Up in Smoke

Tonight,

Doc Worth lights himself a cigarette. His fingers are cold, but they don't fumble with the gears. The movement is perfected by more than a decade of practice, and the sweet little snick is the only thing that's right these days. He looks up at the stars—so much brighter tonight, there's got to be more stars in the sky than there were pages in all his college textbooks combined. He can see a stripe of dust across the center of the sky, every goddamn star in the galaxy spiraling off into space. He doesn't like them. They're pretty and they remind him of things he'd rather forget, all different kinds of things at once, ghosts of memories that press in on him from every side and turn the sky into a massive blue and gray blur.

So he thinks about other things instead, like the machinery in his lighter and the shadow lying next to him, and how he's going to explain this to the goddamn fairy princess when he doesn't even get it himself. And he thinks about how the ground is fucking hard out here but he's not complaining, and how there must be somebody, somebody up there or out there, having a laugh at his expense.

It's the last day of March, and the world as he knows it is coming to an end.

-A-

It was February not too long ago, despite what you might think. Nasty slushy snow refrozen on the sidewalks like a half-eaten TV dinner, the little distant sun pouring weakly over his city. Typical February in the Doc's shithole neighborhood. But it was his town, he picked it and he was going to stick with it if it killed him.

The radio was blasting something about avian flu, or maybe swine flu, and he was trying to decide whether he was interested as a doctor or bored as a citizen. It was a crappy little radio, rejected or left over from the eighties and fitted with exactly three and a half stations—none of which played German death metal. In fact, the only reason he had it at all was some bludger had left it sitting in a window where any idiot could nick it, and Doc Worth had decided that idiot might as well be him. Teach somebody a lesson about leaving shit unattended.

He switched the contraption off and leaned back, enjoying the silence. Everybody talked too much, like they had to fill space with any bloody thing they could get their hands on. He firmly believed that if you had nothing to say, you shouldn't say it.

The silence stretched off into an hour, and then somebody knocked at his door. Doc closed his eyes and reached for a cigarette, because he only knew one person who bothered to knock. Show time.

"Get in here or bugger off."

A pale face poked through his door, scrunched with distaste, and eyed the admittedly filthy floor with obvious contempt. Hey there Mr. Achenleck, done anything about that crippling mysophobia yet?

Doc Worth lit up a cigarette, just to see the expression on his patient's face. It wasn't like the guy even needed to breathe, but some kinds of faggotry just went straight to the bone, he supposed.

"Well well. Ya just can't stay away, can ya Connie?"

Conrad gave him a look typically reserved for the types of bugs that live under rotting logs. "Oh no. I've been just dying to bask in the glow of your unwashed presence. I missed you so much I found a giant cockroach and put it in a jar next to my bed, but it just can't compare to the real thing."

"Movin' a bit fast, there. You gotta buy me dinner before ya start namin' pets after me. Li'l clingy, ain't we peaches?"

Conrad twitched. "I hope your bout with lung cancer is long and brutal."

"Nah, I ain't never getting' cancer. Whole damn family smokes, not one of us ever killed for it. Good genes, eh? Pride o' the damn Aryan race."

Conrad stalked up to his desk and threw his purse—messenger bag—onto the floor. "Normally I'd say you're lying through your crooked teeth, but then again, some people are just too mean to die."

Doc Worth gestured lazily at Conrad with his cigarette. "And some people're too dead to die besides."

It had been the better part of a year since Conrad had entered the world of the living dead—not to mention Hanna's personal world, which was a far scarier place—but the guy still looked like he was going to be sick when anybody reminded him of it. Doc Worth thought it was comedy gold.

"Just give me my dinner and I'll leave you to jacking off or harvesting organs or whatever else it is you do when you're not harassing me."

Aw, that was a little disappointing. "What, ya got a date waitin' for ya back at the apartment? She can wait, I'm more interestin' than whatever ya managed to pick up at the knittin' club."

"Okay, first of all: knitting club? Really? And second of all, no, actually. Just give me my dinner now and you can be twice as annoying next time I stop by. It's not like you actually care."

Oh Conrad, you know what you do when you assume? And yeah great theory, only, messing with Conrad was one of the high points in his week and he wanted to know what exactly was interrupting his fun. That, and the nervous sort of tick Conrad was sporting tonight, looking at the door every couple seconds, was suspicious. You could smell the apprehension rolling off him. It made the Doc… curious, let's call it.

"Less pretend fer a momen' that I do care. Just fer fun. What's got ya so antsy ya gotta run home right the fuck now?"

Conrad glanced back at the door again and sighed, apparently deciding that this was the fastest way to do things. "My mother. She's got this new strain of flu and they can't figure out how to fight it. Doctors in England, you know, they don't have… Anyway, I have to be near my phone in case something goes wrong."

Doc Worth looked closely at him. Vampires didn't get dark circles, but if you paid attention you could still see that he'd been up all day, and there was a kind of unfocused look in his eyes that announced "I'm not really here; I'm back home with my telephone."

So Doc Worth shrugged and stood up, headed back towards the freezer. He might not be on good terms with his own parents, but family is something you don't screw with. He looked back over his shoulder.

"Ya got cash, don't ya? Hop a plane and see 'er fer yerself."

The vampire shook his head. "She won't want to see me. I said some stuff to her a long time ago, and she won't—” he halted, wrinkling his nose. “Why am I telling you this?"

"'Cause I'm so goshdarn trustworthy?"

"Oh god, I've lost my mind." Conrad looked at Doc Worth again and cringed. "Just, don't follow me around this time, okay? I can't deal with you right now."

"Like yer so special. 'Ere, take some blood, get the fuck outta my office." The distrusting look he received was both amusing and irritating. "What, like I don' have nothin' better to do? Go, get. Scram."

Now Conrad appeared to be offended. He snatched the blood packet and marched off towards the door, shoulders stiff.

"And ya know—"

Conrad paused.

"—just in case she don't make it, ya might wanna call 'er tonight. Personal like."

The door slammed closed.

The Doc sat down and leaned back, took a deep drag off his cigarette. He was toeing the line now, wasn't he?

Well. It wasn't like the vampire was particularly inclined to think about Worth's motivation. It wasn't like Worth was particularly inclined to think about Worth's motivation. He let it be. So far, his code of proper doctorly conduct was intact. As long as he didn't think about it, it wouldn't be a problem. Everything was normal.

But he did allow himself to hope, sort of vaguely and quickly, that Confag's mum came out alright. Just because he didn't want to deal with a depressed bloodsucker, moping around his office and drinking all his stock.

He was always more of a Lestat guy, and he never did like Louis much.

-A-

That was early February, essentially January. Closer to midway through the month, Hanna and his little gang of freaks dropped by the office looking like something a rat would be scared to chew on. Again. So the Doc got out his black bag and started sewing things up, yelling at Hanna, and generally feeling put upon by the whole scenario.

"It ain't good enough—" he yanked a thread, "—to go an' get yerself half killed, nah, ya gotta come rollin' in here an' bloody up my clean operatin' table, knock over my plants—"

Hanna hissed and then grinned up at him, as if getting brand new stitches without so much as an advil was just another way to spend a Saturday night, along with horror B movies and bowling. "I did it a favor. Put it out of its misery. Seriously, Doc, when was the last time you watered that thing?"

"'Bout five years ago."

Worth gave the thread a good hard pull to shut up his most frequent patient. There was a racket outside the door that sounded like Conrad having a fight with his desk chair again—you'd think a guy would learn, after the first time, but then some people are stubborn. Worth tied off the stitch and stood back.

"I know ya ain't gonna listen to me this time neither, but could ya stop with the stupid-ass stunts for a while, Hanna? I'm runnin' outta thread, an' don't think I don't see the tearin' 'round those staples. Pop one of those suckers an' I'm gonna lock ya out fer good."

Hanna gave him this look like what are you talking about, I've been a good boy all year. Worth groaned and tossed the kid his shirt—what else can you do? It's Hanna, Hanna don't listen to nobody.

Out the door, the Doc was faced with a tangled mess of paper, plastic, and stunned vampire strewn across his floor. Sighing, he reached down, grabbed Conrad by the collar and yanked him to his feet.

"Can ya do anythin' without embarrassin' yerself?"

"Your chair is unnatural!" Conrad shouted back. "It's got three bloody legs and half its nails are missing! Where'd you find that monstrosity, a dumpster?"

"'Ey Connie, ya didn' know? All the best shit comes outta the dumpster."

Conrad railed at him for a minute solid, while Hanna and his zombie sidekick wandered out of the stitching room and back towards the front door. The Doc lit himself a new cigarette and listened to Conrad insult his mother for a while, stopping by the fridge as he went, and shooed the actual patient out into the alleyway. Then he turned back.

"'Ey, Nosferatu."

"-Doesn't even—what?"

"'Ow's yer mum?"

Conrad blinked. "…What's your angle, Worth?"

Doc Worth shrugged and made his way back to his desk, yanking the awkward chair upright. He left the papers where they were, since he never bothered much with paperwork anyway. Lamont could come get his cash in person if he needed it so damn bad. Enough with the never-ending invoices.

"I'm tryin' to show some frien'ly concern, faggot. Where're yer manners?"

"How can you ask me about manners?" Conrad raged, positively trembling with fury from his square-rimmed glasses to his ultra-hip white shoes.

"What? Ya don’t think I got manners?" The Doc shrugged off his coat and made a pointed gesture towards the mess around his feet. "Think yer the one who don’t got no manners."

"That's a double negative, you—" Conrad cut himself off. Deep breath. "Fine. I don't got no manners. Sure. Can I go?"

"You rag on me fer five minutes and I can't even ask ya a damn question?"

There was quiet, the sound of a heater groaning somewhere in the background, and Conrad's face crumbled. There were lines creased under his eyes, wrinkles at the collar of his polo, little things that the Doc hadn't noticed until now.

"I don't know," he sighed, looking away. "They stopped calling me. I tried the number, the doctor’s number, but he won't answer. I googled the hospital's number but the only one I found is disconnected. I don't know. I can't get in touch with anyone."

He was looking down now, at the loose thread of his sweater coming loose under his fingers.

"I'm worried."

Now, Doc Worth was nobody's psychic, and certainly nobody's grief counselor, but he couldn't quite shake the feeling that he ought to say something a little less dickish than usual, just this once. If something like this happened to his sister, after all, he probably wouldn't be in any mood to deal with wise guys either. He tried to come up with a snide comment anyways, but the words wouldn't form. It didn't feel right.

"Yer mum's prob'ly fine," he said, after a moment, "she probably found out they've been callin' ya and threw a fit. No news is good news, innit?"

Conrad gave him a suspicious look. "That's very… considerate of you."

"Aw now, no need to be insultin'. I just can't stand whiney faggots crowdin' up my front room, and yer in here more 'n Hanna." Doc Worth thought for a moment, eyeing his reluctant patient carefully.

He stood up and leaned over the desk, hands curled around the dull edges. Yeah, he knew just what Doc Worth ordered for this ailment.

"Awright," he announced, "I got the perfect treatment for this'un, Connie."

"Oh do you?" the younger man sniped back, a bit warily.

"You bet." Doc Worth tapped his own cheek, just below the sharp curve of his cheekbone. "One good punch, free o' charge."

Conrad looked at him like you'd look at an escaped Arkham patient. "How would that help anything?"

"Always helps me," the Doc shrugged. "My mum was a bitch too, y'know. If yers is anythin' like mine, she's likely out fuckin' some call boy an' wishin' she di'n have a son ter begin with."

Conrad punched his lights out.

By the time Doc worth got his bearing back, Conrad was stalking out his front door yelling about insensitive pricks who don't have the first clue what they're talking about.

But he didn't look depressed anymore, which was all that really mattered.

-A-

Doc Worth did a lot of work for men in suits with bullet wounds in their shoulders. Doc Worth did a lot of work for men in ties with stab wounds in their sides. Doc Worth had been playing this game since he went by his real name instead of Doc, since he was pre-med and Lamont had recognized the man in the hat stumbling into their diner, demanding to know if there was a doctor in the house.

Those men never forget a favor.

But he was not used to the scenario that presented itself at the end of February, when he opened his grungy back-alley door to another man in a suit. He took one look and turned on his heel, heading for the surgery gloves he kept under his desk, as per usual.

"Where's the hole?" he demanded, straight to the point because if it was a stab wound, he probably didn't have long to work.

The well-dressed man waved him off. "It's nothing like that," he wheezed, whipping out a handkerchief to muffle his cough.

The Doc turned around just in time to catch sight of little red spots blooming across the white cotton. He bit back a curse. "Yer sick," Worth noted, moving closer. "Whaddaya think I can do about it? I'm the sawbones, I stitch people up. Go ter the hospital if yer sick."

The well-dressed man shook his head. The handkerchief disappeared into his jacket, but a smear of red clung to his lip. "Donnie went to St. Mary’s a day ago. Some of us guys, we tried to see him today, went to find his room number. Nothing. Like Donnie never walked in the door. Receptionist didn't have a clue what we were talking about, said there wasn't a Donatello anywhere in the building."

The hospital was small; if you wanted the big hospital you had to go across the city. Doc Worth remembered it from his school days, from sneaking in and nicking the equipment Lamont couldn't procure for him years later. They'd remember you if you came in spewing blood the day before. Something was fucked up here.

"I dunno what they did to Donnie," the well-dressed man was saying, "but if the feds are after the Outfit then I can't walk in there expecting to be treated properly. I'm not high up enough to fly out somewhere else. You're my only chance."

The Doc looked at him, then looked back at his desk, and then back to the man.

"God save us from fuckin' heroes," he muttered, and marched back towards the examination room. "You got five second to get in here or I'm kickin' you out!"

The man rushed in behind him.

Doc Worth did his version of an examination. It involved a lot of cursing, threats, objects stuck in painful places, invasive questions—but Doc Worth was always thorough, you could say that at least. With a smoking cigarette wedged in the corner of his mouth, he mapped the stranger's anatomy like a cartographer on a familiar shore, feeling out irregularities and hoping vaguely that whatever this poor bastard had wasn't airborne.

The Doc was not afraid of death. When it was your time to go, it was your time to go. He didn't particularly go seeking it out either, though.

Joe Shmuck, Worth dubbed his new patient. Joe's breathing was raspy, painful sounding, and his eyes were shot with blue veins. Joe told him he suffered from nightsweats the last two days, started coughing up blood the day before, passed out in the street on his way to the third door down the alley. A couple of his friends were starting up the same symptoms, but they were too scared to tell anyone.

I am Joe's raging sense of paranoia.

And all the while, Worth was smoking his fag and filling his lungs with dry smoke, wondering if he ought to offer his patient one. After all, he did have some sense of social decency.

