Author's Note: I must say, I'm astounded by the amount of feedback I've gotten from this story thus far. The US Being Human fandom is very new, so I honestly wasn't expecting ANY comments from this story, but I'm pleasantly surprised.

Thanks to everyone reading (even those of you who're just lurking) and, especially, those of you who've taken the time to review. I hope everyone continues to enjoy the story!

Warnings: this chapter contains a bit of gore, but nothing worse than what appears on the show. Also, there are some glaring medical inaccuracies (CPR related), but I figure that I can get away with it since I'm talking about vampires and werewolves and ghosts…

Also, a bit of Nora/Josh in this chapter, but it's the bare minimum…

Chapter Two: The Aftermath

Aidan could smell the blood before he rounded the corner.

He didn't even realize the house was shaking on its very foundations until he was inside.

At first, it was impossible to discern what had happened. There was pure chaos, a whirlwind of paper and dust and broken furniture swirling around the center of the living room, and the smell of Josh's blood and dead vampire was so overpowering Aidan fought the urge to gag.

In the center of the whirlwind was Sally, looking nearly as bad as she had when the exorcist almost ripped her spirit apart. Her eyes were completely black, with dark veins creeping from her eyelids and down her face like some odd mockery of tears. Her teeth were bared like she was ready to take a bite out of the next living thing that got close to her and, turning her blank eyes towards Aidan, she let out a wordless, primeval roar so powerful it shook the air around him.

What in the hell had happened to make her this way? Where was Josh? He couldn't be, he wasn't…

"Sally!" Aidan called out above the sound of furniture crashing.

She didn't seem to hear him—given the state of her, it wasn't surprising.

"Sally, stop!"

She let out another roar, but this time it wasn't wordless. "HE'S DEAD! HE'S GONE!"

Aidan froze. No. No.

"Josh," he whispered in the now silent room. Sally seemed to have shocked herself out of her previous state, looking small and alone and heartbroken as she began to sob harshly.

"They killed him," she sobbed, wrapping her arms around her middle in a vain attempt at comfort. "I couldn't, couldn't stop them."

"Where is he?" Aidan demanded hoarsely, unable to believe Josh was actually dead. A world without the awkward, surly, sweet werewolf didn't compute. The smell of his blood was everywhere, overpowering, and Aidan didn't know where it was coming from, but that didn't mean he was dead. Sally had to be mistaken.

She pointed a shaky hand towards the kitchen before collapsing onto the ground with a cry, the house vibrating the wake of her sorrow.

Aidan sped into the kitchen.

Nothing could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him there.

Josh was lying on a pile of what might have once been a table, his body thrown down carelessly like a sack doll. Aidan took in the scene and stifled a gasp. Josh's neck… his neck was completely destroyed, the open, messy wound gleaming wetly. Blood, so thick and heavy it appeared black, dripped copiously from the wound onto the table and collected to the floor beneath Josh's prone body. And god, he was so pale.

Josh looked, for all intents and purposes, dead. Aidan's senses were telling him the same—it was only Aidan's heart that refused to believe.

The vampire collapsed to his knees, ignoring the foul-smelling blood as he desperately looked for some sign of life.

"Josh, c'mon, no, no," he muttered as he checked his best friend's vitals frantically. "You can't, you can't."

The first thing Aidan noticed was that Josh didn't appear to be breathing.

The second thing he noticed was that Josh was burning up. And a temperature like that meant that, in some way, his friend was still alive.

The relief that poured through him was better than the taste of hot, searing blood.

"Sally!" Aidan bellowed as he stripped off his shirt, pressing it to Josh's torn neck. "SALLY! I need you in here! Josh is still alive!"

Sally appeared in the kitchen in an instant, red-eyed, devastated and suspicious. "Alive?" She repeated dubiously, but with a desperate hint of hope. "H-He doesn't feel alive to me, and believe me, I can sense that kind of thing."

"Are you going argue with me while he bleeds out, or are you going to help me!" Aidan snapped, understanding Sally's feelings, but not really having the time or patience for them.

