Author's Note: This is the final chapter but don't worry I will be writing a sequel as certain things remain unfinished and answered when this ends.
-
Coming home from his hunting trip to find the ominous message his sister-in-law had left on his home phone was not how Sam had wanted to spend his night after the last few days wandering around in the woods in search of a rare and elusive butterfly, which sadly still eluded him.
'S-Sam they're b-back and th-D-David, he's after Lily p-please hurry...' Then nothing.
The message was over a day old which was worrisome and Sam only knew one David that could make Star act like that. So 'they're back' could only mean one thing, one very bad thing. He quickly gathered his vampire hunter equipment that the old man had hoped would forever remain officially retired and took off for a house he had not seen in years and hadn't wanted to set eyes on ever again.
During the ride, he tried to call Star's number, but it didn't go through and he once again cursed her refusal to get a cellphone. Not that it would matter if David had gotten his hands on her, with that in mind he called the only other people who could possibly help her in the area.
The Frog brothers.
He also received no response from their numbers, he tried their parent's number but didn't hope for much and he was right too as he received no answer there either.
Sam had hoped that Star was wrong, but it wasn't looking like it. Because if Star had called him then she likely called Edgar and Alan already and the fact that they had cell phones and both weren't answering was telling.
This was going to be a long drive he thought as he glanced at the glowing digital numbers reading 8:07 at night and dialed another number for a conversation that he was dreading. The phone rang twice before a voice answered annoyed, "What do you want Sam?"
"Listen, Chris, I know you don't like me, but I have to tell you something... your mom called me and left me an upsetting message and now I can't get in contact with her. I'm on my way there now."
-
Lily didn't close her eyes she remained looking up at the stars as she fell as she didn't want to see the approaching ground but then someone shout her name, "Lily!"
Everything happened fast after that as she hit something no it was definitely someone hard and it hurt but not as much as she'd expected and it didn't help that some of the glass shards dug in deeper as the person's grip tighten around her. Tears sprung to the little girl's eyes but not from the pain but the fact that she wasn't alone anymore.
It took a minute to realize that the person who saved her was talking to her, "Are you alright!? You're bleeding, come here we need to get away from the fire."
Lily barely noticed he had picked her up while talking because she had been laying on top of him where he had fallen after catching her, he was familiar, but she was too busy crying her relief to recognize him at the moment. He carried her away from the burning house while looking around carefully for anything that might try and attack the pair of them.
His heart was pounding hard in his chest from what the girl could hear only she wasn't aware that it was both from the fright of seeing her jump and the run he had to make to get there in time to catch her.
"Lily I'm gonna set you down so I can look at your injuries okay?" She shook her head and clung tighter and he sighed not knowing how to interact with children let alone ones that were obviously scared, that's why Michael ended up with them instead of him he thought to himself.
However, that thought made him remember Star, "Lily where's Star?" The girl just keeps clinging to him while sniffling but didn't answer so he tried again, "Where's your grandma?"
She shakes her head into his chest and he gets the message, Star was dead or at least would be if she was still in the house. He raised his head and eyed the burning house before sighing, there was no way he could safely go in there and to do so would mean leaving Lily alone.
With the possible vampires lurking around that wasn't an idea he could entertain.
As carefully as Sam could he pried the girl's hands away as she just started to go into a coughing fit. Once he had her at arm's length he took in her appearance fully, while it was dark with only the moonlight, stars, and light from his car's headlights he could still tell she was both matted with blood, soot, tears, and sweat. Not to mention she was burning up, was it a fever or from being so close to the flames he didn't know.
All in all, she was a mess, how much of the blood was hers he also didn't know but he knew that he needed to find out in case she was seriously injured. Still, there was the possibility of vampires lurking around every corner so maybe they should leave first? No, they could leave once he made sure that nothing was deadly he quickly decides.
"Lily, what hurts the most?" She sniffles again but doesn't answer as she takes her arm to wipe away at her face but that action causes her to cry out in pain.
