Chapter 4: Run Away

"Daddy, I'm scared," I heard as I got shaken by my shoulder lightly, and I opened my eyes tired from the stuff that had gone on the day before.

"What is it?" I asked her, and looked up at the clock, 8:00 in the morning, I should be out of bed by now anyway, and she was just a personal alarm for this morning. It was Amy, I knew it wasn't Tiffany, because she wouldn't be able to come wake me up, she was scared of me, let alone whatever Amy had to be afraid of.

"I saw someone in my room, but he disappeared."

"Who?" I asked her not thinking that she was only four and had no idea who was who and what was what really.

"I dunno. He was scary though. He had sharp teeth, and a cape. And creepy eyes." Vlad, Right? It described him enough, and I knew he wanted Amy for one reason or another. Although she was only a four-year-old, he probably thought she could be used for his uses, and he was sick enough to take her from her family.

"Come here," I said and pulled her up onto the bed and she crawled under the blankets between the two of us and Sam woke up from it, and looked at me, "What's wrong?"

"She just got scared," I said, and decided I would tell her about it later. She was now awake to; chances were I wasn't going to fall back asleep, especially when it was 8:00, kind of hard to. Amy wasn't going to either; she just laid there and stared up at the ceiling.

"Not tired?" I asked her, and she shook her head, and kept on staring. I was hoping it wasn't Vlad, and maybe she was just imagining things. After all, if she held it out for a while, Vlad was old now, he wouldn't last much longer, well, at least I was hoping not. Although, I guess he was around the same age as my parents… but he looked older, didn't that count for something?

Sam climbed out of bed, and Amy's eyes left the ceiling to watch Sam walk out the door, and she hopped out of bed to follow, which meant she really came in there to want something as well, not just to say she was scared. I sat up, and went straight to the bathroom, and yanked the towel off my back, dried blood coming with it, shit how much that hurt. New blood started running down my back. This hadn't happened for no good reason; there probably was someone here, Vlad. He had to have been here, he was sick enough to do something like carve out my scar to get me all worried about that to take my attention off of him.

"You Ok?" Sam asked causing me to jump as she walked up behind me and I let out a sigh of relief.

"Yea, I'll be fine, I'm sure," I assumed and grabbed another towel out and set water on it.

"Here," Sam said taking it out of my hands and she began to wipe the blood off my back and I winced in the pain of it. The cold water hitting it felt like needles getting shoved into my back, but it really wasn't all that bad, I was just letting my imagination carry on from what it really was.

"We are gonna need a big band aide for that," Sam said, looking puzzled after she was done mopping the fresh blood off my back.

"I think Vlad did it," I said while she was thinking about it.

"What do you mean?"

"Amy said she saw someone in her room, that's why she came in this morning. I say Vlad did this to me to get my mind off of him, but it isn't going to work."

"Why would he be in Amy's room?" She asked me looking through the cupboards as though there was going to be anything in them, just a few towels was all for the moment.

"Well, I will have to run into town, but for now," she said cutting off her sentence and grabbing another towel. She wrapped it around me a little tighter than I had it wrapped last night and she stuck a safety pin in it to hold it in place.

"Yay, I get to look fat today," I moaned and Sam laughed.

"Yep."

We walked in a line back into the bedroom and I rummaged through a box lying on the floor to try and find my clothes. I found a baggy black shirt and threw it on.

"Well, now you can't even tell," I smirked and Sam rolled her eyes at me and left the room.

Once again my thoughts returned to me and I began to think about what Vlad's plan was this time around. Not as though I had had any problems with him in the past few years, but I always knew that was odd that he all the sudden decided to leave me alone. He was waiting for me to be vulnerable and in the mean time he was able to think up another sinister plan of his, but this time I had a strange feeling that it was going to be worse than any of the other times.

After all, if Vlad had a good four, even a little more than four years without even coming NEAR me, he had plenty of time to think. Now all I had to do was figure out just what he was up to, but it wasn't going to be easy. It was hard for me to think like someone as evil as him, I couldn't figure out his plans if it was for my life, but it was going to bug me all day and all night. And the fact that Valerie was now free wasn't going to help much either. After all, she could be anywhere, but at least she didn't know where we lived and we were set back a little where she wouldn't find us too easily.

I tried my hardest to ignore it, and I walked out into the living room where Sam was dumping cereal into a bowl for Amy. It was amazing that she could only eat half a bowl of cereal maybe. Sam set it on the table and Amy climbed up onto a chair and began taking little bites out of it.

"So, you ready to help me unpack?" Sam asked me, and I gave her a sad face and she laughed at me.

"Yea, that's really gonna change my mind."

"Hey… it was worth a try," I smiled and we both walked into the living room and I began tearing at boxes, it would be forever until we had everything all out of boxes and put where it belonged. But it was interrupted by my ghost sense going off, a cloud of blue came out of my mouth and I looked around tensely. What now?

"Sam, ghost problem, I will be right back," I said and walked outside before transforming into my ghost mode. I flew up and looked around, but there was nothing to be seen around me, so I flew in my house, but nothing there either. I found myself back where I started, but nothing found. I changed back while Amy was out of the room and Sam knew I had no luck.

"Whatever it is, it's sneaky to be able to get past ya."

"Nah, I haven't had a ghost fight since I can remember really. I mean, nothing major, I guess I could be getting a little slow…"

"You think so?"
"Maybe… I have gotten a little lazy," I laughed despite the fact that it really wasn't funny, and I needed to get my butt back in gear, but I wasn't nearly motivated enough to until something actually happened.

"Yea, but that's ok."

