A/N: Alright. Sorry for the delay. Moving to another country can make anyone busy, I'm sure. Apologies aside, I want to say that I've enjoyed your reviews and I hope to be answering most of them in these last few chapters. Some have really steered me in the right direction and strengthened me as a writer. Now, to cut my rambling short, enjoy the chapter!
Disclaimer: Again, I don't own any Danny Phantom characters.
Chapter 20 Freedom Challenged
A large crowd of Japanese was pressing into a circle around Vlad and I. The murmur of the throng had turned from quiet intensity to a full fledged roar of interest. Even in my weakened state, I saw this as the problem that had put that deep frown on Vlad's face. Everyone wanted to see who the cocky American ghost superhero was. When the first flash of a camera went off, I decided it was time to disappear.
"Point taken," I told Vlad before phasing into the sidewalk as if submerging myself in water. The man's eyes rolled skyward at the comment, but he said nothing more as he watched me wave to my new fans before vanishing into the cement.
My body pushed through the bonds of reality one last time as I came up behind a parked car a few yards away from the surprised and alarmed crowd I had just left. Sighing, I glanced around to make sure the coast was clear. My eyes closed as I let the flash of white rings envelope me. The transformation left me breathless. The golem had really taken all the energy out of me. Even my pain killing medication for my wounded shoulder had seemed to have been zapped right out of me. The shoulder throbbed in constant agony.
The crowd was dispersing when I stood up from behind the car. Everyone was excitingly talking to others. With a wince, I realized the subject had to be about me. That wasn't good. I hadn't been dragged to Japan to become a celebrity.
"What on earth went on here?" The voice rattled me out of my apprehensive musing. It was Katsumi Tanaka's.
I turned around and saw Katsumi in Vlad's face. He stood like a stone, merely taking it all in, as she pointed animatedly to the dents in the road, the scorch marks on buildings, a disfigured car that was beyond repair, and the flood of water collecting on the stopped up intersection. Police sirens could be heard already in the distance. A massive crowd still stuck around to give their gossip stories to the authorities.
"There is a perfectly reasonable explanation, Katsumi," Vlad told her calmly. "But here is not the place to talk about it."
"Are you hurt?" Katsumi asked in astonishment. She also sounded angry. I didn't have the faintest idea why she would be. Before Vlad could answer, she whirled around as if mimicking a wind up toy. "Where's Danny?" she asked in a snap of words.
"Right here," I said from where I now stood at Vlad's side. She came to a rest finally. The sight of me put a relieved smile to her features.
"What happened here?" she asked me. "Why do you have so many scratches on your body? You look awful! Do you need to go to the hospital?"
I shook my head just as Vlad answered for me. "That won't be necessary," he said quickly. He gave me a swift, subtle glance before continuing. "It's nothing a few band aids can't handle. He'll be fine."
"What about you?" she asked the proud man with a sniff.
"I'll be fine as well," Vlad reassured her with a thin, forced smile. "Just get us home."
-Next Morning-
This wasn't good. Vlad and I had to get a plane heading for home in the small amount of time equalling a day. As great as that sounded, I felt like it would be like giving up. I needed to find this person the fox spirit told me about, bring out the golem again, and save the day in less than 24 hours. That wasn't enough time. Obviously. I'm Danny Phantom. Not Superman.
I didn't want to leave Tokyo with the problem still at large. That golem was seriously dangerous. The other day when I fought the thing was like my wake up call. The golem was going to destroy this place. If I hadn't been there to hit back, rocky would have dismantled that entire block in seconds.
Godzilla wasn't Tokyo's greatest monster problem anymore. This golem was.
But what was I going to do? How was I going to find this person in such little amount of time and destroy the golem? It seemed impossible. My mind poured through all the possibilities that morning at breakfast. Vlad was in the same contemplative state as I was in it seemed. He hadn't said a thing all morning.
Vlad sat beside me at the bar; him eating a traditional Japanese breakfast of soup, I absentmindedly shoving spoonfuls of cereal in my mouth, and Inazuma on the bar in front of me waiting to be given some sodden pieces of my meal when I remembered him. Vlad and I both stared at the kitchen without seeing it. The two of us were so absorbed in our thinking that we jumped when a newspaper was slapped down harshly onto the shiny, granite counter.
"Look at this," Katsumi fumed with her hands on her hips. Vlad glanced at her as I leaned over to obey her command. The newspaper sat between Vlad and I. My hand grabbed it first, and I quickly dragged it toward me before Vlad could confiscate it.
