Hey guys, I'm sorry about the wait! After getting back from my trip I moved into my dorm, so everything has been a little crazy. There is supposed to be only two chapters left and then an epilogue, but for the first time since I wrote this fic I have finally caught up with myself. So instead of having the next chapter done and just waiting for me to edit it, chapter 12 is only 1/3 of the way done. This also means that I'm not entirely sure where chapter 12 is going to end, and where chapter 13 is going to start. So, while I say the plan is there are only two chapters and an epilogue left that might not necessarily be true depending on how theses next chapters come out.

Thanks again The Awes0me 0ne for being such an amazing beta!

Chapter 11: Run Away

"Hey, human boy… uhh, Finn, come over here for a second!" Dorian ordered, causing all the other cage's inhabitants to fall silent.

The Earl was in his tent and his men were gathered around the camp fire, laughing loudly and drinking together.

"Just ignore him, sweetie," the candy mother, Carol, advised.

Finn stood up and approached Dorian's cage. "What's up Dorian?" Finn noticed he was now wearing a dull grey shirt. "Hey, you did it!"

The vampire gave him a tired grin. "Yeah… it was weird, but I don't feel as weak anymore. I guess I should…" he hesitated, "thank you or something. You're alright, kid, for a mortal."

Finn grinned widely. "No problem. I guess that means you don't have to feed off people anymore."

The vampire chuckled. "Now let's not get carried away."

Finn laughed lightly. "Well, just don't eat any of the peeps here. I'm working on a plan for escaping soon, and I'll get you out too. Maybe you can take the eating red thing back to your vampire friends." Finn shrugged.

"It's called a clan. Doesn't that vampire friend of yours have a clan?"

Finn shook his head. "No, not exactly."

Dorian frowned. "All vampires have a clan. Well, your friend drinks red instead of blood, and hangs out with lowly mortals, so I shouldn't be surprised." He paused for a moment before adding, "No offense about the lowly mortal thing," as an afterthought.

"How is that not offensive?" Finn asked.

Dorian laughed. "You're pretty funny. So, how are you planning to get us out of here, Mr. Hero?"

Finn pointed to the hinge of the door. The rest of the cage was pretty sold, but the place where the door was attached to the rest of the cage by its two rusty hinges was its weak link. There were only two rusty screws in each hinge to hold the door together. "There's a weak point right there. If I had my sword I could bash our way out, but I don't, so I'll have to figure something else out."

"And then you'll still have those thugs to deal with," Dorian pointed out. "Face it, kid, things aren't looking good for your little escape plan."

"I tried to kill Finn."

Jake groaned to himself. She had to put it in the worst way possible, didn't she? She could have said 'there was an accident and I attacked Finn, but he survived'. Or 'I was stupid and didn't get Finn to Jake when he was hurt and found out I don't do too well around his blood'. Any of those would have been better than what she just said. Yes, she attacked Finn, yes, he almost died. But it was an accident, Finn survived and it's never going to happen again. Can we just move on to saving Finn already?

Somewhere along the line, and Jake wasn't sure when, but he had forgiven Marceline. He wasn't sure he could forgive her at first, but it was hard to hold a grudge when the victim himself had so fully and completely forgiven her. Jake didn't trust her and Finn to adventure alone together if they were going someplace dangerous, but that was just common sense and had little to do with Jake's faith in Marceline.

"Wha-what?" Bubblegum choked. The princess looked betrayed, like Marceline had just assaulted her, not Finn. "No, no you wouldn't," Bubblegum protest. "I know you! You would never…" her voice wavered. Jake had never seen the strong princess so close to breaking. She looked torn between trying to wrap her head around this new information, and trying to deny it.

"Bonnie, it was an accident… there was too much blood. I wasn't even aware of what I was doing!" Marceline tried to explain.

In the moonlight, Jake could see Bubblegum cover her eyes with her hands and shake her head. "H-hold on, I need to think."

