The Tale of Gerard Way

Patrick lay wide awake. There was nothing particular on his mind that night (day), other than the usual stresses and worries of doing the job that he has to do every single day, but that’s no different from the usual. It’s something he’s lived with for four long years. It shouldn’t affect him now – not now, when he was finally settled into the frantic rhythm of the full-on vampire-hunting lifestyle. He had tension, yeah, and a permanent headache, but it was nothing peculiar, and it was no excuse for him to turn into an insomniac.

He tried just closing his eyes and forcing himself to drift off for the next half hour. Perhaps he was being a pessimist, but he didn’t see it working. In the end, he was right. He got out of bed, checked that all the doors were securely shut and light-proof, and opened the blinds of the small rectangular window to the top of the far wall to let the light in. Maybe the sun would kick his nocturnality into action. The light flooded the room and Patrick stepped back, squinting at the ray that shone directly onto the centre of the room, and sighed. He kind of missed what that looked like.

He clambered back into bed, ridding himself of his pyjama top for the moment, because he knew the normally chilly room would warm up soon by the natural light to a temperature he was no longer used to, and stared at the ray of light as it reflected off the particles of dust floating through the damp air of the small dungeon chamber. He heard a thud from the above room – either Joe had just got out of bed or he’d fallen out of it. Probably the latter, Patrick thought. Joe had never been the model of self-awareness and grace.

There was a tiny sound from just outside his door. Anyone else would have disregarded it as wood creaking as it cooled or a mouse scampering under the floorboards somewhere, but Patrick knew better. For a start, there were no floorboards, it was all solid stone, and the doors never creaked, but he would have recognised that sound anyway. That was the sound of Pete’s lightweight body leaning onto the door, ear pressed up to the wood and metal, listening.

Patrick sighed again, and got up, closing the blinds and lighting a few more candles. He knew Pete’s sensitive ears would have picked up the sound of him getting out of bed, so he didn’t hesitate in opening the door swiftly. Pete was waiting on the other side, eyes dark and pupils widened, smiling faintly, as he did.

“What’s the matter?” Patrick asked softly.

Pete paused, looking over Patrick’s shoulder uncomfortably, mouth opening slightly before closing again. Finally, he spoke. “You couldn’t sleep.”

“You mean you couldn’t sleep?”

“No.”

Patrick smiled half-heartedly and stepped to the side, welcoming Pete in. This whole underground basement was just as much Pete’s as Patrick’s, and yet Pete still entered awkwardly as if he wasn’t welcome.

“I don’t want to keep you up,” Patrick spoke, gesturing for Pete to sit down on the set of drawers opposite the bed anyway.

“I had a dream,” Pete said suddenly.

“Really?” Patrick was genuinely surprised. It had been years since he’d heard of a vampire who had dreamed. “About what?”

“I don’t know. It was confusing. I saw...” he trailed off, as if unable to remember anything about it anymore.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember when I was turned? When we spoke a few days later, after I got out of intensive, and I couldn't understand why it was happening to me?" Pete didn't wait for Patrick to nod - because of course he remembered - before continuing. "I asked you what could have started it all, how it all began. And you told me you didn't know, that nobody had ever been able to figure out why, and then you went and found a set of photocopies from a book that was written thousands of years ago and told me that it was the story of the first vampire to have ever existed, and that it was all anyone had ever had to go by."

“Gerard Way?”

“Yeah. I think I saw him.” There was a look of fear in Pete’s eyes. If he wasn’t pale enough already, Patrick would say he looked like he’d just seen a ghost. “I didn’t like it.”

“A nightmare?” Patrick furrowed his brow. “It’s been a while since you had a nightmare.” It really had been awhile. At least 3 years, before he was infected.

“No,” Pete shook his head shakily. “It wasn’t the same. It was so real.” His voice was shaking too, like he really wanted to get the words out but his body was reluctant to let him. “Nothing was out of the ordinary. It was all realistic. Like...” Another pause, another long swallow. “Like I was looking through somebody else’s eyes. At him. Like I was watching a video, or—something.”

