"Marko..."

It's time to wake up

"Marko..."

Rise and shine

"...wake up. For God's sake man, wake the fuck up!"

It was Paul's voice that finally made its way through the heavy fog that surrounded Marko's brain and brought him to his senses. The weightless black that had him swaddled in a comfortable state of numbness pulled back and Marko instantly regretted being alive. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. Everything hurt.

Oh god why?

A pitiful groan was all he could manage as Paul's dogged persistence forced his eyes open. Colours, there were weird colours, neon vivid and way too focused. Marko shut his eyes while Paul helped him to sit up. Both of them were dazed and utterly confused.

"Man, I feel like shit." Marko gagged as he rested his forehead on his bent knees and waited until the world stopped spinning.

"What did we get into last night?"

He promptly lost the battle with gravity before the words left his mouth. Instinctively he curled up into a tight ball to ride out the nauseous wave that swept over him.

"I don't know bro, I can't remember a fucking thing."

Paul gingerly shook his head. He felt as if he had been hit head on by a Mac truck and then wrung out like a wet rag. When he had groggily regained consciousness he could not figure out who he was or which way was up for at least ten minutes or more. It had been impossible for him to do little more than fight to breathe until the vertigo had finally passed.

"Paul," Marko mumbled into the patched arm of his jacket as a spastic shudder sized his spine.

"What." Paul growled as he gently massaged his temples. God, beating his head in with the pointed end of a pickaxe would be less painful than the migraine that was pounding out the baseline of Ace of Spades behind his eyes.

"Where the hell are we?" Marko asked before he managed to roll over onto his back without choking on the acid bile that hung back in his throat. Was this how Jimi Hendrix felt before he bought the farm? Because if so, it freaking sucked.

"Huh?" Paul squinted at Marko. The clash of colourful images on his jacket were starting to meld into each other.

"Look."

Paul blinked hard and looked about owlishly. It took a few long moments before things started to sink in.

Huh.

"Are we dead?"

The words just spilling out of Marko without him realizing it. Paul snorted, which was not a smart move, and swore softly.

"Ah...god I hate hangovers. No, we're not dead. We wouldn't be feeling like this if we were. I think we're under ground...looks like some sort of cave...I think."

Paul carefully attempted to stand up. Before he was even half way up, his legs gave out and he collapsed.

"Ok, not good." Paul said as he just laid there next to his best friend. What was wrong with him? No hangover had ever done this before. What exactly did they do last night?

"Evening boys. I wasn't expecting you both to wake for a few more hours yet."

It was hard to pinpoint exactly where the voice had come from because it echoed off the rock walls. Paul lifted his head in an attempt to find the owner of the voice. He gave a start of surprise when he realized that a guy decked out all in black stood right at his feet and stared down at them with a bemused smirk on his pasty face. One that Paul had a sudden and inexplicable urge to remove by force.

"Who the hell are you?" Paul demanded as he forced himself to sit up. Marko's eyes were glued on the figure's too blue to be natural eyes but he did not move. He would let Paul handle this one.

"You don't remember? The party on the beach? Your spat with Dwayne? Oh come on, it's not that hard."

"Don't fucking play mind games with me right now. Just answer the goddamn question." Paul snarled. He did not give a single shit as to who this smirking bastard was. The guy was starting to annoy him and right now he had enough to deal with.

"Paul, maybe you shouldn't..." Marko struggled to lift his head. Something in him told him that this was not someone they wanted to piss off.

"It's alright Marko." Those eerie blue eyes fixed on him before the stranger gave a small smile. Marko blinked in confusion as the figure crouched down so that he was at eye-level with them.

"I'm David and we met last night. It seems that the party was a little too rough on you guys." David eyed the blackened eye that Dwayne had delivered. Paul raised a hand on the left side of his face and winced as the purple black bruise made itself known.

"Who did you say I got into a scrap with?" Paul asked. Vague images of the aforementioned party were starting to piece together in his mind.

