FIC: Ghost Town - R rated, Audrey/Duke/Nathan, (2/3)

[roseveare]

summary: vampire!Duke and Audrey fight for survival. ghost!Nathan runs into Max Hansen and Evidence Ryan among Haven's dead.


PART 2

It had been a joint decision that they go in Duke's truck, and that he should drive. That way, Audrey could keep her attention on him in case things went... hinky.

Duke was pretty sure he wasn't his normal self, because his normal self should have been freaking out a whole lot more about... oh, the little sharp fangs he could feel nipping at his lip when he smiled, or the way Audrey still smelled to him, like something amazing, but not so much in the manner of a beautiful woman, or man, not in a sensual or sexual way -- more like a gourmet dish calling to his appetite. His ears didn't seem to be too sensitive to the other small details of the world around him, but it felt like his hearing had been amped up a hundredfold when it came to picking up her heartbeat loud and clear. Inside his own chest, he was well aware that there was no matching echo.

Instead of freaking out, his current self occasionally drifted into the thoughts and smiled... until he caught himself and struck that expression off his face before Audrey saw it. Ironic how it was the fangs that helped him catch himself: that little nip as they dug in when he smiled bringing him back to reality.

If she knew what he was thinking, what he was fighting to hold down, Audrey would never trust him again. Right now, he wanted to take her in the worst way -- and sure, he'd taken Audrey a hundred times, with Nathan watching or varyingly joining in, and even a few they'd snuck behind Nathan's back because he still got pissy about that (even though he and Duke did it and Duke damned well knew that he and Audrey also did it), but this... He ached to throw her down and take what he wanted: sink his teeth into her delicate throat while he was inside her and feel her blood rush into him as he fucked her...

It would be sweet and warm with her life. It would...

Yeah. He was going to sit here shuffling uncomfortably in his seat and focus very hard on driving.

"Back at the police station," Audrey was saying, all business and no idea as to the content of his rogue thoughts, "I can get a taser. I should be able to subdue the monsters without killing the townsfolk, that way. Just bad luck I don't have one with me, today. Now Dwight's around so much, I often do."

"Mmh. Good idea," Duke said. It rather depended, he thought, on whether a taser would work on what he seemed to have become. He kept himself in shape, but the sort of strength that he could feel lurking in potential when he moved his body now was a level up from that. "Wonder if we should try to break the Teagues out of this Trouble to see if they know anything that could, um, help." He didn't want to be alone with Audrey, next to the allure of her scent and her heartbeat, where every moment that he kept himself under control felt like a major achievement. That was not good, so company, and distraction, and someone else to intervene when he finally fucking lost it, seemed like a plan.

He'd never forgive himself if he did that to her. He kept looping the reminder through his head. He loved her. Her and Nathan... and Nathan... Nathan would kill him...

If Nathan weren't already dead.

That gloomy focus made it a little bit easier to drive back his own shadows.

"But we're lovers, and that was only just enough to bring you around to some semblance of yourself," Audrey told him, still oblivious to her danger. "And you're still barely in control." Okay, maybe not so oblivious. So much for how well he was disguising it.

"I don't know," Duke offered, "Vince is pretty damn fond of you." He risked a glance toward her in the passenger seat. She looked unhappy, a 'v' of tension between her brows as she stared ahead. "Hey, you're supposed to be watching me. Wake up."

"Come on, Duke," she said, giving him a squashed smile. "I do trust you. You know that, right?" She reached out and squeezed his arm above the elbow, and looked at him earnestly out of puppy dog eyes. Duke couldn't help but reflect on how she did that: put her faith in you almost like a weapon. So much faith that you'd be horribly ashamed to fall short of it.

"...Okay." She barked a short laugh and grinned, deflating the moment. "Now, you can stop staring at my neck." She gestured with a twitch of her finger to point his eyes forward to the road again -- and then her strained attempt to foster a lighter tone was swallowed into real panic and an urgent yelp. "Zombie! Zombie on the road!"

Duke yanked his head around, and the wheel, swerving to avoid the ginger haired youth with the blank face and rotting features who'd shuffled right into the path of the truck. Duke yelled rather louder than Audrey did as he missed the zombie by inches and ploughed into the roadside, cutting deep tracks in the soft grass.

He shook his head clear and raised it with a growl, and glared at the zombie still weaving its clumsy way across the road ahead. "You know what's ridiculous? If everyone's turned into a monster, then there's no-one to be the victims... What happens if a vampire and a zombie fight? Who bites who? Is it anything but pointless?"

Audrey struggled up against her seatbelt and cast him a worn look. "Well, it's the one thing that offers some hope maybe no-one dies from this Trouble, if everyone resets to their original state once it's over."

Duke grimaced, and fixed his eyes forward, straight ahead out of the windscreen, picking out a distant scene. "You forget one thing. There's still an open road into this damned little town from the world outside."

Audrey craned her head to follow his gaze and swore. "Damn it, we have to--"

"I know, I know, I know--" Duke swore in a mantra as he tried to reverse his reluctant and partially stuck truck. He remembered at the last moment to check the position of that lone wandering zombie, as he realised he could no longer see it, and barely missed reversing into it as he changed his course. It went past about a foot from his window, and Duke got a good look. "...Huh." He almost stopped the truck accidentally as he blinked in recognition. "Gas station guy. Do you notice, Audrey, if there's a high number of people from the customer services industries changed into these things?"

"Not funny," she said. "Go!"

...Yeah. Duke slewed them around with a screech of brakes and slammed his foot on the pedal, speeding them toward the poor schmuck who was about to be dead. He didn't slow the car as they approached the group of people on the road up ahead, though he did relent a little as Audrey squeaked in accusation.

Didn't want to kill anyone. Check.

"You think I can fight that many?" he yelped back at her as he ploughed into the near side of the group, picking off three of them in one move.

A car was stopped askew off the road -- probably had done exactly what Duke just had, swerving to avoid a zombie. Clearly not a good idea. Even without the three he'd knocked flat, half a dozen others were still tearing at the car. The driver's door was open and a girl shrieked as a zombie clutched at her, teeth worrying into a captured arm.

"Jesus Christ," Duke muttered. He got out of the truck and lunged into the fight, aiming first for the zombie who had hold of the girl. Others got in the way, though, causing him to waste time and effort dealing with them. He tossed one clean over the car and shoved the other down and stomped on it on his way to help the girl.

"Holy Batman, Batman!" Audrey exclaimed wildly, but he barely paid any attention to that. The girl... had the zombie's teeth sunk in her arm, chewing an increasingly messy wound and creating a lot of bright, beckoning red blood. It wasn't Audrey, and some not-so-gallant part of Duke was jumping up and down with glee, insisting that meant it would be okay. Hell, he was saving them from zombies! They'd just eat her regardless. What was a little blood?

