Here is the second half! Again, I have borrowed heavily. I hope you all enjoy.
Being in the hospital, around so much blood, was pure torture. He felt like everything was whirling around him and it was only when he saw Zoe walking down the hall that he was able to focus.
"Did you just give blood?" she asked as he stopped her.
"Um, I gotta talk to you about Sally," he said hurriedly, ignoring her question.
"Sally," a look of anger and disgust over took her. "Sally who eviscerated an entire ghost support group? I don't think so."
"What?" he asked in disbelief and confusion. He could really use some blood.
"What were you talking about?" She looked at him searchingly.
"Okay. Listen to me," he told her urgently. "Sally is very very sick and we think that you're the only hope that she's got. Please just listen."
She seemed to consider for a moment and then she nodded reluctantly.
So he told her what had happened, leaving out the fact that Sally had shredded her boyfriend, and after a moment of stunned horror she agreed to come and see if she could help. When they got to the house Joss jumped up from where she was sitting beside Sally. "Your back? Did you find her?" she seemed to notice Zoe behind him then. "Oh, thank god!"
Zoe looked around the room and then settled on Sally, her expression taking on a determination. "Alright," she directed, "Start from the beginning."
Before he could say anything, Joss jumped in. "Ok, well we came home and Sally was different, like something else had taken over. And then she goes all..." she and Aidan traded a look. "All Linda Blair hell spawn on us? And I don't think I'm exaggerating here, tries to kill us. Like you do. When your a hell spawn."
"Right," Sometimes he wished Joss wasn't so caustic. "So we disperse her with a fire iron and she pops up here on the landing where she died. And here we are, lights out," he finished.
Zoe shook her head, "Idiot,"
"Excuse me?" he asked incredulously.
"Oh, not you," she hastily assured him. "Well sort of you, but mostly me. I should have seen this coming. I mean the first time Sally mentioned the reaper,"
"The reaper? What?" Joss asked confused. "Did I miss something?"
"Yeah, yeah Sally thought there was a reaper that was sent to kill her when she passed up her door and then the reaper offered her a job. It was a thing." He explained quickly. Obviously Sally hadn't felt the need to share with Joss yet, for some reason.
"Shadow guy from her dream door?"
Zoe affirmed her question and explained to them that all this was a manifestation of Sally's mind, a side affect of her conviction that something would go wrong if she missed her door. He had known that Sally was worried, she'd told them both, but he had been so wrapped up in his own mess that he had never noticed really the extent to, which it had gone. So now, he thought as Zoe continued to explain that if the reaper wins the mental battle, they will loose Sally, we have to figure out a way to save her because we were too busy to notice something was wrong in the first place.
"We can talk to her," Zoe offered. "Maybe she can hear us."
"She can't hear me," Joss negated. "I've been talking to her all day."
"Well its worth a try," he carefully stepped over Sally and sat down on the stairs and began talking to her. "Sally, I'm here. Come back to us." There was no response, but he kept trying until the house suddenly began to shake ominously.
"Is this good?" Joss demanded as she braced herself by grabbing the wall.
"She's talking back." Zoe shrugged, "We're reaching her. Aidan, keep talking!"
He stood and grabbed the banister so he wouldn't end up falling down the stairs from all the shaking. Not that it would really do any damage to him. "Sally! We're here for you! Can you hear us?"
Suddenly the house stopped shaking. And then they heard a sound more ominous and more dangerous than loosing their balance or having a shifting foundation due to ghost energy could ever be. All the windows and doors slammed closed.
Aidan and Joss shared a horrified look. "Did she just lock us in?" Joss quickly moved to the kitchen door, while he checked the windows and front door, but before he could touch either, a force pushed his hand back. "Are you kidding me?" he heard her ask faintly, and surmised that clearly the same things had just happened to her. "Did you see this?" she asked as he joined her.
"Uh, yeah, the whole house is sealed shut. She- they locked us in," he told her helplessly. This was not good, but he needed to try and stay calm.
"Why?" apparently Joss had no intention of doing the same. "What did we do?!"
"I don't know," he soothed, but she was having no part of it.
"Really Sally?! Really?!" She turned to him as he squeezed his eyes shut trying to suppress the rabid need he was feeling and the anxiety from the withdrawal and the situation at hand. "You know its past four o'clock."
"I know."
"The moons up in four hours. If I'm not out of here by like..."
"You wanna keep your voice down a little bit?" He pleaded, "Because its just a little bit-"
"Annoying? Like nails on a chalkboard? You know what else is annoying? There is a human being walking around up stairs that has no idea that if we're not out of here, she's dinner."
"Ok," he said exasperatedly, "don't you think your being a touch dramatic?" he leaned forward against the table as if the action would help him stop feeling like he was going to bust out of his skin. He needed blood, now.
