FicWad

Joe sighed heavily. He tried hard to push the dread out of his mind as he headed briskly to the weapons lockers. He knew Andrea was nearby. Thanks to Spencer, he knew that she had been turned into a vampire and was working for Beckett; haunting him as if she were a ghost, intent on destroying his very being and finally killing him if he hadn’t taken his own life. It was the cruellest possible thing that could have happened to him following her death. But he had to push all that out of his mind and concentrate on finding her. He knew only too well that this would not be easy; vampire hearing was acute and she would hear him coming a long time before he actually arrived at her location, wherever that was. At least he had the element surprise on his side; she was not expecting him to know she had been turned. It was as if she were draining him herself as Joe felt the blood rush from his cheeks. He almost felt dizzy as the realisation washed over him. She had acute hearing, he felt sure that he had heard her speak from within the building when he and Patrick had discussed not only that they knew she had been turned but that Patrick couldn’t see her. Then the bigger question dawned on him, how was she in the building? When he had first encountered her, she had been outside, he remembered looking outside to see her. Scouring his memory, he felt a rush of heat as he realised in horror that he himself had invited her in.

Staring out of the small window in his room, Joe’s eyes were transfixed on the form of the ghostly pale Andrea standing a little way out in the parking lot behind the warehouse.

“Andrea?” he choked out, shaking his head and closing his eyes briefly as if to clear his mind and vision.

In that split second she was gone, having raced to a spot immediately below his window and out of sight from his line of view.

“No!” he cried hopelessly. “Andrea! Don’t go. Just… Just be here, right here with me now.” At no response, Joe’s voice fell to a whisper. “I need you… Please.”

Had that qualified as an invitation? Had Spencer invited her in and just not told them? The fact he was locked in the cage for more than one night and that it was intended to be a long-term arrangement certainly qualified him as living there. It would be the sort of thing he could imagine him doing, then just not saying anything. The only thing of which he was truly certain was that neither Pete, Andy nor Patrick would have done it. Patrick. Joe’s blood ran cold as he realised that Patrick could be in danger, possibly even more than he was. Added to that was the fact that Patrick was completely unable to see or hear her. If she attacked him, he would be completely oblivious to it. Almost as confirmation, he realised that Patrick had not followed him as he had expected. Turning on his heels, he ran as fast and as silently as he could back to Patrick’s office.

*

“Aren’t you going to beg for your life?” Andrea laughed, drawing the knife an inch to the right, slicing a small cut across Patrick’s throat, causing a trickle of blood to roll down his neck, pooling as it met his shirt. “Ugh!” Andrea exclaimed her distaste. “Your blood stinks! How do you hold that down? It’s disgusting!”

Unable even to see the knife while she held it, Patrick felt almost foolish standing in the middle of his office rooted to the spot, held by an unseen vampire.

“Why are you still bothering to block me?” he asked carefully, trying hard not to move too much, or accidentally pressing his throat into the knife. “It’s not as if I don’t know you’re there.”
“Maybe so, but while you can’t see me, you can’t fully second guess where I am, so you can’t even try to escape.”

Patrick gritted his teeth, frustrated that she had guessed his motives.

“I am going to kill you, Patrick, trust me on that, I just want you to suffer first.”
“Why?” he asked, half expecting some sort of elaborate reasoning over some perceived sleight while she had been alive.
“For fun,” she laughed. “Nothing more. Why? Do I need another reason?”
“I guess you don’t,” Patrick frowned. “But…”

Patrick grimaced in pain as Andrea pulled the blade a little further across his throat before pushing it back in it’s original position, forcing the knife a little deeper into his neck.

“Am I really going to have to smell more of that disgusting blood when I pull this down all the way?” she mocked with a cruel peal of laughter.

Patrick heard little more than a gasp in his ear, followed by the sound of the knife clattering to the floor. Instantly placing a hand to his throat to stem the bleeding as he felt himself suddenly released, Patrick was at a loss to understand what had just happened.

“No, you evil bitch,” Joe’s strained voice replied to her question. “You won’t.”

Turning quickly, Patrick stood aghast to see Joe standing behind him and Andrea crumpled on the floor, a stake jammed into her heart through her back.

“Joe?” Patrick whispered to his ashen-faced friend. “Thank you! But… Are you okay?”

