Disclaimer: I own nothing at all to do with The Lost Boys. But I would give up my life to ride on a motorbike with David, or Kiefer Sutherland. One or the other, I'm not fussed lol. ;)

Thank you all so much for the reviews again. Words cannot express how much I appreciate them. I am so glad you all seem to like my story and my writing; I didn't imagine anyone would. Hope you enjoy this chapter, although it's not very eventful. In the next chapter, David will reveal his possessive side and so there will be lots from the boys there. Thanks again x CK x

Chapter Seventeen

As we arrive back to the cave, Paul immediately rushes over to the opening of the crack. "Time to hit the lights..." he says loudly in a sing-song voice, and then he is immediately gone. Dwayne follows closely behind him, slinking through the crack.

And then I see Marko. He appears from the bed which used to be my resting place, looking apprehensive, Susie toddling alongside him. "David?" I can't make out what he is asking David, but I see David claps his hands together and smirks at his unspoken question.

"Oh, you bet, pal," he says and I caught the haughtiness in his tone. "Perfect timing, too."

And then Marko's face breaks out into a big, radiant smile as he looks over at me. "That's ace, little sister!"

He comes at me, scoops me up, ten hundred pounds and sneakers and all, and spins me around wildly. I burst out laughing at his hysterics. He seems genuinely exultant, to my absolute surprise. It was as if he truly wanted me to be a part of their bizarre family, and now that I really was – one of them now - he revelled in it. He quickly sets me back down onto my feet as David gives the pair of us a skeptical, bewildered look.

"Perfect timing for what, David?" I ask, confusedly as I try to catch my breath.

"Well, if you haven't noticed, Ruby. The suns coming up; we don't wanna be frying." His voice is grim. I realize then that he almost looked afraid – like the different David than he usually was. Was sunlight the one thing he truly feared the most? I wondered.

I hesitate, moving slowly toward the opening. "Why does it smell so bad in there?" I ask before I am able to stop myself.

David suddenly looks offended, his eyebrows raised halfway up to his hairline. "What?" He looks over at Marko dubiously. "Marko?"

Marko shrugs, grinning. "I can't smell anything..."

Maybe it was just me then...

I walk over to the crack, and look in. I try not to think about the stench as I enter; I don't want to make a big deal out of it, considering the boys have no idea what I am talking about. Paul and Dwayne are already suspended in the air, deep in their sleeping, and for some reason I am always breathless when I see the sight. Dwayne's long, dangling dark hair is falling past his shoulders, his mouth pulled into a tight, grim line as he sleeps. Paul's sandy coloured hair is splayed out underneath him, and he is grinning as he sleeps; he must be dreaming of something very humorous then, but it didn't surprise me one bit.

How could I do that? How could I get up there on the ceiling and sleep the way they do? It was baffling to me.

I turn my head to find David and Marko observing me, watching me take the whole sight in. "You coming up with?" David asks, pointing up at Dwayne and Paul's peaceful, motionless bodies.

I hesitate. "I... I don't think so, David," I whisper uncomfortably, trying not to wake them. "I think I might just... sleep down here on the ground." I glance down at the ground as I say this, and realize the ground is a mess; covered in dirt and gravel and branches. It certainly wouldn't be very comfortable, but I knew it wasn't quite possible for me to do what they do.

David grunts in response. "Fine, Ruby," he says in a hushed, low whisper. "Suit yourself."

I glance back at him to find him shrugging out of his long, dark trench coat. He tosses it at me, to my shock, and I have to catch it quickly before it slips out of my hands and onto the dirt. Susie is staring at me, her face still stained with blood.

"I want to sleep next to you," she tells me quietly and so I wrap David's coat around her to keep her warm and comfortable as we both sit on the ground together.

Everything around us is gray. Slowly colour is beginning to leak through one of the tiny cracks in the ceiling, like a slowly spreading stain of blood orange and it suddenly dawns on me that David was in fact right; it is near morning. Through the crack it illuminates a soft, white beam of light and moths and mosquitoes cling to the source of it, flying around the light in a whirl.

I dismally wonder what would happen if the light reaches out and touches one of the boys, who are hovering in the air silently, and immediately regret having such thoughts. Would it kill them? Would it kill us? I wrap more of David's dark coat over Susie, covering half of her tiny body out of fear.

And then she speaks, in a tiny, hushed voice as she watches me take everything in: "Are you and David my new mommy and daddy now?" she asks, quite casually.

