Love Bites

Six days.

A figure moved in the corner. Jack leapt to his feet and grasped the bars of the cage, hissing when the touched singed the skin on his fingers. He tugged at his hair, collapsed to his knees and began to rhythmically beat his head against the concrete floor.

He could hear a faint voice. Who was it? All he could see were blurs of shadows and a dim light that flickered every 8 seconds. He growled, staring at the light and wishing he could crush it so he wouldn't have to watch it anymore.

Another shadow moved. Who was here? They were mocking him. They were bleeding - he could smell it. Could he? His eyes grew dark and pulsed. Forgetting the vervain, he frantically pawed at the bars once more, only to be burned again.

The voice behind him grew louder. The shadows were talking to him now. They wanted to hurt him. The voice grew closer and more clear. The shadows were closing in. He didn't have much time. He tensed as he heard the voice again, this time, directly behind him.

Jack spun and grabbed the shadow by its throat, knocking it to the ground, his eyes feral and teeth snapping together.

Alex blinked. "Jack. Come back. You're hallucinating. Calm down."

The younger vampire gulped, eyes focusing enough to see that it was his mate he had pounced on. He stood up, shaking visibly.

"I'm sorry, Alex."
Alex smiled weakly. "It's okay. Remember what I told you? It's not real. You need to fight it. Don't let them win."

The vampires crawled together. Alex needed to come up with a plan - quickly. Captivity was destroying Jack, and the starvation was taking its toll on both of them.
------------------------------------------

Ten days.

The werewolves had been gone longer than anticipated. Jack was resting his eyes, curled into a fetal position on the basement floor. Alex paced, knowing he needed to preserve his strength but unable to sit still. He had yet to come up with a solid plan to get them out and he was beginning to feel like a failure. The minutes ticked by and fear was encroaching into his thoughts. Alex needed to hold it together. Jack was already suffering from frequent hallucinations and delusions that were causing him to lash out. This Alex could handle - he was acting as a source of strength for the both of them. But if he were to lose his grip on reality, he wasn't sure of the outcome. At least one of them needed to be lucid and form a plan, let alone have enough sense to defend themselves when the wolves came back.

He looked over at Jack, his body curled up more tightly than before. He was shivering and his face looked to be paler than usual. Alex's gut twisted as he worried for his lover. He didn't know how much longer Jack was able to hold on before the starvation not only drained him of all strength, but all sanity.
Alex hated himself for this. Why did he have to bring him here? Why was he always dragging Jack into dire situations? He wondered if this all could have been avoided if he'd just left the boy alone in the first place. He had a decent life prior to Alex, and he would never have had to go through what he's experienced since the elder changed him. He cursed himself. He had been so selfish. He should have just left the poor boy alone from the start - all the way back to that fateful night in the bar.

"Well, Jack, can I buy you a beer?" Alex asked.
Jack bit his lip. "Sure, Alex."
Alex glanced over, motioning the bartender over. "PBR for this cutie," he murmured into her ear.
The bartender grinned, moving to fetch Jack's drink.
"So, Jack," Alex continued. "You live around here?"
Jack frowned. "I'm not telling you that! You could be a serial killer."
Alex chuckled darkly. "What if I was?" he questioned, deepening his gaze into Jack's chocolate eyes. He was toying with him, unsure if he wanted to kiss the boy more or sink his teeth into his lush neck the minute they got outside. Regardless, it was evident that Alex needed to use a bit of his 'persuasiveness' to get some information out of the lanky boy.
Jack succumbed to the vampire's stare. "I live five or ten minutes away," he admitted.
"What do you do?"
"I'm getting my associates degree right now, but I work at a music store to make a living. I guess selling records is sort of my calling," the boy joked.
Alex grinned. He was beginning to like this boy even more. Maybe he would keep him around.
Jack coughed. "So, um, what about you? What do you do?"
"A bit of this, a bit of that," he answered cryptically. Truthfully, Alex had been to college many times for many different things, and had experimented with vocations ranging from doctor to teacher.
"Hmm," Jack responded, intrigued with the ambiguous man.
The bartender interrupted their conversation, sliding Jack's PBR over toward the two with a small slip of paper hidden beneath the glass. She smirked at Alex, giving him a sly wink before turning with a flip of her hair toward the next customer.
Alex snorted, picking up the piece of paper before crumpling it and tossing it over his shoulder.
"What was that?" Jack asked.
"Phone number," he replied casually.
The younger furrowed his brow in confusion. "She was cute. Why would you-"
"I'm gay," Alex interjected, flashing a dazzling smile at the lanky boy.
"Oh."
Jack couldn't help the blush that spread across his cheeks. How very interesting that this incredibly hot guy talking to him was also gay.
Alex picked up on this, noticing the rush of blood that colored the younger's cheeks. He looked delicious, but at this point, the vampire had decided that this one was not on the menu. He was simply too cute to harm. Out of the many men he had approached in bars, Jack had definitely captured his attention. Maybe he would keep the boy around and see where this goes. Maybe he had finally found someone worth getting to know.
"Hey, Jack, do you wanna come hang out at my place for a while?"

