a little less 16 Candles, a little more coke-dealing in southern Florida
I wrote really trashy pulp! I don't even know if anyone will like it, but at least it entertained me for a good 96 hours.
Untitled Fall Out Boy/Miami Vice Crossover
Literally a crack fic, in which people and vampires deal crack, while cops and hunters try to stop them.
Featuring: Pete/Patrick, appearances by every band in the 16 Candles video, MCR, characters from Miami Vice including possible Sonny/Rico pre-slash
Notes: Knowledge of the 16 Candles video, though not strictly necessary, would probably be helpful. All you really need to know about Miami Vice is this: Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs are undercover cops. The rest of their team consists of Trudy, who handles intelligence and regularly sleeps with Rico; Gina, who shoots things and provides deadpan sarcasm; Larry Zito and Stan Switek, who are backup/surveillance/extra muscle and don’t get many lines. Castillo is their boss. They fight crime and want you to say no to drugs.
Addendum: MiVi characterisations are based on the 2006 Michael Mann movie, not the 80s TV show. The movie has little discernable plot or development, but true to its marketing hype it’s very “dark and gritty” and “visually stunning.”
Disclaimer: This story is in no way truthful, affiliated with its subjects, made for profit, or even meant to be taken seriously.
“Everybody put their guns down,” the burly Cuban ordered with newfound leverage.
Sonny lowered his gun, not so much out of concern as out of sheer confusion. He looked over at Rico. Same thing.
“Now. We will have a new deal,” the Cuban said, dropping the unconscious kid a few feet in front of them. “Give me the full load, and 30% share of the next one, and you have him to do with as you wish.”
Sonny eyed the kid. Chubby, with milky smooth skin, girlish hair, angelic features. Didn’t look like much, besides jailbait. Rico thought the same and said “We don’t do human trafficking, chico.”
The Cuban laughed at him. “Trust me, you want him. He’s a-” and then a Spanish word, something Rico had never heard before in all his years in Miami. Rico glanced at Sonny and saw that he clearly didn’t understand either.
“Look, no more bullshit, and no new deal,” Sonny said, brooking no argument. Almost the second the sentence left his mouth, vampires suddenly descended from all sides, making for the kid. Sonny and Rico had been in this city and in this business for a long time-they knew when something was up. Without needing to say a word, they covered each other and grabbed the kid before the immortals could get to him. They knew from experience that bullets might not kill them, but a shot through the head sure slowed them down. It wasn’t too hard to lose them in a rain of gunfire, and by the time the vampires and the Cubans sorted themselves out, they were already on the highway with the kid in the backseat.
Sonny looked at him in the rear view mirror. “What the hell did we just get ourselves mixed up in?” he muttered to Rico.
“I don’t know, man,” Rico replied, turning to look at the kid over his shoulder. “He looks harmless enough.”
“Well, we know how much that’s worth,” Sonny laughed dryly.
The first thing they did when they got home was cuff the kid to the bed in a spare bedroom.
“Isn’t that a little harsh?” Trudy asked, watching from the door.
“You’re only saying that because he looks all cute and harmless,” Rico said, “but looks can deceive.”
“Right,” she said sceptically, eyeing the unconscious kid. “He could be a monster, for all we know.”
“He could,” Sonny assured her, pocketing the keys to the cuffs.
<> <> <>
Rico kept his hand on his holster and made sure the kid could see it. He had woken up groggy, but jerked hard when he saw Rico enter and now his wrists were bleeding. He glanced at the blood, then at Rico, warily.
“Don’t worry, I’m not one of them,” Rico murmured, keeping his voice calm and low.
The kid blinked a few times, trying to focus. “My head is killing me,” he finally croaked out, managing to sound very casual.
“I’ll get you some water as soon as you tell me who you are,” Rico said.
The kid frowned. “What do you…wait, who are you?”
Rico shook his head. “I asked first.”
The kid looked really confused. Rico hoped he didn’t have a concussion.
“I’m Patrick…” he said it like they should’ve known already. “Are you with the cartels or the vamps?” Such odd words to roll so easily off such a seemingly innocent tongue.
Rico weighed him with his eyes. “Which one are you with?”
Patrick struggled to sit up, his movements sluggish. “What the hell, where am I?”
“Somewhere safe. They obviously dosed you with something earlier,” Rico told him. “You’re not with either bunch, are you?”
Patrick didn’t bother answering. “What the fucking fuck is going on?”
Sonny chose that moment to drop in. “We were hopin’ you can tell us,” he said, circling around to sit on the side of the bed. Patrick drew away from him slightly, but he hid his terror remarkably well for someone drugged to the gills.
Rico filled Sonny in on what he’d learned, while Patrick looked at them with perplexed eyes. “Look, I hate to interrupt your little pow wow,” he said, “but I am fucking dying here.”
Rico took pity on him and got him some water and a couple of aspirins, but Patrick laughed and said “Right. I’m gonna take nondescript white pills from a complete stranger.”
“I’m Sonny, and this is Rico. There, we’re not strangers anymore,” Sonny said ruefully. “And I think we’re on the same team here.”
Patrick rattled his cuffs pointedly. “Yeah, why do I have trouble believing that?”
“This,” Sonny said, pulling the keys out,” is a gesture. You gotta start doing something for us in return, though,” he added, undoing the cuffs.
Patrick snorted at him. “What the hell do you want form me, then, if you’re not vamps?”
“All I’m interested in is information. Starting with why the vamps want you so bad.”
“Why would I tell you if you really don’t know? I’d lose my only leverage.”
“Hey, you better start trusting us,” Rico said. “We rescued you from the Cubans, we didn’t let the vamps take you, and we’re risking ourselves letting you loose right now.”
“Big deal. You kidnapped me, and now I’m supposed to trust you because you have guns while I’m on a bed and I can’t even feel my legs? How about you tell me what the hell is going on first.”
Sonny and Rico could tell they were at an impasse. Neither side was going to give. They silently and mutually agreed to tell the kid a little bit.
“Okay, we were negotiating with the Cubans over their next shipment when they pulled you out and offered to trade you for something. We said no, but out of nowhere a group of vampires came to join the party. We grabbed you before anyone else could, and that’s how you ended up here,” Rico explained.
“What we figure,” Sonny added, “is that the vamps wanted you, but the Cubans got you first, and they were trying to up the vamps’ bid-”
“No.”
“What?”
“No, you’re giving the dealers too much credit. They weren’t trying to up the bid, they just broke the original deal when you guys came along, because they figured they could get more from you. Why they would think that, I do not know.”
“Maybe they thought we were hunters,” Rico mused.
“You’re not hunters.” The reply was a little too sure, and suddenly they knew.
“No, but you are,” Sonny said. “Now, why would they keep a hunter alive? What would vamps need a living hunter for?”
“Ransom?” Rico suggested.
“Too simple. They wouldn’t pay the cartels to get someone they’d give back for a ransom,” Sonny countered.
“No, you’re right. They wouldn’t pay the cartels for any reason-they’d just grab him themselves. If they could. Which means Patrick here must be a little more than meets the eye.”
Patrick gave them both a long, measured look. “You’re very astute.” He shifted a bit, propping himself up on the headboard. “Who does deals with cartels but aren’t dealers themselves, and knows about vamps and hunters but aren’t involved in the fight?”
“Is that a riddle?”
Patrick looked at Sonny pointedly. “Is it?”
Sonny laughed despite himself. “Listen kid, I like you, but you’ll understand why we can’t just spill everything all at once. You just sit tight here, while we decide what to do.”