"Here," he said at last, holding out his spare. "Think yer gonna want this."

The well-dressed man took the cigarette gratefully, muttering about how he just quit smoking himself, for the old lady, you know. Fuck it now, though. Doc Worth sat back and tossed his gloves in the trash.

"Now," he started, "what ya got sounds like a textbook case of tuberculosis, except fer these here veins-" he pointed to the blue-streaked eye, "-an' the sudden onset. No lead-up fevers, no chest pains, nothin'. Look here bloke. I ain't got a clue what's wrong with ya. If this is anythin' like TB, ya need to check yerself inter a damn hospital or ya just might die, and it damn well won't be my fault."

"Wait, you're telling me I have consumption? Doc, isn't that disease gone?"

"No, dipshit, it ain't gone. I don't know what you got, I'm just tellin' ya what it looks like."

The well-dressed man looked up at him, and Worth had to steel himself or he might just have looked away, because in that moment he knew in his bones that he was talking to a dead man.

-A-

Joe Shmuck dropped back by the next day, said he felt better, had been feeling better since yesterday afternoon.

Joe Shmuck came in the day after that, and died on Worth's examination table.

-A-

After that, Worth started noticing the signs. He'd be walking downtown for Chinese takeout and he'd spot tissues pressed to people's mouths. He'd be sneaking into Conrad's favorite coffee shop and he'd spy people asleep on their laptops, sweating in the cool air.

Hanna was coming in at least three times a week, at that point, saying that he'd been picking up a lot of jobs for some reason—the dark side of the supernatural was getting a bit more daring lately, and Hanna was just as gung-ho as ever.

Worth left the radio on these days.

Conrad stopped by, second week of March, and caught Doc Worth mid-practice, administering his special brand of treatment to yet another well-dressed goner. The vampire hung quietly in the background, all respectful and solemn, but he broke character conspicuously when Worth whipped out a new pack. In Worth's world, you got a smoke with your bad news, like it or not. Professional-like.

Conrad hung by the door, watching while the Doc ran the whole spiel for the umpteenth time—coughing up blood is bad, you need antibiotics, why does everybody thing I'm a goddamn miracle worker—and sent a walking dead man back through his door, into the evening light. They never took his advice. They came in one by one, Dee would come because Tony said that he'd been to see the Doc and Tony came back feeling better, but by the next patient Tony would be dead and it was Dee who had sent him to the Doc.

Worth looked over at Conrad, and he could feel the circles under his own eyes darker than usual. It wasn't like he cared or anything. Hadn't been getting much sleep.

"C'mon," he barked, "make yerself useful. I got an office to sanitize."

Miss Priss would be helpful with that, yeah?

Somewhere between scrubbing down the desk and the floor—which was seeing more soap than it had probably seen in ten years—Conrad turned back to him for a moment.

"What was wrong with him?" the vampire asked, nodding towards the door.

"He's dead," Worth replied, matter of fact. "Or 'e will be, soon enough. Those mafia bastards won't go 'n get proper treatment, and they're droppin' like flies."

"Did you… did you tell him it was tuberculosis?"

"Somethin' like that." Worth looked up, and the expression on Conrad's face made him wonder what he'd missed. "Why?"

Water dripped from Conrad's rag. "My mother," he murmured. "Just before they stopped calling. They told me she had a new strain of tuberculosis."

A dull thud of silence rang through the office. Worth set down his own rag and reached for another smoke, suddenly a lot less worried about emptying his newest pack.

"The first guy who walked in here," Doc Worth told him, "was the fly guy. He told me he'd just gotten back from the airport when the coughin' started."

Conrad said nothing, and picked his rag back up.

-A-

The radio finally had something to say. A talk-show host called in sick; the DJ on 101.2 made an announcement about flu season. People called in asking about the new thing going around, asking if anybody knew what it was. Asking what to do about it. Asking if they knew where the patients were getting sent.

But still, nobody much was panicking. The CDC was quiet.

Hanna came in dragging his two dead friends behind him again, talking about how he thought he saw a kitsune and he didn't even know those were in America and wow they must have immigrated here with the Japanese a long time ago.

And Worth made sure to check his eyes before he let the kid leave.

"It's going to get worse," Conrad announced, as the door closed behind his companions. "I can smell it in their blood. It's spreading faster."

Doc Worth leaned back in his chair, examining the spider-web cracks in his ceiling. "Finally got over bein a cursed ‘n miserable demon of the night, then? Ready fer yer next character arc?"

"Shut up!"

Worth raised a brow.

"Ugh, whatever. Sure, I'm using my goddamn superpowers."

"Hey now, don' give yerself too much credit."

"You are impossible!"

Worth grinned. "Y' know it, sweetheart."

"I'm going to knock out your stupid crooked teeth, one of these days," Conrad seethed. "And then I'm going to strangle you with that goddamn coat."

"Now why go ter all that trouble when ya could just suck me dry?" Worth tilted his head, stretching the tendons of his neck as far as they'd go. He grinned. "Worried you'd get hooked? Worried you'd turn into some kinda addict?”

"Oh yes, that's rich. Let's psychoanalyze the man with the legal occupation and functioning social life, never mind the addled recluse who cuts people to bits without a license!"

"Aw Connie, I didn' know ya felt tha' way."

Conrad made an inarticulate sound of rage. “God, I don't know why I come here, I'm sure Lamont could help me just as well."

"Heh, mebbe. But you'd miss me. Besides, this-" Doc Worth held up a bag of very valuable red liquid, "-this lunch ain't free with Lamont. I'm more a generous sorta bloke."

"Generous my ass," Conrad muttered, swiping the baggie. "You just get off on fucking with me."

"Mebbe that too," Worth grinned. Then the grin faded for a fraction of a second. "Ya make sure ya come to me if ya get in any trouble, now. World's gonna eat ya alive unless ya get some kinda backup."

"I don't need your help," Conrad growled, spine cracking straight. "Keep your generosity, and whatever else you're going to ask for in return. I can do just fine on my own."

"That’s the spirit," Worth yawned. He made a shooing motion. "Now get yer ass outta my office. I got work to do."

And Conrad left the office irritated and indignant, which was a hell of a lot better way than he came in.

-A-

Worth managed to sleep properly the night after that one. He fell asleep in his chair, a hand resting on the ancient radio.

He dreamed that the world was unraveling at the seams, leaving piles of yarn where post offices and street signs used to be. He dreamed that his office crumbled to dust and Jesus was standing over him, saying that

To conquer death you only have to die

And he dreamed of buildings that blew away into clouds of grey smoke, people blowing away into clouds of dust, crumbling into nothing and carried away on the wind. He dreamed of fire and ice, frozen moonlight pouring down over hollow skyscrapers. He dreamed of Conrad standing in front of him, perfectly manicured hands dripping blood, eyes as empty as the skyscrapers and saying

To conquer death you only have to die

And Worth dreamed that he reached out and grabbed Conrad's dripping hands and wiped the blood onto himself, smeared it into the lines of his own dirty palms and saying

To conquer death, you’d need one hell of an army.

-A-

Two days later, all hell broke loose.

You could blame it on the reporter who ran the story, slipped it into the printer at the last minute or so the story goes, but that's just blaming somebody for what was bound to happen anyways. Like blaming the Germans for World War One. What happened happened, and even if she'd never published the headline "Government Hushes Killer Epidemic", the world was wired to explode eventually.

She did her research, you can say that much for the poor bitch. Tracked down every lost patient, located every crematorium, tracked down letter after letter reading the same thing—"getting better, heading to rehab. Be home in a month or so."

And then she went and published it.

The first riots were in New York City, where the mass of citizens—white, black, yellow, wouldn't the liberals be proud to see it—crashed down as one wave over St. Mary's hospital, and Bellevue Hospital, and Harlem hospital, spreading out to crush the police stations and the government buildings, rippling out into the heart of the good old US of A, shattering windows and leaving bodies in its wake.

Worth stayed inside.

The first fire went up at six, and Worth walked up the abandoned fire escape to the top of his building to watch it, sat on the edge of the roof with his shoes hanging over the alley, and cracked open a beer. Part of him would have liked to be out there, participatin' in some anarchy, as it were, but something kept him tied to the building. Project Mayhem was better left to people with nothing to live for—Worth didn't need a cause, didn't need to prove anything to anyone.

Besides. Somebody might come by.

When the sky went totally dark, Worth climbed back down into his office and pulled out a scalpel. The radio shrieked another fire, another fire, and for every new one Worth put a slice into his arm. To conquer death, yeah right.

To conquer death, you need to stop being scared of it.

At eight o'clock, the door swung open for another walking dead man. There was blood pouring down the face, dirt matted hair, stained fingers leaving smears on his doorframe.

"Worth," the dead man croaked, and then—"Luce."

Fucking hell.

Doc Worth was across the room in seconds, wiping blood off the injured face and holding together a massive gash, and—

"Lamont."

His friend made a grimace that was supposed to be a grin.

"Oh, you motherfuckin' idiot," Worth growled, grabbing his lapel and dragging him back towards the surgery room. "Once I sew this up I'm gonna rip ya a new one. Can't take a fuckin' day off to save yer bloody life, and that ain't even a metaphor."

"Don't bother," Lamont wheezed, smiling in a way that split his lip open. "No point in that now."

"Whaddaya mean, dumbass? Don' be a baby, head wounds bleed a lot but they ain't life-threatenin'."

"No, that's not it. I—" his friend broke off coughing, bent over at the waist. Awful hacking, lung splitting coughs. He stood, pulled his hand away from his torn lip, and—

"Shit."

Blood spots bloomed over his palm, huge and ugly.

Lamont laughed, and it was his same obnoxious awkward laugh—the same laugh he'd had since he was ten years old and he'd finally pinned Luce Worth after weeks of getting beaten up, laughing because he wasn't quite sure what had come over him but now he was sitting on top of the neighbor kid and there was a black eye growing where his fist had met face. The day they decided they were friends.

Worth didn't know what to say, so he gripped the shirt tighter and dragged his best friend to the bedroom.

"I don' have a cure," Doc Worth said, once Lamont had taken up what little space there was on his mattress. "I can't fix ya."

"It's okay," Lamont coughed, "I feel a little better anyways. Sitting down, I guess. Air's better in here."

"I can't fix ya," Worth repeated, staring at the door. "Yer gonna die. Soon."

"Well no shit Sherlock."

Worth kept staring at the door. He could feel the cuts on his arms turning into scabs, and he wanted to pull his coat off and dig his nails into the healing flesh. Break the system down.

"Nobody lives forever," Lamont says, with an ironic sort of smile that Worth can hear in his voice. It's an old joke. A pretty vampire woman once offered Lamont a shot at immortality, maybe because she liked him, maybe because she was bored. They'd never know. Lamont came over to the Doc's that night, wasted, laughing in that awkward obnoxious way.

"No thank you, ma'am," he'd told her, "It's hard to do this job if you can't wear a crucifix. And besides, nobody lives forever."

Now Worth turned back to his friend. Walking dead man. Why was there a difference between dying and seeing someone die? How could he be so casual about his own death, come today or ten years from now, and still feel like his insides were shredding to pieces tonight?

His fists were clenched so tight he sort of wondered if he was going to pull a muscle. Men don't cry. Men don't whine. Men take their fucking lumps and keep going; men do not fall apart.

He looked away. "I'll probably miss you, I guess."

"Hey," Lamont groaned, "don't get all sentimental now. I'd hate to be the one who proves you're not completely heartless."

"Fuck off."

There was silence for a minute, and through the thin walls, Worth thought he could hear the sounds of mayhem drawing ever closer. Glass breaking and people shouting. But maybe not.

"Hey Luce," Lamont whispered, after a while, catching his friend's eye as he glanced back. "I'm sorta glad, you know."

"What, that yer dyin'?"

"Nah," Lamont laughed, and the laugh sounded painful. "That we stayed friends. It's been… fun."

And then Lamont was closing his eyes and slipping off into the cheap facsimile of wherever he'd be headed soon enough.

Doc Worth ghosted back out into the main room of his office, fingers curled into a muscle-burning knot. Men do not cry. Men do not fall apart. Men do not fall on their knees and scream at God and rip their own chests open and pull out their hearts to stop the pain. Men do not fall apart.

As he passed the door, he reeled back and kicked a hole in the plaster.

He knew, without turning the radio back on, that the fires were getting taller and the riots were getting bigger, and the city would burn and the country would burn, and the whole goddamn planet would burn from the biggest metropoli to the smallest villages, and they would burn and burn until there was nothing left but dust and smoke.

Watch now how the mighty have fallen.

And he couldn't spare a fuck, one way or another, for what happened to the world, because his best friend was dying in the back of his shithole alley office and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. This was nowhere near the darkest hour in store. This was only the beginning.

Doc Worth didn't give two shits whether he lived or died, and he hadn't since he was twenty-six and standing bloody over another man's corpse. But for some reason, and he hadn't realized it until that moment, standing at the front of his shithole alley office - he did care if the people he knew survived. He did give two shits about that. And he realized in the same moment that a man with nothing and everything to lose can be a very dangerous man indeed.

He cared, and it was a pity he'd only realized it now.

He would not sit back and let the universe fuck him up the ass. He would not. Real men fight losing battles. Real men grieve. Real men hold it together, and goddamnit—

He needed to find Conrad.

It was the end of March, and by now Doc Worth's office was probably a pile of ashes with an old friend buried somewhere in the smoldering mess.

It was the end of March, and Doc Worth was standing outside of an artsy apartment in a red-hot copper city. There was a bag at his feet, a doctor's black bag, packed with whatever he thought he might want later. Scalpels, bandages, drugs of varying legal status, cigarettes. Mostly cigarettes. It was for a different kind of smoke, different than the greasy burning plastic clouds gathering over his city.

His city. But that didn't matter anymore, not really. You are not your office. You are not your home. He had a plan and black bag with a red cross on it, and plenty of experience on the street. He had a cracked blue lighter that spun and sparked in his hand.

He had a stack of blood bags and a syringe.

He had Lamont's crucifix tucked under his jacket.

He had messy black stitches in the red matter of his heart.

But none of that really mattered, and he would have been hard pressed to say exactly what was really hurting him at that moment. It might just have been the nasty purple bruise spreading over his ribs from where some jerkoff ran into him on a goddamn bike. What kind of pussy rides a bike during the apocalypse?

And for that matter, why the hell were all those cars still parked outside the building? That one, Worth observed, was a Cadillac. Motherfucking Cadillac. Red, too—blood red, good wheels, polished leather seats—Christ, somebody just left that out in the open? What had happened to the owner?

He heard footsteps behind the door.

