Chapter Text
Pete was packing for the tour while Patrick slept. While his boyfriend slept.
Boyfriend. Patrick was his boyfriend.
Pete was still wrapping his head around that. Probably-straight twenty-two-year-old Pete would never have imagined that he might end up in bed with Patrick Stump, the nerdy high-schooler who had a hell of a singing voice but was decidedly male and not exactly Christian Bale. It wasn’t like Pete had thought he was ugly, just plain. And a little bit short.
He couldn’t see anything plain about Patrick now. Not in the fluid way his fingers moved across a guitar, or in the way the light caught every color in his eyes which couldn’t be categorized as green, blue, brown, or grey. There was nothing plain in the sound of his laughter or the glow of his aura or the soft curves of his chest. Pete felt euphoric whenever he looked at him.
And once the two of them had gotten together, it seemed as though everything had come together. Like Pete had been driving in the wrong gear his whole life and now he had finally shifted to the right one. Before the Honda Civic Tour, Patrick had already been staying at Pete’s house, so all he had to do was move his things from the guest bedroom into the master suite. Pete and Patrick had blown through all the couple firsts in under twenty-four hours: from first kiss (first real kiss, as Pete identified the kiss after he dragged Patrick out of the dragon’s mouth) to first time to moving in together.
“I only spent a few months of my adult life not living with you,” Patrick had said in the middle of carrying his clothes into Pete’s bedroom.
“You’re just now moving in with me. Officially.”
“I’ve lived here for most of a year,” Patrick said. “Like, my living with you is not a new thing.”
“You’re just now moving in,” Pete insisted, and he had kissed him, and the clothes Patrick was carrying were then forgotten, because hey, Patrick’s mouth.
Pete was aware of the honeymoon phase, but he felt like this was different. Patrick was glowing around him, and Pete was sure he was glowing too. There was a small worry in the back of his head that the prophecy hadn’t been fulfilled yet—that the fall of the dragon hadn’t been the fall Ryan had predicted—but Pete was too selfishly happy to care in that moment.
Or any moment.
There was Patrick. Every time Pete woke up, there was Patrick lying next to him, with a sleepy morning smile on his face. There were midnight trips to the grocery store for ice cream and swinging by Blockbuster immediately after for some awful 80’s fantasy movie. There was kissing and morning sex and making dinner and taking the dogs on walks together.
There were changes, of course. The band went from two buses to three, because Andy wanted his daughter on a non-smoking bus and Joe still wanted to smoke, and neither of them were willing to put up with Pete and Patrick caught in the throes of early love.
Some things didn’t change. Patrick was as obstinate and stubborn as ever when it came to music. Writing and recording. He didn’t punch Pete in the face anymore, which was nice, but he still shouted a lot. And occasionally tore up Pete’s lyrics with a blunt “this is garbage; write me something better.” In a weird way, Pete was grateful. He wouldn’t know how to deal with a Patrick who suddenly became nice and easygoing in the studio. It wouldn’t have been the real him.
The only bad thing that had happened between Pete and Patrick getting together and the start of the tour was the dreams.
As if summoned by the thought, Patrick started stirring on the bed. The thick beige duvet was tangled up at the foot of the bed, no longer covering him. His arms jerked a little and his face was no longer smooth and peaceful with regular deep sleep but furrowed and upset. Pete could tell that he was deep asleep from the way his eyes darted back and forth behind his eyelids, but the problem was he wasn’t sure if Patrick was dreaming his own dream or someone else’s.
It had started with Joe. Recently the four of them had started taking breaks from each other whenever a tour ended. Pete and Patrick obviously weren’t about to split up once Honda Civic was over, but Joe and Andy each went home. Since the next tour was starting soon after, it was silently acknowledged that they were going to stay apart and get some space before Young Wild Things began. Pete had assumed Joe was pretty sick of him after the hellish week at the end of the last tour. He was shocked when, not even a week into their break, Joe called him and woke him up in the middle of the night.
“Pete.” Joe sounded winded and scared enough that all the sleep melted off of Pete. He sat bolt upright, brows furrowed, and pulled the phone closer to his ear so fast it yanked the charger from the wall. Joe never sounded scared like that unless something was terribly wrong. Patrick was lying next to him in the bed, and Pete was okay, so... Andy? Had something happened to him? He was so caught up in panic that Joe said his name a few times, each increasing in volume, before he replied.
“I’m here,” Pete said. He felt chilled. “What’s wrong?”
“Are you— are you okay?” Joe asked. That, Pete thought, was an intensely stupid question, given that Joe was the one who called in the middle of the night.
“As okay as can be expected when you give me a heart attack, why?” he asked.
“You’re.” Joe stopped, trying to catch his breath. “Were you having a nightmare?”
What? Where was this coming from?
“I think so,” Pete said. Patrick stirred next to him, so Pete got out of the bed and walked into the bathroom. He shut the door behind him and turned on the light. “Shit, dude, I’m usually having nightmares, you know that. Why?”
“What was it about?” Joe asked.
Trying to recall his dreams was usually easy for Pete, but after being shocked from sleep so suddenly, it was harder to grab hold of it. Now that his fear for Joe had mostly faded to annoyance, some flashes were coming back. The Drake. Huddling in a bathtub, too small for two people, his knees crushed to his chest. There was blood everywhere and someone was crying— not Patrick, like it had been in real life, but Pete. Crying over a corpse.
He’d been thinking about the Drake and the vampires ever since he and Patrick had come home. Patrick had said that was when he started falling in love with Pete, and Pete wanted to think about that, falling in love, but his mind kept lingering on all that blood, too much blood.
“Patrick,” he said. “I was dreaming about when the door got ripped off at the Drake, and the vampires were crawling all over him. But, you know, more of a nightmare version of it. Darker and more blood, less survival.” The fear came creeping back into his ribs, icy and uninvited. “Again, I ask why?”
The line was silent for way too long before Joe said, “Because I just had the same dream. Except I couldn’t have because I was never in your hotel room and I don’t know about all the details and in this dream, I was you.”
“Just a coincidence,” Pete said quickly, before he could start believing Joe. “I’m sure we’ve all had nightmares about—”
“There was no door on the bathroom either, right?” Joe said. “And you two were hiding in the bathtub together? The wallpaper was green and gold all the way into the bathroom, but it was covered in blood-”
“Stop it,” Pete said, too loud. He was going to wake Patrick if he wasn’t careful. “That doesn’t… you were in the hotel too, dude. All hotel rooms look the same.”
“The bathtub?”
Pete was silent.
“This is weird,” he admitted at last. “Is it a pack thing, do you think?”
“I’ve never heard of this being a pack thing before,” Joe said, still sounding shaky. “Maybe we can call those All Time Low kids. The Backstreet Boys. Somebody. See if this really is…”
Pete waited for him to continue, but he never did.
“Is it that bad?” Pete asked.
“Isn’t it bad for you?” Joe asked.
“Bad dreams aren’t that uncommon for me,” Pete said. “And you kind of startled me out of it.”
“Think I scared myself awake,” Joe said. “So… everyone’s okay?”
“Unless Andy is secretly dying,” Pete said. “This is weird, yeah, but get some sleep, okay?”
Joe had agreed and gone back to sleep. But it hadn’t stopped. Two nights later, Pete had woken up to realize that he was having a sex dream about himself, which was right up there for one of the weirdest experiences of his life. That one, at least, was pretty easily solved by waking Patrick up and having sleepy sex right then, but it was eerie to remember how he got hard at himself moaning. Then Andy had complained about dreaming about a childhood home that wasn’t his, and Joe dreamt about anxieties over Carmilla. Patrick woke up with morning wood and wouldn’t let Pete touch him, taking an ice-cold shower instead because he had dreamt of Marie. Pete revisited the Arma Angelus van from the point of view of a scared high schooler, saw kitchens splattered with wendigo gore, and had night sweats when he heard Carmilla asking “where’s my mom?” Patrick had nightmares that weren’t his. Even on the mornings where he wasn’t awoken by nightmares, he looked confused. Andy and Joe eventually stopped calling, because it was quickly becoming commonplace.
Right now, Patrick was tossing and turning. He wasn’t muttering in his sleep yet, thankfully. He had always been a pretty heavy sleeper, looking more like he was hibernating than anything else. So far, the only pattern Pete had picked out was that the dream with the most intense emotion usually took the most precedent. One time, all four of them woke up from a too-vivid remembrance of Joe’s first time transforming into a wolf, something Pete never wanted to think about again. It had been too painful, the bedroom too childish, the hands too small. So whatever Patrick (or Andy, or Joe) was dreaming about, it must have been bad.
Pete spent a few seconds debating whether or not to wake him up, but when Patrick made a pained noise in his sleep, Pete decided. He couldn’t wait through even a few minutes of hearing that. He sat down on the edge of the bed and shook Patrick’s shoulder until his eyes blew open. He was breathing heavily, and he blinked a few times before seeing Pete and then his aura evened out.
“Dreams again?” Patrick said, and though it was a statement, it sounded like a question. Pete nodded and smoothed his hair back.
“Whose?” Pete asked.
“Andy,” Patrick said. He glanced down at his hands and shuddered. “I was— I saw Andrea and all the blood and— Jesus, hand me my phone?”
Pete unplugged Patrick’s phone and gave it to him. Andy was on speed dial, and in under thirty seconds of “just thought you’d wanna be awake, yeah man, get some rest,” he had hung up again.
“Killing Andrea?” Pete asked. Patrick flinched, but nodded.
“I’d never pictured it before,” he said. “I mean, I knew, obviously, but. She was still holding Carmilla in the dream.”
“There’s no telling how much is memory and how much is nightmare,” Pete said. He pulled Patrick in closer though, not minding the excuse to have his arms wrapped around him. Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend.
“Yeah,” Patrick said. He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was just freaky. Do you think the dreams are a problem?”
“They don’t seem to be,” Pete said. “I guess it’s worth looking into, but it’s not hurting us, or anything.”
“I’m losing sleep,” Patrick said. “And if I lose my voice screaming, this tour is gonna suck.” Pete could tell he was joking, from the dry mirth in his eyes and his deadpan voice. But he did have a point.
“I’ll look into it,” Pete said. “But, hey, now that you’re up…”
Patrick snorted. “You have the stamina of a sixteen-year-old.”
Pete laughed at that. “I was actually gonna ask you to help me pack, but I guess I know what’s on your mind.” He kissed the corner of Patrick’s mouth.
“Okay, so I help you pack and then?” Patrick shifted closer to Pete, pressing his hand against the inside of Pete’s thigh to emphasize his point.
“And you have the audacity to call me the sixteen-year-old,” Pete said, kissing him again. “Yes, packing then sex and then we’re gonna try to sleep before tomorrow. Ready for yet another US tour?”
“Can’t wait,” Patrick said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Remind me, when do we get a break again?”
“When we retire,” Pete said. “But since I was kinda planning on dragging this out till we die of old age, Rolling Stones style, I would actually call it never.”
Much as he complained, Patrick’s aura settled into the familiar, happy glow, and Pete felt content. Despite being wildly different sizes, their closets had merged into one, so having both of them up at four in the morning made packing a lot easier. Pete turned on the lights and their dogs lumbered in to shed on everything. Pete packed all of Patrick’s best t-shirts with every intent on stealing them, and Patrick put in way too many of Pete’s hoodies to just be for Pete, then gave up on clothing altogether in favor of packing up recording equipment. Pete sighed, and put Patrick’s jeans in the suitcase for him. By all rights Pete should have been the one forgetting basics like socks and toothbrushes, but Patrick was a remarkably forgetful person.
It wasn’t like Pete didn’t already know this. It wasn’t like he didn’t already know Patrick. But before they had been running parallel to one another. Now they were tangled up so closely, they might have been one person to anyone watching from the outside. Pete loved it.
He finally (finally) got Patrick to fall back asleep when the sun was rising, and even fell asleep for a little while next to him. The two of them met up with the rest of the band at the first venue, still glowing in a way that made Andy say, “Did my nightmares turn you on that much?”
“We’re big into bloodplay,” Patrick replied coolly. “So. You know.”
Andy rolled his eyes but didn’t actually look pissed. Pete read a few emotions from his and Joe’s auras— apprehensive mostly, but they didn’t seem upset that the two of them were together, in full couple mode.
They hadn’t actually had a Big Band Discussion about the whole thing yet, the kind of discussion Pete thought was inevitable. They would have to, at some point, talk about band dynamics. Reassure them that this didn’t mean it was going to be an Us vs Them situation wherein Pete would always take Patrick’s side, because Patrick made a lot of stupid decisions that needed to be contested. They had talked enough to come up with the new bus situation, but little else. It wasn’t going to be weird. Not if Pete had any say in it.
Besides, they couldn’t do anything in public at all. Pete and Patrick had discussed it and ran their decision by the band: Fall Out Boy absolutely did not need the kind of publicity scandal that came with “Pete Wentz ditches Ashlee Simpson for Lead Singer.” They would come out someday, they said, with quiet implications that “someday” either meant never or twenty years from then. Patrick was a private person, and Pete did not want to be the household name for “gay” for the next five years.
As they were loading up the buses, Pete had the sudden and sinking revelation that the tiny honeymoon was over. Back in the real world, he and Patrick could be together on their bus and nowhere else. The thought made him feel almost ill.
But there was no time to dwell on this— no time for much of anything, not even to kiss Patrick with a see you soon, because then Travie was on top of him with an arm slung around Pete’s shoulders and an enthusiastic punch to the middle of his chest.
“You finally hopped that,” Travie said by means of greeting.
“Well, someone else was going to if I didn’t get to him first,” Pete shot back.
“Nah, he would’ve waited for you,” Travie said easily. “Shame you’ve both been too busy bed-in-for-peace-ing for me to come say hi, but I guess that’s to be expected.” He was leering. Pete rolled his eyes, so he wouldn’t betray the sense of actual discomfort he felt. Facing the rest of the world with Patrick as his boyfriend was a lot stranger than being at home with it. He couldn’t say what was wrong, if wrong was even the right word for it, but something was different.
“We’re still busy,” Pete said. “If you think you and I are hanging out after shows, then I’m sorry but that’s not happening.”