"You are so not credible right now," she told him taking in his actions. "Incidentally, when were you planning on letting me in on this whole reaper situation? I mean our best friend gets recruited to be a supernatural assassin and you figure, huh, keep Joss in the dark."
"Okay look," he was starting to get pissed. "Sally didn't want you involved, for whatever reason. She probably thought you couldn't handle it."
"Oh, but you can?" she gave him an incredulous look. " What about you and any of your behaviour the last several months suggests that you can handle it?"
"Well obviously I didn't." They were in each other's faces, not even a hand span apart, and it was doing nothing for his hunger issues.
"I checked all the windows up stairs," Zoe panted as she ran in to the room. "Nothings moving or breaking."
They moved away from each other and Joss crossed her arms uncomfortably. "I'm sure it will pass," she said in a much calmer tone than she had been using not moments ago. "Its just Sally, being Sally."
"What?!" Zoe threw her hands up. "We're screwed!"
They both gave up any pretence of being calm then. "You've seen this before, is she going to snap out of it?"
The answer to that question was not not at all reassuring, nor was it any more so when Joss suggested that they exorcise Sally. Eventually Zoe admitted there was something they could try, which lead them to attempting what Zoe called a mind meld. Unfortunately, while she was explaining it them, all he could do was stare at the pulse in her neck, his mind conjuring up the image of how good it would be to just jump her and drink. That was all interrupted though when Sally sat up and began speaking in the demonic voice of the reaper once more.
"Daddy gave all the food to his helpless offspring didn't he?" she taunted him, "Not even a nibble for himself. Look at you, what a hot mess."
"Listen," Joss' voice was hard as she directed the attention of the possessed ghost toward her. "Its like this. You need to let us out of this house. Now."
"Aww, poor little puppy," she cooed. " Trapped in here all day, not even a walk. Timings a bitch huh? What, no Nate to rub your belly and give you treats? No, you've ruined him haven't you, but I'm sure Aidan is dying to pick up the slack."
Joss leaned closer to the ghost, her expression as deadly as he'd ever seen it. "Let Sally go."
"Now you know how she felt, left alone here day after day. You did this to her, not me. I'm protecting her." She whipped back around to face Aidan. "Your going to rip each other to shreds tonight," she said gleefully. "Just a couple more hours and you'll all be dead. She'll finally be free of you."
"What?" the question from the only human in the room seemed to amuse the reaper, as it laughed.
"This isn't real." Aidan assured Zoe, which caused it to chuckle even more. "We're your friends," he tried to reason, but the reaper possessing Sally just laughed more.
"Some friend you are Aidan. Am I right Joss?" she whipped around to look at the werewolf again. "Upstairs. You can smell it can't you Joss? It's seeping through the wood. No amount of scrubbing is ever going to get it out, not ever. You'll always know what he did here, in your home."
He looked away at that, not able to look Joss in the eye then or look at the gleeful spirit below him.
"Some friend you are."
"Ok, what the hell is she talking about?" Zoe asked tremulously. This only served to direct the reapers attention on to her.
"Zoe. Sweet awkward Zoe. So clueless. Tick tock, tick tock. Oh these two, so forgetful. They forget to tell you the catch of this rescue mission. Your going to die in here tonight and the best part is that Nick won't be waiting for you on the other side. Sally shredded him this morning." And then the Sally reaper laughed once more before falling backwards into unconsciousness. The damage of course was done.
"Zoe please," he pleaded as the distraught young woman paced back in forth in the living room.
"You knew and you lied to me."
"I know. I'm sorry about lying, I'm sorry about Nick. But you can't give up on her please."
"She can rot in there! I don't care if we're locked in, I can wait. She'll get tired eventually."
He and Joss shared a panicked look, or at least it was panicked on Joss' part, he was more delirious than anything.
"Zoe," she approached the other woman. "We can't think in eventual terms, we just don't, we don't have that kind of time," she informed her emphatically.
"What makes your time so much more special than mine?" the tearful human demanded. "She shredded my boyfriend! So if I don't feel like I'm in a rush to help her, I mean kill me."
Joss nodded, biting her lip and looking briefly over at him as if for support or affirmation. "I'm a werewolf,"
"I'm a vampire." It was strange, he mused, how they could be so in sync some times.
"What?"
"I'm a werewolf," Joss said, her tone mater of fact. "And he's a vampire and that's how we can see ghosts.'
"Its like we're different countries on the same continent." he supplied; ignoring the look Joss gave him.
"And, and," she continued, probably thinking, and rightly, that he was loosing it. "If I'm not far away from here in an hour or so you will be in mortal danger."
