Cursed

Tre had long since discarded the bloodied sword and settled for the battle axe the suit of armor in the parlor came with as he skipped quite aloofly through the grand entrance hall, whistling the theme song to 'I Dream Of Jeanie.' When the theme song came to a dwindling end, Tre's face became gravely serious as he stepped into the dining room and made his way into the kitchen.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" he called out hauntingly.

Hiding around the corner from the kitchen, Isabella hung back behind Brandon, holding tightly onto his bare arms, biting her lip to keep from yelping out loud in fear and letting Tre know where they were.

"Is it a bad thing that I still think he's cute?" she whispered to her male friend.

Brandon looked over her shoulder and knitted his brow. "Are you crazy? He just killed Val!"

"I know," she grimaced, trying to block the image of her friend's beheading out of her mind as best as possible. "He's a psychotic murderer who killed our friend and is trying to kill us, too, but...that's not to say, physically, he isn't handsome..."

"Can you shut up now?" Brandon snipped quietly.

"Sorry."

"We should've believed Val," he added. "She said Craig had been killed and wanted to show us to prove it...if we'd believed her..."

"But we don't know he's actually dead. Have you seen a body?"

"After what happened to Val, I don't need to see in order to believe..."

Back out in the kitchen, Tre was slowly getting irritated. He knew they'd had to have come this way, and even though the mansion was quite sprawling, it wasn't completely spacious. It had narrow hallways, and one room didn't lead necessarily to another.

"Fuck it! Come out, come out, wherever you are!" he screamed, lifting the axe above his head and slamming it into the wooden countertop, making an unavoidable crack in the surface.

His eyes flashing wildly, he turned his eyes to the pantry door when he heard a rustling. Smirking, he tiptoed over to the door and chopped the axe right down the middle and pulling the broken boards of wood out toward him, and sticking his face in.

But no one was in there, except for a small, brown mouse crawling around on the pantry floor.

Frowning slightly, Tre pulled his head back, just as he heard the scampering of two pairs of feet behind him. Turning his head to the point of getting whiplash, he saw Brandon tearing out of the kitchen with Isabelle in tow.

"Finally come out to play?" he laughed, taking off after them...

* * *

Mike sat on the bench below the bedroom window while, one knee pulled up to his chest with his arms wrapped around it, and staring out at the dark, early morning as the rain continued to drizzle down the window pane. In the reflection in the glass, he could see the outline of Beth's body lying on the bed with her eyes closed and a thin, white sheet covering her naked form.

The blue-eyed, vampiric bassist smiled a little to himself, but just faintly, at the fresh memory of having a lovely young woman such as Beth underneath him; and how he could revel in the warmth of a living soul. It wasn't anything he was able to feel nowadays, unless it was a random 'house guest.'

Or Tre.

Staring at his own reflection, something he could still do, despite popular folklore, he studied his features. He looked no different from two years earlier when he died, but he could see the change, more mentally. He didn't need to see it, physically. His eyes were more serious, more dark and moody. And he didn't smile as much, unless it was a front to lure his next meal into his home.

Easily hearing the screams coming from downstairs, he knew Tre was at it again.

Poor Beth. She never knew of her friends' fates the moment they stepped through the front door. Hell, he didn't even know what happened to all of them at this point, except that Craig had apparently been killed by Billie Joe and changed into a zombie.

Mike was a little happy for his dead friend. Now he at least had a buddy. That is, if they didn't gnaw each other up to the point of them no longer existing.

Letting out an unnecessary sigh, the lanky vampire swiveled in his siting position and placed the flats of his feet on the floor and stood up. He walked over to a spot beside the bed and bent over to pick up his shirt, throwing it on like a matador gracefully beckoning the bull.

Buttoning up a few of the bottom buttons, Mike quietly slipped from the room.

* * *

"Omigod!" Isabelle screamed.

"God ain't gonna help you, toots!" Tre cackled after her as she darted around the dining room table.

It's like they were playing cat and mouse. She was on one end of the long table, he on the other, and still wielding the battle axe.

"Kiss my ass, you psycho freak!"

Tre puckered his lips. "Produce it." Then, without any warning, Tre chucked the axe down the length of the table at Isabelle.

She ducked out of the way just in time as the blade got wedged in the wall behind her.

"Close, but no cigar," he muttered with a smirk.

"Hey!" came Brandon's voice, behind Tre.

Just as the drummer turned around, Brandon whacked him across the face with an orange, antique vase, knocking the shorter man down.

"Homerun, yourself, asshole," Brandon added with a growl.

Taking Isabelle by the hand, Brandon led her from the dining room and toward the grand staircase in grand entrance hall. And as they reached the top, they were greeted by Mike, standing with his hands folded across his chest and his feet about a shoulder's width apart.

"Enjoying your stay?" he asked with a smirk.

"Get the hell out of our way, man," Brandon demanded.

"Why? From what I hear you're causing a ruckus in my house, and I don't take too kindly to unruly house guests."

"Where's Beth?" Isabelle barked her question, though nervous of the man before her.

"Resting."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Brandon inquired, suspiciously.