Rico and Sonny left the handcuffs off but locked the door on their way out.
<> <> <>
“Security breach,” Trudy said tersely.
“Where?” Rico asked, looking up from the files he and Sonny were reviewing.
“Left wing, third window-but it’s gone now. There was a blip.”
“Anything on the perimeters?”
“No,” she replied, slightly confused, “just the inside window, for two seconds.”
Sonny and Rico had their guns drawn already. “Maybe the kid’s breaking out,” Rico muttered.
They checked the room with the window breach first. All clear. They got to the guestroom. “Ready?” They entered in formation to find Patrick asleep on the bed and nothing amiss. Except for a soft “whump” behind them. They whirled around. Nothing. They turned back to Patrick, and found a man holding a pistol to Rico’s forehead.
“We can play this game,” Sonny said with deadly calm, “but you’ll have a bullet in your brain faster than your fingers can fire.”
The man laughed and his fangs glistened in the dim light. “We can play the game where you back the fuck away from Patrick,” he countered.
“Pete?” Patrick’s voice, hazy and unfocussed.
“Yeah. You okay?” The man named Pete had that self-possessed casualness all vampires exuded, but underneath it burned a fury barely held in check.
“I thought you said you weren’t one of them,” Rico said, feeling for some reason oddly betrayed.
“I’m not,” Patrick answered. “Neither is he.”
“What?” Pete and Rico both said it in unison.
“Pete’s a hunter too.”
“Wait, who are they?” Pete questioned, lowering the pistol.
Patrick shrugged, struggling to sit up. Pete immediately went to the bed, helping him up and letting his hand linger on his cheek. Patrick practically collapsed into him, pulling himself close. Sonny and Rico holstered their guns.
“Who are you?” Sonny demanded, bewildered and tired of asking the same question over and over.
Pete whispered something to Patrick, who nodded and murmured something in return.
“So what are you guys, renegade fighters or what?” Pete asked.
“They’re MDPD,” Patrick answered for them.
Rico and Sonny immediately drew their guns again.
“Guys, I’m not stupid,” Patrick said rolling his eyes. “You’re narcs, undercover. You were making a deal with the Cubans, and you have no idea what you’ve just gotten yourselves caught up in now.”
Sonny and Rico exchanged a look.
“No need for secret eye messages,” Pete said sardonically. “He really isn’t stupid. I can already tell he’s right.”
They weren’t sure if it was some sort of veiled reference to the vampire’s ability as a living polygraph thanks to preternaturally heightened senses. Pete just smirked at them infuriatingly.
“So now what,” Sonny said, once more holstering his gun. “We’re narcs, you’re hunters. Why would the Cubans think we’d want anything to do with you?”
“Globalization,” Rico suddenly said, stepping around Sonny to sit gingerly at the foot of the bed. Pete tightened his hold on Patrick, a quiet snarl on his lips. Rico raised his hands slightly to show they were empty. “There’s some partnership deal going down between the dealers and vamps; they’ve got something up their sleeves. Bad shit. Some kind of alliance.”
“You’re not stupid either,” Pete allowed, nodding with approval.
“But it’s still raw and they don’t trust each other yet,” Rico went on, not pausing to acknowledge Pete’s compliment. The last thing his self-esteem hung on was approval from a vampire. “The Cubans had to throw in a little bonus, to keep things from going south.”
“And Patrick here was the bonus,” Sonny concluded, having no trouble following his partner’s thought process.
Pete and Patrick eyed each other, knowing what was coming next.
“The question is,” Sonny said, having joined Rico at the foot of the bed by this point, “Why is our friend Patrick still alive? What would make a live hunter a sweeter bonus than a dead one?”
Patrick shifted uncomfortably, rubbing his injured wrists subconsciously. Pete’s eyes practically glowed with desire, looking at the smeared blood.
“Maybe the Cubans knew the vamps want to turn Patrick?” Rico theorized, “Use him to get to Pete?”
“Close,” Pete growled, grabbing Patrick’s hands and holding them still. “Put Patrick in cuffs again and I end you,” he said abruptly, looking first Rico then Sonny hard in the eye.
Sonny gestured appeasingly. “Mere formalities,” he said. “We didn’t know who he was and we didn’t want to take any chances. Won’t happen again.”
Pete rumbled low in his throat once more, this time less angry than assenting, and said, “They don’t want to turn him. They want to do experiments on him. He’s unturnable.”
Interesting. Rico and Sonny looked at each other in light of this new intel.
“There you go with the secret eye messages again,” Pete whined, his voice becoming surprisingly petulant. “I’m giving you gold here, you mind letting us in on your operations?”
“It’s inter-agency and it’s strictly need-to-know,” Sonny replied. “Deep cover.”
“Well we’re gonna need to know if we’re gonna work together, aren’t we?”
Rico looked at Patrick and could practically see his brain ticking behind his quickly-clearing drug fog. “Whoa now,” he drawled, “who said anything about working together? How do we know you’re telling the truth? I’ve never heard of an unturnable before.”
“Half the stuff we deal with, you’ve never even dreamt of hearing about before,” Pete retorted.
Sonny was pretty sure he and Rico could say the same to them, but he was better than Pete at holding his tongue.
“Trust me, I’m unturnable,” Patrick spoke up. “We’ve tried before,” he added, turning just a little pink. Pete grinned ferally.
“Okay, so Patrick’s expensive to the vamps because he’s immune,” Rico said, firmly keeping the conversation from veering into any other direction. “How did the Cubans get him, then?”
“I got careless,” Pete replied, tone of voice instantly going form smug to deeply remorseful. “I’m sorry,” he said to Patrick, eyes wide and sad.
“We all got careless,” Patrick answered, squeezing Pete. “No apology necessary.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Sonny voiced the question in Rico’s mind.
“Our group,” Patrick replied. “We hunt in a pack, and we thought we had a lead from a man named Saporta down in Uruguay. Turns out he was two-timing us with the cartels all along. Last thing I remember, the rest of our team was trying to contain the mess in Uruguay while Pete and I came up to get reinforcements.”
“Gabe Saporta?” Rico asked, knowing the drug heir’s name.
“That’s the one,” Pete said glumly. “Knew him from a while back, in Chicago. I thought I knew him better than I did; I sure as hell didn’t know he had ties to Beckett’s gang.”
Sonny and Rico weren’t hunters and they definitely weren’t from the Midwest, but Beckett’s gang was powerful enough and notorious enough for them to grasp the significance of this. “If the Saporta clan’s been dealing with Beckett’s people for more than a little while…” Rico began.
“Wait, the group we’ve been running for isn’t Uruguayan,” Sonny interrupted. “Which means Saporta’s already aligned Beckett and the Cubans.”
“And the Paraguay-Brazil-Argentina tri-border,” Pete supplied.
“And Beckett’s in talks to ally with Travis McCoy’s vamps,” Patrick added for good measure.
“They’re consolidating real hard, real fast,” Rico frowned grimly. “At this rate they’re gonna control the whole fucking continent.”
“Which is why we need to stop them before they can come to an agreement,” Pete said, steel in his voice.
“How?” Sonny asked, sounding like it was out of idle curiosity, like he and Rico had no real interest and could still back out any time they wanted to. Rico had always admired his ability to do that.
“Drive a wedge between them,” Patrick answered for Pete. “You guys are, for all intents and purposes, with the cartels. You let them think you have me prisoner and you want to negotiate a cut in the deal with the vamps. You get everyone together, and once all the heavyweights are in the same place at the same time, we bring the wrath of the hunters and cops down on them. Anyone left alive is gonna think the other side sold them out, and that’s the end of that unholy alliance,” Patrick concluded.
