Young Blood (PART ONE OF THREE)

Once Lost

15. Once Lost

The urgency had never been so great. It fueled Vaan. It was the extra push, the energy he needed to run up the stairs and kick down every door he found.

No Blake, he thought, as he finished the first hallway o the second floor.

No Blake, but there were others, definitely. Witches and demon kids ran out of their confinements and shouted for freedom.

It was hard for Song to keep up with Vaan. Shape shifting took a lot of energy from him, and he wasn't exactly the running type to begin with. However, he understood why Vaan was so crazed about this. The poor guy had spent a year thinking his girlfriend was dead and now that there was a chance she was alive, everything was different. Every little second felt like a lifetime, and every step both boys took seemed to get them nowhere.

Like they were running in place.

The second hall way was cleared.

Then the third, and the last.

A bit disgruntled, and even more furious then before, Vaan ran back up the stairs, two by two, and then proceeded into the first hallway of the second floor, kicking down doors and nearly screaming when Blake wasn't there.

Song stopped at the end of the hallway, just in front of the first door where a small girl peered up at him and have him a big mischievous grin then dashed down the stairs. He smiled as he watched her go.

Song watched Vaan carefully, noting how mad his friend looked. Vaan just kept kicking the doors down, poking his head in to the room, and then jumping across to the next door.

His face was red with white-hot fury, and Song was almost a little bit terrified of him at that moment. Vaan was driven with the desire to save this girl, because he thought it was his fault Blake had disappeared.

He thought he couldn't save her, and that's why he'd gotten taken from him. And now was his chance to redeem himself.

Song didn't know what it was like to handle all of it.

Vaan had been blessed and been turned in to a vampire and when his adoptive parents found out, they kicked him out onto the streets and left him to die. Then Blake got taken away from him, and he had once said, "I have nothing to live for." Song almost thought he was going to try and end his own life, so he always kept an eye on Vaan, just in case. Song couldn't bare to lose his best friend.

Now they were on the third floor, and as Song watched Vaan he noticed a broken window and his jaw clenched tight.

"Vaan...," He said, beckoning the vampire over to him.

"What?" Vaan said through gritted teeth. He spun around and saw Song pointing to the shattered window. It was then that he noticed the cold air wading in to the hall and his breath caught when he saw just the tiniest few drops of blood on the carpet.

"Is that where Mandy...?"

Song nodded. "I think so." He looked from the window to Vaan and said, "C'mon. We gotta find Blake."

Vaan nodded firmly and went back to slamming doors open.

They'd looked through every room, except the last two on the fifth floor an Vaan was giving up.

Exhausted, he sighed and groaned. "Really wish the covert squad could've found out what room she was in," He breathed.

Song snickered. "Maybe I should've listened better to Celeste when she told me who to put on the team," He joked.

Vaan laughed lightly. "Maybe," He repeated.

Vaan sighed again an leaned against the second to last door in the hallway and it swung open behind him. He tumbled backwards and rolled to a stop when he hit a bed.

"Uh, Vaan?" Song said, a smile growing on his face as he pointed to the person laying on the bed.

Vaan stood up and turned around and his jaw dropped.

The girl lying in the bed unconscious, was Blake. He almost smiled, almost.

He really tried to.

But then he looked at her, he really looked at her. Blake was hooked up to tons of machines, she was muttering something in her sleep and a bead of sweat was trailing its way down her temple.

An IV hooked to her arm was pumping a bunch of weirdly colored chemicals into her blood stream and suddenly Vaan was furious. He wanted to rip the IV out of her arm, but he knew that would hurt her.

So he slowly pulled it out and taped up her arm. Song helped him unplug her from all the machinery and Vaan carried her out of the building.