all of our ghosts

”Dad … please don’t …”

The last words he’d spoken had been a soft plea, but they echoed around his head like he’d screamed them as Magnus had angled that dagger towards him. Don’tdon’tdon’tdon’t … dad.

Magnus. Cassie.

Heart racing in his chest, Linc jerked awake. He clutched at his chest and then scrabbled at the ground, trying to get himself up and away from the feeling of the blade plunging into him. Ruby red smears of Hector’s blood still on the gleaming metal, catching the light in the basement a split second before Magnus had struck. Linc panted out a breath, tearing at his hoodie as he stepped back, trying to get it open, to see if the wound was healing. Blood still painted his shirt around a ragged tear in it, but the skin beneath was smooth , unmarked.

Linc let out a breath that was probably closer to a sob. Was it his blood or had it been Cassie’s? The days of confinement – for his own good – after Hector had come within a twitch of killing him – had turned into weeks. Trapped down in the basement, practically clawing at the walls to get out as his mind had slowly rotted from what he’d caught off of Hector. Magnus hadn’t been anything like Wesley, even when he’d thrown every venomous word he could at him, but he’d still been the one barring the door, measuring out his rations of blood, stopping Cassie from actually being with him. He’d hated it, but look what he’d done the second she’d appeared at the door.

Swallowing hard, Linc expected to taste her blood, but there was just the faint sour taste of his own fear. He hadn’t hurt her, hadn’t fed from her at least before she’d thrown him. He’d been down at the bottom of the stairs when Magnus had come down after him. It was for his own good, he was going…

Magnus’ words were as clear as his own, but made less sense. He was home. And now he was … dead?

One look around him made it obvious that he wasn’t in Mystic Falls anymore. This wasn’t the basement of Magnus’ neat home, the street he was standing on wasn’t any that he recognised and he’d wandered through most of Mystic Falls by now. It didn’t feel like London either and he’d always figured he was destined for Hell and an eternity trapped in the nightmare of how life had been there before Magnus had saved him. The town around him was quiet and deathly still, like the entire place had been stripped of life. Cars sat outside the houses, but there was no movement behind the windows, nobody out watering their yards or walking their dogs. He strained to hear the distant sound of traffic until his ears rang with the effort.

Panic started to surge through him again. His heart fluttering in his chest in a way that felt unfamiliar now. Had Magnus managed to hit his heart with that dagger? Was this his body still trying to heal the damage that had been done? Linc curled a hand over his ribs like he could hold it in as he took off down the unfamiliar streets. By the time he heard the music drifting from a house on the next block it felt like it could tear its way right out of his chest. Linc broke into a jog, trying for something faster and failing miserably. What the hell had that blade done to him?

He bounced up onto the porch, craning to try and get a glimpse through the open windows. Music poured out of them, but all he managed to see beyond was slices of empty rooms. A sharp knock on the door got no answer, the quiet ding of a doorbell inside swallowed up by the music. It could all have been a mirage, but it was the closest thing he’d gotten to signs of life since he’d got here. He couldn’t walk away now.

Slowly Linc turned the handle and the front door sprung open. He paused on the doorstep, one hand still hovering in front of the threshold. Back in Mystic Falls he would’ve been kept out without an invite. Was it the same here? Extending a hand slowly, Linc expected to feel that invisible barrier keeping him out, but his hand went right through. Still cautious, he stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him in case he had to run. ”Hello? Is anyone here? Hello?” A quick look around the downstairs proved there was no one there to hear him, but as he reached the bottom of the stairs he caught the faint hiss of water running upstairs.

Linc walked up them slowly, half expecting some sort of trap. Magnus and Cassie had been going to help Hector. If he hadn’t fucked up, they’d have done the same for him when he pushed them to. That had to mean this place was safe. Magnus wouldn’t have done anything to hurt him … or Hector.

”Thank fuck,” he puffed, bending over to brace his hands on his knees like he was winded before he realised that Hector wasn’t dressed in one of his snazzy suits. ”Fuck me!” Groaning like he’d been stabbed again, Linc spun around, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes like he was erase the image of Hector standing there starkers. ”If Magnus used that dagger on you too, maybe,” Linc puffed. ”I thought I was when I woke up here, but dad wouldn’t have killed us. Not unless he had some way to get us back. What happened? They went off to get you and the next thing…” Cassie had been there at the top of the stairs, beaming at him until he’d tried to bite her. Fuck, she was never going to forgive him this time – not that he deserved it.

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 989

Until he’d spent a few weeks with Magnus, Linc hadn’t known that vampires could feel guilt. There hadn’t been a flicker of it in Wesley or any of his people. The human masks they painted on to draw people in fell away the moment it was time to feed. Eyes going flat as the veins crawled between them, bored expressions seeping in as they told him to clean up. If Wesley had ever felt bad for what he’d done to a boy who was meant to be in his care, Linc had never seen a single sign of it. Magnus had shown him how different it could be and he’d thrown it all back at him.

Had his dad’s face crumpled as his body had sagged, the blade still in his chest? Magnus wouldn’t walk away, not the way Wesley had done as he’d laid dying. Having to do what he’d done would hurt him just as much. God, he regretted having to put his dad in that position in the first place. Regrets had vanished like smoke over the last couple of weeks, but they’d slammed back into him like he’d smashed into a brick wall the second he’d woken up here. Cassie. Magnus. Maybe even Lawrence, although he’d always seemed impervious to the shit people gave him. He’d hurt them all in some way and in here he had no way of making up for it.

