Seven Years Later, 2018

"Do you know why the vampire is so cruel Annie?" Hal whispered to the double bolted door.

He looked a mess sitting on the floor with his back against the wall just to the left of the doorframe. His elbows were rested on his knees. His shoulders were hunched over like a child hiding in the cupboards.

"It's the blood," he said but no one heard him over the screams.

They were muffled and to any human ear those screams would be like the sound of cotton balls rubbing together. However, Hal was no human and with immortality came great hearing. It was like she was screaming in his ear.

"PLEASE," Annie shrieked the sound ripping from her frame like the muscles and sinew of a neck as fangs sink in.

Hal knew that after a few minutes of torture the screams all just slur together for both the torturer and the tortured. The pleas, threats and confessions all become one big unintelligible stream of sound. Grammar and syntax go out the window. You forget the order of time the past looks like the present and the present looks like it never even happened. One time Hal could have sworn he had seen the future.

"MITCHELL! GEORGE ANYONE PLEEEEASE," Annie continued at least that's what Hal thought she said.

"Always calling for your boys, Annie," Hal said, "not me though never me."

He paused at the sound of a sickening crack from inside. Hal felt the dead acid in his stomach turn and boil like a pot of cooking bones.

"What was I saying before?" Hal said, "oh yes, cruelty. It's the blood not the blood itself of course. Blood is just blood. It is the act of taking what doesn't belong to you that just kills something in you."

He heard her squeal and then babble about some sin or other she committed or will commit. She screamed again and then started asking for her father.

Daddy daddy daddy daddy please daddy. I'm sorry I'm so so so sorry. Forgive me forgive me. I didn't mean to DADDY PLEASE! Anyone ANYONE. My name is Annie Sawyer. My mother's name is Carmen. My father's name is Max. I had two brothers called George and Mitch— No. My mother's name—

And so on and so forth. Of course he didn't enjoy it. No of course he didn't enjoy her pleads or her pain but he needed it. He wouldn't allow himself not to hear her, to mourn with her, to die with her.

"Have you ever stolen something, Annie?" Hal said his eyes were red ringed though no tears fell, "Of course you have. How silly of me to forget. You told me about that one time back in college back when you were a student, back when you were alive."

He laughed, actually laughed. Then he sniffed and ran his hands over his dry eyes. Hal looked a mess with his wrinkled white dress shirt all untucked and soiled with the blood of the innocent. His pants were wrinkled too with dark stains here and there. His feet were bare but clean and pale. Hal was a mess.

"When everything that's in you is stolen, the only thing keeping you alive and burning," he said, "Annie, you can't imagine what it's like? You can't help but turn vicious. You can't help but turn desperate and cruel."

He's quiet for a long time letting her shrieks wash over him. It is a long process, Mr. Snow had explained. It would take some time and some pain. Blood, swear and tears.

Hal didn't know when he started crying or when he started screaming with her. When he starts pounding on the door Hal is fully aware that he doesn't have the key anymore. That door is locked to him.

"HAAAAL, HAAAAAAAAAL," Annie screamed for him, "HAAAAAAAL."

It was then that Hal began to scream back.

By the time Mr. Snow finished, his henchmen all filing out Hal had broken his all of his fingers and both his wrists. They had started to heal of course but every time one crack mended he broke and bended them again against the steal door. By the time Mr. Snow had finished and Annie had passed out Hal was broken all the way through.

"My god, pull yourself together, you fool," he said disgusted by the state of his soldier but then smirked cruelty and blood smeared across his teeth, "she's been asking for you."

The sound of a lone metal key hitting to the floor echoed through the silent halls.

2011

"Oh come now Annie," Mr. Snow crooned from across the room, "don't look so upset. Aren't you excited to meet me? I know I've been going practically manic since I heard that you were the one guarding the child. What are the chances?"

Annie backed away looking for an escape. Her eyes darted and scanned every corner and crevice for asylum. She kept trying to rent-a-ghost but she was too scared, too horrified by the second murder of her friend. He could hurt her actually hurt her.

