when shadows crawl {andy biersack}

make it through {walk away}

one, two, three.

one, two three.

andy counted his echoing steps, one by one, as the dark hallway flickered with broken fluorescent lights. it was a method he used to keep him focused so his mind didn't stray elsewhere. that happened a lot when he felt scared and wanted to run away from everything that seemed terrifying. this was terrifying.

it had been approximately two days, six hours, and thirty-three minutes since he realized something had happened to emelia. what exactly happened, he really had no clue, but soon he would find out. he knew all of the ins and outs of los angeles, and knew that they couldn't have taken her far. it was too busy, too well-lit. somebody would've spotted a woman held captive.

they may not have been able to link each other to communicate, but since they were a part of each other, he could–essentially–feel her essence, her life force. it was like a constant pull, a gravitational force like the earth used to lure in the moon.

whoever had taken her had no idea who they chose to wrong—and if they did, they would have a very, very big storm coming. he was not about to sit back on his stupid window and cry out for her when she wasn't going to come home. he was done with crying and wallowing in his grief and sadness. he would no longer allow himself to be a shell of a man like he had become. he would not let anything happen to her if he could help it. this time, he could, so alas he was here, walking through miles upon miles of abandoned tunnels under the city of angels.

as he marched confidently through the darkness caused partially by the night that loomed overhead, he dug into that great, massive power, reveling in how good it felt to awaken it from its deep slumber. however, he hadn't gotten as far as he would've hoped so. being so long in a world with little magic, away from the lands that fed into his magic, had left him more depleted than he had first been. it was like he was bound to chains, unable to go farther into the well that was his power.

bound to the human vessel in which he was contained, the amount of power that still thrummed within his chest, racketing and vibrating throughout veins and muscle and bone, may not have been enough to summon the wicked creature–his true form–forward, but it could be enough to destroy entire armies, entire cities, within moments. surely they wouldn't go as far as to test him like that?

halting his steps, andy sniffed the air, cocking his head; the ultimate apex predator trying to catch the scent of his prey. oh, how he would feast tonight.

whoever these pathetic beasts were, he would destroy them, rip them apart bone by bone. once, long ago, he had to live a life without the one supreme being he was meant for, created for. everything—gone, for centuries. there was no way, heaven or hell, that she was slipping through his slick fingers this time. the dark part of the man he used to be slithered forward, hunting mode engaged as his muscles locked into place. tendrils of dark were unleashed, reaching out once again to search for her location within the old, darkened train tunnels.

it was this thing that he had just become that made him feel the closest to the monster that lurked under the surface of his skin. the crimson hell-beast raked claws down the thick obsidian wall of his mind, testing the barrier as if there was a hole, a fault where it could slip through and take power once again, ripping the cage of this human vessel to shreds and reclaiming all of its glory. its instincts were like a loud siren blaring through its entire body. protect, protect, protect.

little did it know, it screamed through andy's blood, too, pounding with every echoing step. he didn't need its form to become the beast. he was already the beast.

one, two, three.

each step brought him closer and closer to the only woman he had left to call his family, and it was when he turned a bend in the tunnels that the smell reached his sensitive nostrils. they flared, the calm, cool anger he had just possessed turning into white hot flame. it seared through his body, blood boiling with a rage unknown even to him.