Seeing Hector standing there, the first word that should’ve spilled out of his mouth was sorry. He’d darted towards the only signs of life, barging into whatever Hector had going here. A desperate kid looking for some sort of rescue. Hector got there first, apologising to him as he stood there scrubbing at his eyes. That was karma Linc supposed, this whole thing had been a sick dose of karma. ”I called out…” he started before he started to put the pieces together. He hadn’t been able to run any faster than he had been able to when he really had been a kid, Hector hadn’t heard him yelling over the music. No matter how loud it’d been, he should’ve been able to do that. ”I don’t think so.” Linc shook his head, his hands finally falling away from his eyes – he wasn’t turning back towards Hector yet though. ”My dad didn’t look like he’d…” Had to kill his best friend. There’d been regret there maybe, but Magnus hadn’t been broken in the way he thought he would’ve been if he’d had to kill both him and Hector.

Linc turned back in time to see Hector’s eyes close for a moment. ”Dad thought they'd found some way to help. They just came back from meetin’ you. There was still…” He swallowed hard, suddenly feeling a little nauseous at the memory of blood gleaming on the blade that’d been driven into his chest. Cassie had looked happy to see him, and then he’d wrecked that too, the need to bite her hitting so strong that he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Linc’s lips pressed together, but he shrugged instead of nodding. ”Maybe. I don’t think they figured that out. It wasn’t your fault though. It was the virus, you couldn’t control yourself.” He hadn’t been able to with Cassie, or with the woman he’d killed before that. Guilt lodged hard in his chest again. It might not’ve been his fault, but he’d still become the monster he’d sworn he wouldn’t become.

The corner of Linc’s mouth lifted in a wan smile as Hector headed off to get dressed – thank God. Instead of poking around a space that wasn’t his, Linc sank down on the top step, propping his forearms on his knees. ”That’s why you didn’t hear me,” Linc puffed. ”I started runnin’ when I got here, tryin’ to find someone. Felt like I was runnin’ through mud.” A human heart and human lungs weren’t gonna let him blur across town. He supposed he was lucky he’d heard the music at all. Linc stood slowly as Hector emerged, his brows drawing together before he glanced down at Hector’s casual outfit. ”You haven’t been hungry here? What have you been doin’ for food?” It was still hard to believe that Hector thought it’d been months here. Did being human feel that boring for him that he was imagining the days were that long? Linc glanced around, his frown deepening. Just where had Magnus and Cassie managed to put them?

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 743

The first few days in the basement had been the worst. Almost the second the magical force field had been thrown up around it, the walls had started to close in. There was light, there were plenty of blood bags, a soft bed, enough entertainment to keep him going for a decade and yet none of it had been enough. It had just been a gentrified version of the basement Wesley had kept him trapped in for years. Another promise that it was only temporary. With panic holding his throat in a death grip, Linc had pored over every inch of the room looking for a way out. He’d raged at Magnus, throwing a hundred foul accusations at him that he hadn’t deserved. There’d been a whole night spent on the top step, in one of those few entirely lucid spells he’d had, pleading quietly with Magnus to let him out. Maybe his dad hadn’t heard a word of it, maybe he had and that was what had stopped him from coming at him with that blade before.

It had felt like an eternity of it before Magnus had finally seemed to be pumped about being able to do something to save his friend and his boy. Endless torment relieved in just a couple of rushed, violent minutes. Still he knew it had only been a couple of hours at most between Magnus rushing out of the house to go and save Hector and him appearing back at the basement door, the blood stained blade in his hand. He wasn’t that out of it that he hadn’t been able to keep time.

Linc frowned at Hector, that sick feeling slipping away. What had that blade done to him? Had Cassie managed to spell it somehow to twist up both of their minds so they went away into some sort of weird woo-woo magic coma? They put people in medically induced comas when their bodies needed to heal, maybe this was just their version of it. ”It definitely wasn’t days. A couple of hours maybe. They told me they knew where you were. It was still light when they got back.” He wasn’t gonna tell Hector that there hadn’t even been enough time for his blood to dry to that rusty brown of old blood before the blade had sliced into him too.

Irony had never been funny to him, not with the way his life had played out, but when the blade coated in Hector’s infected blood had been jabbed into him, it had suddenly seemed that way. It had more than likely been Hector’s attempt at killing him that’d infected him in the first place and that had been all his fault. If he’d stayed in the cupboard like Magnus had told him to, he might never have ended up like this. Magnus might’ve ended up dead though. Hector’s lack of control had been what had maybe damned them all, but it had been the virus that had driven that, probably in some fucked up attempt at surviving and spreading. "Brings out the worst in you,” Linc muttered hoarsely. His frown deepened, his throat constricting as he dropped his gaze away from Hector. ”I attacked Cassie again. She got away from me, gave Magnus the chance to … you know.” He made a stabbing gesture towards his chest in an explanation he was sure Hector would get.

Hector would probably see it as a problem that he wasn’t a vampire anymore. It was different for him though. Linc was almost glad of it as he sat there on the top step, barely able to hear Hector getting ready. ”It was all locked up? You sure we’re allowed to be in here?” He glanced around him, taking in the little indicators of other people’s lives in the house. Hector had said he’d been here for weeks though, if anyone was gonna come back and complain he’d gone digging through their wardrobe, it probably would’ve happened by now. ”No tailors?” Linc joked, his fear finally starting to bleed away. It wasn’t like it’d make much of a difference to his own style.

”Surely there was somethin’ like it then,” he muttered. Magnus had told him things about those times, Jo had too and there were probably classes on it at school. ”Chocolate’s the best. Bettin’ they haven’t got Cadburys here. I’m sort of peckish,” he admitted finally. ”You think we can go and get somethin’?” It was probably some sort of a holdover from the state he’d been in when he’d … when Magnus had stopped him. If he could get some human food in him, maybe he could push the memory out of his mind.

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 785