"Vampires?"
Even as she stuttered out the word in confusion, deep down inside of her everything was starting to make sense. In fact, she couldn't believe Sam had figured it out before her. She was the one that had been living with them for countless months. Sam had only met them a few times and had barely even spoken a few words to them.
She should have been paying more attention. But, she guessed, she had gotten caught up in the feeling of actually belonging somewhere, and actually being cared for. The feeling had taken over all of her senses and in the past few months, she had let herself completely overlook all of the things that were wrong with her now four closest friends. Even Star and Laddie showed signs that they weren't exactly normal.
She turned away from Sam to hide the tears pooling in her eyes. She wasn't sure what to feel. Her heart was fighting between betrayal, confusion, disbelief, and worst of all, fear.
She wanted to say her fear was unfounded. She had been living with them for months now and they had had plenty of chances to kill her and drink her blood. She realized now that it wasn't just simply sleep all day and party all night; it was sleep all day, party all night, and kill people. Still, even with the thought of the four men killing people, fear was the emotion she was feeling least. And that scared her. Why was she not more afraid? Did they have such a strong hold on her that she really didn't fear them when she should have?
"Bekah," Sam called, effectively breaking her out of her inner thoughts. He walked around her until he was standing in front of her again and then he grabbed onto her shoulders in a firm grip. "You need to get out of there. You can't live with them anymore. They're bad news. They're vampires! They kill people for a living!"
"Sam," she said again and she tried as hard as she could to make her voice sound annoyed. "Vampires aren't real. They don't exist. This isn't a horror movie." She shrugged out of his grip and turned around, only to be stopped by the Frog Brothers who were standing right behind her.
She had run into them a few times on the boardwalk and honestly she thought they were creepy. The pair of them was always glaring at her four companions and even her on most occasions.
"We've seen you around with them," one of them said.
She wasn't sure of either of their first names. She just knew their last name and only because it was on the front of the comic book store they ran.
"We thought you were already one of them," the other said.
Both of their voices were serious, as if they had just come from a funeral.
"I don't even know what you're talking about. They're perfectly normal. Just because they seep during the day and prefer to party all night does not mean they're vampires. You can't just go around accusing people of being vampires!" She insisted, even though she was already convinced they were right. "You have to have more evidence than that."
"We have all the evidence we need. We could really care less about what you do." One of the Frog Brothers said. "We only told Sam the truth because he was worried about you."
Bekah turned towards Sam with a fake roll of her eyes.
"Sam," she started. She felt horrible for what she was about to say but she didn't want him to worry further. She didn't want him to get involved and put himself in danger. "I know you hate that I left home and that you hardly get to see me, but making this story up about how my new friends are vampires is a little far fetched." She put her hands on her hips for good measure, taking a page from their mother's book.
"I didn't make it up! I just told Edgar and Alan who you were hanging out with and they warned me! I knew I had to tell you I just didn't know how. And then you just came walking in here, like you knew where to find me."
"Have you drank anything strange lately?"
"Have you had the urge to kill anyone?"
"Have you woken up on the ceiling in the last few days?"
The Frog Brothers started firing questions at her and she immediately started to shake her head.
"Stop!" She yelled at them. "This is between my brother and me. Excuse us." She promptly latched a hand onto Sam's arm and drug him out of the comic book store.
"I don't want you to worry about me," she told him earnestly. "I'm perfectly fine where I'm at. I know what I'm doing. My life is just fine. I promise I'll make more time for you Sam. I've just been caught up in a lot of my own emotions lately. It's hard for me to deal with mom, you know that." Lying to him brought tears to her eyes.
The thought of the boys finding out where she had been today and what the Frog Brothers has talked to her about, scared her. Maybe they had only kept her alive because she was ignorant of what they really were. Maybe if they knew she knew now, they would kill her without a second thought, like she was their pet or something.
"I'm telling you the truth, Beks!" Sam cried. His voice was getting desperate and it broke her heart.
"Listen, Sam," she said softly before she wrapped him in a strong embrace. "I have to get going. They'll be awake soon and they'll worry about me if I'm not there," she whispered. "I swear to you that they have been nothing but good to me," she added as an afterthought. Anything to convince him that she was ok and that he didn't need to come to her rescue.
"Don't go, Bekah," he pleaded with her as she released him from the hug. "Just come home with me. I promise I'll stand up for you. I won't let mom treat you like shit anymore."