“It’s cool,” Travie said, raising his hands in the air. “I’ve got a girlfriend. But damn. I don’t know. Never expected this. How are you doing?”
“I still think I’m dreaming,” Pete said. Travie looked at him and raised one eyebrow. And damn, but Travie always could get Pete to talk.
“I’ve got soundcheck in a minute,” Travie said. “But after that…”
“Can we talk?” Pete asked, relieved when Travie nodded. Travie was a godsend. Possibly a literal god too, but that wasn’t Pete’s problem at that moment.
His problems were normal, down to earth things. Without a girlfriend to steal makeup from, he bought cheap shit at Walgreens that smeared all over his face, and he wasn’t sure who to ask for help before the show. He had a phone interview that night and they were probably going to ask about Ashley’s new boyfriend, who Patrick had pointed out to Pete during a late-night grocery store run. Then there was the fact that one of the emo kids with shaggy hair similar to his in Cute Is What We Aim For wouldn’t stop staring at him.
Lots of people were milling around outside of the buses, and lots of people stopped and stared at Pete, most likely because he was Pete Wentz. Most of his band had disappeared, probably off catching up with the other bands. Pete had work to do too, helping to load instruments or ironing out things with the people that Island Def Jam had sent on tour with them. He was sort of enjoying just being on his own outside, easing back into tour life like he was slowly getting into a cold pool, as opposed to jumping right in, like he used to do.
He was on the precipice of hunting down Dirty to bug him and maybe make him drop an expensive piece of equipment when he noticed the Cute Is What We Aim For guy was still giving him a death glare.
Pete walked over to him, hands in his pockets. He was so not in the mood to start the tour on the bad side of some dude he’d met maybe once at a party. There were times when being fae was a perk. He flashed the guy a dazzling smile and stuck his hand out.
“Shaant, right?” he asked. Shaant nodded, his facial expression switching from angry to dubious.
“We’ve met,” he said. Pete shrugged, still smiling. He focused on exuding an aura of friendliness, willing Shaant to like him. He could see it working behind the other guy’s face, but damn if he didn’t seem determined to stay pissed.
“Wouldn’t be shocked if you’ve forgotten me,” Pete said. “You looked upset,” he probed then, and Shaant scowled.
“I don’t want to start anything,” Shaant said. “But— Jesus, do you always have mood swings like this?”
Pete’s friendly aura dropped for a second in surprise. That was usually the sort of thing people said to him after knowing him for much longer than a day or two.
“Mood swings like what?” he asked. He tried not to sound annoyed, and to remember he was keeping the peace. Shaant scowled at him.
“Funny,” he said, not looking like it was very funny at all. “Was it not you who was being a dick to me all fucking morning?”
There was the hostility Pete had seen in his aura. Of course, the problem there being:
“I was asleep all morning,” Pete said. “I just got here.”
“Oh, so your evil twin was the one who said opening for a band as big as you guys might be a good ‘stepping stone’ for us, if we ‘learn to fucking play.’” He put air quotations around the words Pete had supposedly said, which looked sort of pathetic. But the hurt emanating from his aura was real. Pete frowned.
“Yeah, must’ve been Smete Smentz,” Pete said. He shook his head. “When did this happen?”
“Are you for real?” Shaant asked. He looked both pissed and concerned, and a hundred percent genuine. Which was not good.
“I wouldn’t say something like that,” Pete said. Shaant rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, whatever,” he said. “By the way, the sunglasses indoors look is douchey as fuck.”
Pete stared at him as he walked away. Shaant hadn’t been lying, Pete knew that much, and he was hurt, but Pete had definitely been sleeping.
There were two options, as far as Pete was concerned. Either one of the techs or roadies for one of the five artists on tour looked a lot like him and had a mean sense of humor, or there was some magic bullshit going on. Again.
He was really hoping it was the first of the two.
There was no time, really, with all of the hectic first-day panic of tour to stop and have a serious conversation with the band. Pete knew it was beyond necessary that the four of them talked, but there were too many people to meet, and too many final details to settle. They had to talk about dreams, him and Patrick as a couple, and possibly a doppelganger, and Pete just didn’t have the free time to worry about a look-alike wandering around.
The day blurred by, and before Pete knew it the show was over (and they had been incredible, better than before, so there was no need to worry about the band’s onstage chemistry getting messed up). They were back in the green room, taking a minute to breathe before they got back on the buses. And, finally there was a chance for the four of them to talk.
Pete pulled the door shut tight, catching the eye of a tech glaring at him before he did. He perched on the arm of a sofa and said “So.”
“You know, I don’t miss sharing a bus with you guys,” Andy said. “But I think it made strategic meetings easier.”
“This isn’t a strategic meeting, is it?” Patrick asked. “Is it? Already?”
“Well, we’re figuring out this dream bullshit, aren’t we?” Joe asked. “Because this dream sharing? It’s gotta stop.”
“Is it a pack thing?” Andy asked.
“Are you asking me?” Joe asked. “That’s speciesist. Specist? Ugh, just because I’m the wolf here, it doesn’t mean I know. Pete, you know the little All Time Low punks, can you call and ask them?”
“They’re not— I don’t think this is a pack thing,” Pete said. “I read a hell of a lot about wolf packs while we were trying to get our pack off the ground, and nowhere did it mention sharing dreams.”
“Some kind of curse, then,” Patrick said.
“Well, it’s a weird fucking curse if it is,” Joe said. “It’s not doing a lot of damage, it’s mostly just annoying. What’s the endgame with that?”
“Maybe someone we defeated once could be petty,” Pete said. “The dreams aren’t actually my biggest issue right now.”
“Ah, the marital bliss issue, then?” Joe said. Pete started.
“The— me and Patrick?” he asked. Andy looked at the ground as though embarrassed, and Joe suddenly seemed sheepish.
“Oh. That wasn’t what you wanted to talk about?”
“No, but apparently you do,” Pete said. Joe looked at Andy, but Andy wouldn’t meet his eyes. He sighed.
“It’s not really an issue, per se,” Joe said. “More a thing we ought to discuss. You didn’t want to come out out yet, right?”
“Definitely not,” Patrick said.
“Well, did we want to explain to the people we’re touring with why there are three Fall Out Boy buses for four members?” he asked.
“That,” Pete said, “was not your only issue.”
“No,” Joe said levelly. “But it’s worth discussing.”
“I’m sure there have already been rumors about us,” Patrick said. He was lounging back in an ancient sofa, looking far more relaxed than Pete felt. “We’ll tell our friends and be subtle in public. As long as you two are comfortable with it.”
“As long as they’re comfortable with it?” Pete said, turning to Patrick with too much betrayal showing on his face. “Pretty sure it’s just between the two of us—”
“Not really.” Patrick said. “It’s their band too, our collective name.”
“No, Pete’s right,” Joe said. Good. “We’ll switch to exclusively the pride circuit if that’s how you guys want it, but Andy and I,” he glanced at Andy again, who didn’t seem to want to be part of this conversation, but wasn’t stopping Joe from speaking for him, “just wanted to know what to say if someone asks.”
“Shrug and tell them to ask us their damn selves,” Patrick said. He looked the teensiest bit smug.
“What else?” Pete pried. Now even Joe wouldn’t make eye-contact.
“I mean, is it gonna be weird? Actually?” he asked.
Pete sighed.
“Yeah,” he said. “Probably. But we’ll deal, right?”
“Good enough for me,” Andy said. “No more heart to hearts this early in the tour.”
“Or sober,” Patrick added. “Pete, what was your other issue?”
“There’s something pretending to be me and messing with the other guys on tour,” Pete said. The room got very quiet.
“Well why the fuck did you let me go on about relationship bullshit, then?” Joe said. “Jesus, what did it do?”
“I don’t know,” Pete said. “But I guess it looked like me and was a dick to Shaant, because now he’s not speaking to me.”
“Is that how you say his name?” Patrick asked quietly.
“Holy fuck,” Joe said. “Okay. So something that looks like you and clearly has bad intentions. This is, like, a very fucking serious kind of situation and you didn’t mention it because?”
“Emergencies don’t really feel like emergencies after a few years with this band.” Pete admitted. “No one is actively getting maimed, so I figured it would probably be okay if we waited a bit.”
“I feel like, given that you are Pete Wentz, you really underestimate the power of being Pete Wentz,” Joe said. Pete was shocked at his severity, the way Joe leaned forward in his chair, eyes narrowed, and muscles tensed. “He could hurt someone, he could kill someone and leave your fingerprints all over the crime scene!”
“He could do an interview as you and sabotage you,” Andy said.
“Be serious!” Joe half-shouted.
“That is a serious worry,” Patrick said. “Was it just Shaant?”
“As far as I know,” Pete said. The anxiety he had felt earlier picked up heat again, worry rising up in his throat. “What do you think it would do?”
“We clearly don’t know anything about it,” Joe said. “It’s gotta be some kind of shapeshifter, right? That or a really powerful spell someone’s put on themself.”
“Or a glamour,” Pete said, voice then very flat. He hadn’t begun thinking about what it might be till then, but a glamour would make a lot of sense, and be very, very bad news. “It could be someone from Seelie Court trying to get my attention.”
Patrick rested his hand on top of Pete’s, not quite holding it, but still reassuring.
“But they stopped, didn’t they?” he said. “I mean, it’s been nearly two years now. Haven’t they given up?”
Pete let out a hollow laugh.
“Stopped because it’s been two years? Two years is nothing to fae, a blink of an eye. Fae live for thousands of years. And I really couldn’t say if they’ll ever give up.”
“So maybe fae,” Joe said. “Fae or a spell or a shapeshifter. Anything else we should look into?”
Pete shrugged. He was lost in a tangle of thoughts: the fae he had managed to fight off, the Seelie Court, and as much as he didn’t want to think about it, the Unseelie Court. There were a lot of things to worry about, and the idea of someone else going around looking like him was more than a little unsettling. That was his face, his voice— the gravity of the damage it could do settled on him with cold weight.
“I can let KTC know we’re looking for something, and you give Ryan a call,” Joe said. Pete was grateful he was taking command. “We ought to get on the buses, but we’ll do some research tonight and regroup in the morning.” Joe glanced at Pete and Patrick. “Actually, do research tonight, okay?”
“Well, you’ve just rescinded your invitation to the gay orgy,” Patrick said, rolling his eyes. “You’re making it weird. Go research Pete’s evil twin.”
They walked out of the venue and onto their separate buses, Pete brushing past a guy as they did. The guy gave Pete a hurt look and hurried in the other direction. Pete felt almost guilty as he watched Joe walk onto a separate bus, but there wasn’t much to be done. He’d spent so long sharing space with Joe that he almost felt like he had turned traitor by moving out, but no one had seemed to mind. He knew Joe wasn’t upset. But it felt like the ache of growing up to sleep somewhere else, just a little more bitter than nostalgia.
The sullen mood evaporated fairly quickly. Once the door was shut Patrick pulled Pete close against him, mouth pressed just underneath his ear.
“You know, we could totally cram some research in tomorrow morning,” he said. “Spend the evening christening the tour instead?”
“I think you have a very theologically unsound idea of what christening is,” Pete said. He could feel his heartbeat trailing all across his skin, but it could wait. He gently untangled himself from Patrick and pulled out his phone. “Come on. We’ve got the youngest member of the Beatles to bother, and work to do.”
***
“So, you’re thinking it’s a shapeshifter?”
Ryan’s voice crackled through the speakerphone. Joe leaned forward to hear better and glanced at Pete. He was tense with worry, but nothing majorly bad had happened yet. Maybe, Joe thought, every tour would feel like they were sitting on a ticking time bomb. That was how it seemed to him.
“We don’t know what it is,” Pete said. “None of us have seen it at all, but we’ve heard from other people that it looks like me.”
“And you’re sure it’s not just someone on the tour who, you know, looks like you?” Ryan asked.
“Shaant was sure,” Pete said. “And a couple of the roadies have been giving me… weird looks. They can’t all be mistaking someone else for me, right?”
“Maybe,” Ryan said. “It’s worth going through all the non-supernatural explanations first, just in case. But, okay, if it’s something else… shapeshifting is really intense magic. No ordinary witch could do something like that. In fact, in terms of magic users I’ve only ever heard of skinwalkers, and even they only transform into animals. Like, ninety-nine percent of all shapeshifting is shifting into animals.”
“I think you’re right, Pete, and it’s probably some sort of glamour. There are fae out there who could pull that off, and fae would be less dangerous.”
“Less dangerous?” Andy asked, eyebrows raised.
“Yes,” Ryan said firmly. “I’ve run into a shapeshifter before, just once and— look, pray you’ve got a weird lookalike, and if not that, pray it’s fae. You’ve handled Seelie Court before, you could do it again. Don’t take any food or drink from strangers.”
“Does that include catering?” Patrick asked.
“Fuck if I know,” Ryan said. “I’ll go look into it more, but I need more information. See if you can find this thing yourselves and in the meantime be careful.”
Joe waited for more, but after a second, he heard a beep and the static cut off.
“He didn’t even say goodbye?” Joe said. “Rude.”
“Fae?” Andy asked Pete.
“Maybe.” Pete stood up. The four of them had gathered in Pete and Patrick’s bus, which was good middle ground because, despite smelling the worst out of the three buses, it was non-smoking and made the most sense for them to congregate in. Joe dragged himself back up onto the couch and leaned his head back.
“Maybe we should spread out,” he said at last. “I mean, Ryan said we should look for this thing so we can give him a better description. We can cover more ground if—”
“It’s not safe,” Pete said, already shaking his head. “If this is fae, and one of you ends up alone—”
“We can handle it,” Joe said firmly. “We’ll be in public, we’re not teenagers anymore. And we need to stop this in its tracks.”
“And if one of us gets replaced by another fae with a glamour?” Pete asked. “We should stick together. Maybe there is some… easier explanation.”
Like anything about this band had ever been easy, Joe thought, but he didn’t say it out loud. He would stay next to Pete, if that made him feel better, but if whatever looked like him caused more havoc than they could handle… Joe wanted to find the thing and get it over with. He was tired, tired of fighting monsters and looking over his shoulder. He wanted a normal tour, if not a normal life.
