I pivoted around, and launched myself towards him. I had a stake in my hand, I was ready to end this. But when I jumped to land on top of him, he turned over, his legs up and ready to kick me. Vampires can kick really hard, like fucking mules. And that kick sent me straight into the side of another tombstone.
Okay, I guess the tombstones weren’t nearly as convenient when they were used against you. Because that freaking hurt!
Oz was up on his feet in an instant, and started to run again. But he made the mistake of running right past me. That's when I kicked my leg out and tripped him. In pain or not, I was going to kill this blood sucking bastard. He had bitten my girl, and she was turning into a vampire. I would not let him take Ellie from me. That was not going to happen.
I was on top of him in a flash. Oz rolled over and tried to push me off of him, but I straddled him, using my knees to hold his arms down, and held the stake up high, ready to plunge it down into his chest.
“She's my girlfriend, you prick!” I growled, and I plunged it down into his chest. His pore-less, freckle-less face stared up at me, his mouth open in a fang-y, surprised O. I stared into those brilliant emerald eyes as he started to shake, and then…
Poof!
Oz turned to dust, like a water balloon filled with… well, filled with vampire dust. That was one really great thing about this fandom—the vampires took care of themselves when it came to corpse disposal. No muss, no fuss.
I smiled, stood up and brushed my stylish black clothing off, only now realizing how long my arms and legs were. I missed having long arms and legs.
Being a gnome really sucked balls.
I turned and started to walk away. But then I stopped, something occurring to me. It was almost like a physical pang. I turned around, and Oz was just lying on the ground. It wasn't the freckle-free, blazing red haired and burning green eyes vampire I had just chased down–the one that stole my girlfriend. No, this was my freckle-faced, faded-green-eyed, nearly orange haired best friend, that I'd always counted as my person for so long.
I rushed back to him, dropping to my knees. He was so pale. I grabbed hold of him, and when I shook him, he was limp in my hands.
“Oz!” I yelled in his face, “Oz, wake up!”
But he wasn't asleep. Oz was dead. There was a big, bloody hole where his heart was. That's when I realized I still had a bloody stake in my hand. My stomach lurched and I threw the steak away from me.
I killed Oz.
Tears streamed down my face, and I had to wipe the snot off my face with my sleeve.
This can't be happening. This cannot be real.
“Somebody help me!” I screamed into the night.
Please, please…
I don't want this. I don't want a world where Oz isn't alive.
Please!
I jolted up right, my eyes snapping open, and I was one again in the nearly pitch black front end of the pizzeria. I’d been laying down in the dog bed.
I’d been asleep, hadn't I?
I should’ve been happy about that... but I wasn’t. Because I remembered what I’d just dreamed. What I’d just done in my dream.
I was not going to live with that thought. No fucking way.
Teddy glanced over at me. “You okay?”
Again, I really wished I could shake my head. “No, I'm not.”
He looked away from me, back to the little sliver of the outside the front window afforded.
“You snore,” He said.
I blinked at him. “What?”
Teddy smiled. “You snore. You always snored, and you still snore.” He turned to look at me, his eyebrows knitting. “Oh, you were asleep, by the way. Congrats.”
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I blinked again at him, realizing that he was right. “I was asleep,” I echoed his words, trying to believe it.
“Yeah, for at least an hour, Teddy said. “And you snore.”
I glared at him. “How can I snore? I don't even breathe.”
Teddy shrugged and turned away to look out the window again. “Who knows?” He still sounded pissed at me, but then he closed his eyes and grit his teeth loud enough to make his jaw crack. He looked at me again, and that anger was gone. That made a weight lift from my chest. “Maybe it's just the game AI having fun.”
Having fun, huh?
I jumped out of the dog bed and rushed over to where Teddy was sitting on the stool. I looked up at him.
“I need to find Oz.”
***
No, I'm not a total idiot. I waited for the sun to come up through the thickly overcast sky before I headed off to find Oz. The sky was a strange, murky green today, and I trudged through town, Teddy by my side, heading down Grand Avenue to the Mars Post Office.
Oz's father, Jimmy Fitzgerald, had been the postmaster of Mars for as long as any of us could remember. The fact that Oz was hiding out there, staying away from his friends out of fear that he would hurt them, was even sadder.
Somehow I was going to have to fix this. I had no idea how, but we could not leave Oz out here by himself any longer. We just couldn't.
The front door was locked, but when we tried the back door it came open easily. Teddy led the way, and we moved hurriedly to Mr Fitzgerald's office.
