"ZACH!"

  I heard Autumn's screams cut out every time a sliver of consciousness visited me, however fleeting they'd be. The car, the chase, the gunshots. Everything spun around in a carousel of fractured memories.

  "WAKE UP!"

  One moment I'd be in the candy fields, barely able to get my bearings, the next moment I'd be thrown into a random memory. From eating muffins with a deer made of pretzels to being six years old and hit across the face by a bully – a misbehaving kid named Hunter. From dancing in a soda fountain with a talking vacuum cleaner to looking up swear words on a school computer with the twins I'd grown up with, giggling quietly so no one would hear us. From teaching an owl made of cotton candy how to play chess to losing the annual mathematics awards to some boy named Malachi.

  From drawing in the dirt with a giant purple crab to watching Tori's reanimated body poke a stick in the dirt beside the campfire.

  "HELP!"

  I could hear Autumn through each memory. Some screams were louder than others. I didn't understand what was happening at all, not until her sobs finally broke me out of the dream loop.

  "Please wake up, Zach. I can't handle this alone."

  My eyes shot open. Misery welcomed me home.

  I immediately slumped over as pulsing waves of electric agony surged through my skull and down my spine. My jaw was entirely numb, yet the surrounding areas sizzled with pain. Flesh buzzed and muscles screamed like a hundred fish hooks had caught me. I couldn't feel any part of my mouth, inside or out. The sting spread through every vein and vessel. It was all I could do to groan but even that proved difficult.

  "Zach?"

  Her voice offered a brief moment of solace, letting me lift my head at last and observe the situation as best as I could.

  I couldn't see a thing, other than the moon out the window. My head fell again with a grunt as I trembled from exhaustion. Every breath was a heave as if I'd dried out in the desert. I attempted to call her name only to cry out from another blazing spike through my mouth.

  "Don't move! You'll only hurt yourself more." Autumn whispered. "Just try to breathe. You're not in any immediate danger, I promise."

  I held onto her voice like a grapple hook and gave up, eyes shutting softly. I couldn't form a proper thought through the pain. At least Autumn was in here too, wherever we were. The ground seemed to sway slightly every few moments, and the air reeked of my own toxic blood alongside a seperate metallic scent, one more like rust and salt. At first I thought the swaying was just my lack of balance, until Autumn muttered something about it under her breath I didn't quite catch. Trying to move my arms told me they were tied to something behind me with rope. My legs were crossed under me and felt too heavy to move. I felt as if all of my strength had been drained right out of me, but the weight felt familiar.

  Silverleaf. Of course they drugged us with nightshade. No wonder I'd had such weird dreams.

  "Please don't try to talk." Autumn spoke from wherever she was in the room. "Don't freak out either. Your jaw is... not in good condition. I'd focus on letting yourself heal."

  I nodded, only to wince from another jolt of electricity and immediately regret it.

  "Also if you do say something, I won't know." She added quietly. "I can't hear a thing. I don't even know if you can hear me alright or if I'm fumbling my words all over the place."

  Okay. That's fine. More than happy to keep my mouth immobile right now.

  "Tori's beside me, she's still asleep. I don't know where we are." She sighed. "Did you have weird dreams? I guess you can't really answer."

  A few. Nothing worth noting.

  Though I was interested if she had. As far as I was concerned, Autumn had never been affected by nightshade before. Another curiosity was if Tori was dreaming right now or if she was incapable of dreams without Victoria's soul.

  "I had... a strange one. A memory." Autumn mumbled timidly. "Just the other day we were talking about whether the damn plant could help us remember the things we'd suppressed. I got an answer. A really visceral answer."

  Now that my night vision was starting to come online, I wanted to look her way, to find comfort in her presence, but once I did manage to make out her form I just as quickly realised she'd turned her back to me. Ouch. I must've looked a mess for her to not be able to see me like this.

