Disclaimer: I do not own The Drake Chronicles. Alyxandra Harvey does.

Logan's POV

*This happens just after Quinn enters the bar at the start of Chapter 5.*

The back of my neck prickles, hairs standing to attention. I shiver. Anticipation's cloudy, hanging over my limbs with the weight of a wet blanket. Something feels wrong, and it makes me uncomfortable. There's a lapse in my breathing as the feeling makes its decent, and I whistle shrilly for everybody to stop. They do, and the disturbed air wafts back to greet me, the smell of festering damp even stronger than before.

I'd gag if it didn't feel like my throat had closed up.

Connor walks to me. He stops at a comfortable distance, though I can still see the hard line of his pursed lips. Shadows fall over his eyes. He looks a lot more tired than usual. If I hadn't of been his brother, I'd of backed away.

"What?" He says lowly. His voice is deadly, slowly pressing prickly spikes of trepidation into my back. I try my best to hide another shiver.

"Something's wrong," I say as the rest of the brood emerge out of the shadows engulfing the tunnel, coming to stand next to Connor with steely resolves and determined stares. Lucy ambles up behind them, peering over Duncan's shoulder curiously.

"What is it?" Asks Lucy loudly. She's cheerfully oblivious to the dark mood hanging between us. "Well?" She asks again when no one offers an answer.

I look at her straight in the eye. I note how she gulps with sudden fear, and I soften my stare just a fraction. "Where's Quinn?" I raise a worried eyebrow.

The silence is even thicker than before. I can almost see them thinking. Their stillness is allowing bad thoughts to creep into my head. Worry and another feeling I can't place settle over me, adding to the already frightening whirlpool of emotions I've been feeling since finding this place. What if something bad is going to happen to Quinn? What if something's already happened and we're too late? I start to sweat. It takes a lot to make a vampire sweat, and that's how I know the situation has reached a peek of new heights.

Connor punches the wall. A hard packed clump topples and falls onto his foot. I wince sympathetically. Something's not right about his face, and he looks painfully older, deep lines suddenly creasing up his face. He looks paler than usual, almost gray. Duncan glances at Connors fist briefly as Nicholas's eyes widen in realisation.

I finger the hem of my lace cuff nervously. I'm pissed at myself for not noticing he'd been separated from us earlier. How could I have not seen? I feel so stupid. It's my fault; he was right behind me, after all, barely a foot from me, and I missed the signs. Where had the hours of painstaking training gone?

Lucy makes a noise. "He's—He's not… here," she murmurs finally. Her voice is faint. I only just catch it over the guilty pounding in my ears, beating steadily to the haunting tune of the death march.

"Okay, Okay," orders Marcus, adopting a well nursed business tone. He ushers for everyone to quieten down. Truly, I have no idea how he can be so calm. "Let's not panic. I'm sure he's not far. It's probably just harmless, a mistake, in all honesty."

"Yeah," scoffs Solange rudely. She spins to glare at Marcus, who, in all fairness, shrinks away from the imitation of 'the Helena glare' as well as the rest of us, leaning safely away from her current emotional rampage. I understand it, but, honestly, why does she have to be so goddam good at it? "Take a look at where we are, Marcus, what we've been through. Does it look like a fricking harmless mistake to you? Huh?!"

My hand flutters automatically to comfort her, though it feels as if somebody should be comforting me. He's my brother, and, despite everything, I love him, and would do anything to keep him, and the rest of my brothers, safe. On top of all that, it feels as though I've failed them personally. My hand falters when her sharp glare swings to me. Acid shoots from her eyes, wildly alert and awake, burning my body. Subconsciously, Lucy cowers.

"Don't, Logan," she warns darkly. "This is my fault, don't try to comfort me."

"How is it your fault?" I ask quietly.

"Shut up, Logan, for God's sake! We should be finding him, not chatting away like this!"

I see something in her snap right then. The straining leash reining her sanity and temper has snapped, and she's spitting insults and obscenities faster than I can process. I stumble out of her range of fire. Duncan eases grimly forward, face straight, and clamps a restraining arm around her elbow.

"Shush, Solange," he whispers. "It's going to be… be Okay…"

The many faces in my line of vision waver slightly, like heat rising off asphalt. I see many arms rub the same forehead, but the face is too blurred for me to make out clearly. Duncan's voice fades off.