"Oh," was all I could say through my growing grimace.
Vlad didn't like my reaction. He viciously snatched the paper out of my hands and looked it over with a critical gaze. I watched him closely, trying to gauge his anger depth and pondering over the question to run or not. Would it be better to go now while I still had the chance? Or would an escape be futile at this point of the game?
"When were you going to tell me that your son was a superhero?" Katsumi asked Vlad. Her voice was on the edge of being irate with the man. She turned toward him, cutting me off from the conversation entirely. It was as if my kitten and I weren't there anymore.
"You didn't have to know," Vlad said after a second for serious thought. He gently laid the paper down beside his bowl and waited for her response.
The front page of the paper had been one big picture. Of me. But not of good ol' Danny Fenton. It was a giant, black and white picture of full blown Danny Phantom fighting the blurry form of the attacking golem. Headlines in Japanese proclaimed the situation, but they had left my name the American way. It didn't take a genius to know what the top story was about.
"I didn't have to know?" Katsumi repeated. "You were supposed to come here and find out more about the golem. I told you specifically not to draw attention to yourselves. Now your son is the headline of the day! I have had it, Vlad. Explain this to me right now, or you're out of a job."
"Danny," Vlad said stoically. I perked up in fearful interest. Inazuma did the same, his ears tall and face alert. Vlad didn't sound mad or pleased. I didn't know what to make of this situation. All I knew was that someone was in trouble, and it was probably all my fault. Goody.
"Yeah?" I asked reluctantly. Katsumi had turned to look at me when she was reminded that I was sitting there in the room. Her glower made me cower in my seat. Slowly, Zuma's ears lowered too, and he almost seemed to hunch over.
"Leave," Vlad said with a final sternness. He glared at me as I looked back and forth between the adults in a kind of shock. What was going on here? Was I in trouble? This was all very confusing. I slowly slipped off the stool, picked up Inazuma from the bar table, and walked over to the door of the garden. My last glance back at the two only drove me off more from their piercing scowls.
The door closed, and I whirled to face the bamboo surrounded garden with the release of a pent up sigh. Jeez, all this stress was going to kill me. I strode briskly away from the glass door to get far from the adults, as if determined to distance myself from their weird conflict. The stone in the middle of the zen garden presented to be my resting place once again.
I sat cross legged on the hard surface of the stone before setting my kitten down. The rock was cool to the touch because that morning the sun was hidden behind gray, depressing rain clouds. The fleeting thought of being rained on flittered through my head, but I decided I didn't care. Let it rain. Let it pour. My situation was hopeless. Nothing else could worsen it.
Whack!
"Ouch!" I yelped while bringing a hand to the back of my head. Hissing while it stung, I looked around for the culprit to my new pain. A scan of the garden didn't give me the answers I had wanted.
A confused meow pulled me out of my pained grumbling. I looked down and smiled at the kitten that was looking innocently up at me, blue eyes questioning. "The squirrels are restless," I assured him with a giggle. He was rubbing his face into my hand, desperate to be pet and paid attention to. His mass of lightning markings rippled each time my fingers ran through his fur.
Whack!
Again, I let out a small cry of pain as another fresh burn from a sting lit into the back of my head. This time I had to bite my bottom lip as I rubbed the sore spot. My glare peered into the garden. Inazuma took it upon himself to investigate this mystery as he leapt out of my lap and ran into some thick bushes behind me.
"Hey, get back here!" I called after him. "Those squirrels aren't nice animals." When the kitten decided to become deaf, I began to feel slightly worried and a little, admittedly, lonely. "Don't make me come after you," I threatened while getting to my feet. Still no answer. The bush was silent and nonmoving.
Fearing the worst for my companion, I sprung off my rock and landed in a crouch on the pathway by the zen garden. I rushed up to the tangle of leaves and branches that Zuma had gone through, but I pulled up in hesitation. My twinge of fear was pushed away. I shoved aside some branches and plowed into the bush in search for my cat.
A hand clamped down on my arm.
Screaming, I reacted solely on my surge of adrenaline. My hand grabbed the wrist of my attacker, and I pulled him toward me in a violent yank. The person let out a cry of pain when I twisted their arm behind their back, a technique well learned from Vlad.