"It means she's resting," Mike repeated. "And I'd rather not wake her up just yet, so you need to be silenced..."

For the briefest of moments, Brandon was able to express a look of slight confusion before Mike's arms unfolded and he pushed the younger man backward down the flight of steps, in half the time it takes to blink an eye.

Arms flailing, Brandon lost his footing and began to roll down the steps; tumbling sideways at first until his entire body did a bit of a somersault and he came down hard on his neck. A snapping sound echoed throughout the grand entrance hall as Brandon fell lifelessly down the rest of the steps, and landed on the marble floor like a lumpy bag of coal.

Screaming in a mix of grief and horror, Isabelle began to back away from Mike, as she then scrambled the rest of the way down in such a hurried manner that she almost lost her own footing and slipped, perilously.

In helplessness, she touched Brandon's shoulder and rolled him onto his back as his eyes stared blankly up at her. Touching her fingers to his face, she whimpered a tad, holding back her tears until she heard Tre groaning and saw him climbing to his feet out the corner of her eye from where he lay in the dining room.

She looked back to the top of the stairs, where Mike no longer stood; having no idea where he could be other than with her remaining friend, Beth. And Isabelle was determined to not lose another. She had to find a weapon to protect herself, and she needed to rely on her knowledge of scary movies it seemed.

Apparently Mike was a vampire, so...fire? Crosses? Holy water? Garlic? Sunlight? Beheading? Stake through the heart?

Biting her lip, she wondered, desperately where'd she get those things...and then she had to figure out Tre as well. For all she knew, he was some bloodsucker as well. And according to Val, before her death, Billie Joe and Craig were zombies.

Fuck. How were zombies killed?

Shaking it from her head at the moment, she jumped to her feet when she saw Tre staggering from the kitchen. Taking off like a flash of lightening, she rounded the staircase and headed down yet another downstairs hallway, looking frantically for someplace to hide or find a weapon until she could formulate a plan of attack.

* * *

When Beth opened her eyes, she was greeted by Mike, sitting on the edge of the bed and running a cool hand across the soft skin of her face; his fingers trailing delicately through her hair.

"How was your rest?" he asked.

She moaned lazily. "Peaceful," Beth replied quietly.

"I'm glad." Leaning forward, he placed his lips to her forehead and kissed her gently. "There's a lot of things I want to show you..."

"Why are you being so generous to me...to me over my friends?" she inquired, turning sideways in the bed and looking up at him with curious eyes.

"Because you're like me more than you know," was Mike's answer. "Fate dealt you a card; yours being brains and common sense. Something your friends latched onto, despite their own levels of intelligence." He watched how her eyes studied him as he spoke, which made him smirk a little. She was ever the inquisitive one, but not in the nosey way, which he so very much despised. "They depend on you, rely on your judgment, look to you for answers...but sometimes---"

"---I don't have all the answers," Beth finished.

Mike shook his head. "No one does. And you don't have to worry about making the decisions for anyone else, ever again. The choices you've made are and will be, for you. No one else..."

As Beth smiled up at him and lifted her head, he met her halfway, cupping a hand behind her neck to cradle her head so that they could kiss.

But the kiss was interrupted by a random gunshot going off.

"Goddamnit, what the hell..." Mike growled, pulling his lips from Beth's.

* * *

Isabelle looked a little startled as she looked at the shotgun in her hands that she'd just fired straight into Craig's head.

He stumbled backward a few steps, moaned a sharp moan and fell down to the floor; finally dead for good.

She released the breath she'd been holding as she slinked out of the library where she'd found the gun mounted on the wall. And lucky for her, one of the desk drawers contained a box of bullets.

From years of seeing it done on television and in the movies, Isabelle quickly loaded the gun, just in time for a zombified Craig to barge into the library and try to attack her.

But she knew she couldn't stay in that room any longer. They'd come toward the noise at any moment, looking for her.

Running with the shotgun pointed out before her, Isabelle practically skidded as she came to an abrupt halt in the parlor where Tre was holding onto a butcher's knife.

"Oh," he muttered aloofly, looking upon her frenzied composure with a light smile. "There you are. I'd almost given up playing hide and seek with you."

"This isn't a game," she mumbled nervously.

"But it is to me," he amended.

"You killed my friends, you sick bastard!" she shouted, aiming the gun at him.

Tilting his head, Tre's face grew serious. "And some old woman's curse killed mine. Condemned me to insanity," he replied as he gripped the knife tighter. "You know," he began, as he held the knife up before him. "My little 'spree,' if you will, started with this little thing. Took my first two lives with a baby like this. The lives that took Billie Joe's. And then the old bitch who cursed him to not remain dead in peace."

"So you kept on killing?" she snipped. "That makes you no better than any other murderer on this planet."

"What else have I got to lose?"

"Your life."

"My life's already gone," he smiled, albeit sadly. "It died when my friends died; when my family found out what happened and fled us in fear." He shrugged. "I have nothing. Except this," he added, looking at his knife, admiringly.

"And here I thought you were handsome," she remarked, disgustingly. "You had a choice to walk away from what happened and instead you became a homicidal maniac," she grimaced. "You're pathetic."

