Find Him Who: Darcy and Aidan Where: Between Aidan's and Noah's When: late
Darcy was running for her life. She knew she was. And she hated herself for it. This wasn’t supposed to happen again. She wasn’t supposed to be leaving someone behind and running. She bypassed her house, maybe stupid, but she needed something stronger than a lock. Noah needed something stronger than a lock. I love you. He’d said it. She’d heard it. And now he might be dead. She stumbled to Aidan’s door, banging on it. She was bleeding from a bit down her arm and a scrape on her cheek. There were bruises starting to show already under pale skin and the tears were free flowing. “Aidan!” She banged harder trying to find her keys to let herself in, but failing.
Aidan was in his room when Darcy started banging on the door. He knew it was her when she yelled his name, and it seemed he couldn’t get there fast enough. “Darcy,” he said, opening the door and pulling her inside. “What’s wrong? What happened?” He knew it was dangerous out there, that a number of people had been killed last night, so he was already considering the worst. The blood on her wasn’t helping things either.
Inside was good, but it wasn’t where she needed to be. “No, no, no,” she pulled on him as he pulled at her trying to go back outside. “No. We have to go. They got him! We have to go now!” Her voice was a mess, coming in needy sobs, barely breathing, but pulling on Aidan all the same.
He was willing to go wherever she needed him, but he needed a better idea of what was going on. He also wanted to put shoes on. “Slow down,” he said, hands on both her shoulders. “Let me put some shoes on and grab my jacket. What happened? Who got who?” He was trying to remain calm, but her panic was starting to amp him up.
She didn’t want to slow down. She didn’t want to stop because it was all coming crashing down on her and she was starting to lose whatever composure she had left. “Noah! They...I don’t know what they were. They were strong and fast one of them bit me and they grabbed him and he told me to run and I didn’t want to go, but I had to and we have to go Aidan. We have to find him!”
“Okay, okay,” Aidan said, pulling on his shoes as fast as he could. “Do you have something of his? I need a scent to follow?” Because if someone took Noah, he doubted they were just hanging around the place they took him from, waiting for Darcy to return. “Was the one that bit you a werewolf?” he asked, looking up at her with wide eyes. “How do you feel?”
“Not with me no...I was just with him, can’t you..tell?” She was panicked, but more so that they might find him than the need to. That whatever got him had just left him dead in the street. “I feel scared! And I don’t know! It was a person!” She held out her bleeding arm, gashed open from where she’d tried to pull her arm away from the guy who’d bit her.
“I know you were just with him, but I can’t track him down based on that. Let’s just go to where you were,” he said, getting frustrated. She wanted to go now, which meant he didn’t have a weapon on him, didn’t have anything, and it seemed like a horrible idea. He couldn’t handle walking out the door without even being armed and ran back for his gun before following her outside. “I mean are things louder than normal?” he said, since she didn’t seem to know what he was asking.
Darcy almost panicked when he went back into the house. “I might have something at my house, I can look...please, Aidan, what if he’s hurt or…” She couldn’t say it. Not now. She couldn’t wonder if he was dead. He loved her. And she knew he’d meant, but he’d also said it because he was sure he was going to die. “Louder...no. It just hurts.”
“I just needed to get my gun. If we’re going where he was, we don’t need to go unarmed,” Aidan said, stepping out into the night with her. There was smoke on the air and it burned his nose. “Okay. We’ll take a look at it after. Let’s go.” There was a time when the normal thing to do would have been to call the police, but that didn’t even cross Aidan’s mind.
She reached for Aidan’s arm, holding on to him for a moment, pulling him with her. “Aidan…” Darcy couldn’t say it. She couldn’t suggest he could be dead. The words couldn’t come out. No. She wouldn’t believe it. “It wasn’t far.”
Aidan paused for a second to look back at Darcy, measuring her fear against the words unsaid. She wasn’t just scared for herself, he sensed, but scared for Noah, and there was little he could do to comfort her without lying, at least so far. “Let’s hurry,” he said, keeping his eyes peeled. The rain was masking the scents in the air, but there were few creatures that could move in complete silence.
Darcy wasn’t afraid for herself. Not now. Not with Aidan. Alone, yes, but not with him. They could handle anything. At least anything but a body. She hurried to the spot when he instructed, slowing once there, looking around. “It was here! It was right here.” There was blood on the ground, though the rain was already washing it away, but still red, but no Noah, no attackers. Nothing. Turning she looked at Aidan with wide eyes. “They have him.”
He hurried after her, gun ready just in case something jumped out at them. If Darcy got away, there was a high chance they were looking for her, hoping to quiet any witnesses or take her as well. When they arrived at the scene, Aidan kneeled, touching his fingers to the blood and bringing it to his nose. “Then he’s alive,” he said, looking up at Darcy. “If he was dead, they would have left the body.”