It didn't go far when an elbow was whacked into the side of my head. I stumbled to the side with a sharp wince, head throbbing. My attacker's hand grabbed my shoulder, the wounded one. I rammed my other shoulder into his chest so hard that he toppled over with a grunt of pain. Quickly, before he could get back up, I jumped on top of him and flung a tight fist above my head for a punch I was sure was going to hurt.
I never executed the blow.
"S-Sam?" I whispered in complete and utter shock.
"Jeez, Danny! What the hell is wrong with you?" Sam growled her accusation from where she lay under me. She propped herself up on her elbows. Her ebony hair was messy with twigs and leaves stuck in obscure angles. Her violet eyes glared at me with an angry, weary fire in them. I hadn't noticed the cast on her wrist.
I was speechless. My mouth tried to say something by opening, and my brain searched for the words, but nothing managed to make its way out. How did she get to Japan? How did she know where I was? How had she gotten into this garden? Was this real? Had I finally snapped? This wasn't Sam, right? These were the questions that I had wanted to ask but was too dumbfounded to say.
Instead, I said this: "I was looking for my cat."
Sam's face didn't quite know what to do with that statement. For a split second I could see her get more angry with me, but it was gone in the blink of an eye. Compassion and a longing swept across her features before she broke out into a small, sad smile. "Oh, Danny," she said quietly, "Are you okay?"
I didn't answer. I just looked at her in fearful disbelief. I'd gone crazy, hadn't I? To cope, I'd come up with some make believe vision of my best friend. Sam wasn't really there. This was just some stupid figment of my imagination. This was bad. I had finally cracked. I had gone cra-.
Suddenly her arms were wrapped tightly around my neck. In my astonishment, I leaned backward and propped both of us up with my hands. Her hair smelled like earth and citrus shampoo like it always does. Her light, firm arms refused to let me go. My senses attacked me as they remembered every detail of my friend. How could I imagine this? It was way too real.
"I've missed you, Danny," she whispered into my ear in one last beg for me to snap out of my fog and step into reality. It did the trick. I had to bite back a surge of emotion as I threw my arms around her and hugged her back with a raw desperation I didn't know I had till then.
"You're really here, right?" I asked her with a weak chuckle.
We pulled away and held onto the other's arms to stare into each other's faces. She grinned at me before saying, "Duh, Danny. Where else would I be?"
"In New York City," I answered seriously.
"Well, yeah," she said with a guilty shrug. "But I used my emergency credit card from my parents to get me a flight to Japan. You had already told Tucker and I that you were staying at Miss Tanaka's place, so it was easy to find out where she lived. Just last night I snuck past the security guards and hid out in this garden. It was a coincidence that you were sitting on that rock when I woke up. Why are you looking at me that way?"
I was momentarily stunned by this question. My head shook rapidly to throw off the fragments of shock before I answered, "I-I was just worried about you. How's your wrist?"
"It's fine," she said with a lair's sniff. She retracted her arm with the cast and lightly rubbed the straps that bound her fractured wrist. "The hospital gave a fit when I checked myself out of there, though. But my Uncle Smith said I could leave, so they had to let me go. Who knew someone who'd I'd never seen could be so nice?"
"He probably didn't care that much about you if he hadn't even visited you in the hospital," I muttered my opinion. At least his carelessness helped Sam out in the end. When she didn't respond to my comment, I looked at her with curiosity. Her eyes were thoroughly scanning my face and body. "What?" I asked.
"You look awful," she said softly. Her fingertips grazed a rather large scab from a scratch on my forehead I'd received when fighting the golem the other day.
"Why does everyone seem to be telling me this these days?" I complained with a suffering sigh.
"Because it's true," Sam smiled. "Did Vlad do this to you?"
"Nah," I answered. "That was from the golem yesterday. Although that evil fruit loop did shoot me in the shoulder." I quickly flicked my head around to look behind me toward the door to the house as I said off handedly, "Speaking of which, I should probably take more of those pain killers. Wonder if the adults are done talking."
"He shot you?" Sam practically screamed. The alarmed look I gave her quieted her a little as she hissed in a whisper, "Danny, that's a big deal! Why the heck did he shoot you? You should have ran away from him before that even happened."
"Not with my dad's life on the line, Sam," I shot back. "You know that. I don't gamble with any one of your lives."
"Then why are you still here?" she asked incredulously. She said it as if I was stupid for not taking off already, that she and Tucker didn't matter to me and I should just be selfish and leave. I thought she was smarter and nicer than this. It angered me to hear my friend talk this way to me. I'd suffered through days of torture for her and the others! Now she was telling me I was dumb for ever doing that for them.
