“Spencer, for once in your life can you stop acting like an idiot” Lassiter growled out, his teeth clenched. Shawn, currently standing on the restaurant table sat at by their current suspect, turned his head slightly to grin widely at him. “Come on Lassie, I was just getting to the good part.” Earlier that day, Shawn made the connection between their suspect and the restaurant he frequently visited after sneaking a look at the credit card information that was left open on Juliet’s desk. One psychic revelation later, Lassiter and Juliet along with a team of officers were hopping into their cars and heading to catch their suspect at his weekly lunch, Shawn and Gus trailing closely behind.

At the beginning of the week, a young man in his late twenties was found dead at a local park by a late-night jogger. The coroner at the scene concluded that the cause of death was due to severe blood loss. What was strange, however, was the cause of the loss. One large wound was located on the victim’s neck, which Shawn happily announced was eerily close to a vampire attack. This idea was immediately dismissed by an annoyed Lassiter, who then proceeded to kick Shawn and his side kick Gus out of the crime scene. By the time Shawn and Gus made their way back to the station after stopping for smoothies, a name for a suspect had already been determined. Apparently, the suspect was sloppy and put no effort into hiding evidence, leaving DNA all over the body. Will Benedict was a cashier at the local Starbucks, having abruptly quit his job a week previous. According to his coworkers, Will was a stand-up worker whom everyone loved to work with until recently when he started to act different. He became withdrawn and short tempered until one day when he stopped showing up to his shifts. Juliet and Lassiter had just pulled up his bank statements before Shawn was announcing to the entire station that he knew when and where Will Benedict could be found.

This led them to the current situation. While Lassiter and Juliet were outside setting up a perimeter before confronting their suspect, Shawn and Gus snuck through the back door and spotted Will sitting alone at a back table. Without waiting for backup, Shawn climbed up onto Will’s table and began spewing nonsense about vampires and murder, to the complete surprise of the man sat at the table. After a minute, Lassiter and Juliet led their team inside and surrounded the table, guns pointed at their suspect and glares directed at their psychic.

“Shawn, please just get down” came Juliet from beside her partner, her voice soft but stern. Shawn turned his attention to his girlfriend, the grin on his face not faltering. “But Juless, I’m almost done.” He opened his mouth to begin to speak but was cut off by the table being pushed out from under him. Will, taking advantage of the distraction, stood up and shoved the table, causing Shawn to lose his balance and fall backwards, crashing into the suspect. Will grabbed Shawn by the shoulders and threw him down, quickly jumping on top of him. Before anyone could react, Will bent down and shoved his head into Shawn’s neck and bit down, hard. Shawn’s eyes widened and let out a scream, arms swinging up to try to push the man off of him. After a moment of shock, Lassiter raised his gun and shot the man in the shoulder, but Will didn’t even flinch, his jaw instead clenching down harder. Shawn’s surprised scream turned into one of terror, his arms failing to pry the man off of him.

Juliet, momentarily frozen in panic, followed Lassiter’s lead and pointed her own gun at the man, shooting him in his opposite shoulder. This finally caused a reaction, Will releasing Shawn’s shoulder to clutch his shoulder and glare at the officers behind him.

“Put your hands up and don’t move” Lassiter shouted; his glare fixed solely on their suspect. Will glanced back at Shawn, a smirk forming on his face as he watched Shawn clutch at the wound on his neck, his eyes clenched in pain. With her gun pointed at their suspects head, Juliet followed her partner as he approached Will, finally handcuffing and detaining the man. As soon as the handcuffs were tightly secured, Juliet holstered her gun and ran to her boyfriend, dropping to her knees as she replaced Shawn’s hands on his neck with her own.