The other occupant of the car, a man, shoved open the passenger side door straight into a zombie's face. Now the numbers were reduced, he was getting out to help, too. Duke couldn't really blame him for staying put and trying to hang onto the girl from inside the car, before, when things had looked bloody hopeless. The guy got out, kicking at another zombie's kneecap repeatedly with a gurgling approximation of a battle yell. He got past that one as its leg collapsed, then threw himself over the hood, getting to his girlfriend at about the same time as Duke.

"Tina!" He kept yelling her name as he and Duke pulled her attacker away, and that kind of ruined things for Duke's thoughts of a guilt-free meal. That, and now... there was something increasingly sour, he felt, about the smell of her blood. This close in, it still looked enticing, but he found he didn't want it at all. She was abruptly very easy to resist.

He turned to check his back and found Audrey close behind him. She gave him a tight nod. Her eyes said she'd been worried, but spoke of approval now. She thought he'd asserted his own control over the urge. She didn't know about the stink.

There were other zombies still left to deal with. The thing about zombies, at least they were slow. Duke shoved one into the trunk of the car, which hadn't fared so well as his truck after its crash and was all banged up on one side. He unconcernedly slammed the trunk shut and ignored the slow banging that started up. The couple clung to each other and eyed the banging car nervously. There was blood on the guy's face, but he'd been bitten as well, and the unappetising stink also coated him.

"Get into the truck," Audrey ordered, pushing at them. Duke wondered if he should say something, but really, he didn't want that conversation. He didn't know what was going to happen to them, and they definitely couldn't leave them here, as they were, human and clinging to each other while the zombies they'd just put down were all in various states of getting up again. Audrey had the only workable idea.

They got in the truck, the dude taking his jacket off and wrapping it around and around the girl's mangled arm to try stem the bleeding. That at least took it out of Duke's sight. But even Audrey didn't smell very good now, stuck in the confines of the truck with those two contaminating the air. Duke slammed his foot down again and they screeched away from the cluster of zombies, heading back in toward town.

"Oh my God, oh my God!" the girl yelled. If she was that vocal, the blood loss couldn't be too bad. "It's the zombie apocalypse! I knew it... we knew it! We were supposed to be ready, Mike!" She punched the guy. Duke snickered despite himself, and covered his smile with a hand as it earned him a glare from Audrey.

"You wanted to bring three handbags and six pairs of shoes on vacation!" the guy babbled back. "There was no room for the freakin' survival kit!"

"It's not the zombie apocalypse," Audrey said. "It's... It's just a local outbreak. It'll be over soon."

"Yeah, but every apocalypse has to start with a local outbreak," Mike countered, obviously a logician. "Think about it."

"Doesn't matter to us," Tina told him, her voice bitter. "We've been bitten! We aren't going to survive it."

"Hey, now," Audrey said, turning around, knee on her seat, arm hanging onto the backrest. "We don't know how these zombies work... or even what they really are. We don't know that they're contagious."

Duke sped up the car a little. He listened to Audrey trying to pep talk the couple, but beyond the fact they probably had two of those annoying things now in the car, he didn't really care. He examined that coldness in him. He remembered the vampires on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which he had totally watched for Joss Whedon's writing and not just for Sarah Michelle Geller doing high kicks. Did this mean he didn't have a soul? Had the Trouble taken his soul? Or did it still suggest he had one if he was bothered enough by the thought to worry about it? Then again, he wasn't that bothered, and as to whether he'd had a soul to begin with... whether anyone did...

Duke's ponderings on the Big Questions of the Universe were interrupted by a hard poke in the arm and Audrey leaning in to hiss aggravatedly in his ear, "Stop. Humming!"

He supposed the cheery sound might not be appreciated in the current context.

It hardly mattered. By the time he pulled up outside the police station, their passengers were still and sluggish. Tina's face had gone blank and she latched her fingers into Audrey's hair when Audrey tried to rouse her. Duke had to go around and haul her from the car to make her let go. Mike was quieter, but he'd gotten less of a dose and slightly later, so it was probably slower acting.

"We can't do anything for them," Duke said. "Let's just get them out of the truck. They can't stay with us. They'll be as safe as any of them, wandering about, now."

"Hopefully they'll go back, too, when this Trouble ends," Audrey said sadly. She frowned as she watched Duke pull Mike out and set him on the pavement, then slam shut and double-check the doors. Tina was staggering up from where he'd pushed her already.

"Just walk fast," Duke said. "They're slow as hell."

"You don't feel bad, do you?" Audrey pushed. "Not even a little bit. The Duke that I know..."

"I... kind of feel bad that I don't feel bad?" Duke tried. "Does that count?" It was on the tip of his tongue to suggest that she try touching him -- maybe just holding his hand -- and see if her anti-Trouble influence had any effect. But now they were away from the stink of the infected Tina and Mike, he could smell her so clearly again, and her warm skin touching his would be... No. Absolutely not. "Besides, did you notice? Her arm, when the jacket fell off? The blood had stopped. That wound was a mess. Considering the state of this town and any medical care she could access right now, she's probably safer like this until the Trouble's over."

"Assuming she turns back," Audrey said, her voice a dry rasp.

Duke shrugged. "Let's go and pick up Nathan." He did shiver, then, with the thought that the Trouble might not reverse.

"We need to close off the roads into town," Audrey said, strained. "If we were in Nathan's truck, we'd at least have had police tape. I'll have to pick up some of that, too."

The police station was... too quiet, as the old cliché went. Duke started to feel a distinct nervousness building despite himself. He didn't want to see Nathan's dead body. He had a horror that he'd be able to tell somehow that he was really dead, and there was nothing they could do this time. But he took the lead down the corridors. Not so much to protect Audrey from what they might encounter as to continue protecting her from himself. That she went along with that plan, when he was the civilian here, pretty much told him she knew that.

"He's just in our office," she said, her voice low. They hadn't seen anyone or anything, except another dead man under a table in the main office -- a uniformed officer Duke only vaguely knew by sight. Audrey took a deep breath before she moved to push open the door. Nathan was right there, long body stretched out on the floor.

"Shit." Duke was across the room dropping on one knee to touch Nathan's face and verify its cold with barely a thought for his reticence to encounter Nathan's dead body. "This is turning into a bad habit, man."

Nathan didn't reply, obviously. His blue eyes were open, glazed and waxy. It was freaky, but Duke was not about to draw them closed as he would the dead. Death hadn't stuck last time and they'd fix it this time, too. Those eyes, as well, seemed to Duke to have a hint of life still in them, even if Nathan's skin was dead and cold. He wasn't going to snuff that out.