Alex was snapped out of his distant reverie by the sound of a door creaking open above them. Jack's head whipped around from his position on the floor, and he was soon slamming into the bars of the cage again. He seemed to ignore the burn for a moment, hissing and shrieking at the werewolves.
"Get me the fuck out of here!"
Alex lunged, wrapping his arms around his boyfriend and slamming him to the ground to keep him from losing his grip. This exertion of strength was debilitating, and the elder struggled to preserve his control over the feral youngling beneath him while the wolves looked on with amusement. Finally, Jack seemed to calm down, and he became quiet and still on the ground. Alex stepped off of him gingerly, wrapping his mate's shivering body into his own arms.
Tyler, the alpha, cleared his throat. "What an interesting experiment this has been. You're still alive."
"Of course we are, you dumbass," Alex grumbled. "You of all creatures should know what the only thing is that kills us off once and for all."
The alpha nodded. "Yes, we do. We brought some with us, actually."
To Alex's horror, Tyler pulled two wooden stakes out from a bag one of the other men was carrying.
The elder hissed. "Kill me, but don't you dare fucking touch him. Let him go. I promise he won't bother you."
"See, Alex," Vic interrupted, "our plan was to kill both of you. But after watching you for several days, the pack has decided to go with a different approach."
Alex raised an eyebrow. "Do tell."
Vic sneered, stepping forward to lean in and meet the elder vampire, eye to eye.
"We were impressed with your resilience. Jack, as we guessed, lost his wits quickly. He's a ticking time bomb. We honestly had thought that he might go crazy and tear you to shreds. Granted, we would have to step in to finish the job, but we were a bit disappointed in the outcome. A vampire going stir crazy and killing his mate would've been hilarious."
The elder vampire snarled, and Jack continued to shiver in his lap.
"But you held it together, and subsequently, so did Jack. Barely," he added. "So we've decided that in order to repay your debt to us, and right your wrongs, only one of you needs to die."
"So then kill me and let him go," the elder insisted.
Tyler stepped forward. "I'm sorry, Alex, but we've made our decision. Jack will die tonight. But don't worry, you get to continue your miserable existence. The pain of losing your mate is enough to suffice for your punishment. I think Alex would even make a nice pet, boys."
The alpha's remark was met with howling and laughter. A low snarl was building in Alex's chest as he began to lose control. His eyes grew dark and he quickly shoved Jack behind him defensively, crouched in front of him, prepared to protect him until his dying breath.
"You. Won't. Touch. Him."
"Open the cage, one of you," Tyler commanded, voice dripping with boredom. "I want Alex to watch his mate die."
Alex began to shriek, backing Jack into a corner as one of the younger pack members ripped open the door to the cage and began to attempt to pry Alex away from Jack. He swiftly twisted the youngling's arm into a broken heap as he naively reached for them. The young wolf yelped, retreating back quickly and collapsing to the floor in a quivering heap. The pain and rush of emotion was causing him to change.

Alex looked on as he saw the youngling begin to violently shake and contort into different disturbing positions. Tangled, coarse fur began to erupt from his head, neck and shoulders, crawling down to the small of his back where a thick tail sprouted. His legs began to swell, tearing easily through the pants he was wearing. Long, sharp nails grew swiftly from his hands and feet, and his feet stretched so that he was walking on his haunches. His face was perhaps the ugliest contortion of all, a snout growing and baring its teeth to reveal a jagged set of fangs. His eyes blinked open, yellow and angry, and his body mass tripled. The wolf towered over them all, snarling and swiping wildly and furiously with his long, powerful arms. His uncontrolled swings struck one of his pack brothers, causing him to cry out and slink off toward the exit. The alpha growled, and though he was still human, he got in the werewolf's face.
"Jared," he snarled. "Get ahold of yourself."
The young wolf, however, was inconsolable. It was evident that he was not used to phasing and lacked self control.
Tyler, deciding that he was useless in his human body, immediately began to phase, though his fur was darker and his muscles were larger than the newer pack member's.

Alex knew that he needed to take advantage of this temporary chaos. The cage door was open and their alpha was distracted. Aside from that, three other pack members remained, two watching the situation unfold while Jaime was frantically looking back and forth between the vampires' open cage and the alpha struggling to control the younger.
Alex spared a glance back toward Jack, who was now sitting upright, eyes assessing the room. It seemed that the sudden commotion had knocked the sense back into him, and he was lucid for the time being.
"Alex," Jack whispered, catching the elder's eyes. "What's going on?"
"We need to go, love," Alex rushed, reaching for his hand. "They're distracted."
The elder turned back toward the commotion, seeing that Jaime had also phased and was now struggling with the youngling as he fought and continued to lose control. As he surveyed the room for a potentially quick escape route, his eyes caught something that gave him a surge of fervor and hope.
Anna was crouched up into one of the ceiling corners, holding a finger to her lips.