A/N:

Sorry it's 9pm (if you're on the same time that I am). I know I should've put this chapter up after I got home from school, but it took me awhile to edit the whole thing because I kept getting distracted.

This chapter is longer than usual, because  it's finally a certain someone's story time... XD

I'm excited, I hope you are too! Enjoy

Definition of maniacal: exhibiting extremely wild or violent behavior.
(Poor Ash...)

Word Count: 2718

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Chapter 14: The First Maniacal Episodes

"So, you were fighting a guy who could take on the appearance of someone else, who also had telepathy." Ash thought aloud, gathering his thoughts so we could figure out what my dream meant.

He paced beside the bed while Zane and I sat calmly.

"And he was trying to get information from you about where we are and where we're going." Zane added, making sure we covered all of our bases.

"I hate to say it, but that had to have been an attack by Storm. He couldn't have done this, but he probably has a follower that could. And who knows? If vampires, werewolves, and telepathy are real, can't people shapeshifting into others be real too?" Ash theorized, making me uneasy.

The blood suddenly running out of my nose also unnerved me, and I wasn't even the one to notice. "Alicia, your nose is bleeding." Zane said in concern.

I reached up to wipe it away, but he grabbed my hand before I could. I looked and saw that the blood I had wiped away earlier was dried on my hand.

"Has this been happening since you woke up?" Zane asked me in alarm.

"Yes?" I replied as more of a question, not wanting them to know about that as I wiped the blood away.

"That's it!" Zane exclaimed, completely shocking me at his random outburst.

"What?" Ash questioned what I couldn't voice, scorn in his tone because Zane said something so seemingly insensitive.

"You were having a telepathic battle, right? So what if he dream jumped using mind walking to enter your dreams as someone else, and he can't actually wear someone else's face? He was controlling your dream." Zane suggested in a complicated, but mostly understandable, way.

"What's mind walking?" I inquired in confusion.

"It's the technical term for entering someone's mind." Zane explained to me.

Ash came to a standstill and seemed to catch on to what was being said, because he added on to the theory. "And that's why your nose was bleeding, because you exerted an extreme amount of telepathic force to defeat him."

I nodded in agreement, glad that we were able to figure it all out. "So this guy, this other telepath, is most likely working for Storm?"

"Almost definitely. Remember what I told you? There's rumors that Storm has had a telepath on his side for years, and that's how he found out you were turned and where you were." Zane reminded me, unsettling my stomach a bit, but I pulled myself together.

That wasn't the first problem we had to face because of Storm, and unless we killed him, it wouldn't be the last.

"Hold on a second." Ash demanded with a frown. "You knew there was a telepath against us and you didn't tell me?"

"It was a rumor, so I didn't know if it was true. I only told Alicia because she's been wanting to know how Storm found her a second time." Zane answered inscrutably.

"Alright, so this guy attacked me with telepathy in my dreams. But I won, so it's fine, right?" I inquired hopefully.

"Alicia, you could've died. This isn't okay, and you're going to need to work on your telepathy to become stronger." Zane explained gently like he was afraid that I might snap.

"I thought I did just fine. After all, I knew from the beginning that something was wrong and it wasn't Ash. And I was able to push the guy out of my head by putting up my mental shield again." I defended myself, crossing my arms as I slumped against the headboard.

"That's called a psychic shield, which is one of the many things I'll need to teach you before you have to fight this guy again." Zane informed me. "We have no way of knowing what this guy knows how to do. There are a lot of ways to turn telepathy into a weapon."

"You told me around a month ago that you were more progressed with telepathy than I am. Is this what you meant? You know how to wield telepathy like a weapon?" I questioned him, ready to learn more about these ways so I could defeat this other telepath, then go kill Storm.

"I didn't say that I was better, just that I had trained a lot and knew a few things. I could possibly teach you those, but there's more to it than that. And it'll be hard to do without my telepathy." Zane told me reluctantly.

Ash took a step closer and put in his own two scents. "So why don't we get Zane's telepathy and then take down the guy from the dream?"