"Who is it?" the muffled voice demanded, harsher than a TV judge on daytime programming. Some manners.

"Aw, Connie," Worth sang, "that any way ter treat yer guests?"

The door swung open so suddenly that Worth's jacket snapped in the wind. Conrad Achenleck looked out at him like you might look at Freddy Krueger standing on your doorstep.

"…Motherfucker."

Worth grinned at him, showing off crooked teeth. "You called?"

Conrad squinted, peered over Worth's shoulder, looked behind himself. "The hell are you standing outside my door for?"

"Mebbe 'cause ya ain't invited me in?" Worth shot back, and before his unwilling host could respond, he tossed his black bag at the younger man and waltzed into his apartment. Hm. Straight eye for the queer guy in here.

Outside the window, through half-closed blinds, you could see a lurid glow seeping out of Downtown like some kind of hellish radiation. On the opposite wall, this massive canvas covered with red splotches hid behind a completely impractical white sofa. Worth decidedly he'd like to stretch out on it, see if he could leave some stains. Piss Count Fagula the hell off.

No time for that now.

"How did you find my hou—apartment?" Conrad demanded, stalking up behind his uninvited guest.

"Followed y' once," Worth grunted, wiping grime equal parts soot and blood onto a throw pillow. Enjoy the little things, right?

"You—ARGH!" Conrad swooped in to rescue his newly stained pillow. "Hands to yourself, jackass. And no, I don't mean like that."

Doc Worth did his impression of an innocent smile, the one that supposedly gave Hanna nightmares. Glass broke somewhere below the window.

"What do you want, Worth?" Conrad sighed, after a moment. The rage seeped out like water dripping off a miserable wet dog.

"Aw, puppy," Doc Worth replied, settling in on the couch. "Whatcha in such a hurry fer? Ain't nothin' out there to be rushin' off to. 'M sure they won' mind ya bein' a couple minutes late what with all the traffic downtown."

Ruddy light sank into the white fabric of Conrad's blouse—fucking right it was a blouse—lines of red and shadow where the blinds cut through the outside light. A phone, some fancy five hundred dollar latest model, sat skewed on its docking station next to a crumpled half-finished sketch of a woman in black. All the pieces were in place, but Worth could tell sure as Hell was hot that this was as close to a raging mess as Confag's apartment got.

"The city's burning to the ground and you want to banter with me," the vampire muttered, rubbing the place on the bridge of his nose where his glasses left little pressure lines. "Now is really not the time for jokes!"

"Princess," Doc Worth mused, "y' take yerself way too seriously."

If the expression on Conrad's face was anything to go by, that was not on the list of acceptable replies. "Damnit, where's your sense of… where's your sense of gravity?" Conrad demanded, pointing a shaking finger at the blinded window. "There's people dying out there! Where's your godforsaken respect?"

"The hell d'you know 'bout respect?" the Doc replied, leaning back into the useless white couch. "Who y' ever lost, huh? Whatta y' ever done without? Ever killed a man, Connie? Ever seen somebody die? Ever had that one goddamn moment in yer whole pointless life when y' really knew y' were mortal, really knew y' were gonna be gone someday? Not even vamps live forever, Connie. Just a li'l longer."

"I—"

"'Course y' ain't. You don't know the first thing about life or death, so don't pretend like ya do."

"Fuck you, like you know anything about me."

In the almost silence after that, Worth thought he heard sirens, which was funny because he hadn't heard those since the first couple hours. Far as he knew, cops were just people too when you got down to it. Must be a lot of pigs out there, throwing trashcans through windows and mobbing ambulances with the rest of them.

"It's just…" Conrad murmured, after a long moment, "…it doesn't seem right to be making jokes when things are this bad."

"Oh, princess, y' gotta lot ter learn about life. Actin' like yer dead ain't gonna bring 'em back if they ain't livin' no more."

Without thinking, a scarred hand slipped up into the folds of his jacket to grip the cheap metal of Lamont's crucifix. Lamont had never liked it; he got it from his aunt right before she tried to sell the whole family out to the feds. Funny how the old bastard had never been able to get rid of it, either—but then he always said the only respectable way to lose an heirloom was in a bet and no one would ever bet against that stupid pewter cross. Lamont had always thought that was funny, at any rate.

He was never going to hear that tired old story again.

And he was never going to tell Lamont to shut the fuck up again, either.

"Once yer dead, yer dead. Forget all the magic shit. You can't cheat it forever. Everybody's gotta go some day, and the point is…" Worth closed his eyes. "Point is, 'til ya kick the bucket for good, ya gotta suck it up n' keep on goin'."

"Where is there to go!" Conrad threw his arms out, a kind of hysteric mania packed tightly under his voice. "There's nowhere left to go from here! We hit the end point a couple yards back! You're going to die when the disease finally gets you, and I'm going to die when you—when no one's left to—fuck, when humanity's gone. We're all dead."

"Such a pessimist, Connie." Doc Worth kicked his feet up on the glass coffee table. "Ain't nothin' fer sure. Do I look sick? Naw. Pride o' the damn race, remember? And as long as I'm around, you don' have ter worry yer pretty li'l head about gettin' fed."

A massive explosion of broken glass rattled the building across the street.

"See? We done got the whole damn world to ourselves."

Conrad covered his face and sank down to the ground, perfectly manicured fingers splayed out across his glasses. Worth watched him studiously, like a scientist observing a caged animal, waiting to meet his eyes when he finally looked up.

"Where could we go?" Conrad asked, at last, voice muffled by palms.

"I dunno, Kokomo? What's it matter?"

The younger man stared at him. There was a blank moment, and then a hysterical smile split the seam over his mismatched teeth, death-pale lips cracking into something dangerously unstable and yeah, Worth approved. "Oh God," he laughed, "sure, yeah, Kokomo is great this time of year, why the hell not?"

"That's the spirit," Doc Worth grinned. Everybody had their breaking point and sometimes coming out the other side of it was the best thing you could do. Or, you know, maybe he just sort of liked seeing prim and prissy have a nervous breakdown.

"Should we get Hanna and the Zombie?" Conrad asked, staring off with this dazed sort of I've-recently-misplaced-my-reality expression.

"God 'imself don't know where Hanna is most the time," the older man replied. "He'll find us. Always does."

"…I guess I better pack," Conrad murmured, glancing back at what was presumably his room. "I'll need some clothes, maybe a few sweaters, have to fit it all… What are we driving?"

Doc Worth thought about it for a moment, and then he grinned.

"Ey, Connie, how ya feel 'bout Cadillacs?"

-A-

There were a lot of wrecks to get around.

Conrad had insisted that he drive, when Worth admitted that the only thing he'd piloted in the last few years was Lamont's car and he'd nearly totaled it last time. Wonder what was going to happen to Lamont's car. He'd have taken it if he knew where the poor bastard parked it. Would have been handy. Lamont would have hated him for it.

Too bad he couldn't find it.

Man, he missed his oldsmobile. Only car he'd ever owned, and it had been a monster on the road. Shame it committed automobile suicide before he could get it garaged somewhere.

The Cadillac was nice though, once Conrad stopped bitching about how stealing it was wrong.

"Well where's yer car?" Worth had demanded towards the end of that argument, snatching keys out the glove compartment.

"Hanna drove it into a tree a week ago," Conrad had replied, a pained look across his pale face. "I was supposed to get it back this week. Cost a fortune to fix."

And now they were zipping through the remains of mainstreet, making sharp turns around the sparking remains of other automobiles. Conrad drove like the kind of guy who owned a sports car—fast and aggressive but with special care for the metal under his command.

Worth always had a tendency to drive like he was drunk even when he wasn't.

So Conrad kept his whiter-than-usual knuckles clenched around the steering wheel and his eyes on the road, and Doc Worth leaned back in his white leather seat wondering if it would be worth the trouble to light up when the top was down like this.

Conrad made a sharp, squealing turn around a ninety-degree corner, and Doc Worth grinned.

Somewhere in the back of his head, he figured that this was what he'd been waiting his whole life for. This was where the road had always been leading up to, back when he was in college and he'd felt so damn out of place, back when he was a kid and all he really wanted to do was get in fights and poke dead things with a stick.

Wouldn't Lamont think that was funny.

"Oh it's the end of the world as we know it—"

Conrad and Doc Worth both looked down at the buzzing cell-phone on the tray between them. Worth raised a brow.

"Shut up," Conrad hissed, and answered the call.

"Hello?"

"Hey Con-my-man, still undead?"

"Hanna," Conrad sighed, grudging relief in the corners of his tone. "Is everything alright? Are you okay?"

"Course he ain't okay," Worth muttered, on the other side of the car, "'e's Hanna."

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Stu's been watching my back and it's all good, really man, no need to worry, we've been out chasing after some minor daemons and man you should have seen Pestilence, he's really tall but whooo he looks out of shape."

"Hanna," Conrad started, sort of horrified sounding. He made a schreeching left turn through the only working stoplight they'd come across. "Hanna, you have noticed what's going on around here, haven't you?"

"Huwha? Oh, you mean the Apocalypse? Yeah, sorry I didn't warn you about that in time, but I only figured out the riddle like four hours before the riots started and I really couldn't find my cell phone, well you know, I'm still trying to get the hang of this thing and really I ought to stick with payphones but that's so passé."

"What? Hanna, you knew this was going to happen?"

"Well I mean sort of, it's not like I had a date and time and everything yanno."

"And you didn't even mention it?"

"Er, I really meant to but there was this big thing last night and all the vampires in the area had this truce meeting and Casmiro wanted some kind of mortal third party to act as a witness or something but don't worry, I totally read the fine print before I signed anything."

"Hanna Falk Cross, when I get my hands on you I'm gonna make you wish you weren't born!"

Nervous laughter crackled over the speakers. "Uh, hehe, yeah, so, can I talk to Worth?"

Conrad skidded the Cadillac to a stop in the middle of a one way street and stared at the phone. Doc Worth waggled his eyebrows.

"The hell makes you think Worth is here with me?" Conrad yelled at the rectangle of glass and plastic, quickly losing his infamously short temper.

"…DOC! HEY, DOC WORTH, PICK UP THE PHONE!"

Cursing profusely, the vampire tossed over his very expensive cell and hit the gas like it was Hanna's face. Inertia threw them both back into their seats.

"'Llo," Worth grinned into the speaker. "Y've reached Confag's sexual frustration hotline, this's the Doc speaking."

"Alright! Loki give me a high five—man, I knew you'd be with him!"

"An' how ya figgur that?"

"Oh, you know. Anyways, Worth, we're kind of busy but once we wrap this case up I think we'll have enough cushion to settle down alright, and if I play my cards right we might just have a place in the new world order—shit, isn't that the coolest?"

"It's sumthin' ter start with, I guess," the Doc replied, wondering vaguely what "new world order" entailed. "Whaddaya want from me?"

"Oh, right." The voice paused, some of the high energy draining down into a serious whisper. "Keep an eye on Conrad, okay man? He's actually a good guy to have at your back when worse comes to worst, and I know you won't let him do anything dumb. We'll meet up with you in a couple of days. Oh! And Conrad will probably want to hear this part too!"

The vampire gritted his mismatched teeth and kept his eyes on the debris-covered road.

"Meet up with us Tuesday in Salem! If what I think is going down is going down, then you'll definitely want to be there. We'll be in the big blue RV, there's three extra bunks 'cause Shaun doesn't sleep, so maybe if you can find Toni or Vesser you could bring them along too! It'll be like a party, yanno, one big Apocalyptic party that never ends!"

The phone clicked off.

Worth blinked down at it.

"Sometimes I really gotta wonder what's goin' on in tha' bloody ginger head o' his."

Conrad kept his eyes forward. "Awful. Things."

-A-

They'd been driving all night when things went sour.

It was the gas station. It's always the gas station; Worth could have told him that hours before the whole fiasco if the dumb art fag had just said something, but nah, he had to slam on the breaks right in front of the first fill-up they'd seen for miles.

Back in the city, the roads had been littered with broken glass and mechanical wreckage, glittering and shimmering in the smoggy light. Sometimes the occasional person, wandering through the street, bloody mouths and bloody sleeves—Conrad swerved around them with the precision of a stuntman, even though Worth was of the opinion that hitting them now was probably doing everybody a favor.

Doc Worth learned a good long time ago that kindness just ends up fucking everyone over.

Now, though, the only thing he'd seen on the road for miles was a hand falling out of the grass on the road's shoulder, a blur of pale flesh on cracked gray asphalt. Somewhere along the way, Conrad mused that they were probably among the first people to leave the city, if not the first.

Somewhere along the way, Conrad had turned on the radio to see what was still playing. Static, static, a panicked news cast, static, static, static—and Journey.

Somewhere along the way, Conrad must have looked down and noticed the gas levels dipping into the red and he must have decided not to say anything.

And so Worth found himself parked outside of a gas station in the middle of nowhere, cursing a red streak while Conrad unbuckled himself and slid out of the car like a fluid inkstain. Worth once noted how much more vampiric Conrad became as the sun started to draw closer to dawn and the hours dragged on. His humanity was wearing thin.

"Confag," Doc Worth ground out, throwing his door open, "hold yer fuckin' horses, moron."

Conrad looked back at him, tired and irritated. "What now?"

"Yer not really just gonna walk in there, are ya? Tell me y' ain't that dumb."

"Worth," Conrad replied, in a tone that said yeah, maybe he wouldn't win a fight but he could break Doc Worth's nose in three directions before it was all said and done. "Look, we need gas or we're not meeting anybody anywhere."

"Connie, I dunno what crazy notion's o' humanity ya got rattlin' around yer skull, but I kin guarantee there ain't nobody in there willin' ter take yer fancy plastic."

"Whatever, I have cash."

"Damnit Conrad, that ain't the point!"

The younger man flipped a bird at the sky and went stalking off towards the station. The rim of blue twilight was rising just barely over the edge of far away fields, and Conrad went stalking off towards the station, muttering to himself about jackass knowitalls.

"If ya get fucked up in there," Doc Worth yelled after him, "I ain't comin' in ter save yer pansy ass!"

"Good!" the vampire yelled back, without so much as turning his head.

And then the tinted glass door was closing and Worth was all alone in the fucking parkinglot.

Hadn't the damn kid ever seen The Hills Have Eyes?

Stupid motherfucking yuppie art fag techno hippy, as if he knew everything about everything. Like listening to your elders and betters was such a hard concept to grasp!

Hadn't he even seen Deliverance?

Well, serves him right for being a bitch. Worth ought to take the Cadillac and drive off himself, try to find a frikin' Hostess factory and set up shop. Fuck Confag. He didn't even know why he went to the trouble of saving that prick in the first place.