"And you think that makes it okay?" an angry voice came from Jake's left. Jake looked over to see his brother practically seething. "Because you couldn't control yourself, you think that makes almost killing my brother okay?" Jermaine spat.

"No!" Marceline protested. "That's not what I meant." Marceline didn't sound like the cool, collected Vampire Queen Jake knew. She was trapped by the truth and her own guilt.

"Jermaine, calm down." Jake put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "It was an accident and Finn's fine. We don't blame her."

Jermaine shrugged his brother's hand off. "How can you be defending her? Normal people don't accidentally try and kill their friends! This is why you can't be friends with a vampire! This is what I was trying to warn you about!"

Jermaine turned on his heels and stormed up to the vampire. Jake thought this was a particularly bad idea because of the blood in Jermaine's fur, but Jermaine was obviously too furious to be thinking straight.

"And you!" he barked at Marceline as he continued his approach. "You actually got me to trust you! I thought maybe I had been wrong this entire time; that maybe I was being unfair to you, but now I see. You've been lying to me!"

"I never lied to you!" Marceline defended, and then recoiled instantly. She covered her nose and mouth with a hand and took a step back from the blood. Jermaine was way too close, and yet, he wasn't stopping.

He didn't stop until he was right in front of the vampire, a snarl on his lips. "No? What was it you said to me? 'Nothing's going to happen to them. I won't let it.' Isn't that what you said?"

Marceline took a few more steps back, still desperately trying to cover her nose. She couldn't even open her mouth to defend herself.

"Jermaine," Jake pleaded. "This is not the time to be having this conversation. Can't you see she's trying not to kill you right now?" Jake wanted to rush forward and pull his brother out, but adding his blood to the mix was probably not a good idea.

"Well, at least she's finally showing her true colors!" Jermaine shook his head. "I can't believe you actually got me to trust you. For a moment I called you my friend, and I liked that you were my friend."

"Jermaine stop, please," Bubblegum pleaded. "And—and maybe you should step back a bit." She cast a nervous eye at Marceline who had gone deathly still.

Suddenly in a flurry of black, Marceline moved faster than the eye could see. But she didn't move forward to attack Jermaine, but backwards, until she was roughly fifteen feet away.

She opened her mouth to say something, but froze when she couldn't find the words. She closed her mouth, turned into a bat, and took off into the sky.

"Sir!" Two of the Earl's thugs came back from patrol. They were panting hard from running. "The migrating trees have changed directions! They're heading towards us now!"

"What?" The Earl nearly tripped when he exited his tent in a hurry. "But they never come this way. That's why we decided to camp here."

"Something must have made them change directions," the second mercenary explained.

"Well, go make them change it back!" The Earl sighed loudly when no one moved. "What are you waiting for? Go now! If fact, I'm going with you just to make sure you don't mess this up!"

The group of men grabbed their weapons, and before Finn could blink, the campsite was empty. No one even bothered to stay with the prisoners, but why would they? The prisoners were locked in a cage with nowhere to go.

Finn opened his backpack and began to search through it.

"Now is our chance," he informed the group.

"We're breaking out of here?" the little girl, Irene, asked in excitement.

"Yep, once I find… ah, here." Finn picked up the device that was no bigger than his palm.

"What is that?" Nathan asked, "Some sort of weapon?"

Finn shook his head. "No, and because it's not really a weapon, those guys didn't take it away."

Finn carefully wedged device between the cage and the door, just on top of the lower rusty screw holding the hinge in place.

"You guys should probably get back," Finn warned. "I don't really know what's going to happen."

Stan, the candy father, pulled his daughter and wife close to him and the rest of the group backed away from the door, but not back far enough that they were close to Dorian. The vampire was watching the events unfold with vague interest.

Finn took a hopeful breath and turned the knob of his birthday present.

Bang!

Crack!