"We have to go to Storm's science lab building to get my telepathy, and we have to find at least one of the guys who took it from me in the first place so he can put it back." Zane said, a far away look on his face. He shook his head, his sandy blonde hair falling in his eyes a bit, to clear his head.

"If that guy is working for Storm, they could have him there away from any fighting or prying eyes. After all, he was just a rumor. No one knew for sure if he existed." Zane reasonably argued.

"Wait, is there any way I actually killed him in the dream, and we're worrying for nothing?" I asked, knowing it wasn't very likely.

"No, I don't think so. We have to assume he's out there and preparing to kill us, just like we're preparing to kill him." Zane answered darkly, his words giving me a slight chill. But I shook it off. I could worry about that later.

"Alright, so we're going to start practicing telepathy soon, after Ash tells us what happened here." I ordered, turning to a suddenly uneasy Ash, speaking of the ruined house.

Zane joined me in leaning against the headboard of the bed. "You can sit down." I offered because Ash was just standing there.

"No, that's okay." Ash declined the offer. I could tell that he'd probably be pacing during the story because of the awakened memories.

Ash went around to the end of the bed so that he could face us as he told his story.

"When I was younger I played in the woods a lot. I knew the area well, but I never realized that others were taking notice when I stayed out late." Ash began to tell us.

"I was turned into a vampire around three years ago, when I was 14 years old. There was a coven of vampires that had watched me for years. They knew my name and my family. They figured they could turn me and use my anger issues to take down the hunters in the area." Ash explained.

I was appalled at how they thought it was okay to turn a 14 year old boy. At least Ash wasn't stuck at that age, since vampires age three years after their transformation before they stay that age for the rest of their immortal lives.

Ash turned away as if to pace, but stopped with what might've been a grin on his face. "But they didn't realize what a disaster they were creating."

"What did you do?" I asked impatiently, intrigued by his story and wanting him to tell it faster. I glanced at Zane and saw that he was rolling his eyes, not sharing in my excitement over the dramatics.

Ash shook his head and turned back to us without a hint of a smile. "I want to tell you in order of how it happened, so that part will have to wait until later."

He made his way over to the desk in the room and sat down at the chair facing us as he continued on. "The vampires didn't care about teaching me the basics of surviving as a newborn. They only wanted to teach me how to fight to help get rid of the hunters, which is exactly what I did."

"It didn't take long for me to suddenly get angry one day during training. It was the first time I had felt so furious and powerful all at once, and the first time I felt like someone else entirely." Ash told us as we listened intently.

That was his first "maniacal episode" as I called it, like the one that led to him thinking that we had to stay away from him back at his cabin.

"It was also the first time that I won a fight during training. I was never the best at fighting. I took down six out of the ten vampires before they knocked me out to stop me. Even then, they didn't realize that I was bipolar and that turning me into a vampire at that young age made me into a monster." Ash said as if it was a fact.

I guessed that in his eyes, he was a monster, more than any other vampire could be because he couldn't control his anger or the beast that awakened from his rage.

"The next time I lost control, their leader noticed before it got bad and sent me and a few others to get rid of the hunters in town. We found a scout far outside their base and he managed to get a message to the other hunters before we killed him because one of the guys in my group decided to question him to come up with a better plan of attack." Ash said, his gaze far away as he remembered.

"When we made it to their base, they had fled halfway across the city already. Of course, we chased after them, but we were only able to catch and kill a few of them. When we arrived back at our base, the leader was unhappy because we didn't kill all of them, so he decided to punish me for it by locking me in the cellar." Ash said, causing me to interrupt.

"That's ridiculous! You were a kid and they expected you to take the blame for something you didn't do?" I questioned, unable to wrap my mind around that.

"Let him tell the rest of the story and you'll find out how he got back at them." Zane teased, knowing exactly what I was waiting for. We both returned out attention towards Ash so that he could get on with it.

He cleared his throat and returned to the story. "They didn't realize that I hadn't gained control over myself again because I had remained quiet to trick them. It's the longest time that I've ever stayed like that, for hours on end."