After about a minute, Worth followed him inside.

As he slid in the door, it became immediately clear that yes, he was right and yes, Confail did indeed need a fucking hand after all. Son of a bitch.

The black barrel of the gun pointed at Conrad didn't flinch. Something moved in the shadowed corners of Worth's peripheral vision, and he made sure he knew exactly where the motion was coming from before he spoke.

"Oi, now why ya gotta gun pointed at my friend there?"

"We aren't friends," Conrad muttered, looking inappropriately embarrassed. "And I don't need your help."

"Uhuh. Ya wanna tampon for tha' PMS?"

The man holding the gun pointed at Conrad's face scowled. His skin purpled around the eyes from lack of sleep and his hair was crudely bleached, and if he'd been a foot taller it would have been like Worth was looking at his better shaven twin.

"I don't know what you clowns are trying to pull, but you're both dead men." Johnny Psycho never looked away from his target. "We don't tolerate the Bug in here, Mister."

"Don' take to kindly ter travelers, eh?"

"You could say that," the stranger grunted. "Now, you look healthy enough I guess. Tell you what, mister, you back right back out that door and I won't blow your brains out. This guy, though, he gets his pale ass shot up either way. Your call."

Irony strikes again. Worth flicked his vision back towards the motion in the corner, and straightened his spine to its full height. Vertebra clicked into place. Nothing else in the room clicked. Huh.

"Generous," Worth cracked, slipping a thumb into the fur ruff around his skinny wrists. "But see, it's a long drive all by m'self."

And then he was diving forward with a long silver scalpel clenched in one fist.

The shadow was on Worth in seconds, but not before he landed tempered steel in the fleshy part of his not-twin's face, dragging down to reveal pearly white molars. He turned, catching momentum on the back swing and planted his fist in the shadow's face. Bounced back, throwing his weight into an upperhook with something silver and red clenched tightly in the fist. Knuckles and blade met the soft spot below the shadow's chin.

Not immediately fatal.

Doc Worth planted a lightning-fast black shoe in the shadow man's gut, wedging his jaw off the scalpel with a slick tearing noise, and then he followed him to the floor. Jugular slice. Bleed out in seconds.

And then Worth realized he'd forgotten the other one. Slowing down, old man.

He turned just in time to see the blur of a bottle smashing into the first bastard's head with a sick crunch of bone and tinted glass. Johnny Psycho made a horrible noise and fell forward at Doc Worth's feet.

Conrad's hands shook around the neck of the bottle.

"You," Conrad hissed, "you fucking take me out of my home and you won't even let me pack half my shit and you drag me out here into the middle of fucking nowhere and I haven't slept in nineteen hours because I've been too busy running for my life and now somebody pointed a gun at my fucking head and it's ALL YOUR FAULT!"

Worth looked up at his companion, down at the twitching mess on the floor, and back to the red-splattered bottle.

"Ey, princess," he said, grinning, "if ya wanted a nap, y' coulda just said so."

-A-

They slept in the car. Worth slept in the driver's seat, because he slept lighter and Conrad needed the shade of the back seat. A black blanket pulled over a vampire's skin works just as well as a coffin, provided they don't wake in the middle of the day and royally bugger things by reaching out for their glasses. Some lousy survival instincts.

The second day, Worth slept with the keys tucked into the curves of his hands so tightly that the next evening he woke up with pressure cuts on the pink flesh of his palms. He slept somewhere hanging between the far way sun and the rivers that ran deep underground, pitch black and green tasting, winding down into the caverns of the earth.

He dreamed that the ashes blowing on the wind caught in the rain, falling back to earth in grey droplets like paint, landing on the abandoned sidewalks and running together, outlining the footprints of people long dead. He dreamed that spiders gathered up the threads that held the world together, spinning them into webs of neon blue and plastic green, on and on and on, with tiny voices whispering

To conquer death, you only have to die.

And he dreamed that Conrad was standing at his back, shaking like a caged whirlwind. And he dreamed that he could see Conrad's chin tilted up towards the sky with grey rain running down the lines of his ageless face, and Worth reached back and found the man's hand and the outlines of their skins faded and passed through each other, like two clouds of smoke merging high above the city, and he was telling Conrad

To conquer death, you only have to die

And then it was just him, standing in front of the house he'd once called home, a long long time ago, and Lamont sitting in his old window, looking down on his old friend with this cheap-shot smirk and Worth crossed his arms and said

Let me guess. To conquer death, yeah?

And Lamont laughed at him in that obnoxious way of his and said

Yeah, something like that.

-A-

On the third day, early evening actually, they found a mass grave on the side of the road. Worth was sinking into a moment of silence after some petty argument, stretching out over the white leather, when the car came to a sudden, unexpected stop. After they ripped everything of value out of that gas station, it wasn't like they were zapped on fuel or anything. Worth opened an eye to peer out the window.

Bodies went on and on, lit into near silhouettes by the purple sun set, one after another, men and women and children laid out like toy soldiers in a kid's toy box, far as you could see across the nearby field. Conrad opened his door, and the stench hit Worth like a closed fist. Mother fucker.

"God," Conrad breathed—lucky him, he didn't actually need to breathe anymore, unlike some less fortunate SOBs around here. "God, Worth, there's so many of them…"

"'s a lotta folks in the world, princess. Not many of 'em gonna live past Tuesday."

Conrad leaned back against the hood of the Cadillac, nails tucked into the edge of the hood. He looked far away, like he was gazing off into the far reaches of the planet and seeing the same thing stretched out in front of him.

"They're like… They're like things."

Worth grunted and climbed out of the metal contraption. Something cracked under his left foot, and he reached down to pick up the shattered remains of a ceramic necklace. Tracey. He dropped it.

"That's what happens when ya die, Connie. One minute yer somebody, next minute yer nobody. Tha's how it goes."

"I don't understand," the younger man burst out, almost spat. "Nothing makes sense. This isn't life, this isn't what life is supposed to be like! I don't get it!"

Conrad gritted his teeth, and Worth looked at him for a minute before reeling back and punching him in the face.

"What the fuck was that for?" Conrad yowled, clutching his injured jaw.

Worth answered with a kick to the gut, and that was about it for talking. The vampire knocked him over and they went tumbling across the asphalt, punching and kicking and generally trying to beat the shit out of each other. Grunts and curses punched through the graveyard air.

After a bleeding-burning eternity, the steam ran out and left them both panting on the road like bruised and tired fish. Worth reached into his pocket for a smoke and realized he'd left the pack in the car.

"Heh," he breathed, spitting out a mouthful of blood.

With an ugly crack, he turned his head toward where Conrad was lying, breathing hard even though he didn't need to breathe, bloodied knuckles pressed against his lips. Nothing like the fresh stuff.

Worth grinned.

Time ticked by; wind whistled through the treeless field, shaking the jackets and blouses of its morbid crop. It still smelled foul, and Doc Worth knew a thing or two about foul.

"Do you believe in God?" Conrad asked him, after a while.

Worth shrugged, shoulders grating against the grit. "Can't believe in sumthin' if ya don' give two shits either way. I'll tell ya one thin', though…" Doc Worth made a vague gesture towards the field. "'e's gotta be one sick bastard or one goddamn ineffable genius t' rig thissun up."

Conrad looked away, stood up and tossed him the keys. "Here," he murmured, "you drive. I don't feel like being awake right now."

"Not worried I'll drive us off a cliff while yer sleepin'?"

"I trust you," the younger man replied tiredly, slipping into the back seat.

And that was how Worth found himself driving eighty miles an hour down a country road, wondering if this was what it felt like to be alive, because he knew plenty well what it felt like to be dead, and this wasn't it.

Not in the fucking slightest.

Mile after mile of road sped by, after that. It was easy to forget what they were running from, out there in the country side in the darkness, driving by headlights and moonlight and the orange glow of evening. Eventually, everything on the radio was static, except for the one channel where Don't Stop Believing played every night at two.

And it was easy to forget. It was easy to forget and think that they were just on the most bizarre road trip of their lives, arguing every five miles about stupid shit like the color of the sky or the merits of German death metal. Conrad's collection of bruises was coming along nicely, and he never turned down a fight. In Worth's opinion, fighting with Conrad was the best of life's simple pleasures.

Except that sooner or later they had to pull over somewhere for Worth to piss or just remind his spasming legs that yeah, they were still attached to his body so shut the hell up. And invariably, when they pulled over, some disturbing shit was waiting for them just around the corner or just over the hill.

The dead kid was the worst, probably.

That one, he still couldn't quite get out of his head. Maybe it was the gaping hole where his ribs should have been, or maybe that nothing was left inside—black and empty, like a muddy grave—or maybe it was the broken cell phone clutched in his rigor mortis hand, still giving dull buzzes when Worth almost stepped on it. He knew, without a doubt, that the last number out of that thing had been the kid's mother, and it was that knowledge that made him stumble backwards cursing while Conrad fell to his knees and heaved his long empty stomach with dry hacks.

Conrad had wanted to bury it, but Worth had bitched him out, grabbed him by the hospital-white wrist and dragged the dumbass away before he contaminated his system with exposure to rotten blood.

And that night, like every other, Streetlight People came pouring out of the radio and filled the car with its ringing chorus, and Worth kept his eyes fixed on Conrad as he stared down the road, right on until they pulled over to escape the first light.

And Worth let clouds of smoke fill up the car, relaxing into the dark corners of the cabin as Conrad roused himself up into a nagging fit.

Don't stop believin'…

-A-

He sort of lost count of the days on the road, but it couldn't have been six yet because they weren't in Salem. You know, after a point everything sort of blends together, like when you add weed on top of heavy blood loss. Details flowed together, making smoke patterns in the sky and drawn away by the wind.

One of those days towards the end, as they started to see signs with SALEM slapped across the reflective green metal—so many miles to, come stay at insert witless hotel name here—the first signs of civilization made a comeback.

A girl was standing by the side of the road.

The Cadillac screeched to a halt; Conrad threw it into park and reached for his door, reeking with goddamn common decency. Worth grabbed him by the collar as he scrambled for the handle, yanking him back across the tray between their seats.

"Connie, tell me y' ain't goin' out there. Do I need ta get ya a friggin' shock-collar?"

"Damnit Worth," Conrad hissed, "let go. There's a girl in the road and we can't both be heartless bastards."

"Are y' stupid? Ya really think there just happens to be a cute li'l girl standin' in the road as we come drivin' by? Y' ain't even a li'l suspicious?"

"No." Conrad replied, straining against the fabric around his neck. "Look, why would anybody want to trap us? It's not like they want the car or anything, and your paranoid ass hid all the valuable stuff days ago. We don't have anything they want. Just look at her, Worth. There's no reason to be suspicious."

Doc Worth took another look at the little girl, no more than five years old, standing with her "Please help" sign on the shoulder of the road.

"I am lookin'," he insisted, hand tightening around Conrad's shirt. "An yer a fuckin' idiot! Ya want the world ter make sense but it don't! Get a grip on reality before it gets a grip on you and breaks ya over its goddamn knee!"

"You're sick!" the younger man yelled back. "You're a sociopath! Let me go!"

Worth obliged, and the snap-shot effect sent Conrad's head smashing into the window.

"Awright," the Doc grunted, "go get yerself shot. I ain't gonna patch ya up."

"She can't hurt me," Conrad shot back, rubbing his nose. "I'm… you know… she can't really hurt me. Not permanently."

"Bullet to the frontal cortex'll kill ya just as dead as anybody else."

"She doesn't have a gun. She's five. The worst she could do is infect me, and I can't even get sick anymore. This is the first time me being dead has ever done anybody good, and you're not going to screw it up for me!"

After a moment, Worth sighed and threw his own door open. "C'mon, let's get this over with."

"What?" Conrad demanded, scrambling out after him. "You can't come too!"

"Shove it, Peaches. Hanna'll have my head if I lose ya now, an' I don't feel like drivin' back alone anyway."

"But if she's sick—"

"Do I look like I give a shit?"

Conrad looked at him. Apparently, he did not.

"Ugh, fine, don't listen to me. I don't know why I try anyways."

Worth cocked a brow at him. Join the fucking club, we got jackets.

They squared their shoulders, Doc Worth adjusted the collar on his coat, and then they were off after the stupid kid on the stupid road, with the stupid sign that was definitely not in a five-year-old's handwriting. The things he did for Conrad.

Up close, her dress was torn and stained down the front with dried blood, stained with ugly cuffs of moon-black iron around her wrists. The trees behind her led off into a shadow darkened winter forest, all peeling bare limbs and needles, and Doc Worth kept his eyes on the shifting gloom.

"Hello," Conrad said, awkwardly. He wasn't a kid person. "Um, you need… help?"

"Help," the girl croaked, fingers tightening around the cardboard. "Daddy said bring you back."

A shiver went up Doc Worth's neck as a blast of cold wind shook the trees. The sooner this was over, the sooner he was going to rip Conrad a new one.

The vampire went down on one knee, reaching out carefully for the girl's small hand. "Are you alright?"

"I'm hungry," the girl moaned.

"Er… no, I mean, are you sick?"

She shook her head. "Liza was sick. She's gone now. This was her dress."

Worth eyes the outfit and decided that although he wasn't really anybody to judge, he figured he probably wouldn't have been up to wearing somebody else's blood like that. At least, not if it was a sick person's blood.

Conrad looked down at the stains, eyes dilating in the moonlight. Taking that as a sign of how the hell exactly this situation could get worse, Worth grabbed a pale ear and yanked his companion to his feet.

"Fucking—"

Worth gestured at the little girl who was now wandering back towards the forest. "Are you goin' with her or can I get back to the goddamn car now?"

Conrad made a frustrated noise, and then they were following her back to wherever the hell she came from. Sharp branches tore at their skin from the second the ducked through, and the tangled veins above their heads blocked out most of the moonlight, leaving nothing but a patch of platinum grass here and there and the red ember of Worth cigarette curling invisible smoke into the air.

The girl ducked down a thin pathway, twisting between trees and onto a sandy driveway. Worth tucked his thumb up into his sleeve, searching for the cold comfort of stainless steel. The house in front of them had one window lit, but not with the familiar buzz of electric lights.

A candle flickered behind the curtains. The shadow of a man stood in the doorway.

As they got closer, Worth spotted a twin red ember in the stranger's mouth, and they nodded to each other because, y'know, you have to acknowledge good taste at least. Shady Jack here knew how to keep it classy.

"Miri," the stranger said, gesturing for the girl to join him. "Who are these people?"

"I got help," the girl answered, tone unfocused. "Just like you said."

The stranger's suspicious look eased slightly. "My apologies," he sighed, "I was hoping for women. Maternal instincts and all that."

