Chaos erupted as the other vampires howled. The pandemonium was lost to the thumping music downstairs. A blessing really. Charlie wasn't sure what would happen if someone happened to come upstairs and witness three men with demonic faces attacking a single, well armed girl.

Was it her imagination or were they pulling their punches. They were supposed to be faster. Stronger. Over all more powerful than her and yet…

No, decided. They had to be toying with her. Lulling her into a false sense of security.

Well.

Underestimating her would be their last mistake.

A savage swipe of her hunting knife and she managed to drive David back as he growled.

With a quick maneuver she ferociously stabbed Marko in the heart with the same knife.

Dwayne snarled as he rushed at her. He barreled into her, violently knocking her off her feet. She fumbled with another stake as they went down hard and blindly thrust up into the vampire's chest. His solid body bore down on hers and the stake luckily. He grunted as it pierced his heart, his eyes going wide. Charlie was caught in his stare as she lay frozen beneath him. Gradually, his eyes closed and his body went limp on top of her.

Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes, though at first she wasn't sure why.

Oh god what have I done? The thought popped into her head unbidden.

Her stomach roiled and bile rose in her throat. Suddenly she felt disgust. Disgust at herself no less for what she had just done because she remembered now. She remembered October and she remembered how much she loved the men she just murdered.

She cried out in anguish and she struggled to squirm out from under Dwayne's dead body. This must have gone on for hours, or so it felt like but she deserved to be tortured after the atrocity she just commited. Finally, his body was lifted off of her and rolled over onto her side as she gasped for breath around the lump of emotion stuck in her throat.

"Charlie? Hey! Look at me Charlie!"

She blinked through the sea of tears in her eyes at David who leaned over her with a doleful expression. Not believing her eyes, she raised a trembling hand to his throat where she had cut him. The collar of his shirt was bloody but his skin unharmed.

"David," she breathed in amazement, fullon tremors shaking her body. "You're alive!"

She reared up and threw her arms around him as a river of tears flowed down her face. "I remember now! It's me! I'm October! I'm back!" she sobbed.

"Oh thank fuck that wasn't for nothing," someone groaned.

Charlie wrenched herself away from David and watched as Paul heaved himself up from the floor. Dwayne and Marko were quick to follow, neither worse for wear as their injuries healed miraculously. More tears of guilt misted her eyes as she clutched at David's sleeve.

"I thought I killed you all…" she whimpered, closing her eyes, unable to bring herself to meet anyone's eye.

David wiped away the tears on her downturned face, causing her breath to catch. He lifted her chin with a finger and she finally opened her eyes. She sunk her teeth into her bottom lip as he offered her a small, encouraging smile. Her face flushed and her gaze darted away, needing to look at someone else.

Dwayne regarded her with a look of mild amusement. "That should make us about even now. We've really got to stop meeting like this."

Charlie sniffled. "How is this even possible?"

Marko crawled over to her and wrapped her in his arms.

"I'm sorry, but you must be a really shitty hunter if you forgot the most important rule when it comes to vampires," he whispered teasingly into her ear. "You are rendered powerless if a vampire has an invitation into the house. Remember?"

Charlie was overwhelmed with emotions at that moment, but relief sang the loudest right next to soul crushing embarrassment. It quickly dawned on her how many successful past hunts had been due to sheer dumb luck. To be fair, she was kinda new at this. In this lifetime anyway.

"Don't feel bad Charlie," Paul cut in and she pulled away from Marko. "Jess said you to mortally wound us if we wanted to jog your memory. It was part of a ritual."

Charlie laughed darkly and ducked her head to swipe at her eyes. "That was really fucked up of her. I can't believe you let me kill you just because my sister said you had to."

Her boys chuckled at that and then the room faded into an awkward silence.

"Could really use a glamor to sneak out of here looking like this," Paul said suddenly, inspecting his bloody shirt.

They all looked to Charlie with varying expressions of accusation at the damage to their ruined wardrobe.

She wrung her literally red hands together and winced.

It felt like coming home as Charlie rolled up to Hudson's bluff on the back of Dwayne's bike even though it was for the first time. The other Lost Boys eagerly led her down the eternally rickety wooden stairs, though it looked like someone had attempted repairs at one point in the last couple of decades.