"I'm still playing as Vlad's pet for you guys!" I argued, voice rising as my emotions did. "I've gone through all this for you, Sam, and Tucker and Jazz! The second I bolt, he'd have his spies killing you off or hurting you with the snap of his fingers. Don't you understand that?"
"Of course I do," Sam said, sounding highly offended. "But didn't Tucker or Jazz tell you? We took care of our spies. No one is looking after us. Vlad can't do anything to any of us."
Was she serious?
I gripped her arms hard as she told me these things. She gave a little gasp when I pulled her close to me so our faces were an inch apart. "Please don't tell me that you're joking," I urgently whispered. "Are you sure? Am I free?"
Sam had never seen me this intense before. And I'm sure my grip on her arms was kind of painful. Despite all this, she pulled off a timid smile and said, "Free as a bird, Danny."
A joy flew through me so suddenly that I just couldn't contain it. In my peak, I brought Sam close and laid a kiss right on her lips. She was too stunned to protest. Before she could get her head straight, I scrambled excitedly to my feet. An inane grin had permanently made its way to my face. I was freaking free!
Zuma had found his way over to us during our talk. I picked him up and plopped him in Sam's lap while saying in a rush of words, "Here, hold my cat. His name is Inazuma. I'll be back in a second. I gotta go get some things."
"Danny," she called after me. I paused and whirled around to smile brightly at her. She looked slightly confused and concerned while awkwardly holding a bewildered Zuma. "Do you have any idea what you're doing right now?" she asked with slow calmness.
"Um...," was my thoughtful answer.
She sighed with a warm yet impatient smile spilling over her features. "What's going on, Danny?" she asked me finally. "What are you doing?"
"I-I...well," I started but stopped to think it over. What was I doing? I was free from Vlad's hold. He couldn't tell me what to do or push me around anymore. It was an odd and frighteningly quick concept to get inside my mixed up head, but I was glad to wrap my mind around it.
I could so easily forget him and throw him out of my life completely by getting the next flight out of Tokyo and heading straight toward home with Sam at my side. That option was something fun to play out in my mind. The promise of my own bed and the company of friends and family who loved me was a nice thing to contemplate as something in my reach. For this entire week I'd seen it as some fantasy future. Now it was sitting on a silver platter, just a few plane rides away.
But I wasn't going to take it.
A grin gradually came upon my features as I thought things over. My eyes returned their connection with Sam's. "I'm saving Tokyo," I told her, mind well made up. When she didn't even open her mouth to argue but instead kept still, I turned back toward the house and walked at it with my mind swarming with ideas. Where was I going to start?
It took some constant mental reminding to wipe the smile off my face before entering the house. A quick sweep of the kitchen told me it was vacant. I snuck over to the cabinet and grabbed a large box of crackers. Sam had been her regular self and had camped out in the garden that night. I'm sure she was starving, and crackers looked innocent enough if I was caught.
And speaking of getting caught...
"What are you doing, Daniel?" I had turned around to be faced with the uncompromising chest of Vlad. My exit of the cabinet was strictly cut off now. My eyes darted up to meet his. They tried not to look guilty.
"Second breakfast," I said, opening the package of saltines like it was the most common thing to eat for brunch. I munched on a cracker and offered Vlad one, saying with mouth full, "Want one?"
"No," Vlad said flatly. He tried to look more threatening as he narrowed his eyes, folded his arms across his chest, and hardened his voice when stating, "You're acting rather suspicious."
"Really?" I asked sarcastically. "How so?"
Vlad played our game as he bent down to look me in the face. He smirked a little before asking smugly, "Where's your cat?"
"Peeing in Katsumi's zen garden," I answered bluntly. "He likes his privacy, so I came in here for a snack."
"Crackers?" Vlad asked incredulously. "That doesn't seem like a snack one your age craves."
"You gonna lecture me on my eating habits now?" I asked with the curl of my lip. "Then you're more of a fruit loop than I thought. Jeez, Vlad. You're paranoid. It's just freaking crackers."
Forcefully, I squeezed my way through a crack in his body barricade and headed for the open door to the garden, knowing that the man would follow. His quick footsteps behind me told me I was right. I'd only made it a few feet outside when he clamped down on my shoulder and yanked me to a sudden stop. He whirled me around and kept a threatening hand on my throbbing shoulder.
