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And the Children Shall Lead (3/4)
Title: And the Children Shall Lead
Chapter Title: Uncontrolled
Rated: hard R
Pairing: none
Fandom: Danny Phantom
Danny Phantom belongs to Nickelodeon and its associates.

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This story is a dark fantasy involving vampirism, vore, blood, evil, and death. Emphasis on dark. It is a sequel to And the Children Shall Inherit the Earth.

It was written the middle of 2007.

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Feed me.

“Nooo….” James whimpered. He was in bed, caught between awake and asleep. He thrashed and squirmed in his distress, sweat sticking his nightclothes to his body.

Feed me.

“Noooo… please no…”

Feed me!

James snapped fully awake with a scream. Again, once again he’d had that dream. Not really a dream, though. Just a voice. A voice commanding him to do things. Lately it was always the same thing. Feed me…

“Feed you what?” he asked aloud to his empty room. He pulled himself out of bed and opened his window, stared up at the crescent moon. “Dad,” he whispered reverently. “I need you. I need to talk to you. Why did you have to go? Why did you have to die?”

-----

At school that day James picked at his lunch. For some strange reason he had this massive craving for fish and the fish-flavored sticks served in the lunchroom were in no way worthy of even a second sniff. Odd since he didn’t even like fish. He looked up when Dash plopped down next to him. “Dude, you okay?” James asked.

Dash shook his head. His eyes were red-rimmed from crying all morning before school and trying not to cry during school. He was pale and drooping and looked as though someone had just killed his best friend.

Kwan jumped on the table. “I know what’ll make you feel better,” he said with a stupid grin. He took on a fighting stance and proclaimed with a booming, overly dramatic voice: “I am Long Wang, son of Hung Wai Lo. I will defeat my enemies with the power of my secret martial arts style, the Standing Cock!”

James laughed, as did most of the football team assembled. The popular girls rolled their eyes and ignored the fact that an amount of silly was expected when dealing with males in large groups. Dash just sniffed and slumped lower.

Kwan jumped off the table triumphantly before noticing his friend’s depression. “Dude, you okay? What happened?”

“It’s Pooky,” Dash said miserably, tearing up again. “He’s dead!”

A number of the football players gasped in shock. Sure Dash’s dog was small enough to get lost inside one of Dash’s shoes but most of them knew that dog as almost a member of the Baxter family. “Did he suffer?” Kwan asked sadly.

Dash nodded, tears returning as his mind’s eye returned to the scene. “H-he got attacked by an animal,” he said. “We found him in the yard. He was just lying there, not a drop of blood anywhere, head almost ripped off, this big hole where his chest had been… He was covered in these big pricks, Dad pulled a rose thorn out of one. A-and there was barely anything left of him--” He broke into a sob.

Kwan wrapped comforting arms around his sobbing friend as the rest of the football team looked on silently. Not a one dared to say a word.

-----

That night Lyonell Lancer stared into his bathroom mirror. News of Pooky’s death had been haunting him all day, especially since he didn’t entirely remember leaving Fentonworks last night. He recalled flashes, of a woman in his arms, of walking through town.

Of warm blood on his lips.

“Did I do that?” he asked the mirror. “Did I kill little Pooky?”

No, the voice assured him. We did.

Lancer suddenly felt like he was about to be sick.

Thou art a weakling, Lyonell, the voice scolded. By Flora why did Father implant me within thee?

“Because I pissed him off,” Lancer ground out, glaring at the mirror in hatred. He doubled over and shrieked as the swathe within him stabbed spines into his stomach to steal his meal away from him.

I can see why. Frankly it was only Mother’s influence that kept me from killing thee.

“I’m supposed to be happy about that?”

Why not? Thou art alive.

Lancer growled. He pitied the others if their swathes were as pompously talkative as his own.

-----

At school the next day Danny stared in fear at Tucker as his friend sat down next to him. With a salad on his lunch tray.

“Hey, man,” Tucker said, taking a big bite of lettuce-y greens. “What’s wrong? More pod people?”

“Yeah, you!” Danny hissed. “When do you ever eat green things?”

“What, like vegetables?” Tucker asked through bites of salad. “I dunno, I just had to. Weird, huh?”

Sam sat down on Danny’s other side. He wordlessly pulled at her sleeve and pointed at Tucker’s lunch. “Pod people!” he exclaimed.

Sam gave Tucker a weird look. “That is weird,” she agreed. “Maybe not pod-people weird but really weird.”

“Hey, it’s not weird when you eat it,” Tucker complained through a full mouth.