Conrad visibly relaxed, and Worth wanted to slap him because reasonable did not equal safe, it never had and it definitely never would in this world.

"It's okay," the vampire assured their host, ignoring everything else. "My… uh, this guy is Doctor Worth. Maybe he can help you."

The urge to slap his companion increased tenfold. What did he look like, a charity service? "Call me Doc," he said, instead, because he wasn't a damn idiot unlike some people. Don't show weakness in front of potentially dangerous strangers.

A second of tension ran through the local man's shoulders, like he was trying to decide something quickly and everything hung on his choice. He looked away.

"We're the survivors around here," he told them, "my family and a couple people from Dunny. My wife… is sick. Maybe you can help, Doc."

He turned and started inside, and Worth looked over at his vampiric traveling buddy. The stranger turned around and gave them a worn "are you coming?" look.

Conrad shuffled. "Um, I have this thing about going where I'm not invited…"

Their host made an irritated noise. "Well then you're invited already, now come on."

And they followed him into the house, against Worth's screeching better judgment.

"I don't know if you know this, but some people are immune to the disease," Shady Jack told them, grabbing a burning candle off the kitchen counter as they passed through. "It runs in families, mostly. Chaplin's son didn't catch it either, although his daughter wasn't as lucky. My whole house is bug free, but we're unusual. I've been taking in the survivors, everybody from around here and Asheville, ever since the refugees started looting the stores in town."

"Refugees?" Conrad echoed.

"The ones who run. Some of them are survivors, some of them just die a little later and a couple cities over. They cut the power everywhere a day or so after the riots started, I don't know, maybe because nobody was left to work the generators. Most of Dunny burned down when they tried to use too many candles. Nobody wants to stay where they are now, nothing working and everybody dying, and the refugees try to make a break for it. Try to find somewhere that isn't infected."

Conrad looked at Worth.

"There's no food coming in, either," their host went on, "so they're out looking for a meal too, sometimes. Especially since Dunny burned down. Truck drivers all dead, fridges all zapped out, no gas… It's getting harder to find a decent dinner."

The two of them hadn't had to worry about food since they ripped off the gas station. Worth wondered for a moment what Hanna was doing about that.

Conrad was nodding, beside him, hands tucked safely into pockets. "We're out of food too," Conrad lied—admirably—and Worth had to grudgingly admit that maybe Conrad did listen sometimes. Not when it really mattered though, obviously, and he was still pissed off.

Shady Jack made a humming noise and gestured towards what looked like a basement door. While no one was looking, Doc Worth reached for the nearby countertop.

"So what exactly is wrong with your wife?" Conrad asked, settling his white converses on the carpeted stairs. "I know you said she was sick, but isn't your whole family immune?"

"Well actually," Shady Jack replied, rounding the corner, "I have to admit I was lying about that."

Then things happened very fast.

Worth swung out with the butcher's knife he'd stolen in the kitchen, carving a bloody hole into their host's shoulder just as he turned back to them with a pistol in hand. The gun dropped, and Doc Worth dove at the shrieking bastard with every cell screaming for annihilation, aiming bloody steel at the stranger's throat.

They went down in a tangle of arms just as another stranger came rushing out of the basement's dark corners, and Worth turned to Conrad who was standing stunned at the stairwell.

"Get the fuckin' gun!" he yelled, clawing a dying man's hands away from his throat. "What, do I have ta tell ya every damn thing?"

And then Worth was rolling off of Shady Jack's bleeding almost-corpse, turning to face the woman with a shotgun aimed at his face. His back bumped against one of the things hanging from the ceiling all around the room. Today was just not his day.

"You killed my husband," she hissed, looking down at the twitching body of their double-crossing host. She looked up again, and the glitter in her eyes was scarier than the sawn-off in her hands. "Mister, I'm going to fuck. You. Up."

In that split second, Worth finally noticed what exactly was hanging behind her. His breath caught.

"You guys 're bloody cannibals."

A shot went off, and then the woman was collapsing to the floor with blood pouring out of her abdomen, red that mixed with rusty iron long dried into the carpet.

Worth turned around to find Conrad gripping the pistol with shaking hands. "It took me a while to get the safety off," he whispered.

For a frozen second, they looked around the room at the ugly masses suspended from the ceiling, red stains seeping across the carpet, and realized that there must be a lot more people in this house than just these two psychotic fuckers.

The next thing Doc Worth knew, they were racing through the front door and out into the moonlit yard, and there were voices starting to yell behind them but he couldn't make out the words. The beginnings of frost covered the grass, and he could feel his feet wanting to slip out from under him, and hell, he was so alive his cells were practically singing.

Shadows. Four. Up ahead, standing at the edge of the field.

The world shook with every pounding footstep, and the ground between them shrunk to nothing. Like matching cogs in a single machine, the fugitives dashed into the line—metal flashed and Worth could hear himself laughing, could hear gunshots from his friend's pistol, could see one of the shadow men collapse inches away from him.

He took the second down with a steel point through the eye socket, aimed for the third and missed, aimed again and hit just as the latest bullet tore through this shadow man's other arm.

But it's always the last one that gives you trouble.

"Fuck!" Conrad shouted, and behind him the fourth shadow was tightening the hold on his arm lock.

The pistol fell, and Worth froze.

"You killed Marty," the man accused, jerking Conrad's arms again, just for kicks.

"Yanno," Doc Worth said, sliding into a better stance, "I'm getting' real tired of hearin' that. So we bloody killed some people, it ain't like yer the Dalai Lama yerself!"

"You sliced a goddamn hole in my neck, and you're going to pay," the man insisted. "I'm gonna kill you, but first I'm gonna do a number on your well-dressed friend here. Sound like a good time?"

Doc Worth gritted his teeth. The fun was over.

"Blood," Conrad muttered, randomly, voice drifting through the space between them. "You're bleeding."

Oh, shit.

The man looked down. "That's what I said," he growled. "Your lunatic friend over there got a knife in me."

Conrad swung his head upwards, a weird boneless motion that left him looking in the shadowy man's nervous-blinking eye.

"You're bleeding," Conrad repeated, in an eerily polite tone. "Everybody's bleeding, and I’m… so hungry. I’m so hungry. I'm sorry, you should know I'm not normally like this…"

Joints cracked.

"I hope you don't think any less of me."

And then Conrad was twisting in the shadow man's grip like a snake, sinking fang and canines alike into the moon-white flesh on his assailant's neck, and he sucked.

-A-

The digital clock on the dashboard read 4:45.

Conrad sat in the driver's seat. His hands were vices around the steering wheel, and his eyes were empty unfocused headlights staring off into the unmoving darkness.

Worth sat in the passenger's seat, cleaning his new weapons.

4:46.

They'd been like this since Conrad ghosted out of the woods and slid into the Cadillac, buzzing buzzing buzzing silence like a bubble around his not-so-pale body. And Worth hadn't said anything because he was tired, because he was pissed off, because he was worried, and he was wary of telegraphing the wrong one of those emotions.

4:47.

"He deserved it," Conrad whispered, at last, sliding a white hot poker into the thick silence. "He was a cannibal. They all were. He deserved it. I'm not a monster."

Doc Worth tossed the pistol into the back seat. "Bullshit," he replied. "You were stressed and scared outta yer motherfucking mind and you were hungry. Don't make this about justice and morality or nonna that shit. It ain't. Ya lost yer fuckin' mind n' that's all there is to it."

Conrad sucked in an angry breath, and for a moment Worth though he was going to scream and deny it all and break down, and ruin this one working thing and kick Worth out of the car once and for all. But nothing followed except a sigh.

"You better leave me."

Doc Worth turned to look at him, frowning. "Scuze me, I'm not sure I heard that righ'."

The younger man punched the steering wheel hard enough to bruise the shit out of his knuckles, and the horn blasted into the countryside.

"Leave me here!" he shouted, throwing the door open for the second time in an hour and scrambling out into the night air. "We aren't even friends, you don't need to keep babysitting me like this! I'm fucking everything up and I'm tired of it, I'm tired of running and fighting and trying not to think about things! I'm tired of just slowing you down! Leave me here and I'll go suburn myself to death or something, I don't even care anymore."

Conrad slammed the door behind him and stomped off down the road. Worth groaned and, swearing under his breath, scrambled out after him for the second time in an hour.

"Hey drama queen," he yelled, stalking around the hood of their car, "get yer fuckin' ass back here! Jesus Christ, you want some midol or somethin'?"

The absolute fury on Conrad's face just made him louder.

"Yeah, get yer ass back here before somebody else comes along and tries t' kill ya! Bloody Hell, Confag, yer sense a self-preservation is total shit! I can't believe ya put me through this kinda shit, I oughta—"

"What, leave me?" Conrad screamed back. "That's what I'm asking you to do, you fucking idiot!"

Doc Worth paused.

Conrad looked at him, flushed with guilty blood and seething anger.

Doc Worth looked away first, for probably the first time in his life.

"Eh, Connie," he murmured, feeling his voice grating in his own throat. He was tired. "What ya want me to say? Yer a fuckin' liability an' we both know it."

Cold wind whistled down the road, carrying ashes from a city far away.

"Yer gonna get us killed if you don't get a grip on reality, and the fact that ya need human blood to get it up in the mornin' isn't helpin' matters right now. You want things to be normal so bad it's like yer completely blind to what’s in front of ya. If ya can't get a grip on the world quick, I'd be better off leavin' ya here an' cuttin' my losses."

Conrad only looked at him.

"The thing is…" Worth went on, pausing to cough, "The thing is, I don't want to."

"Could've fooled me," Conrad muttered.

Doc Worth's spine snapped straight. "Oi, are ya really that fucking unobservant, or have I been dreamin' the last five days? Princess, I came and bloody dragged ya outta yer apartment. I let ya drive the goddamn Cadillac! You think I don't wanna drive the goddamn Cadillac? Christ, get yer head outta yer ass for five seconds! Who comes rushin' in after ya every time ya screw something up? Who gets ya the goddamn blood without ever chargin' a nickel? Who goes to the trouble of startin' fights with ya so ya won't blow a gasket when we're in the middle a something important?"

Maybe he should have shut up a couple sentences back. On the other hand, in for a penny.

"Tell me who's had yer back since the world fucking ended? Huh? I oughta ring yer scrawny li'l neck, that's what I oughta do, and then we're getting' back in the car and we're driving to goddamn Salem whether you like it or no, and if ya try anything as damn stupid as crawling out into the sun to end yer miserable faggotry I'll put y' in the trunk and drive us both ter Salem by myself!"

"Uh." Conrad looked at him like he'd just admitted to being Joan of Arc. "…I didn't know you cared?"

"I don't," Worth growled, yanking the idiot vampire back to the car by the wrist. "Hanna'd cry like a friggin' baby if I let somethin' happen to his faggot friend. I can't stand cry-babies."

Worth shoved him towards the driver's seat and crossed his arms, waiting. For a moment, his companion just stared back, and the clicking and grinding of wheels in his head was really getting on the Doc's nerves. After long seconds, Conrad smiled, and then Conrad pulled back and punched him in the face.

The car door closed, and then his friend started up the engine.

-A-

You have 1 text message:

HEY CONMAN, TEXT BACK IF YOU'RE STILL WALKING.

YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THIS.

The road has a mind of its own.

That's just a poetic way of saying that some things are bound unravel a certain way, no matter how bad you fight it. Some things have to be dealt with sooner or later.

Worth figured that out somewhere along the way. Too many nights of trying not to look up at the stars, trying not to get sucked back into let's-remember, too many times when his heart jumpstarted like an electrocuted engine and he had to pretend that the first thought in his head hadn't been can't lose him too.

The road doesn't like lies.

That's just a poetic way of saying that the truth is gonna out, one way or another, if you spend long enough trying to ignore it. But still.

The road demands to be acknowledged.

-A-

Tuesday.

Salem.

It was three o'clock in the morning, and Worth had the window rolled down as they raced through tiny streets, where spring was still a far away promise hanging over frostbitten heads. He said something to Conrad, but the wind snapped his words away and he gave up. Too much trouble.

Conrad's teeth were gritted, and that meant he was thinking about where they were going, whether it would be any different, if they could trust Hanna to take care of them, moan moan moan.

He let the pansy worry.

The world blurred at fifty miles an hour, which was as fast as Confag was willing to go down a winding New England road. He figured he'd bitch about it some other time.

Something caught his eye. Outside the window, down the road where night created a muddled pit of half-seen suspicion, there was something like a man's silhouette standing at the far end of a bridge—and when the Doc leaned forward to get a better look, Conrad flicked his eyes that way.

"Great," he muttered, "running water, that's gonna be pleasant. Yet another gift from Hanna."

Doc Worth let out a slow breath. "Y'think it looks like a bloke out there?"

"You're asking me?" Conrad snorted. "My night vision isn't exactly up to folk-tale par."

"Righ'. Shoulda known better'n to think you'd be helpful."

The vampire made an annoyed noise, but he was too used to Worth by now to take the bait. Snooty little fag was getting smarter. Worth would just have to up the ante, wouldn't he?

He started to say something else, but a shadow out the corner of his eye halted the words.

Motion at the end of the bridge. More shapes.

"Well well," Doc Worth muttered, "looks like we got ourselves invited to a party."

Conrad squinted out into the darkness, and then he sat back with a hiss. "Fucking fantastic."

The Cadillac rolled to a stop at the edge of the bridge, headlights shining on a rank of not quite human shapes. It was hard to get a good look, because they seemed to suck the light in more than reflect it, and the hoods pulled over their faces left a lot to be desired—or maybe that wasn't a hood, Worth wasn't sure, but it creeped him the fuck out and he found himself trying not to look at them directly.

"Wraiths," Conrad growled, tendons in his neck sharpening into tense lines. "Fucking shadow people."

"An' that means, wha', exactly?"

"They're a kind of fey," the vampire muttered, "We had a run in with one last fall. Hanna said that they're really malicious, I think they feed off fear. Shadow people. Of all the fucking…"

Doc Worth glanced back through the rear window, some kind of something sparking off in his head. "They ain't gonna let us leave, are they?"

"Not likely," his companion replied, flicking the stick shift into park. "We're going to die, this is just fantastic, goddamn, what a fantastic ending. Killed by Wraiths ten miles from Salem."

Doc Worth hummed and looked out at the waiting creatures again, ran a thumb over his stubble. "Fey, eh?"

"Yes, that's what I said," Conrad growled, and then relapsed into soft swearing.

There was a mess of tools in the Cadillac's trunk. Whoever had originally owned the vintage Cadillac had been keen on servicing it himself, and there had to have been at least five different kinds of wrenches, not to mention various tools that Worth had never seen before—and back in his college days, he'd known a thing or two about cars.