“Oh my god Shawn, are you alright?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Just peachy, Jules. Can we confirm my vampire theory now?” Shawn asked quietly while giving her a weak smile. Juliet rolled her eyes and instead leaned down to place a kiss on Shawn’s forehead. Gus, who had thrown himself behind one of the officers as soon as things took a turn for the worst, was now leaning over Juliet’s shoulder, his eyes locked on Shawn’s face to avoid looking at the blood seeping out between her fingers. “Dude, we were so right. You were just bit by a vampire!” A second passed before a look of fear spread across his face, Gus immediately stepping back to hold up a small wooden cross in front of himself. “Gus” Juliet growled out. “That isn’t helping. Where did you even get that?” Beneath her, Shawn let out an amused snort. “Come on, Jules. Did you really think we’d show up to take on a vampire unprepared?” Gus, taking another step back, smacked his lips together in agreement. “You know that’s right.”

Lassiter, having just finished reading Will his rights, was now leading him past the group towards the exit of the restaurant when the man suddenly let out a loud, disturbed laugh. “You have no idea what’s coming. Good luck, psychic.” Will called out, continuing to laugh as Lassiter forcefully dragged him away and out the door. Frowning at the man’s words, Juliet glanced down at Shawn, concerned, before calling out to the officer behind her to call an ambulance.

After the paramedics arrived, they immediately got Shawn up and into the ambulance waiting outside. They wanted to bring him straight to the hospital, but Shawn simply waved them off, stating that a couple stitches and some Tylenol was all he needed. “I really think you should go to the hospital, Shawn. That man bit you, they need to test you to make sure you didn’t contract anything” Juliet said as she leaned against the opening of the ambulance. “Jules, im fine. Actually, im already feeling so much better, it barely hurts anymore. I’ve had my fair share of people biting me. And by people, I mean Gus in the second grade, but that’s just semantics. He’ll deny it, but Gus definitely went through a biting faze.” Gus, who was standing only a short distance away, began to defend himself but Shawn waved him off.

Juliet scanned Shawn’s face for any sign of pain, but she had to admit that he did look better. Now that the blood was cleaned off, the wound on his neck looked shallow. She could have sworn it was deeper, but she wasn’t really in the right mindset at the time for her memory to be reliable. “Fine” she finally relented. “But if you start to feel worse, or if it looks like it’s starting to become infected, I’m taking you in. No complaints.” The EMT patted Shawn’s bandaged neck a final time, signaling Shawn was free to go, allowing him to jump down from the truck and smile brightly at Juliet. “Come on, Jules. Gus. Lassie’s probably already booked our vampire by now and I want to be there when he’s interviewed.” Shawn reached for her and pulled on her hand to lead her away towards her patrol car.

“Actually Shawn” Gus said hesitantly. “I think I’m going to pass on that. I mean, we have our suspect now and I still have to make my rounds for today.” Shawn rolled his eyes at the look of fear still on his friend’s face. “Gus, there’s no need lie. Jules won’t think any less of you if you just admit that you’re afraid of vampires, isn’t that right Jules.” Juliet held back a laugh as she glanced over at Gus. “Leave him alone Shawn. If Gus doesn’t want to come because he’s scared, then he doesn’t have to.” At the embarrassed look on his friend’s face, Shawn let out a loud laugh. “You’re right, Jules. I’ll ride with you to spare Gus from having to get within a square radius of the big bad vampire.” Shawn continued to pull Juliet towards her squad car, leaving Gus to return to his own car alone.

On the way to the station, Shawn started to feel a little weird. He began to feel cold, his mouth becoming dry and a burning sensation starting to form at the back of his throat. Not wanting to worry his girlfriend, Shawn began to shake his leg up and down and remained quiet. After ten minutes, they arrived at the station, Juliet pulling into her parking spot near the front door. Before she even had time to pull the car into a complete stop, Shawn was jumping out the door and up the steps leading to the entrance.

Juliet parked the car and shut off the ignition. She took a couple minutes to calm herself and shake the fear that had been growing in the pit of her stomach ever since she watched Shawn first fall off the table. After she felt composed, she walked into the station and straight to her desk. She wasn’t too keen on going down to see their suspect just yet, so she instead sat at her desk and began the incident report covering Shawn injury.

