Young Writers Society

Nich blinked at the skeleton. “I’m a what?” he asked, confused. He could hear the whispered conversation the wolf-man and his fellow animal-person were having about him, but he wasn’t sure what to make of it. He knew, intellectually, what a vampire was...but weren’t those just fiction? Surely they weren’t real? He frowned. “Are you sure about that? Because I don’t feel like I am one? I don’t feel weird at all, really. Besides the headache, that is.” He glanced up at Grim again. “Grim, right? How do you know me?”

Queenie finally snapped.

Her interest in keeping Nitch comfortable vanished.

She turned to him, "Congratulations, you're a vampire. Now do what the rest of us have to and take it at face value, because wasting time on the details right now is the last thing we need to be doing. It's getting late, and none of us have anywhere to go. I offered earlier to pay for a room at a hotel a couple of blocks from here so we wouldn't be stranded on the street for the night, but everyone else here refused. Now we're here," she waved her hand at their surroundings, "with no plan, nowhere to go, and an amnesiac."

She huffed a shaky breath, murder flashing in her eyes, "I don't think you people quite appreciate the gravity of our situation. We can't keep pausing to baby the newcomer, or to grab the runaway, or even to fix up the killer. None of that was helpful. We're still here, in some alternate version of New-York-gods-danmed-City with a half-baked plan to get everyone back to their respective worlds." She looked to the sky, praying again for someone to help her. Or just kill her.

She calmed down suddenly, closing her eyes as she spoke in a controlled tone, her voice shaking ever so slightly with her newly re-leashed temper, "It is an unfortunate fact of circumstance that I'm at all reliant on you people to get home. If it weren't for the fact that I am entirely unfamiliar with the concept of magic, I wouldn't have bothered with any of you in the first place. I can't leave now for the same reason, so if we could just, please, focus on something more immediate, that would be wonderful, thank you." The anger that boiled beneath her voice melted away as she spoke, leaving nothing but absolute exhaustion by the time she finished talking.

She didn't want to go home, but the others did. She didn't even know why she cared, save for her point about getting to somewhere safe to sleep for the night. It was also about time she did a maintenance check on her body armor. The inside was probably caked with blood, which would explain the uncomfortable sticking around where her wound was. Speaking of which, she wondered what that looked like now. Was there a scar? She hoped not. Scars were a big part of the reason getting wounded was strictly out of the question. the only time she was allowed to bleed like that was when she was in the manor with a team of medical staff ready to fix her up, good as new.

Half-hiding behind Taber, Kendrik glared at Queenie. "Then let's go ta the hotel!" he said. "There's a lot ta be scared 'bout in a world none of us've been in, so of course we're gonna be fussin' 'bout some dude who lives forever and doesn't know who he is, a huge pile of bones, and whatever else this city wants ta throw our way." He crossed his arms, trying to look less afraid than he felt. "And I'm tired 'n' confused 'n' don't want ta deal with all this vampire stuff, and I bet everyone else agrees, and ya want ta go to a hotel, so let's go there."

Queenie didn't have the energy to glare back. Instead, she looked to Ryder.

"You seem to have decided that you're the leader here," she said without hostility, "What do you say?"

"We have a plan," Ryder said. Any of his anger from earlier had disappeared; now his voice was quiet and almost monotone. "We'll do what Kirux offered. We'll go through his darkness and find our way back to our worlds. Going to a hotel wouldn't be safe for us. Some of look human, but others don't."

He glanced over at Nich, then turned his attention back to Queenie.

"He's an amnesiac," he said. "Let him ask questions, and let the others try to understand what's going on. We probably would have finished this conversation already if you didn't keep interrupting."

An awkward silence followed, and then Grim offered the answer to Nich's question. "We met at an abandoned restaurant," he said. "Kirux and Taber were there, too. You were there with a...ghost, and your boyfriend. We didn't talk about our lives too much, but that's where I met you."

It was only when he was watching Grim did he realize that Kirux had darted away from Queenie at her anger, and was now using Grim as a makeshift shield again.

Queenie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The urge to correct Ryder fought with her need to not cross a line in her head. Part of her argued that if there was a line, she overstepped it a long time ago.

Still, if there was a chance that there was one, and that she hadn't crossed it already, she didn't want to be removed from the group.

It would give you an excuse, a dark little voice in the back of her head whispered, That would leave you with no hope of getting home, and no one left to stop you. All you would have to do is climb up one of those tall buildings and-

Shut up. She told it.

She glanced over at Grim.

If he was the reaper, a kind of death god, could he hear her thoughts about death? She hoped not. That last thing she needed in the middle of this mess was an intervention.

Ryder's words ticked at the back of her skull. We probably would have finished this conversation already if you didn't keep interrupting. Wrong. If she hadn't interrupted, the conversation would have just gone on. She had no doubt these people were the types to just go on talking and talking and talking, long after all the vital points had been made.

"We still don't have a place to stay for the night, genius," she growled. She expected his answer to be something like 'we can stay here'. As if this place was never going to be visited by anyone, a night guard, a contractor, even just some teenager who thought it was funny to break into the seemingly abandoned building.

She voiced none of this.

The others had pissed her off. If she spoke now, there was a very good chance her actions would turn to violence.

"We don't need one," Ryder said.

He glanced over at Kirux and Grim.

"When can you make the darkness?"