His eyes strayed back towards the cradled cache.

"Well," he announced, "lesse what they want, then."

Conrad turned so quickly something cracked. "The hell, Worth? How many times have you told me not to get out of the damn car?"

Doc Worth shrugged. "Yeah, but tha's you. Unlike yer sorry ass, I happen t' know what I'm doin'."

And then he threw the door open, climbed out and waited impatiently. Cold wind blasted over the river, and the edges of Worth's coat caught the moonlight as he leaned against the stone wall. Conrad disentangled himself with more vague swearing.

"Ask 'em what they're holdin' up the show fer," Worth ordered, nodding towards the line with a grin.

Conrad spared a second to look over at the doctor. Worth looked back. The wind smelled like smoke and winter. After one last curse, the younger man tugged on his collar and went stalking off towards the Wraiths, seething indignant because at least anger didn't leave any room for fear. Worth watched him for a precious second, and then he was sliding behind the Cadillac, pulling open the trunk and reaching inside.

He could hear Conrad clearing his throat.

"Uh," the undead man's voice came sliding back across the bridge, "whoever you people are, it'd be really great if you'd, uh, move for a second?"

There was silence, and Worth clicked the trunk back into place.

A voice that wasn't so much a voice as branches rattling against a window, floorboards creaking in an attic, whispered into the places that Conrad's voice hadn't filled.

"You are not human…" it rattled, suspicious. "Go away, Redlips. Your kind are not welcome here."

Worth made his way up behind Conrad, eyed the creatures as much as he could while his vision fought to slide away from them like water running off a leaf. Wasn't much to look at anyways.

"Oi, 'm human," he cut in, resting a hand on Conrad's not-quite-shaking shoulder. "I got people waitin' fer me on the other side. Gonna let me through?"

A clicking noise filled the air, and the hair on the back of Worth's neck ran with black electricity.

"We have no objection to humans," the Wraith creaked, at last. "Swear to enter under the hand of the Shadows, and you may join the black city."

"Real gracious. 'Ow abou' Conniekins 'ere?"

"The Redlips may not pass. You may."

Doc Worth tilted towards his traveling companion. A nasty grin split the seam over his teeth. "Sorry princess," he said, grabbing the startled vampire's chin. "I gotta get in that city. Looks like yer on yer own after all."

Conrad's eyes flared up with sheer rage. "You're just going to leave me, after all that? You motherfucking… You said you wanted to stay with me!"

"Nah, I said it was convi'ent," Worth corrected, "an' I didn' want Hanna cryin' all over my goddamn jacket. But right about now… I ain't gettin' nowhere less I ditch you."

He raised one brow, almost pityingly.

"An' I'm sure Hanna'll get over it fast enough. I'll buy 'im a proper puppy 'r somethin'. He'll forget ya in a month tops."

The look on Conrad's face was murderous, like the guy with a pistol in hand who found his wife in bed with another man. Wisps of white curled away from his moon-silver skin. The clicking started up again.

"I trusted you," the vampire spat, more white wisps smoking off him.

"Shoulda known better," Worth shrugged, wrapping his cold fingers more tightly around the weight in his right hand. "Y' said it yerself. I'm an egotistical bastard. Doc Worth don't look out for nobody but 'imself."

White smoke. That face. Worth realized he recognized the symptoms from when Conrad had flipped a shit on the cannibal, and he grinned even harder. A step back, and then another step back, and he was almost level with the Wraiths.

"Or," he mused, glittering eyes locked on Conrad's blazing ones, "maybe I just needed a distraction."

And then he turned on his heel and aimed one heavy end of a tire iron at the nearest indistinct head.

The difference between Doc Worth and Conrad was that the Doc always had his eye on a solution. The thing about Fey is that they have certain rules, just like every supernatural creature, and when you know the tricks suddenly the high and mighty aren't quite so mighty anymore. Believe it or not, sometimes he listens when Hanna talks.

Fun fact number one. Crosses don't tear massive gaping holes in Fey bodies because the Christian church says so. That shit is older than anybody's religion, older than written history. Equal armed crosses were a sun symbol since the beginning of time.

Fun fact number two. The really great thing about tire irons is—they're really just massive iron crosses, when you get down to it.

Iron is good.

Doc Worth swung cold metal at the nearest shape, tearing a fizzling swath through the black outline, turned and swung again, ears ringing with a high pitched shriek wherever his makeshift weapon rent holes around him. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of half-transformed flesh and skeletal fingers sinking through a shadow neck as easily as cheesecloth—

He laughed, and swung again.

This was it.

The push-and-pull, duck-and-thrust tide dragged them out into an ocean of laughing shrieking moonlight, until there was nothing left at the bridge's end but a human and an undead man, and the soft hum of a forgotten engine.

Worth tossed the tire iron away and smirked back at his friend.

"Y' really thought I was leavin' ya, eh?"

Moonlight seemed to congeal on Conrad's skin, leaving pale human flesh in its wake. The sharp bone of his jaw disappeared. "Piss off," he shot back, rubbing the place where his glasses pressed into his nose.

"I mean," the older man went on, "wasn' like it was too hard t' figgur out what I was doin'."

"Piss. Off. Seriously."

Doc Worth flipped a careless hand and headed back to the car.

"I gotcher back, sweetcheeks. Now get yer ass in the car," he called over his shoulder. "Don' want ya wand'rin' off inter another nest of 'em."

As he turned back to the Cadillac, he almost missed the shrewd look on Conrad's face—but he didn't think much on it, really. It didn't quite sit comfortable with him, but there were more important things to deal with. Right now, they had places to be.

-A-

You have 1 text message:

777 DORMIER STREET

BE THERE OR BE SQUARE

-A-

The moon was full two days ago. Worth only noticed it because Conrad noticed it first, made an offhanded comment about how rare werewolves were. Probably had his panties all up in a bunch about the crazy Mohawk chick. Worth had scowled and taken a shot at Conrad's sexuality, because that was guaranteed to piss him the hell off every time.

You know, something about waning moons just got him all uneasy.

The cherry red Cadillac purred down New England streets, glancing streetlights off its sides for the first time in almost a week. Without thinking, Worth reached for his cigarettes. Somebody had this town running.

Eyes melted here and there into the background, watching them go. Unlike every other town or city they had passed through—even only briefly—there were no corpses strewn across the streets or tucked into gutters. Only a few broken windows. No candles in the upper stories.

Almost like the world wasn't dying.

A pale face flashed through a doorway, and Doc Worth decided, not quite.

Dormier Street turned out to be a forgotten dockside road, and the Cadillac clashed horribly with the collapsing wooden warehouses. They loomed just off the cracked pavement, black and empty like the chest of the dead boy Worth still couldn't get out of his head.

Light spilled from the frame of number 777.

Conrad parked outside, opened his door to a low rumble of voices seeping out with the light. The vampire took a look around and adjusted his sleeves, ran a hand through the mess of his black hair—he'd made the mistake of lamenting the lack of gel days ago, and Worth still hadn't let him live it down.

"Think Hanna's in there?" Conrad asked, leaning against the cooling metal as Worth shrugged on his jacket.

"Only place on the damn block wit' the lights on," Worth said around his cigarette. "If he ain't in there, we're walkin' inter 'n ambush."

"Uggghhh. Why does everybody want us dead?"

"Mostly 'cause I'm so damn good lookin', the jealous bastards."

They met glances for a brief second, and then they were off towards the party.

They pushed though the door into a yellow-lit room, massive and filled with people who didn't all look quite like people. A cloud of voices buzzed overhead, near the rafters where there was a loft full of indistinct humanoid shapes, hanging away from the well-lit interior. A flash of orange caught Worth's eye, and he followed it toward the makeshift stage erected in the middle of the room.

A boy named Hanna had his arms thrown out to the wings.

"—You know I'm right!" he shouted, somehow meeting every eye in the sprawling room at the same time. "You heard Casimiro, you've seen it yourselves!"

Doc Worth dug a sharp elbow into his undead companion's side. He cut off the resulting bitch fit with a well aimed finger. A kind of hush fell over the crowd.

"I know you're tired of getting pushed around," Hanna was saying, looking up at the loft full of indistinct figures. "And I know it's gotta feel like you're finally getting a chance for revenge—I know! I know! Nobody likes hiding, nobody likes being oppressed. You've been locking yourselves away in fairy-forts and mansions for a hundred years now, you've been starving yourselves and sleeping in basements because you can't come out at night anymore. I know!"

Worth leaned back against the wall, scanning the crowd, watching faces watching Hanna—emotions sliding behind eyes, quick flutters of righteous anger before immortal discipline shuttered them away.

"I understand cabin fever, I really do! And I know what it's like to be wronged, to want to get even no matter what it takes—but you can't let your anger blind you! That's what humans do, and you've seen where it gets them. It feels good now, sure, it feels amazing and you'll finally show them all and you'll be rid of those idiot humans once and for all and then—What?"

The hyper-motion on stage stilled.

"What then?"

He looked down.

" You'll be alone. It'll be just you. You and yourselves and rocks and dirt, and there'll be no one to make it balance. Think about it! There's a reason why you've never tried to stamp out humanity before—there's a reason why even you can't remember a time before people. We have to have each other! You need us! We need you! Everything gets fucked up and unbalanced otherwise, you saw what happened in the last hundred years!"

A rumble went through the crowd, and Worth took another drag on his cigarette, watching.

"I know what you're thinking: yeah, it's great for the vampires, this is their dinner we're talking about—but that's just it! One way or another, we all feed back into the same cycle. If you take us out of the equation, who's going to till the farms? Who's going to leave out food, tell the stories, make the machines? Where will you go for food or neutral ground, where will you go for the old games?"

Hanna paced like a caged tiger.

"You're immortals, you've got the foresight that humans don't have. Think about tomorrow, or next century, or next millennia, even. Don't let something this minor screw up your judgment. The cities are falling—all the factories and the police forces and the scientists that want to slice you open and see what makes you tick. All the things that fucked up the balance are dying! The old world is dying! The power is back with you, but the old laws are weak. You're angry. If you let revenge eat at you, you'll find way around them. And once you destroy humanity, you'll turn back on yourselves."

A low wave of hisses rolled in from the back of the warehouse, from somewhere in the dark corners of the room. Hanna pointed a stiff finger towards them.

"Think you won't? Look at the werewolf-vampire wars back in the dark ages. Look at the Unseelie court back in the BC's. Every time humans lose power, every time the balance swings back towards you… the first thing you do is turn against each other! This isn't any different! You've seen what happens, some of you first hand!"

Pause.

"So that's where my proposition comes in. We need new laws. We need a treaty. There has to be some kind of guideline to keep everyone from walking all over everyone else, something that we'll all hate equally even if that's all we can agree on it. I don't want the wolf packs in Ohio hunting down all us humans—and you know what? I don't want the mages rounding the fey up into frickin' concentration camps either! And you know what I really really don't want?"

Hanna looked towards the door, and for a second Worth thought that maybe he noticed them—but nah, there was nothing. The words kept pouring out like blood from a head wound.

"I don't want the damn Wraiths starting this fucking territory feud with the vampires and shutting all the people up like livestock. How many laws does that break? Yeah. This is your problem too. Think it won't affect you? Think again. The shadow people don't want any competition, they don't want anybody's rules—it's not just the vampires. Look, you guys know better than anyone that laws only have as much power as people give them. What I'm asking is that we give them power again."

"Think about it."

And that was when Worth noticed the Zombie for the first time. He glided into motion so subtly that you didn't even see him until the stitched green hand was closing over Hanna's shoulder and leading him away, down off the stage and into the crowd. Like some kind of ghost machine.

Whatever spell Hanna's voice had cast over the crowd, it broke the second he stepped off stage and disappeared between their bodies. Voices clanged over voices, layer and layers and layers, almost as quickly as the noise had ceased.

Worth looked over at Conrad, raised brow. Ain't that somethin'.

The vampire snorted. Hanna's an idiot.

Doc Worth took a drag of his dwindling smoke, watching debates break out between a green-skinned woman and a white-skinned vampire. To his left, an elf twisted awkwardly to avoid brushing the bodies around her. This many species were just not meant to come under the same roof—had to be some bad shit going down if all the races agreed to play nice for the night.

"Let's go get the ginger," Worth rasped, after a long moment, eyeing one particularly fine ass between here and there. No harm in trying, is there?

"Lead the way," Conrad muttered, staring at the crowd with the horrified look of the mildly agoraphobic.

Doc Worth looked sideways at him. "Ladies first, peaches." He grabbed the vampire by the shoulder and shoved him headfirst into the buzzing throng.

Hey, what's a doctor for?

-A-

Hanna was standing in the far west corner when they finally found him, chatting the ear off a one-eyed vampire. Hanna was mid-sentence when he noticed them, pushing between two gnomes, and his blue eyes went bright like twin lighthouse beacons.

"Doc! Connie! Man I'm glad to see you!"

Worth ran an eye down his tiny form. Kind of greasy hair, bags under the eyes, periodic trembling in the left hand—oh hell. The doctor grabbed him by the ear.

"Kid, ya got yerself a doctor's appointment. Tell yer buddies g'bye, we're going back t' the damn car so I kin see what kinda damage y've done while I was off watching Count Fagula."

("I deeply hate it when you call me that—")

Hanna laughed nervously. "Uh, I really don't have time for a checkup. There's a lot of people I gotta talk to, you know, the Selkies are here from Maine and I really gotta talk to them myself 'cause of the whole thing with Vesser's mom—"

"What's going on?" Conrad demanded, busting into the conversation with the righteous indignation of the customarily ignored. Worth rolled his eyes.

"Good question," Hanna replied, relived for a distraction. "You see all these guys here?"

"Yes Hanna, I've been seeing them for the last ten minutes."

"Yeah, well, every one of these guys is a delegate from one of the Moonlight Races—er, paranormal races. That guy—" he pointed to a hulking man in a long overcoat, "—he's a troll. The tribes in the Appalachians sent him up a couple days ago. That woman—" he pointed to a lady in a flowing white gown, "—she's a Fey, from the Seelie Court. We've got the Ghost and poltergeist representatives up in the rafters, along with a few… a few Wraiths. They make the ghosts nervous, I can tell. There's Iwa up there too, they came up from Louisiana and some other places. It's amazing! Do you know how many of these guys immigrated here in the old days? I couldn't even believe it, it's like every country that came to America brought somebody along for the ride!"

Conrad pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's interesting and all, Hanna, but what is going on here?"

The zombie—shit, where'd he come from?—placed a placating hand on Conrad's shoulder.

"It's hard to explain," he said, soft and even. "You have to understand what's been happening while you were on the road. The riots started Wednesday… there was a lot of killing. People died. That sort of chaos brings out the darker side of the world."

