't it strange for Sorel to help us like this?" Patrick asked Pete.

"Nah," Pete said calmly. "This place is full of children and old ladies that Sorel actually has a good reason to maim. It's better than beer and candy to him."

"And that's saying something," Gerard added, grappling with a very tall vampire. He teleported behind the bloodsucker (who must've been about 6 foot 8), and dislocated both his shoulders by placing a foot on the man's back and pulling hard on his arms. "Besides, they're after us, too. The odds of us all getting out of here alive – or undead – go up if we work together. Speaking of…" the very tall vampire was now thrashing wildly and Gerard was having trouble keeping his grip. "Somebody stake this guy while I hold him down?"

"Happy to." Patrick bulls-eyed the V.T.V. in the heart.

Meanwhile, Mikey and Andy were back-to-back, slashing away at a circle of freshly arrived vampires that apparently formed the room service cooking and waiting staff. They were all dressed in fancy uniforms or white aprons, and they almost all carried meat cleavers. "You're pretty good," Andy said as he ducked a high cleaver and staked the offending chef. "When did you learn to sword-fight?"

"About four weeks back, Sorel got this cool sword from a bounty hunter we killed. It's got a rifle that shoots silver bullet built right in. See?" Mikey pointed the sword at a bellboy's chest and pressed a hidden trigger. A shot rang out, and in a flash, both the bellboy and the female chef behind him were disintegrating. "Since I lost my morningstar, Sorel gave it to me, and I've been training with it every night since then." Mikey brought it down on a chef's skull, splitting it open. The chef dropped like a ragdoll, and Mikey brought the blade back up and around to parry a cleaver aimed at his own head. "Too bad I used up all the exploding bullets on another bunch of bounty hunters last week. Now I've only got silver ones left."

Pete was dodging the swings of a twelve-year-old with a baseball bat. "You don't belong here, kid," Pete said. "Get out of here."

"Fuck you!" the kid swung the wooden bat into Pete's leg.

"Ahh! Hell! Fine, you just struck out!" Pete grabbed the bat and his hands ignited, lighting the bat on fire. The kid dropped the bat in shock, and Pete picked it up and knocked the kid out (also lighting his blonde hair on fire).

"Let's dance, jerk," a voice said from behind Pete. Pete turned to find Joel wielding one half of a rusty pair of hedge clippers in each hand. Pete swung the flaming bat overhead, but Joel blocked it with one clipper, tearing a deep gash in wood that was already splintering from flames.

Joe kicked a teenage girl in the chin, and hopped into a kick with his other foot that knocked her over the lobby's help desk and into the large rack of mailboxes. He spied a set of half a dozen silver stakes hidden under the desk, and stuck one in the girl's chest. He then threw four into approaching vampires, causing two of them to disintegrate and missing the hearts of the other two. As he hopped back over the counter to finish them, he saw Gerard go down from a hit to the back of the head with a frying pan. Four other chefs converged on him to finish him off. Joe also took in that there was a large and very ornate glass chandelier over their heads. Without any further thought, he whipped his hand forward and hurled the last stake into the chain connecting the chandelier to the ceiling.

"Whoa!" Gerard looked up, saw the chandelier dropping toward him like a huge glass specter of death, and quickly teleported away. The five townsfolk of Purity were not so quick on the uptake. Gerard re-appeared next to Joe. "Thanks. You saved my ass."

"Wouldn't have made a difference to me if you hadn't gotten out of there," Joe replied gruffly, repositioning the stake in an older woman so it pierced her heart.

"Yeah, sure."

"And THIS ONE'S for dogpiling me!" Sorel lifted the last three vampires who had attacked him into the air and jumped up after them, sword extended. Screams and slashing noises were heard.

Pete swung the bat low, and knocked Joel off his feet. He brought the bat down toward Joel's face. "Thanks for letting me RUIN YOUR SMUG FACE TWICE IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS!" He expected to have smashed Joel's face in by now, but Joel had crossed the clippers like they were one piece again, and was blocking the bat.

"Why didn't you just split and leave your friends when you first saw this place posing as a threat?" Joel asked suddenly, talking fast.

It was sudden enough that Pete was caught off guard. "What kind of question is that?!"

"I've seen people do it before here!"

"I'm sure there's a way for all of us to get out of here in one piece!"

"No! There's not!"

"How do you know?!"

"Do you think I haven't tried to get out of here?!" Pete looked caught off guard and again, and this time Joel took advantage of this. Joel's face widened into a manic grin. "Time for the kickass CLIP of the week!" he brought the handles together, and the hedge clippers sliced right through the wood of Pete's bat, cutting it down to a third of its normal length. Pete stared dumbly at the smoldering chunk of wood in his hand for a second, and that was enough time for Joel to kick Pete in the gut and knock him over. Joel drove both halves of the clippers down towards Pete's heart, and Pete grabbed his forearms to stop him. Joel pushed down, and Pete pushed up, but he wasn't sure how long he could stay like this. "Let's see if this is close enough to a stake to work," Joel laughed.

Suddenly a rain of dark red gore and viscera splattered onto Joel's back. "Ugh! There are intestines in my hair!" Joel moaned.

"Look out below!" Sorel's voice rang belatedly from the ceiling.

"Yah!" Pete kneed Joel in the gut and pushed him off. Joel threw a clipper at Pete, but Pete dodged and jumped into the air, doing a front-flip and bringing his foot crashing down on Joel's blood-spattered scalp. "That felt good!" Pete yelled. He grabbed the stunned Joel by the neck, and carried him over to a tightly shuttered window. "Here, Joel, why don't you check for us if it's dark out yet!" Pete smashed Joel's upper body through the shutters, leaving his legs and ass sticking into the room. "Well, judging by your screaming and kicking, the sun's still up."