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His name was Vinnie, Vinnie the vicious! Because lets face it, he was a bloody vicious vampire! Just ask anyone. Well maybe not anyone, but definitely the witch and his friend Ste. They both appreciated a vicious vampire when they saw one. Vinnie sighed and picked up his Wii controller, he was bored and there was only so many times he could watch his Twilight box set.

Vinnie didn't really have much luck with friends as a vampire. The first friend he'd made was a stray cat, he'd lured the thing into the house and taken care of it. Eoghan and Cam had laughed at him, but Vinnie was determined to prove them wrong. It wasn't his fault he'd gotten a bit peckish and ate the thing. It was annoying really, it had hissed all the time and wanted feeding a lot...so it was the best solution to that problem. It was quite yummy really, it had tasted a little like chicken.

After the failed cat-friend incident Vinnie had tried to befriend Eoghan...but he'd been proper boring. All Eoghan seemed to do all day was do his hair and talk about Brendan, usually in that order. There was only so many times Eoghan could tell you about his extremely brief (it was so brief Vinnie was now beginning to wonder if he'd made it up) encounter with Brendan. Cam wasn't that interesting either...Vinnie had noticed that he was, well...nuts. He'd filled a room with newspaper articles about Brendan and painted pictures of him on the wall. That couldn't be normal, right? Macca wasn't much better either, there was something about the man that Vinnie didn't trust. They hadn't spent much time together. It didn't matter now any way, he assumed they were dead and Brendan had killed them.

Vinnie didn't really count Brendan as a friend either. Sure they'd had amazing sex a lot when he was human, but that was about as far as it had gone. He was pretty sure Brendan probably wanted to kill him right now. Friends didn't try to kill each other, did they? Not proper friends. Not like Ste and him. Ste and him were friends forever. BFF'S. Brothers from another mother. Nothing was going to tear them apart. Not even Brendan trying to kill him.

Vinnie placed down the Wii controller and let out a sigh. He was hungry and stuck in this house all alone. He didn't like being alone, he didn't like being lonely. He'd take Eoghan's stories/Cam's mental ravings over this silence any day. Maybe he could go and try and find Ste. Maybe Ste would play the new Wii dance game he'd shoplifted from Tesco's with him. Vinnie grabbed his coat and tried to ignore the mess that Brendan's vampires had made of the house. The only thing that had been left untouched had been the Wii and this was the only thing Vinnie really cared about. He'd have tracked down and murdered the vampires if they'd broken his favourite karaoke disk!

He stepped out the door and into the cold night, trying to ignore the fact he didn't feel the cold any more. It had been snowing and Vinnie loved snow. He couldn't wait to make a snow man and make snow angels. Maybe he could hypnotize a load of kids to have a snow ball fight with him...or even better at Christmas maybe he could make a family spend the day with him. He could even open all their presents, he loved presents!

The sound of crying forced Vinnie to stop and listen. He felt around with his mind to see if there were any humans about and found none.

"Hello?" said Vinnie.

The crying stopped suddenly, as if it had never been there in the first place. Vinnie suddenly realised he was scared, what if it was a ghost or something?

"Is someone there?" asked Vinnie.

"No." replied a voice in a sob.

"Oh, okay then." said Vinnie, he was about to walk away when he noticed a figure curled up in the snow. They were rocking up and down under a tree, almost as pale as the snow itself. Vinnie slipped over to them and tried to get a better look. Whatever they were, they were not human. And they'd lied to him, they were so blatantly there!

He was about to have a go, but they were crying. He couldn't shout at someone who was crying. Just because he was vicious didn't mean he was mean!

"Can I help you?" asked Vinnie.

The man lifted his head up slowly and if Vinnie was human he would have gasped. It was Ste, but it wasn't Ste. Ste was a beautiful human with golden skin who smelt of sunshine and fresh bread. This thing was a vampire who smelt of death. Besides, wasn't Ste tucked safely somewhere with Brendan? Why would he be out here on a cold winter's night? The man's eyes were crimson red instead of blue and his face was stained with trails of blood from where he'd been crying.

"Ste?"