There's a sound, like something sliding open, repeated several times. Then there's a steady hissing. A white gas winded around our bodies, caressing throats. It's thick, and there's coughing, and I can't make out anything through it anymore. I'm alone, separated, and I don't have the energy to try and fight. I would, on principle, but the more I involuntarily breathe it in, the more I find myself rendered useless.

There's no clean air. The gas is isolated to a small space, and it isn't long until I hear dry thuds, one after the other, like the death march in my head. I take one last forbidden breath, one that I have no control over, and the thick wall of white slowly turns to a never-ending abyss of blackness.

As I'm falling, I could've sworn I saw red eyes glare at me, but before I can register them, they're gone.

The sun's shining.

That's how I know that everything's not as it should be. The tingling on my pale skin feels so good. It's not burning me, and that in itself should worry me, but, strangely, I can't find it in myself to care. I've missed the warmth, and I want to lie in it all day.

But I'm interrupted.

I hear snarling. Jaws clicking, nails scraping, ripping and killing. My eyes snap open. The sunlight dazzles, and I put a hand over my eyes to shield them. There's a thick border of trees ringing around a grassy meadow. I'm sitting smack bang in the middle, sprawled out uncomfortably on my back. Startled, I sit up when I see the blue smudges flitting about behind thick trunks. Mottled blue hands reach for me, for anything near, desperation forcing whines and angry snarls from their throats.

It's the Hel-Blar. Hundreds of them, ringing me from the start of the forest, trying, but never coming out from the bed of dried leaves below the canopy. Slowly, I reach down for my boot and pull out a stake. Wild-flowers and stalks of long grass tickle my knuckles. My one stake's pitiful against a frenzied swarm this size, but I grip it menacingly anyway.

I feel strangely relaxed. The only thing that makes me growl is when I see the worked in dirt and dried flower petal stuck to my pristine lace cuff. It's my favourite.

I start to walk along the length of the grassy clearing. It's quite large, with enough diameter for me to have more than enough space to sprint without coming close to the first branch of any of the trees or a outgrown bloodied nail of any of the Hel-Blar.

I pick up my pace. Frowning, I start to jog, and then run, then sprint, pushing myself until I'm just a blur of pale skin. My fangs sting my gums as they elongate out of confusion and frustration.

Despite running long enough, I don't reach the end. I don't reach the trees or the ferns that grow under their shadows. I'm moving, but so is the meadow, faster, faster still until I can't see the end and I'm hardly moving, running through air that's turned to honey.

I grunt as the trees either side of me shrink in and the ones in front and behind fan out. Unlike before, when I was travelling in relative safety, I'm sprinting treacherous ground. The hands of the Hel-Blar can almost touch me. Brave, the reach out farther. One of the grasps my arm. I shake it of, pushing myself faster until my legs burn and I'm short of breath even though I don't need it.

And then there's no time to notice any of that.

The sky darkens. Clouds flock the sky fast, covering the warm glow of the sun. The very second it's gone, the Hel-blar jump from behind the shadows of the trees. I stop. My eyes widen and I draw in a final fowl tasting breath.

But even then they're on me. It's like a sea of mottled blue from all directions, pressing in, clambering over each other in a mad attempt to be the first to get me. There's no gap in the swarm. There's no glimmer of grass or flowers, only the thick stench of swamp water.

I'm enveloped. The one stake I had is flung from my fingertips as I'm toppled by a blue battering ram.

One Hel-Blar climbs the rest clawing at my skin, eyes crazed with hunger.

A million tiny needles pierce my skin.

There's pain, of course there's pain. I can feel blood.

But as I fade, so does their smell, and the feelings of warm liquid on my arms. I'm left with the sky, so bright, so beautiful, so missed. I gaze up at it.

I'm not sad or angry. I can't find anything to be sad or angry about. What's bad when there's sky, and sun and warmth? These are the things I've missed, and for the first time in a long time I can smile without fangs or hunger or all those other things that made life difficult.

And as thoughts leave me, and as everything else dies, the sun remains. It blazes, never-ending, even in death, and will shine forever.

I'm at peace.

Oh, my God, did I just do that?

Did I just kill Logan?

Oh, my God.

You probably hate me, but, yeah, it's kind of crucial to the plot. Don't send my dead babies in the post.

Please, because—because- I FEEL TERRIBLE!

I'm going to cry now… Why did I even create a story where the story had to involve death? Poor Logan, R.I.P.