"There's this sort of barometer of weakness," Hanna agreed, making a balancing motion. "It's a power struggle, I guess, between humanity and the supernatural, Light-side/Dark-side of the force type stuff. As soon as everyone realized how bad things were going to get—you know, people dying, sickness, infrastructure collapsing—pretty much all Hell broke loose. There's been an imbalance swinging towards humans for a long time now, and, you know, pendulum effect."

Conrad looked at him like he was speaking gibberish. "What?"

"What he means," the Zombie cut in, "is that when the oppressed races realized their oppressors were losing power, they took the opportunity to get even."

"Casimiro found me about five hours after things really started getting out of hand," the younger man piped up, gesturing towards the tall vampire he'd been speaking with earlier. "About the same time as the riots did. Really, it was Finas' idea, but you know Casimiro always does the talking so yeah, he was all like things are getting out of hand and I was all like—"

"Can it, Cross," the tall vampire cut in, "I know where this is going, and you will not make me out to be some sort of good guy. I know how to look out for my interests, that's all."

Worth cleared his throat, and the four idiots looked back at him like he'd fired a gun. What, he didn't sound that bad. A little phlegm adds character.

"If thissus how ya talk when I ain't around," he said, cocking a brow, "makes me glad I don' go on any of yer dumbass adventures. Casi-whatever, whoever the hell y' are, go make nice with a gnome or somethin'. I don' need yer dead ass hoverin' over my patient."

The vampire scowled dangerously. "You don't know who you're talking to."

"Yeah yeah, save it Cap'n Depth Perception." Doc Worth looked at him for a second. "Unless ya wanna take it outside, eh? Can ya even walk through doors like that?"

The Casimiro practically growled, fingers clenching into long-nailed fists that would probably hurt like balls if they hit your face. Worth grinned around the butt of his cigarette.

"Well?"

And that was when the lights went out.

Screams and curses went up from every corner of the room, and the vampire spun like a top, disappeared off into the crowd. Conrad grabbed Doc Worth's arm and then nearly fell backwards in his haste to let go when he realized what he was touching.

"Fuck," Hanna hissed, digging through his pockets, "fucking Wraiths—where's my…"

Conrad and Worth looked at each other.

"Hanna, what's happening?" Conrad demanded, rubbing his hands vaguely against his jeans. "What are you not telling us?"

The magician produced his sharpie with a crow of triumph. "Yes! Uh, yeah, so the Wraiths really don't want us to make a federation; they've been sabotaging us since Saturday. They can't come into direct light, so yanno, we had the whole placed rigged up to keep them out but somebody must have fallen asleep on duty or, I dunno, maybe they got ballsy and took the guard out of commission—who was it, Havel, that mer-guy we met this morning?—and now they're gonna try to kill us all probably, so I really have to go."

Then there was an empty place where Hanna had been standing, and the dead guy was racing off after him.

"Hanna FUCKIN' CROSS," Doc Worth yelled after him, "you get yer ass back here or I'm gonna kill ya MYSELF!"

Conrad huffed and rolled up his sleeves. "C'mon," he muttered, elbowing his companion, "let's go get ourselves fucked again."

Conrad ran after them, and Worth ran after him, swearing the whole bloody way. Nobody around here had any goddamn sense of self-preservation.

Busting through the crowd, wrists bruising throats and heels digging into feet, Worth knocked a blue creature out of the way and found himself standing between Conrad and Hanna with his feet digging into the stone-cold body of whatever poor bastard got there first.

The door was thrown open, warehouse doors swung open to the wind and moonlight, and a mass of Wraiths filled the space just beyond the opening. Worth felt Conrad take a deep, unnecessary breath beside him, could practically feel the jittering of Hanna's cells. He took another drag, observing.

"We told you not to come here," Hanna said, almost managing to sound neutral. "You aren't welcome."

A familiar clicking sounded through the warehouse and down the street. Laughing. The bastards were laughing at him.

"Unlike your Redlipped allies," the Wraith—one of the Wraiths, all of the Wraiths—whispered, like wind whispering through the corners of an old house, "Shadows do not need to be invited."

"We gave you a chance to send delegates," Hanna told them, "and you said no. Well. Nobody wants friends like you anyways. You're more trustworthy as enemies. The hell do you want?"

"The Redlips," it—they—creaked, "and the angry one. They killed our people. We will have them. And then, we will destroy your infantile meeting and grind the human-loving traitors into dust for fires to burn and scatter."

Hanna looked sideways at Worth.

He shrugged. "Well they got the whole damn city blockaded, don't they? Had ter get through some'ow."

The Wraiths hissed.

"You're not getting in here," Hanna told them, and suddenly he wasn't a redheaded klutz with an accidental talent for magic anymore. It had been a long time since he'd seen that, and Worth was sort of startled by the shift.

Only sort of, though.

"If you want to get in there," Hanna said, hard as iron, "you have to get through us."

("Great cliché," Conrad muttered, and was promptly ignored.)

"Oi," Worth said, "I ain't volunteered for the fuckin' coast guard, Hanna."

Hanna grinned at him, blue eyes bluer than the sky even in the moonlight—impossible, you don't see colors in low light situations, what the hell—and said, "Think of it this way. The fewer people I have to deal with, the less you gotta patch me up."

Worth blew out a cloud of smoke, spit out his fag and ground it under his heel. Moonlight disappeared into the shoulders of a hundred living shadows.

"Awright," Worth said, "but ya owe me one."

And then he was reaching into his shirt where Lamont's iron crucifix still hung, tugging the chain over his head. He wrapped it so that the cross bit into his knuckles.

"Here comes the fun part."

They sprang into motion in the same moment, four bodies like a wave tugged out to meet the moon—two dead men and two humans; a vampire and a doctor, a magician and a zombie. It was good to be fighting again—swings and hooks and kicks, leaving gaping holes where his armored fist tore through solid shadow.

Punch and duck—where the crucifix didn't hit, the creatures were like moving ice—and somehow Worth ended up with his back against Conrad's, and he knew without turning around that the vampire had his claws out, and he was gritting his teeth like he always did when the two of them fought, and Worth thought he might be the luckiest son of a bitch in the world—

One of the Wraiths finally landed a hit on him: sunk inky talons into the thin flesh over his ribs as he punched through another shadow aiming for Conrad's side. The feeling almost knocked him over. It wasn't pain—pain he knew, pain was sweet and familiar—it was like death on impact, freezing and empty.

A low moan escaped his windpipe.

Conrad turned quicker than lightning and sank white claws into the Wraith's side, red eyes dilating to endless black rings.

You could almost hear the thing that wasn't his humanity growling.

And then the wind blew him back to his feet and the sensation was gone and, shit, maybe it was brushing so close to the abyss or maybe it was what Conrad's not-humanity hadn't said, but he was twice as alive now. Words gone. Motion. Sweet destruction.

That was the wave he rode until they found themselves surrounded, pinned in by a new wave of shadow people, pouring out from all the black crevices on the street—under the gable of number 776, from between the twisted knots of the oak tree at 778—and he realized this wasn't going to fucking work.

"Any bright ideas, Hanna?" he muttered, meeting the zombie's glowing eyes. Hoping for another Cross-brand miracle.

"Just one," Hanna replied.

Quick as a flash, he uncurled his glowing palm—light as a weapon, not bad—and scribbled something on his fingertips. There was a crackle of electricity and then the glow became a beacon blasting up through the midnight sky.

"I didn't want to do this," Hanna muttered through clenched teeth. "This is going to hurt our allies too, but we need all the power we can get."

Light flashed.

The sudden clang of a church bell rattled the warehouse, rang down the street and shook the atoms of whatever dark matter Wraiths were made from. You could almost see it in your head, suspended stories above the ground and swinging with the unstoppable force of gravity.

BRANNNGGG.

Somewhere behind them, Worth vaguely heard swearing and cries of pain.

The ringing went on until the sea of shadows around them fled or shook apart and collapsed onto the gravel like nitrogen bursting across a warm floor; until the world shrunk back down to definitions and perceptions. Worth found himself panting, fingers white from lack of circulation, watching the yellow glow on Hanna's palm die down to an ember and disappear. Conrad's wicked hands shrunk back to human proportions along with his pupils.

The last ring faded away.

"You okay?" the vampire asked him, too dazed to remember he didn't give a shit about Worth.

Doc Worth cackled, unbinding his hand. "Best I've felt in a damn long time, Xena."

Conrad blinked at him and then rubbed his temples furiously. "Is that a complement or an insult, Jesus Christ I don't even know anymore…"

Behind him, Hanna coughed discretely and high fived his undead companion. "I'm gonna have to apologize to all the Unseelie delegates now but whatever, man that was so cool!"

"A bell?" Conrad demanded, because somebody always had to go and ask stupid questions.

"Casimiro," Hanna replied, as if that explained everything. "We worked it out as a backup system a couple days ago. Church bells really do a number on Fey."

Doc Worth rolled his neck, cracking tense vertebrae. He glanced down at the dissipating shadows around his feet, and then back at the crowd of delegates just behind the warehouse gates.

"'Ey," Doc Worth shouted, "fat lotta cowards y'are, great job holdin' down the fuckin' fort."

Hanna coughed and slapped his friend across the back. "Don't worry about it, Doc. They have a different concept of the rules of engagement. That's why it's good to have some humans around," he added, a little bit louder.

Conrad rolled his eyes and flopped down on the gravel. "How often are we going to have to do that?"

"Oh, yanno, until the guys there can hammer of some kind of agreement so maybe a week or two if we're lucky?"

The look on Conrad's face spelled tirade in capital letters, and Hanna quickly changed the subject.

"Hey Worth, isn't that Lamont's cheap-ass cross?"

The older man tucked it into the tight creases of his palm. "Yeah."

Hanna wiped a smattering of dark matter off his glasses. "He finally managed to pawn it off onto you, huh?"

"Yeah," Worth said again.

"About freakin' time. How'd he manage it?"

Worth was silent for a moment, reached into his pocket for another cigarette. The lighter fizzled into life.

"He died."

And suddenly, the look on Hanna's face made him want to climb inside the Cadillac and leave the whole stupid place behind, fuck Hanna and his fucking shockpitysympathy. Just when he thought he'd gone past it, Lamont's dead slammed him in the ribcage and broke his heart all over again, and he realized there wasn't going to be any easy way out.

"Oh, man," Hanna whispered, "I'm so sorry."

"He's dead?" Conrad echoed, paler even than usual. "This whole time?"

Worth scowled at them both and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Yes, Mary. The man's fuckin' dead. Just shut yer trap, alrigh'?"

"But then, all that stuff—"

"I said shut it, Conrad!"

The vampire recoiled.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Hanna opening his mouth—to say some useless shit, like Worth need his goddamn sympathy—but instead of words, thick hacking coughs poured out.

And blood.

Half a second later, the doctor was on his knees tugging down the kid's eyelid, staring at a web of criss-crossing blue veins spiking through the cornea—blue because he knew they were blue, he knew it like he knew his own fucking first name.

It was Luce. If you were wondering.

-A-

Doc Worth lay back in the passenger seat of the Cadillac, legs crossed and hanging out the window. Smoke twisted off into the darkness. The moon hung suspended over the treetops, broken by the spire of a church somewhere in the distance. Couple hours to dawn.

He heard the sound of the driver's door clicking open, but he didn't move.

Soft leather creaked.

He kept his eye on the rings of smoke.

"Whacher Nancy ass want now?" he demanded, filling his lungs with grey heat.

Beside him, Conrad sighed. He didn't have to look to know the stupid wimp was picking lint off his shirt.

"It's not your fault, you know," the vampire told him.

"Who the 'ell said it was my fault?" Doc Worth shot back. "I ain't said nuffin."

"God Worth, give it up. You're about as hard to read as a picture book. Hanna's your patient—Hanna's your friend. Tell me you're not kicking yourself right now."

"It ain't my fault," the older man insisted, grinding his teeth around the butt of his cigarette. "Ungrateful li'l prick wants ter go out an' ignore all my bloody warnin's, work too damn hard an' catch the motherfuckin' plague, tha's fine. Whatever. I ain't his momma."

"Yeah, that's really convincing. You should have been an actor," Conrad muttered, dripping sarcasm. "Stop being a dick for five seconds, okay?"

"Don't like it, find a dif'rent car," Worth said, still refusing to budge.

Fucking… Of course he cared, figured that out the night Lamont died. And now he was kicking the shit out of himself, running in circles trying to figure out what he could have done different, what might have changed things.

So useless.

But to say it would be to admit he lost control—that he had a weakness and he felt pain and his goddamn heart was breaking and he couldn't… he couldn't rip that wound open. Men don't show their emotions. Men don't cry.

Worth doesn't cry.

Cold air settled between them, sinking down where he'd rolled the top back. Somewhere far away, an owl's screech shattered the night. Goddamn banshees.

"He'll be fine, Worth," Conrad sighed, at last. "You know Hanna. He'll find a way through it. Somehow."

That's bloody rich. Doc Worth tilted his head back and laughed until his throat was raw.

"Stop deludin' yerself, peaches," he ground out, words scraping his mouth and windpipe. "That boy's got two days at the most, what with the way he's been runnin' 'imself to the fuckin' bone. He'll be six feet under before y' kin say 'ow much fer the small coffins?"

There was a pause, and Worth was thinking to himself, sure showed him, miserable son of a bitch, even as he felt the hand close around his lapels. In one fluid movement, Conrad had yanked him around so they were face to face and punched his lights out.

Pow.

Five minutes later, they lay in a bruised heap across the driver's seat, Conrad half-across his thudding chest.

"I know you miss him," the younger man murmured, through a split lip that refused to bleed. "Even if you won't admit it, I know you have to miss him. But you're not going to lose Hanna too. I promise."

Worth closed his eyes and concentrated on the sweet burn under his eye. That was going to leave a mark.

"How the hell can ya promise that?"

Conrad pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "I just do, okay? I still owe you one from the whole gas station thing."

Moon. Wind. Cold. It all blurred together. Nothing stayed, nothing held its form. Men don't cry. Men go it alone. Men don't ask for…

"Just… let me help," Conrad sighed, sounding almost too tired to speak. "Even bastards like you don't have to do everything alone."

Let me help.

How many days had they spent together, anyways? How long had they spent bitching and fighting and listening to Journey at two o'clock in the morning? How many bruises? How many insults? If he was a better man, he would have gotten up and left—he would have ignored whatever the hell it all meant and just walked away, left before he could see Hanna die or watch Conrad struggle to offer him what little support he could spare as a worry-sick idiot with anger-management problems.

If he was a better man, he would have just opened the door and started walking.

