A/N: Greetings! Here is our next chapter. We hope you like it! Thank you for all the brilliant reviews we received for the last chapter. They are as always much appreciated!
Panic exploded through DOA.
The clubbers were screaming around Ste, staring at the dead girl hanging from the ceiling. A hundred people were panicking and shoving at each other trying to get out of there. A male voice was sobbing hysterically, calling the girl's name.
Ste was breathing too heavily. He tried to push through them, "Calm down!" he shouted. "Calm down!"
He was knocked hard and felt himself crash into the bar, sending waves of pain up his abdomen. He groaned, trying to stay out of the way, but people were still pushing, still screaming. He was being shoved, kicked, crushed and bruised.
Then suddenly there was absolute still and quiet. The people around him simply stopped still and silent.
He pushed away from the bar and looked at them. Their faces had gone blank. Ste was beginning to recognise that look.
He saw Brendan the moment he looked up. The vampire was on his walkway, almost level with Theresa's form. Ste only spent a tiny moment wondering if he could have had anything to do with the murder. The look on Brendan's face showed anyone who cared to look that he was as saddened by this as anyone. But Ste still freaked out.
Hundreds of people had been hypnotised around him in a matter of seconds. Not one person had thrown it off and Brendan hadn't even raised a sweat to do it, or even a finger. Ste stared around him. The power that Brendan had was terrifying.
"You alright, Ste?" he heard Mitzeee ask.
Ste spun towards her. She wasn't looking bubbly and spirited, but she hardly looked panicked, or any of those human emotions that should be expected. She wasn't surprised her friend could do this, or that an employee had been murdered.
Unable to answer, Ste ran for the door. He heard Mitzeee say "Leave him, he's in shock," and was grateful. He just needed a few minutes alone. He couldn't watch Brendan control so many people. It terrified him. It was scary, it felt wrong, it was not human.
The night air was cool and welcoming and Ste dragged it into his lungs greedily. It helped. He felt the blind panic ebbing away a little, he swore quietly to release some energy and sank down by the side of the door. There was more noise coming from the darkness than there had been inside the club, which was wrong. Dogs were barking, cars were speeding along, cats were fighting. A voice nearby said "But I told you to bring the gaffa tape!"
"I brought the sack!" said another. Unlike the first that had a strange accent that Ste thought was like Cheryl's, this one spoke like someone from Liverpool."And the rope, what did you bring?!"
"I brought me and my fantastic brain!" said the first.
"Exactly!" snapped the second, "you brought nothin' of any use whatsoever!"
"You were in charge of supplies, idiot!" snapped the Irish voice.
"And you're just a spare part!" countered the Liverpuldian
"I was in charge of planning!"
"Oh, great plan! We won't use rope on the witch, let's use gaffa tape, which we don't bloody well have!"
"Well, she might have an anti-rope spell!"
"But she might have had an anti-tape spell too!"
Ste couldn't stop his curious feet following the sounds, which were coming from round the corner of the building. Were they talking about a witch? Were witches real too? What next, werewolves? Or were these people just messing? Or a bit weird.
A figure appeared at the corner of the building, tiptoeing quietly towards him.
"Hang on," said the first voice, "you idiot, she's escaped!"
The figure squealed and made a dash for it, but before she got two metres two men were upon her.
"Where do you think you're going, witch!" said one of the men, who Ste now knew were somehow magical themselves. No human could have done that journey in a blink of an eye.
"Don't think you can run from Vinnie the Vicious!" said the second.
"Vinnie the Vicious?!" scoffed the first.
"Yes!" said Vinnie the vicious, "My name is Vinnie and I'm Vicious, so I'll be calling myself Vinnie the Vicious from now on! And it sounds good because it uses the same letters! It's an onomatopoeia!"
"That's alliteration, you idiot!" snapped the man who wasn't Vinnie the Vicious, "I think we should call you Vinnie the Illiterate!"
"But that doesn't work!" complained Vinnie the Vicious.
"Oh, for… come on!" snapped the other, as Ste wondered which side he should be on right now. He suspected his knowledge of witches which came from various works of literature was not going to help. "Get her in the sack!"