Zoe threw her hands up even as she nodded, "Mortal danger. Right."
"Yeah, this isn't a joke," Joss said looking at the girl like she was crazy. Aidan had to agree; it wasn't like he told people everyday he was a bloodsucking creature of the night, but in this situation the admission shouldn't seem really that far fetched.
Zoe laughed, humorlessly, "Your going to turn into a wolf and have me for dinner."
Joss gaped at her, clearly reaffirming her conclusion that the woman had lost it,
"Listen carefully," Aidan told Zoe calmly, as Joss seemed unable to form a response. "She's telling the truth."
"Of course. Of course it's the truth. And you get to be the cool vampire; who doesn't want to be the cool vampire?"
"I'm not making this up!" Joss insisted as he turned and paced away, hearing her mutter, "And he is so not cool". Zoe was going to need some convincing, he could see that. Steeling himself and hoping that he could resist actually using them, he allowed his fangs to come out and turned back to them, flashing the elongated teeth at the disbelieving ghost wrangler,who gasped and stepped back.
"Holy crap, your monsters."
Well duh.
At last Zoe seemed to be shaking off her incredulity and she agreed, out of self-preservation obviously, to try to meld again with Sally. Which left he and Joss to stand and watch.
"I need to start getting ready," she informed him, her look indicating that she was not comfortable being alone with him at that moment, and then literally jumped over Sally and Zoe's prone forms as she ran up the stairs. He moved to the chair and sat on the arm of it, trying to get a grip on himself. He needed to stay strong and fight his urges, just a little more time, he told himself. Zoe will fix this and then I can get out here and get some blood.
"It smells like a slaughter house up in your room Aidan." Joss thudded down the stairs and jumped over the bodies again. "None of those doors are going to last more than five seconds. The wolf is going to smell the blood, she's going to go nuts and then she's going to smell Zoe and go even more nuts and rip through this place like its made of cardboard." She looked around their living room despondently and then she looked over at Zoe and then back at him.
"Really, your just going to leave Zoe there, with miss dead by dawn swallow your soul? Go sit with her."
He ignored her and instead moved to the couch, while she ran to the kitchen still in full freak-out mode. All that began to fade though as his eyes landed on Zoe and he felt temptation taking hold. He could hear Joss asking for power tools and saying something like, "I'm going to change in the friggen fridge," and calling for him to get his ass in the kitchen, but it was like static. He sat down beside Zoe and took her arm in his hands, exposing her pale wrist. His teeth sinking in and the warm blood that gushed forth in answer was like heaven. No high could ever come close to this.
"Aidan! Aidan, stop!" he was suddenly wrenched away from Zoe and thrown against the couch. If he had been in his right mind he would have been a bit taken back by Joss' strength, even though he knew she had it in her. As it was all he wanted was to get his teeth back in that arm.
"Are you crazy?"
"Let go of me," he pulled against her arms as they locked around him, holding him back as he tried to get past her. "I just need a little bit more."Part of him was disgusted at how needy he sounded.
"No, what's wrong with you," she yelled as she pulled him backwards, "She's trying to save our friend." She pushed him hard and he hit the wall, before regaining his footing and grabbing her, pinning her against the wall with his body.
"If you ever get in my face again, I'll-" he snarled, all reason having left his mind long ago.
"You'll what?" she demanded, unafraid. "You'll kill me?"
He loosed his grip at that, beginning to feel horrified as the blood lust faded, and she grabbed the front of his shirt using it as leverage.
"Your gone." she continued, her voice loosing some of the fight and becoming more pained. "You started feeding live, you murdered those two girls. Those two human beings. Under our roof. This scared place, the only place we can be ourselves" She pushed him away from her and he saw that she had tears in her eyes and it made him feel even more wretched. What had he done? Had he really just threatened to kill the best thing in his life?
She stepped towards him, making him back up more, "Does it stop Aidan?" Her tone was escalating again. "When does it stop?"
He could feel tears in his own eyes, although he knew they would never fall, they never did. What had he done?
"I feel like I'm the only one trying anymore. Like I'm dangling off a cliff by my finger tips and your up there stomping on them!"
"I know! I know," he found himself sobbing, actually crying for the first time in a long long time. "Oh my god Joss" he collapsed backwards onto the overturned couch. He was falling apart, coming apart at the seams, worse even than when he had had his vision of Bishop. "What am I supposed to do Joss?" he begged, as she angrily swiped at the tears running down her cheeks. "What am I supposed to do? I can't survive without blood. I need it. Everything just slipped out of my control. I thought I could be different, that I could be better, but I can't. I just can't," He was telling her things he had never meant to share; he had never wanted to be this weak in front of her.