While it sounded like a plan that would satisfy Sonny’s insatiable thirst for reckless heroic action, Rico had some serious reservations. “Well that all sounds very tidy,” he said, “but we’re not renegades. We don’t have your freedom to operate. We need clearance and cooperation from our various agencies before we can get involved in a high-casualty shootout. You understand.” Rico glanced at Sonny before continuing. “And we need to make sure you guys aren’t the vamps’ equivalent of what we do to the cartels.”
That got Pete’s hackles raised. Patrick shushed him and said, “Of course. Pete would rather chew his own arm off before doing anything that would help Beckett. You’ll find that out soon enough when you look us up. We have nothing to hide. We’ll give you access to all the other hunters too.”
“Aright, we’ll set up a meeting with our handler and see where it goes,” Sonny agreed. “in the meantime, why don’t you gentlemen make yourselves comfortable in this guestroom. No more locks, as a gesture of our good faith. Not,” he admitted, “that our security’s capable of holding a skilled vamp. We’re just trusting you not to try anything.”
Pete got up and walked them to the door. “You set up your meeting,” he said. “Here’s a list of all our main hunters. Our troops are ready to roll whenever you are. We’ve been holding our breaths for a chance like this.” He shut the bedroom door behind them.
Sonny and Rico walked back out to the dining area to find Trudy with Gina, Zito, and Stan all present, crowded around her laptop and listening to every word that’d just been said through their security cameras.
“So it’s gonna be Quentin Tarantino meets Anne Rice, huh?” Zito said nonchalantly.
“Maybe. We’ll see what Castillo has to say,” Rico replied, already on the phone to their boss. Sonny and Trudy started digging into the hunters’ identities right away. Most of them checked out without a fuss, except for a mysterious group from Jersey. They were working on those ones when Gina’s low whistle brought their attention back to the security cameras.
“Look at them go,” she deadpanned, flicking her chin toward the screen on which Pete and Patrick were quite obviously about to get naked.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” Rico groaned.
“Well you did tell them to make themselves comfortable,” Trudy said reasonably.
“We shouldn’t be watching them,” Rico said, wincing at the sound of Patrick’s heavy moan coming through the speakers and turning away.
“I think they know we are,” Sonny replied, causing Rico to reluctantly turn back.
Pete was looking straight into the camera, as though he could see them in return. And then he quite deliberately leaned down to bite Patrick in the shoulder, hard enough to draw blood and another loud moan from him. Pete then licked the wound closed and looked at the camera again, pointedly.
“So now we know they weren’t lying about the unturnable part,” Trudy said, clearing her throat.
“Or the trying it before part,” Gina supplied helpfully.
Rico shook his head despairingly at all of them and told them the time and place for the meeting with Castillo. “Which gives us one week to put out bad intel. Patrick is our prisoner, and Pete needs to get the word out.”
<> <> <>
If Sonny didn’t know better, he’d think Castillo had a thing for rooftop rendezvous. Their meeting was once again on an open roof, this time of an empty parkade shut down for maintenance. Sonny knew for sure though that Castillo had a thing for saying no to them, and he was doing it again over Rico’s protests.
“It’s too risky, there’s no way of knowing they’re for real.”
“Trudy checked them out,” Sonny said, turning back from where he’d been looking over the city’s skyline and acting like he didn’t care what Castillo decided. “Are you gonna second-guess her work?”
Castillo looked at him like he was the world’s dirtiest asshole, because what was he supposed to say about Trudy’s abilities with Rico right there.
Sonny smirked, and added, “Most of these guys used to be in bands, they have albums out from a few years ago. You can fake documents, but you can’t fake physical CDs with full-length songs. Switek found a bunch at the local store.”
“So their identities are real, and up to a few years ago they were on the level. So what? A couple of years is more than enough time for a lifestyle change.”
“But I got a feeling about them,” Sonny insisted.
“Now look here, I didn’t have you raised to the federal jurisdiction just so you can plot mass murders willy-nilly, based on nothing but your ‘feelings’,” Castillo told them.
“Did you just use ‘willy-nilly’?” Rico asked incredulously.
“Did you want to get fired?” Castillo asked in return.
“Fuck it, go ahead and fire us,” Sonny said. “There’s too much at stake. We’re doing this, with or without your clearance. We’ll worry about the legalities of it after we save the world.” Sonny met Castillo’s eyes defiantly and didn’t back down.
“Where are you on this?” Castillo asked Rico, looking away first.
Rico looked sideways at Sonny and had probably the world’s most doubtful expression on his face, but his words were sure. “A hundred percent with Sonny.”
Castillo rolled his eyes. “You’d be with Sonny even if he said you had to commit suicide and then use your omniscient knowledge to save the world from beyond the grave, why the hell am I asking you.”
“I’m with Sonny when he’s right, and he’s never let me down. He’s right this time too.”
At this, Sonny started walking away, because he knew it was a done deal. Rico stayed to see Castillo’s face and to make sure Castillo saw he was earnest, and then began to follow Sonny back to their car.
“You got a month to set this up, and you’re doing your own damn reports to the FBI and the DEA,” Castillo called after them. “I’m not cleaning up after you. And don’t come crying to me if you get turned into bloodsuckers.”
Sonny waved over his shoulder without turning around. They drove into the night without another word.
<> <> <>
Andy and Joe’s ascent from the south of the continent could be traced only by the path of decapitated bodies they left behind.
They were careful, efficient, and left no other visible clues as to their trajectory. Any local policia still uncorrupted by the cartels and/or vamps did not have half the skill necessary to catch them, and the ones who had been bought didn’t need to follow them. They already knew of Patrick’s capture, knew where Andy and Joe were heading, knew that a much larger confrontation was inevitably drawing near. Nobody got in their way.
Andy hated it when Pete used his telepathy thing on them. Sure, they were a coven or brood or whatever the fuck the vampires liked to call it, he understood that. Because of Pete, they were bound beyond the means of normal friendship, and he appreciated that. But he really didn’t like the whole mind connection thing, really didn’t like how Pete could broadcast thoughts at them. The feeling of not knowing something one second and then knowing it fully the next, without any conscious learning in between, was unsettling and downright creepy. He didn’t like having his brain hijacked.
But he liked the thought of all-powerful drug-running vampire lords even less, so he followed the instructions Pete planted into their minds. Anyone who would’ve benefitted from Patrick’s kidnapping, had it been real, got a swift and silent sword through the heart.
Andy didn’t sleep so well these days.
Joe was more of a method actor than Andy. He just imagined that Patrick really had been taken prisoner-it had been a close enough call anyway, the undercover cops had been a complete fluke and a stroke of luck they could never count on having again. Joe just imagined that those cops didn’t exist and that everything had gone according to Gabe’s plan, that Patrick was being tortured by drug lords and waiting to be sold to the highest bidding leech even as he and Andy made their bloody way across the border.
Joe had no trouble sleeping at all.
<> <> <>
The Cubans insisted on choosing the location, and they changed it last-minute to ensure that no one could set up against them. It made no difference. Pete’s mind was hotwired to Patrick’s, and he passed the new meeting place along to Zito and Stan, who kept Castillo and every other officer on the case up to speed.