The man continued to rock and didn't even acknowledge his name had been called. Vinnie noticed his hands were dripping with blood.

"Ste." repeated Vinnie, desperate to snap his friend out of his mental state. He briefly wondered how Ste had become a vampire, surely Brendan hadn't changed him. He wouldn't leave Ste to cope on his own after the transformation. Something must have gone wrong, very wrong.

"What's Ste?" asked the man. He was naked, apart from the stained white coat that was slung around his shoulders.

Vinnie bit his lip. "You are."

"I don't know what I am." hissed Ste. "All I know is that I was someone and now I'm not, now I'm a thing. A thing that kills and wants blood."

"You're not a thing." said Vinnie.

"I am a monster, a monster who wants blood and the beautiful man, blood and the children, blood and blood." cried Ste. "I need blood. Blood, blood, blood!"

Vinnie hesitated, wondering if he should call Brendan. Then again Brendan did want to kill him. He thought about it and then realised what an amazing opportunity this was. This was Ste, but not Ste. Not Ste didn't know he was Ste...which meant he could be Vinnie's Ste. Vinnie's Ste would be so much better than boring human Ste. They could stay up late together watching films, playing on the Wii and eating pizza boys! This was great!

"Why don't you come home with me, Ste." Said Vinnie, trying to sound as neutral as possible. "I can get you blood, lots of blood."

He now had Ste's full attention.

"Blood?" asked Ste.

"Lots of blood," said Vinnie.

"I want the man! I want the man too!" hissed Ste. "I need blood, I need sex, I need to kill the man."

Vinnie glanced down at Ste's battered body. It would be healed soon, all the imperfections would be gone by tomorrow. The blood lust might be gone by then too. It only lasted less than a week, then the human memories and emotions would begin to return. Vinnie wouldn't let that happen. Vinnie would make Ste into his Ste. Then he wouldn't be lonely any more.

"Blood and the best sex you'll ever have." said Vinnie. "I will give you both." Ste was very pretty, though not Vinnie's usual type, and Vinnie could do with a fuck. The last one he'd had was with Cam and that had been over too quickly. Ste had only just been turned, his need for sex would last for days and days. So what if he was technically Brendan's? Brendan shouldn't have left him here in the snow. In Vinnie's eyes it was finders keepers.

"Are you coming?" asked Vinnie, he held out a hand for Ste to pull himself up with.

Ste looked up at him with a lost expression on his face. For a moment he looked human, as if the real Ste was hiding somewhere underneath. But the flicker of the human Ste was before he was turned was gone as quickly as it appeared as Ste reached out and grabbed his hand.

"Come on, Ste. I can look after you," said Vinnie excitedly. "We'll get you some blood, play on the Wii and then we'll have sex and when we're done doing all that...we'll do it again!"

"Blood?" said vampire Ste, his eyes were frantically darting around as if he was looking for any source of it.

Vinnie's smile got even wider. "I'm going to give you the best night of your life!"

He read Leah and Lucas a story as he put them to bed. It actually hurt him to do it, unable to stop thinking of the story he'd told Steven as the beautiful boy had laid dying in his arms. The children had clung to him as he read, like he was somehow going to bring love into their lives rather than misery.

If he hadn't made that promise to Steven, he would be nowhere near this flat. This was a home he had no right to destroy, no right to invade. The children needed safety, not the monster under the bed. They needed their father, not the villain who had stolen him away from them.

They'd insisted on sleeping in Steven's bed. He wasn't sure that was a good idea, but he didn't argue. When they'd insisted he get in with them he had protested for ages. Leah had been in tears before he had consented to sitting on the bed beside them. Still Lucas had climbed onto his lap as he read, and Leah had wormed her way under his arm. When they eventually fell asleep he'd lifted them so carefully, as though they were made from thin glass and gently laid them on the bed, before tucking them carefully inside and getting under the bed himself. He couldn't risk falling asleep before sunrise and failing to wake up.

