Running Wild (Sequal to I'm Not A Vampire)

Found

**BLADE'S POV**

That was pretty much the routine for the next few days. Drive most of the day, stop and get something to eat every once in a while, and stay the night at a hotel before continuing on the next day. By day 3, we were already well into Illinois. Since Drake was the only one who knew how to drive, he was behind the wheel the entire time. I felt bad, but there wasn't really anything I could do about it.

Every night, I had a new dream about Ashlyn. Strangely, the graveyard was no longer the setting of them. Now it was always a room, more often than not a hotel room. Sometimes I recognized them as my own, and sometimes they were completely unfamiliar to me. Either way, I always woke from them with a bit less of a hole in my heart, as if I were actually having conversations with my sister. The strange thing was that I never remembered the consistency of the conversations after I woke up, only that I'd had them. And the little things I remembered, the setting of the dream, the ever-changing outfits my sister was wearing, didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason to them or why they stuck in my head.

On the morning of our fourth day on the run, Drake and I did our usual routine of getting some food from the breakfast buffet and checking out. I couldn't help but notice that Drake was exceptionally quiet. "Is everything okay?" I asked as he was pulling out of the hotel parking lot.

Drake glanced at me quickly before returning his eyes back to the road. "Yeah," he said after a long pause, though his tone told a completely different story.

"Don't lie to me, Drake," I insisted, suddenly concerned. "Tell me what's going on."

He was silent for a long time, but I noticed his grip on the steering wheel tightened. Finally, he said, "We have to check into another hotel early."

"What? Why?" I peered at him, panic fluttering in my gut. If our families were chasing us, staying in one place for too long could damn us both.

"Tonight't the full moon," he whispered, voice soft and filled with a violent shame I'd rarely ever seen on him.

"Why-" I began, then cut off when I realized what he was saying. "You're going to change."

He nodded once, a tight, stiff movement. "Yeah. I have to leave before sunset. I just feel horrible about leaving you by yourself."

"I'll be fine."

"Blade, I know how you get when you're alone."

"It's not like it's gonna kill me. Don't worry about it, I understand."

"Are you sure?"

I nodded. "You don't have a choice, I know. I can go a night by myself."

Drake sighed and looked at me, his gorgeous eyes filled with worry. "Alright. Just promise me you won't do anything bad to yourself while I'm gone."

I nodded. "I promise."

**ASHLYN'S POV**

This was by far the weirdest setting for one of my dreams with Blade. I opened my eyes and looked around to find the world rushing past me, wind whipping my hair around my face. I was sitting cross-legged on top of a car, somehow as still as if I were sitting on the ground. But then, this was a dream, so shit didn't really need to make sense, did it? Across from me, Blade sat in the same exact position. "Are we top top of a car?" he asked, looking around as the wind played hell with his black hair.

"Yeah, I think so," I replied. "Weird, normally it's in my hotel room."

"You're hotel room?" he whipped his head back to me. "Why are you staying in hotels?"

I rolled my eyes. "Because we're trying to find you, dumbass!"

Blade's face went pale. "Y-you are? Why?"

"Why do you think? Because we want you to come home!"

"I'm not coming home. So stop looking and just leave us alone."

"Blade, it's not like that-" I cut off when the car we were on top of suddenly swerved, and I was thrown to the side. A hotel sign appeared, sparkling with blinking lights. By the time I looked at my brother, the image of him was starting to flicker, like a candle in the breeze. "Blade?"

"Stop looking for us!" his voice was barely there as the image of him blinked out, and was gone.

I gasped and bolted upright in my seat, the sudden exclamation causing everyone to turn and look at me weirdly. "What's up, Ashlyn?" Andy asked from the passengers' seat in front of me.

"I had another dream about Blade," I explained.

The three adults in the car exchanged looks. I'd told them about my dreams of Blade, and to my surprise they'd taken them extremely seriously, explaining to me that twins tended to have a connection between them. If I was having dreams about Blade, they said, they weren't just dreams. They were our subconscious minds literally communicating from across long distances. Any information he shared was real. "What did he say?" Ashley from the drivers' seat.

"I told him we were looking for him," I said. "He told me to stop, because he's not coming home."

Andy flinched. "There goes our element of surprise."

"Well, was there anything else?" Matt peered at me curiously.

"Not really," I shook my head. "We were on top of a car. Right before I woke up, the car pulled into a hotel parking lot."

"Do you remember what it looked like?"

"Yeah."

Andy's eyes were wide. "Keep an eye out the window. Wherever that hotel is, it might have something to help us find Drake and Blade."

**BLADE'S POV**

I opened my eyes, blinking as my eyes adjusted to my dark room. The curtains at the window were pulled, letting in very little light. I was lying on the bed, alone. I sighed and closed my eyes against the empty hotel room. I'd curled up on the bed shortly after Drake had left and battled a vicious panic attack for about an hour before falling asleep. Now I could feel another fit coming on, and groaned. I couldn't be alone here anymore.

Standing up and running over to my backpack, I yanked out one of the shit-load of books I'd put in there. The walls were beginning to suffocate me, and the shadows of the room moved and danced nearer, threatening to consume me. Without even bothering to look and see what book I'd grabbed, I raced to the door. Taking about half a second to quickly check that I had the room key in my pocket, I yanked the door open and ran down the hall, earning weird looks from the couple opening the door to their room a few doors down. At the sight of other people, my heartbeat slowed, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Walking to the elevator and riding down to the lobby, I was pleased to see that there were other people in the sitting place off to the side, most of them on laptops plugged into outlets of some sort. I walked over to one of the cushy armchairs and plopped down, opening my book and settling down to read. After a while, I became so engrossed in my novel that I completely lost track of my surroundings. It wasn't until I heard a familiar voice that I actually looked up and realized that I was in a lot deeper shit than I thought.

"Are you sure this is the right place, Ashlyn?" came the unmistakable voice of Andy. I looked up over my book and watched with horror as my family walked through the doors to the hotel.

"I'm sure," Ashlyn replied, wearing the same exact outfit I remembered her wearing in my dream: an Alkaline Trio shirt, ripped navy-blue jeans, and a zebra-striped bow in her jet black hair. My stomach dropped, and I resisted the urge to scream.

They were here. They were coming to take me away. And for once, Drake wasn't here to defend me. I had to run, but I had nowhere to go without being spotted.

They had me cornered.