Chapter Text
It had been only last night that the juke joint had been the victim of that hoard of monsters. Just a few hours ago, they’d been partying and drinking and playing music, even fewer hours since they had been fighting desperately between themselves to consider the best course of action through what had become a nightmare.
By the end of the night, the shock that wrecked their senses was palpable, and the adrenaline induced numbness hadn’t worn off quite yet. Neither Smoke, nor Annie knew what had exactly happened in their post-attack scramble to achieve this outcome. Sammie and Remmick had thrashed around in that water for a time that felt too long to everyone around, but for Sammie it all felt like a flash that took place in matter of seconds.
—
One minute, that old guitar was in his hand, the next, a piece of it’s shattered wooden body was wrapped in his hand. While Remmick lunged forward to get a grasp on Sammie’s neck, Sammie shoved the shard of wood forward and into the vampire’s chest.
“Too low.” was Sammie’s only thought before he closed his eyes and braced for the pierce of a devil’s fangs. It never came.
Two large arms wrapped forcefully around Remmick, pinning one of Remmick’s hands to his side and the other grasped at Stack to let him go. Whatever had broken Stack free of the hivemind’s control of his autonomy was greatly appreciated as Sammie cracked open his eyes to watch the scene. It was gruesome, to say the least. From above the stomach of the vampire stuck the large piece of wood from the guitar’s back panel, and all the way through his back. It stabbed against Stack’s stomach like a silent punishment for betraying his master.
However, Stack’s grip didn’t release as he dragged the struggling demon from the water and into the juke. Sammie figured Stack was going to finish off Remmick himself.
As the sun rose and the hivemind was exposed to the daylight, he hoped every last one of them had stayed to burn.
—
Now, the group milled about in the joint, unsure of how to process it all. They were smaller in numbers than before, yet grew by one person they hadn’t intended for.
Remmick stirred from his exhaustion and opened his eyes to find that he hadn’t died. In fact, the stake had been removed from his chest entirely, seemingly leaving his still-beating heart unaffected. A deep raspy breath rattled his lungs. The room was warm, but cracks in the wall’s boards proved to him that he was safe from the sunlight in here. His pupils contracted to adjust to the lighting and look around the room.
He sat with his legs out in front of him, centered in front of an old shelf, facing the rest of the room. He struggled to free his wrists tied on either side of him to the legs of the shelf, but with his arms being straight out to his sides like that, leverage wasn’t on his side. There wasn’t much else he could do but keep pulling, trying to scoot the whole thing and him together. Long claws, sharp fangs, quicker regeneration, keen senses, even immortality – should he avoid the dangers of a well-placed stake – had been gifted to him upon his turning. Yet he remained no stronger than his unaltered muscles would allow.
Remmick stopped and listened when he heard murmuring in the next room.
“I’m going to… while… kept here. Sammie stay… for now.” was all he could pick up before the sound of footsteps neared him. The doorknob turned, and he was greeted with Stack’s tall figure in the doorway.
“You been good?” Stack asked Remmick, clearly lacking the seriousness Remmick would appreciate right about now.
“What in the hell is all this?” Remmick seethed. He liked to keep a pretty vocabulary, something folks would appreciate whenever he went charming people into letting their guard down. A polite man, he’s learned, can get most anything he wants if he says it sweetly enough.
“Now don’t go blaming me. This is all Annie here,” he gestures to the thirty-something wraps of baling twine that adorned Remmick’s wrists. They were raw from the incessant struggling already. “Now I wanted to talk it out last night but you got yourself all worked up and tired and passed right out ‘fore I got a word in about this new situation.”
Remmick felt a growl rise in his throat but pushed it down, hoping to talk himself out of this.
“What would that new situation be exactly?” he put on a sickly sweet voice. So sweet, it circled right back around to being downright mean.
“You ain’t got a guess?” he flashed another smile and the gold grill adorning his top teeth shined.
“You seem to have me stumped,” Remmick fake smiled back, the way he’d faked a smile when singing his song at their door last night, “How ‘bout a hint?”
“We was thinking you’d be some sort of… assistant from now on.”
The word “we” struck Remmick sourly in the throat. Stack and who else? The other traitors who he turned as a gift? The ones who didn’t see he was providing them a well-needed service? The ones he tried to save, who deliberately stabbed him in the back when he’d thought he had them hook line and sinker?
“Oh there’s a ‘we’ now?” Remmick spat.
“You’d rather have burned to death out there?”
Stack’s posture remained relaxed and in control. Remmick however, felt like glaring holes into the man’s eye sockets. He wished Mary would have eaten Stack whole instead of merely turning him. All the hatred welled up in his chest with nowhere to go. Normally, he’d just aleve it by biting down hard on whoever had been unlucky enough to tick him off.
The taller man spoke again, “I thought not. Now I’m gonna cut that twine off and you’re gonna do what I say or I’ll have you outside in the sun within the next two minutes, how’s that sound?”
Remmick kept up his glare but remained quiet. He’d swallow his pride for a few hours and try to slip out for an escape when it got dark again.
