cast no shadow. (the lost boys).

Chapter Twenty: The Price of Humanity

The cave was quieter than I'd ever heard it. The only sound was the crackling fire, its light casting eerie shadows on the walls. We'd returned from the Emerson house in a daze, the weight of everything that had happened pressing down on us like a suffocating fog. I sat in the corner, knees drawn to my chest, trying to make sense of it all, but nothing did. Max—the man who took me in—had turned the Emersons. He'd taken a good, innocent family and ripped their humanity away.

It didn't make sense. How could he do that?

Marko's voice cut through the silence, sharp and disbelieving. "I never thought he'd do it," he muttered, his eyes locked on the fire. "Turn an innocent family... a family, Lizzie."

I didn't respond. I couldn't. My heart ached in a way I hadn't felt in a long time. Max had always been ruthless, sure, but he'd always had a purpose, a reason that I could, if not agree with, at least understand. But this? This was different. This was cruel.

David stood by the fire, his face unreadable, but I could see the tension in his posture, the way his jaw clenched every few seconds. He didn't have to say anything; I knew he was just as shaken as the rest of us. Max had always been our leader, our creator, the one who turned us into what we are. He was supposed to protect us, guide us. But now, he felt like a stranger.

"I don't know who he is anymore," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. It felt like admitting something awful, something I wasn't ready to face. Max had taken me in when Klaus sent me here, alone and scared. He'd been more than just a leader—he'd been a father figure, someone who understood me when no one else did. But now, I wasn't sure I knew him at all.

"He's about control," David said, his voice cold and distant. "But turning the Emersons... that was a step too far. We've taken lives before, but we've never destroyed an entire family's humanity. He didn't just turn them—he broke them."

Paul, usually the one to crack a joke or lighten the mood, was sitting in stony silence, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles were white. "We didn't sign up for this," he finally said, his voice low and angry. "We're vampires, yeah, but we're not monsters. What he did to them... it's not what we're about."

I looked up at David, hoping he'd have some kind of answer, some way to make sense of this, but his eyes were hard, unforgiving. "We've always had our code," Dwayne added, speaking up for the first time. "We take what we need to survive, but we don't destroy lives for the sake of it. Max used to understand that. Now... now he's just like the rest of them. Power-hungry and cruel."

The words stung, but they were true. Max had crossed a line, and in doing so, he'd shattered the fragile trust we had in him.

"He was supposed to be different," I said, my voice trembling. I hated how weak I sounded, how broken. But I couldn't help it. "Better than Klaus, better than the others. But now... I don't know if I can ever forgive him for what he's done."

David turned to face us, and I could see the resolve in his eyes, the determination. "Max thinks he's still in control, that he can keep us in line. But he's wrong. We're not his puppets, and we're not going to let him turn us into monsters like him."

"What do we do, then?" Marko asked, his voice tinged with bitterness. It mirrored the feeling I had inside—like everything had turned sour, rotten. "We can't just let this slide."

David's gaze shifted to me, then to the others. "We lay low for now, but we keep our eyes open. Max wants to play the long game, but we're not going to sit back and let him destroy everything we've built. We've lost our respect for him, and he'll know it soon enough."

I nodded, the firelight dancing in my eyes. We had to protect what was ours, what was left of it. Max had taken so much from us already, but he wasn't going to take our will, our loyalty to each other.