  "It was February 23rd." Her voice trembled. "I... remembered my own death. The first one, at least. When I turned into a vampire. There's still pieces missing, namely what happened once I woke up, how I was impaled, and how I became Autumn, but... I really don't think I can handle finding any more out."

  Holy shit.

  This was not good timing, but I was relieved anyway. With the knowledge on how she'd turned solidified, at least half of the blanks were filled in. Maybe we could tell Apple and Diego what she'd found out and they'd let us go, or at least go easy on us. We could offer it in exchange for freedom, maybe.

  The sequence of how she died and what happened before she turned was exactly what gave her the ability to hop bodies. Surely that information could be dissected and used to figure out how to prevent it from happening to others, or maybe even how to stop it entirely.

  My thoughts were interrupted by another ache in my skull, causing me to bend over and choke in pain.

  "I think we're really about to die." She laughed nervously, voice strained. "I'm not ready to go."

  I couldn't comfort her. I felt the same, too. I wanted to tell her we'd get out of this and be alright, but come on. It was obvious this could only end one way.

  "When they kill me, I hope I don't come back as one of them." She began to tear up. "I think that would be worse than death."

  I'd let you take over me.

  I couldn't say that, though, and I wasn't sure it would be an option anyway.

  Suddenly the creaking of the door caught me off guard, and I snapped my head around only to hiss in pain. No light came in from outside, but a heavy scent of salt washed its way in. It took Autumn a few extra moments to register that the door had opened thanks to her lack of hearing.

  I could only stare in horror as Apple walked in.

  A scarf in her hands, hair tied back, boots on. She marched right past me and over to the table Tori was tied to. She knelt down and tied the scarf around Tori's eyes, my guess being so that when she woke up she couldn't make eye contact with Autumn and be sent into the hopping loop. Apple really had been stalking us for a while if she'd picked up on that. She then stood back up and started tinkering with something on the desk I couldn't see from my position. Autumn began to shake like a leaf.

  "You two really are fighters." Apple muttered. "You shouldn't be awake yet. Not by a long shot."

  I looked over to Autumn and suddenly realised how tricky this situation was. Anything Apple said, only I would hear. But I couldn't reply, only Autumn could talk. Neither of us could communicate. I couldn't even try gestures with my hands tied, and Autumn would only have a very slim chance at lip reading in the dark.

  "I told him to give you twice the dose, but he never listens to me." The woman continued, ponytail swaying as she grabbed supplies from the cabinet beside her. "He got lucky those needles even penetrated your skin at all."

  I paled.

  I glanced down at my arm and sure enough there was a faint bruise where a nurse would administer an IV. Confusingly, it hadn't healed by now. Was my body too busy prioritising whatever had happened to my jaw to care for any other injuries?

  I looked to Autumn desperately. I knew she didn't want to look at me, but surely she understood we were going to have to find a middle ground here if we had any hope of surviving. Thankfully she met my gaze, even if she instantly averted it again with a wince. She nodded to say she got the idea.

  Autumn watched carefully to see when Apple stopped speaking before finding her voice. Even if she couldn't hear the replies, she could serve them to me.

  "Where are we?"

  "Oh. Morning." Apple smiled down at her almost forcibly. "You're supposed to be muzzled. I'll add that to the list of Diego's infinite mistakes."

  Autumn turned to me for help as to what Apple had said. I merely shrugged, unsure how to respond.

  "What are you going to do to us?" She tried again.

  "Well I wanted to dissect you on a lab table and see how many times you can flicker between your two bodies before you go mad but that idea got shot down." Apple sighed and continued her tinkering. "So we went with Diego's boring idea instead."

  I gave Autumn a terrified look. She gulped back.

  "That was a joke." Apple eventually added far too late. "I don't really care for torturing you. I just want you gone as quickly as possible."

  I had no idea how to translate that to Autumn so I just narrowed my eyes.

  "Um, you don't think this is a bit extreme? I haven't hurt anyone, really." Autumn spoke. "This is all a huge misunderstanding, actually. We talked to some vampires about Dahlia and they said–"

  "Maxine Byrne. I know." Apple glared. "Can't trust anything that bitch says."