Charlie's eyes lit up as they entered the underground hotel. Paul Jr. came scampering up to greet the group, yipping happily. Paul shooed the pomeranian away to give her some space to just look around.

The lobby looked just as she had remembered it. She couldn't believe her spell held up after everything that happened. The lobby was perfectly preserved, decadently frozen in the height of its time. Naturally, she glanced over at the front desk, and more specifically the empty space hanging over it.

"We tore down Max's portrait and burned it after that night," David explained.

Her mouth set in a hard line. "Good."

Marko laced his fingers with hers and tugged her in the direction of their rooms with an ecstatic grin. As a group they made their way down the hallway and stopped in front of her old room.

"We hang out here a lot, but we tried to keep everything just as you left it," Paul told her as he pushed open the door for her much to her chagrin.

The boys hung back so she could enter first.

She surveyed the room quickly and the only difference she could spot was the giant flatscreen TV mounted on the wall above the old square set. Venturing further into the room, she made her way over to the big poster bed and fell back into the plush covers. Sneaking a subtle sniff into the covers, she breathed the Lost Boy's familiar, faint scent in and sighed.

"We missed you," Marko told her softly from where he leaned up against one of the bed posts.

Charlie sat up. "I swear I'm not going anywhere from here on out. Okay? Never again."

David stood at her bedside with his hands in his pockets. "Do you want to make that official?" he asked with a single brow raised.

Charlie connected the dots in an instant. "You mean like…?" she trailed off.

David gave a half smile and cocked his head.

She wondered just how many times they had already had this conversation. How many times she'd fantasized about drinking from the infamous bottle of wine. As she sifted through her memories of her life as October, she found she couldn't quite recall if she had ever had the chance before.

A line formed between her brows and she glanced away from him.

Dwayne caught the subtle change in her face and spoke up when she didn't. "We should talk first."

Paul guffawed from where he sprawled on the small couch along the wall, his legs draped over Dwayne's lap. "That's how you know it's serious when Dwayne wants to talk," he joked.

Dwayne shot a glare in the rocker's direction that swiftly shut him up. He shoved Paul's legs off of him and hopped up from the couch. He approached the bed cautiously and only when Charlie met his eye did he sit down.

"Go ahead," he encouraged her. "Ask us anything."

Charlie shifted on the bed so she sat criss cross style. Her gaze darted around the room at each vampire, thinking.

She licked her lips and her forehead creased. "Okay, first explain to me the spell that Jess supposedly cast on me. What did it do exactly?"

"Well, before we can explain that, we should tell you everything that happened after the night we lost you," David plopped down on the bed, sitting opposite Dwayne.

"Alright, what happened?"

David traded a glance with Dwayne before he continued. "Max was dealt with finally. Together, we went to look for you inside the widow's house and we found Jess. Just her. She had been waiting for us. She told us what happened, that you were gone and so was the widow."

Marko curled an arm around the bedpost. "We couldn't believe we lost you again."

"We begged her," Paul piped up and then paused thoughtfully, "well, David basically threatened her to resurrect you the same way you resurrected us. But apparently that was against the rules or something."

"We were devastated and Jess took pity on us. She explained what usually happens when a witch dies, that they usually reincarnate in some other lifetime," David said. "She also said that because of how you died, the chances of your reincarnation were slim to none. We asked her if there was anything she could do to find you - the next you, anyway - just in case. After all, we're going to live forever so we could wait for however long it would take."

Charlie refrained from interrupting with what she could remember from her side of things. "And then what happened?"

"Jess' spell could only search for as long as she was alive. So when she would eventually die of old age, we would have no way of finding you."

Her heart broke for them. Why did their lives have to be so fucking complicated? Why couldn't anything ever be simple for them?

"But," Paul interjected, "then last Halloween happened. Jess finally got a hit on your location."

A corner of her mouth twitched. "And you found me."

Dwayne chuckled. "Yeah. We found out ol' Sam Emerson had a half niece that was hell bent on destroying us. Guess we were destined to end up with an Emerson one way or another."

Hecate, you sure have one weird sense of humor, Charlie thought to herself.

"This must be weird for you," she noted with a cringe. "Every time we cross paths I'm basically a different person."

