Sons of Night

Andy’s POV
I was still recovering, to say the least. It was going on eight thirty, after my little (massive) breakdown I’d taken a nap and then woke up feeling so emotionally dead that I could hardly even move. Even after I had been awake for a solid ten minutes I still didn’t move. My parents had come home while I was asleep and the rest of the guys had explained what happened to me. Ashley had not come back. We were getting ready to go to the school, just Jake, Jinxx, and I, when the phone rang. I nearly jumped out of my skin, the fastest movement I had made since waking up. My mom got to the phone on the second ring and after she said hello her brow furrowed with concern. She asked for the person on the other end to hang on for a minute and she put the phone down, she turned to look at me.
“There’s some lady on the phone. She says her name is Lynda, and she’s begging to talk to you, she sounds hysterical,” Mom said. The name rung a bell but I couldn’t think of where from. Every instinct told me not to answer. I hesitated.
“Andy, she’s very upset, and she knows you’re here. She says she’s some girl named Mayden’s mom,” Mom said. My stomach dropped. I looked at the other guys, they glanced between me and the phone with looks of shock on their faces. I took a deep breath and held out my hand, Mom put the phone into it. I brought the phone to my ear.
“Hello?” I asked. I could hear stifled sobs on the other end. At the same time the front door of the house opened and closed. I glanced that way and my stomach sank even further as I saw Ashley enter. He avoided eye contact.
“Andy?” The voice on the other end of the phone asked tentatively.
“Yeah it’s me,” I said back, she stifled another sob.
“Please tell me you know where Mayden is,” She whispered.
“No, no I don’t. I haven’t seen her since last night,”
Jake’s POV
I shot a glare at Ashley as he walked in but I was more focused on Andy talking to someone on the phone. I watched his face deepen with worry and then he took a step back and crumpled slightly like he’d been punched in the gut.
“I’ll catch him,” Andy whispered into the phone, and then he hung up and stumbled past us like we weren’t even there. He collapsed into a kitchen chair and knotted a hand into his hair. I wasn’t sure how much more he could take. All of the negativity and stress was tearing him to shreds emotionally. He had to be nearing the end of his rope, I knew that his breakdown he had had just a few hours before was not all he needed to let out.
“Dude, what happened?” I asked, approaching him tentatively. He looked up at me with eyes that burned with hate.
“He took Mayden,” Andy rasped.
“Wait what? Who took Mayden?” Jinxx said from across the table. Ashley perked up from the corner of the room, where he’d been steadily avoiding us.
“The killer. The goddamn, fucking serial killer took her. Not two hours ago. She was walking home from school and the mother fucker snatched her up right off the street,” Andy screamed he grabbed a, thankfully empty, decorative plate from the center of the table and threw it. It shattered all over the wall and a spray of crystalline glass rained down over the room followed by a silence. Andy was trembling.
“We have to go. We have to go right now. We have to find out who it is tonight. I will make him wish he was never born,” Andy rasped. He turned quickly and headed for the door. Of all people, Ashley caught him by the shoulders and forced him backwards into a chair. Andy glared up at him like death.
“Stop and think about it for a minute Andy. How long has it been before the other victims were killed?” Ash asked, shaking Andy gently. Ashley was very close to Andy, bending down slightly and looking him dead in the eye. I’d seen him do it before when Andy lost his cool. At first I thought that Andy was going to kill Ashley. Andy glared, his lower jaw jutted forward and he was breathing heavily.
“Three days, sometimes more,” Andy said.
“That means that you have at least three days to find her. We can do that. You just need to stay calm and think,” Ash said.
“But in that time that they were gone he tortured them. Usually raped them, usually more than once. God, she’s a virgin. Ashley, whether you care about her or not, I do, and I can’t let that happen to her. She means something to me,” Andy said.
“I know. Andy, we’ll find her in time, and I’m sorry. Nothing I said to you before I left was true,” Ashley said. Andy nodded, and looked away. Ash took a step back and I resisted sighing out loud. I’d never seen someone able to diffuse the ticking time bomb that was Andy’s temper like that. I looked up at Amy. She looked scared. Jinxx was starting to sweep up some of the glass that took up an area near her bare feet. Hearing the commotion Chris had come up behind me and frozen at the scene that laid out before him.
“Everyone okay?” He asked.
“Yeah, but we need to go,” I said. I figured that action would help to stop some of the stress that was building up pressure in all of our systems.
I went and checked all of our smaller backpacks. There were ropes and carabiners in each. We figured we had enough rope to make it down to the floor and up to the ceiling of the lunch room. Each of the four packs had a walky-talky on one shoulder, ear pieces and small cameras lay on top of each. As I checked the ropes CC checked to make sure that all of the technology was working. To make sure that he’d be able to see and hear us the whole time. After everything was checked and triple checked I went back into the kitchen. Andy was still sitting unmoving in the kitchen chair. Jinxx was still cleaning up the glass and Ashley appeared to be explaining who Mayden was to Andy’s parents. Who were holding each other's hands and looking increasingly worried. Amy kept stealing glances at her son, who might as well have been dead.
His head hung as he sat sideways, completely motionless in the chair. His blue eyes stared at some unimportant spot on the floor. He could have been working himself back up into a frenzy, but his face seemed very calm. Disturbingly so. I took a step forward and placed a hand on his shoulder. I could feel every single bone, and he didn’t respond at all to my touch.
“Let’s finish getting you ready to go,” I suggested. He made some sound that was a combination of a whine, a grunt, and a yes, but he stood. He followed me into the living room, and started putting on his coat and his boots. He shouldered the backpack. I put the earpiece in his ear and turned on the small camera that sat on the opposite shoulder. I heard CC’s voice come through the earpiece. Andy reached up to the walky talky and pressed the button.
“Yeah, I can hear you,” He said. Jinxx and Ashley joined us in the living room and we got ourselves all hooked up, before the clock could strike nine o’clock we marched out the front door and headed in the direction of the school.
Mayden’s POV
I woke up, and had to check to make sure my eyes really were open, it was so dark. I was shackled to a cement wall, sitting on a cold cement floor. I had enough chains to be able move around just a bit. Maybe a two of chains on each hand and maybe three on my feet. I tugged and tugged at them. Trying to loosen them up a bit, but it was no use. They were new, and solid. I took a deep breath and twisted my wrists, annoyed that the cuffs were so dang tight. My jaw ached. It was forced apart by a stale cloth. The air around me was chilly, damp and smelled like mold. I was willing to bet money that I was in a basement. That was when the panic really hit.
I was in the basement, of a killer, who was no closer to being caught than he was months ago. My mind flashed again to the all of the newspaper clippings. Eyes gouged out, fingers broken, lips cut off, ear cut off, hair pulled out, electrocuted, disemboweled, drowned, suffocated. Those words all swam around in my mind, but there were two words that made me really squirm more than any others. Those word were, sexual assault. It made me want to be sick, but I resisted. Who knew when I was going to be fed, if ever again? I prayed. I prayed so hard that the schedule that I’d given Andy would be what they needed to find the killer, and to find him in time.

Notes

Hey everyone! I hoped you enjoyed reading. I enjoyed writing it. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think, and by the way if you haven't yet go check out the prequel to this Children of Dawn, they can be read in any order you choose, though I recommend this one first. Thanks so much for reading guys, love you!