  My eyes widened. Was she still stalking me? When was I ever not being watched?

  "What if you're wrong about all of this?" Autumn offered. "What if me becoming Autumn Laurence was just a one time thing and it's nothing like Dahlia's case at all? Or what if whatever you do to me only makes things worse?"

  "Dahlia took my best friend from me." Apple snarled. "I've seen her face to face. I know how this works. I won't let parasites like let you control anyone else."

  I half frowned to Autumn, trying not to let my facial expressions move my mouth at all. She sighed back, trying to infer what Apple could've said.

  "What are you doing? What's with the weird faces?" Apple smirked, genuinely curious. She crossed her arms and turned to face me, looking between Autumn and I. She waved her hand vaguely. "It's kinda cute. You're like birds in seperate cages trying to call to each other."

  "Are you mocking us?" Autumn guessed in a glare.

  "Wait," Apple gasped excitedly, pointing to each of us one at a time, "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. That's kinda cool, I didn't even mean to do that."

  She found this funny. The only one of our captors that I could've seen changing her mind or feeling too empathetic to go through with killing us was making fun of us. If I had my voice I'd have thrown an equally taunting quip back, probably something along the lines of her having just referred to herself as said evil.

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  "You're insane for this." Autumn brought the topic back. "I never asked for this curse and I never intend to use it. Go ask your detective boyfriend what counts as enough evidence for the death penalty, because I clearly don't deserve–"

  "Ew. Diego's more like an annoying uncle. I'm barely any older than his daughter." Apple's face scrunched slightly. "And I'm sorry to say it, but the law only applies to human beings with human rights."

  She knelt down and flicked Autumn's forehead with a grin.

  "You lost your human rights when you came back from the dead."

  Ooh I wanted to kill her so bad. But I knew if I tried to move now while sedated and weak, I'd only cause more harm. Autumn stared down at the ground in shock at the fact she'd been reduced to a flick at the head like a misbehaving child, oblivious to what Apple had dared to say.

  Never in my wildest dreams was that a possibility I could've thought up for Apple and Diego's motivations. She wasn't a person to them, she wasn't human. The law wouldn't help her, the law didn't apply to this situation at all, and a court would spend years trying to agree on what to do with her. Even if it did, everyone involved was technically serial killers. No one was morally right in the head. Apparently that was enough for Diego to justify his actions.

  "Aw, don't pout, you'll get frown lines early." Apple returned to the desk. "Not that they'll show up for a decade."

  "I thought you were the nice one." Autumn murmured, starting to grow frustrated at the triangle-shaped conversation. "You were understanding and patient with Zach. He told me you were empathetic, and that you said you didn't want to do anything bad to us."

  "Yeah, I was sober, honey." Apple flashed a fake smile, holding onto her last thread. "I get extra sentimental from withdrawals. Don't take it to heart."

  Of course. I was stupid to think she'd always be as maternal as she'd seemed that night at the docks. While on a human blood diet she was probably in a constant state similar to my hunger-induced-blackout-self. This wasn't a sweet sister-like vampire we were dealing with, this was one who felt the same way towards every substance in existence as she did towards fresh blood. I couldn't imagine a hungry vampire on heroin, or crack, yet she probably ingested both of which often whether on purpose or not. Years of that had to rot your brain, and your body. I was almost impressed she was capable of being calm at all.

  Either Apple had incredible self control or absolutely zero.

  "W-We still had several days left!" Autumn grew desperate. "You didn't give us a chance to try and fix things. You lied to us."

  "I got bored." Apple groaned. "When I realised you two were trying to ditch the whole state I ran to throw Diego in the car. If you got lost in Sydney I'd have to spend ages trying to find you and ugh, I do NOT wanna have to keep track of both you and Dahlia's whereabouts 24/7."