Stack took the toothpick from his mouth, pocketing it before pulling a knife from his jacket and beginning to saw away at the rough strings. It didn’t take long for the bindings to come loose and slip off Remmick’s wrists like a pair of headless snakes. The release soothed the skin underneath that he had rubbed raw from his attempt to free himself, and he let out a quiet sigh of relief as he fixed his suspenders.
“Remember, any smart ideas and you’re out the door.”
Remmick didn’t reply, only rolled his eyes and heaved himself to his feet, feeling slightly unsteady at first but gaining his footing soon thereafter. The taller one nodded toward the doorway of the storage closet and ushered Remmick out, holding onto the collar of the shorter man’s shirt in case he tried anything funny. He still wondered how Stack had broken from his control.
Uncomfortably, everyone’s head seemed to turn and stare as the pair left the storage room. It was easy enough to deal with the prying judgement of one or two people, but as Remmick had discovered last night, he wasn’t much of a success when it came to charming too many at a time. He felt exposed, awkward. Much different from the persona he had tried to portray to all of them earlier. He was out of his element, and everybody could see the effects of that.
A few of the looks were fearful. Slim and Pearline in particular looked like they were just about ready to jump out of their skin. Smoke looked surprisingly well adjusted, but he didn’t seem to be one for exaggerated reactions. Others looked with disdain. Disgust. The worst of that was Annie.
It reminded Remmick of when he was a boy. It didn’t feel like the disgust of a stranger. More like a mother who had caught you in a lie. One who found out you had done something bad and asked herself where she could have possibly gone wrong to raise this kind of person in her own home.
It was a look Remmick knew, and hated. He recoiled internally. Who was she to judge him? She had no idea what his life was like. She didn’t know him. Nor should she. Few deserve it.
Despite her hostile demeanor toward him, she was the first one to speak.
“You gonna make yourself useful ‘round here?” she asked in a bored tone.
“You make your guests do housework? Now ma’am, that ain’t very hospitable,” Remmick retorted, the same sweet tone he had used to try and lure them into inviting him in before.
“You know the deal, don’t you?”
“Ain’t much of a deal ma’am. Never shook on anything, to my knowledge.”
“I didn’t think you cared for what was customary,” She argued. “Rippin’ apart someone’s neck ain’t much of an official greeting either.”
“No, I guess it ain’t.” Remmick admitted. “But I was under the impression you was civilized folks, being business owners and all.”
“You earn civilized when you behave like the rest of us. Now sit down.” Annie commanded and gestured to the chair beside her, set up at a table.
The scent was strong of alcohol and hand-washed rags, and Remmick gazed down into the bowl in front of him. No doubt where the scent was coming from. Before he knew it, his arms were being held by Stack again.
“You gon’ sit still and let Annie work. You so much as think about anyone’s blood but your own and we gonna have a problem.”
With that, Annie helped herself to undoing the buttons on Remmick’s shirt and pushed up the blood soaked wife beater underneath to get a view of the wound from the stake.
“Nasty business,” she said under her breath. He didn’t know if she meant the wound or the brawl that brought it on. She cleaned away all the extra blood from the front and the back of the wound hastily, like she was scared to touch him for too long. Not that she didn’t have reason to be. In any other situation he might have just drained the blood from her right there. But with a stronger, newly-turned vampire behind him, it’d be a death sentence.
Remmick found himself entranced by hunger, his eyes devoid of color and trained like a shark on the way Annie’s quick pulse showed on her wrist. It was like a blackout. Only him, his senses, and the thrum of the pumping blood beneath her skin. Bottom fangs started to reveal themselves as his jaw hung slack, hypnotised.
Before the drooling started, he felt a sharp and searing pain on his cheek that snapped him out of it. Stunned for a moment, he realized it had been Annie’s free hand. Shaking himself back to his thoughts, eyes and teeth returning to default, he looked to Annie again, seeing that she had an expression that was just as shocked as he was. Rightfully so, he’d never seen someone so confident to act that way. It had always taken until the attack for his victims to break from their freeze response into fight mode. Everyone around them had stood at attention, worried for what had been about to happen, ready to fight Remmick off of her.
“Now what the hell did I say to you, motherfucker?” Stack rattles Remmick in the seat, grabbing the back of his neck, pulling him out of the chair and facing him toward the front door, almost like he was grabbing the scruff of a dog. “What’d I say?”
Thoughts of apologies crossed his mind but realized his silent submission could be all that stood between him and the scorching sun. For now, he just kept his hands in surrender, staying as still as possible.
“Stack.” Annie speaks in a calm tone. Stack looks back at her, looking for what she wants, but Remmick keeps his eyes down. She nods toward the chair he’d been sitting in before, beckoning for the taller man to sit Remmick back down.
When the vampire sat back down, Annie gave him a knowing look. As if she could tell he really didn’t mean to get lost like that. Because why would he? It was this, or boil.
“And this ain’t for you,” Annie talked to him, “This is so you don’t stain any changes of clothes we gotta give you.”
“Alright,” he replied sounding cocky, and genuinely amused. He lazily looked around the main room of the joint, all of the lights remained on, looking just as it had last night, only more empty. It would be a pretty place to live if it weren’t for the group of strangers inside that seemed to hate his guts.