Marko runs through the tall grass, hot at the heels of a pale white German shepherd. The dog happily yips into the night air, occasionally snapping his teeth at a bug flitting by, or a particularly tall weed smacking into his face. It had taken one month for them to start searching the property. Three more months to realize Thorne would probably do a better job. And finally...8 more months for him to find what the Lost Boys were searching for. The remains of their fallen companions.
David sailed overhead, keeping his eyes on the lookout for anyone who might approach them and disturb their games tonight. Even he couldn't hide his excitement over reuniting with Dwayne and Paul, who'd done a much better job at keeping Marko occupied, and were a hell of a lot more fun than just a trio.
Michael hung behind, stepping slowly through the field with no particular desire to get to their destination. He had spent the last year living a nightmare, and something told him it was only about to get worse.
"Come on, Michael!" Marko shouted behind him, forcing Michael to pick up his pace a little.
None of them, afterwards, would really understand how they'd missed this spot after they'd combed the Emmerson's backyard and surrounding property so many dozens upon dozens of times. But there was a feeling in the air as they approached the 'grave site' that struck each of them immediately. It was as if all the noises of the summer evening faded away all at once. There was not one cricket chirping, not one rodent crawling through the grass and frantically scraping at the ground. Even the wind became disturbingly absent.
David lowered himself to the ground, not too far from Thorne, who had begun to scratch at a large patch of darkened earth. It was as if someone had kept the area religiously mowed, tearing up any remaining grass from the soil to keep it from coming back.
"We don't rot," Marko remarked, kneeling down to aid the dog in his digging.
"What?" Michael asked, slowly drawing towards them.
"Bugs don't go after our body parts, neither does mold, or much of anything..." Marko explained, which really didn't help to clear matters up. He sounded nuts.
"It's why the grass isn't growing here, Michael." David supplied, throwing an arm around him and grinning. "Cheer up, Mikey. We're about to have a family reunion!"
A peal of thunder echoed in the night air, seeming to drive the point home.
"A bit overkill, but I'll bite," Marko joked, continuing to dig through the loose dirt. By now his claws were fully-grown, and he was morphing into his vampiric shape to give himself the extra burst of energy he'd need to get the job done. Clearly, the old man who'd buried them had made damn good sure neither Paul nor Dwayne's remains would be found by anyone. Unfortunately for him, he'd neglected to mark the site with a cross or even sprinkle holy water over it to ward away the remaining Lost Boys. His unfortunate grandson included.
"How much you wanna bet it's gonna be a shit load deeper than six feet?" Michael snorted, crossing his arms and watching David join Marko and Thorne to help speed up the job. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it up. Nothing laced. There wasn't even a tiny bit of marijuana in it. He hated that shit. Probably because Marko and David seemed to like it so damn much. Any way to set himself apart from them, or privately rebel from the 'family' he'd become a part of.
David lifted his arm from around Michael's shoulders and gave him a slightly evil grin. Who the fuck was he kidding? All of his grins were evil.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Michael asked wearily, taking a long pull of his cigarette and letting the smoke drift from his mouth slowly.
"No reason. No reason at all," David shrugged as he spoke, unconvincingly. He was up to something...always up to something.
"Would you fuckers get down here and give me a hand?" Marko grunted in a slightly deeper voice, warped by his morphed state. As hyper and cheerful as he always tried to be, he was sure as hell not going to be the only one getting his hands dirty tonight.
"They're your 'brothers', not mine," Michael replied, taking another pull of his cigarette and looking up at the night sky.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" David asked, placing a hand on Michael's chest and pretending to straighten his shirt for him.
"I said they're-" Michael was cut off by a firm glare from David, and he very angrily forced himself to drop his cigarette and grind it in the grass below.
"Asshole..." He murmured under his breath as he stripped away his jacket to toss it aside. Michael wasn't a big fan of going out on the hunts to grab himself fresh clothes, so he tried his best to keep what he had as clean as possible. Kneeling down, he joined Marko in clawing at the dirt.
As for David...Michael wasn't surprised to note the mother fucker lighting up his own 'cigarette' so he could enjoy the show.