"The same guy that tried to take your head off the last time." David said and watched as the realization finally began to dawn.

"That mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch!" Paul swore with a vengeance, one that caused him to hiss in severe pain as the pounding in his head spiked with his emotions. "So how the fuck did we get here? Where the fuck are we? Why the fuck do we feel like we got hit by a fucking train?"

David arched a pale eyebrow as Paul continued to swear a blue streak with venom laced in every other word.

"I brought you here. I couldn't leave you two lying dead to the world in the middle of nowhere, now could I?" David rose to his feet. He stepped over Paul's legs and walked past Marko, who shrank back. He wanted to keep as much distance between himself and this David dude as possible.

"Yeah, but that only answers one fucking question." Paul growled, blinking slowly as the throbbing in his brain matter began to subside a bit.

"Impatient are we? You need to relax Paul. You are only going to cause yourself more pain." David said and completely ignored the crude hand gesture that Paul sent his way.

"And where is here exactly?" Marko spoke up and drew David's attention away from Paul for the time being.

"My home." David replied.

"You live here? I...seriously? You actually live in this cave thing?"

"Seriously."

David glanced around the cave. There wasn't much to see, just a few odds and ends that he had managed to install during his stay. He was not big on the décor so the cave was pretty spartan with one exception. A huge black and white poster of Jim Morrison hung in a place of honour on the back wall. If there was one thing that David truly appreciated, it was the music that Morrison had created. The man was a rock legend, immortalized in music, dead by twenty-seven. In a way, David seemed to look up to him. Well, it was kind of difficult not to, seeing how the poster was at least twelve feet tall.

"And just when you think you've seen everything. Are you believing this? Cause right now I don't know what to believe." Paul said to Marko as he tried once more to get to his feet. This time he succeeded, only barely.

"Look, nice cave and all. Just tell us why my friend and I are so shit-faced will you?" He said as he straightened and tried very hard to get a firm grasp on his simmering temper as he did so. His gut instinct was telling him that this David character had something to do with why they felt like death warmed over.

David looked Paul over slowly, saying nothing while he contemplated on how he was going to bring about the big reveal. As the minutes passed, Paul's temper began to flare. David's deliberate silence really started to grate on his self-control. For some reason all he wanted to do was deck the guy in the face a few times before crawling under a rock to die.

"You want to know?"

"Yeah, we kinda do. That's why I'm asking."

"Fine, you want to know so here it is. You are dying."

David stood back on his heels and waited.

"What?" Marko whispered. Not quiet believing his ears but at the same time knowing what David just said was the truth. He looked up at Paul, eyes full of fear and uncertainty, as Paul blanched at the news. The cave was quiet, the distant sound of the ocean surf crashing against a solid wall of rock was the only thing that could be heard.

"Are you trying to be funny or something?" Paul said quietly, fixing David a glare that would have made Vincent Price proud. His right hand curled into an iron fist as he fought the urge to physically hurt the person in front of him.

In a situation like this he knew better than to lose his cool. It was obvious that they were dealing with some sort of sick psychopath and blowing his stack was not going to help them. But for the life of him, Paul could not shake the foreign feeling of seething rage that was grew in his core and started to spread through him. Marko scrambled up to his feet and stood behind Paul while David just stood there as calm as anything.

"Am I laughing?" David asked as he arched an eyebrow, deliberately taunting Paul.

That was the last straw.

Something fragile inside Paul snapped and he flew at David with his arm swinging. The blow never connected.

"Fuckin' Christ!" Paul gaped in mid-stride as his fist met nothing but air. Marko let out a fearful yelp as David turned and grinned, jagged teeth gleaming lethally in the dim firelight of the cave. The sight of David's vampiric face had done exactly what he had expected and the two friends stood petrified as they stared at him dumbfounded.

"Trust me, he has nothing to do with it." David chuckled darkly as his grin morphed into a full-blown demonic sneer that sent the two running for their lives.