"What what's wrong!?" He grabs her arm gently and sees fresh blood on it but it's not from her arm, a bigger piece of glass stuck in her arm had cut her face right beside her eye in fact at first because of the blood he'd thought it had cut her eye. Thankfully that wasn't the case.
"Shit!" He exclaims making the pained girl look worried, "Don't move anymore until I get some of this glass out or else you could lose an eye." Her eyes widen making her wince as it stretched the new wound and tears started to flow once more stinging said wound.
She was also breathing much too hard, was it the smoke or cause she was crying? A combination of both?
"Aw, shit don't cry, man I'm not good at this." As quickly and carefully as he was able he carries her the rest of the way to his car and looks for something to clean and wrap her wounds, finding only the holy water he reluctantly pours some on a shirt from the back seat to try and clean her face and the newest cut which is hopefully not that deep despite all the blood coming from it.
She winces and pulls away from the smelly cloth, "Come on kid work with me." Lily frowns but tries not to move as he takes care of her face all the while finally recognizing him as her weird uncle Sam, well he was better than nobody, but she was starting to wish someone else came.
Lily winced again as he took the same cloth to clean her bleeding arms with, "...I'm gonna take out this piece of glass now so just hang tight cause it'll probably hurt." Lily eyes him warily through her tears as he wraps the dirty shirt around the biggest piece of glass in her forearm and pauses, "You know on second thought this might need stitches better wait for a doctor to do it."
The young girl pales at the thought and then promptly throws up without any warning right on her uncle Sam, "Shit! Oh man..." He backs away some and once she finishes he grabs some more holy water, "Um, here drink this." He hands it to her with one hand and awkwardly pats her back with the other one.
Lily is embarrassed but drinks the water as more tears form in her eyes, this was the worst day of the girl's entire life she decided as her headache made its self known now that she wasn't running on adrenaline.
All she wanted was to go to sleep and pretend it was all just a bad dream.
She wanted to wake up at home with her parents arguing and just have everything be normal again.
But the heat she felt coming from behind her was real, monsters were real, this was a waking nightmare... she never understood that phrase before now and she wishes she still didn't. Lily wonders how many wishes she's made tonight as Sam tries to ask her questions again but she's not paying attention.
He had to use the rest of the holy water on himself after she got sick on him and then he moved them both to the inside of his car hoping that she wouldn't be sick again but just as he was deciding to drive them to the nearest hospital he heard something and looked over his shoulder.
Fire trucks and police cars were arriving at the scene.
Sam turns back to the house or what was left of it and decides that it's beyond saving, luckily though he didn't encounter any vampires and with all the police headed this way it wasn't likely that they'd show themselves even if they were around.
Sam was starting to believe that they weren't.
Maybe Star started the fire, maybe she wasn't stable anymore.
Or rather hadn't been as there was a very high possibility that she was no longer alive.
Believing in vampires returning from beyond the grave was pretty crazy after all.
That still didn't explain all the abandoned cars around them though.
-
It was the strangest feeling and currently not the most comfortable, the best way Paul could describe it was like his skin and insides were melting backwards or something. Hell if he knew, he wasn't poetic or some shit but he was reforming his skin over his skeleton and that was just way too weird for words but at least it wasn't as painful as when his skin melted off, not that he thought anything could measure up to that kind of pain.
Oh wicked his veins were being put back together and he could feel it, it was actually making him kind of hungry. No, if only he could see but Paul put that down to his eyes not having reformed just yet.
Dwayne was having a surreal experience as well, only he wasn't regrowing anything he was reassembling like a broken toy and he hated it. The feeling of being put back together. Sure he wanted to be whole and in one piece but he could've done without feeling it happen, David had to be the lucky one as both him and Marko just need to regrow one pierced spot, sure it was in their hearts but he couldn't imagine it taking nearly as long or being this uncomfortable.
A vampire's heart though it turned out was more complicated once pierced it wasn't an easy fix, it stitched itself back together but at an agonizingly slow pace and David felt every minute of it all the while cursing Michael for his quick death. The pain was bad at the start but the more his heart mended the less pain he was in so at least there was that but it still felt like it was taking far to long for his taste.