"Now now don't run away just yet," Mr. Snow said moving towards the poor frightened ghost, "we have things to discuss, plans to plan."

Annie whimpered and began her retreat. She turned but before she could run Mr. Snow spoke again.

"I'm going to enjoy splitting open that little puppy bitch you've got stashed away in your house," Mr. Snow crooned smirking at his own thoughts relishing in the images his imagination provided, "and that mutt you keep all kenneled up. I'll split them open just like I did your little friend."

Annie stopped dead in her tracks at the mention of Eve and Tom. That rage, that oh so familiar rage began to build as he continued to speak.

"I'm going to roast them over the ashes of that abomination you call a home," Mr. Snow said his tone turning nasty, "I'll fuck both of your boys until they bleed and make you watch."

Mr. Snow waited. That's all he had to do. Say some ugly words, drop a few derogatory terms and then wait because he knew Annie wouldn't stand for it. He had done his research and he knew Annie. He knew her perhaps better than anyone in the whole world.

Annie couldn't explain what she felt at the moment. Ghosts were cold maybe even freezing. Even Mitchell who had been dead for over a hundred years thought she was cold. Cold and a bit squishy and yet at that moment Annie felt like lightening, she felt like a sun flare. Furious and deadly. Fire and intent, that is an angry ghost. That was Annie.

"Don't you ever TOUCH. MY. FAMILY," Annie hissed and threw up her hands, "you son of a bitch."

The force of her fury pushed Mr. Snow back but only just inches.

"Oh come now, no need to mention the circumstances of my birth, you can call me Mr. Snow" he said tauntingly calm, "come now Ms. Sawyer, even you can do better than that."

So she did. She pushed harder, her eyes glowing in the dark warehouse. Her lips were pressed into tight line and her shoulders were square as she slammed that bastard into the concrete.

"Aha! Yes now that's more like it," Mr. Snow cheered from the ground, "that's my girl."

She hit him again and again the sound of his ancient body was nothing but a hollow thump in the darkness. The whole time Mr. Snow just laughed. He laughed because he honestly did enjoy pain. Pain and pleasure that all a vampire understood. It was how they viewed the world, in black, white and red. Mr. Snow laughed because it was all going according to plan.

"I swear on my life and death," Annie hissed as she concentrated harder than she'd ever done before, "if you EVER lay a hand on them I. WILL. TEAR. YOU. APART!"

She threw out her arms and all of her ill intent and focused it into a thin line and aimed it straight at his throat. All that could be heard after that was the strangled laughter of the mad vampire.

"Oh Ms. Sawyer," Mr. Snow said his mouth full of blood, "the things we've got planned for you."

Annie halted her attack. She suddenly felt so sick she was sure she'd heave all over the cold concrete. She wanted to run; she needed to run. Annie needed to get as far away from that man as she could possibly get before he could poison her further. She needed Hal and she needed Tom. She needed her family.

Her eyes flashed to the stake that Alex had abandoned in favor of going towards her door. At the thought of her fallen friend Annie felt the urge to double over from the pain she felt from the loss of the young woman. There was no time to break down, however because Mr. Snow was already getting to his feet. The gap in his throat was closing in that disturbing, unnatural way that was characteristic of vampires.

"You don't even understand what you are," Mr. Snow whispered more so to himself but Annie heard him, "you don't even know what you're capable of."

That was true. Annie had no idea what she was. She knew she was dead and she knew she was a ghost but she had barely scratched the surface of what being those things actually meant. No one had told her and being dead didn't exactly have a handbook.

She'd never had to find out on her own. George or Mitchell and now Hal or Tom was always around to do the fighting. There was always someone around to do the dirty work. All the while she was left at home to twiddle her thumbs and wait for her boys to come back to her.

But that got boring very fast. Playing Rupunzel and Sleeping Beauty and bloody Snow White got old. She was tired of being good and sweet and Annie. She wanted to know. She wanted to become. What exactly she wanted to become she wasn't sure yet.