He'd laid still until long after midnight, when he had just needed to get away. He couldn't handle the guilt. He wanted to stab himself with the same stake that had killed his beautiful man, but he knew his body wouldn't be able to. The pressure of the two needs inside of him, the one to obey, the one to die, warred painfully. He wondered if the need to die might win simply through the stress of wanting to obey.

He went back to the still, silent club. No punters would be welcomed back for a long time. Once it had shone like a beacon of hope, the light in his future, built on the witch's spell and his children's health and happiness. Now it was a shell, like him. Empty, pointless, useless. Barely worthy of life.

Mitzeee and Cheryl both sprang out of their respective hidey holes when he arrived. Mitzeee smelt like she had just interrupted her feeding to greet him, while Cheryl was holding a slightly bandaged and much more forlorn looking Nate the dog clutched tightly to her bosom.

They both started talking at once. What came over was a mixture of "Brendan! Are you alright? Where have you been? Been worried sick! Terrified of what you would do! What were you thinking?"

He rolled his eyes.

"Jesus!" he growled, "can't I just have five minutes peace?!"

"Brendan, you've been gone for hours!" Cheryl said, softly and with that hurt expression that nearly killed him.

He snapped at her and she quivered away, making him regret it instantly. "Look, I'm sorry!" he said, but he wasn't really sorry about that. He was sorry that he was still here, still in this world when his reason to be here was gone, "I just spent the evening with ..." he couldn't say the name, "with his kids."

Cheryl blinked, "That must have been hard," she said, kindly.

"Yeah," said Brendan, accepting 'hard' as the inadequate replacement for 'devastating,' "so, unless there's something really important, I'd like to be alone."

He turned away from them, ready to hide in the office, but they followed.

"Er, Brendan..." said Mitzeee, nervously. "There is something..."

Brendan sighed, "Really, Anne, if it's something to do with a man you both want or a leaky pipe, can you just leave it for tonight?"

"Brendan, it's not anything like that. Lynsey rang; there was an attack. At the hospital."

Brendan scowled furiously. "And that's my problem how?"

"Someone drank a kid. Pints of the stuff." Mitzeee explained.

Brendan groaned. Why the hell was that his problem? Except, of course it was. The hospital was on his turf and if the word 'vampire' got into the paper there would be hell to pay. He didn't care for himself, but he couldn't risk Foxy knocking on his door again or someone trying to take over his patch.

"I wouldn't bother you with it Bren, but me and Cheryl have been talking and we think it might be Vinnie."

"Vinnie?" He asked surprised. Why Vinnie? Just because Steven had been too good for all of them and stopped him killing the little bastard?

"The mum saw a skinny fair-haired man running away," Mitzeee explained.

Cheryl interrupted "I think it'd be good for you anyway. You need to get your mind off..."

"I'm going," Brendan snapped before someone said the name.

"Do you want one of us to come?" asked Mitzeee, quietly.

"No!" He growled and stormed off. It wasn't til he got outside that he realised they hadn't argued once as they spoke to him. Once he might have felt relief at that, but right now it just pointed out how lifeless and wrong the world was now.

He made it to the hospital in seconds. So slow. What reason was there to be quick?

As always the hospital was disorienting. The smell of blood mixed with chemicals and plastic and sickness from every angle disgusted him and sent his teeth tingling with want simultaneously. Most vampires shied away from hospitals - there were too many people and so much illness that feeding could be dangerous. But if you were weak, it was a certain place to find a weak victim.

He hypnotised a passing nurse to tell him where to find the kid. Maybe someone could tell him where the attacker had gone. Who attacked a kid when a hundred ready willing grownups would line up for the chance for a fuck and a feed? He hadn't been that desperate since he was newly made and he'd never gone through with it. He'd been on the receiving end enough to be disgusted.

"Here you are," said the nurse blankly, "Robbie Roscoe."

She opened a door to a room full of angry young men comforting an angry and upset middle-aged lady.

He hypnotised them without thinking. Their anger was comforting, a break from the misery that dominated his own mind.

"What happened to the kid?" he asked the nearest man, dully.

