13 Floors in Every Direction

Chapter 15

Location: Jade and Lance's apartment in downtown New York City
Lance showed Matyo to a spare room for the night after a few hours. "Ok, what's your theory?"

Jade shrugs. "I don't know that I have any," he says in a slightly worried voice. "But I do know one thing, whoever turned him did not want him turned."

"What do you mean?"

"The marks on his wrists and the bites on his neck. The vampire wanted him dead and they wanted to drain everything out of him." Lance's expression drops. "He's scared and has no idea what to do and I have to help him. I don't want him going through what I went through."

Lance gently grabs Jade's hand giving it an assuring squeeze. "I'm sorry."

"Why? What are you sorry for? You didn't do anything." Jade asks a bit confused as he heads to their room.

"No, I'm sorry as in I feel bad for you not that I'm apologizing." Lance follows.

"Tomorrow I want to take him to an old friend of mine. A doctor in Queens."

"Like tomorrow tomorrow or like today tomorrow?"

"In the morning." Jade says, "We also need to get the window fixed." Lance laughed a little moving closer to Jade.

"What was it like? Being turned I mean?" Nobody spoke for a long while, they just listened to the sounds of the city.

Jade fell asleep but Lance couldn't seem to clear his mind of everything that was going on.

(Just a little note, whenever words are like this it will usually mean one of two things.
1. If only a few words are like this then the character is being sarcastic or there is enhances on the word.
2. If there is a bunch of words like half of a chapter like this then it will be a dream of some sort. For Jade, all of his dreams will probably be about the wars or something along those lines and any spoken words are in German. For anyone else it will just be normal English unless I say otherwise.)

"Jade you still haven't ever told us about that chick you got back home, what was her name? Maddie, was it?" One of the other men paroling with Jade asked.

"What about it?" He really could care less about the other men and what they thought, he had already been through one world war and seen more than any of these kids had ever dreamed of. And yet they still treated him like he was lesser then they were.

Usually Jade was very aware of what was around him especially when he was on patrol not many things got past him.

A gunshot echoed through trees scaring a few birds and making Jade for just a second back down from the other man to see where it came from.

One of the other men made direct eye contact with Jade looks down at his chest then back at Jade before falling to the ground.

The look in those kids eyes, he was scared. He was scared and he wanted Jade to do something and Jade just stood there and watched that bright-eyed, laughing, smiling kid who got on his nerves all the time fall to the ground and die.

Nobody moved nobody made a sound. Jade heard the sound of a pin drop before all hell broke loose. Both sides fired blindly into the trees hoping to hit someone. And Jade just froze he knew that the four men left would never see their families again, they would never take another drag on a cigarette, they would never stay up till the early morning drinking trying to forget about the war. And Jade didn't care. They could shoot all they wanted at him, they could do whatever they wanted to him but the second they shot at his men, the second they killed his buddies they had asked for everything Jade had.
______________________________
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry that this had to happen to you. I'm sorry I couldn't keep my promise and keep you safe." Jade says to his dead comrades sitting next to the kid.

He gets up and looks toward the trees, covered with blood splatters from his little game. "And I'm sorry to you, that you'll never be able to go home, that you'll never be able to laugh and drink and sing and wave your countries flag again. But this is my country and I will protect it." He turns and walks back toward camp to inform his commander about what happened. He had better come up with a damn good story.