"I could tell you," Mr. Snow said as if reading her mind, "I could teach you so many things, Annie."

But not like that. She would rather be plain and boring and useless than become Mr. Snow. No matter what he could give her Annie would never let him live. She would find out on her own what she was.

She pulled on the stake with her will and flew it at his chest. She aimed directly for his heart. Her eyes narrowed as she heard him gasp and the left corner of her mouth quirked up ever so slightly but the satisfaction didn't last long.

"Oh darling," Mr. Snow said wrapping his hand around the piece of wood, "did you really think it would be that simple to find my weak spot?"

Annie paled at the sight of Mr. Snow wrenching the stake for the center of his chest like it was a splinter. She would have screamed if she could find her voice but it evaded her.

"Though it was easy to find yours, Ms. Sawyer," Mr. Snow drawled looking her square in the eyes as he continued to twist the wicked splinter from his wretched his heart.

Mr. Snow could practically hear the click as gears shifted in her mind.

"No," she whispered covering her mouth as if to keep in the terror, "no no no no."

His smile was slow and triumphant like the snake as it watched Eve take her first bit.

"What are you waiting for?" he said dark mauve tongue running over the teeth in his grin, "run."

And Annie did not disappoint. She turned and ran out of the room and then out of the warehouse. Once outside she disappeared into the air leaving not a trace behind.

Mr. Snow waited patiently for the hole in his chest to close. Occasionally he would giggle, gurgling back his own blood. He had never felt so alive.

"Oh the plans I have for you, Ms. Sawyer," he whispered, "the plans I have for you."

"Hal please," Tom said pushing the injured vampire down to the bed with his free hand, "jus' wait fer Annie to get back. You ain't well."

Tom's other arm was busy holding a screeching child. She had started to scream just after Hal woke up and she hadn't stopped since.

"Oh blast wellness," Hal said slapping the werewolf's hand away from his shoulder, "I need to find, Annie and Alex. They should have never left the house. It is no longer safe."

"Anneh can take care of 'erself, Hal," Tom said bouncing the crying child in his arms, "an' so can Alex. You just 'ave to take care of yerself mate. I did a number on ya."

Hal scoffed rolling his eyes at the comment but knew full well that it was the truth. Hal has seen werewolves fight. He had seen them tear each other limb from limb but never had he ever been subject to those claws. And Hal would be the first to tell you that it was quite a different experience.

"I went easy on you," he mumbled bitterly but when he looked up and saw Tom grinning at him over the head of a screaming baby Hal couldn't help but smirk back.

"Yea yea whotevah mate," Tom said, "just sit ya butt down and wait for Anneh to get back, which she will, so's she can clear ya."

Tom set Eve, who had finally quieted, down in her pram. He reached out a hand and began to pat her belly. His hand that had brought the end of many a creature of the night. His hand that had stolen, maimed and killed. Tom's hands had done many things great and terrible because it's like McNair said 'idle hands do the vampires' work' but he preferred making bottles and burping Eve to all that.

"How long ago did you say they left?" Hal said the worry evident in his brow.

"Not more than a couple 'ours ago," Tom replied then cooed to Eve who gurgled back in delight.

Eve did so love the one with the large eyes and expressive eyebrows. He would always dote on her and she on him. He would always babble at her, as did the pretty dark one with the curls around her face. Though the other one was always silent. The one with pale skin and dark hair, he had no stories to tell her, no songs to sing her but she loved him all the same.

"And exactly how long did Annie expect to be away," Hal said growing suspicious of the situation, "Tom."

Tom continued to lavish Eve with attention but his lip was caught between his teeth. He was nervous and unsure. He didn't want to tell Hal that Annie had meant to be back in less than an hour.

"Tom," Hal said again rising from the bed, "Tom how long was Annie supposed to be gone?"

"Look, Hal I really think we should learn to put more faith in – "

"TOM! TOOOOM!"