Oh my God.

I stare at her face through the darkness, startled. Where did she possibly get that idea from? "No." I frown. "What makes you say that?"

She thinks about it for a long moment, her face scrunched up and puckered, deep in thought. "David bosses everybody around, but he doesn't boss you around because you're a girl!"

I laugh. "That's ridiculous, Susie." She clutches her pink toy in her arms, hugging it against her chest. "Besides, you're a girl, too. Aren't you?"

"But sometimes he still bosses me around," she says sadly.

I lean back and look at her, stunned. "He does?" How dare he? He's not her father. "Well, I wouldn't bother listening to him. He has no right to boss you around, Susie."

She looks at me doubtfully. "But then, if I don't listen he gets real angry."

"But that's just David..."

She leans forward on her knees, and whispers in my ear, "Sometimes he says bad words and throws stuff around when I don't. It's really scary!"

"David? Scary?" I roll my eyes, shuddering. "I can't imagine that..." She doesn't seem to catch my sarcasm. She looks frightened; it hurts me to see her look that way. "He can't hurt you, Susie," I tell her gently. David hurting Susie – it wasn't something I could imagine him doing easily. Sure, he was frightening and intimidating at times but he seemed almost protective and caring of her.

"I don't know..." She doesn't sound too convinced.

"Has he done anything to make you think he would?"

She sucks on her thumb anxiously and looks as though deciding whether she should tell me or not. She whispers in my ear again, "One time I was eating my food and he went real mad at me because I got in the way while he was trying to eat his!"

I didn't know what to say to her about that. I felt the rage simmering up inside of me; I wanted to confront David about it, but then realized he was already probably too deep in his sleeping to even register what it was I was babbling on about. "But then sometimes when people are hungry, they act irrationally, Susie," I explain to her, curling a piece of her soft hair around my forefinger. "He probably didn't mean it." I try to brighten my tone, "Do you remember when our daddy used to get grumpy when mom didn't make him breakfast in the morning before she left for work?"

"No."

"Well, anyway, that's some men for you. If they don't eat, they get grumpy as hell." Although I was certain it was a different case with David... he's just an ill-humoured person altogether. "They throw things around, yell at the top of their lungs! Be cruel to the people they care about the most!"

Susie giggles. "That's silly."

"Yes, it is," I agree, smiling at her. "That's why you don't pay attention when somebody's like that. Okay?"

Someone growls above us, a deep unpleasant sound clattering from the back of their throat. "Will the both of you girls stop prattling on about me as though I can't hear you up here, and go to sleep?"

David. Oops.

Susie stares at me in silence, her mouth wide-open. And then one of the boys pretend to snore loudly, making funny noises, and Susie starts giggling boisterously, a little hand cupping her mouth.

"Marko." David's voice is low and full of annoyance.

The humorous sounds that have Susie shaking with laughter immediately stop. "Sorry, David," Marko says softly above us. There's a hint of a smile in his voice.

After what seemed like hours, Susie is asleep, finally. She sleeps next to me, curled around me like a little kitten, her head tucked underneath my chin, the pink toy David gave her pressed against me. She talks sometimes and weeps, laughs, shakes and yells out in her sleep. Some of the words aren't exactly coherent, but sometimes I hear them out to be: "David!" or "No, no, no..."

I wonder about what it is she is dreaming of, what has her so afraid. Is it him who is scaring her? I listen to her carefully in the darkness, the way her lips part in surprise as she dreams. I close my eyes, trying to induce myself into a quick and easy slumber until nightfall when we must all wake again. I listen for her breathing. I hear nothing. No heartbeat, no anything.

I hear no heartbeat from within myself either. I feel cold; the hard rock on the ground making my legs and back stiff. I suppose this is what we are now; a never-changing body where no blood moves inside of us, no heartbeat...

Breathing isn't even a necessity anymore.

This is a relief, because now I am not able to breathe in the stench that has surrounded us. In a way, it was becoming oddly comforting to be here, in this crevice in the cave, where the boys are hovering silently above us, like a protective shield. If anyone dared to try attack us – they would get to them first, I had no doubt about that.

I no longer felt afraid, when thinking this through. I suppose now I truly understood what it was like, to be part of a protective family, and to be able to feel as if I finally did belong, now that I truly was one of them. Well, except I didn't feel any different. I didn't feel like this monstrous reproduction of myself, as I thought I would. I didn't feel possessed. I simply felt like... me.

But then he was about to change all of that.