His own research had turned up little, because there was little to go off of. Something that looked like something else could be everything from a girl that got her hands on a spell book to an Eldritch monster. He doubted it was an eldritch monster. (Joe decided that if anything HP Lovecraft wrote was real, he was giving up the monster hunting business. No anti-semitic tentacle demons for him.) But there were a lot of mythical creatures that could make themselves look like Pete, so in the interim Joe was looking for a motive.
While Pete and Ryan and maybe his whole band was convinced this was a fae issue, Joe wasn’t so sure. Whatever was attacking them needed a motive, and while the fae obviously wanted Pete to join them, Joe couldn’t figure out how they would accomplish that with a clone of Pete smearing dirt on his reputation. This felt more like someone with a grudge, but maybe Ryan didn’t want to believe that simply because it would involve such strong magic.
Of course, it would be so much easier to figure this out if Joe could just see the thing.
Joe did have other things to keep him busy as well. Things like begging off of interviews with the promise of babysitting his favorite half-vampire niece.
“Your only half-vampire niece, I hope,” Andy said dryly. Joe winked at him.
So while the rest of the band was stuck doing yet another radio interview (the questions had finally migrated from Infinity on High to “what’s your next project?!”), Joe got to heat up a juice box of what he strongly suspected was Patrick’s blood and play the why game with the almost three year old living on Andy’s bus.
“How come you don’t drink blood?” Carmilla asked. She had a booster seat set up at the table, and she was swinging her feet back and forth in the space underneath. Joe snorted as he handed the juice box to her.
“Not everyone drinks blood, Carm.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like the taste of it.”
“Why?”
“It tastes kind of sticky to me.”
“Why?”
“Cuz I’m not a vampire.”
“Why?”
Joe eventually sat down next to her and settled in for what was sure to be a long day. Most of that time was spent leaning over a LeapFrog learning pad and trying to teach her letters, but it was nice. She nuzzled into his chest, warm and cute as any kid he’d ever seen. Joe was grateful every day that she looked more like Andy than her mom, with a thick shock of bright orange curls hanging down nearly to her shoulders. He helped drag her finger to trace the letters but stopped when he saw something just outside of the window.
It was just a flash, like someone running across the front of the bus, but there was something so deliberate and close about it that unease ripped through Joe’s body. He set the LeapFrog down next to Carmilla and walked over to the window, glancing out at the parking lot.
Fall Out Boy kept a lot of secrets hidden on tour buses, from secret kids to secret relationships, and if some tech had paparazzi dreams of sneaking photos, Joe would be sure to nip it in the bud. But something about just the flash of dark hair, the speed at which it disappeared from Joe’s vision… He had much better than average sight. Whatever what moved out of the way would have to be pretty damn fast for him not to have caught a glimpse of it.
“Uncle Joe?” Carmilla enunciated the words carefully. “Is somethin’ wrong?”
“No, sweetie, everything’s okay,” Joe said. He glanced around the parking lot again but couldn’t see anything. He sat back down with her, but this time kept glancing up at the window, determined not to miss anything important.
They played like that without Joe seeing anything until Andy came back onto the bus. Carmilla shrieked and stretched her arms out to Andy, making his face burst out into a smile. Andy scooped Carmilla up and swung her around in a wide circle, her gasps of laughter echoing around the whole bus.
“How was my little monster?” Andy asked, not turning away from Carmilla for a second.
“A terrifying creature, like always,” Joe said. “We played some letter games and discussed why humans don’t drink blood.”
“I don’t blame her for the confusion,” Andy said. “Blood is delicious.”
“Gross,” Joe said. “How was the interview?”
“Well, I didn’t say more than my name, and nobody noticed,” Andy said. “So pretty average from my standpoint. Although I’d’ve been a lot more pissed if Pete was upset about Ashlee.”
“Fame is glamorous,” Joe said sagely. “Anyway, I’m gonna go find something to eat myself before the show. You dropped something.”
Andy glanced down at his feet where a piece of paper sat on the floor. He tightened his grip on his daughter before bending over and pinched the paper between his fingers. His eyebrows pulled together, and he glanced back up at Joe.
“Is this a joke?” he asked.
“Is what a joke?” Joe asked. “You didn’t drop that?”
Rather than answering, Andy handed the slip of paper over to Joe. It was lined paper, uneven and smaller than traditional notebook paper like it might have been torn out of a composition notebook. Written across the paper perpendicular to the lines were a few words in scratchy handwriting.
“WATCH YOUR BACK. ESPECIALLY WHEN THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE ARE BEHIND YOU. XOXO.”
“I haven’t seen this,” Joe said. Andy’s face was still composed, but now visibly concerned. His forehead was furrowed, and his eyes were narrow.
“It wasn’t here when I left,” he said firmly. “And you’re sure you—?”
“I haven’t seen it,” Joe said. “And I stood up an hour or so ago, I would’ve noticed it on the floor.”
“He dropped it while you were by the window,” Carmilla said, nonplussed. Joe and Andy both stared at her.
“What?” Joe asked.
“Uncle Pete came in when you went over to the window,” she said. “He made me shh,” she said, holding a finger up to her lips, “And dropped it.”
Joe could hear the intense strain in Andy’s voice, but he hoped Carmilla couldn’t.
“And did Pete do anything else?” Andy asked, voice higher than usual. Carmilla shook her head.
“He just waved,” she said, and wriggled her own fingers in demonstration. Andy and Joe met each other’s eyes.
“Let’s go see Uncle Pete and Uncle Patrick, okay baby?” Andy said, rocking Carmilla just a little too fast. Carmilla cried out happily, and Andy grabbed the note and shoved it deep in his pocket, leading the way back out. As they walked, Andy kept shooting Joe dark looks, somewhere between terrified and furious, but he had to know that Joe would never have let anything hurt Carmilla. Whatever that thing was hadn’t done anything, and Joe would have heard if it had. Of course, he didn’t want to say anything like that out loud. He thought it best not to rile Andy, who was already more on edge than Joe had seen him in a very long time.
Andy all but kicked the door down to Pete and Patrick’s bus, where the two of them looked up in one fluid motion from the laptop they were both bent over. Pete reeled back almost at once. Joe didn’t even want to think about how thunderous Andy’s aura must have seemed at that moment.
“Look at this,” Andy growled, pushing the note into Pete’s hands. Pete and Patrick both looked over it, and the lines of concern on Pete’s face deepened. Patrick’s mouth moved in the shape of the x’s and o’s.
“What is it?” Pete asked eventually.
“It was on the floor of Andy’s bus, put between me and Carm while my back was turned,” Joe said. He glanced at Andy and Carmilla, who had shrunk down, having realized that people were angry. “Carmilla says you put it there.”
“I didn’t,” Pete said quickly.
“I know,” Andy growled. “But something that looks like you did.”
All four of them looked stony, while Carmilla hid her face in Andy’s chest.
“What do you want to do?” Pete asked Andy after a long silence.
“I want to find this thing and get rid of it,” Andy said. “I can tell her not to trust strangers but you’re not a stranger, Pete.”
“I know,” Pete said, the words too heavy. “But whatever this is, it seems like it’s avoiding us.”
“Guess I’m not playing bait this time then,” Patrick said with a small smile. Andy didn’t return the look, and neither did Joe.
“We should stay calm,” Joe said, though he was sure he couldn’t stay calm if it were his kid. “It hasn’t done anything yet.”
“But it could,” Andy said shortly. Then he sighed. “I’m gonna go back to my bus. See what you can find.”
Andy and Carmilla left, leaving Joe with Pete and Patrick. He didn’t have the faintest idea how to look for something trying so pointedly to not be seen by them, but he sat down next to the other two and leaned to see the laptop as well. Pete started calling around, trying to see if he could find some contact who could put him in touch with someone at Seelie Court. Joe wasn’t incredibly invested in the Wikipedia page on Lubber fiends, since he still wasn’t convinced that this was an issue of fae. He supposed it would be good to verify that it wasn’t, but he still felt like there was a much better use of his time.
It felt like a complete waste spending the whole day researching when it was so nice out and they were surrounded by other bands. Joe was full of pent up energy from a day of sitting down when he went to bed that night, the next day much the same. A couple of the techs for The Plain White Tees were avoiding Pete and being overly polite when they did run into him, but Joe didn’t know how to approach them to ask what was wrong or what they had seen. Since he hadn’t personally seen anything, there was little else he could do but wait.
His sleep was uneasy, and one day he made the mistake of staying up too late with Gym Class Heroes and falling asleep much later in the night than he usually did. Patrick was usually the last to bed, a problem Joe only remembered once he was already dreaming.
Still lying down and awash in warmth, he was breathing slow and deep, feeling the rise and fall of his chest with every breath. The room around him seemed to be glowing softly, everything awash in the amber light of dreaming. He realized he was asleep, as he often did, though knowing he was asleep never gave him the omnipotence of most lucid dreamers.
He could only see the ceiling of this room, lying flat on his back as he was. However, he could hear the quiet thrum of a fan, which wasn’t doing much for the heat in the room. And then— then he could feel more warmth, a finger tracing patterns up the side of his thigh and warm breath washing over his chest. The breath was followed immediately by lips pressing down against his side, someone kissing a trail down his chest, down his stomach…
He groaned, reaching out to grab the girl’s hair. His fingers buried deep into thick hair, but it was too short for him to take hold of. His eyes opened, and he saw Pete staring back up at him.
“Fuck!” Joe gasped. He sat up straight, breathing heavily. The sheets of his bunk were sweat soaked where he was lying, and he felt deeply nauseous. Sure, the others had complained about seeing way too much of Marie, but Pete—
Joe shuddered, almost vomiting. That was too many levels of not okay. And some part of him deep down felt overwhelmingly lonely in response to waking up on his own. His bus was much colder and darker than the dream had been. The incredibly vivid dream. He could practically still feel Pete’s hands running down his hips and—
Joe retched a little. Of all the places his subconscious could have gone, that was the worst. He dug his phone out of his bag and called Pete immediately, not shocked that he was still up.
“Hello?” Pete’s voice was very low, possibly because he was trying not to wake Patrick.
“Go fuck your boyfriend,” Joe said firmly.
“What?” Pete said, much louder now. “What are you—?”
“He’s already dreaming about you, dude,” Joe said. “I need brain bleach, and you need to go have sex. And try and get some sleep yourself.”
“I really, really don’t need you giving me sex advice,” Pete said. He sounded mortified, which Joe was selfishly glad for. If Pete was embarrassed, it felt like permission for Joe not to be.
“I’m just giving you a suggestion,” Joe said.
“Stop dreaming about us, pervert,” Pete said, his voice almost light. Still embarrassed, still annoyed, but it was easier if they joked about it.
“I want nothing more,” Joe said. “Take care of your dude.”
“Good night, Joseph.”
After hanging up with Pete, Joe stood up, not quite ready to go to sleep again yet, just in case. He walked out into the lounge area, sat down at the table and watched as the countryside sped by. They were getting back into midwest territory, and the land outside constantly alternated between corn and soybean fields. A patchwork of farmland that looked almost pretty from above, that had always been so exhausting and homogenous to drive through. It was weird how much Joe sort of missed it.
While he was up, he pulled out his computer to do some research. There was nothing better to do while he waited to fall back to sleep. And sleep was sure to be in short supply anyway.
Instead, he looked up doppelganger. Most of the mythology seemed to claim it was an omen of what was to come for the person it emulated, but that didn’t make any sense. Pete wasn’t mean, and even when he was, he wasn’t cruel. It was also listed some places as an omen of death, but usually these sightings were benign. The doppelgangers wouldn’t do anything wrong and would just appear. One such double in mythology turned out to be a mistranslation of texts. Joe slammed the laptop shut, frustrated.
There was nothing helpful. A lot of Harry Potter fanfiction and scary stories, and nothing else. He suddenly wished he had the note on him that the thing had left so that he could see if any kind of scent clung to it, much as he complained about bloodhound jokes. Funny, he hadn’t sensed anything behind him when Carmilla said it had left the note.
That was a worthwhile thought, he realized. Though he wasn’t often in the habit of talking to Ryan on the phone, he had his number, and he called him then, not really noticing or caring that it was past three in the morning.
“Hello?” Ryan sounded ragged when he answered the phone.
“You up?” Joe asked.
“Obviously,” Ryan said. “What’s wrong now?”
“The thing, whatever it is,” Joe said. “It— did Pete tell you what happened earlier today?”
“Yes,” Ryan said. “Creepy note, threatened the kid, defcon five, go on.”
“Right, well whatever it was had to have been right behind me and I didn’t hear it, or smell it, and like. I’m a werewolf, but even a human should’ve heard that. Does that help it all?”
“Huh.” Something creaked on Ryan’s end. “Maybe? Say, has anyone touched this thing?”
“No,” Joe said. “But it wrote something down.”
“Yeah, I figured that for myself,” Ryan said. “Okay. I’m gonna look into it, but probably in the morning. Try and get some rest. I have a couple of theories but…” he trailed off.
“But?” Joe prompted.
“Not sure,” Ryan said. “Keep an eye out for this thing.”
“No shit,” Joe said. “Night.”
“Night.”
Morning came quickly, and thankfully Joe wasn’t woken up by anyone else’s dreams between falling asleep and getting shaken awake for sound check. The rest of the tour seemed entirely unaware of whatever was stalking Fall Out Boy, but Joe was on edge. More than that— he couldn’t defend why, but while setting up equipment and exploring the venue, he felt like he was being followed, or watched. When he stood alone behind the stage he felt like there was someone else there. He checked everywhere and listened as hard as he could, but there was nothing, no one.
Paranoia, probably, he told himself. The rest of his band was on edge as well, but everyone else on the tour seemed to be thriving. Joe, Pete, Dirty and Travie went out to a local Halloween store on a whim to get some crappy decorations for the bus. Dirty and Travie were fine, laughing and taking turns trying on cheap rubber masks. Pete, on the other hand, looked just as distracted as Joe felt.