“That’s because I eat it all the time,” Sam explained. “You eating veggies is as weird as me eating meat. And as gross,” she added with a face.

“I’m telling you, pod people,” Danny warned. “It’s like Mr. Lancer drinking blood and Dad’s 6 hour baths and Mom talking to herself.”

“Wait, what?” Sam asked. “Now that is weird.”

“See?! Pod people!”

“You’re both overreacting,” Tucker said before biting into a tomato with relish. “Especially you, Sam. You should know better.”

“What?” Sam asked.

Tucker shrugged. “I dunno, it just seems to me like you should know better. Especially after the Undergrowth thing.”

“What about the Undergrowth thing?” Sam asked, venom dripping from her voice.

“Look, I said I was sorry!” Danny exclaimed in self-defense. “I didn’t mean to take two months, I had no choice!”

“Shut up,” Sam and Tucker scolded. They glared him into silence before turning back at each other. “What about the Undergrowth thing?” she asked again, venom doubled.

“Something just tells me you should know better, Mother.”

Sam’s venom faded and she looked at Tucker with fearful disgust. “What did you just call me?”

Tucker looked confused, not remembering his slip. “I called you ‘Sam.’ That’s your name, isn’t it, Sam?”

Sam got up and started backing away. “That’s not what you called me. But that… They survived, didn’t they?”

“What survived?” Danny asked, confused and frightened.

Sam didn’t answer, merely ran off. Danny got up and followed her. He caught up with her in the doorway. Tucker watched as he made her an ice crystal and she shoved him away for it before running off. He ran after her out of the room.

“That was supremely risky,” an adult voice said above Tucker’s head. He looked up to see Mr. Lancer. “Right in front of the ghost boy, too. Mother isn’t ready to reaccept the truth.”

“I thought maybe…” Tucker trailed off before beginning again. “I thought maybe she was.”

“Maybe she is but just doesn’t know it yet,” came a third voice. James stood there with his lunch tray filled with fish and fishy-smelling things. “May I sit here?”

Tucker gestured to Danny’s empty seat. He pushed Danny’s tray away to the edge of the table. “Join us,” he said. He looked up at Mr. Lancer. “Do you want to join us?”

Lancer shook his head. “I’m supposed to look like an authority figure,” he lamented. “Speaking of such…” He stepped back and spoke louder this time. “Detention for both of you after school. My office.” He walked off.

Tucker and James shrugged. Tucker went back to eating his salad.

“Hey, have you been getting a voice that demands to be fed?” James asked.

Tucker nodded and gestured at his salad. “Hence the veggies. Just the thought of these things is making me queasy but it’s what I’m supposed to eat.”

James poked at his fishy things. “Same here.”

-----

Danny finally cornered Sam on a remote corner of the schoolyard under a tree. “Sam, what is going on?!”

“I-I can’t tell you,” Sam said miserably.

“Then who can you tell?!” he demanded. “Sam, you’re acting all weird, Tucker’s calling you ‘Mother’ for some whacked-ass reason, you’re both getting distant from me, what is going ON!”

“All right!” she shrieked in anger. “I’ll tell you what I know!”

“Thank you!”

“But you’re not going to like it.” And with that she relayed the story of the swathes. Everything she remembered. How she’d given birth to Undergrowth’s children and implanted them in their five hosts. How Maddie was first, how she held a pretty little climbing vine with tiny flowers. How James was second, how he carried a predatory flytrap with a taste for fish. How Tucker was third, how he hosted a dark poison ivy with tempting red berries. How Mr. Lancer was next, how he held a thirsty bloodrose with pale white blooms and three-inch spines. And how Jack was last, how he was infested by a water-loving lily.

“You’re insane,” Danny said softly after Sam seemed done.

“You were gone for two months, Danny,” she scolded. “Did you really think Father would just sit idle waiting for you to return and fight?”

“Well, yeah,” Danny said softly. “Didn’t he?”

“No,” she said coldly. “No he didn’t. And we have suffered because you decided to return. You have caused my children this pain, this agony of growing up without their father guiding them. ‘Pod people’ you called them.”

“I was right!”

“Yes you were. But unlike the movies there are no original copies somewhere else. The ‘pod people’ are all that’s left of them.”

“Then I’ll remove the plants!” Danny vowed and started to storm off.

“If you do that you’ll kill them!” Sam shouted after him.

Danny froze at that then continued storming off. He’d find a way to get his parents back and they’d be back to normal. They’d be just fine, she was one of them, it had to be a lie!

Right?

End Chapter 3