"What do you need me to do?" She asked immediately, dropped down next to him. Aidan wordlessly guided her (cool, but corporeal) hands to Josh's neck. Taking the hint, Sally braced her hands against the reddening t-shirt that was keeping Josh from bleeding out.

Aidan immediately began to do compressions, trying not to think about how long Josh's brain had been deprive of oxygen—or what slim chances the werewolf might have at some sort of recovery, much less a full one.

"God, he's so warm," Sally remarked tearfully. "How can he be this warm, and not be breathing?"

"I don't know," Aidan replied quietly before he lowered his lips to Josh's. Of all the times he'd imagined what it might be like to kiss his best friend, he'd never thought it'd be to save his life.

Aidan pushed one breath into Josh's deprived lungs before pulling back and frowning.

What was that?

"Aidan! What are you doing?" Sally's tearful voice snapped him back into action and he gave Josh another breath.

Then he pulled back in shock. Josh's mouth tasted like vampire blood.

In that same second, Josh jerked, coughing and wheezing before stilling again. "Oh thank god, thank god," Sally whispered fervently. "Thank you, thank you."

Closing his eyes to hide tears of relief, Aidan pushed aside his errant observation and just reveled the fact that, at least for the moment, Josh was breathing.

"Keep pressure on this wound," Aidan advised sharply when he noticed Sally's hands had gotten lax. Aidan checked Josh's vitals, noting that they were far too weak, but he took an inordinate amount of relief in the faint heartbeat beneath his hand.

"Right, sorry," Sally replied, worrying her bottom lip. "But what are we going to do? This isn't some scratch—this, this is bad, Aidan. He needs a hospital."

"We can't risk it," Aidan said, fishing out his cell phone. "If it was something minor, maybe, but if he comes in like this, they're going to do blood tests and god only knows what they'd find."

"And? So? At least he might live!" Sally snapped.

"To be a lab rat!" Aidan retorted, pressing a number and putting the phone against his ear, using his other hand to monitor Josh's pulse. "It's already a miracle he's alive; they're going to wonder how he's breathing with a practically slit throat! Without his werewolf blood, he'd be dead."

He still should be dead even with werewolf healing, Aidan thought, disturbed. It's too far away from the full moon.

"Who are you calling?" Sally asked, finally noticing the phone.

"Nora, it's Aidan," he spoke as Sally listened attentively. "…wait, listen, I need you to get to the house now… it's Josh, he needs blood, A positive, at least two pints…" Aidan paused, listening the woman's worried voice. "It's bad, bring whatever you can get."

He hung up, sighing. "The closest thing Josh is going to get to a hospital is me and Nora."

"It better be enough," Sally whispered, and a gentle wind caressed Josh's overheated skin.

By the time Nora got to them, Josh looked worse than before. He was extremely pale except for a fevered flush across his cheeks and over his eyelids. His breathing was shallow, and every breath rattled unsteadily in his lungs. It seemed that, for every breath Josh struggled to make, Aidan swore he could almost feel his heart beating frantically inside of his chest.

It took Nora 20 minutes to get to them—it might as well have been an eternity.

To pass the time, Aidan asked Sally to explain what happened.

As she began a halting retelling of events, Aidan felt fury burn in his veins. How dare them! How dare the Dutch come into his home and nearly destroy everything he'd ever cared for! And all for some piss poor excuse—as if he could become some sort of coven leader. As if he would want to!

"How did they even get in?" Aidan asked, irrationally angry with Josh for even allowing vampires through the threshold.

"They just walked right in," she snapped, detecting the edge in his voice. "What, you think we just said, 'oh, please, vampire FBI, come right in and viciously murder us'?"

"But that's impossible! Vampires can't—"

"I know! But it doesn't matter how—they got in, and now Josh…" her voiced trailed before she began to tell of the attack that nearly killed the werewolf. When she got to the end of her tale, Aidan froze, a horrifying possibility going through his mind as he remembered the taste of vampire blood on Josh's lips.

"Sally, you said that Josh bit the woman vampire? After she bit him?"

"Yeah, then she broke the salt line and I killed every single one of them," Sally said with relish. Aidan would have to address that under less dire circumstances.

