A/N:
Date 5-29-17

Hey everyone! I know this chapter is late...I was spending time with my dad. We're both busy all the time, so we usually don't get to spend any nice time together.

Word Count: 2803

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Chapter 22: Plan C

"Where is he?" Lena cries, feeling completely hopeless as she yells at Mason.

"I don't know! That's what I'm telling you! I woke up this morning and he was gone!" Mason yells back, fear glittering in his eyes, wondering what happened to his brother.

"How could they have taken him and you didn't know?" Lena asks with a plea in her voice, coming unhinged at the thought of something happening to Lucas.

"I had this weird dream, but I fell asleep and-" Mason tries to tell Lena, but she interrupts him quickly.

"You saw and you fell asleep!?!" Lena exclaims in horror, unable to believe that Mason could've done something but he didn't.

Jerica runs down the stairs as she wakes up to Mason and Lena fighting. "Hey, Lena! Calm down! What's going on?"

"I came to check on Lucas like we agreed, but Lucas has been kidnapped and Mason didn't save him! He's gone and I didn't help either! I should've been here..." Lena covers her face, struggling to get herself under control, realizing she's taking out her anger on Mason.

Jerica rushes over to Lena, wanting to comfort her, but Jerica isn't that type of person.

Jerica grabs Lena's shoulders, shaking her slightly to get her attention. "Get it together Lena! We all know you're stronger than this!"

Lena nods her head. "Sorry Mason." She mumbles to him while finally slowing her breathing and shoving the lump in her throat back down.

"It's okay. I should've known it wasn't a dream." Mason admits, feeling awfully guilty.

"No, no Mason. I'm mad at myself for not being here, not you." Lena tries to take back what she said.

"Alright, enough of that." Jerica interrupts. "We need to form a plan to get Lucas. Okay?"

Mason and Lena nod, but Mason knows that this is on him. He should've gotten up and fought when Lucas was kidnapped.

"As much as I hate to say it, we need to call Adrian." Jerica says bitterly.

Lena smiles slightly, remembering when Jerica had a crush on Adrian. "What happened to you liking him?" Lena teases Jerica.

"Um, that stopped when he chose to be with Ivie." Jerica replies snottily. "That shows that he's an idiot, and it's a waste of time to act like an idiot." Jerica reasons.

Lena holds in a laugh while Jerica scowls at her. "You call him. You have his number, right?" Jerica says.

"No. But I have Monique's number." Lena says, grabbing her phone to call Monique.

~*~

Earlier that morning around 2:30am...

Lucas jerks awake as they hit a bump. Lucas looks around in surprise to see that he's in the back of a van.

Lucas sees two men sitting with guns across from him. Their guns are sitting on the bench next to them and they haven't noticed him yet.

Lucas shuts his eyes, feeling that his hands are chained together behind his back.

So these must be other hunters.

Lucas wonders if the Sterling parents told some other hunters that he's a vampire, then they let the others take care of him.

Lucas sits quietly for a few minutes, barely breathing and trying to think up a plan that isn't stupid.

The only plan Lucas can figure out through his racing thoughts is to just attack and hope for the best. That will be named plan C, because it isn't the smartest and will most likely be a last resort.

"It's about time to dose him again with vervain." One man speaks up. "He shouldn't wake up for a few hours, but we can't be too careful."

Lucas forces himself not to tense up his muscles in preparation for a fight. It's an instinct that's hard to ignore.

Lucas hears feet moving and assumes they're coming closer to him to give him vervain.

Lucas feels his eyes burn gold protectively beneath his closed eyelids.

Lucas forces his eyes to remain normal. Time for plan C. In one swift movement Lucas opens his brown eyes, kicks the person in the legs effectively knocking them down, and stands up to further defend himself.

The two men both let out a yell and the one not on the floor jumps up to attempt to restrain Lucas.

"What's going on back there?" Someone shouts from the front of the van in the passenger seat.

Lucas lets his instincts take over, kicking the gun out of the hunter's hand and flattening himself against the wall when the guy tries swinging at Lucas, so he misses.

Lucas jumps up, head-butting the man he just rid of his gun. Unfortunately, Lucas forget about the hunter on the ground.

He shoots Lucas in the chest with a dose of vervain, causing Lucas to falter in surprise.

Lucas pulls hard at his chained hands, but they won't move enough for him to hit someone with.

Lucas kicks out at the man standing, but he avoids it and shoots Lucas again.

"He seems resistant to vervain!" The man yells as he swings at Lucas.

Lucas catches the guy's fist while the other guy gets up and comes at Lucas.

