Author's note: So...discovered I was spelling Alan wrong. I will eventually go back and edit this grievous error. How many people honestly spell it that way, though?! Anyway, there will be some mild to I guess what you'd call hardcore gore in this scene. Blood. Guts. All that gross stuff.
"Hey, kid...c'mere..." Edgar gestured to a small boy munching on a mouthful of cotton candy. His mother was busy talking, so she didn't notice the curious child slip away.
"Yeah?" The boy lisped, licking bits of pink sugar from around his lips.
"Have you seen this guy anywhere?" Edgar reached under his coat and pulled out a wallet-sized photo of Michael that had been folded 6 times and chewed on by Nanook twice. It was the only picture Sam had handy.
"Nooooo," the boy shook his head, his voice getting a little higher pitched with each second he let the word draw out.
"Really? Not like...on a bike? With other guys...on bikes?" Edgar urged.
"I like cotton candy," the boy hinted, grinning. He couldn't be more than five, but already he seemed like a real con artist to Edgar.
"Do you know something?" Alan knelt down beside his brother and glared at the kid.
"Depends...is there cotton candy in it for meeee?" The boy asked, stepping away from them and tucking his hands into the back of his pants to hitch them up from the inside.
Sam looked over at the kid's mother nervously, and then back at the frogs.
"Guys, I don't think we should be giving candy to kids we don't know..."
"Do you wanna find your brother or not, Sam?" Alan demanded, glaring at him.
"Not if it means getting my ass arrested!" Sam protested, when the boy's mother suddenly looked up and began striding towards them with a look of murder in her eyes.
Once, as a kid, the family car had broken down in the desert on a road trip. They'd been stuck there waiting for someone to hopefully drive by for seven hours. From then, until the blood lust, Michael had never been so thirsty. Swallowing saliva only agitated his throat, making him even more frustrated when he couldn't sate it.
And now, every night that they hunted, which was most nights, Michael thought of that road trip. It couldn't compare to the pain of resisting what he needed. Rich, warm life pumping in rivers through the veins of the humans around him at the bonfire...it was almost beautiful, to the beast inside him.
He let his drained victim fall to the sand with a soft thump. An empty shell now. Marko was right when he'd told him about a year ago that the killing would cease to really matter. He still wanted it to, though. He was terrified of himself, sometimes.
"Join the party, Michael!" Marko shouted, hovering above the fire with a partially-roasted junkie in his arms. He was still alive, and his shrieks were clearly exciting the monster that held him to no end.
Michael grabbed the boxes of Dwayne and Paul's remains, and gingerly climbed down the small hill that merged into the sand dunes the party-goers were skittering through. Left and right, David was grabbing and slashing throats. Sometimes he would lick his bloodied claws and grin at the sight of the crimson sprinklers he'd turned his victims into.
Michael dropped the boxes at his maker's feet and crossed his arms.
"What now?" He asked warily, reaching out to snatch a hysterical woman who'd somehow manage to escape David's attention. Holding her close to his chest, stroking her hair with one hand as if she were a lover, Michael kept the other over her mouth. The screaming was giving him a headache.
"If you calm down, I'll let you live," he whispered into her ear. A sweet lie that sometimes worked to soothe the many meals he'd had over the past year. She went lax against him, and he continued to watch David, awaiting instructions he didn't really have any interest in following.
"Careful, Michael. They don't taste as good if they aren't a little scared of you..." David smirked, tucking a cigarette in his mouth as he knelt down to flip the boxes open. He was standing in the center of a pile of bloodied bodies, many of them still spurting blood from their throats and quivering madly in the sand. Like frogs in a science class when you shocked their muscles.
The brunette shrugged, noting that the woman in his arms seemed to be bursting into a fresh wave of panic after hearing David's warning. She was quickly catching on that he had no interest in letting her live.
Michael drew back his lips and sunk his teeth into her neck, eyes trained on David casually while he drank. The woman screamed into his hand, and he felt the slight vibration of sound against his fingers.
What followed almost gave Michael pause. Almost. He was still too thirsty to draw himself away from his second course. Drops of blood fell into both boxes, then suddenly...the dust and bits of charred bone began to stir. It was like they were living things, somehow held together in their grayish-black masses as they climbed over the edges of their respective boxes and flew towards the bloodiest and closest bodies at hand.