  She finished whatever it was she'd been working on at the desk and marched over to me, to my surprise. I flinched and tensed more and more as she sat across from me. Autumn panicked and tried to squirm out of her ropes.

  "Relax. Jeez." Apple growled at her. "Zach's the only one I wont kill tonight. So long as he behaves."

  Her hands reached up for my face and I tried to inch away the best I could, my heart pounding. I wouldn't have been shocked if she were about to claw my eyes out slowly. Instead, she grabbed my jaw with one hand and placed the other atop my head. I screamed from the touch. Apple harshly pushed my jaw up and to the side until it clicked back into place. A pulse of relief came from the area before it was drowned out by the aching in my skin. She poked and prodded my lips and the side of my mouth like a dentist for a few moments, ignoring the tears running down my cheeks.

  "Ugh..."

  She shook the blood off of her hands, picking off pieces of flesh that had come off. I jolted at the sight. Just how mangled was my face if skin was falling off?

  "Sorry about that. I was aiming to shoot your shoulder." She muttered under her breath, lifting her small contraption up to me. "This'll help it heal up faster."

  I hissed through my teeth. She placed some kind of homemade bandage made out of duct-tape and gauze pads across my jaw, holding the sliced up chunks of the left side of my mouth back together. If my tongue wasn't still numb I'd have felt the blood filling my mouth before I had to cough it out. Some spattered onto Apple's shirt. She froze for a moment, eyes shut like she was about to explode, but exhaled slowly and continued tending to my injury.

  For a vampire who'd just confessed to not usually being nice or caring, this felt pretty kindhearted to me. Autumn had thought so too, judging by the look she was burning into the back of Apple's head.

  "Why is he even here if you only want me and Tori dead? Isn't he just a liability to you?"

  "I don't know why I bother responding to her." Apple chuckled to me. "Only you can hear me."

  I snarled sharply at her.

  "Fine! Fine." She raised her hands in surrender. "I'll keep up your stupid little one-way game. Don't bite my fingers off, they'll take years to grow back."

  Oh. There went confirmation that we could in fact regrow limbs. Just like that. Out of nowhere.

  And now I was even more terrified of being attacked by her and Diego, my mind picturing me completely mangled and disfigured and still being alive, slowly regenerating over the years, feeling the pain the entire time. Thank you Miss Harvey, you really have a way with words.

  "For someone who acts like she's all dangerous, you treat him like a little brother." Autumn said my earlier thoughts for me. "It's a little weird. Most people don't get protective over people they're willing to kidnap and shoot in the face."

  Apple's green eyes flickered crimson and her shoulders stiffened. A rare glimpse of vulnerability passed through her, and she applied the next makeshift bandage more gently than the last.

  "He's not a part of this. Not like you are." Apple replied quietly. "He's only here so that he can't call for backup."

  I relaxed slightly, curious. She looked guilty. Regretful. Why?

  "Diego said you've been stalking Zach since he turned." Autumn continued, checking with me through eye contact that she was on the right track, since she was guessing what to say. "It's not because he's your student, don't bother trying to give me that lie. Why? Why watch from the shadows and never step in only to start raving about how he made a huge mistake you could've and maybe even should've helped him avoid?"

  "Do you ever shut up?" Apple yelled at her. "I'll slit your throat if you ask another fucking question, I am NOT bluffing."

  With her fingers still prodding at the bandages on my lip, I fought through the pain and bit her finger. She shrieked and scurried back slightly, clutching it as blood dripped down her hand. Thankfully my tongue was too numb to taste the toxic blood or feel the burning sensation the acidic substance gave.

  "Fine! Damn it!" Apple snapped. "God!"

  She jumped back up to her feet and leaned against the desk, blood dripping from her finger. Materials clattered and clinked as she rummaged for a new bandage. Autumn's posture had changed, she'd tensed up like she was straining for something. It slowly dawned on me that her hearing was coming back. The way she flinched with every growled out curse that came from Apple's breath confirmed it.