"What aren't you telling me, Daniel?" he growled the question with uncommon impatience. He was usually as calm as a the waters of a lake on a stagnant summer's day. What was up with him?
"What? You gonna torture it out of me?" I asked in a bold sneer. When his fingers dug into my shoulder in the beginnings of an intense pain, it was hastily decided my secret wasn't worth it anymore. "Ah, screw it!" I blurted out through a wince. "Your fruit loop disorder isn't curable. There! I said it! Happy now?"
"You're only wasting my time," Vlad exploded in a sigh while shoving me away. He folded his arms in front of his chest with the roll of his eyes. The thin, sulking frown on his lips gave me the hint that something wasn't right here.
"That's it?" I asked in surprise. "What's going on? You're acting weird, and that's saying a lot coming from me." Vlad watched me like a disinterested father as I continued to say, "Usually you like to play the mind game thing and act all smug and crap. Today you're all mean and direct. I mean, you're always mean, but its a different kind of mean. You-." I stopped very abruptly when I caught him smiling down at me. "What?"
"What makes you so jittery and happy today?" he asked sneakily. "You don't have a plan stashed away somewhere in that dim head of yours, do you, Daniel?"
"Do I?" I cleverly returned with a sly smile. I was tempted to tell him he didn't matter anymore, but he actually did matter in the long run. If I admitted that his spies were not doing their job and I was free from him, he could still beat me to a pulp and make sure I didn't get in his way that day. It would be wise for me to keep my freedom hidden from the man for now.
"Well, that's smart of you," Vlad mocked me smoothly. "Keep those cards close to your chest." He took out a small bottle from a pant pocket, grabbed my wrist, and firmly placed it in that palm. "Those are your new pain killers. Katsumi has work till late tonight. Now, I have things to finish here before we leave. It will only take me a few hours, so I'll be back by seven tonight. Be ready by then to leave for the airport."
"Where are you going? What are you doing?" I asked in alarm. "Wait. You aren't killing the master of the golem tonight, are you? Hey! No! Let me go, Vlad!"
The man was refusing to let my wrist go as he dragged me back inside the house. I dug my heels deep into the carpet, but that didn't slow him down for a single stride. My wounded shoulder gave me fits of pain every time I tried yanking my wrist free. It was no use. There was nothing I could do physically to slip out of Vlad's grip. That didn't dampen my views on struggling, though. I made his job very difficult to say the least. He had a nasty time getting me through the door to our room.
In the end, he managed to shove me into the room's bathroom. The kick in between the shoulder blades was a little unnecessary, but my tumble into the room gave him the time to slam the door shut behind me. As soon as some of my balance was restored, I came back at the closed door with my whole body.
"This is ridiculous, Vlad!" I shouted angrily after a short gasp of pain. Using your body as a battering ram wasn't something I advise anyone to do. I don't know how those people on TV do it. Hollywood lied to me once again.
"Not when I know the depths you will go to stop me," Vlad said joyfully from the other side of the door. "I'd advise you not to touch to door knob." As he said this, my hands were already curled around the knob, and it was rapidly growing in warmth. My hands released the object right before it seared the skin off. My swift movement was accompanied by a flabbergasted hiss of pain. The metal warped as if melted under the heat until it looked more like a funny icicle than a handle.
"The hell is wrong with you?" I yelled in my frustration. My fist pounded the door with all it's furious might. A small scream escaped me when the edges of the door began to melt. I sprung away from the door and watched in horror as Vlad sealed me into the bathroom as if I was doomed to die in some ancient Egyptian tomb. Despair hung on my chest.
What was I going to do now? Ironic how freedom was at the tip of my tongue not even five minutes ago. The universe had to hate me.
Sighing in defeat, I slumped against the door that wasn't really a door anymore because it was welded to the wall due to Vlad's ghost powers. It was quiet on the other side. I believed Vlad had left me to suffer in my makeshift prison.
"You're in there for your own good, Daniel," Vlad told me suddenly from the other side. He paused for a response I refused to give him. His hands came through the door by my head. In them were the box of crackers and my pain killers. He dropped them unceremoniously to the floor before saying, "I'll be back for you in a couple of hours. By then this mess will be taken care of and we can both go home. Understand?"
I glared at the door and said nothing.
"You're silence isn't very reassuring," Vlad commented. "I'll ask you one more time, boy. Do you understand?"