"Fu-AH!" Paul screamed as he turned to bolt. David was suddenly there in front of him, blocking his way completely.

"Are we satisfied yet?" David stalked forward dangerously in such a way that Paul back-pedalled as fast as he could. He could not see where he was going before he tripped over a fallen wooden beam. All he saw was teeth.

"Well?" David asked as he grabbed Paul by the collar of his jacket and hauled him to his feet single-handedly.

"What the fuck do you want man!" Paul gasped as David brought his face a mere inch away from Paul's. Paul could not look away from those hellish demon-like eyes. He could see his own terrified face reflection in them.

"What I want is for you to..." David started but before he could finish Marko was behind him with a broken wooden spar that he had found. He brought it down on David's head as hard as he could.

"Argh!" David snarled as his hold on Paul broke. He turned to face Marko with a growl that everyone felt. Even though David's vicious snarl scared him senseless Marko refused to back down. Wielding the piece of wood like a sword, Marko kept David at bay while Paul picked himself up and got the hell out of David's reach.

"Marko put that down." David said in a levelled voice as he gracefully dodged a solid jab to his chest. Marko's only response was to swing the wooden spar like a bat so that David was forced to take a step back.

"You're a fucking vampire!" Marko cried as David whirled under his line of defence and grabbed hold of the spar. He wrenched it out of Marko's grasp as he pulled in him close.

"And so are you." David hissed.

Marko scrambled backward shaking his head in denial.

"No way! No fucking way man!"

Marko found himself backed up against the cave wall with nowhere else to go. David had him cornered. He looked about him wildly, trying to find something, anything, he could use as a weapon. There was nothing.

"Will you just calm down for a minute so I can explain everything?" David face morphed back to his human self. However that just freaked Marko out even more which was the exact opposite of what David had expected.

"Like hell you will, you fucking nutcase!" Paul let loose a roar he did not know he had as he ran to Marko's aid. The rage had come back in full force and it drove him forward. Paul wanted blood. He did not care about what he had to do to get it.

"Not so fast little man!"

An all-too familiar snarl cut through the chaos as none other than Dwayne, in his full terrifying vampire form, wrenched Paul around with nothing but a hairsbreadth of space between them. Paul got the full blast of Dwayne's roar as the vampire prepared to do some permanent bodily harm but Paul was not going to go down without a fight. Not this time.

Unbeknown to Paul his face now mirrored the snarling visage in front of him, eyes aflame and fangs elongated into wicked points. He snarled right back without an ounce of fear as the wave of rage he had been riding finally peaked. There was no going back now.

"DWAYNE! STOP!" David roared in sheer outrage. What the hell?! How dare he! What was Dwayne even doing there?

There was no time to argue. If David did not intervene immediately Dwayne would rip Paul to pieces and that was something that David was not about to let happen. Blue gave way to gold as David was forced to look away from Marko just in time to see the two infuriated vampires ram each other's fists in the others face.

Marko did not hesitate. One look at Paul and that was all he needed. Fight or flight, Marko chose flight. He used David's momentary distraction to make his move. With a force born from sheer desperation, Marko lashed out with his foot and nailed David a blow to the groin with enough power behind it to land a forty-yard touchdown. David blanched as his knees buckled, completely engrossed in the pain. He had not seen that one coming.

What was that saying about best laid plans going awry? Yeah, fuck that shit.

'Run man! Just run!" Paul shouted as he brought his knee up and rammed it into Dwayne's stomach. "Get out of here!"

Paul motioned Marko to head for the exit as he grabbed a handful of Dwayne's long black hair and threw him down. Marko fled up a ramp made of rubble and rock without stopping to think. He booked it out of the cave, taking the rickety wooden stairs two at a time up to the top of cliff face.

Paul knew that there would be no such escape for him and as Dwayne swiped his legs from under him, he accepted the fact that at least he had bought Marko some time. But now it was all about the blood.