"You thought I was handsome?" he questioned, a small glimmer of hope and innocence in his voice.

And then Isabelle pulled the trigger.

* * *

Mike walked into the parlor very slowly as his nose led him to the smell of freshly spilled blood long before his eyes showed him the body of his friend, Tre Cool, slumped on the floor, and semi-propped up by one of the couches.

He was dead; his blue eyes staring down at his feet, and completely void of life. And then there was the gunshot wound to his heart that had killed him.

"Tre..." Mike muttered.

Grief washed over his unbeating heart and rage glimmered in his eyes as he turned his head over to where Isabelle was holding the shotgun protectively against her.

"Stay away," Isabelle warned.

"How does it feel?" he questioned. "To have killed a mortal man?"

"I didn't kill a man. I killed a monster."

"He was still human."

"Who was a monster of his own creation," Isabelle retaliated.

"No, not his. We didn't ask for this. All we did was break a few Bed & Breakfast rules. Our punishment was disproportionate to our crimes," Mike seethed his venom from his teeth; his fangs growing as his anger did. "We didn't choose this life...or this unlife. It was chosen for us. Is it fair to condemn us for that? Is it fair that everything we held dear was ripped from our grasp? Is it fair that I'll never feel warm again? That I'll live an eternity as the world slowly dies away?"

"I can fix that," Isabelle muttered, bitterly, raising the shot gun at his head.

"Belle, stop!" came Beth's shriek as she scurried into the parlor.

"Beth! You're okay!" Isabelle smiled in relief, dropping the gun to floor as she went over to her friend, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. "Oh, god...they're all dead. Craig, Val and Brandon..." she started to cry.

"I know...I know..."

"You do?" Isabelle questioned, pulling her head back, and knitting her brow. "How come you're not a wreck like me?"

"Because death isn't the end, Belle," she replied, brushing a hand across her friend's face.

Isabelle shook her head. "I don't understand, but I know that I just wanna leave this place...please. Let's just leave," she begged Beth, whimpering slightly.

Slowly, Beth nodded. "Shh...it's okay. If you wanna go, we'll go." Then, smiling, Beth turned her head to look at Mike and then back to Isabelle. "But I've already gone. So, now it's your turn."

Isabelle, confusedly, tilted her head in order to read between the lines just as Beth's eyes change to all white and fangs were bared from her toothy grin.

Before the frightened Isabelle could react, Beth pulled her friend closer to her, sinking her fangs into the soft skin of her neck, sucking down the warm blood from her body and taking it into her own. But, before the dying Isabelle was completely sucked dry, Beth pulled away and cut into the skin at her collarbone, leaving a small line of blood. Pressing Isabelle's lips to the cut, she forced her friend to drink before her weakened body collapsed to the ground.

Looking down at her dead friend, Beth backed up enough that she had backed comfortably into Mike, who's arms wrapped around her waist and who's cool cheek rested against her own cool cheek.

"Still hungry?" he murmured, pressing his lips to the skin of her neck, his tongue flicking over the recent puncture wounds he'd caused about an hour earlier when he turned her during their lovemaking.

Beth shook her head. "No. I'm full."

Both their ears perked at the sound of Billie Joe groaning as he bumbled into the parlor and discovered Isabelle's body lying on the ground. He began to advance on her until Mike spoke up.

"Ah, ah, ah. Not that one, Billie. She's gonna be your babysitter, so I don't have to look after you all the time," Mike informed. "She was gonna be Tre's companion after I turned him tonight, but it looks like she got to him first..."

Billie Joe moaned in some understanding. The moan even had a different sound quality to it; like something of sadness.

"Yeah, I know, Billie. He was a good friend. Really looked after you and did a lot that I asked of him, which is why you don't get to eat him," Mike added, pointing a finger knowingly at his zombie friend. "We'll bury him when the sun rises. A nice, proper burial. With sunlight and flowers. And maybe some music."

"Unnnhh," Billie Joe groaned in response.

"Yeah, he'd have like it, too."

As Mike released his hold on Beth, he lifted Tre up off the ground and set him gently on the couch, lying him down with his hands crossed over his chest, and closing his eyes. Mike then placed a kiss on his dead friend's forehead.

"Hope you can get into Heaven, buddy. If not, save a comfy room for me in hell."

As he took a step back, Beth grabbed his hand as Isabelle stirred. The newly risen vampiress stood up and looked Mike and Beth over and then glanced to her side at Billie Joe who tried to reach out and bite at her arm.

"Billie!" Mike snapped. "What'd I say? Do you want me to get the leash?"

"What happens now?" Isabelle inquired. "You changed me into this," she muttered toward Beth. "What am I supposed to do now?"

"Look after Billie for us for a few...hours," Mike smirked. "And make sure he doesn't chew on Tre." Bending at the knees, he placed one arm under Beth's legs and one under the small of her back as he lifted her up into his arms. "Right now, I'm gonna make love to my queen."

Beth giggled. "I had a feeling this would be an okay way to exist."

"Well, you are certainly going to make it easier to be cursed..."

~*~ THE END ~*~