Still holding one guy's fist, Lucas twists his arm, spinning him around at an odd angle until he cries out in pain, and shoves him into the second guy.

They both go down, and the van suddenly swerves, coming to a sudden halt, causing Lucas to lose his balance and fall to the side.

Lucas stands as he hears the pound of footsteps, just in time for the back doors to swing open and two men shoot at Lucas.

Lucas takes the darts in the chest, which hurt like they're real bullets, unable to avoid them. Lucas can tell that they aren't using vervain anymore because whatever they shot him with starts working.

Lucas' arms and legs start to feel heavy as he stumbles into the wall of the van.

"It's working." The hunter, who Lucas assumes is the boss, says. "He must've been taking vervain to become resistant."

Lucas opens his mouth to tell them that he has always been resistant because he's not a vampire, but his tongue feels as heavy as his other limbs now. Lucas slides involuntarily to the floor.

"Now we're taking you far away, so you can't hurt anyone in Cain anymore." The other man standing there says. The two men from the back of the van are now standing and glaring at Lucas.

"But I wasn't hurting them." Lucas tries to say, but the words won't come out as he falls slowly unconscious.

~*~

"Mason, you need to track their scent. This'll teach you a valuable lesson that you'll use later in life." Adrian tells Mason.

"You mean, his sense of smell is better than yours?" Jerica retorts.

Adrian puts a hand up to his face, covering his eyes for a moment in annoyance before turning to Jerica.

"Werewolves are good trackers, but not better than me." Adrian tells Jerica with a scowl. I've trained a long time."

"Anyway, Mason knows Lucas better, so he'll be able to get a better scent of him. I can follow the trail of the hunters to make sure we're going the right way." Adrian adds casually.

Monique, Lena, and Jerica quickly follow Mason and Adrian as they track the smells of the hunters and Lucas.

The scents lead them outside about a block away from the house. "They must've gone in a vehicle. The gas masks most of their scent, but they're probably long gone already." Adrian says.

"It doesn't matter! We have to follow him. Who knows what they'll do to Lucas?" Lena exclaims, horrified that Adrian would even think about not following the scents to help save Lucas.

"I can track them, but you guys can't come. You'll slow me down." Adrian explains.

"Oh really?" Jerica replies with a questioning note in her voice.

"Yeah. I'm physically faster than all of you because I'm a vampire." Adrian says with narrowed eyes, daring Jerica to argue further.

Jerica rolls her eyes at Adrian, but she knows he's right and that they can't go with him.

"I can keep up." Mason says, believing that his werewolf speed can help him keep up with Adrian.

"Mason, it's better not to." Monique tells him gently. "Even when I use speed runes, I can't always keep up with Adrian." Monique says, referring to the runes she draws on her skin for power because she's a Shadowhunter.

"We should let Adrian track them alone." Monique says, looking to Lena and Jerica also.

Lena turns to tell Adrian that he can go alone, only to find Adrian already taking off with his vampire speed.

Jerica crosses her arms angrily. "He was going to leave alone no matter what we said."

Monique glances away from them, unable to say that Jerica's statement wasn't true. That's just how Adrian is. Stubborn and arrogant.

~*~

Lucas wakes up in a pitch black, dark room, chained to a wooden chair.

Lucas pulls at his chains to no avail. Lucas also throws around his weight to knock the chair over, but the chair legs seem to be bolted to the floor.

Lucas decides to take a look around the room, but to do that he needs some light.

Lucas closes his eyes, willing the werewolf side of him to emerge and turn his eyes gold.

Lucas opens his eyes to see a golden light shining wherever he looks.

Lucas smiles a bit, satisfied with this small victory. Now to figure out how to get out of here.

Lucas looks around, seeing a dusty stone room with nothing in it besides the chair that Lucas is sitting in.

There's a door directly across from Lucas, but it's useless to him for now because Lucas can't yet escape his chains.

Lucas looks up in frustration, when he accidentally spots a camera.

Lucas immediately closes his eyes, forcing them to turn brown again, wondering if the camera caught his eyes glowing.

But Lucas didn't see a red light on the camera, which means it probably isn't on.

The door suddenly opens, admitting the hunter who Lucas assumes to be the boss because of the way he acts, and by the way others act around him.

"You're awake! You shouldn't be." The boss says with a grin.

He starts off his questionnaire by asking, "Have you been taking vervain?"

"No, I don't take vervain." Lucas answers with a frown as the boss closes the door. The room is surrounded in darkness again, until a small light bulb flickers on overhead.

As soon as Lucas' eyes adjust, which is pretty quickly considering that he has super senses, Lucas sees a red light on the camera in the corner.

The camera's rolling now.

