Bound to You

“There’s more breaking news.” Matt told Zack grimly the next day, flipping on the TV to the local news station. “Give it another fucking day and it’s going to be on CNN and Fox, too.”

Zack pushed a hand through his hair in frustration, sighing agitatedly. “Is there any way we can stop them from pushing the story?” He asked Matt, who shook his head, pointing at the screen. The images were gory, just as Zack would have expected from Sean. The screen was showing a body which was being reported as the station’s president of operations. His chest was carved in gruesome detail with words that Sean definitely would have chosen, two puncture marks quite obviously belonging to a vampire on his neck, the veins drained of all blood.

“Not after this. There’s no way they’re going to put this on the backburner now, Zack. It’s just what every news station wants; a gory, bloody murder. Ratings will skyrocket after this.”

“You’re right.” Zack said angrily before slamming his fist into the wall. “We’ve got to do something about this. We can’t play by his rules anymore. This is risking all of us, not just Sean. If this gets as much publicity as we know it is…There’s no way any vampire is going to be able to hide what they are. It’ll be the Middle Ages all over again, Matt.”

“I know, man.” Matt told him. “What can we do, though? Honestly. A sabotage isn’t going to work; we tried that last time, and it didn’t work. We almost lost Johnny over it.”

“There’s only one thing we can do at this point in the game.” Zack said with a tired look on his face. It was only then that Matt noticed just how exhausted his friend must be, and how much this was wearing down on him.

“You’re not really going to suggest that, are you?” Matt asked, knowing what Zack was getting at. Zack nodded, and Matt’s eyes widened. “That hasn’t been done in almost two centuries, Zack! Do you realize how goddamn dangerous what you’re thinking is?”

“I know how dangerous it is.” Zack told him angrily. “But it’s not like we have any other options, is it?”

Matt didn’t’ reply, but instead sighed, looking over at the wall. “No, I suppose not. You better take every single outcome into consideration though, Zack. Because there’s no way in hell everyone will walk away from that kind of fight alive.”

Zack only nodded as Matt walked out of the house, leaving him in the living room to himself to think over everything. He knew his idea was insane; so insane that a fight such as the one he was considering had only been used two other times in vampire history.

“Zack?” Eliza’s voice asked from the doorway, peering in quietly at him. Shaken out of his thoughts by her voice, he turned to look at her, putting a small smile on his face when he saw her.

Few things mattered to Zack in life; before Eliza had come into his life, his sole purpose in life was to help run Bat Country with his four best friends. After that, his only other priority in life was to keep the other four—Matt, Johnny, Jimmy, and Brian—safe, just as they did for him. However, when Eliza had come into his life, that had all changed. She had become the single most important thing in his life. He’d be damned if he let anything happen to her, and he’d do his damndest to make sure that the other four walked away alive too, no matter who else would die in the fight he knew would happen.

“You’re talking to me again?” He asked her, the smile still on his face as she walked into the living room, closing the door behind her and sitting on the couch a few feet away from him. She didn’t say anything, but waited until he had sat down on the couch next to him before she said anything.

“I had a talk with Val.” She told him. “And I want to…I want to tell you everything I told her, because she said that’s what I should do.”

“Go on.” Zack reassured her, watching her carefully. He almost smiled at the thought that Eliza too had gone to Val for advice; it seemed everyone did that. She was just good at giving advice, he thought to himself as he listened to Eliza’s words.

“First off, she said that you’ve been trying to respect me by giving me space. I didn’t know what she meant by that, though, because no one’s ever done that sort of thing for me. And…In a way, I don’t want you to give me space, Zack. I don’t want you to not talk to me. It’s not how you act. It’s not how you’ve ever been with me before, and I don’t want it to be how you act now.”

“What do you mean?” Zack asked her, tilting his head to the side, confused by her words. It was true that he’d been giving her space, but he’d been doing it precisely because of the reasons she’d just laid out. He’d thought she wanted him to leave her alone, and he wasn’t going to intrude on her space.

She sighed, and then continued with her explanation. “That first night we met, remember it? When you “kidnapped” me, as I called it back then? You didn’t give me space then, or any time after that until just recently. If I didn’t want to talk, you made me talk. If I claimed I didn’t want to share a bed with you, it didn’t matter; you made me. I like that Zack. I don’t like the one who just gives me space. It makes me…It makes me feel like I did when I was with Sean, and I hate it.”