  "I wanted to help you. Diego always said no." Apple hissed through clenched teeth. "I wanted to take you out of school and bring you up with us instead. Diego said no. I wanted to teach you how to feed properly without drawing attention. Diego said no. All I was allowed to do for years was clean up your messes! Just hide any evidence you'd left at crime scenes, get rid of any bystanders who got too close or saw something they shouldn't have, little things in the background."

  I sat straighter. That wasn't just stalking, that was helicoptering. Now everything started clicking into place.

  All the close calls I'd been sure should've gotten me exposed or arrested. All the out of place convenience, like how I'd never had teachers tell anyone about my weird behaviour, or how not a single police officer ever showed up at my doorstep. I'd killed almost fifty people in the last four years, and fed on countless more. For a group of teenagers to get away with crimes like that without too much effort always did feel... easy.

  But why?

  Why did these two random vampires choose to guardian angel me? Without ever stepping in properly and introducing themselves, at that? Was it pity or a sense of responsibility? Something was missing.

  "All because I wasn't 'safe', he said. I wasn't 'in control' of myself. I'd 'hurt' you if I got too close." Apple continued bitterly. "Meanwhile the most he ever did was convincing your surgeons not to tell anyone about your miraculous and impossible recoveries when you turned."

  I slowly blinked.

  "Diego interfered at the hospital when Zach was killed?" Autumn blurted out in her own disbelief. "Were you... Were you two there that night?"

  "Welcome back to the auditory world. You really do love keeping your recoveries to yourself." Apple deadpanned, bandaging her bitten finger back up. "I don't like how fast you young vampires heal."

  "Apple!" I managed to growl just barely, every movement of my mouth electrocuting me. "Answer!"

  "Answer what, bud?" Her eyes glossed over as she turned to me. "If you've got a question, ask away. You'll never see these girls again after tonight, so if you want Victoria to die with clarity, all you have to do is tell me what to say."

  I seethed. I'd used up my strength with just two words, and could barely keep my head up.

  "No? That's a shame, I'd tell you anything. I owe you that much." Apple cooed. "Too bad I couldn't care less about what Victoria wants to know."

  "It's Autumn." The girl muttered back.

  "Oh, is it, now?" Apple grinned mockingly. "Finally accepted you've switched?"

  Her fangs flashed in the dim moonlight as gravity swayed once again. This time I saw her ponytail sway at the same time, so it wasn't my imagination. This place was what was tilting, this room or whatever it was on. Combining that with the scent of rust and salt in the air...

  "Did Diego..." I grunted, choking on each syllable, "... kill me?"

  Apple paled. Like the many other times it had in just a few minutes, her demeanour snapped to its opposite, and she glared down at the carpet with a mix of resentment and guilt. Autumn stayed equally quiet.

  "Diego..." Apple's voice had turned weak. "Diego turned you. It... was his decision."

  I shuddered.

  I let my eyes fall shut to better process the heavy words. In a way I'd known, both from everything I'd been told and from his behaviour towards me in general. The confirmation still hurt. The implications–

  "I was the one who killed you."

  ...

  I'm sorry...

  What the fuck?

  "What?" Autumn whispered, eyes wide, hoping she'd misunderstood.

  Apple bit her lip and shook her head as if she couldn't handle the emotions the memories gave her, resorting back to defence.

  "It wasn't on purpose, I... I didn't even see your face during it." She murmured. "I'd only known Diego for a few days, we were fighting constantly. I ran away one night like the rebellious teenager I thought I was and hit up a club, drinking from whoever looked my way. I didn't know my limits. I didn't know how bad my curse could affect me–"

  "What are you saying?" Autumn hissed, voice shaking. "Get to the point!"

  Apple swallowed almost sheepishly. Her emotional instability was the only thing we had here to use against her.

  "I couldn't see straight, I was blacking out every few minutes. One second I'd be myself and the next I'd be after another victim. You know what that's like, Zach, you've had those episodes." Her voice had grown almost frantic with desperation like I was a judge she was pleading for her life to.