Patrick was very suddenly unsettled. It wasn’t unheard of for vampires to have telepathic experiences, though it was rare. Vampire brains gave out a low-level psychic resonation that allowed groups of vampires to be mildly connected and for vampires to be able to sense when others were near, but it was so low-key that even the most sensitive radars could only pick up a faint signal. It should be impossible for them to pick up images, let alone vivid ones.

He told his brain to shut up. He was clearly overreacting. “It was just a dream, Pete.”

Pete’s shoulders slumped, resigned. “I know.” He let the end of the word draw out as a shuddering exhale. He didn’t need to breathe, but he always did. He had once told Patrick that it made him feel less like them.

Patrick stood and walked over to Pete, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder and easing him towards the door. “C’mon. We both need our sleep. We need to try, at least.”

“No,” Pete said, jerking backwards, away from Patrick’s touch. “I don’t want to get back in that box.”

“Okay, okay,” Patrick soothed. “But you can’t stay up all day. It’s only been 2 hours.”
“I know.” He turned to Patrick, looking past his eyes, into his soul, as he had a habit of doing. “Can I stay here? Just this time.”

He smiled at Pete, a wordless agreement and a reassurance that he could always stay, of course he could, and that he didn’t have to ask.

Patrick expected that he would get a few hours of sleep in his bed, but he didn’t think Pete would be so successful on the floor.

- - - - - - - - - -

“Egg?” Joe offered up the boiled egg in front of Patrick’s nose, right in the way of his view of the science journal he was trying to read. Patrick gave no response other than a huff.

“He doesn’t want your egg, Joe,” Andy smacked his head playfully to exaggerate his point, leaving Joe with an expression of disbelief. “I’ll have it, though.”

“Pfft, you ain’t having it now,” he replied, and promptly threw the egg in Pete’s direction on the other side of the large main room – which contained the kitchen, the living room, Pete’s casket and all of his things, the monitoring station and the conference area , so it was a long way to fly - as the last resort to getting rid of it. Pete reached out calmly and plucked the flying egg out of the air, causing it no damage, and placed it neatly on Patrick’s now empty breakfast plate as he passed the desk, making sure the egg balanced perfectly on its side, not-so-accidentally perpendicular to the knife that was resting on the edge of the plate. Looked like Patrick was having it anyway.

Joe perched himself on Patrick’s work desk, peering over his shoulder at the journal. “So, what’s up, doc? Any news? Any plans?” Patrick rolled his eyes, but still said nothing. “C’mon, you know we’re useless without orders, Trick.”

“Oh, don’t I know it.” Patrick closed the journal page and looked at Joe for the first time that morning. Night. “Go make coffee.”

Joe let out a high-pitched noise just bordering on a squeal as Patrick stood and crossed the room towards the filing cabinets. “You call that responsibility?”

“Like you deserve responsibility,” Pete retorted in a tone that anyone else would have mistaken for being threatening but they all knew was anything but, and Patrick couldn’t help but grin.

On his way over to the cabinets, his pager chose that moment to go off. He read the message once over briefly, before plugging it into the overhead and displaying it to the team.
It read simply:

“To: All members of I.C.C.S.T.

Supernatural threat rates have reached all-time high. Be aware.”

It took longer than it should have done for the information to sink in; they all just stared at the screen for a while, not in shock, but in confusion.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Joe looked exasperated for a moment. “Oh Jesus, does this mean we have to work overtime?”

The rolling of eyes was practically audible.

- - - - - - - - - -

The message from H.Q. was a sign that they had to be on top form. The call for extra alertness was command’s way of telling them that investigators were scouring the cities to see how the teams were doing in keeping ‘threats’ under wraps. It was easier said than done with vampires. Werewolves were easy enough, they only had to be kept under control once a month and for the next twenty-nine days or so the officers responsible for them could take time off for their day-jobs and their personal lives. Lycan-hunting was only slightly worse in that they were active on a constant basis, except they were nowhere near as determined or sadistic as vampires. Lycans weren’t what Patrick would call a ‘threat’ - more like a nuisance. Only vampire hunters knew the meaning of true work-related stress, and ironically, they were the only people who didn’t have time to see their shrinks.

