Secrecy (Hosie)

Part 49: Rubble

Hope pulls up outside of the sanitarium, but she doesn't see Josie's car outside. She quickly gets out of the car, but as soon as she gets close to the side door, there's a loud explosion from the third floor of the building, sending bricks, metal, and all sorts of debris everywhere. Hope is thrown off her feet when pieces of concrete hit her harshly in her leg, but she doesn't even register the pain as she looks up to the building, a singular name coming through her lips in a fearful whisper, "Josie."

She stands to her feet, with much difficulty, and runs with a limp through the door of the slowly collapsing building, "Josie!"

She knows the bomb was on the third floor, so she makes her way to the stairwell, trying to avoid the falling debris as best she can while she struggles to run up the stairs with her injured leg. She can feel it slowly healing, but it isn't nearly fast enough.

She makes it to the third floor, using her werewolf senses to try and find Josie, but after several minutes of breathing in dust, getting hit with falling rubble, and avoiding the fires that have started all around her, she still doesn't find Josie.

Using her werewolf senses, she can hear a muffled groan coming from down the hall, so she quickly makes her way in its direction.
She can see an arm peeking out from under a pile of rubble, "Josie?"

She uses her supernatural strength to lift the huge block of concrete on top of the person, moving it to the side and bending down to see that it isn't Josie who was pinned underneath. It's one of the electricians she saw earlier.

He seems really dazed and out of it, he's banged up pretty bad, so Hope bites into her wrist and puts it up to his lips, allowing some of her blood to fall through his lips. He doesn't even seem aware enough to register what she's doing anyway.

When she can see some of his wounds beginning to heal, she starts to pick him up, wrapping one of his arms around her shoulder to help him out, when he lets out a barely conscious whisper, "She told me to stay until the bomb went off."

The explosion. At the end of Josie's nightmare.

Hope practically carries him down the stairs to the first floor, "I'm so sorry."
She of course blames herself for this innocent man getting hurt. She gets him outside and drags him a safe distance from the building, hearing sirens coming in the distance.

She has to go before she's spotted here.

Once she's sure he'll be fine, she hurriedly goes back to her car, having never picked up any sign of Josie in the building.

Josie isn't here.

Once on the road again, going the back way to avoid passing any first responders, she pulls out her phone, calling Lizzie again. She picks up quickly, "Hope? Is Jo okay?"

Hope tries not to groan at her injuries from the debris, the damage to her body being significant enough to take a long time to heal, "She wasn't there. Can you meet me back in your dorm room to do a locator spell? I don't have any of her stuff with me."

Lizzie notices the out of breath and pained sound of her voice, but focuses more on the substance of her words, "Yeah, I'll get the spell ready."

Hope hangs up and immediately receives a call from her aunt Rebekah. She picks up as she speeds back to the Salvatore School, "Hope, what the bloody hell is going on? Why did you hang up earlier?"