The sound of Annie's shrieks sent both men rushing towards the living room. Tom of course stopped to grab Eve from her pram before hurrying after Hal.

"Toooom," Annie screamed pushing her hands against her cheeks as if to push the tears back into her eyes, "Tom please I – please be here."

Hal couldn't explain what he felt then in that moment before she saw him. It was like he had been waiting. He had been holding his breath waiting for her return.

"Annie," he called to her, "Annie calm down."

She spun around to face him eyes wide and wild. Hal had seen her tear apart the house on a cleaning spree and rip another ghost to dust with sheer will but for the first time he was actually frightened at the sight of her. She looked dreadful

"Hal," Annie said the one syllable that made up his entire name sounded like a long holy prayer as it fell from her lips, "oh my god, Hal."

Annie practically ran to him her curls all undone and limp on her shoulders. She looked so young to Hal. She wasn't a mother in that moment just a lost girl running for the terrors of the world. She was a sad scared creature that wrapped herself around him too tired and too dead to care that he may not hug her back. She just wanted to touch something that was real.

"I thought you were de- I thought you were done for," Annie said sobbing into his chest, which was covered in a sheet, "I thought I'd lost you."

It took him a second to adjust but when he did he was hugging her back just as fiercely.

"Hal there was just – I thought they – he said that -," Annie tripped and trembled over her words, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can barely feel my feet touching the ground. I can't even form sentences."

"Annie!" Tom said rushing towards his friend.

"Tom, Eve!" Annie said pulling away from Hal and moving towards the others, "oh my gosh I was so frightened, I was so – I thought that-"

She stopped speaking thinking better of it. There was no time to explain.

"Anneh, whot 'appened? Are you all righ'?" Tom said immediately, "did Alex make it? Anneh, whot 'appened?"

Annie shook her head and reached for her child. Tom relinquished Eve to her but all the while his hands quivered and his thick eyebrows were knitted tight across his forehead.

"Annie," Hal said finding his voice, "what's happened?"

"I can't – I – there's no time," she mumbled rocking the cooing baby back and forth, "we need to leave. NOW."

The two men fell silent.

"No more talking, no more deliberation," she said her voice harsh and unforgiving, "this is my decision and if you don't like it then you can just shove it!"

"Anneh, please," Tom began but Annie was having none of it.

"NO, Tom I will not back down on this. I've seen things. You have no idea the things I've seen," she shouted prompting the child in her arms to whine and then cry, "oh Eve I'm sorry. Annie is sorry. I'm so sorry."

Annie didn't even notice the tears on her face as she let Tom take the girl from her. Hal and Tom stood on either side of their friend. Tom turned away too disturbed by her breakdown. She had been fine just a few hours before. Only she hadn't been. Annie hadn't been okay for a long time.

Hal on the other hand kept his eyes trained on the cracking woman. He knew what it meant to fall apart, how it looked, how it smelled. He should be angry or bitter. She had left him and Eve and Tom. She had just disappeared without a note or warning. They were supposed to be a family, an army gathered around their little girl. And she had broken rank.

But there was no time to be bitter and angry about her abandonment. There would be time later.

"Annie," Hal said as gently as he could muster, "I believe there are matters that you have yet to share with us. Please Annie help us out. We're confused."

When Hal is the calm and kind one the world must be in danger. In so many ways he had been such a child all his life. Then nearly all of his unlife he had been a demon. But somehow he had become a man and he owed a great deal of that to Annie and the home she had made for he and the rest of their ratpack family.

So Hal manned up and pushed past his petty aversion for physical contact. He put a hand on her shoulder hoping to draw her attention. It didn't work. She continued to rock her child back and forth until Eve's cries subsided and quiet befell them all once again.

"Annie," Hal said so low it was almost a whisper, "please tell us what's happened."

Annie looked up from the child and for a moment she could have sworn she was somewhere else.