The store wasn’t anything like a Spirit Halloween or Halloween City, but instead a permanent fixture Joe that remembered as a highlight of their last time in Champaign. On Dallas and Company’s outer walls, they had enormous statues of dinosaurs that looked like they were bursting out from within the store. Inside the store, the maze of shelves and racks were packed so full of costumes and gags that there was hardly room to walk around. Pulling Pete into a corner of Star Wars costumes, Joe looked over his shoulder and began speaking in a low voice.
“I don’t think this is fae,” he said. Pete looked at him oddly, and Joe rolled his eyes.
“This thing that looks like you, I don’t think it’s fae and Ryan doesn’t either. Look, the other day I should have heard something open the door. Even if I didn’t hear it or smell it behind me, I should’ve heard the door open.”
“What if it was already on the bus?” Pete said, eyes wide like he had frightened himself by his own thought. But Joe shook his head, unfazed.
“No, I didn’t think it was important earlier, but I saw something out the window first. That’s why I was standing up— I was looking for it. This thing was outside. Then it was inside. How could a fairy do that?”
Pete looked concerned, but more confused than anything.
“Some types of fae are very small,” Pete said. “But I don’t know how large they could make themselves appear. Especially unseelie.”
“What is unseelie anyway?” Joe asked. Pete looked somehow more reserved, arms crossed over his chest.
“Evil fae,” he said. “Not that they think of themselves that way, but it’s the easiest way to describe it.”
“So, what, the fae who drugged and kidnapped us were the good ones?”
“You think you’re joking,” Pete sighed. “What do you think it is, then?”
“Not fae,” Joe said. “I don’t know what, but I don’t like it.”
“Hey!”
Joe jumped, turning around so fast the room blurred, but it was only Dirty, grinning at the both of them with his eyebrows raised.
“What are you two doing hiding back here?” he complained. “Come on, did you know they sell Pete Wentz cardboard cutouts here? There’s one in Hawaiian get up and you’ve got to see it.”
Dirty led them through the labyrinth of the store, past enormous figurines and a wall completely covered with an array of wigs to a section of the store filled with cardboard standees. They entertained Dirty for a while but didn’t get any shopping done. As it turned out, the store had very little to offer in terms of decorations, and since none of them were looking for costumes, they didn’t have much to do.
In retrospect, it took Joe too long to realize that Travie wasn’t with them. Not until they were getting ready to leave did Dirty ask where he had gotten to, and Joe and Pete exchanged one fearful look before sprinting to the exit. One of them might have knocked over a display— Joe didn’t stop to check. The two of them burst out of the door into blinding daylight. Joe blinked, his eyes slowly adjusting to see Travie standing at the edge of the parking lot, a confused expression on his face, and a darkly shrouded figure rounding the corner of the building.
“Hey, Pete, dude,” Travie called, “That thing, it looked like-”
“Me,” Pete whispered. Joe launched himself the rest of the way out of the store and took off sprinting. He cleared the distance across the small parking lot and around the corner of the building in seconds, but there was no one there when he got out onto the street. A few people walking his direction on the other side of the street, but they were all college aged girls. Nothing that looked like Pete, no getaway cars, nothing. It was as though the figure had just disappeared.
Joe went back to the car where the other three were standing. Travie didn’t look scared or angry, thankfully, just confused. Joe skidded up to them, frustrated.
“It’s gone, whatever it is,” he said. “What happened?”
“I came outside to make a call,” Travie said. “Got out here and Pete or something that looked like him was already leaning on the car. He said hey, but something was weird about him. He told me we should just get in the car and head out, but I wouldn’t. He got kinda weird. I tried asking him what was up, but I figured this was the thing you guys were talking about. I asked him to take off the sunglasses, see if there was maybe something going on with his eyes—you know how supernatural shit is—but then he got really weird. He backed away, and when I tried to take them off myself he fucking jumped. He started running away right before you got out.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “So that’s… creepy, but not outwardly threatening.”
Travie seemed more outwardly uncomfortable then. “Yeah, but what if I’d gotten in the car?”
“Thank fuck you didn’t,” Pete said. “Also, sunglasses? Shaant mentioned that too, but I didn’t think it was a big thing.”
“It’s bright out today,” Dirty pointed out.
“Yeah, but since when do I pay attention to shit like that?” Pete asked. “It could be important.”
“Probably is,” Travie said. “I’m telling you, he flipped over the sunglasses. What is that thing?”
Joe and Pete exchanged another look.
“We don’t know,” Pete said. “Let’s get back to the tour.”
The arena in this town had the appearance of an enormous orange juicer stuck in the middle of Southern Illinois’ endless farmland. The parking lot was filling up steadily, and Dirty had a hell of a time getting them back into the back lot, even with Pete and Joe’s access passes. Leaving the venue during the day was getting to be more of a hassle with every tour.
As soon as they got back inside, Pete was calling Ryan, but unfortunately Ryan wasn’t answering. Andy brought Carmilla backstage for once, unwilling to be too far away from her. Even with the whole band holed up in the back room, Joe still felt uneasy, like he was being watched. He couldn’t quite describe the sensation, other than he felt like there were six people breathing when there were only five people in the room.
After the show while they were all backstage, Pete tried Ryan’s number again.
“Clingy,” Patrick had teased, but he was too tense for the joke to really carry through. It did feel like they were sort of dependent on Ryan’s information, Joe thought, but he wasn’t having any luck researching on his own.
Finally, Joe couldn’t take the tension in the room. He stood up, stretched, and slid on a jacket.
“I’m going on a walk,” he said. “Anyone want to come with?”
“Funny,” Pete said. “I wish.”
“No,” Andy said, glancing once at Carmilla, curled up asleep on the sofa in the back room.
Patrick shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll come along. We shouldn’t go off on our own.”
He leaned over and kissed Pete softly on the lips—seeing the two of them acting domestic together was still going to take some getting used to—and stood up as well. The two of them snuck out, ditching security as fast as they could and walking through the dark streets. The venue was next to a college campus, and the streets were still teeming with drunk students.
“What do you think it is?” Joe asked Patrick. Patrick shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I think it’s related to the dreams.”
Joe stared at Patrick, breaking stride for just a moment. “What makes you say that?”
“We’re the only four this thing is avoiding,” Patrick said. “And the dreams are only happening to the four of us. These two things are happening at the same time and... I don’t know. It’s just— it feels too weird to be a coincidence, you know?”
“Maybe,” Joe said. “Some type of magic, then?”
“Maybe,” Patrick agreed. They walked past a cemetery, their surroundings quieter than they had been all night. “You know, it’s so funny, I used to avoid quiet streets at night.” Patrick said. “Scared of getting mugged or murdered or whatever. You know, the kind of shit your mom warns you about when you go to the city. I’m not scared of that anymore, though I guess I should be, right? I don’t have superpowers, so there’s nothing to stop some human with a gun from killing me, but I feel invincible to non-magic shit.”
“You’re right,” Joe said. “You should be more careful. If you get shot all the John Lennon comparisons will be exhausting.” Patrick laughed very hard at that, though he wouldn’t explain why. He was still so human—maybe not weak, not anymore, but certainly weaker than Joe was. No need for him to get reckless.
Their path had winded a bit to stay on the quieter streets, but now they were surrounded by streetlights. A group of twenty-somethings spilled out from a door underneath a more traditional looking marquee, lit up to say “The Canopy Club.” Joe smiled fondly at it, and Patrick elbowed him, probably having the same thought.
“Remember when we played there?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Joe said, feeling warmly nostalgic as well. “Man, you ever miss playing shows that small?”
“Kinda,” Patrick said. “But I also really like not sleeping in a van with you.”
Joe laughed along with him. They waded through the small crowd and around the corner, back onto a darker, quieter street. This stretch was more industrial, no bars or restaurants lighting up the sidewalks for a long way.
“Hey, I’ll be right back,” Patrick said. “Gonna go piss, scream if you get attacked.”
“So, the usual system, got it,” Joe said. Patrick flipped him off and turned back towards the bars they had just walked by. Joe leaned back against the brick wall, exhaling hugely in the hopes of expelling some of the tension still built up in his body.
And when that didn’t work, he pulled out a cigarette. His hands were shaking in the October chill, and he dropped the first one. Joe swore loudly and leaned down to see if he could save it. He’d managed to drop his cigarette into a puddle, so he pulled a new one out of the pack instead as he straightened up. He lit it up and took a deep drag. That did a much better job of easing the tightness in his muscles, and he leaned his back against the wall again, breathing out a puff of smoke in relief.
“Can I have a light?”
The voice Joe heard almost directly in his ear was familiar, but he couldn’t for the life of him place it. He turned to face the man the voice belonged to, but it was too dark to see him. The man stood a little taller than Joe, but not by much. There was very little Joe could see of him, other than the breadth of his shoulders in the hazy glow from the next street over.
“Yeah, sure man,” Joe said.
“Can I also bum a cigarette?” the guy asked. He had a warm voice, deep and smooth and reassuring. Joe rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. He held out the pack to the man and flicked the lighter to life. The flame sparked up and illuminated the face of the man. Joe’s face.
Joe staggered backwards, dropping the lighter in the gutter as well. The second Joe, now dimly lit by the cherry ember at the end of his cigarette, laughed.
He looked just like Joe: thick, dark curls on top of his head, his skin pale but healthy looking in the greyish light of night. It was like looking into a mirror, except for the man’s eyes. The other Joe had flat black eyes, eyes that glistened like an oil spill from one corner to the other. There were no whites, no retinas, just black, like a black hole, like the darkness of the night around him.
“Always nice getting to socialize while you smoke, right?” the other Joe said. He took a deep drag, and chuckled again. “S’pose I should introduce myself. I’m Joe. Joe Trohman.”
“Likewise,” Joe said. He felt paralyzed with fear, but he was happy to find that his voice was still there. “You. Are you the thing that’s been following us?”
“Sort of,” the other Joe said. “I’m a shapeshifter.”
“You’ve been listening to us,” Joe said.
“Oh, more than listening,” Other Joe said. Joe could have imagined it, but he thought he saw a gleam in the shapeshifter’s eyes, a mirthful glint. “I know you inside and out, Joe, know your hopes and fears better than you do. I know what you look like underneath your skin, the weakness and rot you try to hide, know what bruised parts of your soul have already turned necrotic. But to answer your question yes, I know what you’ve been talking about.”
Joe stared at the other him. His heart was either beating very fast or not at all, and he couldn’t tell which.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Well, this is, um, enlightening, but I should go.”
“Running back to your friends?” Other Joe asked. “Don’t worry, we’ll let the whole band in on the party soon enough. We thought you would find us quicker, but it seems we overestimated your intelligence.”
“We?” Joe asked. Other Joe scowled, his face turned thunderous as he must have realized he’d said too much. Then Joe heard Patrick’s voice.
“Hey, dude, you still out here?” Patrick called. “Who’s your friend?”
“Patrick, run,” Joe said, his voice very even. Patrick froze, eyes dark. His hand flew to the knife strapped to his hip, bless him, but the other Joe had already turned around.
“No, Patrick,” he said, stepping forward. “Why don’t you stay awhile?”
“Joe?!” Patrick said, his voice thick with alarm. Before Joe could summon the will to move, to help, to do anything, Other Joe had lurched forward and slammed Patrick into the wall. Patrick let out a terrible scream. Joe smelled the singed flesh before he saw the cigarette in the shapeshifter’s hand pressed against Patrick’s shoulder, put out on his skin.
Joe started to run forward, but Patrick beat him to it and kicked Other Joe as hard as he could, knocking him into the street. They didn’t even have to look at one another before the two of them took off at a dead sprint, leaving the creature behind them along with the smell of burnt skin.
***
Patrick was still not a big fan of the constant running involved in his job. It looked sort of cool in old music documentaries, all glamorous shots of bands laughing as they ran from crowds of screaming girls. Of course, maybe this would be more fun if he were running from fans rather than a monster that looked like an exact copy of Joe.
He and the real Joe had run down the dark street without even having to discuss it. Patrick’s initial thought process was mostly a wordless shout of alarm, but once his head was clear, he was grateful they had run away from any potential bystanders. There was no need for anyone else to get hurt, or for anyone to catch sight of what might as well be Joe Trohman randomly attacking people on the street.
Patrick was already gasping for breath when Joe started tugging him across the street. He had a stitch in his side like someone had stabbed him in the ribs. On the other side of the road was a tunnel exuding orange light that looked like it led to an underground parking garage. Hopefully that was a place where they could hide for a minute or two. Patrick tried to put on a new burst of speed, but Joe still outran him by far, and the tightness in Patrick’s chest was threatening to make him collapse in the middle of the road. Even still, he thought he had never run so fast before, which made it all the more disappointing when he felt arms wrap around him from behind and pull him up short.
Patrick did scream, but when Joe turned around he managed to get ahold of his fear for a moment.
“Keep running!” Patrick shouted. This thing, this not-Joe, was holding him up off the ground, and Patrick was flailing in an attempt to break free of its grip. Joe nodded and disappeared into the parking garage, and Patrick twisted his body violently enough that he broke free, falling ass-first onto the asphalt. He scrambled backwards, and the not-Joe just smiled at him.
“Pleased to meet you, Patrick,” not-Joe said, its voice smooth and pleasant. “I feel like I already know you so intimately, though we’ve never met. Such a fascinating person you are, such a glutton for proving yourself no matter how much pain it puts you in.”
Not-Joe knelt down blindingly fast, its face suddenly inches from Patrick’s. Even in the dark, Patrick could clearly see the deep black pools of its eyes, endless and empty. The thing smiled, its smile just a little too wide to be human. As the inhuman smile spread, Patrick swallowed back another scream that threatened to rise up in the back of his throat.
“I’m going to have a lot of fun with you,” the thing said. It was so close Patrick could feel its breath. He was blinded by the bright white smile, and though it wasn’t holding him, though he knew he had to move to escape, he was frozen to the ground. Everything about this double was so viscerally wrong and uncanny. A twisted, warped version of something he was supposed to trust.
“I’m going to have fun burning you,” it whispered.
Before Patrick could push himself to his feet and stagger backward, the thing pulled something silvery out of its pocket. There was a flash of light, an ear-splitting bang, and Joe screamed behind him.