Kirux peeked out from behind Grim, and signed something that he couldn't understand. Grim, however, seemed to know what he meant - he turned back to Ryder and acted as a translator. "He said he can make in ten more minutes - he just needs to rest after making the one to get Taber's friend."

Ryder turned back to Queenie, the same look still on his face. It wasn't that he wasn't feeling. He was. He just felt ashamed for how he had acted earlier - for how he had let his magic out, for how he had given into the story that his brother had been telling for years. "We can leave in ten minutes," he said. "Then we can start getting home - or, if anyone is getting tired, Kirux can bring us to a place that's safer than this building or a hotel."

Kendrik was about to ask what Ryder had in mind for a good place to sleep, only for Ryder to answer exactly that. Granted, Kendrik wasn't sure how much he trusted a scared kid who had to spend a lot of time recovering after making one portal to catch one (admittedly hard-to-catch) panther. But he really wasn't in the mood to challenge Ryder, no matter how long and how tedious this whole using portals to find the right worlds sounded.

"Then we have ten minutes ta see if we can clear the air and get the vampire ta remember anythin'," Kendrik said, focusing on the vampire in question. "And how d'ya not remember Taber? He's, uh, not 'xactly forgettable."

Nich glanced around at all the different people and slowly lowered the phone, brow creasing in confusion. "Okay," he said slowly, and quickly found something to sit down on--which happened to be the floor. "Let's say I am a vampire... Wait, I have a boyfriend?" He shook his head and brushed a hand over his face. "Focus... Okay, so let's say I am a vampire, why don't I remember that? You'd think that'd be a pretty important thing for someone to forget about...and why don't I remember any of you guys who know me? Man, my head hurts.." He trailed off, still frowning in confusion with his gaze now on the floor. He knew this entire conversation was somewhat redundant, but what could he do? Try hitting his head against the wall until he remembered? Nonsense... He lowered his voice, muttering to himself, "I have a boyfriend? Why would I forget that?"

Queenie sighed and sat down on the ground, tucking her knees under her chin and placing her gun at her feet. She wasn't burdened by extreme exhaustion, as she was before Grim used his powers on her, but she wasn't exactly wide awake either.

Meaning she was tired. Very, very tired.

Resigning herself to the role of passive bystander, she closed her eyes and focused on the train of thought she had left to rest.

She thought she had more time to think it through. She thought she would be able to make sense of this jumble of emotions before she had to decide.

Those emotions all hit her at once. Every one seemed to shout at her its own point of view.

Briar will be left to deal with their father's requests alone.

Briar can handle herself.

There is no knowing how dad will react to you disappearing.

You don't have anywhere else to go.

You could go to one of the others' worlds.

They wouldn't allow it.

And so the argument went.

She felt sick.

She needed to do something useful. Even the most minor of tasks would do.

She was wearing three layers, the visible overshirt, the body armor she had thrown on to look like she hadn't gotten shot, and the grey tank top she'd been shot in. She lifted the edge of her overshirt and examined the metallic silver body armor. It looked undamaged on the outside. That was good. If she had bled too much beneath it, it could have seeped through, risking rust or other damage to the specially designed material.

She pressed a finger into where her wound had been. Nothing. Not a hint of pain. The armor, however, had become slightly stiff with dried blood from the inside. She sighed. Of course it had.

The vampire boy was having trouble wrapping his brain around the whole 'boyfriend' thing. Queenie didn't think that was the most shocking discovery of the evening, but whatever. She leaned back on her hands and watched, fully content to ignore her own problems in favor of not caring about his.

"I don't know," Grim said with a shake of his skeletal head. "It might be a spell, or it might be regular amnesia. It's hard to say."

Taber raised a paw. He wasn't quite sure what a spell was but, spell or not, he was a little familiar with amnesia - a few of the patients at the hospital had lost memories after getting hit in battles. They'd always been friendly and polite, if confused, and Nich didn't act any different. "When we're going to other worlds, can we look for his boyfriend first? So he can try to remember things? I'm not sure if it'll work, but it's worth a shot."

Queenie's eyes snapped to Taber. She was tempted to speak up. The others, if they were think about her at all (doubtful), would expect her to. After all, they all thought she was all too desperate to get home.

She shot out a prayer that they weren't thinking about how she should be reacting and stayed silent. Taber's suggested course of action would give her time to think, to come to her senses.

Her gut twisted.

She was going to go home, wasn't she?

Her breath shook as it left her lungs. She wondered if she'd still be breathing, even a week from now, if she stepped foot back in the manor. She could explain herself. Take pain over death. But dad didn't like excuses.

She grit her teeth and willed the others to accept the suggestion.

"It seems like a good idea," Ryder agreed.

Kirux gave a big nod as well - he could definitely do that! He wanted Nich to remember him, and he knew exactly what his boyfriend looked like, too. It would be easy to find him!

"Can you do that, or does the portal just take you to a random spot in that world?" Taber said, glancing over in Queenie's direction to see if she would take shots at Ryder. Ryder and Queenie had the best and most detailed plans, but didn't quite like each other's. However, when she let out a shaky breath, he looked away. She looked a little too frustrated and, if she'd wanted to say something, she would've said it. "You found Lunis, but he was pretty close, but it looks like you're pretty good with portals, so could you make one right next to Nich's boyfriend or something? That would be awesome!"