"When the leader of the coven sent two of his men to lock me in the cellar, I killed them both and went back to kill the rest of them, leaving the leader for last. In his last moments, I could tell he finally grasped what he had done. The pure look of horror on his face as he died also broke me free from the rage." Ash explained emotionlessly.

I wanted to do something to comfort him, but I knew that neither he nor Zane would appreciate that. Ash had to be feeling horrible about all of those things he did when he wasn't himself. It wasn't fair that he had to remember them as if he had actually done it. And I knew Ash would never do the horrible things he's done if he could help it.

"It had only been a few weeks since I was turned and I had nobody to teach me how to get blood without killing. I ransacked the coven's base and took all of the blood that they had, which wasn't enough to last more than a few months, and that was with me rationing it with extreme care." I couldn't imagine what Ash was saying, having to go long periods without blood. Like when I passed out during dinner with my family, which was awful.

"After around two months, my parents confronted me, convinced that I was on drugs because I was pale and weak most of the time but I couldn't eat. I swore that I wasn't on drugs and told them they couldn't understand, but that only made it worse." Ash said quietly.

He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. I could sense that it was the part that we'd been waiting for. "My parents threatened to send me to a drug rehab center or the military. I got angry and punched the wall, creating a gaping hole in the hallway."

"My mom rushed over and grabbed my hand to see how badly I was hurt, but there weren't any wounds where there should've been. I gained control of myself for a minute and retreated to the kitchen, trying to escape through the backdoor before I could do any more damage, but they followed me there and started yelling again. I remembered what it felt like earlier, right before the other times I'd completely lost control. I recognized that and tried to stop it, but there was no use." Ash told us with a regretful shake of his head.

"My mom came closer and I pushed her so that she fell, then my dad pushed me back. I started throwing punches at him, fueled by fury as I attacked my own parents. They both yelled at me to stop and I tried. I tried to regain control of myself, but I could only manage to push my rage onto the house instead of them." Ash said, staring at the ground as he relived the memories.

Ash sighed as he continued. "So I destroyed everything in sight. I flipped the dining table and threw the chairs at the walls so they shattered. I didn't realize that my mom had been cooking until the pan on the stove caught fire. I continued on, ripping the curtains from the windows and throwing them carelessly, not thinking anything of it when the flammable curtains landed on the fire and made it worse."

"They caught fire immediately and filled the house with smoke as my parents ran away from me, deeper into the house. I left my parents there to die so that I could go destroy the living room too. When the flames had burned down most of the kitchen, I was outside and fire trucks had appeared. Somebody asked if there was anyone in the house and I told them that my parents were in there." Ash said impassively.

"Somebody began whispering, and somehow my heightened hearing picked it up even though I didn't know how to control it. They said that there was no way my parents could've survived the fire if they weren't already out of the house. The smoke was suffocating. That's what finally snapped me out of it, realizing that I had killed my parents." Ash coughed to clear his throat again.

"I rushed back inside, but a few of the firefighters caught me and brought me back outside. A little while later they brought out two burned bodies and they told me that my parents were gone, but they didn't know that it was my fault. I ran away to live at my family vacation home, which you know about." Ash informed us, confusing me for only a moment.

"The cabin?" I questioned, receiving a nod in answer.

"I'm surprised that Storm didn't have a part in any of that. I figured he would, since he's a part of mine and Alicia's stories." Zane pointed out.

"Zane." I hissed out, wondering how he could say something like that instead of giving condolences. But then again, the two really didn't get along.

"It was an accident, Ash. Nobody blames you, and I'm sure your parents would forgive you if they knew what was really going on. You went through a lot that a kid, or anyone at all, shouldn't have to go through." I tried to assure him, but Ash changed the subject.

"Alright, you know the story now. How about we all sleep for awhile longer. Then you'll be fully rested to begin telepathy training." Ash suggested.

"I'm good with that." Zane announced as he settled back on the bed, ready for more sleep. Even I had to admit, after having that horrible dream and hearing Ash's even worse story, I could use some sleep.