"Sure," I muttered with a surly attitude ebbing into my voice.
"If I don't find you in here when I get back, Danny, you will surely regret it," Vlad threatened me. I heard no more as I walked over to the toilet with my eyes still glaring daggers at the door. I hated that man! I have mentioned that, right?
Sitting, I grumbled curses inside my head. My fingers brushed over my watch keeping me in constant human form. I looked down at it in surprise suddenly. I can be an idiot sometimes.
Duh. Ghost powers.
I set to work on the combination of the watch with feverish turns on the clock face. Tucker had shown me how to do this days ago, and I was only lucky that I'd memorized it. Absentmindedly, my tongue stuck out of the side of my mouth as I spun and twisted the complicated puzzle.
At last, I was presented with the small victory of the code being broken. I was granted access into the depths of my genes, but with the small price of pain. My palm punched down on the watch face. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. I managed the familiar pain with the twinge of a wince.
"Let go!"
The scream made me jump in surprise, and my eyes darted toward the door where the loud noise had come from. I got to my feet just as Vlad Plasmius phased through the door with Sam kicking and protesting in tow. The man yanked her by her good wrist so she stood between us. His eyes bore into mine with an icy cold anger that shut down any thought of words from me.
"I found this snooping around the corridor before leaving," Vlad growled at me. "No wonder you were so cheerful this morning. Pity it got you nowhere."
"Don't you dare hurt her!" I seethed.
"Or what?" Vlad laughed cruelly. "Seriously, boy, think before you make petty threats like that." He brought up a steady, glowing pink palm and aimed it at me. I'd just crossed my arms in front of my face for protection when the ball of ectoplasm hit me square in the chest. My body rocketed backward till it hit the wall. Cringing through the agony my limbs presented me, I slumped to the floor to recoup.
"Danny!" Sam screamed my name as she lunged toward me. Vlad held her steady with a look of feeble interest. All I saw was her blurry, troubled form reach out for me. She turned toward Plasmius and demanded, "Let me go, you creep!"
Plasmius was stone faced as he roughly threw the girl at me. Sam gave a small scream before landing on her hands and knees next to me. Simultaneously, we shot Vlad venomous looks of acute dislike. He seemed to enjoy the expressions as his trademark smirk returned to his lips.
"Don't look so distraught, Daniel," Plasmius chuckled. "I just gave you some company for the next few hours. I could have easily had locked her in some closet and left her to be found out by Miss Tanaka. I call that a rather nice gesture, don't you think?"
"You're anything but nice, Vlad," I grumbled as I forced sore muscles to support my legs. "I swear, we're not going to be here when you come back."
Vlad took a swift step forward and had my chin in his grip before I could avoid him. Grunting, I strained to pull my head free, but he was a lot stronger than me and kept me still. Sam stood off to the side, watching this all with the likes of a tense guard dog. As long as I was not getting hurt, she'd stay there. The second I showed a sign of pain, though, and she'd be on Vlad like a police dog with the go ahead of an officer.
"Was that a challenge, boy?" Vlad in a clear, pleased voice. His eyes connected with mine finally, and a chilling spike of fear and excitement slammed down my spine. A quick study of the man's face didn't give me a single hint as to what Vlad was thinking.
"Yeah," I retorted after a long pause for thought. I tried to keep the shakiness out of my voice as I added, "That was a challenge."
"Alright then," Vlad said with a short, mysterious chuckle. "I want you to destroy this golem before I kill its master. You have till sundown. Think you can handle that?" He grinned cockily down at me as he presented this new twist to his game to me and saw my face scrunch up in utter confusion.
It took me a second for my brain to process the information I'd been given, muster up some courage and confidence in myself, and smirk back, "You're on, V-man."
I soon choked on those words when Plasmius took a hold of my shoulder and kneed me in the stomach. The blow knocked all the air out of me, and I staggered back while bending over. Through my panic for air, I felt Sam rush to my side and heard the loud laugh of my enemy.
"And, Daniel," Vlad said more seriously now. Through my wheezing, I shot him a deathly scowl. "Don't disappoint me."
A/N: Well, a lot of things happened in this chapter, now that I've read it over and over again. Maybe that's why I'm a bit weary of it, but I had planned Sam to hop in this way from the start. I decided to go with my gut, whip up the speed of the fic, and throw Sam in. I hope it turned out well. I personally like the chapter, but who knows. Well, I'll see you guys in two weeks! Thanks for your reviews!