Rico got out of the car first and motioned for Sonny and Patrick to stay inside. He walked along the perimeter of the warehouse they’d been told to wait in, looking carefully at every nook and cranny and seemingly muttering to himself. In actuality, he was muttering into a tiny mic under his shirt, at the other end of which Gina took notes and prepared for all the tactical possibilities of the terrain in a shootout. Sonny watched him while oiling his guns.
“Do you ever think about it?” Patrick asked eventually, just to break the silence. He wasn’t used to the tense hush Sonny and Rico liked to work in. This wasn’t how he and Pete and Joe and Andy prepared for a hard night’s work. He missed their banter. He missed them.
“Trudy would have my nuts,” Sonny answered, which was just as good as a yes, since he didn’t have to ask what Patrick meant.
“Just for thinking about it?”
“For having to write whole new covers for us that explain the homoerotic tension between me and her man, probably.”
“What, she doesn’t already?”
“Fuck you,” Sonny replied good-naturedly.
“Sometimes, you love someone enough and sex is just pointless,” Patrick offered kindly.
“Yeah.”
Patrick laughed slightly. “But sometimes it still feels good.”
“Staying alive while you’re under feels better,” Sonny assured him.
Behind them, Rico had returned to the car and was getting something from the trunk. “To keep up appearances,” he said, tossing the burlap sack and rope he’d retrieved into Sonny’s lap. The sack went over Patrick’s head, and the rope “Is because Pete swore he’d murder us if we tried to cuff you again.” Rico tied his wrists behind his back.
“I’m sure you guys are readier for this than I am,” Patrick said from beneath the cover he’d compliantly accepted, “but this isn’t one of your usual fights. Bullets don’t kill them. You have to either remove the heart or take the head clean off.”
Rico loaded his new Vepr, skimmed from the cream of the Ukrainian arms shipment he and Sonny ran only a few days ago, and replied, “Don’t worry, this will take the head clean off.”
They waited in silence until unmarked vans started rolling into the warehouse. Sonny bumped fists with Rico, and then they became their covers. “Move it,” Rico ordered roughly, pulling Patrick out by the elbow hard enough for him to lose his balance. He shoved the barrel of his rifle hard against Patrick’s spine and let it stay there.
“Gentlemen,” Sonny greeted tranquilly, as though they’d met on a pleasant evening stroll.
“How are you, Burnett?” the Cuban leader bit out. “Still taking what is not yours to take, I see,” he indicated Rico’s Vepr.
“What, this?” Rico ran the gun slowly down Patrick’s side. “We don’t take, we just pick up whatever people are sloppy enough to leave behind.”
“I offered you a way to buy into the deal, fair and square,” the Cuban growled.
“And now we’ll have a new deal,” Sonny said, mimicking their original exchange.
Even as they spoke, they were aware of the dark shapes drawing in around them without so much as a rustle. The vampires had arrived. And they kept on arriving, more of them than either Sonny or Rico had imagined. They were prepared for several leaders and perhaps a few goons for show, but there were at least a good forty or fifty of them gathered now. It seemed that Patrick was worth more than he’d let on.
Beckett tipped his hat at them in a mockery of respect, then said to the Cuban without preamble, “We’re prepared to offer you 75% of everything that goes through the Ciudad del Este neighbourhoods we control in exchange for the Unturnable.”
“Yo,” Rico called out, “there ain’t no deal without us. We have your goods.”
Beckett curled his lip in disdain. “I hardly care whom I’m getting the creature from. We’re offering seventy-five percent. Work it out amongst yourselves.” He waved a white-gloved hand between Sonny and the Cuban, as though shooing children.
“Sixty percent of your seventy-five,” Sonny said.
The Cuban laughed. “You don’t even have any people in the Tri-border! We do all the work and you get more than half the cut. No, that’s not how it works. How about we say fifteen.”
“We have your biggest bargaining chip,” Sonny replied. “Without that, you would have zero percent. Try fifty.”
“Twenty.”
“Forty.”
“Thirty.”
Sonny snorted. “Forty.”
Beckett made an impatient noise.
“How do we know they’re not fucking with us,” the Cuban said obsequiously to the vampire leader. “We cannot give such a large percentage until we have a guarantee.”
“That’s easy enough.” Rico jerked his rifle slightly toward Beckett. “You send a couple of your people over to check out the merchandise, and Sonny here will go to your side as a show of good faith.”
Sonny put his handgun away and held both hands up to show they were empty.
Beckett shrugged and flicked his wrist at the vamp immediately to his right, one that looked like a hyper-active kid forcibly poured into a tightly tailored tux.
“Not him,” Rico said.
“This isn’t a yard sale, you don’t get to choose,” Beckett said, annoyed.
“I don’t want someone who looks like a motherfucking ten-year-old involved in this, it makes me uncomfortable,” Rico shouted, jerking his rifle once more. “Send me those two.”
Beckett turned to look at the ones Rico had pointed to, two of the serious-looking guys Beckett had recently recruited as a set of five. They were quiet and they did their jobs, so he shrugged once more and nodded his consent.
The two vampires passed Sonny in no-man’s land as he made his way to Beckett’s side.
<> <> <>
William Beckett took note of two seemingly unrelated details in the split second before all hell broke loose.
The first was how the remaining three vampires from Jersey simultaneously shifted forward as soon as their colleagues had moved past Sonny. He didn’t have time to figure out what that meant, however, because the second thing occurred immediately after. He heard Pete Wentz.
He heard Pete Wentz, as he sometimes did, in his mind-but he also heard him physically, in the form of a shout that echoed across the warehouse. Beckett had one millisecond to wonder what it meant before unseen shooters opened fire all around them.
The Cubans ran for their vans, swearing in Spanish. The two vampires Rico had picked gave chase and jumped on several of them, opening their throats. This caused the rest of the Cubans to start shooting at every fanged being within range. Rico himself was pumping 600 rounds per minute into the minions surrounding Beckett.
Beckett drew back and let his followers take the fire-that’s what they were for in situations like these. The vampires naturally retaliated, but there were suddenly a lot more people firing back at them, people unaccounted for at the beginning of the meeting. His followers were screaming about cops and being set up, while the Cubans were yelling the same on the other side. Something didn’t add up.
Beckett looked for the Unturnable, his mind still focussed on the main objective behind all this, and saw Pete Wentz untying It while Rico provided cover for them. A sudden shock of understanding ran through Beckett as he realised exactly how they’d been set up. He frantically scanned through the mess that was his dwindling forces, searching for those traitorous leeches, Mikey and Frank and Ray, but they had already joined the other two turncoats attacking the Cubans. All Beckett found on his own side was the barrel end of Sonny’s gun.
“Narc,” he spat out with all the disgust in the world.
“Sorry,” Sonny replied, sounding far from it.
“So that was the plan all along? Get us to turn on each other before the deal’s finalized?” Beckett stalled while cool gunmetal pressed into his Adam’s apple. “Clever. Who thought of it? I bet it was that blasted Unturnable.”
Behind him, the sound of a hunter’s blade slicing through his favourite disciple reached his supernaturally sensitive ears, and beyond that he heard the noise of FBI choppers coming for the few drug lords left alive. His lip curled involuntarily. “I know it couldn’t have been the dumb brute you call your partner.”
To his credit, Sonny didn’t bother answering. He just pulled back the safety and squeezed the trigger.
It was too late, though. Beckett had gathered enough energy for apportation. The last thing he saw before teleporting away from the carnage was Pete’s anguished, frustrated face as he ran towards him as fast as he could, but never fast enough. The harmless report of Sonny’s gun was the last thing he heard.
And then Beckett was gone, with nothing gained from the violent transaction besides some new knowledge. And a taste for revenge.
