AUTHOR'S NOTE: I know. The last chapter was a little rambling. But really, I'd expect nothing else from Eve were she in that situation. Anywho, I don't own any of this. I do, however, love it. I hope you're enjoying reading this, and if you are, I hope you'll be fantastic enough to chime in to let me know that you're enjoying it by faving or following it. And, of course, I live for reviews and PMs - positive or negative.

SHANE

It was hard to think clearly right now, what with the feeling that my eyeballs were going to fall out of my throbbing head at any minute. Michael had knocked me a good one, but I was thankful I'd at least put up a fight. I'd never seen him like that before. Sure we'd had our fights, sometimes even coming to blows, but I'd never really known just how strong he was. It was nothing like when I'd been fighting the vamps in the gym. Then, I'd been on more even ground.

When I was in elementary school, there had been this kid. Max. Not only had he been small for his age, he had been a total geek. Never talked to anyone, always had his head stuck in some book or another. Wanted to be something crazy like an astrophysicist or something. We picked on him incessantly, even though we knew he had a rough time what with his dad being dead and his mom working as basically a blood slave to some of the worst vampires the town had to offer.

We were kids. We'd been scared. It isn't easy growing up in Morganville. We'd always wanted to take our fear and our anger out on someone and here was this weak little boy just sitting there, like he was a gift to us all. Growing up with my dad, I knew violence. Not as much as I experienced after Alyssa's death, and after Mom, but I knew it even then. I'd seen fights. I'd seen grown men lay into each other after Dad and his friends had a few too many. I got it.

One day, this boy named Henry - he was a few years older than us, probably should've been in middle school by then - took it too far with Max. I never knew what he said. I just know that he leaned down and whispered something to Max, and that scrawny little boy, who'd been bullied since before we even knew what bullying was, just went off like a rocket.

There's a style to fighting. Even the wildest bar room brawl has it. You throw blows, yes, but you're protecting your weak spots at the same time. You keep your hands tight toward your middle to protect your ribs and your face. You duck, you dodge, you move to a sort of rhythm. That is, of course, unless you just don't care anymore. Max had reached that point.

He came at Henry like some sort of feral animal. He fought with his hands, with his feet, with his teeth. None of us had ever seen anything like it. Never. He took Henry down - a boy almost twice his size, as if he was a gazelle and Max was a lion. Henry lost the use of his left eye that day and almost died of an infection from a bite Max gave him on his upper right arm. We never saw Max again, but we did learn a valuable lesson. There is nothing more dangerous than a caged animal that has nothing left to lose.

That was how Michael had fought me the night of the funeral.

Grandma Day stood as I shuffle-stepped my way up the walk to her house. I waved for her to just stay where she was, and she nodded. I climbed the porch steps slowly, hoping I wouldn't puke my guts up on the old lady's deck. When I made it to the top, she scooted over to give me a seat on her old front swing. She didn't say anything, just sat with me as if it was perfectly normal for her to have people all beat to hell come and sit with her every day.

"It's all changing," I said softly, trying to shield my eyes from the sun. It looked like it was close to midday, so the overhang was helping quite a bit. But still, every ray of light reflected off of every window, every sparkle from the stones used on our streets when they mixed asphalt, it all felt like daggers in my head.

"Been changin' for a long time, the way I see it," she responded.

"Dude in the car over there tells me Amelie's dead. Says there's a new boss in town now, one that doesn't even pretend to hold with the fact that we're anything other than food."

Grandma Day simply grunted in reply.

"We're gonna fight," I continued.

"Damn right we are."

I fell silent. So did she. "I don't think we're gonna win," I whispered.

"Me neither," Grandma Day confessed. "But we gotta try. I'll not lay down my weapons and go peaceably, that's for sure."

I nodded. "So we're on the same page. Grandma Day, I need to talk to Hannah."

She sighed heavily. "I assumed as much. She's in her room. Go ahead in. You can try, but you know she hasn't been right since the mayor died."

"I know." I stood up carefully and headed into the house that mirrored my own. It was homey - homier than ours was. After all, this was the house a family lived in, not a bunch of teens trying to be adults. I quietly walked up the steps, taking them slowly and swallowing down bile as my stomach tried to hurl everything inside it up onto the carpeted stairs. I walked down the hallway to the room that would have been Claire's in the Glass House. Claire. I couldn't think about her right now. I had to assume she was somewhere safe, or I didn't think I would make it through this. I knocked on Hannah's door and waited for a reply. I didn't get one, but the knob was unlocked, so I went inside anyway.

Hannah was laying in her bed, the covers tossed off of her and bunched at the bottom. One foot hung over the side. She looked up at me with a look that bordered on hostility. "I didn't say you could come in," she snapped.

"You didn't say I couldn't, either," I responded. And, because I thought I was going to faint right then and there, I sat down on the floor near the door.

She eyed me angrily for a few more minutes before sitting up and straightening her pajama top, pulling it down over a well-toned stomach. "Well," she said, "What do you want?"

"I want your help," I replied.

"No." Hannah shook her head vehemently and went to lay back down.

"Before you say no, just hear me out." I told her everything I knew, which probably wasn't the whole story. And maybe I embellished on a few parts. But she'd been a virtual hermit these past few months, and I had no idea what she knew and what she didn't know. By the time I finished, I was so tired and so light-headed that I don't think I even cared if she agreed to help. I just wanted to lay down and get some sleep.

Hannah fell silent. I could see every emotion that crossed her face - disbelief, astonishment, fear, anger. "What do you want me to do about it, Shane?"

I sighed. "I want you to do what you were born to do, Hannah. I want you to fight. I want you to be the woman I know you are. I want you to do what's good, and right, and honorable. And you know Richard would want you to do the same."

A look of anger crossed Hannah's face, and I realized I'd made a mistake. "Don't pretend to know what Richard would have wanted, Collins."

I nodded slowly and carefully, trying to fight back the gray around my vision. "You're right. I don't know what he'd want. All I know is that right now, right here, we're in a fight for our lives. And I want all hands on deck when it goes down."

Hannah looked me up and down, really looking at me for the first time. "You're hurt," she said, surprise coloring her voice. "Like, really hurt."

"Yeah."

"And instead of getting yourself looked at, you're here, asking me to help you, a virtual invalid, save a town full of people from creatures we have no real defense against."

"Yeah."

Hannah swore softly. "Let me get my things. You know I have a soft spot for the underdog."

I smiled and leaned back against the nearest wall, closing my eyes and relishing in the slight release it gave me from the nausea at hand. Everything was going to hell in a handbasket, but at least I'd have someone I trusted by my side when it did.