Finally Paul felt whole again but he still couldn't see though he knew his eyes were back he'd felt them grow back he was sure of it. In fact, he couldn't move either, no wait he was moving no... that was something else moving beside him, wait was he buried? As soon as he thought that he knew that was the case, they'd reformed where their bodies had been laid to rest.
So Paul would have to dig his way out of his grave like some sort of zombie and he dreaded the damage already done to his poor clothes not to mention his hair.
After what seemed like days of reviving and then digging but was actually all less than half an hour the ash-like dirt was finally rising along with it three figures, first a hand breaks free of the earth and then several hands and soon full torsos follow, then all at once they were free."Aw man, look at all this stuff in my hair!" Paul exclaims as he touches runs his hand through it in disgust before shaking his head like a wet dog making dirt and ash fly everywhere, "Knock it off." David tells him with a glare as some of the dirt flies his way, he really needed a cigarette.
Dwayne was stretching as if he'd just woken up from a long nap but really it was a way to test out his limbs, "Too bad they're dead cause I'd like to kill them again for making me have to go through growing back all my skin and veins and stuff." Paul says while trying to dust off his clothes to no avail, yeah they would have to be replaced there was no way he could save them... just how many years were they buried anyhow?
"At least you were in one piece," Dwayne tells him trying to forget his body literally piecing itself back together again, he shudders.
"I was all bone!" Dwyane looks him over, "Nothing's changed then." Paul gives him the finger.
David rolls his eyes, "Come on you big babies. I don't know how long it took to get our bodies back, so we need to get moving."
Dwayne is the first one to notice something off and he sniffs the air, "Do you smell that?"
Paul stopped shaking his jacket to say, "Wasn't me!"
David's eyes narrow ignoring the other blonde vampire as he looks off into the distance. "The house is on fire." His tone is calm but obviously not happy with his own statement and without another word, he's flying through the sky with the other two close behind.
They arrive in record time to see that the house is indeed on fire, it's practically engulfed in flames at this point, but the humans are doing their best to put it out.
David's eyes don't linger on the fire instead he looks over the people, there are many down below the three floating vampires, but one catches his attention, Lily. She's alive and near the back of an ambulance, in fact, they're putting her in the back of it.
"I can smell her blood." Paul tells them worriedly, "...It's not a dangerous amount." Dwayne states but still looks concerned. David motions for them to follow him and the three descend.
Easily they hide their presence from the humans with a simple mind trick the only thing not simple about it is to use it on so many at once, Paul's gaze lands on one of the medical staff and he mentally tells the others, "I'm always up for eating a nurse."
David snorts, "Maybe later."
The trio make their way to the back of the ambulance and see the little girl being treated for what seems to be some cuts, broken glass is being removed from her arms and she appears to be mostly out of it though once the oxygen mask is put on her. David wasn't a medical expert but he was sure that she would make it, her breathing was off but her heartbeat was strong.
"So are we taking her?" Dwayne questioned, it would be easy to sneak her away from the humans but after a pause, David shook his head, "No."
"Why not?" Paul inwardly pouted, "I thought she was going to become one of us? I mean you did promise her."
David frowns and turns away from the injured girl, "Can't you feel it?"
"Feel what?" Paul asks confused as he'd felt a lot of things since their full revival just minutes earlier.
"Max," David says hatefully.
That causes Dwayne's eyes to narrow and Paul's expression to turn uncharacteristically serious, "...I do now."
Dwayne nods his agreement.
"How the hell is he back?" Paul asks angrily.
David glares at the ground before just replying with, "Doesn't matter how he came back, all that matters is that he's not staying." The others silently agree.
"After we deal with the problem we will come back for her."
"...She might think we've abandoned her though." Paul points out.
David looks back at her for a moment deep in thought before his eyes drift off to the shed that the fire didn't touch and walked towards it the other two of course followed.