That night, they did as they were expected to. Instead of monitoring Saint Paul quietly from their underground hub using the many cameras and radars at their disposal, the usual routine on a quiet, crisis-lacking night, they all took on extra shift on patrol duty. For the first few hours they stuck in pairs, Patrick sticking with Pete and Andy with Joe, pairing up a fighter with a scientist in equal measures. Pete had been the best fighter since he was turned, for obvious reason; before that, Andy was the one to choose for combat. Patrick was the team scientist due to his abundance of training and qualifications in that area and Joe was the researcher and historian. You needed a historian when most of the folklores about vampires turned out to be true.

After a few hours of being joined at the hip while walking streets they’d walked a thousand times before, the inevitable happened and Pete got bored. Patrick wasn’t at all concerned when he turned his attention to some bystanders to usher them indoors and into safety, and Pete was nowhere to be seen when he turned back round again.

- - - - - - - - - -

The second morning in a row, Patrick couldn’t sleep.

The second time in a row, Pete dreamed of ancient mythological people and interrupted Patrick’s non-restfulness to tell him about it. This time he told him of a grand dining room with a long table and a traditional head seat that had a high-rising back. It was night, and there was a fireplace that dimly illuminated the large stained-glass windows on either side of the table; they showed ancient images of brutal murders and vampire attacks, all committed by the same white-haired creature. The whole room looked as if it could have once been a church.

This time, Pete’s whole body began to shake as he told the story. “I tried drawing him,” he explained. “I didn’t know I could draw like that. I tried to get it as right as possible. Most of it turned out fine…” his voice trailed off, as if distracted, but he continued anyway. “I just couldn’t get his eyes right.”

“What was wrong with them?”

“Nothing, they were perfect. They were incredible. That was the problem. They were too vivid, too real. I couldn’t— ” Pete stopped abruptly, and this time he didn’t continue. He brought his hands up to his face and gasped out in frustration, then groaning as if in pain. He hunched over, jumping from the cabinet and making a run for the door. If he had really been trying, Patrick wouldn’t have been able to catch him, but he didn’t want to leave, not really.

“Whoa there, shh,” Patrick reassured him. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain.”

Pete knew that. He relaxed as much as was possible for him.

“Can I see it? Later?”

“You can see it now, if you want,” Pete said, looking down at his feet, unmoving.

Patrick shook his head. “No. I’ll look at it tomorrow. I should sleep.”

Pete nodded in agreement and then looked up at him, a question in his eyes. Patrick recognised it from the night before.

“You can stay here, Pete.”

Pete slept curled up in the armchair this time.

- - - - - - - - - -

A shadow stood in front of the fireplace. He was mumbling to himself, so quietly that Pete couldn’t even hear him from where he was standing, right beside him. His body was a silhouette of black, but his white hair looked golden in the light of the flames. He stared down into them. His face showed remorse, but a strong sense of anticipation and lustful rage resonated from his being, and Pete could feel it like a barrage of shards of glass digging into his soul, almost as if their minds were one and the same. Pete wanted to shiver, but he didn’t. He was merely a spectator. The mumbling stopped, and silence fell for a moment, but it felt like an eternity of anticipation.

“How soon?” Pete said, but it wasn’t his voice. The whisper came out light and graceful, and there was no lisp.

The creature’s gaze moved slightly closer to him, grazing the neat floorboards by his feet, but not touching him. He wanted those soul-reaching bronze eyes to touch him so badly; he wanted to whine for them, to beg, but he didn’t. He was not in control of himself.

The thick black lines above those eyes furrowed at the ground, but there was no thought in his expression. His breath sighed out of his lungs meditatively.

Then his voice grated out like it was coming past a razor in his throat, so remorseful but so soft, simultaneously warm and deadly cold, comforting and yet so intense, as he said:

“Soon enough, Michael.”