A foot scuffing on the floor reminded him Audrey was watching. He looked up and found her face directing a softer expression at him -- at both of them. She caught herself and returned to business, and Duke nodded back in response to her brisk tip of her head as he gathered Nathan up in his arms. He knew full well that Nathan was a heavy bastard, for all that he was skinny, but picking him up now was remarkably easy compared to all the other times Duke had had occasion to do so, sadly only some of which had been x-rated. Duke juggled the weight in his arms a bit until he was balanced and Nathan's head curled in against the side of Duke's neck, hair soft and ticklish there. The newly-dead smelled neutral, he discovered, which was a bit of a relief. Not bad the way the zombies smelled, but not appealing like Audrey. It would have been hard to resist sinking his teeth into Nathan's throat if he'd smelled like Audrey. He wasn't more than an hour dead, so there had to be liquid blood in there still, but apparently the pulse was important.

"I swear, you spend way too much time dead," Duke murmured to him as he negotiated around the desk and then through the corridors. Audrey had a taser in her hand now, and moved with him, watchful and ready. "This had better be temporary."

They came down out of the main entrance of the police station and Duke bumped into Audrey as she stopped. He followed her gaze and cursed at the sight of the bunch of black-clad youths around his truck. The two of them hunkered down on the steps in a fashion that didn't really count as hiding.

Duke recognised a couple of the bunch. He had, in fact, sold them weed, and gotten lip when he told them he didn't have anything stronger (which was kind of a lie, but that stuff was for personal use and friends, and he definitely wasn't peddling the shit to schoolkids). He didn't know if they were at school anymore, but they still hung around town doing not-much, except getting wasted or stoned or wrecked on a regular basis.

"What do all the little junkies turn into when the horror movie Trouble comes to town?" Duke muttered. Then he thought about it. "Fuck me."

Audrey's eyes widened slightly. "You think there's a connection..." Her face cleared in comprehension. "Of course. It's your Trouble. You're practically a vampire already, in a way."

Duke winced. "Yeah. So I suck blood. Those little needy suckers are on any other substance they can get their hands on. Fucking video shop clerk turned into a zombie, of course, and the garage guy, or maybe the zombies are just the default option, since there sure are a lot of them, whatever. And the living dead... died." He looked down at Nathan, in his arms, thinking of a bunch of times he'd made some verbal barb equating Nathan's state of not being able to feel anything to not really being alive. "Sorry, buddy."

"I'm sure it's not like that," Audrey said, hard. "And I'm sure we can fix this, just like last time." She looked over at the truck. "Can you take four of them? They're just kids. I've got the taser now..." She also had Duke's shotgun, had had to take it so that he could carry Nathan. But stating that he was ready to kill someone to protect her had been easier as an abstract; not quite the same faced with a bunch of transformed teenagers. Or maybe associating with her had brought him closer back to his normal self since he'd declared that.

"Screw the truck," Duke said, not wanting to shoot them, but not wanting to fight them either. "I'll pick it up when this is all over. Let's just hotwire that sedan." He pointed to the nearest parked car.

She shot him a crooked smile. "Break the law, Duke? I could arrest you for that."

"My misbegotten youth," he fielded. "You and Nathan can arrest me and read me my rights when this is all over." That was always a fun game. Nathan in particular got really into it. Duke still remembered with glee Nathan's expression when he'd admitted the sexual kick he'd gotten from all those times Nate had dragged him to the station in cuffs in the past. It had been a beautiful picture. He wished he could've snapped it, framed it and hung it on the wall.

"Uh-oh." Audrey stood, balancing her stance and levelling her taser. The vampire youths had already seen them and were on their way over. "So much for that plan."

Duke lay Nathan down on the steps next to where Audrey had left her roll of police tape, making sure Nathan's head was cradled and he wasn't going to roll off. Then Duke straightened and moved to stand in front of Audrey, accepting his shotgun back from her. "You boys want something? Got no merchandise on me today."

Oh, shit. Their eyes were looking past him to Audrey, and their noses were sniffing, their facing craning, like they were more animals than men. They weren't interested in him or their vague past acquaintance. Duke had felt that pull himself, and he knew they weren't going to be able to talk the group out of this.

Decision made, he discharged the shotgun wide of the nearest, catching the one behind him in the halo of the fire, with hopefully enough damage to slow it down. Then he swung the weapon back in his arm as he moved to meet the lunge of the one who'd been too close to point-blank for comfort. Duke grabbed him by the neck and curled the hand holding the shotgun around under his ass, ready to snap him in two as he drove upward with his knee... Audrey's shrill cry was a timely reminder. Jesus! Even when he was deliberately calculating, his physical instincts wanted to go in for the kill. He softened the blow and cast the kid aside still definitely groaning.

The next one, with the pellet damage, had claws and dealt Duke a slice of all five of them right down from his exposed collar, tearing through the front of his shirt before he had time to do more than flinch back. Getting shot had definitely pissed him off. The other two junkie vampires were going straight for Audrey. Duke heard the crackle and smelled the ozone as she used the taser. She wouldn't be able to get the weapon back and primed again in time for the second...

Immaterial, as it turned out when, beyond the initial jolt, the shock seemed to have less effect on the bloodsucking undead than on people.

The pain of the cuts annoyed Duke and he dealt several swift blows to the vamp-boy's face, stomach and groin in retaliation. He curled his foot around the kid's ankle and shoved him hard backwards. There was enough force in the push that the kid slid on his ass halfway across the road. Duke blinked for a moment. He hadn't expected that.

Audrey's cry demanded his attention, and he spun around to start on her assailants. They were pawing at her, the first with the prongs of the taser still in him, and even still flickering with electricity, for all the difference it made. They had her pinned between them, and Duke saw them take a few desperate hits from her that from him would have made an impression. Audrey's human strength they absorbed like it was nothing.

One of them caught Audrey's hand and waist and the other pulled at her hair, yanking her head back to expose her throat.

Duke wasn't particularly thinking about not killing when he drove his fist into the kid's face. That one fell and didn't get up... but the two behind him he'd thought he'd dealt with were making enough noise to tell him they were going to be pests again. Never mind. He ignored them while he separated the remaining vampire from Audrey. The little huff of pain she gave as he pushed her aside warned him that increased strength could be a danger to his friends, too. Even if he'd bruised her, she set about retrieving her taser.

Duke swung the guy who'd been attacking Audrey around with the intention to hurl him into his oncoming friends, and was stopped short as unexpected agony punched him through the gut.

Audrey let out a gasp and a horrified, "No!"