"Watch your language," she said as a reflex. "You shouldn't have to stand up for me, Sammy. That's the point. It's just better if me and mom don't live under the same roof." She squeezed his shoulder and gave him a small smile.
He didn't return it and she didn't expect him to. Turning away from him in that moment was probably one of the hardest things she ever had to do. Especially because she wasn't sure if she would ever see him again.
"Wait Bekah," he called before she could get too far way. "Read this. It explains everything. If you start to realize they're anything like the vampires in this, then you need to get out." Sam was holding out a comic book to her. She wanted to refuse and tell him she really didn't need, that she already knew without a doubt they were vampires, but instead she walked back to him and gently took it from his hand.
"Ok, Sam," she reassured him. "I promise."
A few hours later, around noon, when the sun was highest in the sky, Bekah was standing in front of a bulletin board. It was littered with missing person's posters. It was literally full of them. It made her sick because she was sure she knew what had happened to each and every one of them. Some were around her age and some were younger. More than a few of them were attractive girls that she knew didn't deserve to die like they had.
What made her different than all of the people on those missing person's flyers? What made her so special in the eyes of the four boys she had grown to think of as family in their own way? The thought made her sick to her stomach and she turned away, clutching the comic book to her chest. She hadn't bothered to open it. She knew what would be in it.
She didn't know where to go from here. She didn't know if she could get out, if she could leave. Her relationship with Dwayne had just changed in a big way and something told her he wasn't going to let her go anytime soon. Although, a big part of her thought he wouldn't be above killing her if he found out she knew their secret.
It was a predicament, one she deeply regretted being in.
If only they had never come to Santa Carla. If only she had never met the boys.
The sun was beginning to sink in the sky as she mindlessly made her way back home, back to the boys. She didn't know what she would do when she got there or what she would say, if anything. She knew she was making good timing and would be back to the cave by the time they started to wake up. She had between now until she arrived to decide what she was going to do.
When she finally came to the cliff and the bridge that led to the cave, she realized there was a car sitting by the entrance. A car she didn't recognize and didn't like. It wasn't a good sign, at all, and she ran into the cave as fast as her legs could take her.
She wasn't sure what compelled her. She now knew for certain that the men she lived with were monsters, that they killed people, and yet as she ran towards the cave, all she could think about was her family and their safety and whether or not they were still alive.
She skipped the precautions she usually took when she entered her home and instead jumped straight to the bottom. She carelessly flung the comic book onto the table as she passed it and made her way straight to the commotion she could hear back by her bed.
She hadn't expected it. It was almost like a nightmare.
It made her want to vomit.
And it infuriated her beyond belief.
Michael was there, in her home, lying on top of Star. They were engaged in a passionate make out session that would have no doubt led to more if she hadn't come home. She saw red, pure red. And her mind and body were completely taken over by the rage she felt in that moment. After everything she had been through, everything Michael had put her through, he still wouldn't stop screwing things up for her. He still couldn't let her have a life of her own.
She surprised herself with the amount of strength she used to push him off of Star. And she surprised herself even more that the person she grabbed for wasn't Michael, but Star.
With a strength she had no idea she possessed, she dragged Star from her bed and clamped a hand around her throat. Although Star was taller, she was no match for the rage pumping through Bekah's veins at that very moment.
"Bekah!" Michael exclaimed but his voice fell on deaf ears.
Bekah was too focused on strangling Star, vampire or not.
"You whore," she spat, as her grip tightened on the other girl's throat. "You just can't leave well enough alone. You have to bring other people into your own mess of a life."
Her hand began to cramp with the effort of choking Star but she tried to shrug the pain away.
"You made your bed, Star," she continued. "Now you have to lie in it. Alone." She squeezed as hard as her hand would allow her.
Star couldn't make a sound. She could barely move. Bekah was only vaguely aware of the hand Star was using to claw at the hand that was wrapped around her neck. The pain of Star's scratches wasn't enough to bring her out of her current emotional state.
It wasn't just the rage of finding them together again after all of her warnings and threats. It wasn't just the rage of knowing Star was trying to bring Michael into their twisted little family. It wasn't just the rage she felt that Star couldn't just deal with the life she had long ago decided for herself. It was the rage she felt at being betrayed and lied to by her closest friends for months. It was the rage she felt at herself for not realizing the signs sooner.
"You're going to kill her!"