'Seriously?!' Michael wanted to snap, but managed to bite his tongue. For his little act of half-defiance earlier, he'd already earned himself a late evening of deep scratches in his back and a sore ass while he slept. He wasn't about to compound it and end up having to regrow another limb. In the past year, he'd luckily only experienced an unfortunate accident like that one time. It had been enough.
"Hey, look, I found a finger!" Marko crowed, sifting a handful of thick black dirt in his hand and picking out a long white object. He then frowned and tossed it behind him.
"...False alarm...just a tail bone..." He grumped, continuing to dig.
"...Tail bone?" Michael raised an eyebrow, pausing.
"Your nutjob gramps does taxidermy, right?" David asked through a mouthful of smoke, looking for all the world like an albino dragon-man as he spoke.
"Oh...yeah..." Michael shrugged. Of all people, David should damn well know what his grandfather did for a living. He'd been up close and personal with one of the many projects in the house. Michael mentally sighed, wishing his grandfather had considered rigging up false wooden horns instead of real ones.
David cast Michael a dark glare, and he shivered. Fuck, sometimes it felt like he could read his god damned mind.
"I can," David took another pull of his cigarette after he spoke, giving Michael a toothy grin. Marko burst out laughing.
"What?!" Michael yelped.
"Fuck, I was wondering when you'd tell him!" Marko continued digging, picking up the pace as he found his rhythm.
For Michael's part, he felt bile rise in his throat as he recalled all of the conflicting thoughts he must have had about David throughout their entire 'relationship', and the irony that David hadn't been even more thorough in his little nightly punishments escaped him. He was too busy freaking out about the few times he'd actually thought he enjoyed the sex. No wonder the fucker was so smug all the time.
It had begun to pour outside, and rivulets of water streamed over Star's bedroom window, while she sat beside it and stared out at the night sky. She hadn't gone to the boardwalk tonight. Laddie had been begging for weeks to pay them a visit, and she'd finally acquiesced. His parents, of course, were exceedingly fond of the saintly girl in the spangled skirt who found their little boy in an alley and returned him home unscathed.
That was what they'd told her a thousand times over the phone. To them, Star was an angel sent from on high. In reality, she felt more like a devil who'd straddled the line between heaven and hell, keeping Laddie in her arms so he wouldn't fall in-between the cracks. The little boy still loved her as if she was his mother, and sometimes even a little bit more than his real parents. He hadn't gone through torture with them, nor had they been forced to endure a hunger no living person should have. But Star knew what it felt like, and so Star understood him.
He was still innocent in many ways. But the hunger...even if it was gone...sometimes memories of it came to bother him in the night. They bothered Star too. It was the same reason she'd started calling him, checking up on Laddie to make sure he was okay. She'd promised herself when she'd sent him back to his real home that she'd sever their connection to keep him safe, should David (or anything like David) come back seeking some sort of sick vengeance on her and the Emmersons. Star told herself she called Laddie to keep him sane, to remind him that it was all in the past. But the truth of the matter was, she called him for more selfish reasons. Sometimes she was afraid her nightmares would carry her away, and her body would be left with nothing but the hunger. Even if it was only a memory, it still had a strange hold on her mind.
Star placed her hand on the cool glass of the window, letting it contrast with her body heat. Knowing that she was still warm, that blood was pumping quickly and constantly beneath her skin...kept her mind focused. Sam and the others had gone to bed already, and she'd gone another night without dinner. They were beginning to worry about her. Worried that she was going to do something drastic.
Star glanced down at a plastic pill bottle in her left hand, which was not touching the window. They were absolutely right. Lucy Emmerson really should have paid more attention to her medicine cabinet. Star had gathered enough random pharmaceuticals to kill an elephant over the course of the last week.
Each time she took a pill or two, she told herself she would stop there. She told herself she'd put them all back, think no more of it, and go back to looking for Michael. But Star couldn't handle the visions of him on the boardwalk anymore, and she couldn't handle never being able to catch up with him when she turned around. There was only one way she knew she could definitely be with her lover, and it was not a happy thought.
Yet...flicking the cap off of the bottle...Star smiled to herself. Maybe in her final dream before the fog of the drugs claimed her final breath...she'd finally get to sun bathe on the beach in Michael's arms. Maybe.