Duke dropped the guy -- he was going to drop him anyway, a bunch of the muscles he was using to stretch his arms to hold him up like that had just been severely compromised -- but managed with a last-ditch effort to score at at least one of his fellow junkie-vamps, though that was almost entirely by accident, because all he'd been trying to do was avoid hitting the metal pole that was poking about three feet of its length from the front of his belly and presumably at least some behind him, too.

He was left staggering, facing a conundrum. His legs wanted him to fall. He couldn't fall -- couldn't even risk going to his knees and jarring the pole against the ground... He was peripherally aware of movement from Audrey and a gunshot ringing out as she shot the last guy in the foot. Duke gripped his hand to the point where the fucking street furniture was embedded in his torso, trying to hold it steady, and managed to lurch the dozen or so steps necessary to take him to the side of a (much more solid, still upstanding) lamp post, which he clung to. He felt around behind him for an exit point... Definitely protruding from his back, as well. But a shorter length: he could reach the end with his fingers. He leaned his forehead into the lamp post and swore, and swore, and swore.

He heard a click as Audrey cuffed together the two guys still in a messy pile. Her voice spoke harshly, "If you fucking move, I will shoot you in the other one," and then her feet approached Duke.

"Duke..." she said, sad and soft and hoarse. "Are you..." ...All right? would have been a stupid thing to ask. She left it at that.

"This," Duke grit, through the pain, trying to think, trying to remember the rules. "This probably isn't going to kill me as a vampire. Right?" Stake through the heart... It wasn't a stake and it was too low to be anywhere near his heart.

"No," Audrey breathed. "No, it shouldn't." Audrey knew the rules, too. But there was only a little, sorry note of relief in her voice, because this Trouble, this Trouble they had to end...

"Oh, God, I'm so fucked," Duke groaned, clutching his fingers to the lamp post, abrading them to the point of grazes with the force of his touch.

"Wait." Audrey reached out and grabbed his hand. She pulled it from the post, spreading his fingers out, tips facing upwards. He turned his head so he could watch her directly, rather than out of his muddy peripheral vision. "Look, Duke..."

The small wounds in his fingers healed up sluggishly. They had to watch for a minute to get any impression of it, and it'd take about fifteen before they'd be completely gone, but they did heal.

"You're a vampire," Audrey said. "You regenerate. That means we need to get that thing out."

"No!" Duke's automatic reaction was horror. He couldn't imagine moving again, even the smallest amount that would shift the pole. It was a no parking sign, of all things, torn up from one of the bays outside the police station that were used for police cars... like the one in which he'd parked his truck, and regularly parked his truck, because hey, he was boning two cops who could deal with stuff like that. It was like his bad karma. It was nearly two inches thick, hollow inside, and he absolutely could not frame the concept of pulling it out. "It's not going to make a difference," he said, with difficulty. Talking shifted its solid mass against his abdomen. "It's a huge wound. This thing is... it's hollow... there's gonna be bits scraped out." He wanted to throw up. That would definitely hurt. Could vampires throw up? "There's no way it regenerates enough in time. Not unless it takes something like a week to fix this Trouble. I'm a dead man."

"What about the tattoo?" she shot back at him.

"Last sight, remember?" He groaned. "Not necessarily the killer. It's probably gonna be Nathan reaching for me as he's all back among the living and I'm bleeding what's left of my guts out."

"Bullshit!" Audrey hissed. She grabbed the pole, the three-foot length of it in front of him with the bizarre no parking plaque on the end of it. Duke didn't have the voice to scream. "You are not going to die..." Her eyes changed with wary anxiety, with burgeoning hope. "I know how these things work. I'm not going to let you die. But I have to take this out so we can heal that wound."

She yanked on the pole. This time, Duke did scream.

He clung to the lamp post and considered begging her, but he really didn't have the breath, and he doubted, at this stage, that she would even listen.

She hadn't moved the sign by much and it took two more tries before she hauled it clear. She was trying to put as much force as she could into the tugs, to pull it out smoothly, and she was sweating by the time she finally dragged it free. The sensation as it came loose and the hole in Duke's body sort of collapsed in on itself was particularly horrible. Audrey flung the post aside with a clang. Duke grunted, nothing left in him to manage more, and slid down to his knees. It smelled like dog at the base of the lamp post, sharp and unpleasant, but he couldn't make himself move until Audrey caught at his shoulders. "Come on..." She got him back to the steps, next to Nathan, hauling him to lie up the steps too, so he was almost sitting upright at Nathan's side.

There was some blood on his torso, and what at least looked like a lot of blood on Audrey's hands, but the wound wasn't gushing the way he'd have expected. Vampire, Duke thought. Undead. No pulse, no blood flow, nothing to pump the blood out of that hole. That was something, at least.

"I know what you need," Audrey was saying. But Audrey was kind of floating, and seemed both very close and very far away. Duke felt his head spinning... Could he pass out? Spike and Angel had used to, he rather thought, then tried to remember other less crap fictional vampires. Dracula had never fainted. "Duke, stay with me. I have what you want." She was drawing a knife. It was his own knife, his father's... the one he'd taken to carrying around since he learned of his blood Trouble, even though he was determined not to use his blood Trouble... Just his way of hitting irony hard. She stuck the point of it into her own arm and flicked it hard out, creating a fast-bleeding little gouge. "This is what you need, Duke, isn't it? What you've been after since we found each other today..."

She hovered the blood in front of his face and Duke made a little noise of denial, jerking his head away. He'd been trying so hard not to...

The blood followed him. Audrey pushed her arm against his mouth, and as soon as the taste hit his tongue, there was nothing he could do to fight against it any longer. He latched on and greedily sucked her in. After the first energising, glorious mouthful slid down his throat, he had the strength to raise his hands and grip her arm, pulling it to him. He heard a discomforted noise from her, but it didn't really register. Her blood was amazing. Duke was a connoisseur of fine food and fine wines, but he'd never tasted anything so good as this. He never wanted it to stop.

A jolt shook him. His eyes flew wide, though his teeth and hands didn't quite relax their grip. Audrey's face was directly above him now, very close. The taser was in her hand and the electrodes sunk into his breast. Her legs straddled his thighs. Her hair hung over him. Her face was pale, and shining with a sheen of sweat. She looked like she did in sex, except for the pallor.

"Duke..." Zzap! "Let go... You've had enough!"

Realisation landed on him like a truck. He opened his jaw wide and his arms flew clear, releasing her. His abdomen still hurt, though it was far dulled from before. The taste still filled his mouth, but it was mingled with guilt. Had he taken too much...? His mind was clearer now. How much blood had he stolen, that she needed for herself?

"I'm sorry..." he stuttered. "So sorry.. Audrey... Audrey, are you all right?"