She was thirteen again surrounded by her mother and sisters as the paramedics tell them that he died instantly when the other car made contact. They all cry except for Annie. She's always been a little bit slow on the uptake but when her mother looks up at her eldest daughter she knows that it isn't ignorance. Annie is glad he's gone.

Then she was dead but more alive than she ever felt while she was still breathing. She's on an IKEA couch flanked by the two people she loves most in the whole wide world watching some silly program on TV in a pink house.

Then she's locked in an endless catacomb of white rooms with things far worst than werewolves and vampires.

She's watching the love of her life turn to dust.

Then it's the day Eve's born.

And then the day the whole world dies with Nina.

Tell us what's happened.

Impossible.

So much had happened to Annie things that neither her dreams nor her nightmares had prepared her for.

She was back in the present, once again flanked by two boys who had become men right before her eyes. A werewolf, a vampire and a ghost sharing a B&B in Barry. She had tried for so long not to draw parallels, not to compare them to the ones from before.

Annie didn't want to love them and trust them as much as she had Mitchell and George. She didn't want Eve to be the light of her life the way Nina had been her strength. Annie was made to survive the ones she loved. She'd already given her forever to someone else. She shouldn't have any room left in her heart but she's so lonely.

And she can't deny that she loves the two men in front of her. She can't do it on her own anymore.

On the eve of the End of the World, Annie breaks down in Hal's arms.

"I've killed her," Annie sobbed, "I've killed Alex. I let her go to that warehouse. I encouraged her to go. She's dead because of me."

Hal let her throw her arms around his middle. He gave a shiver of discomfort before looking over her dark curls at Tom who still refused to see his Anneh in such distress.

"Annie that's impossible," Hal said trying to catch Tom's attention with his eyes, "you know that it is. Alex was already dead."

Annie felt her whole body go cold, colder than it already was. Colder than death. She pulled away from him unwinding her limbs from his own. A million things ran through her mind.

Perhaps it was the stress and the fear of Alex's demise. Maybe it was what Eve had shown her of the future perhaps she had snapped.

"Yea I knew that," Annie said backing away from him to stand in front of Tom and Eve, "but how do you know that? Alex, she said -"

Maybe it was the sweat on his brow or the queer twitch of his eye that doomed him. Annie knew, she just knew because she'd seen that look on another man, on another monster. She just knew.

"Annie," he murmured heartbroken at the look in her eyes and the blood in his belly.

And she just knew.

This was how it always happened with them wasn't it? They always went bad. They always fell down and took everything and everyone, George, Nina, everyone with them.

Vampires.

"Anneh, wah you sayin'?" Tom cut in finally.

"What I'm saying, Tom is that he's drunk," Annie said growing more aggravated with each word, "fallen off the wagon, taken a gulp from the big bad sippy cup, he drank blood."

She was screaming by the end of her spiel. Her hands were before her face her fingers curled up half way to her hair. The air crackled with her frustration.

"So wha are ya sayin', Anneh? We carn't be turnin' on each other naw," Tom said bouncing baby Eve in his arms, "it's madness, that. We need ta stick togetha."

Annie shook her head and rolled her eyes. She turned to Tom ready to strangle him if need be.

"I will not have a junkie in my home, Thomas," Annie hissed, "putting us in danger, putting Eve in danger, I won't have it."

And they went back and forth. Tom kept arguing for his mate. He had faith in his friend. They would get him clean again. They'd set up those dominoes again and take them down one by one. All of them together.

"We're a family, Anneh," Tom countered becoming just as annoyed as Annie, "we'll figure this out like a family. No one get left behind."

But Tom hadn't seen the future. Tom hadn't see what the world could become, what Hal could become. And what scared Annie the most was that perhaps neither of them knew what was to come. Maybe she had changed too much, maybe nothing could be changed at all.

She just couldn't win.

"My goodness, Tom," Annie screeched, "this isn't a Disney movie. This is real life and-"

"So you want me to leave," Hal cut in spitting the words out like melon seeds, "is that it?"