<> end?
AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA WTF WAS THAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW OKAY
Untitled Fall Out Boy/Miami Vice Crossover
Literally a crack fic, in which people and vampires deal crack, while cops and hunters try to stop them.
Featuring: Pete/Patrick, appearances by every band in the 16 Candles video, MCR, characters from Miami Vice including possible Sonny/Rico pre-slash
Notes: Knowledge of the 16 Candles video, though not strictly necessary, would probably be helpful. All you really need to know about Miami Vice is this: Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs are undercover cops. The rest of their team consists of Trudy, who handles intelligence and regularly sleeps with Rico; Gina, who shoots things and provides deadpan sarcasm; Larry Zito and Stan Switek, who are backup/surveillance/extra muscle and don’t get many lines. Castillo is their boss. They fight crime and want you to say no to drugs.
Addendum: MiVi characterisations are based on the 2006 Michael Mann movie, not the 80s TV show. The movie has little discernable plot or development, but true to its marketing hype it’s very “dark and gritty” and “visually stunning.”
Disclaimer: This story is in no way truthful, affiliated with its subjects, made for profit, or even meant to be taken seriously.
“Everybody put their guns down,” the burly Cuban ordered with newfound leverage.
Sonny lowered his gun, not so much out of concern as out of sheer confusion. He looked over at Rico. Same thing.
“Now. We will have a new deal,” the Cuban said, dropping the unconscious kid a few feet in front of them. “Give me the full load, and 30% share of the next one, and you have him to do with as you wish.”
Sonny eyed the kid. Chubby, with milky smooth skin, girlish hair, angelic features. Didn’t look like much, besides jailbait. Rico thought the same and said “We don’t do human trafficking, chico.”
The Cuban laughed at him. “Trust me, you want him. He’s a-” and then a Spanish word, something Rico had never heard before in all his years in Miami. Rico glanced at Sonny and saw that he clearly didn’t understand either.
“Look, no more bullshit, and no new deal,” Sonny said, brooking no argument. Almost the second the sentence left his mouth, vampires suddenly descended from all sides, making for the kid. Sonny and Rico had been in this city and in this business for a long time-they knew when something was up. Without needing to say a word, they covered each other and grabbed the kid before the immortals could get to him. They knew from experience that bullets might not kill them, but a shot through the head sure slowed them down. It wasn’t too hard to lose them in a rain of gunfire, and by the time the vampires and the Cubans sorted themselves out, they were already on the highway with the kid in the backseat.
Sonny looked at him in the rear view mirror. “What the hell did we just get ourselves mixed up in?” he muttered to Rico.
“I don’t know, man,” Rico replied, turning to look at the kid over his shoulder. “He looks harmless enough.”
“Well, we know how much that’s worth,” Sonny laughed dryly.
The first thing they did when they got home was cuff the kid to the bed in a spare bedroom.
“Isn’t that a little harsh?” Trudy asked, watching from the door.
“You’re only saying that because he looks all cute and harmless,” Rico said, “but looks can deceive.”
“Right,” she said sceptically, eyeing the unconscious kid. “He could be a monster, for all we know.”
“He could,” Sonny assured her, pocketing the keys to the cuffs.
<> <> <>
Rico kept his hand on his holster and made sure the kid could see it. He had woken up groggy, but jerked hard when he saw Rico enter and now his wrists were bleeding. He glanced at the blood, then at Rico, warily.
“Don’t worry, I’m not one of them,” Rico murmured, keeping his voice calm and low.
The kid blinked a few times, trying to focus. “My head is killing me,” he finally croaked out, managing to sound very casual.
“I’ll get you some water as soon as you tell me who you are,” Rico said.
The kid frowned. “What do you…wait, who are you?”
Rico shook his head. “I asked first.”
The kid looked really confused. Rico hoped he didn’t have a concussion.
“I’m Patrick…” he said it like they should’ve known already. “Are you with the cartels or the vamps?” Such odd words to roll so easily off such a seemingly innocent tongue.
Rico weighed him with his eyes. “Which one are you with?”
Patrick struggled to sit up, his movements sluggish. “What the hell, where am I?”
“Somewhere safe. They obviously dosed you with something earlier,” Rico told him. “You’re not with either bunch, are you?”
Patrick didn’t bother answering. “What the fucking fuck is going on?”
Sonny chose that moment to drop in. “We were hopin’ you can tell us,” he said, circling around to sit on the side of the bed. Patrick drew away from him slightly, but he hid his terror remarkably well for someone drugged to the gills.
Rico filled Sonny in on what he’d learned, while Patrick looked at them with perplexed eyes. “Look, I hate to interrupt your little pow wow,” he said, “but I am fucking dying here.”
Rico took pity on him and got him some water and a couple of aspirins, but Patrick laughed and said “Right. I’m gonna take nondescript white pills from a complete stranger.”
“I’m Sonny, and this is Rico. There, we’re not strangers anymore,” Sonny said ruefully. “And I think we’re on the same team here.”
Patrick rattled his cuffs pointedly. “Yeah, why do I have trouble believing that?”
“This,” Sonny said, pulling the keys out,” is a gesture. You gotta start doing something for us in return, though,” he added, undoing the cuffs.
Patrick snorted at him. “What the hell do you want form me, then, if you’re not vamps?”
“All I’m interested in is information. Starting with why the vamps want you so bad.”
“Why would I tell you if you really don’t know? I’d lose my only leverage.”
“Hey, you better start trusting us,” Rico said. “We rescued you from the Cubans, we didn’t let the vamps take you, and we’re risking ourselves letting you loose right now.”
“Big deal. You kidnapped me, and now I’m supposed to trust you because you have guns while I’m on a bed and I can’t even feel my legs? How about you tell me what the hell is going on first.”
Sonny and Rico could tell they were at an impasse. Neither side was going to give. They silently and mutually agreed to tell the kid a little bit.
“Okay, we were negotiating with the Cubans over their next shipment when they pulled you out and offered to trade you for something. We said no, but out of nowhere a group of vampires came to join the party. We grabbed you before anyone else could, and that’s how you ended up here,” Rico explained.
“What we figure,” Sonny added, “is that the vamps wanted you, but the Cubans got you first, and they were trying to up the vamps’ bid-”
“No.”
“What?”
“No, you’re giving the dealers too much credit. They weren’t trying to up the bid, they just broke the original deal when you guys came along, because they figured they could get more from you. Why they would think that, I do not know.”
“Maybe they thought we were hunters,” Rico mused.
“You’re not hunters.” The reply was a little too sure, and suddenly they knew.
“No, but you are,” Sonny said. “Now, why would they keep a hunter alive? What would vamps need a living hunter for?”
“Ransom?” Rico suggested.
“Too simple. They wouldn’t pay the cartels to get someone they’d give back for a ransom,” Sonny countered.
“No, you’re right. They wouldn’t pay the cartels for any reason-they’d just grab him themselves. If they could. Which means Patrick here must be a little more than meets the eye.”
Patrick gave them both a long, measured look. “You’re very astute.” He shifted a bit, propping himself up on the headboard. “Who does deals with cartels but aren’t dealers themselves, and knows about vamps and hunters but aren’t involved in the fight?”
“Is that a riddle?”
Patrick looked at Sonny pointedly. “Is it?”
Sonny laughed despite himself. “Listen kid, I like you, but you’ll understand why we can’t just spill everything all at once. You just sit tight here, while we decide what to do.”
Rico and Sonny left the handcuffs off but locked the door on their way out.