"No please!" pleaded the witch, "I only came out 'cos it's half price on sausage rolls at Price Slice!"
"And who are you anyway?" snapped Vinnie, "Eoghan the ordinary?"
"I'm just Eoghan, because I'm not an idiot," said Eoghan, "Where's that rope?"
"I told you, there's not enough left!" snapped Vinnie the Vicious, "We need more!"
"Oh, shall I go get whatever that blond girl's not using? See how that works out? At least tie her hands so she can't wave them about!"
"Please, you don't want to take me!" said the witch, "I'm one of the worst witches I know!"
"Wait, who's that?"
The two men had spotted Ste just as he'd realised which side he should be on. The rope and the blond girl; they had to be talking about Theresa. Which meant they had probably killed her.
"Oh my God! It's him, isn't it?" gasped Eoghan.
Ste turned. Brendan was inside the club, Brendan was safety. All he needed to do was get into Brendan's line of sight. An arm was around his waist before he could even get two steps. "What do we do?" said a panicky voice by his ear. He recognised it as Vinnie's.
"Er," said Eoghan, as Ste kicked and struggled, and shouted at them to get off, "take him back!"
"But the Master said..."
"We can hardly let him go back to Brendan!" snapped Eoghan.
"Can we make him forget?" said Vinnie, and Ste panicked further. Could they make him forget? Brendan couldn't hypnotise him, but he hadn't tried to make him forget anything. Unless he'd forgotten.
"Best not risk it," said Eoghan, "we best let the Master decide."
"You're not taking me anywhere!" Ste shouted, "BREND…"
A hand fixed over his mouth. "Now!" he heard Eughon snap and suddenly his feet were off the floor again. He was flying for the second time that day, but this time with none of the excited feelings of before. Now he was trying to scream for another reason, and seemed to be travelling faster than any car on the motorway. He didn't even dare struggle. Falling from this height would kill him in moments.
The realisation had already hit him. These people had killed Theresa. They'd probably killed all the others, too. And they'd recognised him.
Ste didn't think he was getting out of this alive.
"You will all calm the fuck down!" Brendan instructed the crowd below him, all of whom were looking at him with blank faces awaiting his instructions.
"We will all calm the fuck down," replied the crowd in eerie unison. They were quite disconcerting, this mass of people all listening and obeying his command. He hadn't thought about his actions before he did them. He saw Theresa, little more than a child, life snapped out in the space of a few minutes and he'd felt ready to cry. And then a hundred stupid idiots had started screaming and he'd wanted them to shut up, so he'd made them. He'd never tried to hypnotise more than a handful of people at a time. This was too much. This was scary. But kind of awesome, too.
"You will stay out of the way until we have respectfully taken her home."
"We will stay out of the way until you have respectfully taken her home."
"If you saw what happened, you will speak to myself or Mitzeee as soon as I have finished giving these instructions."
"If we saw what happened, we will speak to yourself or Mitzeee as soon as you have finished giving these instructions."
"You will speak to no one else about what happened here tonight."
"We will speak to no one else about what happened here tonight."
"Unless I tell you to do so!" Brendan added, realising the problems he might be creating for himself.
"Unless you tell us to do so," repeated the crowd.
"Then get to it!" Brendan instructed, and the sound of hundreds of feet obeying while no mouths spoke filled the room. It was still scary, still weird. Mitzeee was looking vaguely impressed with his power. Cheryl was looking slightly sickened.
"Bren," she said, "That was horrible! Imagine what Daddy would say about all of that!"
Brendan rolled his eyes. He left his father behind long ago, his opinions were worthless now.
"Who knew you were capable of that!" said Mitzeee, "yet you still can't get into Ste's pants!"
He glared at her, but was grateful she was trying to lighten the mood. He was being crushed by the image of Theresa McQueen. How old was she? Twenty? Twenty one? Probably even younger than Steven.
"Can we call her Mum?" he asked.
Cheryl shook her head, "She lives with her Aunty. Lived."
"Well get her on the phone, or something, yeah?" said Brendan.
"Her Aunty's Myra McQueen, Bren," said Mitzeee pointedly, and Brendan frowned.