Annie stopped for a second and she saw her friend. His head bowed down burning holes into the floor. She saw the broken, awkward, silly, adorable and yet bitter man that she had trusted. She had loved him as one of her own. But she had also seen his face 20 feet high with the words "show no mercy" printed across it. He was just as merciless as he was broken.

"Yes," Annie stated firmly taking in a deep breath through her nose, "I want you to leave, Hal."

Hal looked up meeting her eyes both of their gazes so angry and so understanding. The world was splitting in half and they had somehow ended up on opposite sides of the chasm.

"Then I'll go," Hal said walking towards the door.

"Hal, don't," Tom begged, "please don't go."

"Tom please," Annie breathed a hitch in her voice.

Without even knowing it they were no longer in a line instead they had formed a triangle. Each person a corner, an island unto their own, they were sitting ducks vulnerable and fallible.

"Goodbye, Tom, Eve," Hal croaked feeling heavy and weightless at the same time; his head was spinning, "goodbye, Annie."

And then he was gone.

"Why'd ya do tha'?" Tom demanded struggling to keep from shouting, "he's our friend, and you just kicked him out like he was a stray."

Annie didn't reply. She couldn't bring herself to watch him leave.

"Wha's wrong wit ya?" Tom asked truly bewildered, "wha's 'appened to tha both ov ya? 'ave ya lost ya minds?"

She didn't want to be the one to break his spirit, to break his heart. How she wished she had a heartbeat to drown out his questions. She just wanted to hear the sound of her own breathing but she didn't to that anymore.

"We need to go," Annie mumbled feeling very tired, "pack up the things we need and then we leave."

"No Anneh I'm nah-" Tom began but Annie cut him off.

"NOW, Tom," she snapped but then sighed and added an apologetic, "please."

Tom glared at her pulling his lips thin over his teeth. He didn't like this; he didn't like it all. They couldn't just leave without Hal.

"I'll go," Tom said but before Annie could feel any relief he continued, "but we have to wait for Hal to get back."

"He's not coming back, Tom," Annie said.

"He will," Tom declared jutting his chin out defiantly, "he'll come back then leave togetha."

Annie just shook her head. She was just as stubborn as Tom and twice as dangerous if she put her mind to it. Annie was not a force to reckon with, she was to be feared.

"Please, Anneh," Tom pleaded, "we carn't leave wit'out 'im. He's our friend. He's mah best mate."

A silence befell the two. Once again it was just the wolf and the dead girl staring each other down. It should have been love and acceptance, understanding and reassurance. That's what it was the last time but those were different people. They used to be George Sands and Annie Sawyer but now it was Tom and well she wasn't quite who she was anymore.

It wasn't the same and maybe that would be their saving grace.

Or their downfall.

"We wait," Annie said finally and Tom eyes light up but Annie continued, "but only until morning. If he isn't back by then sober then we leave without him."

For a moment it seemed Tom would protest but then he nodded and headed up to his room with Eve in his arms. Annie watched him go her fingers interlocked and knuckles white.

"I have no idea what I'm doing," Annie whispered to the space he had just occupied, "I'm so scared and so lost, my god what do I do?"

No one could hear her and no one could answer. So she answered.

"I'm going to take my family," she said to no one but herself, "I'm going to kill that twat of a prophecy and I'm going to run."

With each utterance she became more confident. She knew what she would do now. If the death of the war child is what would save the world then that's what would the world would have. There would be no Eve Sands, there never was.

"We'll disappear," Annie said, "all of us together, we'll run."

She spent the rest of the night planning and charting out their journey. Hours were spent on Google Maps, looking up the most obscure ways and passages. In just a few hours Annie created routes that should last them years.

"We're going to be fine," Annie chanted to herself all the while, "we're going to make it."

She was wrong.

A/N: So it's been a while. Bless your soul if you're still reading. The next chapter will be the final chapter for this installment. I've begun work on the sequel so be on the look out for that.

I love you all and I really wish I could express just how much but it would be an insult to even try.

Thank you all

much love,

Bri