Dwayne's gaze trailed from hers down her face and lingered on the handkerchief scarf tied around her neck. He delicately reached out a hand and tugged the scarf away. "We will love you no matter what face you're wearing," he confessed in a low timber that did things to her.

Her heart stuttered as he scooted closer to her on the bed and leaned in to press a kiss to the side of her throat as he cupped the back of her neck. Charlie was putty in his hand.

To think, this reunion never would have happened if she hadn't botched a hunt with her uncle and nearly died. Although, looking back, Charlie realized that maybe she had crossed over for a moment and in that moment Hecate unlocked something in her fate.

Dwayne lovingly swiped a thumb over the scars on her neck. "We're sorry for putting you through everything that happened tonight. Jess told us about a ritual that would at least return your memories of October and it required you to spill our blood. We didn't want to take any chances so we made sure we were protected before we ran into each other."

"I don't know whether I should thank you or apologize," she laughed breathlessly, her eyes fluttering from the sensations the vampire was sending down her spine.

"Don't apologize," Marko argued. "We should apologize. We could only return your memories from when you lived as October."

Dwayne pulled away from her and shook his head, appearing forlorn and regretful. "Hundreds of different lifetimes, erased."

"That's gotta be a witch's worst nightmare," Paul lamented as he fidgeted in his seat.

David frowned. "You probably don't remember your life as Rose. When we met for the first time ever."

She shrugged. "You'll just have to remember for me. Or better yet..."

Charlie took a moment to probe what memories she did retain and sure enough, she couldn't remember a time before October. The idea didn't terrify her as much as she thought it would. So she could hardly remember what it was like to exist as a witch. So what?

If this was her last lifetime as Hecate had warned her it would be, she would make the most of it. That was the beauty of being human, there were endless opportunities for transformation.

Suddenly Jess' tarot reading made a lot of sense to her.

"Let's make new memories. Forever."

The lights were turned down low in the lobby, but the music was turned up loud as shadows danced in the candle light. Paul danced around the rim of the fountain, banging his head and shredding the air guitar. Dwayne circled the fountain on a skateboard with Paul Jr. nipping at his heels. Charlie and Marko were perched on the front desk as they scrolled through Marko's phone gallery.

"Oh man! I missed that time Dwayne had a man bun!" she complained loudly.

Marko laughed. "Too bad I don't have any pic's of Paul's "Scene Phase". He made me delete those years ago."

Charlie squealed in delight as she pawed through a box of polaroids. "You had 90's noodle hair?!" She threw her head back and laughed.

He gave her a lopsided grin and she continued to rifle through the pictures. She pulled out a yellowed image of David and smiled.

"Damn, David makes Grunge look gooood," she whistled.

"He makes everything look good," Marko quipped.

"This much is true," David interrupted the two as he sidled up to the front desk with a wine bottle in hand. "But enough of that. We have an eternity to catch up. For now, it's time."

"I'll say!" Paul hollered as he hopped off the fountain's edge and made his way over to the front desk.

"A long time coming!" Dwayne agreed with a roguish grin as he rolled up beside him.

Charlie set aside the box of polaroids and reached greedily for the glass bottle, after which she paused and squinted at the label. "What happened to the 'wine drink'? This is a totally different bottle than last time."

David shrugged and leaned back against the front desk. "We lost that one to another earthquake in 1989."

"We seriously considered leaving Santa Carla after that, but your sister talked us out of it. At that point she sorta became like our little sister," Marko mused.

Charlie weighed the wine bottle in her hand thoughtfully, the liquid inside sloshing against glass. "I can't imagine this place without you guys. This will always be your home."

Paul playfully nudged her leg hanging over the edge of the desk. "And now it will be yours too."

As her fingers curled delicately around the neck of the wine bottle, Charlie took a second to take in the matching hungry grins gracing each boy's youthful face. She felt the corners of her own mouth curve up into a wicked smirk as ravenous want churned in her gut. In a fell moment, she shed her loyalties from the rigid morals Sam Emerson and the Frog brothers had drilled into her.

To hell with them.

Even though she wasn't able to remember exactly when she first crossed paths with these vampires, she could feel it deep within her very soul that she was literally re-born to be one of them.

With fervent fingers, she uncorked the bottle.

"I'll drink to that."

The End.