Patrick turned his head to see Joe on his knees, one hand cupped to his shoulder. Then he looked back up to the thing. It was blowing smoke off the muzzle of a gun. Joe’s flintlock pistol; Patrick recognized it.
“That’s mine,” Joe growled from behind Patrick. His voice was thick with pain. The thing just laughed and tucked the gun away.
“Finders keepers,” not-Joe said lightly. “Now-”
Whatever it meant to say, it didn’t get to finish it. Patrick had taken advantage of its attention on Joe to draw his knife and slash the creature. He cut deep, not caring whether he injured or killed it, just wanting to buy enough time to get away. He dragged the knife through flesh and cloth, cutting over its stomach. Then, Patrick quickly pulled himself to his feet and ran towards the real Joe. He stopped to help Joe up, pulling his arm over his shoulders and then they half-ran, half-limped down into the parking garage.
The thing behind them was roaring in pain or anger or both, but Patrick didn’t waste any time turning around to see. He and Joe ran down two floors and then Joe pointed out an elevator bank. Patrick smashed all of the elevator buttons— up, down, it didn’t matter as long as it was sealed and away from that thing.
The elevator came before the creature did, and the two of them fell into it, Joe slamming the “Door Close” button dozens of times as the doors slowly sealed shut. Then it was quiet, no noise but the sound of the two of them breathing.
“Are you—?” Patrick stopped himself. Joe was soaking him with blood, which was steadily running out of his shoulder wound. His face was ice white and he looked scared and out of control in a way Patrick never had seen him. He was absolutely not okay, and Patrick didn’t want to waste time asking stupid questions. “What was the bullet made of?”
Joe gulped, his breathing shallow. “Not silver,” he gasped at last. “Iron, so it hurts like shit, but it’s not silver. I’ll be okay once we get it out.”
Patrick stared at the tiny bullet hole that was leaking blood. “I don’t have any tweezers with me.”
Joe let out a hysterical gasp of laughter.
“Me either,” he said. He was still breathing in tiny little gasps that didn’t convince Patrick that he was getting enough air. “Fuck. Fuck!” Joe punched the wall, and the elevator started rising. He gripped Patrick’s arm, and Patrick shook his head.
“Hey, hey, come on, it’s just going up, it could be anything,” Patrick said. “Anyone could’ve called it. Deep breaths.”
Joe gave him a disparaging look.
“Deep breaths?” he repeated. “Deep fucking breaths?”
“Not to stress you out more, but you either need to calm down and put my jacket on over yours or get ready for a paparazzi filled hospital visit,” Patrick said. Joe pushed himself away from Patrick and shed his own jacket with some difficulty.
Patrick had just finished covering up the bullet hole as best he could when the elevator doors opened. They were met not by the horrific double, but by a small crowd of elderly white people dressed in suits and expensive dresses. Patrick smiled and nodded at them.
“Pardon us,” he murmured, and he led Joe past them into a high-ceilinged wooden entrance hall. It looked a lot fancier than the rest of the campus they had wandered around, but it was well lit. Patrick wasn’t in the habit of endangering bystanders when he could avoid it, but they needed a minute to recuperate.
“Bathroom,” Joe said, jerking his head towards a sign. Patrick shook his head.
“No, bad idea.”
“Bad idea? I’ve got a fucking bullet in my shoulder!”
“Keep your voice down! There’s a line coming out of there— are you just gonna slice your wound open bigger and dig in with your fingers in front of everyone?”
Joe gave Patrick a pitiful, pleading look.
“I won’t be any good in a fight like this,” he said.
“Leave it up to me for a minute,” Patrick said. “Come on.” The two of them walked over to what looked like a closed cafe area that was roped off from the rest of the hall. Patrick ducked under the velvet rope surrounding the area and pulled out his cell phone. Thankfully, the phone only rang once before Pete picked up.
“Patrick! Hey, I was just about to call you guys, Ryan said that—”
“It’s here,” Patrick said, words tumbling out in a rush. “That—that thing, that whatever-it-is, it looks like Joe and it found us and it’s pretty fucking violent and Joe’s been shot, can you pick us up?”
“Shot?!” Pete shouted.
“Yes,” Patrick said, “And I don’t know how much time I bought in slashing the thing because I don’t know what it is, so hurry here with a car and weapons and a first aid kit.”
“I—shit, okay, where are you?”
“Um,” Patrick looked around. Joe shrugged. “I don’t know? We were by the Canopy Club when we first ran into the thing and we started running. We’re in a big building, some kind of concert hall, I think.”
There was some shuffling on the other line, and after a moment, Pete said “Krannert?”
“Maybe,” Patrick said. “Is that a big ass concert hall with an underground parking garage near the Canopy Club?”
“Yes,” Pete said emphatically. “Hang tight, we’re on our way.”
“Pete, wait!” Patrick said. He didn’t realize until now how much he didn’t want Pete to hang up, how much he wanted to keep hearing his voice. Some of the adrenaline coursing through him was starting to fade and Patrick felt his hands shaking. “Um. Hurry, I guess. And remember, it looks like Joe, but it isn’t him. The eyes are all wrong.”
“Eyes?”
“They’re black.”
Pete was quiet for a moment, then said “We’re on our way.” The line went dead.
“So now what?” Joe asked in a hushed tone. “This place is clearing out, and security’s gonna kick us out eventually, aren’t they?”
“Shit, probably,” Patrick said. “Or as soon as they notice we’re dripping blood. We’re pretty secluded now, do you want me to look at your shoulder?”
Joe glared.
“Do you have tweezers now?” he asked mockingly. “Or a medical degree I don’t know about?”
“No, but I thought I could at least wrap it up in case we have to run again,” Patrick said. His own shoulder ached too, the burn throbbing viciously now that he had slowed down enough to feel it. Though the wounds were far from comparable, Patrick could feel what he suspected to be either blood or plasma oozing out of the burn, and the sensation was nauseating.
Guilt rushed over him in waves as Joe peeled back the layers of his clothes to reveal the bleeding bullet wound. He should have gotten away faster, fought back better so that Joe wouldn’t have had to turn back in the first place. He had to stop himself from thinking too much about what he should have done; there would be plenty more time for wallowing in guilt later but he had to do something to help Joe first. In that moment, he tore the sleeve off of Joe’s old jacket and tied it as best he could around the wound. It wasn’t a great job, but it was probably better than nothing.
“We have to get out of here,” Joe said. He was breathing heavily, and Patrick hated the idea of them trying to run again like this, but he nodded.
“We can try and wait a minute for Pete and Andy to show up,” he said, but Joe was shaking his head before Patrick finished.
“No, listen— that thing knows where we are,” he said. Patrick felt suddenly chilled.
“Why do you think that?” he asked.
“Because I was dead fucking quiet going back to you,” Joe said. “He couldn’t have heard me, he wasn’t even looking at me, but he shot and hit me with perfect accuracy without even aiming. I mean, how do you explain that?”
“I don’t know,” Patrick admitted. “But we’re probably as safe in here as anywhere else, even if it knows where we are.”
“What about Pete and Andy?” Joe asked. Patrick’s stomach flipped over.
“Should we warn them?” he asked.
“I think we should get to them before this thing does,” Joe said. Patrick nodded, then pulled a woman aside as she was leaving, asking where the main entrance was. She pointed to a door opposite the elevator Patrick and Joe had taken, and he went to help Joe up. Together, they walked quickly to the exit.
Outside, the world was too quiet and too dark. Patrick felt more exposed than ever, facing of the huge stone staircase descending to street level. At least no one was staring at them out there. It was abnormally cold for early October, and Patrick slid on the remains of Joe’s hoodie, which now only had one arm. It looked horrible, but it kept him just a little bit warmer.
“We shouldn’t stay still,” Joe said, shaking his head. Patrick stared at him in disbelief, but Joe was resolute. “That thing is going to find us if we stay in one place.”
“Where else do we go?” Patrick asked. Joe looked around and pointed to the road.
“Down the stairs, at least,” he said. Patrick hurried down the stairs with him, sometimes flying down two or three stone steps at a time in his hurry to get away, get moving somewhere.
When the two of them reached the bottom and there was still no car in sight, Patrick was ready to suggest they start wandering back in the direction they had come from, but then he saw a figure running down the sidewalk towards them.
“Guys!” he heard Andy call. “I ran ahead, what’s up?”
Patrick remained frozen. It sounded like Andy, sort of, but this voice was different too. It wasn’t the same way not-Joe’s voice had been different—it was deeper this time. And he couldn’t see Andy’s face.
“What’s going on?” he asked again, his voice clear and too low, his face obscured by shadow. Patrick drew his knife again, holding it out in front of him warily.
“Step into the light,” he called. Laughter echoed down the empty street.
“You’re a bit smarter than you look, aren’t you?” the thing asked with its version of Andy’s voice. It stepped forward, walking towards the two of them at a steady pace. From a distance, Patrick saw it: similar to Andy but too tall, covered in more tattoos, and having those empty black eyes.
“That isn’t saying much,” the thing said. “But it’s still better than someone would expect.”
“Patrick,” Joe’s voice was low and pleading. “Patrick, we have to-”
“And how’s my favorite shitty alpha doing?” not-Andy asked. It was still striding forward, not running, but not slowing either. “Have you realized you couldn’t keep a flea under your care without killing it?”
“What are you?” Joe asked.
Not-Andy stepped up right in front of them. It smiled just like not-Joe, its lips stretching just a little too far and its smile just too wide to be human.
“I’m Andy,” it said. “Andy Hurley. But better.”
It lashed out then, knocking both Joe and Patrick to the ground, separating them from one another. It slammed its fist down across Patrick’s cheek with a force that sent tremors through Patrick’s whole body. Patrick gasped, but before he could take in enough air he felt another blow, this one to his ribcage, knocking all the air out of his lungs. Patrick curled in on himself on the sidewalk but forced himself to open his eyes. He looked up just in time to see that not-Andy was about to bring his foot down on Patrick’s leg. He rolled out of the way, dragging himself back to his feet.
Patrick’s knife had gotten knocked aside, so he simply punched not-Andy as hard as he could in the face. To his great surprise, his punch knocked the thing off balance and sent it stumbling backwards. Patrick re-balanced himself on the balls of his feet and ran at not-Andy, kicking it as hard as he could in the stomach, forcing it to fall to the ground.
“Joe?” Patrick called, turning around. His vision was a little blurry. He could see Joe sprawled out on the ground, but couldn’t make out any details of him, not his face or clothes or any worsening of blood spreading across his clothes.
“Fine,” Joe croaked. “’m fine, watch out behind you!”
Patrick turned and just barely ducked a blow to his head, throwing a punch at random that, by some good luck, managed to catch not-Andy in the sternum and knock him back a foot or two. Not-Andy spat out blood on the side of the road, its face twisted up in pure rage. It didn’t look human, and Patrick couldn’t figure out what was wrong, but something was wrong. It wasn’t human, wasn’t normal, shouldn’t exist, and every part of him recoiled from the thing’s existence.
“You’re kinda getting on my nerves, Ricky,” not-Andy said. “I think my counterpart should’ve drained you like a juicebox when he had the chance, little bloodslut. Would’ve spared the rest of us a lot of trouble.”
The words hit Patrick a little, more by way of the terrible memories than anything else. Even so, as not-Andy spoke, Patrick snatched his knife off the ground and brandished it.
“Stay away from us,” he said. Not-Andy grinned its horrible grin again.
“Or what?” it asked.
Patrick charged forwards and sank the knife into the thing’s chest. Not-Andy gasped, staring up at Patrick with black eyes as it sank to its knees. It cocked its head, shuddering with its whole body, then suddenly ripped itself backwards, pulling off of the knife.
Blood splattered the sidewalks, dripping red where they had fought.
“You’ll live to regret that,” not-Andy said, and then fled from them at a staggering run. Patrick swiped his knife along his jeans to get the worst of the blood off, then fell down on his knees next to Joe.
“Oh Jesus, oh fuck,” he whispered. Joe was half-curled in on himself, his breath shallow and blood still coming out from the wound in spite of the makeshift bandage. “Christ, Joe, you’re—”
“I know,” Joe said through gritted teeth.
“This isn’t an iron bullet,” Patrick guessed flatly. Joe shook his head.
“Iron-silver blend, but I didn’t think you needed to worry,” he said, taking in sharp gasps of breath. “Fuck, I have come too far to die in fucking Illinois.”
“No one is dying,” Patrick said. He pressed his hands down on the wound, pressing down as hard as he could. Joe cried out, but Patrick pressed his whole weight into it nonetheless.
“Are you trying to kill me faster?” Joe screamed.
“Shut up! I’m putting pressure on it!” Patrick yelled back. His own breathing was labored and his chest ached, whether from sharing Joe’s pain through their pack bond or from the kick in the ribs he’d just gotten.
They weren’t on the ground long before a car skidded up to them, and Pete’s voice washed over Patrick like hot tea, a warm blanket, familiar and comforting even in his panic.
“Shit, fuck, guys!” Pete cried. Suddenly, doubt seized Patrick, and he jumped to his feet again, ignoring the protest in his whole body as he did so. He held up his knife, shaking.
“Turn the light on and show me your faces!” he shouted.
“Patrick, get him in the car so we can—”
“Show me your fucking eyes!” Patrick shouted. The interior light of the car came on, illuminating Pete, Andy, and Dirty staring at him with wide, horrified, normal eyes. Brown and blue irises, whites, and blown pupils. Patrick dropped his knife in the gutter, almost collapsing with relief.
“You’re all you?” he asked. Rather than answering, Andy got out and opened the car door. He pulled Joe into the car, and Patrick realized Pete was tugging him in as well. Patrick scooped up his knife and had enough presence of mind to pull the door shut as he got in.
“What the fuck happened?” Pete shouted, but Patrick’s eyes were closed and he wasn’t sure who Pete was yelling at. When no one responded, Patrick made a noise in the back of his throat that he hoped indicated “give me a minute.”
“It looked like Joe,” Patrick said. “‘Cept for the eyes. Black eyes. And it shot him. There was silver—!”
“Got it,” Andy said softly, and Patrick was overwhelmingly relieved to hear real voice. “He should heal in a second, Patrick, don’t worry.”
“We got inside,” Patrick said. “And when we came out to wait for you it looked like Andy.”