Joe stood in silence, reflecting on the question, taking a deep breath as he lowered his eyes to stare at the vampire lying at his feet, trying desperately to remain objective and distant.

“It wasn’t her,” he finally replied, almost choking on the words. “It wasn’t Andrea, not the Andrea I knew; she just looks like her.”
“Yeah, but…” Patrick began, at a loss to know what to say that would comfort his friend. Finally leaning in for a hug, Patrick sighed as Joe sank into his arms readily. The slight shake in the shoulders of the traumatised hunter gave away more than any words could have.

It should have been a peaceful moment with two friends comforting each other, one on a lucky escape, the other for having to stake his recently turned girlfriend. They needed this moment to reset, but it was not to be. Wrenched out of Patrick’s grip, Joe was pulled back and held firmly as a fist shot forward and connected sharply with Patrick’s jaw sending him spinning backwards to the floor.

Crying out in shock and pain, all of Joe’s struggles fell away as the pair of fangs pierced his neck. The razor sharp teeth slicing through his skin with ease almost caused his knees to buckle under him but the two handed grip held him in place for a few more moments before he was thrown viciously to one corner of the room.

Shaking the dazed feelings from his mind, Patrick scrambled to his feet, his eyes widening as he spotted Joe lying in a crumpled heap, unmoving and apparently not breathing in the far corner of the room. In the doorway, Gabe Saporta stood leaning on the frame, arms crossed with one foot tucked casually behind the other as he watched with amused interest. But what brought the greatest level shock to his expression was Pete, standing in the middle of the room, staring at him with wide eyes, his shoulders lightly hunched, blood still on his lips - Joe’s blood.

“Pete? What the Hell are you doing?” Patrick cried in a shocked tone. “Joe?”
“Don’t bother,” Pete smirked. “He tasted good, that’s all you need to know.”
“What the Hell is going on?” Patrick asked urgently.
“I tried to tell you, Patrick,” Pete shook his head mockingly. “I tried to make you listen to me, but you didn’t want to know. Human blood. It’s not just an addiction, it’s a sickness. I’m still connected to you. You were my first human blood. You tasted amazing; I have to tell you. Your fear… The adrenaline, so sweet, so rich. Better than chocolate… Hell! Better than British chocolate! I’m sorry about Joe,” Pete heard Saporta shift behind him, only to settle back into his relaxed state as he continued. “Sorry I didn’t make you eat him. It doesn’t seem right to kill you before you’ve had the chance to taste real blood… Human blood. It’s so different, Trick. You’ve missed so much, I can’t even begin to tell you.”
“Kill me?” Patrick stared with confusion at Pete’s sudden breakdown.
“Do you think we could move this along please?”
“You must have seen this coming, Trick. You, with all your notes and observations. Did you really not know it would come to this?” Pete seemed almost pitying. “I have to kill you. All vampires kill their original blood source… Not me, I turned you. Your very existence is eating away at me, threatening to destroy me. While you’re alive, I’ll crave more human blood. With you dead, I get control back.”
“That’s garbage, Pete, you know it is!” Patrick protested.
“No,” Pete shook his head. “No, it makes perfect sense. I need to kill Beckett and to do that I need a clear head. So, I need to kill you. It’s simple logic; you understand that now, I know you do. Simple vampire logic, clinical, no emotion, just driven by need.”
“Wentz,” Saporta prompted. “Get on with it.”

Pulling a stake from his pocket, Pete shrugged almost apologetically.

“I know you’re fast, Patrick, but you won’t get past Gabe and you know I’m stronger than you. This is going to happen, you might as well give in.”
“Pete, I know what to do now, I can help you!” Patrick tried to convince him.
“No,” Pete shook his head. “I know what to do.”

Stepping forward, Pete moved to within two feet of Patrick. Quickly darting to the side, Patrick bolted for the door only to be met by Gabe Saporta, quicker again than the younger vampire; he shoved Patrick back into the office, so viciously that he found himself tumbling to the floor. Straddling him in an instant, Pete held him down by his rapidly healing neck. Pausing briefly, almost as if he was still questioning the action, Pete brought the stake down hard, jamming it into Patrick’s chest, leaving it embedded and pausing to watch as Patrick sagged limply beneath him.

Only moments later, he was pushing himself to his feet, his eyes wild and hungry.

“Take me to Beckett!” he demanded. “I want to tell him myself - the hunters are dead.”