"No, not really. If I let myself get too laid back, I will be in trouble when something actually happens. I should go like… on purposely let a ghost out, then maybe it will get me moving again."

"Yea, that's a real smart idea Danny. Then when you let out some thing that destroys the world the pressure will all be on you," she smiled and put an arm around my shoulder.

"You have a point…"

"Of course I do, I'm always right."

"I wouldn't go that far…"

"Hey!" She yelled and shoved me, then walked off in another room. I shook my head and followed her, but then my ghost sense once again went off. Well, so far this day was getting annoying. I transformed and looked around, nothing within sight. I walked around, and then flew to the outside of the house, searching high and low. But there was once again, nothing. It was someone I knew, because they were trying to annoy me to death that was for sure.

"Danny!" Sam said running into me when I transformed back into my regular form.

"Hey, watch where you're going," I told her and she looked like she wasn't in the mood for jokes, she looked frightened about something and I returned her glance with a confused look in my eyes.

"Amy is gone," she told me quietly, and it took a couple of minutes for me to realize what she had actually said, and I ran up the stairs really quickly looking in her room. There was a scuffled mess of stuff all over the floor with Tiffany sitting in the corner terrified to death. I walked over to her and picked her up, tears had stained the side of her cheeks and she was still trying her hardest to stop crying.

"Did you see anything?" I asked her and she nodded, but I had a feeling I might not be able to get much out of her.

"Do you remember what he looked like?" She once again nodded but said nothing, and clutched onto me as tightly as she could. I walked downstairs to where Sam was sitting on a chair with her head in her hands. I walked up behind her and put my remaining hand on her back and she looked up at me, her eyes were watery but she was going to act as though she wasn't crying.

"I'll get her back," I promised and set Tiffany down on the ground.

"Tiffany, tell me, did this guy look like this?" I asked her returning to the room with a picture of Vlad. She nodded slowly, and I thought for a second. Wherever he was, it wasn't at his house because then I could find him. With all the money he had, there was no telling where he would be hiding at. I went into our bedroom and laid down staring at the ceiling, I had to think, to the best of my ability, where would he be at? Knowing him sooner or later he would play a sick joke on me or something and give himself away. But could I wait that long? He could wait until he had all ready corrupted her mind before he would even come close to letting me know where he was. He was figuring with a 4 year old he would have much more of a chance getting her to turn into him, since it had never worked on me.

"You can't go after her right now," Sam told me walking into the room. She lay down next to me but I kept my gaze at the ceiling.

"What makes you say that?"

"You're hurt still Danny."

"Has that ever stopped me before?"

"No Danny, but this time I mean it. You try to hard at things and never think about it. I can't loose you too."

"Sam, I'm fine. I still don't know where to look first, I have the whole world to look for her, Vlad could be anywhere. Yet, it's only time before it drives him nuts and he has to give it away."

"Valerie is out there now too," Sam reminded me; she wanted me to stay, yet in a way I could tell she also wanted to get Amy back as soon as possible. I was totally lost as to where to look, or go at the moment.

"Maybe I should go find Valerie, ask her if she has anything to do with this."

"Are you out of your mind? She wants to kill you Danny!"

"Very true… but still. She could be in it, remember, her and Vlad did work together… in an odd kind of way."

"Yea, but she doesn't know he's half ghost yet, and she's not going to believe you, or turn on him for you."

I sighed and closed my eyes for a second trying my hardest to think, but when you had to worry about where your four-year-old child was being held captive by a psycho, it didn't allow you to think all that to easily. Especially when really, you weren't expecting to have to think at all then all the sudden you get hit with something like this, it kinda freezes your thoughts.

"I say you try his house first. You know, he is going to think you're going to think he isn't there. So maybe, he's playing tricks on your mind."

"Yea, I guess I could do that," I said and stood up, I needed to get started on something as fast as I could at least.

"I didn't mean right now," she mumbled and I smiled at her and transformed. I left the house and was far out of view within seconds, I was going to have to push the limit if I wanted to get there before it got dark out, after all… it was a few states over.

"Danny, I never expected you to leave your house when you found out I was out," I heard the familiar voice of Valerie say behind me and I turned around to greet her with her gun pointing at me.

"I have more problems on my hand then you know of," I said and turned to leave without causing a fight, but she shot up and I felt it fly over the top of my head. I turned back around and she was laughing at me.

"Don't turn away Danny, or you might find yourself falling to the ground, dead. You don't want to fight me? You know, you were indeed lucky you made it out the last time. This time though, I'm going to make sure you go down."

"Seriously, I don't have time for this!"

"Oh, what do you have better to do? Hmm?"

"Nothing you need to know about Valerie…"

"Ah, ok. Well, then obviously it isn't too important because if I found it to be, I just might let you go. Does it have anything to do with Amy?" She asked with a smirk and that made me attack her, but it was a natural impulse. I raised my hand up and shot at her, breaking the board out from under her feet. It caught her again though as she fell, which was kind of good because she might know something.

"What do you know?" I asked her, this time I was serious, she would have only known that if she had something to do with it all.

"Wow, you have a temper all right. I know nothing about it Danny; I was just taking a lucky guess."

"I'm highly doubting that," I challenged, I could tell by the way she was acting that nothing coming out of her mouth was true.

"Oh? Fine, maybe I do know something. In fact, I was even here because I was hired to keep you busy," she laughed and I tensed up. I couldn't kill her, but I needed some way to hurt her, and get everything out of her. This was Vlad's idea; he knew I would never actually kill anyone, so he was going to set up something to keep me occupied.

"Well Danny, you ready to fight? Or do you want to let this opportunity slip right by you?"

All right, that was it. Sorry it took me so long to update