"Course," he said, "I knew that. Get her in, yeah?"
He stepped to the very edge of the balcony, then flew to to the girl. Vampires weren't meant to hover in the air, but he could do it for long enough to scoop the girl up and cut the rope before taking her back to the ground and laying her down as gently as possible. He tore the rope away, tears in his eyes. A child. Whoever was doing these awful things needed to die slowly and painfully.
Brendan was no fool - these murders centred around the club and Steven. Most vampires he knew of drank from willing suppliers, but he knew accidents happened. He knew some people were just psychopaths: vampires and humans. He had no reason to believe Theresa's killer was a vampire. She hadn't been drunk from. But he knew enough to be suspicious. This was about Steven, which meant that unless Steven had a much darker and deeper past than he let on, this was about Brendan.
"Where's Steven?" he asked whoever was nearest.
"He just popped out for some air," said Mitzeee, "I think he was a bit shocked by the whole mass hypnotising thing."
Yeah, that would freak out Steven. It had freaked out Brendan.
"Is he alright?" he asked, wondering if it was OK for him to be running after his lover when a girl was dead in front of him.
"He's fine, Brendan," said Mitzeee reassuringly. "I'll go check on him if you like, though."
"No answer from Myra's," Cheryl told him.
"Keep trying," said Brendan. "What happened to the one in the cellar?"
"What?" said Cheryl.
"The one in the cellar!" Brendan repeated, "the body in the cellar!"
"What body in the cellar?!" Cheryl cried, obvious shock in her voice.
"The body in the cellar, Cheryl, we do not have multiple bodies in the cellar, Cheryl!"
"Since when was there a body in the cellar, Brendan?" cried Mitzeee.
"Since you locked me in there with it and Steven!" Brendan shouted.
"And you didn't feel like mentioning it at the time!" Mitzeee shouted back, accusingly.
"I had to go to Steven!" he protested. Obviously he did, but it was stupid he'd forgotten to tell them. "Look, just go find someone who can make them disappear."
"Who?" cried Cheryl.
"Oh, just... just leave it, I'll sort it!" He rubbed a hand over his face, and breathed deeply. "One of you go check on Steven, he's been ages."
Cheryl nodded and went on her way. Mitzeee stood closer, "So, we're going to cover this up, then? Not go to the police?"
He'd had that on the edges of his mind, but hearing Mitzeee voice the question confirmed it to him. "You know as well as I, the police won't be finding these monsters."
"And you will?" she asked, and Brendan heard a note of worry in her voice.
He scooped Theresa up into his arms, looking at her empty eyes, her features frozen in terror. Brendan began to shake with anger, radiating with fury from every part of his body. "I'll find them if it kills me."
Ste opened his eyes slowly and let out a long groan. The last thing he'd remembered was flying through the cold night air and then it had all gone black after that. His head hurt, so he assumed one of the men must have knocked him out or he'd passed out. He tried to move, but realised he seemed to be tied to a chair.
"Do you think the Master would mind if we just had just a little lick of him?" asked one of the voices, Ste assumed his name was Eoghan. "I'm really hungry. That police officer bloke just didn't fill me up.'
"I don't think we should. There's something different about him, something that's not quite right about him," answered Vinnie the Vicious, or whatever his name was. "Besides I think I'm getting a bit fat."
"Vampires don't get fat, stupid!"
"How do you know Eoghan?"
"Because I am one."
"Well you obviously haven't looked in the mirror lately, because you've put on more than a few pounds!" said Vinnie in a childish voice.
"Vampires can't look in mirrors!" growled Eoghan.
Ste glanced over at the two men, noticing neither were paying attention to him. He took the chance to look around the room and noticed the woman who he'd caught them kidnapping earlier had her eyes closed.
"Well that's obvious by what you're wearing! Did you get dressed in the dark this morning?"
Eoghan's face twisted with anger. "You know I haven't been feeling myself since I feasted on that Will Savage kid, he didn't half repeat on me. I don't know how you can be so cruel!"
"It's not cruel, I'm just being honest." said Vinnie, scratching his head in confusion.