She swung up and off him, staggering and catching herself. But she did catch herself, and she turned back to him. "I'm all right. We're... I hope we're both all right. Open your shirt."

Duke sat up, wincing as that moved the damaged tissues of his stomach, and fumbled clumsily at buttons, pulling his shirt open. Audrey dropped carefully back to one knee to reach in, to dab a little blood clear with her sleeve. There was a puckered wound in kind of a lazy star shape, a central point with reddish lines spiking off, but it was closed and it looked a week old or more. Audrey let her breath out in a long, slow, relieved sigh. "I think we might have done enough. But we'll look at it later and maybe we can try again if this hasn't improved further, before everything... turns back."

Duke managed to crook a grin at her, of sorts, still half shocked and his mind racing with thoughts of guilt. "We shouldn't..." But he didn't have any intention to die, either, so he didn't push the thought.

He gathered his feet under him to get up, and his body let him, albeit unsteadily. He found himself clinging to Audrey's shoulder, and tried to transfer that to the low wall, knowing she was almost as unsteady. "That was... that was something else," he said, meeting her gaze with a little bit of a cringe.

To his surprise, she flushed. At least her body had blood enough left in it for that. "Umm... We should..." She pointed at Nathan, and looked back at the truck. Duke, suspicious, sniffed the air and caught behind all the blood the scent of sexual arousal. God, she must be so wet, right now, if he could scent it through the blood. He wanted to kiss her, to touch her... but in the circumstances, that was a bad idea. "I'll get the truck."

Duke fumbled his keys across to her and made a point of trying to reassert control over himself while she walked away. No doubt she was using the opportunity apart to do the same.

But it seemed to him, as he had chance to steady and take stock, that he was more in control now. Maybe it was having her Trouble-resistant blood inside him, helping him along... Though he winced for another reason, at that thought: dumb luck it hadn't gone the other way, and made him all the way normal and all the way dead.

He was seriously going to get some mileage out of Audrey's vampire fetish once they were all back to normal. He wondered what Nathan would make of it...

Nathan.

Duke sighed, bent down and gathered Nathan up again. It wasn't so easy as before, but he was still able to lift him up, and lay him across the back seat when Audrey brought the truck closer.

"He has to survive this," he commented. "For no other reason than we absolutely need to roleplay those two dudes from Twilight or Buffy and reveal your secret shame."

Audrey's face coloured again and she shot back, "Which one's the broody one and which one's the evil one? Oh, wait."

Duke was... not so okay with this as he was shamblingly -- very shamblingly -- trying to project. He shut the back door, Nathan safely inside. As he rounded the truck, he noticed something, and he was drawn back to the lamp post he'd been leaning on earlier.

It wasn't his own bloody handprints daubed all over it which had drawn his attention.

"...Audrey?" She was distracted by kicking the handcuffed vampires back into submission. "This is, uh, interesting." Duke pointed to what was attached to the lamp post.

She fell in at his side and stared at it with him. "I've seen that poster somewhere before."

MOVIE NIGHT, it read. 14TH OCTOBER. AN EVENING OF VINTAGE AND MODERN CHILLS. Fuzzy images of corny vampires, witches and spectral ghouls glared out from the poster's sides. It was advertising for the amateur movie theatre at the high school.

"There's a copy of it up in the Gull," Duke said, gruffly. "And I remember having a long conversation with the guy who asked to put it there."

***

Annalise Hammond had been fighting cancer for two years, but now a fluff of hair was starting to reclaim her scalp, and along with her slow gain of a little more weight, had started to return her to a semblance of her former self. It seemed deeply unfair that this Trouble had decided to cast her among the deceased after her hard-won battles. "But it is a Trouble," Nathan said to her, as positively as to all the rest, "and we're going to fix it."

He was noticing a pattern, though, with the people they picked up. The downtrodden and faded and just plain tired, this Trouble had claimed for ghosts. He had to assume that it was on account of his own Trouble that he belonged in that group.

They'd acquired nearly a dozen on their way down Main Street. For the most part, they were like Baylen, scared and useless and even less functional now they'd been snatched from life without warning and stuck in this state, in an altered and terrifying version of their hometown, unable to communicate with anyone else... not that they would want to, because all of their families, those of them who had families, were monsters. They clung to Nathan's little group when he found them. There were some surprises. Duke's permanently incoherent barfly John MacDee had run all the way from the Grey Gull back into town, desperate to investigate what the hell had happened, desperately sober for the first time in years.

Annalise Hammond came hand-in-hand with a non-verbal, ghostly child. "I found her wandering at the hospital. There were enough horrible sights there. So I brought her away from them." Annalise's eyes were hard.

The more people joined them, the more pressured Nathan felt. His original plan had been to head more or less toward the Gull, but with this many in tow, they would certainly question that choice. To go to Duke's bar rather than stay central and investigate the power bases of the town would seem crazy to them. Nathan had thought Audrey would have gone to Duke if she'd seen him die. John MacDee had confirmed Duke had been there, but hadn't seen Audrey.

If Audrey had gone to Duke, then Duke... Nathan had to believe he'd back her up. Audrey would be Trouble-proof enough to bring him around from whatever he'd been transformed into. Duke would be strong enough not to hurt Audrey, whatever he'd become. Nathan needed to leave them to it and look after these people. He could see how much they needed it. It was the right thing to do.

It didn't sit easy with him, all the same. Audrey was important to the town, too, but he couldn't explain that without sounding insane. They couldn't drive, or even sit in a car, and he couldn't drag these people all the way out to the Gull on foot. So he opted to approach the Herald office instead. Maybe they could get some information from Vince and Dave, or at least from their computers.

Max Hansen, for the moment, seemed content to follow Nathan's lead and smirk condescendingly every so often. Nathan was afraid to look too deep at what drove Max to attach himself to the group -- no, to Nathan, for it was clearly not with the rest of these people that Max's interests lay. Awkward, too, so very much so, to be trying to take charge of so many when he knew Max held power over him that he might decide to exercise at any time. If he did, then everyone would see how ineffective their Chief of Police really was in this state... just the same as any of them.

They were heading off Main Street down to where the Herald offices lay when a teasing wolf whistle called Nathan's attention to the left. He stopped abruptly. Annalise bumped his arm and exclaimed in surprise. Leaning in the shadows of the big old Rowan tree, which had been lightning struck a few years back but still struggled to leaf in the summer, there stood another figure Nathan recognised already belonged among the dead.