  She'd flipped a total 180, totally fragile about the subject.

  "Diego tracked me down so I took off and ran for the hills. A-At some point I got lost and thought he'd found me again. All I saw was a guy with dark hair walking around, and that's all I needed to pounce. I never meant to... I... I didn't know you were just a kid–"

  "Get away from me."

  The words shot from my throat before I could stop it. I couldn't breathe despite the way I was panting.

  Apple visibly flinched at the rejection. Her shoulders tensed. She suddenly sat back down on the ground again and came back up to me.

  "No-no-no, I wasn't trying to hurt you. You know that, right?" She forced herself to smile, placing her hands on my shoulders. "It was an accident. Just a mistake. I thought you were Diego, I just said that. I-I wouldn't hurt a kid. I'd never–"

  "Get the FUCK away from me!" I barked, kicking her in the chest with all the strength I had left.

  Apple skidded back with a choked cough, clutching her chest. She stared at me, her eyes fading red.

  Autumn could barely keep from crying herself. Her mind took her back to that night, to the image of my mangled body, to my screaming when I woke up, to the ambulances, the hospital, everything. She had the culprit now. Just a metre away. And yet despite all the fantasies she'd created in her head of what she'd want to do to that person if she ever found them, she couldn't move an inch because of the lingering nightshade in her system. All she could do was scowl with murder in her eyes.

  "Don't look at me like I'm a monster." Apple growled, growing cruel again as she got back up. "I stopped the second I realised he wasn't who I was after. I helped Diego fix everything–"

  "What about his leg?" I cut in.

  "..." Apple trembled with rage. "That was an accident, too."

  "When? When he had to rip you away from me?" I pushed further, ignoring the pain it caused me to speak. "Don't pretend you have the s-self control to stop halfway through a feed!"

  "FINE! Maybe I didn't want to let you go! Maybe I was too angry!" Apple threw her hands in the air. Her eyes glowed scarlet through the darkness. "Who cares about his stupid leg? It was a small price to pay to save your life."

  "From you!" Autumn yelled, tears burning her eyes. "You caused everything!"

  The room fell silent as Tori shifted. The blindfold held strong, but she whimpered and tried to wriggle in her restraints. Autumn swallowed coldly, terrified of being triggered into a hopping-loop again. All it would take would be the slightest bit of eye contact between the two of them.

  "Now look at what you've done!" Apple snarled, marching over to the girl. "Now I have to drug her again!"

  "NO!" Autumn and I shouted in unison.

  "I don't understand why you hate me." The words left Apple's throat as a strained chuckle, desperate. "I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to cause any of this. Just let me fix it before more people die."

  "You had years to fix things!" Autumn barked. "You had years to swoop in and be the mentor Zach needed! Even if Diego told you not to, you never had to listen to him!"

  "I've had enough of you." Apple pointed a claw against Autumn's neck. "It was one thing when you were Victoria Evans and wouldn't stop poking around with Zach's messes, it's a whole other thing to refuse to move on. You died. Stay dead."

  Autumn stared up at her, quietly sobbing.

  Apple narrowed her eyes.

  "I'm ending this."

  She sliced Tori's ropes with her nails and yanked her up by the shirt. Tori squealed, unsure what was going on. Autumn hung her head with a sharp cry, her senses overlapping from Tori's distress. I could only watch.

  Apple dragged Tori across the room. I yelled for her to stop, to leave her alone, but I couldn't get through to her. Autumn thrashed in her restraints. Apple shot us both one last glare before taking Tori out of the room and slamming the metal door shut behind her.

  The air fell cold once more.

  The only noise was our panicked breaths and quiet sobs.

  This was it. We were going to die, one by one.

  Autumn was going to experience it twice, now that Tori was conscious. She'd feel every injury. She'd greet death for a third and fourth time.

  "Zach?" She cried.

  I looked over to her, just as broken.

  "I love you." She whimpered.

  My heart shattered.

  "I love you too."