While Shawn wanted to go straight to the interrogation room to watch Lassiter question Will, he first made a stop at the water station. The thirst burning in the back of his through had only grown on the way back to the station, to the point where he was desperate for something to drink. After downing six cups of water with no relief, Shawn threw his paper cup into the trash bin with a frustrated groan. What is going on with him? He rubbed his throat a couple times, hoping to relieve some of the weird sensation he felt, before heading towards where he knew Lassie and Will to be. Once he entered the observation room, Shawn’s throat was practically on fire, no amount of rubbing or swallowing seemed to help. After a couple minutes of half paying attention to Will ignoring all of Lassie’s questions, Shawn marched out of the room and threw open the door to join the two men.

“What did you do to me” Shawn demanded, the door slamming behind him with more force than he thought he exerted. “Are you starting to feel it?” Will asked with a knowing smirk on his face, to the annoyance of Shawn. “I feel like I swallowed a hand full of hot coals if that’s what you’re talking about. Now answer my question, what did you do to me?” Shawn yelled out, a feeling of pure anger blossoming in his chest.

“I think you know exactly what it is, psychic. You spent minutes spewing out random facts about it back at the restaurant. If you’re really as smart as you say you are, it shouldn’t be that hard to connect the dots.” Will leaned back smugly, thoroughly enjoying the situation. Shawn felt a wave of fear roll through him, thinking back to exactly what he had been accusing Will earlier at the restaurant. “No, that isn’t possible.” Shawn whispered loud enough for only himself to hear. Will, however, smiled brightly at the comment, clearly hearing what Shawn had just said. “Oh, but it is. And you’re about to find out just how real it is.”

Lassiter, who had stood silent for the past couple minutes watching the interaction between his suspect and Shawn, finally had enough as he turned his glare to Shawn and pointed at the door. “That’s enough Spencer, now get out of my interrogation room before I force you out. You’ve screwed this up enough already, I won’t stand here for another second and listen to you spew your idiotic nonsense to my suspect.” The anger growing in Shawn’s chest suddenly spread across his entire body, and before he even realized it, he was across the room and holding Lassiter against the brick wall, hands around his throat. It was then that a sweet smell reached his nose, his mouth suddenly salivating. Shawn’s eyes dropped to the vein he could see pulsating in Lassiter’s neck and he felt a strange urge to lean in and bite at the exposed skin. The anger that Shawn could feel moments ago faded away and was replaced with a burning thirst.

“Spencer, what the hell!” Lassiter called out, surprise clear in his voice. Shawn could hear Will laughing behind him and was aware that he currently had Lassiter up against the wall by his neck, but he couldn’t seem to care as he continued to focus on the detective’s neck. Lassiter took advantage of this distraction and shoved him backwards as hard as he could, Shawn only budging just enough to lose his grip on Lassiter. Now that his head felt clear, Shawn took a larger step backwards, creating more distance between them.
“You’re lucky he didn’t kill you, very few have that kind of restraint in the beginning.” Will interrupted. Lassiter momentarily took his eyes off the psychic and glanced over at him. “What do you mean by ‘the beginning’? What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s transitioning now. When I bit him earlier at the restaurant, I started the process.” Will said, sounding bored. “Im not an idiot, don’t even start with the whole vampire thing. Now if you don’t tell me what you did to him right now, I swear I’ll…” Lassiter began but was cut off by Will pulling his arms apart and snapping the cuffs around his wrists like they were made of paper. He stood up and took a step towards Lassiter, his eyes black and his mouth pulled up to show off two pointed, fang like teeth.

Lassiter shouted in surprise and fear, jumping away from the man and towards the door. “Holy shit” he whispered quietly to himself, hand reaching behind him in search of the door handle, eyes never leaving the man. “Now leave, I need to have a nice talk with our Shawn here. And I would suggest locking the door, I doubt he’ll be in control for much longer.” At the sound of this, Shawn finally moved out of his frozen state and whipped his head towards Lassiter, pleading with his eyes not to leave him. Lassiter held his stare for a couple seconds, fear still visible in his eyes, before quickly turning and leaving the room, the sound of the lock echoing throughout the room.