"Yer so damn useless."

And Worth reached into his pocket for a new smoke.

"Shit," he growled, suddenly, finding nothing but pennies and pills, "I left the whole damn pack with the ginger moron."

The mood shift startled Conrad.

"Uh… why?"

"I dunno, he asked fer one."

"Hanna smokes?"

"Not usually. Bad fer yer health, see?" Doc Worth replied, disentangling himself so he could paw through the glovebox for a spare. "Said 'e wanted one tonight though. Reminds him of m' office 'r summat."

Worth turned around with a half-burnt spare and found himself looking at an almost comically wide eyed Conrad.

"Wha'?"

"I just… I had an idea. We need to go. Now."

-A-

"Now that you mention it," Hanna said, voice hoarse, "I do feel a little better, I guess."

Conrad was standing over his bed in the RV while Worth and the dead guy stood to the side, shoulders brushing fake wooden paneling.

"How often were you coming into Worth's office before the riots?" Conrad demanded, even though he'd been there with Hanna nine out of ten times so it wasn't like he didn't know the answer already.

"I dunno, three times a week maybe? You were there, Connie," Hanna pointed out, much to the vampire's annoyance.

"So pretty damn often," Conrad surmised, choosing to bypass the obvious. "And that guy, the one Worth and I had an encounter with, the, uh, the cannibal—"

"Cannibal?" Hanna piped up, and for once he was ignored instead.

"—He was a smoker," Conrad continued. "He had the voice, not as bad as Worth's obviously, but still pretty bad. And his whole family was immune—everybody in his house was immune, even the random guys he took off the streets."

The Doc eyed his pack, resting innocuously on the bedside table. He remembered Joe Shmuck, all the mafia boys who came busting through his door, the way they'd talk about him like he was their last chance, the only thing that had ever remotely helped.

He thought about all the packs he'd emptied out for his patients.

"You probably have to get it in you early on in the sickness," the vampire was saying, "maybe within twelve hours of showing symptoms. I'm just guessing, but I bet keeping it in your system will stop you from catching the bug, like a… like a tetanus injection or something."

"Hey, Connie, this mean I don't die after all?"

The undead man glanced down at his bed-ridden friend, unable to look him in the blue-stained eye for more than a second. "Er, if you keep that shit in your lungs for the next day, maybe not. I hope not. Just, whatever you do don't stop smoking. Ugh. I can't believe I just said that."

Hanna looked up at him like a kid that just heard Christmas was coming a month early.

"Hah, Worth," Hanna cackled, turning towards the Doc, "you're not gonna look like such a bad ass when everybody else is smoking too! Man, it's gonna be a weird world."

Conrad looked back at him too, pushed up his glasses and hmmphed. "So how's that for useless, you hack?"

Worth bared his teeth in something resembling a grin. "Good li'l housewife, takin' care o' the sick kiddies. How's about ya fetch me m' slippers now?"

"You—you ungrateful dickhead!"

Worth leaned back as the pale man stomped out of the RV, spewing insults about the doctor and the heartless bitch that must have raised him. The creaking door slammed shut behind him. SMACK.

And then it was just the three of them, Hanna fiddling with the lighter as Conrad's cursing faded to nothingness. The zombie turned to examine Doc Worth, glowing orange eyes soft with muted relief. Worth looked away.

"He cares about you," the dead man said, quietly, and there wasn't a question who he meant.

The Doc snorted.

Havel, or whatever his name was today, blinked suddenly, as if he'd only just remembered that people were generally supposed to blink. "I owe you for the way you take care of Hanna," he said, his even voice firm. "Don't say it's just your job. True or not, it's irrelevant. I owe you."

The vehicle creaked, somewhere deep inside its core, like a sigh.

"Conrad… has changed a lot. He's lost a lot. Not being so much of a person myself, I readily admit I don't know much about people—but I know you give him something. Don't ignore him if he tries to give something back."

Worth tugged on the bandaging around his arms. "I ain't gonna take 'im ter the debutant ball, man."

"That isn't what I was saying," the zombie replied, "and you know it."

-A-

There was a Fey woman standing on the makeshift stage.

She was shouting something about trust and balance, real Starwars kind of shit, gesturing towards the congregation below her. Worth swore there was something different about the air tonight, a different kind of fire than the one Hanna had sparked—there's outside fire, and then there's the inside kind.

"You don't have to join me," she was saying, with a voice like how Worth always figured an angel's might sound. "None of you are bound to this cause. There will be power here if even two races choose to join me!"

Worth glanced over at Hanna, who was sucking on one of Worth's unfiltereds. His eyes were blazing like electricity and his hand was clenched tight around the Zombie's. Worth had told him to get the fuck back into bed, but Hanna's Hanna after all, and you can't tell that boy shit. Worth was going to perform an involuntary appendicectomy on him if he collapsed tonight, though.

"—I speak for all the eastern Fey courts," the female was saying, "when I pledge to work until I am dead or abandoned for the sake of this meeting. We will have a federation, or we will have nothing!"

A roar went up throughout the packed cella of number 777, Dormier Street. Doc Worth took a drag of his own cigarette and looked across the room, amused to see Hanna's zealot expression mirrored everywhere he looked.

"They're big on respect," Hanna had told him, earlier. "Symbols, yanno? They live in this world where ideas have physical power, where contracts are literally binding, and I dunno, I guess these guys act with words and talk with actions if that makes any sense. That thing we did last night? Impressed the hell out of 'em."

The Fey woman was talking again.

"I am not afraid. The Wraiths and their allies will not turn us so easily, like frightened younglings at the sunrise. They are scared and weak, but we are strong! We will show them what the Moonlight Races are capable of—you who are with me, say aye!"

As a deafening cheer blasted against the walls, Worth allowed himself to look for one last face, the only one in the room who wasn't blazing with patriotic pride.

There would be business later, unquestionably, some tedious job that Hanna would somehow manage to talk him into—and he had a feeling that it was going to be like that from here on out, whether the idiot redhead stuck around Salem to rebuild the last outpost of civilization or went gallivanting off across the country with the rest of them in tow, like some deranged crusader against the world.

But for tonight, Doc Worth met eyes with a tired, undead twenty-six year old, and the rest of it faded to nothingness.

-A-

Worth dreamed.

He dreamed that new cities rose up out of the ashes of the old, maybe better, maybe worse. There was smoke hanging in the sky, reminders of the world before—to remember, to learn.

He dreamed that a tree grew in the center of the world, a tree whose branches held up the sky and whose roots made up the earth, and stars hung from its boughs. He looked up at it, standing at the knot of one soaring root, and Lamont was standing next to him counting poker chips.

You never were a betting man.

Worth didn't bother turning. He shot back

I don' never pay ya back anyways

And Lamont smiled at him the same way he always had, just as greasy and down-right suspicious as ever, like nothing had changed between them—maybe it never had. He laughed, and he replied

That's debatable

And Worth dreamed that he was standing behind Conrad, and there were strings wrapped around his own arms and legs, tied tighter than sin and yellow as cowardice. He turned to the undead man and thrust out his bound hands

I ain't a coward

Conrad looked unimpressed.

Prove it

The string sang like an electric harp when he tugged at it. The harder he pulled, the louder it got, until it was screaming and his ears and hands were bleeding. Conrad continued to look unimpressed.

I got it, awright?

The vampire sighed angrily and turned on his heel.

You always do.

And Worth dreamed that he pulled and pulled and pulled until he collapsed and cursed and screamed. When he finally looked up, Conrad was standing above him.

Let me help.

Doc Worth looked away. Luce looked away.

Don't need yer nancy-boy help, sweetheart

Conrad scowled.

Let me help

And Worth dreamed that he looked down at his useless hands, and then back up at the man who had spent a week fighting and bitching with him, a month coming back again and again for god knows what reason, and a night promising to back him up. His hands bled and three damning words were ringing around his head. Let. Me. Help. I hate you—trust you—just go away—this isn't some kind of—where's your goddamn—follow my lead—I'm sorry—you can drive—my mother—

—if I was a better man—

Doc Worth nodded, slowly, and Conrad reached down to touch his bindings. The second his fingers brushed them, yellow string unraveled around the skinny wrists and dripped to the floor. Evaporated. The older man looked up at him, for a long time, and finally he grinned, saying

T' conquer death, y' only have to die

And Conrad crossed his arms, demanding

What the hell does that even mean?

And Worth just grinned at him, threw out his unbound arms and said

Hell if I know. But it's got a nice ring, don't it?

-A-

Tonight, the small hours of the morning have been as still as nature ever intended. There is a peace that reminds Worth of graveyards, but graveyards are not the pits of unease they once were. There are so many worse things in the world than a few orderly silent graves.

It’s coming up on dawn and inside the warehouse up the hill, in the candlelight, a hundred something exhausted delegates are sniping at each other over the footnotes of a subsection of a clause that doesn’t even seem to be written in English. Democracy at work. Worth will take guard duty over parliamentary duty any day of the week. Granted, if they catch him snoozing on his shift he won’t be getting the choice for much longer.

Worth lights himself a cigarette. His fingers are cold, but they don't fumble with the gears. He looks up at the stars—so much brighter tonight, there's got to be more stars in the sky than there were pages in all his college textbooks combined. He can see a stripe of dust across the center of the sky, every goddamn star in the galaxy spiraling off into space. There goes Lamont, the greasy bastard. There goes his office, his city, his life, and his finely crafted reputation as a heartless dick.

It's the end of March, and the world is coming to an end. When you get down to it, the world was never any great shakes anyways. Medical degrees and policemen and idiot FBI agents, fucking lavender Febreeze. Stupid shit.

Tomorrow there will be more shouting and politics and fist fights. They can’t stay in this bubble of law and order forever—Hanna's got a look in his eyes that’s getting more wildly bright by the day, and even Worth knows that this isn’t their home. They can’t stay here. Peace, he knows, is only ever a temporary measure. You go getting too comfortable, and you’ll wind up at the bottom of a grave.

Worth looks over at the body lying next to him, frozen in a rare moment of ease because vampires, much like androids, don't really dream, everyone knows that, and he thinks. You lose something, you gain something. It's weird to see Conrad so peaceful, but it sort of makes him feel like he's in a bubble of halted time, like the universe is pausing around him.

The world goes up in smoke, but it gives you time, like a cheap door prize. Time to think. Time to grieve. Time to make plans. He takes another drag of his cigarette, and he reaches for Conrad's shoulder.

He doesn't want the consolation prize.

Fuck you.

Chicago
One Month after the Treaty

It’s pandemonium.

Worth had thought, over the course of his sufficiently numerous years, that he’d long ago figured out what pandemonium looked like. Christmas shopping two days before the holiday, the malls crammed with wild-eyed, snorting suburban mothers. A riot at a concert with drinks splashing five feet above your head and spiked bracelets in your shoulder. A drug raid on a poorly kept meth lab.

Fuck. That. Shit.

He’d never seen pandemonium like this. In Chicago, the riots had been going on since that first week with only the crackling lull of a fire settling down into its embers between frenzied refuelings. A month. Almost an entire month, and the city was seething under its own black smoke, burning out its own husk at an impossible rate. They shouldn’t have come here; that had been obvious about an hour ago. What wasn’t obvious was why they hadn’t left.

Worth toed a blackened corpse out of his way. It crinkled dully and refused to budge.

Not too far away, Hanna was leading a shaking woman up into the Cadillac—eerily glittering and untouched by the smog. Bright as the day he’d stolen it. There was just barely enough room for the lady to squeeze in next to her children, but the shaking stopped as soon as her hands closed over a miniature shoulder, and that was a relief. Worth was beginning to notice a pattern with women he’d never really had a chance to observe before. Namely, that on average they’re a hell of a lot easier to keep calm than men.

“Y’think this’ll work?” Worth called over, finally stepping over the corpse. He might have been stalling.

Hanna glanced back at him, blue eyes wide, pupils shrunken, ash and blood smeared in ugly streaks down his cheek and chin. He grinned the most unsightly, mirthless grin Worth had ever seen.

“Of course it will,” he yelled back, vaulting over the door and into the convertible. “It’s like… one of those chase scenes that’s in every movie ever. Pick a movie!” he insisted, teeth glittering. “Any movie!”

The pistol in Worth’s hand felt unfamiliar, heavy. There was a smoke in his throat that felt wrong and sticky, and Hanna’s eyes were too blue, too huge and fucking blue, and the sky was all red.

“Pride’n Prejudice,” he said, at last.

Hanna blinked, once, and then a hoarse laugh clawed its way up out of his throat. “Right!” he shouted, fumbling with the ignition. “Right. We’re gonna have a car chase like Pride and Prejudice. I might even be able to keep us on the road.”

Worth watched him, motionless. The rumble was getting closer. The zombie was going to have something to say about letting Hanna drive, but hell, Worth had something to say about letting Hanna drive. There just wasn’t any choice. If anything, Worth was a worse driver than him.

They took off like a rocket, one more streak of cherry red fire racing down the Chicago streets. They shouldn’t have come here. But they’d spent the last month in the cold, ethereal cocoon of Salem, emerging too late into the blazing reality of the situation. They’d passed through countless small towns in the way here, past the endless string of abandoned cars on the interstate, and they had thought… well, they hadn’t thought much of anything. It had seemed bad enough, only Worth bothered to pause with his hand against the glass and wonder why it wasn’t worse.

The rumbling in the distance was building, the thunder of cars and motorcycles alike, and Worth thought that their best chance would be these people’s unmitigated stupidity, more than the modest speed the Cadillac could muster up. With any luck, they’d all run each other off the road before they could catch up with Hanna.

But first.

Worth lifted the gun and took a step back, and then another, and set his sights on the road where it twisted straight just in front of him. He hadn’t used a gun in a long time. A long time. But you never really forget, and by the time they braked for the wreckage Hanna and he had dragged into the road, it wouldn’t matter so much that he’d never been too good with moving targets.

His finger twitched on the trigger. This would be the first man he’d killed in cold blood, if anything could be cold in this roaring hell-pit of a city. But at least Hanna wouldn’t have to do it.

It didn’t bother him too much, though it would be better once he got it over with. He was well aware that whoever he managed to kill, in the flurry of seconds between first shot and regroup, would probably be some mook he had no real grudge against. Starving people looking for protection, frightened boys trying to keep their mothers safe, all mixed in with the trash and the monsters. There was no good side, not even a worse side, and he knew that. They just had the bad luck of wanting the same thing Hanna wanted; the bad luck to be trailing along behind the wrong bastard.

As the rumble bloomed into a thunder, Worth spared a moment to be glad that Conrad was asleep somewhere on the edge of town, and out of all of them, at least somebody would never have to see this.