“How’s your chest?” Joe asked. Patrick lifted his shirt up to look. He half-expected a cartoony imprint of a thick shoe print on his chest, but of course, there was only the pinkish first stage of what was sure to be a hell of a bruise. The cigarette burn was black and ugly too, and he had a few scrapes on his sides he didn’t even remember, probably from falling on the asphalt. Pete inhaled sharply and grabbed Patrick’s arm, but it wasn’t as bad as Patrick had thought.
Patrick inhaled deeply, trying to take stock of how it felt when he did. He felt a sharp stab of pain in the lower right side of ribs, but he could live with it. So long as he didn’t inhale too deeply.
“Baby,” Pete said, and Patrick winced. Pete’s power of aura reading was a lot more convenient when they weren’t in the middle of something, and Patrick shook his head.
“Cracked at worst,” he said. “I can hardly feel it, I was just testing to see how bad it was.”
“Fuck,” Joe said. The one word seemed to convey a lot: resignation, awe, disgust, residual fear. “Fucker did a number on us.”
“Yeah, well,” Patrick pulled his shirt back down. “I stabbed the damn thing the second time, maybe that’ll slow it down. What’d you want to tell us, Pete?”
“Nothing now,” Pete said. “We were just working on theories, but those theories centered on it not being able to touch anyone, so it looks like they’re out the window.”
“So now what?” Joe asked. “Do we get the fuck out of Dodge, or wait around and see if we can finish this thing off?”
“Finish it off,” Andy said, to Patrick’s surprise. He sounded venomous and ready for a fight in a way that was atypical of Andy. “It doesn’t have the element of surprise anymore and I want it dead.”
“It wasn’t that hard to fight,” Patrick said. “I was holding my own. We just didn’t expect it to have a fucking gun.”
“We do now,” Andy said. “So let’s go back to the venue and wait for this thing to come back.”
“We’ll have to send the bus on ahead of us,” Pete said, his voice quiet and almost toneless.
“We can do that,” Joe said. Patrick slowly pushed over towards Pete, leaning his head on Pete’s shoulder. He slowly let the tension drift out of his body as Pete ran his fingers through his hair. It might have been a little too much, like an annoying PDA couple making out in the halls at high school, but it felt nice to be comforted.
So he curled a little bit closer to Pete. Pete wasn’t exactly going to protect him with brute strength, but it felt better being close to him. Dirty looked anxious in the front seat.
“If this thing can touch people then… do you think it already has?” he asked. “I mean, shit, if it can look like anyone in the band… there’s a lot of girls out there who—”
“Not now,” Pete said tightly. “Please, just—just don’t.”
“I don’t think so, anyway,” Joe said. “He wouldn’t let Travie touch him, and why not? I think there’s more to this that we’re not seeing.”
The drive to the venue only took a few minutes but getting back through the scant remains of security took a bit longer. As they made their way back into the massive complex, Pete got on the phone with someone, speaking in a hushed voice about buses.
“Do we have weapons?” Patrick asked.
“Yeah,” Andy said.
“Not my gun, though,” Joe said sourly. “That bastard has it, so be careful.”
“How many bullets did you have?” Patrick asked.
“It only loads one at a time, but I’ve got boxes full of them. Guess there’s no way of knowing how much he took,” Joe said. “Still, it’s a showy piece of shit. Takes a long time to reload.”
“Which I’m sure will be a great comfort when one of us is bleeding out,” Patrick said. “Was anything else missing?”
“Well, I’m assuming you brought your knives with you?” Andy guessed. Patrick felt a minor chill through his body. He was already afraid, but it seemed like each new piece of news hit a little harder.
“One,” Patrick said. “Are they both gone?”
“Oh, fantastic,” Andy groaned. “So, it has a knife too.”
Pete hung up and turned to face the rest of them. His face was drawn and tired looking, but there was a stubbornness and readiness to fight that matched what Patrick felt.
“So, what do we have?”
“The usual: swords, your godawful Indiana Jones whip, a battle axe and a crossbow, for some reason.”
“It’s a miracle we ever get through customs with all this shit,” Joe said. “I’ll take the crossbow, if that’s cool. I owe this fucker a long-range takedown.”
“What’s the plan?” Pete asked.
“We’re holing up somewhere in the venue with the least amount of breakable things and waiting,” Joe said. “I think that thing can find us, so there’s no point tracking it down.”
“Why do you think it can find us?” Pete asked.
“Intuition?” Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. Something Patrick said. I think it’s connected to the four of us?”
“How?”
“If I knew how, we’d be done with this already,” Joe said. The car rolled to a slow stop right in front of the service entrance. The assembly hall was desolate, all the fans and security and crew gone for the night. Patrick had lost track of time while he and Joe were out, and he realized by the greenish glow of the dashboard clock that it was past three in the morning.
“Let’s kill this thing and get out of here,” Joe said. He got out of the car and slammed the door shut behind him. Apparently, the wound in his shoulder was already healing just fine. Dirty cast a worried look into the backseat before following him.
After Andy got out, Pete caught Patrick’s shoulder.
“Is he okay?” Pete asked. “Joe, I mean. He’s acting kinda...” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“He’s freaked,” Patrick admitted. “I don’t know what else to tell you. You’ll get it when you see it.”
The five of them walked back into the venue. It was closed for the evening, but Andy made short work of breaking one of the padlocks off in his hand before leading them all inside. The emergency lights were dim and few in number, but they were enough to see by. Their footsteps echoed through the halls as they walked unhurriedly through the empty place. Rather than holstering his knife, Patrick held it tightly in his hand. His chest was throbbing but having a mission to focus on gave him enough to worry about that he couldn’t really think of his injuries.
There was no need to walk too closely together without a crowd or a conversation to keep up, but the distance made Patrick nervous.
“Kinda makes you jumpy, being in here after dark, huh?” Pete’s voice said from behind him. Patrick laughed, and even opened his mouth to reply, but then he saw Pete a good five feet ahead of him.
Patrick opened his mouth to shout, but before any noise could come out there was a hand pressed down on his mouth. He spun around with his knife out, but Pete—not Pete, most definitely NOT Pete smashed his free hand into Patrick’s wrist. The knife fell to the floor.
“Hey there, sweetie,” not-Pete said. “What, did I startle you?”
Not-Pete was hard to mistake for the real Pete now that Patrick was looking at him. He was taller than Patrick, not by an inch or two but by almost half a foot. He had an easy, leering grin, the sort of schoolyard bully expression that made him look like he was about to kick someone’s teeth in. His hair was the same, if a little longer and glossier. His skin was pale, and his black eyes were even more intense in the dim lighting.
Patrick pulled backwards out of not-Pete’s grasp, then punched the thing in the face.
Not-Pete stumbled back, and Patrick shook out his aching hand. It felt like he’d broken it. Meanwhile, the thing was swearing in Pete’s voice.
“IT’S BACK HERE!” Patrick shouted. The not-Pete snarled at him, suddenly animalistic, and launched forward, knocking Patrick onto his back.
Not-Pete crawled on top of him, pinning Patrick's wrists to the ground. A snarling sound was coming out of his chest as he jammed his knee into Patrick's chest, directly on the rib that felt more like a loose tooth than a bone. Patrick gasped in pain and the creature that looked so much like Pete grinned, looking giddy.
“I'm about to be temporarily dispensed with,” he said, leaning in far too close to Patrick’s face. “But first I want you to know that blood on your skin is a lovely look for you, and that I look forward to spending some time alone with you.”
No sooner had he finished his sentence did Patrick see him get kicked off of himself. Pete's foot sailed just above Patrick's face, kicking the thing in the head. Like a soccer ball, if kicking soccer balls gave off almighty crunching sounds like that just had. Hysterical giggles rose up in Patrick's throat. Pete had kicked someone's head like he was punting a fucking soccer ball.
Patrick sat up then stood up, his chest loudly protesting the movement. Not-Pete had landed in a heap a good ten feet back, and his Pete was cackling.
“Oh, MAN!” Pete cried. “Oh, that was awesome. That was cathartic as shit. I never realized just how much I wanted to kick myself in the fucking nose before today.”
Pete took Patrick's arm and helped him stand straight, all of them staring at the slack figure.
“Did you kill him?” Dirty asked, voice shaky.
“Not quite,” Pete's voice came from the thing, standing up and smiling its terrible smile at them. His nose was crumpled flat against his face, but he pulled it straight again with a wet crunch. His nose then looked fine, but there were still twin lines of blood running down over his mouth.
“Aw, what's this?” not-Pete asked. “You boys look scared shitless. All because of me?” He took a step forward and Patrick took a tiny step backwards before he could even think about it. At least everyone moved with him, either flinching or stepping back. Not-Pete took another step forward, let his face go completely blank and empty. “Boo.”
He lashed out with something in one hand, and Patrick ducked. Something grazed the top of his head, but the thing was too slow. Unusually slow for a monster. When Patrick brought himself back up to his full height again, he saw his long-bladed knife in not-Pete’s hand, and a smirk on his face.
Joe shot forward, moving far faster than the monster. He pinned him to the wall with ease, knocking the knife to the ground.
“Cute,” Joe said. “Now where’s my fucking gun?”
“Don’t have it,” not-Pete said coolly. “Why would I?”
“I saw you with it earlier,” Joe said. “Where did it go?”
“Did you see Joe with it earlier?” not-Pete asked. For someone pinned to a wall and at the mercy of a werewolf, he looked too calm—almost bored.
“Yes,” Joe said curtly. “We saw you.”
“Well, I imagine he still has it,” not-Pete said. “I’m Pete, Pete Wentz, since apparently you can’t see me clearly. Why would I have Joe’s gun?”
The realization of what he meant descended suddenly and terribly on Patrick. Dirty and the rest of his band still looked confused. This was too horrible, it made too much sense.
“You’re not a shapeshifter,” Patrick said. The creature smiled directly at him, sending shivers through Patrick’s body.
“Well, you’re a bit smarter than your friends, but it’s still painfully clear that you dragged yourself through the high school graduation line by the skin of your teeth, isn’t it? I absolutely am a shapeshifter. Do you want to see?”
Patrick couldn’t even say no before the thing started changing under Joe’s hands. The creature looked like melting wax for a moment, hard for Patrick to watch as it lost its shape before regaining it.
Joe was still pinning not-Pete to the wall, but now he looked young, younger than Patrick had ever seen him, and as short as the real Pete, his hair long and unfashionable, his skin unhealthily pale, and eyes shadowed by purple rings. He was actively shaking, looked like he was about to cry, and Patrick had the sudden urge to run forward and knock Joe off of him, before he looked at the black eyes again.
“No, you didn’t,” not-Pete said. His voice was different again: younger and more vulnerable. Patrick wasn’t sure who he was talking to, because not-Pete was staring at the floor. “You never really left me behind. You can’t.”
He changed again, melting upwards and growing taller again, taller than before. He grew long and stretched until he towered several inches over Joe. His stretched bones and pale skin made him look skeletal, and his grin started to spread again. It was just a too wide grin, someone faking a huge smile, but then it kept getting bigger. The corners of his lips pulled up past his cheekbones, all of his teeth visible. It was monstrous, and this time Joe did drop him, stepping backwards with clear revulsion. This was the sort of monster Patrick had expected, six feet tall and made of nothing but bones and papery-skin.
“Want to see what other shapes I can take, lover?” the thing asked Patrick, a double-timbre version of Pete’s voice that rang around the inside of Patrick’s skull. This time he shook his head fast, and the creature tipped its head to the side.
“Tell me, do I scare you?” he said. “Don’t lie.”
“Yes,” Patrick said. “But I think I should scare you more.”
Patrick walked up to the creature. The whole band converged on it, walling it off from any escape. “Give me one good reason not to kill you now.”
Not-Pete just grinned at him, like he knew something Patrick didn’t. This had been too easy, Patrick knew. Something was about to go very very wrong.
On cue, the hall went pitch black. All the lights popped and faded, and Pete’s laughter echoed all around them.
“Guys?” Patrick cried. He could hear footsteps and rustling and what could have been the soft thump of skin on skin from fighting, but he could see nothing. He stretched his hands out to either side, but there was no one around him anymore.
Patrick stepped forward to see if he could get his hands on not-Pete, to hold him down so he couldn’t slip away, but there was no one there either. It was so dark that Patrick may as well have been blind. His breathing became shallow as he spun round, trying to sense something that would give him a clue of what was going on.
“GUYS?” Patrick yelled louder.
“Patrick!” Dirty shouted. Patrick stumbled towards his voice until he ran into someone. He grabbed for Dirty’s hand and wrapped his fingers around the other man’s forearm, but at least there was someone.
“Dirty, what the fuck is going on?” Patrick asked.
“I don’t know, I thought I heard fighting, but I can’t—”
With another crackle of electricity, all of the lights came back on, blindingly bright. Patrick and Dirty had found their way into the middle of the hall, where they were encircled. Patrick first saw Pete right in front of him, not-Pete behind him with one arm wrapped around Pete’s waist, holding him still, and one hand clapped over his mouth, keeping him from making noise. Pete’s eyes were huge with fear, and when Patrick spun around, he saw Joe held in the same position by not-Joe. When he continued turning he saw Andy held captive by not-Andy. His stomach sank.
“We are shapeshifters, Patrick,” not-Joe said with a smile. “Emphasis on ‘we’.”
Patrick couldn’t even step back this time—there was nowhere to go, no place he could run. He and Dirty stood back to back, slowly turning to face the three sets. Dirty didn’t even have a decent weapon. Hell, he probably didn’t have a weapon at all.
“There’s definitely a joke about how we’re just carbon copy musicians in here,” Patrick said. It was weak banter, but he needed to buy himself time.
“Who will you save, Patrick?” Andy asked softly, but when Patrick spun around, it was not-Andy speaking. “The one you love the most? Or someone else? Out of guilt or strategy, either way.”
Patrick narrowed his gaze on the two Andy’s. The tall, black-eyed one was still breathing heavily, and Patrick could see a hint of discoloration on his t-shirt behind Andy’s chest. He was still injured from the fight earlier.