"Hello, lover boy." Evidence Ryan's pretty face stretched in a wide grin, the kind of grin that, from their admittedly short and skewed acquaintance, seemed to be her speciality. In that acquaintance, she also seemed to specialise in calling him by a variety of names which, on her lips, subtly seemed to imply some insult stemming from the nature of his relationship with Duke. "Imagine that. Nathan Wuornos, joining the other side quite this soon." Her voice was a purr. Her arms were folded, her body language closed. Her figure gleamed faintly against the shadows of the tree.

"This is a Trouble," Nathan said. His voice was getting hoarse from saying it. "I'm not dead." Hard glances were being exchanged between Max and Evi.

"You don't say. If this many people dying produced spooks all the time, the overcrowding would be unbearable." She pushed off from the tree and strutted out into the street to join the group. Nathan's eyes zeroed in on the small movements of the nearest branch. It seemed Evi, like Max, could affect the world around her. Were Nathan and the others so powerless in this state because it was a Trouble, or because they were new?

"You..." Nathan ran his eyes up and down her, closer up. He felt like he should say something. She had died as the result of a siege in his own police station. He had failed to save her. "You look well." That was probably a ridiculous thing to say, though she inarguably did look better than the last time he'd seen her alive. He rallied as far as, "I'm sorry you died."

She tipped a shoulder. "No use crying over spilled milk. I guess you and Officer Blondie won. Won Duke, won everything."

Nathan was very conscious of all the spectators this conversation had, and Max most of all. He grit his teeth. "Not because you died. And we wouldn't have wanted that."

When she'd come to town, Evi had been amused and belittling of their newly-forged relationship. Duke in a three-way was apparently nothing new, but Duke seriously trying to forge a life that way, treating it as a steady relationship, was... and was a matter of considerable mirth for Duke's wife. Evi had not taken it seriously; had tried everything to force a wedge between them. Since neither Nathan nor Audrey had previously known Duke was married, her existence alone was already a severe dent. After her death, having Duke's guilt to contend with had probably been the thing that came closest to breaking them apart. But they had weathered that, and it was all in the past.

They had new problems, now, of course.

Evi pulled a face at Nathan. "Of course not, Hero Type. Wouldn't be fitting. Then again, the things you do with your boyfriend and Blondie probably don't fit into any traditional role, either."

There was a distinct choking sound from Max. Nathan growled, "Can we please not talk about this when we have a crisis to deal with? We're going to the Teagues -- the newspaper -- to try find out some information. If you want to join us and help, then help. If you don't--" He shot her a look that was angry and pointed.

Oho, said her returned raised eyebrow. Maybe he'd given too much away.

She'd already done enough. Max's hauled Nathan around by the back of his jacket. "You seriously telling me a son of mine takes it up the ass from Duke Crocker?"

"No, you--" Nathan launched off, furious and not entirely true, but protesting with details of what they actually did was decidedly too much information in front of all these people. Besides which -- it shouldn't matter. He had nothing to damn well prove to that attitude. He told himself it, fiercely, and felt fiercely humiliated anyway. "Get off me, damn it! My personal life isn't at issue here! We need to get the town back to normal!" He shoved Max back.

Evi's brows had gone up with the exchange. She actually looked a little caught off-guard. "Sorry to stir. I mean, I'm dead and all, but no hard feelings." She gestured open-palmed.

No, it was just what she did every time she opened her mouth, Nathan thought furiously. Although he seriously doubted she hadn't got a kick out of the reaction just then. He'd been party to taking Duke from her and in life, she'd made no secret of how she resented that. Made no secret of their secrets, either, one of the reasons not everyone in his little audience was reacting to the revelation with surprise. Perhaps, though, there was a hint of real apology in her face as she looked back from him to Max, her nose and brow crinkling in thought. She hadn't known Max was his father.

"Goddamn, this just gets better. What the hell kind of screw-up job did Garland do?" Max said, snapping Nathan's attention back to him. The feeling of being surrounded by enemies while in front of an audience, with all his hangups and anxieties subject to discussion, was terrifying. He was supposed to be a public figure, a leader... He had people to take care of. He needed their respect to do it. He was supposed to be in control, but Max Hansen's presence was making it hard to focus on anything at all. Evi's presence was, as usual, stirring everything in the worst way.

But perhaps if Max wouldn't cooperate with him, then Evi would. There were things he needed to know. Nathan tried to ignore Max and turned back to her, "Evi... You've been doing this... ghost thing... for a while. We could use your help." It did hurt a little to admit it.

"Obviously." A smile played around her lips. Nathan started walking, gesturing for the group to move ahead, and she fell in at his side, prompting a huff of either frustration or exaggerated patience from Max, who also kept deliberately apart from the rest, eyes fixed on Evi and Nathan. "The newspaper, huh? Why is it that those two old geezers have a stake in everything that goes on in this town, anyway?"

"Think they're just calling dibs by longevity," Nathan murmured. "Evi, I need to--" He didn't really have the time for idle conversation.

"Mhm," Evi said over him, brightly. "Those two are relics from at least the Civil War, huh?" She stretched, or mimed stretching, reaching her arms up above her head and then bringing them down more widely. From his peripheral vision, Nathan knew she'd practically laid an arm over his shoulder.

She'd made moves on him before, but what good would it do to try compromise him to use as a lever against Duke now? he wondered, shoulders stiffening at the unwanted touch even if he couldn't feel it. She was dead, and presumably Duke couldn't see her any more than Nathan had been able to detect Max. He'd certainly never admitted to Nathan that his dead wife was still hanging around. Nathan rolled his shoulders awkwardly and prepared to speed up his steps and shrug loose the arm still curled around him.

Max gave a growl and took a step towards them.

Evi's hand did something, moving swiftly, and Nathan found himself staggering. He heard an angry cry from Max, and almost-felt... something like a giving way, a parting. Since he'd been in this state, everything had seemed... blocked, reduced, stifled. He suddenly felt freed. Less heavy, less hampered.

Max had been doing just what?

Memory slammed into Nathan before he could really shape that thought and take it anywhere. Surging, incoherent images and feelings dumped themselves into his brain. Nathan fell to one knee and shut his eyes, but it didn't help. The confusion continued behind his tight-shut lids.

Huddling scared... A big hand looming closer to take up all his world... The repeated sounds of hard hands thumping into softer, pliable matter... Fear and awfulness and mixed with it all, something else, a thing he barely remembered these days and didn't recall ever experiencing in such stark, overwhelming intensity... Pain, pain, PAIN.

The images steadied just enough to catch a glimpse of the face behind the blows.

"You beat me?" Nathan asked, his voice scraping. He stared up at Max, who'd rounded on the now very nervous Evi, but Nathan's accusation drew his attention back. "I must have been, what? Six years old? Younger?" He'd been with Garland after that, hadn't he? He remembered, he was sure, that it had been Garland going crazy after the sledding incident, especially when he discovered that it had been Duke who helped Nathan back to town. "What possible reason could you have--?"

