FicWad

I was warm. I didn’t understand how I could possibly be warm. I was in the woods a week and a half into December, all alone. Maybe I’d died and went to the afterlife. Anyhow, I didn’t want to open my eyes, afraid that warm feeling would go away. I shifted my body and realized I wasn’t laying on the hard ground. I was in a bed.

“Hazel?” Gerard’s voice asked right next to my ear. “Are you awake?”

“Gerard?” My voice cracked. I sounded awful. “Where am I?”

“You’re in the hospital, Hazel.” He told me quietly.

“Hospital?” I repeated back to him, opening my eyes. I was looking at a white wall. I looked down at my hand as I realized Gerard had been gripping it tightly.

“Yeah. We found you in the woods this morning.” He said. “You were nearly…f-frozen to death.”

I looked up into his eyes. “What?”

“Yeah, sugar.” He sighed. “Your lips were blue and everything. They said that if we would have found you an hour later, it would have been too late.”

“Too…late?” I was trying to get this all to sink it. I looked down at my bed sheets. I probably would have died if they hadn’t had found me. No, I would have died. I shivered at the though of it.

“Yeah,” He sniffed.

I looked back up at my savior. Tears were starting to leak out of them.

“I don’t know what I would do without you, Haze.” He told me.

“I’ll always be with you Gerard.” I told him.

“Hey.”

I instantly let a grin play on my lips as Frank’s voice came from the doorway. I looked over at him.

“You decided to wake up, I see.” He walked in and hopped onto my bed as everyone else came flooding into the small room. ‘How are you feeling?”

“Well, my back hurts. My fingers, I can’t move them. My face, especially around the nose is throbbing. Also,” I motioned to the purple cast hanging slightly about the bed from a pulley, “feels like it weighs about fifty pounds. But, other than that I’m great.”

“Excellent.” He laughed, jumping off the bed.

“You’re an ass.” I mumbled at him.

“Yes, ma’am.” He saluted to me.

“They had to reset your nose.” Gerard interrupted, before a fight broke out between Frank and myself. “That’s why your face hurts. Cole broke your nose.”

“Cole.” I repeated quietly. “What happened to him, when you fought him?”

I stared at Gerard, he looked down at his feet quickly.

“You did kill him, didn’t you?” I asked. “Did you?”

Everyone focused their attention on Gerard. I took my eyes off of him and looked around at everyone. They all had uneasy looks on their faces.

“Well,” I swallowed after a few seconds of nothing. I turned my attention back to Gerard. “Did you kill him?”

“Hazel,” Gerard sighed, his voice broke when he said my name. “Please don’t freak out, but I wasn’t able to kill him.”

I stared at him, feeling an uncomfortable knot forming in my throat.

“Wh-What?” My voice asked, barely above a whisper.

“I’m so sorry.” He looked down at the ground.

“What happened?” I asked.

“After you fell, I-I thought you were dead. I went at him with everything that I had in my. We fought for a good long time.”

He stopped and placed his head in his hands. I could feel my heart throbbing in my chest.

“I had the stake in my hands.” He was so quiet, I had to strain to hear him. “I was so close to killing him, I could taste it. Smell it.”

There was an awkward silence in the room as Gerard stopped talking.

“Gerard,” I said softly. He looked up at me. I could see the tears forming in his eyes. “Keep going, please.”

“When he saw the stake in my hand,” he drew in a deep breath. “When he saw it, he started fighting with all his might. It felt like he just kept getting stronger and stronger. Finally, I had the guys and Emma come help me. Nelly quietly started trying to take out Emma.”

I looked over at Emma and noticed a few scratches on her face. Through the sores, she flashed a weak smile at me before Gerard looked back at me.

“Mikey came to my side, a stake in his hand…”

“Wait, Mikey?” I shot my gaze at Mikey. He was much paler than usual.

“Remember the night Cole took you? He bit Mikey.” Gerard explained. “…Then I bit Ray.”

“Why?” I arched an eyebrow.

“He felt left out.” Gerard shrugged.

“So, now I suppose you are going to tell me that everyone’s a vampire except for me.” I rolled my eyes.

“No!” Ainsley pouted. She crossed her arms and glared at Frank. He acted like he didn’t even hear her say anything.

“Can we get back to the story, please.” Bob said, impatiently.

“Sure,” Gerard sighed, again. “Well, we had all the guys there, ready to help, when he starting spitting nonsense words. I knew they weren’t true. I got so angry. I went after him, doing everything that I could to bring him down.”

“Emma had been distracting Nelly so that she couldn’t rush up and start fighting with us.” Bob said, shooting a proud look in her direction.

“Yeah, if she hadn’t have done that, then I don’t think that some of us would be living right now.” Gerard added. “He told me you were dead. But right before that you started calling for help. I kept beating on him. I was so close. I had the stake right there, ready to launch it into his chest.”

He stopped and grabbed my water cup, taking a few long sips out of it.

“After that, He and Nelly just seemed to vanish.”

I looked around the room to meet several pairs of worried eyes.

“So,” I started after a few moments. “What happens now?”

No one said anything. No one had the slightest idea as to what was going on. I could feel the tension in the room. Everyone was terrified.