<> <> <>
“Security breach,” Trudy said tersely.
“Where?” Rico asked, looking up from the files he and Sonny were reviewing.
“Left wing, third window-but it’s gone now. There was a blip.”
“Anything on the perimeters?”
“No,” she replied, slightly confused, “just the inside window, for two seconds.”
Sonny and Rico had their guns drawn already. “Maybe the kid’s breaking out,” Rico muttered.
They checked the room with the window breach first. All clear. They got to the guestroom. “Ready?” They entered in formation to find Patrick asleep on the bed and nothing amiss. Except for a soft “whump” behind them. They whirled around. Nothing. They turned back to Patrick, and found a man holding a pistol to Rico’s forehead.
“We can play this game,” Sonny said with deadly calm, “but you’ll have a bullet in your brain faster than your fingers can fire.”
The man laughed and his fangs glistened in the dim light. “We can play the game where you back the fuck away from Patrick,” he countered.
“Pete?” Patrick’s voice, hazy and unfocussed.
“Yeah. You okay?” The man named Pete had that self-possessed casualness all vampires exuded, but underneath it burned a fury barely held in check.
“I thought you said you weren’t one of them,” Rico said, feeling for some reason oddly betrayed.
“I’m not,” Patrick answered. “Neither is he.”
“What?” Pete and Rico both said it in unison.
“Pete’s a hunter too.”
“Wait, who are they?” Pete questioned, lowering the pistol.
Patrick shrugged, struggling to sit up. Pete immediately went to the bed, helping him up and letting his hand linger on his cheek. Patrick practically collapsed into him, pulling himself close. Sonny and Rico holstered their guns.
“Who are you?” Sonny demanded, bewildered and tired of asking the same question over and over.
Pete whispered something to Patrick, who nodded and murmured something in return.
“So what are you guys, renegade fighters or what?” Pete asked.
“They’re MDPD,” Patrick answered for them.
Rico and Sonny immediately drew their guns again.
“Guys, I’m not stupid,” Patrick said rolling his eyes. “You’re narcs, undercover. You were making a deal with the Cubans, and you have no idea what you’ve just gotten yourselves caught up in now.”
Sonny and Rico exchanged a look.
“No need for secret eye messages,” Pete said sardonically. “He really isn’t stupid. I can already tell he’s right.”
They weren’t sure if it was some sort of veiled reference to the vampire’s ability as a living polygraph thanks to preternaturally heightened senses. Pete just smirked at them infuriatingly.
“So now what,” Sonny said, once more holstering his gun. “We’re narcs, you’re hunters. Why would the Cubans think we’d want anything to do with you?”
“Globalization,” Rico suddenly said, stepping around Sonny to sit gingerly at the foot of the bed. Pete tightened his hold on Patrick, a quiet snarl on his lips. Rico raised his hands slightly to show they were empty. “There’s some partnership deal going down between the dealers and vamps; they’ve got something up their sleeves. Bad shit. Some kind of alliance.”
“You’re not stupid either,” Pete allowed, nodding with approval.
“But it’s still raw and they don’t trust each other yet,” Rico went on, not pausing to acknowledge Pete’s compliment. The last thing his self-esteem hung on was approval from a vampire. “The Cubans had to throw in a little bonus, to keep things from going south.”
“And Patrick here was the bonus,” Sonny concluded, having no trouble following his partner’s thought process.
Pete and Patrick eyed each other, knowing what was coming next.
“The question is,” Sonny said, having joined Rico at the foot of the bed by this point, “Why is our friend Patrick still alive? What would make a live hunter a sweeter bonus than a dead one?”
Patrick shifted uncomfortably, rubbing his injured wrists subconsciously. Pete’s eyes practically glowed with desire, looking at the smeared blood.
“Maybe the Cubans knew the vamps want to turn Patrick?” Rico theorized, “Use him to get to Pete?”
“Close,” Pete growled, grabbing Patrick’s hands and holding them still. “Put Patrick in cuffs again and I end you,” he said abruptly, looking first Rico then Sonny hard in the eye.
Sonny gestured appeasingly. “Mere formalities,” he said. “We didn’t know who he was and we didn’t want to take any chances. Won’t happen again.”
Pete rumbled low in his throat once more, this time less angry than assenting, and said, “They don’t want to turn him. They want to do experiments on him. He’s unturnable.”
Interesting. Rico and Sonny looked at each other in light of this new intel.
“There you go with the secret eye messages again,” Pete whined, his voice becoming surprisingly petulant. “I’m giving you gold here, you mind letting us in on your operations?”
“It’s inter-agency and it’s strictly need-to-know,” Sonny replied. “Deep cover.”
“Well we’re gonna need to know if we’re gonna work together, aren’t we?”
Rico looked at Patrick and could practically see his brain ticking behind his quickly-clearing drug fog. “Whoa now,” he drawled, “who said anything about working together? How do we know you’re telling the truth? I’ve never heard of an unturnable before.”
“Half the stuff we deal with, you’ve never even dreamt of hearing about before,” Pete retorted.
Sonny was pretty sure he and Rico could say the same to them, but he was better than Pete at holding his tongue.
“Trust me, I’m unturnable,” Patrick spoke up. “We’ve tried before,” he added, turning just a little pink. Pete grinned ferally.
“Okay, so Patrick’s expensive to the vamps because he’s immune,” Rico said, firmly keeping the conversation from veering into any other direction. “How did the Cubans get him, then?”
“I got careless,” Pete replied, tone of voice instantly going form smug to deeply remorseful. “I’m sorry,” he said to Patrick, eyes wide and sad.
“We all got careless,” Patrick answered, squeezing Pete. “No apology necessary.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Sonny voiced the question in Rico’s mind.
“Our group,” Patrick replied. “We hunt in a pack, and we thought we had a lead from a man named Saporta down in Uruguay. Turns out he was two-timing us with the cartels all along. Last thing I remember, the rest of our team was trying to contain the mess in Uruguay while Pete and I came up to get reinforcements.”
“Gabe Saporta?” Rico asked, knowing the drug heir’s name.
“That’s the one,” Pete said glumly. “Knew him from a while back, in Chicago. I thought I knew him better than I did; I sure as hell didn’t know he had ties to Beckett’s gang.”
Sonny and Rico weren’t hunters and they definitely weren’t from the Midwest, but Beckett’s gang was powerful enough and notorious enough for them to grasp the significance of this. “If the Saporta clan’s been dealing with Beckett’s people for more than a little while…” Rico began.
“Wait, the group we’ve been running for isn’t Uruguayan,” Sonny interrupted. “Which means Saporta’s already aligned Beckett and the Cubans.”
“And the Paraguay-Brazil-Argentina tri-border,” Pete supplied.
“And Beckett’s in talks to ally with Travis McCoy’s vamps,” Patrick added for good measure.
“They’re consolidating real hard, real fast,” Rico frowned grimly. “At this rate they’re gonna control the whole fucking continent.”
“Which is why we need to stop them before they can come to an agreement,” Pete said, steel in his voice.
“How?” Sonny asked, sounding like it was out of idle curiosity, like he and Rico had no real interest and could still back out any time they wanted to. Rico had always admired his ability to do that.
“Drive a wedge between them,” Patrick answered for Pete. “You guys are, for all intents and purposes, with the cartels. You let them think you have me prisoner and you want to negotiate a cut in the deal with the vamps. You get everyone together, and once all the heavyweights are in the same place at the same time, we bring the wrath of the hunters and cops down on them. Anyone left alive is gonna think the other side sold them out, and that’s the end of that unholy alliance,” Patrick concluded.