"Did he break the skin?" If he did… there was a possibility… actually, Aidan didn't even want to think of the possibilities yet.

"Yeah, took a chunk right out of the bitch. Why?"

Aidan was just about to answer when Nora came into the kitchen, crying out in shock and dismay at the state of her boyfriend.

In another twenty minutes, Josh was sewed up to the best of Aidan and Nora's shared abilities, and currently undergoing a blood transfusion. Aidan was just about to suggest that Josh might be stable enough to move upstairs when he saw Nora pull a gentle hand through Josh's messy hair and press a kiss to his feverish forehead.

Swallowing bitter jealousy, Aidan had to look away.

"I think we can take him upstairs. He seems better," Sally ventured, looking between Nora and Aidan with something akin to pity, although neither of them noticed.

"Better is relatively," Nora grunted, before sighing. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is just… bad. Really, really bad, and I'm not sure if he will make it without hospital care."

"He'll make it!" Sally cried out. "He… he has to."

"He will," Aidan reassured quietly, hoping with everything in him that he didn't just tell a lie.

"Yeah. I think you're right, we can move him now," Nora remarked tiredly. "Aidan, um. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name with all the gaping wounds and blood loss."

"I'm Sally, a… friend of Josh and Aidan's."

"Wish I could say its been nice to meet you, but…" Nora trailed off.

They'd gotten the shock of their lives when Nora walked in and immediately asked Sally to move aside so she could take a look at Josh's neck. She'd never seen Sally before, but Aidan supposed that having a werewolf for a boyfriend was likely to open anyone's mind.

And Aidan could tell that, despite the terrible circumstances, Sally was excited that someone had mistaken her for one of the living.

They began the arduous task of moving Josh upstairs, and it was ultimately decided that Aidan would carry him up while Sally and Nora took care of his IV.

"Why hasn't he woken up yet?" Sally questioned worriedly once Josh had been put into his bed.

"This type of injury, of trauma, it could be a number of things. Just the amount of time that his brain was deprived of oxygen—"

"You're thinking like a human," Aidan interrupted softly from his seat near Josh's bed, eyes trained on the other man's face. His hands were holding onto one of Josh's… he remembered, not so long ago, when Josh gave him an amazing amount of comfort by doing the same.

"A human," Nora repeated, a dark look coming over her face. "Right."

"What I meant is that, Josh is a werewolf, and they're built tough."

"Not tough enough," Sally replied sadly. "At least, not this far away from the full moon."

For a moment, no one could think of what to say.

"Well, I can't even explain the fever," Nora finally said with a sigh. "From what you've told me, it shouldn't have been long enough for any sort of infection to set in, and I didn't see any signs of infection in the wound when I dressed it."

Aidan sighed, figuring it was time to come clear with a fear he'd been keeping to himself.

"I think that it may have something to do with the fact that Josh bit a vampire."

"What do you mean?" Nora asked, brow furrowed. Aidan had to give her credit—she was handling the situation pretty well.

"I…" Aidan paused. "I don't think I ever told you how vampires are made."

"You told me," Sally said pointedly, obviously wanting Aidan to get on with the explanation.

"Wait, I'm sorry. I know I'm about to sound incredibly rude, but what are you?" Nora interrupted, looking at Sally. "Aidan's a vampire, Josh is a werewolf, and since you seem to know what they both are, you're either one or the other, right?"

"Uh… I…"

"Oh, god, please don't tell me you're something else—I've just gotten used to vampires and werewolves. If you say you're an-an elf, or something, I might just lose it!"

"It's complicated," Aidan interjected. "Let's leave that for later. As I was saying, vampires make other vampires by draining humans nearly to the point of death and then giving them vampire blood."

"So…" Sally said impatiently.

"So, that's essentially what just happened to Josh."

"What?" Sally and Nora exclaimed at the same time.

"Just think about it for a moment. Josh was drained nearly to the point of death and got vampire blood when he bit that woman."

"But she didn't drain him, he bled out."