Her breathing was heavy as she looked down at him, hands on hips. She was calm now though, for the moment. She closed her eyes, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth and when she opened them, he could see a resignation there, a resolve. He stared in wonder as she pushed the sleeve of her shirt up; exposing pale skin traced with blue veins.
"What are you doing?" she wouldn't, there was no way.
"I'm holding on," she said softly, although not without strength, as she made a fist and presented her wrist to him. "For all of us. Go ahead."
He could feel himself getting worked up again and tried to control the shudders going through his body. He shook his head vehemently.
"Do it."
"I can't."
She shook her head in disbelief.
"Vampires don't drink werewolves."
"Why?'
"I don't know, because of the smell?" The woman was crazy, it was the only reason at this point that she would be literally offering herself up to him after all he had done and not done the past months. "I just always took the smell as a warning," he said as she rolled her eyes. "Either way, its just something we don't do! We don't ever do. Ever."
"Okay if this is one of those vampire Jim Crowe laws, you need to get over it. I have blood, you need blood. Its not that far of a logical leap here Aidan."
He shook his head in denial again, "No, no Joss. You're pregnant. I can't."
"Listen to me," she crouched down in front of him. "I'm strong right now, which may be one of the only real perks of being a werewolf. I can handle it. The baby will be okay, I promise. You need it Aidan, you said so yourself." Their eyes locked and he could see the caring there, the need to help him in any way she could, even when she was beyond angry with him. It hit him then, as he sat there shuddering from need and withdrawal, that maybe he wasn't alone in his feelings; maybe, just maybe some part of her actually loved him too, even after everything. It broke his heart.
"Just do it before I change my mind."
He made himself focus and grabbed her fisted hand quickly drawing her arm up to his mouth, before he all but flung it away because of the werewolf smell. Some things were just so engrained.
"Oh, come on."
"Just give me a minute!" he took a moment to steel himself and then grabbed her arm and sunk his teeth into it. He sucked quickly, as she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, obviously making sure he didn't get carried away, but also a bit disgusted at what she was letting him do. Her blood was like nothing he had tasted before, their was a certain tang to it he couldn't identify and it was...well it was good. He pulled back from her, unsure.
"It tastes different." He wiped at his fangs as if that would take the taste away.
"Different? Different how?" she was concerned. "Oh, you know what, I..." she trailed off with a gasp as he grabbed her arm again and sunk his teeth in, unable to resist the nectar being offered to him. God, it was good. Just as quickly as he had sunk his teeth in, he had to pull out. "Gah, too good," he found himself gasping inaudibly as he lurched away from her. He felt energized. "Oh my god." he shook himself out, trying to calm down.
"You okay? Is it bad? It was disgusting, I knew..."
He whipped back around quickly, wanting to reassure her. "No, no no. Its good, its good." He shook himself again. "Its too good. It uh, wow. I feel like this tingling, like all over. Everywhere."
She looked blown over, and a little hesitant. "Okay. Okay, so we're glad we drank me."
"The thing is, that I barely even touched you."
"Yeah," she eyed him cautiously as he approached. "You going to be okay?"
"Yeah, thank you." She would never know just how much he meant that. And then he suddenly didn't feel so good and it felt like he was choking. Caughing raggedly, he tried to catch his breath but wasn't working.
"Aidan!" Joss was at his side instantly as he fell to his knees, coughing and gagging uncontrollably. He had never felt like this in all his years as a vampire. He began spewing blood and rolled on to his back, vaguely aware of Joss' fluttering hands on his chest.
"Aidan, breath. Breath, breath breath."
His eyes felt like they were splitting apart, as what he could only assume was blood came out of them and ran down his cheeks.
"Aidan just breath! You're okay, you're going to be okay."
It was pure agony, his body felt like it was being ripped apart from the inside; everything was on fire. He began screaming, the pain becoming unbearable. It seemed to go on and on and he knew that if he were to be staked at that very moment he would only be grateful it was over.
As Joss continued to plead with him the pain began to lessen and found that he could breath again, short gasping breaths. She gripped his hand tightly, only letting go when Zoe went into the kitchen and Sally sat up, looking normal. The doors and windows were all open again too. As Sally sent Joss off to change, he pulled himself up into a sitting position.
"Are you okay?" Sally asked as she slowly came down the stairs. "Oh, you look like hell," she told him sadly.
"You look better," he managed as she sat on the floor in front of him. He was so glad to see her, the real her.
Zoe came out of the kitchen then, wrapping her wrist in a tea towel. "I'm okay" she reassured him as he looked at her.
"Good, um I gotta go lie down." He pushed himself to his feet and lurched up the stairs to his room. As he collapsed on the bed and closed his eyes, he couldn't help thinking, I was right; today was one hell of a day.