"Then how can you resist vervain? It doesn't seem to affect you much, vampire." The boss snaps back hatefully.

"Because I'm not a vampire! Who gave you that bright idea?" Lucas responds coldly, unable to keep back the boiling anger any longer.

These people kidnapped Lucas for an invalid reason, which just adds to the stress of the upcoming full moon.

Lucas was focusing on reigning in his anger instead of watching the hunter in front of him, so Lucas didn't see the fist coming at his face.

Lucas' head snaps to the side at the contact, making his jaw pound like crazy. Lucas blinks and sucks in a deep breath, curling his fingers into fists where they're chained down on the arms of the chair so that his claws don't come out.

"If you lie, there will be consequences." The boss tells Lucas harshly.

Lucas turns his hatred filled brown eyes to the sickening hunter. "I'm not lying."

This results in Lucas being hit in the same spot as before, unable to defend himself as the whole left side of his face aches.

Lucas' eyes burn gold for a moment as he glares at the dirty ground, but the boss doesn't seem to notice.

Lucas holds in a sigh of relief as his face goes numb for a moment, then starts to warm up. It's healing.

"I said stop lying!" The boss yells into Lucas' face unnecessarily.

"You can test me! I'm not a vampire!" Lucas exclaims, wracking his brain for a way to prove himself.

Vervain obviously hasn't helped, because this guy believes that vampires can be resistant to it.

So Lucas thinks of the most obvious things people think of when they think about vampires.

"I have a heartbeat! And I'm not cold!" Lucas announces, proud that he thought of how to help himself.

But the boss just scowls at Lucas. "I know your kinds' tricks! You can control your heartbeat."

"What about my body heat? You can't fake that!" Lucas argues.

"I don't believe you." The boss says, shaking his eyes.

"You can test me! Please, just let me go. My family is probably worried about me and I have school." Lucas tries pleading, not liking to do it, but doing it anyway.

"I have been testing you. You should have bruises from all of the hits you've received." The boss responds coldly, not even caring that Lucas is practically begging.

"I don't bruise easily. I play football and I work out." Lucas tries to argue, but the boss just shakes his head.

"I've been a hunter a long time, and I know that vampires have sneaky tricks. You may not be able to use compulsion on me because I take vervain, but you can use other tricks." The hunter says, his voice full of hatred for Lucas, someone he doesn't even know.

"But I may have another test, if you'd like me to try it." He adds slowly.

Lucas gets a bad feeling about this, but he has to agree. "Yes! I swear I'm not a vampire!"

A grin spreads across the hunter's face, making Lucas feel very uneasy. "Alright then." He says in a deadpan.

He brings out what appears to be a pocket knife, but it extends to be dagger sized.

Lucas' eyes widen as he realizes the hunter's intent. "No, please don't-"

But he's already plunging the knife into Lucas' stomach. Lucas squeezes his eyes shut, letting out a cry of pain as a burning spreads from the entry point of the knife.

The boss still has his hand on the handle of the knife as he leans closer to Lucas to whisper in his ear. "Now, I'm sure you've had worse wounds. And I'm sure you can heal from this one. I didn't even hit a major organ!" Then he pulls the knife out, causing Lucas to gasp in pain.

Lucas can feel his eyes burning behind his closed eyelids as the healing process prepares to start. Lucas doesn't want this guy to know he's a werewolf, because they might be hunting werewolves too.

"Now this next stab wound will be worse. This is the real test. If you die within a few minutes of me stabbing you again, that means you're not a vampire." The boss says a bit cheerfully.

Lucas opens his mouth to protest, but he can't get a word out before the knife goes into his chest.

"Now I just made sure to stab your lung. That's how I know a normal person would die, because you can't live without your lungs." The boss says before he rips the knife out.

Lucas feels his lung collapse and his breathing falters. Lucas' throat starts to close up and he keeps his eyes shut as they burn along with his throat and his remaining lung works overtime.

Lucas struggles to breathe, but only a whisper of air makes it down his throat.

"Look at me!" The boss demands, grabbing Lucas' chin and forcing his head to face the hunter.

Lucas keeps his eyes shut tight, not about to let this guy see his golden werewolf eyes.

The boss squeezes Lucas' chin so hard that Lucas feels the bones about to break, which causes his eyes to pop open.

The boss smiles at Lucas and lets go of his face. "You must have a lot of control since your eyes aren't red."

Lucas can't believe that his eyes did what he told them to and turned back to brown. The burn in his chest is still going strong, so badly that it brings tears to his eyes.

"I'm not... a vampire..." Lucas somehow manages to wheeze out before he slumps back into the chair, dead to the world, but still stuck in a world of pain.