Nathan's voice failed him entirely. His childhood was indistinct before his teenage years, except for a very few incidents that stood out with crystal clarity. Like Duke and the tacks. Why would he remember that, which looked so unimportant now, and yet not remember being beaten -- badly, and from what he'd glimpsed, it hadn't been a one-off -- when he was six years old? When he'd felt those beatings? But Duke had always claimed to have memories missing from around that time. Maybe whatever Trouble had hit Duke had hit him worse.

"Gun!" Evi blurted, jolting him out of his stupor as she backed away from Max, who'd turned away again in Nathan's distraction.

"You bitch!" Max snarled. "Nothing to do with you, what goes on between me and mine."

Evi's arms were held out to ward Max off. "Wuornos, damn it!"

Gun...? Sluggishly, Nathan remembered he still had the ghost-version of his service pistol at his hip. He reached behind him and drew it. His finger slipped on the trigger, numb and badly controlled by his shaking hands... Should ghosts shake? The ethereal bullet he accidentally loosed cut a narrow line through Max's ethereal substance just below his knee. Nathan considered it lucky it only caused that minimal damage to Max and didn't hit anyone else.

"Boys need discipline," Max growled, and Nathan realised that he was answering him. "Make you a man. Never did me any harm. Now I've seen what kind of a job Garland's done, pretty clear he didn't do the same."

Nathan stared at him.

Evi urged, "You can fight him now."

"What happened?" Nathan asked. There were enough other things to focus on, enough distractions, new memories, new information, new horrors, but this, he didn't understand.

"Don't you point that gun at your old man," Max said, taking a step closer. His leg leaked a little substance off into the air with the movement, but it was a minor inconvenience. "Here, you give it to me, boy."

Those words reverberated in Nathan's head. He'd heard them before. He'd been here before, gun in hand, staring up at Max from this same height... But he hadn't been on his knees, then, and the hand coming toward him had looked bigger. His own hand looked bigger on the gun, didn't match the memory, where he'd had to use both hands to hold it. There'd been someone behind him, someone hurt... Mother... He hadn't had the strength to protect her, though if his new-returned memory served, it had been he who'd taken the rest of the beating afterward, back then.

The memories were his but Nathan felt divorced from them. The physical sensations in them might be a part of it, but so might the fact he'd lived so long believing in another life, a happy early childhood, not even remembering Max at all.

Maybe he should thank Garland for keeping his secrets to the grave.

It was pretty easy to say, "You've got to be fucking kidding me. Why the hell would I do that?" and drag himself to his feet, once the initial shock had rolled past him. He pointed the gun and his hands were steady enough, this time. "I don't know what you were doing to me then, that she stopped--" He jerked his head at Evi. "But it's pretty clear that nothing's changed. Garland thought you were poison. He never told me so. Never told me a damn thing. But it's obvious from his files. Everything I'm looking at now tells me he was right."

Nathan narrowed his eyes at his biological father. Genetics didn't matter that much, did they? Choice was important, too. "You're going to walk away," he told Max. "Leave me and these people alone."

Max laughed, the sound raucous and mocking. "You don't have the balls to do that. First shot was an accident. I saw that."

Damn. Touching Max felt like it might leave a stain, and was a risky act, since Max seemed to have been drawing... something... off of him, before now, but Nathan wasn't ready to find out what effect a more disabling shot had on someone who was already dead -- not yet. He crooked his hand back with the gun, cocking the trigger, keeping it aimed but out of reach as he extended his other hand and used it to shove Max in the chest, hard as he could. "I said get out." He'd forgotten for a few minutes that he had an audience, but noticed again now that they were watching with saucer-wide eyes.

"Yeah, fuck off," chimed in John MacDee, stomping to the fore of the group. "Sounds like you're a worse damn father than I am, and I tell you, that takes a lot of doing." The rest of them shifted around him, turning glares Max's way. Even the ones who were miserable about living and even more miserable about dying found they had disdain to muster for Max. The force of the group in sync might have had its own fazing effect. Max fell back another step.

"Piss off, jerkoff," said Evi. "You know you don't get to do that shit around here. The Haven Dead Committee will have your head."

With a last savage look at Nathan, Max staggered back and lunged away. he seemed to blink out, then he was more distant, fading, vanishing on the air.

Evi let out a long sigh of relief. "He's like a force of nature. And you... you didn't help that." She swung around on Nathan. "Letting him leech that much off you!"

"I didn't--" Nathan was left, gaping, with the gun still raised in his hand. "I don't even know what you just did, I don't know what he was doing, and I won't know unless someone explains." His cluster of newly-dead townsfolk looked just as clueless. Had Evi even done this to help him, or just to prove a point, to hang something over him? She'd always seemed to make much of the fact that she didn't do anything for nothing.

He took a breath. Somehow his body seemed to demand it, even though so far as he could tell, his body consisted of transparent almost-nothing, and certainly was not drawing breath. Habit, perhaps. He decided he might not trust Evi, but she had helped him get rid of Max, and Max definitely hadn't been benign. Worse than the dangerous nuisance Nathan had been thinking of him as. "I... felt... something, when you reached behind me. That's all I know."

"Okay." She relented. "He was leeching energy from you, like a parasite. The worst ones, the scary ones, are usually family members." Her face softened further, perhaps going over what she'd heard. "You can leech off the living fairly safely, and they'll barely notice, but it's worse when it's the dead. I've seen people end up as wisps in a matter of months. Usually it takes centuries for a ghost to badly fade."

Nathan heard, You can leech off the living, and shuddered inwardly. Had Max been doing that to him? The bastard had been haunting the police station offices for months... and apparently had a direct line into buried parts of Nathan's psyche.

"He must have had his hooks deep into you," Evi said, watching him closely. She pulled a face. "I'd never give anyone that kind of hold over me."

"I didn't--" Nathan started again, sourly. He gave up and sighed. "I think he got them in early." He shook his head. "I don't even remember him back then, but... some of it returned just now." Automatically, he closed his lips. He didn't want to talk about it, and he hadn't time to think about it -- they'd wasted enough time already. He forced his expression level again, or hoped he had. "I don't know why you did help, but whatever you did, I... Thanks. Only stay, though, if you mean to keep helping. Max was disruptive. I'm not swapping him for another disruption."

She tipped a shoulder. "I cut the cord, for what it's worth. Takes a practised eye to see it, so I get why none of these would. You should have more energy now. Be able to do more, once you've time to regroup. And it's nothing, by the by, Hero Type... I just don't like parasites." There was still sarcasm in her tone, but she didn't leave.

