I chased Vincent/Slash for hours. That wanker ran at full speed all the way to Indiana. Several times during the run I thought about stopping and running back to Kitten, but then I remembered her family and that I'd promised to bring down each and every person who'd harmed them, and that gave me the extra push I needed to move closer and closer to Switch. When I finally reached him, I rammed my knife so hard in his heart, my hand came out the other side. Then I made good on my promise to her and ripped off each of his hands.
I was exhausted, but I knew the fight wasn't over. Kitten was still fighting on the human side of things, and if there was any way to help her, I would. But first, I had to refill. I found a mall, sweet talked a teenage girl into the shadows with me, and left her with a lower iron count and a memory of just meeting and talking with a cute bloke. Then I took to the air.
When I made it back to Ohio, I landed near enough to the house to see that it was a complete wreckage. The coppers were still there, and I could hear them trying to make sense of all these aged corpses. I also heard them talking about the girl they'd arrested.
I could smell Kitten's scent, and, flying low enough to keep it yet high enough to not be seen, traced it to the governor's mansion. Inside, I smelled blood, some of it human and some of it vampire – and most importantly, some of it Kitten's. I could've followed her scent on my own, but I overheard some humans inside mention which hospital she'd been taken to.
Bollocks. If she'd been taken to hospital, she must've been fairly badly injured. The rational part of my brain told me that she would've healed faster than a human on her own, and extremely fast with all the blood she'd drunk from me the night before, but the vampire side of my brain simply went completely red with rage that she'd been harmed badly enough to be taken to hospital at all.
Once I got there it took me a minute, but I got ahold of myself enough to scan around the hospital to see where she was. It wasn't hard to figure out. One entire floor smelled of Kitten, her mum, and the antiseptic-y smell of hospital staff, as well as the metallic smell of guards. I could hear what must've been her doctors talking about her near-miraculous healing rate and had myself a small smile.
I figured Kitten was under arrest and heavily guarded, and not likely to go anywhere soon. It was close to dawn, so I found someone else to sip from, and a place to spend the day safely to rest and make my plans for getting Kitten and her mum out. For what I had in mind, I'd need to be at my strongest, just after dark.
Not getting her out immediately was the biggest mistake of my life.
