Blood Isn't Always Thicker Than Water

“Are you kidding? I’m not taking him.”

“He’s with us. We promise that none of us has done anything illegal recently. He doesn’t get much sleep, and I guess he just passed out.”

Something soft, warm and fleshy was suddenly in my mouth and pulling my jaw down, but I felt it like I was distantly connected to this thing that claimed to be my body, or that I was dreaming the feeling.

“I don’t smell nuthin’ funky. Okay, put him in, but I’m charging twenty extra.”

“No problem,” the voice from before said, and I recognized it as Fallen’s. “Jeremy, can you help me…with… Uh, never mind, I guess…” After a couple seconds, I felt myself land on something soft. I inhaled a very odd scent, and recognized it as the old grandpa smell, except with a bit of cat-loving grandma added in.

Was I in a taxi? Again?

That made me so distressed I blacked out again. When I had gained semi-consciousness for the second time, I found my head on something poorly padded and…hot.

After a couple minutes, I managed to pry my eyelids open and found myself looking straight at the tan back to a driver’s car seat.

So I was in a taxi. And it turns out that my head was in Fallen’s lap while Jeremy got my legs. I guess Fallen hadn’t trusted Jeremy enough to let him have control of my head, even though the latter had known me longer.

Anyway, I stirred, and Fallen put a hand on my head and said, “Don’t move too much.”

He was most certainly right. Now that I could really feel myself, not just from that semi-conscious state, I realized that I was in considerable pain.

“What happened?” I asked, cringing and grimacing as I contracted muscles in different places experimentally, regretting it every time. Wen I tried my neck, I actually gasped.

Wow, thank the Lord Sam wasn’t here…

“You fell,” Fallen said, toying around with a lock of my hair. At first, it made me stiffen and think, You don’t need to display your gayness on me. Then I remembered that he’s my bro, in the literal sense of the word.

Relief.

“That’s it? I fell? There has to be more than that.” My eyes were closed so I couldn’t see the warning looks Jeremy was shooting in my general direction.

“Yes, that’s it,” Fallen said. “You fell.”

Wow, I felt dumb. This probably—OBVIOUSLY!—had some “vampire” complication in it somewhere. Dumbass, dumbass, dumbass…

Mr. Taxi Driver was looking at us weird through the rearview mirror, like he knew we were hiding something. Well, we weren’t telling him, thankyouverymuch.

We pulled up outside the train station, but I objected—loudly—and Fallen rolled his eyes before telling Mr. Taxi Driver the address to me and Jeremy’s house.

Hold up, was Fallen part of our group now? Was it technically his house, too? Or was he planning on moving back in with his mom? I’d ask him later. Right now wasn’t the best time for that conversation.

The driver then turned on a rock radio station.

Was he trying to make me as miserable as possible?

“No!” I spat as the chorus to “Same Old Song And Dance” by Aerosmith came on.

“Could you change it to something calmer?” Fallen asked in a nice version of what I was thinking.

The driver threw me a dirty glance, then—remembering his tip, probably—he changed to a much calmer station. It was probably classical, seeing as there were obviously string instruments.

“Thanks,” I murmured before falling asleep, head still in Fallen’s lap. My last thought while conscious was: I’m going to use up all my chemicals.

Then I fell into a restless sleep, haunted by dreams of George, Wentz and obviously Samantha. The girl couldn’t be good for my health.

I had a sunburn. It was red, and very itchy. But that’s not the worst of it. I didn’t have just a regular old sunburn. I had the worst in the history of skin-cancer-causing-temporary-rash-like-things. Seriously. And I had slept for seventeen hours straight. That’s a record for me. I think.

And somehow, Fallen was just…there. As I beat myself up—figuratively—for letting Samantha slip through my fingers, for letting myself get a monster sunburn all over and for losing control and using “vampire” speed at the beach, he just sat in my room, on my bed, listening, contemplating, and only letting positive consoling words come out of his mouth. The guy was amazing. I wouldn’t be able to listen to someone talk about how horrible they were for hours on end. I’d probably be so bored I’d forget that I had to walk to get to the bathroom and crap in my pants. Or something. Fallen just sat there, never talking about himself, never trying to say I was wrong about myself, but saying to forgive and to forget. To move on.

But I couldn’t move on. Mr. “Vampire” King wanted his human, and I had been chosen to retrieve her. I had failed. I decided that I’d probably get the death penalty for this.

But that wasn’t the only reason. I couldn’t just forgive myself and forget Samantha Royce. It was undeniable. She’d stolen some part of my heart, and now I felt strangely incomplete without her. Did Fallen ever feel like that? He obviously cared for Samantha a lot. Did a piece of him belong to her, too? The answer was clear in his eyes. Yes. Samantha Royce not only had taken some of him with her, he had some of her in exchange. And I didn’t know how strong that bit of her essence he had was. Would we go crazy if we never saw Samantha again? It seemed like it.

I began—after two days of misery—to put things she’d touched or used into a drawer by my desk. And Fallen didn’t see anything wrong with that. In fact, he put a spoon she had eaten from in the drawer without even washing it.

I was not in this alone…

But the next day, I almost was. Jeremy barged into my room at about four in the morning with a string of words al bursting out of him.

“Fallen’s gone!

I started, jerked out of my Samantha-induced trance.

“What?!” This couldn’t be happening. Why was everyone ditching me? My own brother!

If Jeremy even—

No, I wasn’t going to think about that. Jeremy was here with me till the end. I knew he was.

I took a deep breath. “Any internal finding, my gifted friend?”

“NO!” he shouted, ignoring any threads of humor or sarcasm that had wormed their way into my words. I couldn’t help it. That was usually how I handled hard things.

“I’ll poke around incase you missed something.” Ignoring my peeling sunburn that dominated the back of my neck, arms, face and bottom two thirds of my legs, I darted around the whole house—even the unused root cellar—and came back up to Jeremy empty-handed.

“He was headed southwest,” Jeremy said as a response to my report.

This was bad. This was real bad. Like Michael Jackson bad. I could feel it.

But wait… What would lead Fallen southwest? What could be over there that would be of any importance to him? And how would he know…?

The answer struck me like a bolt of lightning and I suddenly felt very dumb. Of course…

“He’s following Samantha.”