"Right, well I've had enough of you!" shouted Eoghan. "Outside now!"
Vinnie pulled a face. "Why do we have to go outside? It's cold out there."
"Vampire's don't feel the cold you idiot!"
"Stop calling me an idiot!"
"Well stop being one then!" replied Eoghan. "I want to hit you and you know Master says we're not allowed to fight in the house any more. You know what happened last time."
Vinnie crossed his arms. "I don't care what master says. I don't know why he got so upset, it was only a bit of blood on the carpet!"
"Yeah! And look who was the one who had to clean it up!"
Vinnie snorted. "Well you were the one who decided to play with your food. You eat like a pig! No wonder Brendan doesn't want you."
"Take that back!"
"Make me!" hissed Vinnie.
Eoghan flew at Vinnie and began to claw at his face. If the situation wasn't so dangerous, Ste might have laughed. He felt like he'd been kidnapped by the Chuckle brothers! And what was there connection to Brendan? He began to wiggle against whatever was holding him and found himself tied quite loosely. If Vinnie and Eoghan would just leave, he might have a chance of escaping. He glanced over at the woman again and noticed this time she was awake. They looked at each other, both trying to silently communicate.
"Not the face!" cried Vinnie in a feminine shriek. "Anywhere but the face!"
"I'm improving it!"
Vinnie rolled Eoghan off him and began to yank savagely at his hair.
"You fight like a girl...ow!" cried Eoghan.
"Well you look like you've got a stick shoved up your-'
He was silenced by Eoghan clamping his teeth over his hand.
Vinnie let out another girly cry. "You bit me you bastard! And it really hurt!' big red tears started to leak from his eyes. "You crossed the line man!"
Eoghan spat onto the floor in disgust. "Well you taste bloody awful. I won't be able to get the taste out of my mouth for weeks now. It's not like I can brush my teeth!"
"I'm a vampire, what do you expect me to taste like? Treacle sponge?"
"Why would you taste like treacle sponge?" asked Eoghan.
"Why would you bite me to find out in the first place?"
"Boys!" shouted a new male voice from above. "Are you down there? I brought fast-food, they were pretty quick but I caught them in the end. It's Chinese."
Vinnie and Eoghan looked at each other for a second; before they both ran towards the stairs, childishly pushing and shoving each other on the way up. It seemed they had completely forgotten about their hostages as the door slammed behind them.
Ste waited for about a minute, before he desperately began to struggle against his binds. He threw himself forward and fell to the floor and for a moment was disorientated. That was stupid. He looked at the woman with him.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"No, I think they've crushed me sausage rolls!" she moaned, sadly. "I bet they're proper warm now."
Ste didn't know what to say to that, so he said, "You're a witch, right?"
"I sure am," said the witch, with a proud smile, "I'm one of the top three witches in the Chester area."
"Wow!" said Ste, impressed, "so, do you think you could get us untied?"
The witch looked away (well as much as she could while tied to a chair), "Well, I don't... you see... I know a great spell that burns through wood."
Ste was impressed, "Brilliant!" he said, "well go for it."
"But I need a lock of a virgin's hair," she said, "here, I don't suppose you're a..."
"No I bloody ain't!" snapped Ste.
"Hey, no need to be like that, I was only asking!" cried the witch.
"Well you must have another spell?" Ste cried, aware that their captors could return at any moment, "Like one that can untie knots?"
"Er, no," said the witch, "I don't know one that does that."
"How about one that could put them to sleep?"
"Oo, sleep is hard," said the witch, "could have come in dead handy when my kids were small, that, but it had so many steps!"
Ste was getting desperate, "Call for help?" he tried.
"Er, no, can't do that either."
Ste frowned at her, "You say you're one of the top three witches in Chester?"
"Well, yeah," said the witch, "you know, third, but that's top three!"
"And how many witches are there in the Chester area?" Ste asked, catching on.
"Well, three, but they're bloody good the other two!"
Ste closed his eyes and bumped his head against the floor. "Is there anything you can do?" he asked.
"Oo, I have a great line in budgerigars," said the witch.
"Budgerigars?" Ste repeated.