While it sounded like a plan that would satisfy Sonny’s insatiable thirst for reckless heroic action, Rico had some serious reservations. “Well that all sounds very tidy,” he said, “but we’re not renegades. We don’t have your freedom to operate. We need clearance and cooperation from our various agencies before we can get involved in a high-casualty shootout. You understand.” Rico glanced at Sonny before continuing. “And we need to make sure you guys aren’t the vamps’ equivalent of what we do to the cartels.”
That got Pete’s hackles raised. Patrick shushed him and said, “Of course. Pete would rather chew his own arm off before doing anything that would help Beckett. You’ll find that out soon enough when you look us up. We have nothing to hide. We’ll give you access to all the other hunters too.”
“Aright, we’ll set up a meeting with our handler and see where it goes,” Sonny agreed. “in the meantime, why don’t you gentlemen make yourselves comfortable in this guestroom. No more locks, as a gesture of our good faith. Not,” he admitted, “that our security’s capable of holding a skilled vamp. We’re just trusting you not to try anything.”
Pete got up and walked them to the door. “You set up your meeting,” he said. “Here’s a list of all our main hunters. Our troops are ready to roll whenever you are. We’ve been holding our breaths for a chance like this.” He shut the bedroom door behind them.
Sonny and Rico walked back out to the dining area to find Trudy with Gina, Zito, and Stan all present, crowded around her laptop and listening to every word that’d just been said through their security cameras.
“So it’s gonna be Quentin Tarantino meets Anne Rice, huh?” Zito said nonchalantly.
“Maybe. We’ll see what Castillo has to say,” Rico replied, already on the phone to their boss. Sonny and Trudy started digging into the hunters’ identities right away. Most of them checked out without a fuss, except for a mysterious group from Jersey. They were working on those ones when Gina’s low whistle brought their attention back to the security cameras.
“Look at them go,” she deadpanned, flicking her chin toward the screen on which Pete and Patrick were quite obviously about to get naked.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” Rico groaned.
“Well you did tell them to make themselves comfortable,” Trudy said reasonably.
“We shouldn’t be watching them,” Rico said, wincing at the sound of Patrick’s heavy moan coming through the speakers and turning away.
“I think they know we are,” Sonny replied, causing Rico to reluctantly turn back.
Pete was looking straight into the camera, as though he could see them in return. And then he quite deliberately leaned down to bite Patrick in the shoulder, hard enough to draw blood and another loud moan from him. Pete then licked the wound closed and looked at the camera again, pointedly.
“So now we know they weren’t lying about the unturnable part,” Trudy said, clearing her throat.
“Or the trying it before part,” Gina supplied helpfully.
Rico shook his head despairingly at all of them and told them the time and place for the meeting with Castillo. “Which gives us one week to put out bad intel. Patrick is our prisoner, and Pete needs to get the word out.”
<> <> <>
If Sonny didn’t know better, he’d think Castillo had a thing for rooftop rendezvous. Their meeting was once again on an open roof, this time of an empty parkade shut down for maintenance. Sonny knew for sure though that Castillo had a thing for saying no to them, and he was doing it again over Rico’s protests.
“It’s too risky, there’s no way of knowing they’re for real.”
“Trudy checked them out,” Sonny said, turning back from where he’d been looking over the city’s skyline and acting like he didn’t care what Castillo decided. “Are you gonna second-guess her work?”
Castillo looked at him like he was the world’s dirtiest asshole, because what was he supposed to say about Trudy’s abilities with Rico right there.
Sonny smirked, and added, “Most of these guys used to be in bands, they have albums out from a few years ago. You can fake documents, but you can’t fake physical CDs with full-length songs. Switek found a bunch at the local store.”
“So their identities are real, and up to a few years ago they were on the level. So what? A couple of years is more than enough time for a lifestyle change.”
“But I got a feeling about them,” Sonny insisted.
“Now look here, I didn’t have you raised to the federal jurisdiction just so you can plot mass murders willy-nilly, based on nothing but your ‘feelings’,” Castillo told them.
“Did you just use ‘willy-nilly’?” Rico asked incredulously.
“Did you want to get fired?” Castillo asked in return.
“Fuck it, go ahead and fire us,” Sonny said. “There’s too much at stake. We’re doing this, with or without your clearance. We’ll worry about the legalities of it after we save the world.” Sonny met Castillo’s eyes defiantly and didn’t back down.
“Where are you on this?” Castillo asked Rico, looking away first.
Rico looked sideways at Sonny and had probably the world’s most doubtful expression on his face, but his words were sure. “A hundred percent with Sonny.”
Castillo rolled his eyes. “You’d be with Sonny even if he said you had to commit suicide and then use your omniscient knowledge to save the world from beyond the grave, why the hell am I asking you.”
“I’m with Sonny when he’s right, and he’s never let me down. He’s right this time too.”
At this, Sonny started walking away, because he knew it was a done deal. Rico stayed to see Castillo’s face and to make sure Castillo saw he was earnest, and then began to follow Sonny back to their car.
“You got a month to set this up, and you’re doing your own damn reports to the FBI and the DEA,” Castillo called after them. “I’m not cleaning up after you. And don’t come crying to me if you get turned into bloodsuckers.”
Sonny waved over his shoulder without turning around. They drove into the night without another word.
<> <> <>
Andy and Joe’s ascent from the south of the continent could be traced only by the path of decapitated bodies they left behind.
They were careful, efficient, and left no other visible clues as to their trajectory. Any local policia still uncorrupted by the cartels and/or vamps did not have half the skill necessary to catch them, and the ones who had been bought didn’t need to follow them. They already knew of Patrick’s capture, knew where Andy and Joe were heading, knew that a much larger confrontation was inevitably drawing near. Nobody got in their way.
Andy hated it when Pete used his telepathy thing on them. Sure, they were a coven or brood or whatever the fuck the vampires liked to call it, he understood that. Because of Pete, they were bound beyond the means of normal friendship, and he appreciated that. But he really didn’t like the whole mind connection thing, really didn’t like how Pete could broadcast thoughts at them. The feeling of not knowing something one second and then knowing it fully the next, without any conscious learning in between, was unsettling and downright creepy. He didn’t like having his brain hijacked.
But he liked the thought of all-powerful drug-running vampire lords even less, so he followed the instructions Pete planted into their minds. Anyone who would’ve benefitted from Patrick’s kidnapping, had it been real, got a swift and silent sword through the heart.
Andy didn’t sleep so well these days.
Joe was more of a method actor than Andy. He just imagined that Patrick really had been taken prisoner-it had been a close enough call anyway, the undercover cops had been a complete fluke and a stroke of luck they could never count on having again. Joe just imagined that those cops didn’t exist and that everything had gone according to Gabe’s plan, that Patrick was being tortured by drug lords and waiting to be sold to the highest bidding leech even as he and Andy made their bloody way across the border.
Joe had no trouble sleeping at all.
<> <> <>
The Cubans insisted on choosing the location, and they changed it last-minute to ensure that no one could set up against them. It made no difference. Pete’s mind was hotwired to Patrick’s, and he passed the new meeting place along to Zito and Stan, who kept Castillo and every other officer on the case up to speed.
Rico got out of the car first and motioned for Sonny and Patrick to stay inside. He walked along the perimeter of the warehouse they’d been told to wait in, looking carefully at every nook and cranny and seemingly muttering to himself. In actuality, he was muttering into a tiny mic under his shirt, at the other end of which Gina took notes and prepared for all the tactical possibilities of the terrain in a shootout. Sonny watched him while oiling his guns.