Aidan shook his head. "That sort of thing doesn't matter. It's the proximity to death that does. Anyone close to death can be changed."

"So what? Are you saying that Josh is a vampire werewolf, a were-vampire?" Sally paused, closing her eyes. "Let's pretend that didn't sound as stupid as it did."

"Honestly?" Aidan shook his head. "I have no freaking idea. I've never even heard of a werewolf ingesting vampire blood in this situation. Usually, if a werewolf bites a vampire, they're nowhere near death and their body is strong enough to break down the virus before it can take hold, but…"

"But Josh was missing half of the blood in his body and god only knows what's happening to him," Nora finished. "Do you think that's what saved him? I wasn't buying your whole werewolves-are-built-tough excuse."

"I can only guess," he replied honestly. "I wish I could say that I knew what was going to happen, but I've never even heard of this. For all I know, the vampire blood Josh drank is only enough to heal him and will be burned out of his body once he gets well; it could change him in ways I can't even imagine; hell, it could even be poisoning him now that his body can't fight it."

"So, in other words, he could die from it, or he might end up like that guy in Underworld."

Sally received two blank stares.

"Underworld? Kate Beckinsale? Vampire/werewolf grudge movie? Ring any bells?" Sally rolled her eyes. "You guys are hopeless."

Aidan didn't reply. He turned back to the werewolf and tightened his hold on Josh's hand. He had no idea what was happening to his best friend, and honestly, it was scaring the shit out of him.

Sally sat on the bed next to Josh, turning to the werewolf. "If you were awake, you would have totally gotten what I was saying. That's why you have to wake up," she said shakily. "No one's going to understand half of what I say without you—us geeks have to stick t-together." Her tears spilled over, and Sally raised a hand to touch Josh's face. It went right through him, and Nora gasped.

"Oh my god, you're a—"

"Sally, would you mind trying clean up? Josh'll pass out again if he wakes up to the mess downstairs," Aidan said before Nora could finish.

"Right." In the next instant, Sally was gone in the wake of simmering dust.

Nora gasped again. "She's a ghost. An actual ghost!"

"Yeah," Aidan murmured, not really paying attention to anything but Josh. "It's kind of a long story—she sort of came with the house."

"Sally haunts you?" Nora asked incredulously.

"Sally's family," Aidan said sharply. He immediately regretted the words when Nora reeled back, surprised at his vehemence, but he didn't seem fit to take it back.

Soon after Nora found out about everything, she took off for a few weeks with nothing more than a flimsy message on Josh's phone that she was seeing family. She'd just come back, and while Aidan knew he couldn't really fault Nora for freaking out a bit, he couldn't help but think that this might have all been avoided had she stayed.

Maybe, just maybe, if she'd stayed, her and Josh would be at the point in their relationship where they would have moved in together. And if Josh hadn't been at the house today…

Aidan shook his head, dispelling those thoughts. He needed to forget about what might have happened, because this? This was reality. And honestly? If Josh had moved in with Nora, Aidan wasn't sure what he would have done with himself.

He knew that made him all kinds of possessive and pitiful, but it was the truth. And Aidan had been alive long enough to realize that lying to himself never ended well.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed—"

"It's fine, I'm just a bit touchy," Aidan reassured her with a small (and fake) smile. Aidan ran his hand over the soft skin of Josh's knuckles, not knowing that Nora was staring at them with dawning comprehension and no little amount of pain.

"Aidan, you and Josh—" Nora paused. "Do you…"

"Do I what?" Aidan asked, not really paying attention.

Behind him, Nora looked at their joined hands for a moment, expression unreadable, before she sighed with something like resignation. "Nothing. I'll be downstairs."

Aidan didn't turn around his see her leave; he just continued to stare at Josh, wondering what was happening to the younger man.

"You promised to drag me to see the last Harry Potter movie, remember?" Aidan whispered quietly as he took in his friend's still visage. "Who's going to make me sit through that torture if you don't wake up?"

Aidan waited for something. A sneer, a laugh, or even another (painfully) lengthy diatribe about how Harry Potter was a modern cornerstone of literature and cinematography.

All he got was silence.

TBC