The human jumped back, barely avoiding the large shield that had flown out from between the bars, nearly managing to shave some skin off his scalp. Finn looked up, and to his surprise, the door was now swinging wide open. Both its hinges had snapped under the pressure of the shield expanding. The door was lopsided and dragging on the ground as it hung from the chained lock.

"Well… that worked better than I thought it would." Finn admitted, feeling unusually brilliant at the moment.

"You… you did it," Nathan breathed in amazement.

"Yeah, but now my totally math shield is ruined." Finn sighed as he picked up the severely dented shield.

"I'll buy you a new one," Stan promised as he carefully exited the cage, waving at his family to do the same. "Come on, let's get out of here!"

The rest of the inhabitants agreed and eagerly left the cage.

"Wait, I still have to free Dorian," Finn insisted as he walked around the cage and inspected Dorian's lock. His shield was completely busted so that trick wasn't going to work again. This time, he needed a key.

"Are you crazy, kid?" Xlander screeched. "You let that thing out and he will kill us all! That's what vampires do."

"Not all vampires," Finn insisted.

"You're actually going to keep your promise?" Dorian laughed. "That goblin is right, you are crazy."

Suddenly, shouts could be heard in the distance. The men were coming back. They were running out of time.

"Come on, kid, we have to get out of here now," Stan urged, taking ahold of Finn's shoulders and pulling him away.

"But—"

"If we don't leave now, we'll be captured again. My daughter's not going back in that cage and neither are you," Stan insisted.

Finn's gaze hardened and he nodded, turning to face the vampire. "I'll come back to free you Dorian," he promised, "but I have to get these people to safety first."

Finn urged the group to run as fast as they could in the opposite direction that their captives went, and they didn't need to be told twice.

"Hurry up, Irene," the little girl's mother urged.

"I—I can't, you're running too fast!" Irene gasped as her foot caught on the root of a tree, and with a helpless cry, the girl fell face-first into the dirt. The baby Rainicorn flew out of her arms and landed in a bush beside her.

"Are you guys okay?" Finn asked, skidding to a stop.

"Irene!" her mother was on the ground beside her, helping Irene out of the dirt.

The girl was shaking from the shock, but instead of looking up at her mother, she looked down at her arms. "The baby Rainicorn!" she cried.

However, Finn was already retrieving the young creature from where she was whimpering in the bush; she was dirty, but otherwise unharmed.

"I think she's okay," Finn assured the candy girl as he cradled the young Rainicorn in his arms.

Irene's father picked up his daughter and cradled her in the same fashion. "Let's keep moving," he urged.

They traveled quickly through the forest in silence. It wasn't long before they heard the sound of outraged cries, indicating their disappearance had been discovered.

"Everyone stay close together. Don't get separated," Finn ordered when he could see his companions starting to panic.

They heeded his advice and less than a few minutes later they found themselves exiting the forest. Finn had thought they were deep inside the forest, but all this time they had only been on the very edge. In fact… this was still the grasslands. His feet were under a purple path; he knew exactly where they were.

They weren't close enough to the Treefort to get everyone there safely, but they were close enough to somewhere else he knew.

"This way!" he diverged from the purple path with new determination.

"Where are you going?" Nathan asked. "The closet place is the Candy Kingdom, and it's the other way!"

"It's too far," Finn disagreed. "They'll probably catch up with us before we reach it. We need a place to hide, and I have the perfect place."

"But our home is this way," the candy man protested desperately. "There are Banana guards there that can protect us."

Finn sighed. He knew they were scared and just wanted to go home, but those lizard mercenaries were fast and there was a good chance they wouldn't even get halfway to the Candy Kingdom before they were caught.

"Guys, I know what I'm doing. I'm not going to let those plop-heads capture you again, but you have to trust me."

Nathan, Stan and Xlander exchanged uncertain glances. Finn could see it in their faces. They didn't want to risk their lives traveling to some place they've never seen solely based on Finn's word.

"I think we should listen to him," Carol spoke up. "He got us out of that cage like he promised. He obviously knows what he's doing."