Zack sat quietly for a few minutes, absorbing her words as he thought about it for a minute before he looked at her, a smirk on his face. “You really like that Zack better than the thoughtful one, eh?”

She smiled and nodded at him, not letting her gaze divert away from him. “Yeah.”

Zack scooted over on the couch and touched her face with his hand carefully before leaning in and pressing a short, though heated, kiss to her lips before pulling away. “I’ll keep that in mind, then.” He told her as he stood up and walked over to the door leading out of the living room. He stopped and turned to look at her over his shoulder and smiled. “And Eliza?”

“Yeah?” She asked.

“I love you. And you better get used to hearing me say it, because I’m not going to stop any time soon.” He replied simply as he walked out of the living room towards the office, calling all of the guys up after him. It was time to start playing offensive instead of defensive, he thought to himself. And it needed to start now.

-x-

“Are you suicidal? That’s crazy!” Johnny yelled at Zack an hour later, after he’d gotten done explaining his plan. “What you’re suggesting is no short of a World War!”

“I’m aware of that fact, Johnny.” Zack said quietly. “But we don’t have any other options. We can’t deal with this by just running away from him anymore, dammit! It’s just going to get worse and worse until he exposes us all! And you all know what will happen then.”

“Humans will go on a wild goose chase and start killing everyone they think is a vampire, that’s what.” Jimmy said, taking a drag off his cigarette before tapping his foot impatiently on the floor. There were very few times Jimmy got stressed, but right now was one of them. He’d already gone through a pack and a half of cigarettes in the last four hours. “It’ll be like a vampire version of the goddamn Salem Witch Trials.”

“Zack’s idea is no better!” Johnny retorted. “By starting a fight that big, it’s only going to bring attention to us all! I think we need to find a quieter way to approach this.”

“Quiet?” Brian asked, speaking for the first time. He’d taken in all the information, and agreed with Zack. He’d always figured it was going to come to this with Sean; he just hadn’t known when it was going to all happen. Now that it was, he wasn’t surprised. Though he was shocked that Johnny was against the plan. “How can we be quiet about it when he’s leaking fucking information to human news stations? It won’t be long before he offers DNA for scientists to experiment on. And what do you think will happen when it comes up showing as nonhuman? Huh? What are we supposed to do then? No one will be safe if that happens, Johnny.”

“We can—“

“We can do what?” Matt asked the short man pointedly. “Go back to living how we did in the 17 and 1800s? Living in alleyways, killing those we feed from so that we don’t leave witnesses to what we are? Then we’d be no better than Sean. Zack’s idea is relatively humane compared to that, don’t you think?”

“And how many of us have to die for his plan to work?” Johnny retorted. “How many families will be torn apart because one or both of the parents would be dead? How many human bystanders—innocent bystanders, I might add—would be added to the list of casualties because of his idea?”

“I’m not saying I like the idea of starting what will essentially be, as you called it before, a World War.” Zack replied. “But it’s the best thing we have right now. Sean won’t expect such a dramatic attack from us, and it will catch him off guard. There’s also the fact that there are far less followers of Sean than there would be of people who want to get rid of him. The entire vampire community is outraged by his actions, and people will expect a drastic punishment for what he’s done.”

“They’ll also expect Eliza to be killed.” Johnny stated pointedly, pointing towards the door. “If you don’t think that Sean won’t use his relationship with her as leverage and propaganda, you’re wrong. And people will blame her for this. They’ll blame her for the casualties. You know as well as I know that our own kind hate nothing more than they hate a human who becomes a game of tug-of-war between two powerful vampires, Zack.”

“She’s not a game of tug-of-war, Johnny.” Zack said, his voice threateningly low. “And furthermore, I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of her. They can blame her all they like; ultimately, we rule Bat Country, not them.”

“You’ll be one leader short if you take this course of action, Zack.” Johnny finally said a few minutes later. “I’m not going to go for this idea, and if you decide to put it into action, then I’m stepping down as the fifth leader of Bat Country.”