The man indicated a teenage boy looking confused and irritated on a hospital bed. Not so much a kid then. This teenager was at least sixteen, probably older than that. And he had one of the ugliest minds Brendan had ever felt. Hatred, petty vengeance, sadism, a need to destroy. The boy's thoughts were the kind that could bring misery to everyone around him.

The hypnotised older man pointed at the small puncture wound on the boy's neck. "A naked man attacked and bit him."

"Naked?" said Brendan

"He was hiding in that room when they put me in there!" said the boy, who Brendan hadn't hypnotised, "he was some filthy pervert!"

"What did he look like?" asked Brendan, quietly.

"Skinny," said Robbie Roscoe, "pale and girly. Hang on! Are you the police?"

Brendan shrugged, "Something like that," he said.

"Then arrest that pervert! He was staring at me! Disgusting!"

Brendan strongly suspected that no one staring at this boy had sexual thoughts. The vampire was probably desperate for blood. Naked. Why would a vampire be naked? Why would anyone be naked? They must be a new vampire, just woken, recently made. To wake up in the hospital morgue and not understand...

His heart leapt. It couldn't be, could it? His blood had barely passed Steven's lips! He ran, following the scent of the dead all the way down to the bottom of the hospital. He slammed through doors, shoved past people, threw anything in his path aside without care. He was barely aware of any humans around him, and was travelling too fast for them to see.

He arrived in front of a very startled woman who screamed at the speed of his approach. He grabbed her arms, "Have any of your dead bodies come alive?!" he demmanded, with more emotion than he could bare.

"What?" gasped the woman, "of course not!"

Hope drained. He wasn't even sure it it was hope. Did he dare hope Steven was a monster now?

"Er..." said a man. A dumpy man with frekles, who looked carefully at one of the others; one being a spotty youth with a pale-face and the beginnings of an inadequate beard.

"No, not seen a thing mate!" snapped the youth, glaring at the dumpy man, in a way that let Brendan know they were lying.

"But..." said the dumpy man.

Brendan gave the pair of them a searching look. They were trying to hide something and they weren't doing it well. And not just from Brendan.

"What are you two hiding?" snapped the woman, with the unkind air of a supervisor.

"Nothing, Angie!" replied the spotty youth, as the dumpy man stared at the floor.

The woman glared at them, before turning to Brendan. "I'm sorry sir, this is a restricted area..." she began, but Brendan interrupted her. He hypnotised her to freeze.

"You, speak!" he ordered the dumpy one, who glanced with terror between his boss and his friend.

"Er..." he said.

Brendan hypnotised the friend too, "You two, leave, stand outside until you have counted to one thousand, then return slowly. Go."

The spotty youth and the efficient woman walked sedately from the room. The dumpy man looked more terrified as they left.

"What... what did you do?" he gasped.

"I instructed them to stand outside," said Brendan, making the steady eye contact he knew would terrify any sane man, "Imagine if I told them to stand in the middle of a road, or walk off the top of the building…"

"They.. you…."

"Or what I could make them say when you just disappear," said Brendan. He didn't enjoy making the threat, not like he might have once, he just had to know.

"How?" gasped the dumpy man, now with abstract terror painting his face.

Brendan gave a smile designed to scare him further and said, "Tell me what I want to know. Now."

The dumpy man swallowed, and lowered his voice. "Someone woke up in one of the draws."

Brendan tried to stay calm. "Who?" he asked, voice as quiet as he could manage.

The dumpy guy glanced furtively around, "Look, it was just a case of someone announcing a death prematurely, it happens."

"Who?" growled Brendan, angrily.

"We weren't hiding it, we just wanted to give the doctor a heads up before the shit hit the fan."

"Tell me who!" shouted Brendan furiously.

"Steven Hay," gasped the man.

If Brendan had been human, his heart would have fluttered. As it was, it felt like his stomach dropped. Steven had woken up in a mortuary. He'd been hungry and confused and Brendan had been nowhere to be found. Brendan had let the only person he'd ever truly loved die in his arms, then failed him again by letting him go through this alone.

He knew what he had to do. He had to find Steven, take care of him, and hope there was a tiny part of him that was still human enough to recognise him. He had to find him now.

But where would he have gone?

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