“Do you ever think about it?” Patrick asked eventually, just to break the silence. He wasn’t used to the tense hush Sonny and Rico liked to work in. This wasn’t how he and Pete and Joe and Andy prepared for a hard night’s work. He missed their banter. He missed them.
“Trudy would have my nuts,” Sonny answered, which was just as good as a yes, since he didn’t have to ask what Patrick meant.
“Just for thinking about it?”
“For having to write whole new covers for us that explain the homoerotic tension between me and her man, probably.”
“What, she doesn’t already?”
“Fuck you,” Sonny replied good-naturedly.
“Sometimes, you love someone enough and sex is just pointless,” Patrick offered kindly.
“Yeah.”
Patrick laughed slightly. “But sometimes it still feels good.”
“Staying alive while you’re under feels better,” Sonny assured him.
Behind them, Rico had returned to the car and was getting something from the trunk. “To keep up appearances,” he said, tossing the burlap sack and rope he’d retrieved into Sonny’s lap. The sack went over Patrick’s head, and the rope “Is because Pete swore he’d murder us if we tried to cuff you again.” Rico tied his wrists behind his back.
“I’m sure you guys are readier for this than I am,” Patrick said from beneath the cover he’d compliantly accepted, “but this isn’t one of your usual fights. Bullets don’t kill them. You have to either remove the heart or take the head clean off.”
Rico loaded his new Vepr, skimmed from the cream of the Ukrainian arms shipment he and Sonny ran only a few days ago, and replied, “Don’t worry, this will take the head clean off.”
They waited in silence until unmarked vans started rolling into the warehouse. Sonny bumped fists with Rico, and then they became their covers. “Move it,” Rico ordered roughly, pulling Patrick out by the elbow hard enough for him to lose his balance. He shoved the barrel of his rifle hard against Patrick’s spine and let it stay there.
“Gentlemen,” Sonny greeted tranquilly, as though they’d met on a pleasant evening stroll.
“How are you, Burnett?” the Cuban leader bit out. “Still taking what is not yours to take, I see,” he indicated Rico’s Vepr.
“What, this?” Rico ran the gun slowly down Patrick’s side. “We don’t take, we just pick up whatever people are sloppy enough to leave behind.”
“I offered you a way to buy into the deal, fair and square,” the Cuban growled.
“And now we’ll have a new deal,” Sonny said, mimicking their original exchange.
Even as they spoke, they were aware of the dark shapes drawing in around them without so much as a rustle. The vampires had arrived. And they kept on arriving, more of them than either Sonny or Rico had imagined. They were prepared for several leaders and perhaps a few goons for show, but there were at least a good forty or fifty of them gathered now. It seemed that Patrick was worth more than he’d let on.
Beckett tipped his hat at them in a mockery of respect, then said to the Cuban without preamble, “We’re prepared to offer you 75% of everything that goes through the Ciudad del Este neighbourhoods we control in exchange for the Unturnable.”
“Yo,” Rico called out, “there ain’t no deal without us. We have your goods.”
Beckett curled his lip in disdain. “I hardly care whom I’m getting the creature from. We’re offering seventy-five percent. Work it out amongst yourselves.” He waved a white-gloved hand between Sonny and the Cuban, as though shooing children.
“Sixty percent of your seventy-five,” Sonny said.
The Cuban laughed. “You don’t even have any people in the Tri-border! We do all the work and you get more than half the cut. No, that’s not how it works. How about we say fifteen.”
“We have your biggest bargaining chip,” Sonny replied. “Without that, you would have zero percent. Try fifty.”
“Twenty.”
“Forty.”
“Thirty.”
Sonny snorted. “Forty.”
Beckett made an impatient noise.
“How do we know they’re not fucking with us,” the Cuban said obsequiously to the vampire leader. “We cannot give such a large percentage until we have a guarantee.”
“That’s easy enough.” Rico jerked his rifle slightly toward Beckett. “You send a couple of your people over to check out the merchandise, and Sonny here will go to your side as a show of good faith.”
Sonny put his handgun away and held both hands up to show they were empty.
Beckett shrugged and flicked his wrist at the vamp immediately to his right, one that looked like a hyper-active kid forcibly poured into a tightly tailored tux.
“Not him,” Rico said.
“This isn’t a yard sale, you don’t get to choose,” Beckett said, annoyed.
“I don’t want someone who looks like a motherfucking ten-year-old involved in this, it makes me uncomfortable,” Rico shouted, jerking his rifle once more. “Send me those two.”
Beckett turned to look at the ones Rico had pointed to, two of the serious-looking guys Beckett had recently recruited as a set of five. They were quiet and they did their jobs, so he shrugged once more and nodded his consent.
The two vampires passed Sonny in no-man’s land as he made his way to Beckett’s side.
<> <> <>
William Beckett took note of two seemingly unrelated details in the split second before all hell broke loose.
The first was how the remaining three vampires from Jersey simultaneously shifted forward as soon as their colleagues had moved past Sonny. He didn’t have time to figure out what that meant, however, because the second thing occurred immediately after. He heard Pete Wentz.
He heard Pete Wentz, as he sometimes did, in his mind-but he also heard him physically, in the form of a shout that echoed across the warehouse. Beckett had one millisecond to wonder what it meant before unseen shooters opened fire all around them.
The Cubans ran for their vans, swearing in Spanish. The two vampires Rico had picked gave chase and jumped on several of them, opening their throats. This caused the rest of the Cubans to start shooting at every fanged being within range. Rico himself was pumping 600 rounds per minute into the minions surrounding Beckett.
Beckett drew back and let his followers take the fire-that’s what they were for in situations like these. The vampires naturally retaliated, but there were suddenly a lot more people firing back at them, people unaccounted for at the beginning of the meeting. His followers were screaming about cops and being set up, while the Cubans were yelling the same on the other side. Something didn’t add up.
Beckett looked for the Unturnable, his mind still focussed on the main objective behind all this, and saw Pete Wentz untying It while Rico provided cover for them. A sudden shock of understanding ran through Beckett as he realised exactly how they’d been set up. He frantically scanned through the mess that was his dwindling forces, searching for those traitorous leeches, Mikey and Frank and Ray, but they had already joined the other two turncoats attacking the Cubans. All Beckett found on his own side was the barrel end of Sonny’s gun.
“Narc,” he spat out with all the disgust in the world.
“Sorry,” Sonny replied, sounding far from it.
“So that was the plan all along? Get us to turn on each other before the deal’s finalized?” Beckett stalled while cool gunmetal pressed into his Adam’s apple. “Clever. Who thought of it? I bet it was that blasted Unturnable.”
Behind him, the sound of a hunter’s blade slicing through his favourite disciple reached his supernaturally sensitive ears, and beyond that he heard the noise of FBI choppers coming for the few drug lords left alive. His lip curled involuntarily. “I know it couldn’t have been the dumb brute you call your partner.”
To his credit, Sonny didn’t bother answering. He just pulled back the safety and squeezed the trigger.
It was too late, though. Beckett had gathered enough energy for apportation. The last thing he saw before teleporting away from the carnage was Pete’s anguished, frustrated face as he ran towards him as fast as he could, but never fast enough. The harmless report of Sonny’s gun was the last thing he heard.
And then Beckett was gone, with nothing gained from the violent transaction besides some new knowledge. And a taste for revenge.
<> end?
AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA WTF WAS THAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW OKAY