“I don’t know if that’s better or worse.” Darcy frowned, looking around, wrapping her arms around herself, mindless of the blood. “We have to find him.” It was the first thing she’d said that didn’t sound afraid, because she wasn’t. If he was alive, she was going to find him. “Come on,” she said, pulling at Aidan’s shirt.
“Alive is always better than dead,” Aidan said, the blood still on his hand as he tried to pick up a scent. “I’m trying,” he said, looking around them and trying to figure out which way to go. Sylvia had been hard to find and that was without the rain. That was with her coming and going from work. In this case, he had one path to follow, one that had already been washed away. “How many were there? You said they were human?”
Darcy wasn’t waiting for him to get a scent. She was going forward with looking. It had her heading towards Noah’s house, retracing their steps. “Four or five I guess? They surrounded us, but...I don’t know if they were human. They looked it.” But something had been off.
“Were they stronger than normal? Or faster than normal?” If they’d had fangs, Aidan assumed she would have said something about it. “Did they say anything?” As far as he could tell, last night’s attacks had been done by vampires and werewolves, but if humans were just randomly attacking people then he really had no idea what the motivation might be.
“Faster,” Darcy supplied before pausing. “And one was stronger. The one that talked. He was stronger. He wasn’t much bigger than me, but he took Noah down easily. And he talked, but he just gave orders.” She didn’t remember anything else, which was frustrating. Why had she been so scared? Why hadn’t she stayed? “I shouldn’t have left him.”
“If you couldn’t help him, then running was the thing to do,” Aidan said gently. “I can tell others what happened. You gave us something to work with. If you’d stayed, then you might have been taken, too.” And how long would it have been before they noticed? Darcy stayed with Noah often. Aidan wouldn’t have questioned her being gone right away, assuming they were together. Taking out his phone, he began sending a message back to December. “It sounds like they were vampires… the people that attacked you. Or at least one of them.”
“Us?” Darcy asked. “That doesn’t sound like it includes me.” She heard that loud and clear. “I should have stayed. What if I could have helped?” She looked at her arm, the gashes there when he said that word. It made sense, two almost even gashes. Fangs would work. “Vampires?” She wondered if that worried Aidan, if people like Sylvia were attacking others.
“It can include you,” Aidan said, though he was skeptical. Darcy was good at what she could do, but that wasn’t usually hand-to-hand combat. “I think thinking more of the werewolves, and of the girl that organized the full moon. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help. But Darcy, if those were vampires? You couldn’t have helped him, especially if you weren’t armed.” He’d been careful not to go into detail about how dangerous vampires could be around Darcy with him dating Sylvia. He didn’t want her to worry about him. But other vampires? They were worth worrying about.
“You thought I was just going to go home and wait?” Darcy asked, shocked that he’d say that. “I’m finding him Aidan. I promised. I’m finding him.” She wasn’t going to be left out of this. “I feel like I should have done something more than run…” Sighing, she drug her fingers through her hair. “Vampires. Damnit.” It took a couple of breaths to get her breathing under control, trying not to panic.
“Did I say that? I didn’t say that,” Aidan insisted. “I just don’t think you should take them on by yourself. Noah wouldn’t appreciate you getting yourself killed on his behalf.” At least, that was his assumption if the guy was really worth anything. If he’d been in Noah’s shoes, he would have wanted her to run, even if it meant leaving him behind. “Where are we going?” he asked, since he was following Darcy.
“It sounded like that,” Darcy said, shaking her head. “I know he wouldn’t….not after what he said. But I can’t not go after him for the same reason.” She looked up when they got closer to Noah’s house, stopping studying the area around them, as if it might give her a hint. “I was retracing our steps. The guy...he came from behind. The others came from around, but the one who gave orders was following us.” She looked at the house, then turned in a circle. “We started here. That’s Noah’s house.”
“If you’re going to go after him, then be smart about it. Work with people that can help you. I’m not sure we can figure this out on our own.” As nice as that might be, tracking down Noah wasn’t going to be like tracking down Sylvia. The conditions were different, plus he suspected that whomever took Noah was planning on hiding him well. “What kind of orders? They went after Noah specifically?” That seemed weird to him. More often than not, it was the girl that got taken, not the guy.
Darcy frowned while she tried to remember, brow furrowed in concentration. “They went after both of us. Then the guy said ‘get him’ and they changed directions. And I got away.” She sighed and went back to wrapping her arms around herself. “So what’s smart? How do I do this? I have to find him.”
Aidan walked in a circle as she talked, trying to pick up Noah’s scent, but the rain had washed away too much. It was a light drizzle, nothing torrential, but it was enough to ruin his ability to track. “Smart is getting a team together, going in prepared. If we found him right now, you’re not even armed. I can fight, but it sounds like I’d be out numbered. So I’ll let December know what happened and call the police. We’ll get a few of his things with his scent on them and we’ll start searching. We’ll find him, Darcy.”