"Oh, yeah, they're dead pretty! I sell them sometimes. Do you want one? I've got ten at my house."
"No, I don't want a bloody budgerigar!" snapped Ste.
"Oh, and I made a lovely cake for our Jacqui's birthday the other week."
"Can you do anything useful?!" Ste demanded, angrily.
"Er, to escaping this situation, you mean?"
"Yes," said Ste, "I would like to escape and before dumb and dumber come back."
"Then, no," she said, "not 'til I can move mi hands, anyway.
Ste groaned and wriggled in his bonds again. Surely there had to be a way to get back to Brendan? He needed to warn him that there was more than one vampire hurting people. Three from the sounds of it, these two idiots and their 'master'. He tugged at his wrists then reached for the thin rope that bound his hands together. His fingers caught one of the ends and he tugged it. The bonds came apart.
"Er, I think they tried to tie me up with a bow," he said, tugging them open.
"Really?" said the witch. "Not even our Carmel would think that was a good idea. And brains 'ave never our Carmel's strong point."
Ste got up, brushing himself down, checked for signs of their captors returning then untied the witch.
"Right," he said, "now we have to get out of here."
"Hang on!" said the witch, pulling out a packet of sausage rolls and checking them over. They were completely squashed. She pulled one out and took a big bite.
"That's proper rank!" said Ste.
"I'm hungry!" replied the woman, spraying pastry and meat out of her mouth full of food. "Do you want one?"
"No. We need to get out of here, before they come back." said Ste, finally removing the last piece of string (they obviously failed to find gaffa tape or more rope) holding her to the chair. He pulled her up and eyed a door that lead out the room that looked to be a basement; surely they wouldn't have been stupid enough to have left it open, right? He pulled the woman up and began to pull her towards the door as she let out an undignified squeak.
The door swung open on the first try and soon Ste was pulling the woman into the night. They were in an unfamiliar neighbourhood and none of the houses seemed to show any sign of life. Ste continued to pull the woman along, knowing any minute they could be recaptured again. About a minute later she collapsed against a garden wall, coughing and spluttering from the effort of running.
"We can't stop now!" cried Ste. "They'll kill us."
"Not if I put a spell on them. I'm a witch, you know? " gasped the woman, and Ste rolled his eyes. Some witch. He was the one who had been doing all the saving! "I can't run any more, it's taken me years to get a figure like this...I ain't ruining it with any of this running business."
"Well do it then." said Ste. Clutching his side that was starting to ache with stitch.
"I'm trying! This stuff is not as easy as it looks, you know!" she hastily stuffed another sausage roll in her mouth. "It takes years to become as good as me."
Ste thought secretly that it was several years wasted. "Can you at least get us out of here?" asked Ste. "Get us back to DOA?"
The woman's eyes suddenly lit up. "That I can do." She pulled a coloured stone out of her pocket and began to chant in a language that Ste didn't understand. It seemed just as he thought life couldn't get any weirder, it did!
Just as Ste was giving up and thinking the woman's claim of being a witch was a lie, he began to feel a tingling on his chest. The skin just below his neck seemed to be growing and the top of his t-shirt began to stretch forward. When the tingling stopped Ste realised that he now had a perfect, well-sized pair of female breasts.
"What the hell have you done?" asked Ste, poking one of his brand new breasts. He had a feeling Brendan wasn't going to like this new development, if he ever got back to Brendan that is. It seemed nearly every man's dream was turning into his nightmare. "Get rid of them!"
"It was the wrong spell!" cried the woman, defensively stating the obvious. "That's the one I used to help our Carmel the other day! I can't remember the reversal spell off the top of me head. Can't you keep them?"
"No!"
The woman held the rock out in front of her again and began to chant. This time Ste knew things were different, a circle of light formed underneath them and a strong wind rushed around them. Myra's chanting got louder and her eyes turned golden in colour. The street in front of them seemed to be shimmering and becoming distorted.
"There they are!" cried a voice nearby. "Master won't flay us alive after all. Get them!"
Vinnie ran towards them, his arms outstretched to grab them. Just as his fingers reached out to grab Ste's arm, he and Myra disappeared with a loud bang and a cloud of dust.