Nathan had never had much intimations of understanding or compassion before from Duke's wife, but he supposed it possible he hadn't been best placed to witness a softer side of her. He did see those things, for a moment, as she looked at him and her face twisted. She said, "I guess some things we could live without remembering,"

Nathan shook himself. None of this was conducive to the task at hand. "Okay--" He turned around to the rest of them, holstering his gun. It was difficult to force his fingers to unclench from the handle. "The newspaper offices. The plan hasn't changed, though we'll have to keep a lookout for Max -- he knows we intended to go there. I don't know if Vince and Dave will be able to help us. If they can't, we'll have to help ourselves." If Max had been... stealing energy from him somehow, then he hoped his earlier failures to interact with the world didn't mean anything. Had he braced himself against the ground when he'd shoved Max away? He wasn't sure. He looked at Evi, slightly concerned about coming to her as any kind of petitioner for favours. "You'll teach us how to do that? Or help us, if we can't?"

"Great." She rolled her eyes back at him. "Now I'm supposed to be teaching you? Basic Haunting For Dummies. How to Shake Your Ghostly Ass 101. If you hadn't stolen my husband, I wouldn't have gone to those crazy lengths to get him back, and I wouldn't be dead, Mr Self-Righteous Cop."

Nathan rolled his eyes. They knew Evi had already been working for the Rev when she'd come to town.

"And just so you know, I still don't like cops," she added, belligerently.

Nathan gave a bark of helpless laughter. "Duke's been telling me that for years." In fact, the last time he'd said it had been in bed, that morning, and Nathan wasn't going to disclose the circumstances in front of this crowd, not for anything.

***

Audrey had had enough of the High School after what Duke had dubbed 'the sex doll Trouble' and herself and Nathan had dubbed 'please don't call it that' a few weeks back. A bunch of particular Asshole variety of students had discovered one of their number could generate mindless clones of faculty and fellow students alike. It had actually been pretty grim. Especially annoying, she'd discovered her immunity didn't extend to some jerkass deciding to add a cop to their clone harem.

Honestly, she'd been tempted to step back and let the Chief of Police and the criminal of dubious morality at her shoulders pound the kids to paste. It had been hard to tell which, between Nathan and Duke, was more in danger of murdering a teenage pervert. As little as she'd felt like doing so, Audrey had had to intervene, in the end.

But she'd still indulged herself in watching plenty of the panic and fear first.

"Thank God Haven doesn't have a university," she said to Duke as they walked again down the high school halls. "I don't think I could cope with Troubles plus frat boys."

Duke shuddered. "Saved by our lack of Higher Learning. There's a lesson in that..."

"Says the man who speaks three whole other languages to my 'give me a drink' in Spanish," Audrey retorted.

"I live in the world. Big difference."

She thought Duke was doing better, now. Audrey didn't feel quite the same urge to have eyes on him at all times. Perhaps that was kind of weird, when he'd now actually had a taste of her. But perhaps her blood had helped clear his mind and make him more himself.

She shuddered at the thought of the injury. Duke was holding himself slightly tenderly when he moved, but gave no sign of being in any great pain, though his agony before had terrified her. Pulling that pole out of him must have hurt unimaginably. If that repair didn't hold when everyone switched back... She was gathering a list of all the things she did not want to see happen to her lovers ever again. She had seen both of them die far too many times now.

Immunity was its own kind of burden.

And, as ever, responsibility.

There were a lot of copies of the poster up around the school buildings. Someone had already added direction signs, arrows taped onto doors and walls beneath the posters. The amateur movie theatre was in a lecture hall at the back of the science labs.

It was too much to hope that there was anyone there. The movie screenings weren't scheduled until the evening, and it was anyone's guess if the show would still run, now this Trouble had kicked off, if it was the source of the Trouble.

What was there already was more promotional material and handouts, with extra information about the movies being shown. The modern vampire movie was standard teenage fare, and might have been where Duke's particular archetype came from. There was a werewolf movie she hadn't seen but that made Duke snicker and say, "Weirwilfs," in a particular weird voice, and another one said it was about witches. Duke pointed to the list and said, "I remember that movie. Everyone's running around as a ghost at the end. None of this list are exactly classics."

"Teenagers," Audrey said. "You were expecting taste?"

"Not really." Duke rubbed the pad of his thumb over his teeth and his contemplative stare... she wondered if it was starting to develop that hungry, needy look again. He'd had enough of her blood to make her woozy, and they'd stopped to raid a gas station store for candy on the way here. But Audrey knew she wasn't yet ready to spare any more blood. Not and still be functional enough to pursue this case afterward. She'd give him more -- she would not risk having him die if there was anything she could do to prevent it -- but he was going to have to wait.

"Hang in there," she said to him.

She tried not to dwell on the tingles through her body, the flutter in her belly and lower, when she thought about that feeding. Part of her wanted more. That had only been a bite on the wrist... If she let him bite her neck...

Too many trashy vampire novels, damn it, she thought furiously at herself. Calm down, girl!

"Do we have to come back at 6pm?" Duke asked, a hint of desperation in the question.

It was not so many hours, now, but Audrey felt the tension between them at the prospect of this stretching out so long. Enough time to-- "No," she said quickly, reminding herself that indulging in this... fetish... had potentially disastrous consequences. "We don't even know if he'll be here later. There must be something else we can do to find where that kid is. Maybe you don't know where he lives, but the whole staff and security of this place just dropped out of commission. I say we go dig out his school record and track him down... and hope he hasn't been affected by his own Trouble."

"Weeell," Duke wheedled, pulling a face. "Um, I'm guessing at least fifty percent of the name 'Spooky Johnson' is not what's on his birth certificate."

"There can't be an impossible number of 'Johnsons' in the school, and they should have pictures in the records. I'm sure that between you and me -- okay, mostly you -- cracking their computer records system won't be too big a problem." She picked up the poster, scouring it again with her eyes for a clue that might help them out, preferably in the form of an 'organised by' credit in a corner somewhere. Examining the smaller print gave her nothing, though, until she looked at the top. Then she saw something that she hadn't thought to put together before, with everything else that had been going on. "No way."

"No way what?" Duke looked up from his own study of the monochrome-printed schedule.

"This..." Audrey touched the top right of the poster. The artwork had made it look like deep slashes had been scored through the paper by the claws of some beast. Two claw marks seemed aesthetically lacking, though. Surely better to have a convincing handful: three, or four. But that was sort of the point, because this... "It's not arbitrary claw slashes, is it? This is supposed to be the numeral two." She blinked up at Duke. "Troubles have been in this town a while, this time around. Do you think this could have happened here before?"

***