"Whoa..." Marko descended from the sky. He'd already disposed of the body he'd been snacking on. Even if he was an immortal bloodsucker with the ability to fly and sleep on the ceiling with nothing but his toes to support him...he was thoroughly impressed by the peculiar sight. David and Michael were, too.
The cloud of dust and bones that had picked the choicest body seemed to be shifting. There was less gray and more white in the mixture, and a strange crackling sound filled the air about them. Not from the bonfire, but from the bones inside the mass. They were re-forming. Re-shaping into a skeleton. But one body was not enough, and it quickly jumped to another, to continue to sate it's hunger.
How is it even feeding? Michael wondered, dropping the now lifeless woman to the ground. He was un-phased by the look of terror that remained frozen in her glassy eyes. He honestly wasn't even looking.
The other cloud of dust and bones, not to be outdone, had latched onto a third body of it's own by now, and had actually fully formed into a gruesome skeleton at this point, with streaks of meat adhering to it's ribs.
"Oh, that one's gotta be Dwayne," Marko observed, pointing to the other skeleton. Wisps of dark hair had begun to form on it's crown. Paul's re-shaping remains let out a loud cackle, followed by a howl. It's internal organs were beginning to form now, as well as a tongue and set of bloodshot eyes.
"Shit..." Michael's jaw dropped open. If he wasn't a vampire, he'd be freaked the fuck out right about now. Honestly, he kind of was anyway.
"How ya feeling, boys?" David shouted, laughing when Dwayne's skinless corpse turned on him and let out an irritated hiss. Clearly he wasn't in the mood for jokes right now.
"C'mon, Paulie! YEAH!" Marko clapped his hands when Paul leapt to yet another body, and tore into the ribcage with glee, licking at the gore like a crazed toddler who had still yet to grasp the concept of how to eat spaghetti.
"Which one do you think is gonna be done first?" David wondered aloud, leaning on Michael's shoulder. He could only shrug in response.
"Probably Dwayne. He's not playing with his food as much," Michael sighed. Not for a moment did he even think about the fact that for the first time he'd actively called the people they killed 'food' out loud.
David silently watched the others as they continued to feast, and then his eyes slid over to examine Michael's face. Each night he saw a new side to the boy. A new facet of the predator he'd created. It would be heart-warming, if he still had a pulse.
By the time they were all sated, they were lying on the sand together in a group, drenched in red. When Paul and Dwayne had finally gotten themselves back together, the others had decided to finish off the rest of the leftovers. There would not be one survivor to tell anyone of the carnage that night.
"You know, there is one good thing about that accident you made back at the cave...she can eat all the leftovers. Easy cleanup," David remarked, lifting himself up on his elbows and smirking at Michael.
"Don't call her that," Michael grumbled, not meeting his gaze.
"So, like...what the hell happened?" Paul interrupted, a little bit more focused on the fact that he and Dwayne had not only had the best fucking time of their lives, but they weren't roasted fertilizer at the back of the Emerson's property anymore.
Marko laughed, sitting up and pulling Paul in for an unexpected and wild kiss.
"Whoa! Nice to see you too!" Paul laughed, shoving Marko away and giving his hair a playful tug.
"How long were we dead?" Dwayne inquired quietly, sitting up and frowning at David.
"Good question. Mikey, boy, when's your anniversary?" Marko winked at Michael, and the brunette simply glared at him. Both Marko and David were quite used to the glares. Not that they'd ever been phased by his shitty moods anyway. Their indifference irritated Michael even more. But what was he supposed to say? 'Take my anger seriously'? Even in his mind, saying something like that made him seem like a whiny bitch.
"One year...and 2 days." David tucked a cigarette in his mouth and patted his coat pockets searching for his lighter. Michael rolled his eyes and pulled out a box of matches he had tucked away in his jacket. David was always losing that god damned thing.
"Here. And start packing your fucking lighter before we go out," Michael passed him the matches. It escaped him how affectionate the gesture seemed, but Marko noticed. And Paul definitely did. They exchanged a smug look and remained silent.
No one said much after that. They just stared out at the ocean. Bits of chewed up flesh and intestine were being carried away by the tide. Paul was definitely a messy eater.
"Aw, shit!" Marko suddenly slapped his forehead.
The others looked at him curiously.
"I'm gonna have to wash my jacket again!" He grabbed a rock nearby and angrily threw it out into the surf.