All of that sounded like a lot of waiting and it made Darcy impatient. She didn’t want to just wait she wanted to do something. Making a snap decision she pushed up the sleeve of the arm that wasn’t hurt and jumped into Aidan’s weird circular path. “Bite me.”
“What? Why?” Aidan said, completely thrown off by Darcy’s sudden change. He took a step back, looking at her like she’d grown a second head.
“You said it. I’m not armed. We both know even if I was, I’m a mediocre shot and you’re better in a fight. So...bite me. I can be like you and I can find him. I can find Noah, but this isn’t Noah hiding. Someone has him. Then we do something and not wait on a bunch of people who won’t care that some teenaged guy is missing. He’s not important to anyone else.” Except maybe Sylvia, but Darcy wasn’t sure if Sylvia would be any more equipped to go looking for Noah than she was.
“Do you think I’m not doing all that I can do? That you could do better?” Aidan asked, the hair on his neck bristling. “It’s raining outside. There’s no scent to follow. And did you see the part where even I went back for a gun? Making you a werewolf will not solve this problem, Darcy. And if they’re prepared to fight werewolves, then it’d be nice to have someone around who can’t be taken out by silver. If I bit you right here, right now, the only thing that would change is that you’d have a migraine and be even less capable of fighting anything.” The only reason it had worked for Aidan was because he hadn’t been fighting things. He’d been wandering through the woods for hours, following a scent.
“Did I say you weren’t doing all you could? I didn’t say that.” Darcy was echoing his words, but they were true. “But I feel like I’m doing nothing. Like we have to wait on other people.” She was quiet, biting at her lip, not sure what to do. “He said he loves me...Aidan you did it for Sylvia.”
“We don’t have to wait, it’s just… there’s nothing I can do.” Aidan hated telling her that, but he was lost as to what path he should take. There was no scent to follow, no lead on who might have taken Noah, and by now the blood on the pavement was probably washed completely away. “I did it for Sylvia not knowing if it would work or not. But I’m telling you now, I can’t smell anything. The rain’s ruined any scent there was to follow. When Sylvia went missing, she was still going to work, putting her scent back out there each day. I… I doubt Noah will have that chance.”
Darcy didn’t like hearing that. She was relieved it was raining because it covered up the fact that she was wiping away tears, not rain. “He might not have a chance to do anything else.” She hated it, hated that it might be true. She stared at Aidan for a moment more then pushed past him, reaching in her pocket for something to pick the lock into Noah’s house. She’d get some of this things, give them to Aidan, and then go out again. If they couldn’t track him, she’d just start at one point and work her way towards the middle.
“They took him. They didn’t kill him,” he reminded her, even if that wasn’t much better. “The best chance we have is pulling people together for a search party. He has to be somewhere.” That was the advantage of a closed environment. They’d either find Noah… or they’d find his body. “I just need a few things,” Aidan said, following her to Noah’s door. “His pillow case, maybe. Or a used towel.”
Darcy was taking longer than usual, but her hands were shaking almost too much to do it. After a moment though the tumbler popped and she heard the lock fall into place. Opening the door, she held it for Aidan, then pointed towards Noah’s room. “That way. Take whatever you need.”
Aidan followed Darcy inside, then walked into Noah’s room, silently collecting anything that could be useful in tracking him down. He didn’t need much, but he did need it to stop raining before he could really begin to search. “Okay,” he said, coming back into the main room. “Why don’t you and Avery stay at my place tonight? I don’t like the idea of you being by yourselves.”
Darcy had let him go, considering following, but wound up back on the beanbag chair in front of a mostly dead fire. She was drenched from the rain, still bleeding in places and trying hard to keep it together. When Aidan came back she looked up at him, not moving right away. “Avery’s probably at Fi’s. She’s moving out again.” Darcy sighed a little and got up, nodding. “I’ll stay with you, but if you go out looking, I’m coming with you.”
He didn’t know what to make of Avery and her constant moving out issue, but that was hardly his focus at the moment. If she moved out, then they’d find a place for Darcy, either with him and Eily, with Patrick, or with Lochlan. “If I go looking, you can come with me,” he nodded. “We’ll swing by your place and get you some clean clothes, then patch you up at my place. Sound good?”
What other choice did she have? Darcy nodded and got up, looking around until she found her bag from where she’d left it when she thought she was coming back quickly. They should have stayed in. She shouldn’t have cared about wearing his clothes home the next morning or wearing what she had on now, and he’d have been safe. It was hard not to think of it as her fault. “Sounds fine.”
“Come on,” he said gently, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and guiding her towards the door. While he knew she was regretting leaving Noah, Aidan couldn’t help but be thankful that she’d run away. If she hadn’t, she’d probably be gone by now or dead on the street. And while he knew things weren’t looking good, he had to believe that Noah was alive. Why else would they take him? It was tracking him down that was going to be difficult.