“Kick him in the chest, Andy,” Patrick said. Andy moved as soon as he spoke, and Patrick spun to face Pete. With abnormally good aim he threw the knife just above his Pete’s shoulder, sticking it blade first into not-Pete’s shoulder. Still turning, he dove towards the two Joe’s and knocked them both backwards. The second Patrick felt his fingers close around the cold metal of the gun, he yanked it hard and pulled it close to his chest.
It wasn’t actually a hard fight.
Once they weren’t being held anymore and the gun was out of the way, the band could hold their own. Joe slammed not-Joe’s head down onto the tile floor, crunching sickeningly and raising a horrible scream from the creature that sounded just like him. Andy threw his double across the hall, causing it to crash into a wall. With Joe’s gun in hand, Patrick ran to help Pete. He appeared to be doing just fine on his own in a mundane fistfight, but he could still use some help. When Pete stumbled backwards from a hit, Patrick slammed the butt of the gun down on not-Pete’s head, dazing him and knocking him back.
“Nice hit,” Pete said, panting.
“Anytime,” Patrick said.
Injured and bloody, the three doubles started running. Patrick glanced around to make sure everyone was on their feet, then he started running after them.
“This is weird,” Joe said. They were in pursuit of the doubles, Patrick running while Joe and Andy jogged lightly, flaunting their unfair super powered advantage. “I mean, once he didn’t have a gun, that wasn’t a hard fight.”
“Same with mine,” Andy said. “They were injured, though.”
“Yeah, I know, but that’s the other thing. Did you notice that their blood smelled—?”
“They went outside,” Dirty said, sounding tense. Patrick knew that fighting was not so much Dirty’s thing. There was blood spattered on his t-shirt, and he looked pale. Soon, they were out of the building again, and they ran into the dark parking lot. Grass surrounded the parking lot on all sides, and the dew forming on the lawn glittered dimly in the floodlights.
The three doubles had stopped running and were standing in a line facing the band. They looked like they were barely standing, though. Not-Andy was clutching his chest, leaning on not-Pete. Not-Pete’s nose was still bleeding steadily, even if it wasn’t crooked anymore. Not-Joe had a huge gash on his forehead, and they all looked shaky at best.
It was odd, Patrick thought, Joe was right. Most of the magical creatures he had dealt with so far had some kind of healing factor, but these things were worn ragged. The three of them probably wouldn’t stand another round with Patrick on his own, much less him with Pete and Andy and Joe and Dirty. If Patrick’s experience was anything to go by, they should have just gotten angrier, but instead they were close to finishing them off.
And then there was the other fear, the fear that Patrick didn’t want to address because to think of it was to jinx it, to ask for the worst. Even so, Patrick couldn’t help but wonder. Where was his?
“Patrick already asked, but I’ll give you one more chance,” Joe called. There was still a good twenty feet between the two groups, but Joe or Andy could clear that space in an instant. “Give us a reason not to kill you.”
“Only one?” not-Joe asked. No lisp, Patrick realized. That was what was wrong with his voice, it was completely smooth. “Alright, how about the fact that you’ll forever be traumatized by killing someone that looks like one of your pack members? Or yourself, that’ll suck too. Or, if it doesn’t, it’ll ruin somebody else’s day when you dream about it.”
“How do you know about the dreams?” Joe asked, keeping his face impressively blank as he spoke.
“I already told you,” not-Joe spoke with a small smile that didn’t reach his black eyes. “I’m in your head. You have no idea how much.”
While he was speaking, Patrick slid the gun back into Joe’s hands, hoping that it was surreptitious.
“Huh,” Joe said. “Compelling argument, but I won’t lose any sleep over you.”
He raised the gun up and shot in the same moment. Not-Joe twisted to get out of the way, but he still fell to the ground with a cry of pain so familiar it took all of Patrick’s willpower not to run forward, to try and help.
The fight broke out again, but it was barely a fight. The three doubles were on the asphalt, bleeding, too injured to go on, when not-Pete started laughing.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Joe asked. He was cold, unfeeling, in full battle mode as he loomed over the thing that looked so much like Pete.
“You don’t get it yet, do you?” he said. “I heard you wondering.” He pointed one shaking finger at his skull. He was terrifying even out of commission, manic and giggling, bleeding out while a smile crept across his face, almost reaching his flat black eyes. Just looking at him revulsed Patrick so strongly he thought he might vomit.
“No, Andy gets it,” not-Andy said softly. He turned to face Andy. “You know what we are, don’t you?”
Andy gulped. Patrick turned to him, confused. Andy looked down as he spoke.
“You’re what we want to be,” he said, his voice barely audible. “You look how we want to look and sound how we want to sound and—and you’re human.”
Patrick felt his blood turn to ice, crack, and then disappear entirely. Fear coursed through him so fast that he almost fell over.
“What did you say?” he said, meeting Andy’s eyes. It was a struggle to get him looking at Patrick.
“Their blood, it’s human,” Andy said. “They’re weaker fighters because they’re human. Like I want to be.”
It was probably an emotional moment for the rest of the band. It was probably painful to come to terms with their self-consciousness dragged out in front of everyone to see. Later Patrick would have time to feel bad for not being more tactful. But then, in that moment, all he could feel was terror and a bitter undercurrent of shame.
“We have to go,” he said, taking hold of Andy’s arm with one hand and trying to grab Pete with the other. None of them would look at him.
“HEY!” he shouted. “We have to go! Now!”
“Patrick gets it,” not-Pete said in a sing-song. “Poor, pitiful, human Patrick gets it. You should listen to your pretty little boyfriend more often, Pete.”
Pete looked up at Patrick then, clearly trying to focus.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Three of you want so badly to be human,” not-Joe rasped. “And one of you wants to be a god.”
Patrick could see the change in their faces when they understood. He would feel embarrassed later. He started to tug them back towards the venue so they could get inside, find their own ground to fight on, but he stopped as soon as he was facing the assembly hall.
On the roof of the venue, the giant orange juicer of a roof with its enormous white pleats, there was a dark figure watching them.
Patrick wasn’t sure how tall the venue was. It wasn’t a skyscraper, not even close, but it wasn’t a small building either. It wasn’t the sort of drop a human could take, but then, Patrick hadn’t wanted to be human for a long time. Not for as long as he knew there was another option.
The figure stepped to the edge of the roof and jumped off, arms extended like he was jumping from a diving board. He flipped over in the air, probably just to show off, and he landed on the ground in front of them with a crash that shook the ground and resonated through Patrick’s bones. The asphalt had split, cracks crawling out in every direction and a cloud of dust in their center, directly in front of them.
Let it have killed him, Patrick thought. Please just let it be over.
The dust began to settle, and another Patrick looked up at him and smiled.
***
Andy didn’t really hold with standards of masculinity most of the time, but he was still uncomfortable with discussions of self-esteem. What was there to be said that wouldn’t be uncomfortable and embarrassing? He had issues with himself, sure, and he was positive everyone in his band did too. That didn’t mean he liked thinking about it.
He didn’t like thinking about a Pete who was already THE emo poster boy but wanted to look more like it. He didn’t like thinking about Joe making faces at videos of interviews and leaving the room, didn’t like thinking of Patrick going out to get clothes and coming back mortified by numbers on the tags. He sure as shit didn’t like focusing on the way he was dwarfed by just about everyone around, never mind how strong he was. And that was all just superficial stuff, the kinds of things that didn’t really matter. If he didn’t like thinking about any of that, then he actively hated thinking about how he cried himself to sleep after a friend showed him Dracula the first time.
But just because he didn’t like it didn’t mean he could stop seeing it. He did see the guys eating salads after nights of binge drinking. He saw them shrink away from the extra who gasped “oh my god, they’re all midgets.” He saw the light tracings of old battle scars. Seeing that was all bad enough, and now he had this, these physical representations of everything he didn’t want to think about.
From the moment Andy first considered what their appearances might have meant, he suspected that Patrick’s would look the most different. He hadn’t wanted to think of it then either. But now, with the thing in front of them, slowly standing up in the huge crater it had made in the ground, smiling up at them terribly, it was no longer something he could avoid.
The monster was thin, not in a healthy way, but skeletally so, a late-night PSA for anorexia. It was tall too, or at least tall for Patrick. All of the creatures were taller than the band, though none of them were really remarkably tall, not even brushing six feet. This thing was about the height of the real Joe, but its hair—platinum blonde and free of a hat for once—gave the monster another inch or two from the way it stuck up. The demon wore a well fitted pinstripe suit, which unfortunately made Andy think of Jack Skellington. Once he had the thought, irrational laughter rose up in his chest. Like all of them, the most unsettling feature were the gleaming black eyes.
“Hello there,” the Patrick demon said pleasantly. “Fall Out Boy. An honor to meet you at last.”
“Patrick,” Pete breathed.
“Hey there, sweetheart,” the Patrick demon leered. “You I’ve especially been looking forward to seeing.”
Andy didn’t blame Patrick for snarling. There was something in its voice, longing with an eerie dark undercurrent. When the Patrick demon looked at Pete, it licked its lips. Seeing that, Andy wanted to step in front of Pete himself.
“What do you want?” Patrick asked.
“Me?” the Patrick demon asked. The expression on its face turned quickly to disgust and loathing when it looked at Patrick. “I want you to die and rid the world of your worthless existence. I want to get your boyfriend somewhere dark and alone for a while and then for him to off himself as well. I want all four of you to suffer and die. What do you want?”
Andy stepped forward. He knew he shouldn’t rile this thing up more than necessary, but he couldn’t leave it open to attack his band. Patrick had moved in front of Pete, so Andy wanted to stand between him and his demon. Once Andy moved, the Patrick demon started laughing.
“Aw, is Andy gonna save his friends? Big bad dhampir here to fight for his friends’ honor? That’s cute,” he said.
“Cute?” Andy asked. “You don’t scare me.”
The Patrick demon grinned, his teeth gleaming in the parking lot lights.
“I don’t?” he asked. Lightning fast, he slammed his fist down onto the ground. The parking lot cracked and split from the force. A rift spread from the impact site, knocking Andy off of his feet. The Patrick demon laughed as the earth quaked, and before Andy could get to his feet again the demon was there, looming over him, less human than any of them.
“Did you ever wonder what it was like to really be human? To run out of breath after sprinting for less than a minute? To be lapped by magic wherever you go?”
The demon’s hands closed down on Andy’s shoulders, and he leaned forward, just slightly. Andy could see that the Patrick demon wasn’t exerting himself, but Andy still felt the force, heavy and crushing against his body. He gasped for breath, and the Patrick demon smirked. He stood, catching Andy by the throat, and hauling him up into the air.
“Did you ever even imagine what it feels like to be on the brink of death while everyone around you is just getting started?”
Andy was gasping, clawing at the demon’s hands, but it was like fighting something made out of stone. Helpless. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Joe run at the creature, but the Patrick demon knocked him back with his free hand, sending Joe flying with the apparent force of swatting a fly.
“Do you know what it’s like to get a taste of power and have it ripped away from you, then told you should be grateful?!” The demon snarled the last word and slammed Andy into the ground. He heard a crash-crack as he hit the asphalt, felt something break, either the ground or his back. It must have been the ground, since he could still manage the amount of pain he was in, but that didn’t make him feel much better.
“I’m not weak,” the Patrick demon said. His voice was so close to the real Patrick’s that, through his blurry eyed vision, Andy could barely tell the monster wasn’t his Patrick. “I’m not vulnerable. No one wants the blood in my neck. Even if they did it wouldn’t matter, because I am stronger than any vampire.”
He placed his foot on Andy’s thigh. He pressed down just the tiniest bit, and it already hurt. Andy knew, with sudden horror, that it would only take a little more pressure for the demon to snap his femur in half then and there. Still he couldn’t move. His head throbbed, his whole body seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat, and it was all he could do to keep shallowly breathing.
“You were his first fear,” the Patrick demon said quietly. “My first fear. And all we want is to be strong enough to not be afraid.”
He lifted Andy up again. Andy knew that this time when he would be thrown down, he probably wasn’t going to get back up. Andy closed his eyes, braced himself, and then the Patrick demon stumbled and dropped him.
The fall still hurt, sending waves of pain up and down his spinal cord and through all his nerves. But he was still conscious, if very fuzzy and not quite able to move. Andy’s eyes opened slowly, reluctantly, and saw that the Patrick demon was in a new fight. He was circling a wolf very slowly, and the wolf’s hackles were raised. Andy wanted to shout, to tell Joe to just run, but he couldn’t find his voice.
The demon was right. He was stronger than any vampire. Stronger than anything Andy had fought before. Andy had seen the twitch of his muscles and the look on his face. All that strength, all that speed, and he was barely exerting himself at all. Even if Andy could stand up again, even if he and Joe were fighting it together, he wasn’t certain they would stand a chance.
Andy tried to keep himself focused on the battle. He kept losing focus; one second he was able to see the vague shapes of a wolf and a tall, thin man, and the next just a colorless blur. He thought he saw others, less involved in the fight because they couldn’t keep up with it. Vaguely human shapes were on the fringes of the battle.
Andy could still hear fine, though. He could hear shouting as he lay there, willing himself to get up despite being unable to put any strength behind that desire.
“Do you think you’re faster than me?” Patrick’s voice was mocking. “You think you’re faster than his dreams, than his nightmares?”
There was a horrible sound of flesh hitting flesh, and then a distinctly canine whimper. Then the horrible tearing sound of skin pierced by a knife, and Patrick’s voice again.
“Why don’t you fight me?”
It was hard to distinguish between the two without being able to see properly, but Andy was sure that was his Patrick, and also sure that this was going to end badly.
“I’ll deal with you two in a minute,” Patrick’s voice said, and then there were twin whooshes of air, twin thuds on the ground and soft noises of pain.
All the while, the fight raged on. Joe’s strategy seemed sounder than Andy’s, which had ended up as just goading the creature and hoping to match its strength. What a failure that had been. The wolf leapt at the demon, sank its teeth in, and darted away before the Patrick demon could take hold of him. They were small attacks that didn’t do much damage from what Andy could see, but at least Joe hadn’t been caught yet.