-
Lily was in somewhat of a daze as she was put into the ambulance, questions had been asked and still were being asked and a lot of people in uniforms were there. Vaguely she recognized them as firefighters and police officers but that's all, she couldn't tell anyone what they were doing or saying.
Currently, the young girl knew she was sitting in the back of a vehicle with a mask on her face and she was breathing better than she had been for some time now, Lily hadn't noticed how hard breathing was until they put the mask over her nose and mouth to help her with it. They said something about smoke and it made sense to some part of her brain but she didn't have the energy to dwell on it.
Someone was taking care of her arms and putting bandages on them while another was cleaning her face much better than her uncle had, at least the cloth they used didn't stink like dirty laundry. Also, her headache wasn't so bad now, but all she really wanted was for them to stop talking and let her sleep.
Lily's eyes drifted to the backdoor windows of the ambulance which had only closed a minute before and she thought she saw David through the window for a second before she blinked and he was gone and suddenly she felt confused, had she seen someone... who was it?
Sam was pacing worriedly the police were too busy to ask him much in the way of questions but he was sure that it would come later and he'd have to think of something to tell them but for now he was panicking about the whole smoke inhalation thing one of the paramedics mentioned because that was a bad thing, right? Just how much did she breathe in, a lot if her clothes were any indication he thought. There was also the fact that even though he wanted to forget the whole vampire thing it wasn't so easy.
He eyed the sky as if expecting to be attacked at any moment.
"Mr. Emerson," He jolts out of his train of thought with a jump as a police officer calls for him, "Y-yes." He clears his throat and tries again, "Yes."
"Sorry I startled you, the ambulance is ready to take your niece now if you'd like to go with them we'll speak to you afterward." He nods and starts to head for his car only to see an eyebrow raise from the officer, "I'll follow them, I mean you have a lot of vehicles to take care of already you shouldn't have to deal with another when it's not necessary." The policeman couldn't argue with that logic, so he nods his acceptance and Sam takes that as the go-ahead before he continues his walk to his car.
The policeman who spoke to him just sighs and looks around at all the empty vehicles scattered in the yard and just knows that this will not be an easy night and possibly one of the most tragic nights Santa Carla has had in many years if the people who drove those cars are where he suspects them to be. Before he can continue that train of thought though someone grabs him from behind not giving him the chance to scream before his neck is snapped and he's dragged behind a car to be a midnight snack.
"Well it's not a nurse but he'll do," Paul says quietly.
Meanwhile, the ambulance drives off with Sam following after it, while the reasoning he gave the police officer wasn't untrue Sam thought he should be extra cautious and follow the ambulance to watch out for any possible vampire attacks.
Though even if there were vampires and even if it was somehow the ones he'd helped to off as a kid he was able to relax slightly at the thought that they didn't appear to be after Lily like Star had originally thought.
Inside the back of the ambulance it was only Lily now since she wasn't in any immediate danger and she seemed to be dozing the paramedics left her to rest without them, but even as her eyelids became heavy she could sleep.
Something was keeping her awake and it wasn't the ringing in her ears from the exposure to the fire alarm for so long either. It was like a nagging thought inside of her mind along with a familiar feeling that would not leave her alone.
Her eyes tiredly looked around for whatever it was that was causing her to feel like this.
Lily's dark gaze fell on something laying right beside her hand and she wonders when that got there.
It was an envelope?
Groggily she grabbed it and brought it to her face, there were words written on.
It was familiar letters spelling a word she knew by heart, but it took her a moment to begin processing it, it read 'Lily'
The letter was to her.
Something else was in there besides a letter Lily could feel it.
More alert than before she carefully sits up some and opens it before turning it over into her bandaged hand.
A small red vial falls into her hand at the action.
She would know that color anywhere, it was a vial of blood.
Her eyes land on the paper that slid out beside it.
The paper's words were short and to the point and Lily could almost hear David's voice as she read them.
"A promise is a promise."
Lily had thought it was over but no this was proof that it wasn't.
Gripping the vial of blood in her hurt hand and the paper in her other one Lily leaned back and closed her watery eyes, she'd think about what it meant later.