Nathan sighed. "Alright, we'll go your way. Let's hurry. I don't think they were that far behind us."

Five minutes later, they arrived at their destination. Once again, less than half the letters in the amusement park's sign were lit up; a sad attempt at welcoming them to the park.

Jake reached into the backpack he was using to store Finn's present and retrieved the bandages at the bottom of the bag. He convinced Jermaine to go back to the river with him to clean the blood off and put the bandages on. In any other circumstance, getting cleaned up could wait until they rescued Finn. However, Marceline was the only one who had any possible hope of following the trail, and especially now that the Migrating Trees had destroyed most of the path, none of them had any clue about where to go next.

They could always head to the Tropic Kingdom and try to find Finn there, but Jake hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Before they left, Bubblegum picked up Marceline's axe-bass, which the vampire had dropped in the fight. The princess was holding the instrument/weapon close to her chest as she silently followed the two brothers.

When they reached for the river, Princess Bubblegum spoke for the first time since Marceline left. "I should have said something. I just stood there," she admitted in shame.

Jake glanced at her, but said nothing.

"I should have tried to understand better… I was just in shock." Bubblegum hesitated. "How… how bad was it?"

Jake knew exactly what she was talking about. "It was pretty bad, but he managed to fight her off." Jake shook his head. "He doesn't even think about it anymore. After it happened, he went back to apologize to her for hurting her when he fought her off." Jake chuckled, but he found little humor in it.

Bubblegum nodded, smiling slightly. "That sounds like him."

"You should have heard the speech he gave her. He wouldn't let her feel bad about it."

Bubblegum frowned. "And she shouldn't."

Jermaine looked up in surprise.

"It was an accident. Marceline would never want to hurt Finn," Bubblegum explained. "Marceline goes against her nature every day for us. We can't blame her for being what she is. I-I wish I had said that to her when I had the chance..."

"That doesn't change what she did!" Jermaine spat. "If this is her nature then how do you know it won't happen again?"

They arrived at the river, and Jake grabbed his brother's arm to spin him around to face them.

"You were covered and blood and she didn't hurt you," Jake countered angrily. "I know you're mad, I was too, but if you knew her like we did—"

"She's a vampire! She's lived for hundreds of years. You guys are like an ant to her! How can you say you know her?"

Jake could feel his anger boiling over. It was Jermaine's fault Marceline left. And here he was, calling her the monster, blaming her for everything, and he didn't seem to realize that Marceline left to save his life.

Granted, there had been a time when Jake had thought those same harsh things about Marceline. That felt like a lifetime ago now. Why couldn't Jermaine understand? Why couldn't he see Marceline like they did?

"You're never here, Jermaine!" Jake shouted at last. "You haven't been here for us in four years! I get that you have a family, but we're your family too for Glob's-sake!" It was too late to take anything back, and Jake found he didn't regret his outburst in the slightest, despite the hurt look on Jermaine's face. He felt a sudden desire to continue; to say everything that has been building since Jermaine walked in their front door. "So after all that time you can't just come back and expect to know everything about us! If you haven't noticed, Finn grew up since we last saw you. He doesn't need people to watch over him anymore, he needs people to trust him. He's a smart kid with a good heart, and he trusts Marceline, and because of that, I do too!"

"And look what he got for trusting her!"

"What? A best friend that hangs out with him, takes him to amusement parks, and would drop everything to save him from kidnappers? Because that's what I see!"

"Well, I don't see her! She left!"

"That's right, she did!" Jake agreed eagerly. "And she probably already found Finn without us."

Jermaine scoffed. "You have a lot of faith in her."

Jake glared angrily at his brother. "There's a reason for that."

Review and let me know what you thought!

Also, I'm sorry if I didn't respond to a few peoples reviews last chapter. I tried to respond to everyone, but during the trip I got confused on who I responded to and who I didn't. So thank you for all the reviews I have gotten so far! They mean so so much to me!