The door was closed, and I raised my little gnome arm to knock on it. But…
“What are you doing here?” Oz's voice beat me to it, coming from the other side of the door. “It's not safe for you guys to be here.”
I let my arm fall back to my side, if I had real teeth, I would have bit my lip.
“I need to talk to you,” I said. “Face to face.”
“It's not safe,” Oz reiterated, his voice irritated.
I turned so I could look at Teddy. “Can you wait outside?”
Teddy looked like he was about to argue, so I cut him off. “I don't have any blood, and I'm pretty much impervious to harm, so I'll be safe.” I pointed at him with my little gnome arm. “You're the one he's worried about.
There was a sudden O expression on Teddy's face. He nodded, rolled his eyes, and then turned, silently walking away. He didn't leave the building, I was positive. Teddy was sneaky that way.
I turned back around, grabbed hold of the knob to the door and giving it a good twist. The door swung open with a little squeak, and there was Oz, sprawled on the floor, staring up at the ceiling tiles, a small red ball in his hand. He threw it up at the ceiling hard enough it bounced back down, and he caught it. All with extremely fast, lightning quick reflexes.
It was good to be a vampire.
“Are you here to punch me again?” He asked, ricocheting the ball off the ceiling a few more times in extremely fast order. “Or are you here to tell me to stay away from Ellie?” He stopped throwing the ball for a moment, and then turned to look at me. “You'd be right to ask me to do that.”
I walked over, pressed my back to the wall, and then sat down on the floor beside him.
“Oh, that sounds good,” I said, reaching over to take the ball from Oz's hand. It was a hard rubber ball, and that's why Oz could bounce it so fast. I stared at it for a few moments, rolling it around in my hands. “But no, I'm not here to talk about that.”
Oz turned his startling green eyes towards me again, and waited.
“I don't like you being alone out here,” I said.
He looked away from me, and back up at the ceiling.
“It's not healthy,” I added.
Oz chuckled. Then I chuckled. And then we started to laugh. It was such a ridiculous thought, talking about health.
Oz was an undead vampire, and I was a resurrected gnome.
“What I meant to say,” I continued once we stopped giggling, “is that you shouldn't be out here by yourself. It's not safe, and it's not right.”
“It's not safe for me to be with you guys. Just smelling you guys makes me hungry. Especially Ellie…”
Oz stopped, closing his eyes and biting his lower lip. His fangs broke the flesh, and two pinpoints of blood showed on his mouth. He licked his lips, and they disappeared.
“I have to stay away. I can't trust myself.”
I thought about what Oz had just said. He had a really good point. But he needed to be closer to us. Not only for his sake, but for ours. He was a lot more powerful than us. “Having you closer, within shouting distance, would make us safer.”
“I don't know…” he whispered.
“There are three other houses on our street with running water, that would be far enough away you wouldn't smell us.”
“I have a really good sense of smell.”
I chucked the ball at him, and he caught it with a smacking sound. “Suck it up, vampire boy. Consider it practice at curbing your bloodlust.”
“Curbing my bloodlust?” He rolled his eyes at me. “I think you've watched a few too many episodes of Vampire Diaries.”
I didn't look at him. It was time to hit him with my big guns.
Am I a petty gnome? Damn right I am.
“I've been wondering… do you sparkle in direct sunlight now?”
I saw his eyes get bigger, and he took a short breath. But then his expression got pissy.
“Teddy told you, didn't he?”
“You think you know somebody…” I chided him. “And then, out of the blue, you find out he’s a Twilight loving asshat.”
“No,” Oz said, angrily, sitting up and turning on me. “I don't glitter. And I would have told you about… about liking the Twilight Saga—”
“I think it was a little more than like, dude.”
“Haha, very funny,” his voice dripped with irritation. “Between your hate for the movies, and your Stephanie Myers bigotry—I couldn't even broach the subject with you.”
I whooped with laughter. “My Stephanie Myers bigotry? That's rich.”
Oz is up on his feet in a flash, staring down on me, his eyes glowing with that emerald vampire green. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Well nothing, big boy, I just remember someone forbidding me from even buying The Last of Us.
His head jerked back, and he laughed. “Oh come on, that's not the same thing! That game is a waste of money. With all those cut-scenes, you barely get to play. They didn't have to do much to make it into a TV series.”
“Potato, tomato…” I said. “It's totally the same thing.”
I stared up at him, and then I pulled myself up to my feet and dusted off my wee legs.
“Okay, now that that's settled, grab your stuff.”