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Chapter 12: Where Is She?

Fang's POV

Max and the others had been gone for almost 9 hours. I was worried. I was in the living room with Angel, Charity, Total, and Rayne. Pacing up and down the perimeter of the room like a maniac, they watched me nervously. I glanced at my watch, again.

"Fang, you've looked at your watch, like, 100 times in the last 5 minutes. Calm down. They'll be here." Charity said, trying to sooth me. Yea, right. Trying to calm me down right now would be like music actually soothing the savage beast; it just wasn't going to happen. I missed her too much anyway. I nodded just to make Charity happy and sat down next to them on the couch. The list of chores Max had left had been completed hours ago and now we were just waiting. My knee bounced impatiently and Angel's eyes followed it.

"Fang, stop you're making me dizzy!" She practically yelled and jumped on my knee. It did nothing; I just bounced the other one.

"Fine, fine. I'll stop. If they aren't back by midnight, then we're leaving to go look for them." I said as I stood up. Angel fell off my lap and looked at me quietly.

"Okay, 3 hours. There are 3 hours until midnight. Until then, we make sure everything is ready." Rayne said. I nodded and walked to 1 of the spare rooms. It was the 1 I had stayed in. There was a full size bed and we had dragged in a cot from the attic. A simple lamp illuminated the room and I sat on the bed.

I would never tell the flock, but I was worried. Max shouldn't have been gone this long. It was only a simple mission. They were going to fly around, see if they could talk anybody into coming to live here, and come back. That was it. Max doesn't mess up like that, not on a very simple mission anyway. Something must have happened. What kind of trouble had those 5 gotten themselves into? The possibilities were endless. A million different scenes ran through my brain.

Erasers, Taszies, the City, Jeb's minions, nothing could be ruled out yet. I straightened out and walked downstairs. Grabbing a can of corn, I leaned against the counter and ate.

The next hour and a half went by much like the first 9. I avoided everybody and worried. The others talked quietly about a game plan and finally approached me.

"We think we should leave, now." Rayne said timidly. I raised my eye brows at him and smirked.

"Didn't you 4 want to wait? Wasn't I the one that said we should go look for them like 3 hours ago? But, I won't say I told you so, even if I'm mentally saying it," I said, standing up. I head evened out to a full foot and a half above Rayne's. He didn't back down, though. The kid had guts, for a 12 year old, "Okay, let's go." I walked out the front door with out looking behind me. I knew they were following me.

We made our way slowly above the tree tops, so we could see them.

"Angel, can you hear them?" I called to the mind reader and she gave me a sign that said 1 minute.

"Yea, they're down and to the left." She said after a minute. I banked steeply, almost knocking into Charity as I went. She swerved and hit Rayne. I smiled and continued flying. Angel pointed us in the correct direction and we finally flew into a small cave. Only Max wasn't there. Abbey, Iggy, Gazzy, and Nudge were lying helplessly on the floor. Nudge wasn't lying down, she was sitting nervously over Iggy.

"Fang! Thank God you guys are here! We were attacked. I don't know where Max is, I think they kidnapped her. Iggy is in really bad shape. Gazzy set off a bomb and Iggy was in the middle of the bomb's path of destruction. He's knocked out, they all are. Abbey was fighting really well, borrowing anybody's powers she could. A Taszie snuck up on her and brought her down. Gazzy was the one who set off the bomb and he was too close. I already told you what happened to Iggy. Max… they took her practically before we landed. One minute she was there, the next she wasn't." Nudge began to cry and Charity pulled her into a hug. I knelt down beside Abbey and looked at her closely. One of her wings was folded at an odd angle and she had blood coming out of her nose in a slow trickle. Poor Abbey.

I moved closer to Gazzy and inspected him. He didn't look as bad as Abbey. The Gasman was covered in scrapes and bruises, but nothing looked broken.

"Char, can you heal them? Starting with Abbey. I'm pretty sure her wing is broken." I said without turning around. She moved closer to Abbey and the magical sparks flew from her finger tips. They hovered over her crooked wing and then flitted to her nose. She groaned and slowly sat up.

"Max! Where is she?" Abbey had merged seamlessly with the flock, able to become fully awake and alert in a second.

"We don't know." Rayne said, helping her stand up. Charity moved closer to Gazzy and the sparks did their job, She hesitated over Iggy, so short a time period that only I noticed.

Every time Charity heals Iggy, the sparks hover over his eyes for a few minutes and this time was no exception. Eventually they moved on to the rest of his wounds and his sightless eyes fluttered open.

"You guys okay?" I asked as Iggy jumped up. They nodded, "Good. We have to find Max." of course I still loved her. More than the whole world. Even if we had broken up, I don't care. Max would always have a special place in my heart.

As we walked out of the cave, Nudge muttered to Gazzy, "Well, somebody isn't over Max." I characteristically ignored her.

"Okay, where did she disappear?" Charity asked. Abbey pointed and we took off towards that spot.

"We were right here. Max was saying how we should start in the cave and see if we saw anybody. One second she was telling us the plan, the next she was gone. What do you think happened to her? I hope she's okay." Nudge usefully informed us.

"Me too Nudge, me too." I whispered and shot to the ground directly below us. The others followed me and we searched the ground for signs. Trampled grass, broken branches, ashes, anything that could point us to Max. There it was; signs of a fight. A big circle of trampled grass and a small puddle of blood. I hope it wasn't Max's.

"Guys, over here. I found something." I waved them over and pointed to the puddle of blood.

"Oh no, blood. Is it Max's?" Rayne asked.

"Let's find out. Iggy, touch it." I told the blind boy. He gave me a really weird face, but I grabbed his wrist and pulled it in the right direction. He slowly lowered his finger tips into the cold blood and looked sightlessly at me.

"Yea, it's Max's alright." He said as he wiped his fingers on his stained pants. No, oh man. It can't be Max's blood, oh my God. Nudge, being the brave soldier she is, stepped forward.

"Maybe my powers can help?" She asked. Before I could answer, she was on the ground beside me with 1 finger in Max's blood.

After a minute or so, she stood up. The look on her face wasn't a pleasant one and it made me believe it wasn't good. I was right.

"She was attacked. Whoever it was isn't planning on letting her live too much longer. We have to help her. They went this way." Nudge pointed into the forest behind me. I felt there was something she wasn't sharing, but I dropped it and stood up. We began our long and tedious search for our beloved leader.

Carefully pulling up branches, stepping over logs, searching for signs of Max, we made our way through the majority of the forest. Here and there we'd see a bit of Max's dark maroon blood, puddled into 1 spot. That meant that either her captors stopped or she was bleeding badly. If they stopped it meant that they weren't worried about her escaping. The latter was bad for obvious reasons.

We followed the trail of broken branches and blood easily. It was almost as if they wanted us to follow her trail. It wouldn't be the first time that we were caught in a trap. It happened to me and Max after we went looking for a home and ended up kissing in a cave. They did want us to come looking for her, didn't they? I wouldn't care and just keep going if the kids weren't here with me.

Before I could tell them to go home, we were face to face with a high barbed wire fence.

Okay, so I didn't get 5 reviews. I got 4. I'm really pleased with 4, but I'd love 5. I think I'm going to keep pushing you guys. I won't update this time, seriously. Okay, so I might, but my goal for this story is to get at least 100 reviews. I don't know how many more chapters there will be so I'd appreciate it if I just started a ton from everybody. Review twice if you want, 3, 4, 5 times even. The more reviews I get the better this story will get. Trust me, it'll get a lot better, too.