The yelled wasn't what broke her out of her trance; it was the punch that followed soon after. It snapped her head back with a force she had never encountered. Her hold on Star immediately fell away as she stumbled backwards and tried to regain her balance. Instead, she tripped on a rock not far behind her and tumbled down off of the small ledge Star's bed was situated on.
Her head cracked against the solid concrete of the floor and the taste of iron filled her mouth. The pain washed over her in seconds and she gasped, curling into herself until she was a mere ball on the floor. All the rage was gone. An awful pain in her head and her jaw had replaced it.
Her lip was split. She knew from the taste of blood in her mouth. And a goose egg was quickly forming on the back of her head where it had collided with the concrete. She laid there for more than a few minutes, groaning in agony and vision swimming.
When she finally regained her senses and looked up through teary eyes, she found Michael hunched over Star who was clutching at her neck and gasping for air.
Bekah sat on her ass, watching with an immense sense of self-pity as Michael fawned over Star as if she was a porcelain doll.
He had just punched her. Her twin brother had punched her.
"You okay, baby girl?"
She jumped at the voice but her nerves immediately calmed a few seconds later. Even after the realization she had come to about the four of them, she still felt incredibly comforted by their presence.
Marko was kneeling next to her now, as if he had materialized out of thin air. She wondered for a second if that really wasn't far off from the truth. Could vampires do that? Maybe she should have read that comic book after all.
Marko reached out to inspect her lip but a growl from across the room stopped his arm in mid-motion. He dropped his arm back to his side as if he had been burned and then gave Bekah an apologetic look.
She still couldn't say anything and instead decided to take inventory of who had shown up within the past sixty seconds while she was wallowing in pain.
David was standing directly in front of Michael and ironically the situation had been reversed. It was now David who had Michael by the throat but as Bekah took a closer look she realized that David's hold wasn't suffocating her twin brother but rather keeping him in place, exactly where David wanted him. Dwayne was only a couple steps behind David and Star was now on the other side of the bed, as if she had been thrown by one of the four boys.
While Marko was on one side of her, Paul had taken up residence on the other and as soon as she made eye contact with him he put a soothing hand on her back and began to rub comforting circles there.
"What happened?" David demanded as he held Michael in place with not only a hand on his throat but an icy glare as well.
"I went out to get some sun," Bekah lied breathlessly. "When I came back I found them together. I don't know. I just got so angry-"
"She was choking Star!" Michael cut in.
Immediately David's grip around Michael's neck tightened and Michael's face began to turn red.
"I'm going to start choking you if you don't shut up!" David threatened before loosening his grip again.
"It's true," Bekah admitted quietly. "I just got so angry. I pushed Michael off of her and just started choking her. I just…I couldn't stand it. After everything she's still trying to pull him into this mess that's her life…" She trailed off, only realizing what she had just said after she had said. She hadn't meant to imply that Star's life was a horrible one because she lived with the guys and she hoped that none of them had taken it that way.
She tried to recover quickly. "I'm sorry, David. She's just such an ungrateful little bitch!" She snapped.
"You don't know anything!" Star yelled back at her from her spot by the bed.
Bekah wanted to scream back because she really did know everything. They just didn't know she knew everything.
"Shut up!" David roared before the two girls could argue anymore. A dead silence fell over the cave and Bekah twitched under the weight of it.
David's voice rang out through the cave strong a cold a few seconds later. "Get out of my home," he told Michael. "Don't ever come back. And if you ever lay a hand on our sister, ever again, I'll make you wish you were never born." David squeezed Michael's feeble neck to get the point across and Michael gasped for air until David let him loose.
Michael scampered away as fast as he could, up and out of the cave. Never once looking back.
Thirty minutes later, Bekah sat on the couch with a mug of hot tea in her uninjured hand that Paul had made for her and a blanket draped over her shoulders. Marko sat next to her, gently cleaning the scratches on the hand she had used to choke start. She was shivering slightly but not from the weather. It was from the adrenaline.
Her mind had been racing for the past thirty minutes. She had been thinking in over drive. Ever sense Michael had left all she could think about was the sick satisfaction she had felt when she was strangling the life out of Star. All she could think about was how it had felt to have that power in her hands.
And now she was wondering if that's why the four of them had kept her around. Because they saw in her a potential most others didn't have. She wondered if they thought she had what it took. To be like them.
"I guess you went out for a little more than sun today, huh, Beks?" David growled. Her head snapped up despite the ache she still felt and all the blood drained from her face.
David was holding up the vampire comic book Sam had given her earlier that day.