“You’re trying my patience, Joe,” the Patrick demon said, not even the slightest bit out of breath. Andy’s eyesight was slowly beginning to clear, and as it did he could concentrate more on what he could see. Rather than chasing after Joe, the Patrick demon held very, very still. When Joe jumped at him next he caught him by the scruff of his neck in midair.
Joe made an anxious whining noise, and the demon brought the wolf closer to him.
“Misbehaving dogs typically get put down,” he said. His voice was flat and cold, and he swung Joe back and forth twice before throwing him across the lot.
Andy could turn his head just enough to see Joe hit the high glass walls of the venue and tumble down, motionless. Pete, Patrick, and Dirty screamed, but all Andy could do was inhale sharply. He wasn’t dead, the pack bond made Andy sure that Joe was alive, but he had to be in much worse shape than Andy.
Andy pleaded with himself to get up, to help them because the three people left might as well be insects for this thing to squish, but even getting his hand to move was an impossible task.
“Hey! What about me, fuckface?” Dirty was shouting then, and Andy wanted more than ever to scream. He didn’t need someone else dying for them. “You’re not in my head, you can’t scare me!”
“I have nothing against you,” Patrick’s voice came coolly. “So, let’s not make this unpleasant, shall we? Stay out of matters that don’t concern you.”
Swearing violently, a figure Andy strongly suspected was Dirty marched forward and swung with the slowest, clumsiest right hook he had ever seen in his life. Nevertheless, it looked like he was going to hit the thing but then Dirty’s fist passed right through the demon.
The Patrick demon touched his chest and made a little “hmph,” noise in his that sounded largely amused.
“I can’t touch you?” Dirty said, distressed. The demon lurched forward towards him, and though Dirty flinched, no contact was made. The hands fell right through him, insubstantial as air.
“Interesting,” the demon said, sounding bored. “Anyway—” The horrible huge smile came over his face again as he walked through Dirty towards the other two. “Pete.”
Pete and Patrick stood up on their own, but the demon shoved Patrick back onto the ground. He wrapped one arm around Pete’s waist and placed his hand on the small of his back, drawing him in closer.
“Let’s get to know each other, shall we?” he asked. He lifted his free hand up to Pete’s face. Although Pete tried to squirm away, he was held tight. The demon traced Pete’s lower lip with his thumb, their faces too close, and just as it looked like he was going to lean in close enough to touch, Patrick’s fist slammed into the side of the Patrick demon’s face.
To Andy’s relief, the demon dropped Pete. Pete staggered back on shaking legs, and the demon faced Patrick.
“Oh, Patrick,” he said. “What are we going to do about you?”
“Don’t touch him,” Patrick said. “Don’t get anywhere near him, don’t you even think about it.”
“And I suppose you’re going to stop me?” The amusement in his voice was clear, but Patrick stayed where he was, standing between the demon and Pete.
“I guess so,” Patrick said.
Andy didn’t want to watch this fight, but he remained focused on it because he couldn’t bear to look away. The demon barely hit Patrick, but when it wasn’t knocking him to the ground, it was shoving him back and making him double over. It sounded like the Patrick demon was saying something under his breath too, but Andy couldn’t make it out.
He hit Patrick over and over again, and if Patrick got any punches in, they did all the damage of raindrops hitting the demon on the head. He could see Patrick getting winded and slowing down until he was no longer moving fast enough to fight.
The demon pushed Patrick onto the ground and leaned over him, then pulled something off of him— a gun, Andy realized with a cold wave of trepidation.
“Dirty?” the Patrick demon called. He aimed the gun directly at Patrick’s head. “You’re going to walk away now. And don’t look back if you want everyone to survive tonight.”
Dirty, standing to the side, looked at each of them in turn, aghast. But he nodded, and he started running. The Patrick demon dropped the gun on the ground, ignoring it as it went off with a burst of sparks, firing off into the empty parking lot.
“If you’re too pathetic to save yourself, how do you expect to save anyone else?” the demon asked in a low voice. He grabbed Patrick by his shirt collar and flung him off into the distance, just as he had Joe. Like he was shot-putting people, except Patrick was so much more fragile than Joe. How could he possibly live through all of that?
Patrick hit the ground with a sickening crunch. Pete, the last one of them still fully conscious, screamed.
“He’ll be fine,” the Patrick demon said. He had to shout it over Pete’s screaming, but he just looked amused. “We aren’t going to do any permanent damage, just wanted to introduce ourselves.”
He strode back over to Pete, then paused and held out one finger for Pete to stay still. By some miracle, Pete did, instead of running or getting himself killed while Andy couldn’t to tell him not to be stupid. Andy had finally gotten to his hands and knees while he watched, waiting for the world to stop spinning long enough for him to stand. He was so focused on keeping an eye on Pete that he forgot to watch the monster. Andy heard the creaks and protests of metal before he turned and saw the Patrick demon uprooting an entire bike rack, then speeding back to Pete with the metal bars in his arms.
“On your knees,” the demon said. His voice was quiet, but there was no questioning the authority in it, and Pete dropped down. One bar at a time, the demon took the pieces of metal and jammed them into the ground, then bent them around Pete, lacing together a thick metal cage that held Pete tight in position.
“Feel free to scream as loud as you like,” the demon said. “No one will hear you, I promise.”
He leaned over and pressed his lips against Pete’s forehead. Pete tried to move away, but he was stuck. The demon laughed once, quietly, and winked at him.
“Mine’s still conscious,” Andy heard someone say in his own voice. His breath caught, and he tried to get up as fast as he could, but fell over. The thing that looked like Patrick came to loom over him again. He had moved so fast that Andy hadn’t seen him move at all. He smiled down at Andy, black eyes glittering against his high, white cheekbones.
“We’ll see you soon,” he said. He lifted up his foot, and the last thing Andy heard before blinding pain shot through his skull was Pete screaming.
Andy knew he couldn’t have been out for long, but he could have sworn the sky was growing lighter when he looked up again. His eyelids felt sticky as he pried them open, and though it was still night, the faint light above him seemed too bright for his eyes.
“Hey, easy,” a familiar voice said. Andy realized dully that his head wasn’t on the concrete anymore but resting on someone’s knees. His hand fluttered to his forehead, but someone caught it before he reached it.
“Hey, hey, let’s not have you knocking yourself out again, yeah?”
Travie was leaning over Andy. He was smiling a little concerned smile, but his face was reassuring.
“You with us this time, man?” he asked.
“Mmm,” Andy could make noises, so there was that, but he wasn’t sure he was up for full sentences yet. “Mmhmm. How’d you—?”
“Dirty called me,” Travie said. “Brought back a whole bus for you guys, ‘cause it didn’t sound like you were gonna be up for driving yourselves.”
“The guys!” Andy tried to sit up and Travie placed a hand on his chest, forcing him back down.
“Fine, fine, it’s gonna be okay,” he said. “You were the one we were worried about, dude. You’ve been unconscious. Everybody else is awake and breathing okay. We got Patrick and Joe on the bus, and the guys are working on something to get those fucking bars off Pete.”
“Bars?” Andy repeated. His head felt fuzzy.
“It looks like someone twisted up industrial steel pipes right around him,” Travie said. There was anger and worry buried just beneath the soothing surface of his face. “But he isn’t hurt.”
“Good,” Andy said. He hadn’t dared to feel relieved until then. “I wasn’t sure… I couldn’t keep up...”
“You’ve been through the fucking wringer,” Travie said. “Alright. Can you walk?”
Andy could limp, with help, and he managed to ease his way onto the bus. Joe had been laid out on the sofa, and Patrick was sitting at the dining table, holding a lumpy dish towel full of ice up to his forehead. Both of them lit up when he walked in, which only made Andy feel guiltier for not protecting them from those monsters. They looked like hell, but they both seemed relieved to see him.
“Good, you’re up,” Joe said. “Just in time for breakfast.” The joke fell a little flat, but Andy smiled at him anyway.
“You guys are okay?” Andy asked. He sat down next to Patrick.
“I’m fine,” Patrick said pointedly. “Fine enough to stand, which means I should be out there helping, and—”
“We’re going to be okay, but pretty injured,” Joe interrupted. “I, for one, feel like my spine is made of shattered porcelain. And I am concussed, but to be fair, I think we’re all concussed. That’s one of like seven reasons we’re not letting Patrick out to try and do any heavy lifting.”
“Pete—” Patrick began, but Joe cut him off again.
“He’s going to be fine. He’d be much more upset if you were limping around out there and you know it.”
“He’s okay,” Andy agreed. “Travie was just trying to get the bike rack off him.”
“Bike rack?” Joe said, and Andy realized that neither of them had seen where all the metal bars came from. His mouth felt suddenly dry and hot.
“He tore up a bike rack and made that out of it,” he said. “He’s—it’s?—strong.”
Patrick drew in on himself at that, and Andy looked closer at him. Patrick’s lips looked like ground beef, and the pinkish damage continued all the way up to his hairline, although his nose somehow escaped undamaged. His breathing was labored, and his torn and bloody clothes looked more like rags than Clandestine Industries merch.
“How’s the rib?” Andy asked. Patrick glared at him.
“Kinda feels like I’m getting stabbed in the chest, but other than that,” he shook his head. “We might need to stop at a hospital before the next show, but it’s not an emergency.”
“Well, if you’re admitting that you need a hospital, then it might be,” Joe said. Andy leaned back to stretch his sore muscles and his body screamed in protest. He should probably get checked out as well, but they were far, far away from Doctor Ferrum. They weren’t close enough to Milwaukee for his mom to see how he was either. So, for the moment, he hoped his healing powers could take care of him for a day or two.
Before it could get too heavy, Pete burst onto the bus. He ran straight to Patrick, sitting down on his other side and breathing in deeply as though he hadn’t been breathing in hours. Andy was sure it could only have been twenty minutes he was out, at the very longest, but he couldn’t imagine the stress of being awake for all of it. Patrick and Pete stared at each other, having a small, private moment as they looked into each other’s eyes. Andy was about to intercede when Travie cleared his throat.
“You guys want to stop and get breakfast on the way to the next stop?” he asked.
“I could go for breakfast,” Joe said. “And like, a horse tranquilizer.”
“Yeah, I got like, Advil,” Travie said.
“That’ll work,” Joe said.
The ride was quiet as the sun rose outside the window. Andy wasn’t sure what to say— what he could say in front of other people or what they even wanted to say to each other. So he watched the sunrise and felt the pain gradually start fading from his limbs.
The bus stopped at a Denny’s, to Andy’s chagrin, but the good news was it was so early in the morning that they weren’t likely to run into a hoard of Pete Wentz fans. Travie, tactful as always, asked for separate tables so that Fall Out Boy could “have a minute.”
For a minute, the four of them were quiet at the table. They had washed the dirt and blood off their faces and changed into clean clothes, but they still looked pretty banged up. The waitress eyed them oddly before taking their orders. Once she was gone, Joe took a deep breath.
“I’ll open with saying that that fucking sucked,” he said.
“Putting it mildly,” Pete muttered. He twirled his straw around in his water glass, looking like he had no plans of drinking any of it. The hush fell over them again.
“I’m sorry,” Patrick said. Andy turned to him to see him staring down at the table.
“Sorry?” Andy asked.
“We could’ve taken them if it weren’t for,” he swallowed. “If it weren’t for mine.”
“Yeah, and that’s totally your fault,” Joe said, shaking his head. He looked so annoyed that he almost seemed disgusted. “You didn’t make that thing.”
“Didn’t I?” Patrick asked.
“Did we make ours?” Joe asked. Patrick rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair, muttering something that sounded like “not the same thing.”
“So we got our asses handed to us,” Joe continued. “For the first time in a long time. And it was terrible. But we’ll figure it out, yeah?”
“Ryan had some theories,” Pete said. His throat was raw from screaming for so long, but Andy didn’t want to think about that. As it turned out, there were lots of things that he didn’t want to think about. “I don’t remember all of them but yeah, we can talk to him.”
“And this isn’t all bad news,” Joe added. “We’ve learned a hell of a lot more about these things. We can tell them apart from the real us by their eyes, and they can’t touch other people. That’s good news.”
“But how the hell do we fight something like that?” Patrick asked. He looked horrified and panicked and above all else, guilty. Kind of how Andy felt.
“Everything has a weak spot,” Andy said. “We just… have to figure out what this one’s is.”
“These ones,” Joe corrected. Andy glared at him, and Joe shrugged. “I’m optimistic, but I’m not gonna sugar coat it. There’s four of them. And you two didn’t get to see it as much, but the other three are really bad too.”
“I believe it,” Pete said. “There’s a lot that’s wrong with them. For example, if they’re physical, then why didn’t Joe smell anything from them?”
“I smelled the blood when they were bleeding,” Andy said. “Human. But I couldn’t smell anything before then, you’re right.”
“Yeah, and also, they don’t have auras,” Pete said. Andy turned sharply to him. Pete’s face was hard, full of the weight of what he was saying. “They don’t— I don’t understand. It’s not possible to be alive without an aura, but there’s nothing on them. They don’t exist, but they do.”
“But only for us,” Patrick added. “I mean, that’s connected, isn’t it?”
“It must be,” Joe said. “But how the fuck should we know how?”
The waitress came back with three heaping plates of pancakes and one small plate of fruit for Andy.
“Some things never change, do they?” Pete asked, and Andy followed his line of sight to the fruit plate in front of him. “The four of us are outmatched by a monster, holed up in a diner. There’s nothing but overripe fruit for you to eat. Kinda back to square one, aren’t we?”
“This feels nothing like square one,” Patrick said, with a very small laugh. He leaned into Pete, resting his head on Pete’s shoulder.
“I know what you mean,” Andy said.
“Us four against the world. And apparently ourselves,” Joe said.
“God, that’s depressing,” Patrick said, but he snorted too. “Are you guys okay? Really?”
“Stiff, but managing,” Joe said. “You?”
“Well, I’d really like to get my ribs taped before I sing, but,” Patrick shrugged. “It could’ve been worse. Maybe that’s the scary part.”
He was right, Andy thought. The scariest part was not that they had been beaten, but that they were allowed to walk away. He didn’t like it, but they were alive, he supposed. They didn’t know what they were fighting or how to fight it, but they were alive. For that moment it would have to count for something.