A stronger voice began to overpower the others that I was hearing in my head, and I realized it was calling to me. The female voice seemed familiar in a way I couldn’t quite understand, and as her melodic voice filled my mind, I realized she was saying words I’d heard before, something that had been echoing in Mina’s mind. “Born of the desert,” she said, and I didn’t know if she meant me, herself, or whatever it was that the Vampires had been trying to put together. And then, as if making an announcement to everyone, this same feminine voice said, “Come together soon.” Suddenly, I realized there was a link between the voice in my head and Mina’s words earlier about the Vampires moving. They were being called by whoever this woman was. She had to have come through the portal.
“Okay!” Dax startled me back to reality, and I opened my eyes, turning to see him flying up behind me. “It was rea
Dax and I made our way back to the playroom, but on our way, I decided I should check in with Aaron and make sure he knew what was going on down there. I meant to reach out to him through his IAC, but that’s not what happened. Perhaps it was because I had recently spent so much time walking around inside of Vampires’ heads, but when I reached out to Aaron, it was with my own mind, not my IAC, and I didn’t realize it until he answered me.“Aaron—you see him, don’t you?” I asked, and then realized my IAC hadn’t connected to his yet. I was shocked when I heard his voice in my mind.“I do.”I sort of jerked back a little bit, and Dax put a hand on me to steady me, but he didn’t ask what was going on. I was glad, too, because I couldn’t have explained it. Rather than going the IAC route, I finished, “He’s not going to try to hurt you guys. He’s just scared.
“Christian, who told you to give the Transformation serum to Tara?” Cadence asked. She seemed to have a better understanding of what was happening and what to expect, and I remembered she’d done this for Aaron in Ireland after Christian had told him it was okay to take the Retransformation serum for Guardians that wasn’t working properly yet.But Christian didn’t answer my sister. Tara continued to thrash on the floor, and Jamie’s hand came off. She was bucking so hard, she was actually hitting Jamie in the head with each shudder. Since Christian was done, he got up and slid Jamie out of the way. I hazarded a glance at Dax, who was standing over near the sofa with a hand over his mouth, clearly unsure of what to think about any of this, which wasn’t much different from his reaction to everything else he’d seen that night.Christian crossed to a biohazardous waste container and discarded the used supplies, and the rest of
My sister pulled herself up on unsteady feet and crossed to where the newbie was standing, putting a hand on Dax’s arm. “Dax, you have had one heck of a first day. I promise you, most days here are nothing like this.”“Yeah, well, I’m not sure I wanna stick around to find out.” He shook his head and pulled away from her, dropping his eyes to the ground as he muttered, “Crazy kid Vampires ripping people’s throats out, people talking to each other through their eyes, doctors who fall asleep on the job, weird winking guys who appear and drug people while they’re passed out. I’m not really sure this is all for me.” He met her gaze again with that last sentence, and I felt like I might lose yet another person I cared about.My sister seemed to think his outburst was slightly humorous, though, as she stifled a laugh. “Well, when you put it like that…. Look, I think the excitement is done for now.
When we got to the building where Jamie’s and Christian’s offices were, Christian already had Tara on a bed in the same room where I’d recently had my procedure, and where Brandon had undergone his Transformation. Jamie was on a bed next to her, but it looked like Christian hadn’t been quite as careful with him, and as Cadence walked over to check on Tara, I went over to straighten Jamie out a little bit, put his head on the pillow instead of near it, and pull a sheet over him. He was just as out of it as Tara, but I could imagine he would’ve done the same thing for me.Dax stood at the foot of Tara’s bed and watched as Christian hooked her up to a heart monitor. I had no idea how he had learned to do that, but I guessed if you live long enough, you pick things up. “Okay, now we wait,” he said with a shrug. The tech guy looked around at all of us and then headed for the door.“Where are you going?” I asked.
The apartment was dead silent when I walked inside. I didn’t know if my sister was there or not, but I decided to be extra quiet as I went about taking a shower and shoving a bite of food in my mouth. It had taken me a long time to get all of the blood out of my hair, and I thought we should invent some sort of blood removing shampoo for nights like this. Most of the time, it was ash I was struggling with. None of it was ever easy to remove, but I would’ve rather been scrubbing Vampire residue than Faye and Tara’s life fluid out of my hair.It was less than an hour later when I reentered the office building, two cups of coffee in my hands. I immediately stopped by Christian’s office and saw the lights were off, and he was gone. I hoped that meant he was in the operating room, but I wasn’t shocked when I walked in, and he wasn’t there either. Dax was pacing, and Jamie had moved again. I thought he had to be close to waking up but imagined th
Dax was back pretty quickly, and we sat in silence, watching Tara sleep with only a few words between us. It was around 1:30 when Jamie was awake enough to check on Tara himself. I watched him carefully, even though I realized he’d been doing this since before the turn of the last century. Still, I didn’t want him collapsing on my watch. He said she was healing nicely, but it wasn’t clear yet whether or not we’d acted in time, and I nodded, though it didn’t really make all that much sense to me. I didn’t quite understand how she could hold on for this long, be healed, and still potentially expire.Jamie went back to sleep, and I started to nod off. “Hey, Cass?” Dax said, shaking me lightly. “Why don’t you go back to your apartment for an hour or two and rest? I’m really not tired, but you’re not going to be any good to anyone if you’re exhausted.”I wanted to argue with him, but I reali
“Wow. That must’ve been crazy, seeing your first Vampire in the forest like that,” I said, to Dax, shaking my head. “But the girl you came across in the woods was okay?” I thought I’d heard that from my sister or Elliott or someone.“Yeah, she was okay, but her dad wasn’t so lucky. Her name is Delilah. She was just shaking the whole time she was in my truck. I took her to the police before we went out to look for her dad. He… looked a lot like the folks we ran into tonight.”I understood what he meant. Throat ripped out. “How terrible. What did the police think?”“They thought it must be a wild animal of some sort. I told them what I’d seen, and they decided it had to be unrelated, that Delilah was attacked by a criminal of some sort while her dad was being killed by a bear or whatever. I knew what I’d seen, though, and my grandma helped me get ahold of Daniel.”
“Gee, Cass, I’m so sorry to hear that Tara is doing so poorly,” Emma said, and I could tell she really must’ve meant it because Emma O’Sullivan doesn’t say she’s sorry for you if she doesn’t really mean it.“And Brandon’s AWOL?” Lucy asked.“Yeah, he came by a few hours ago, but I was taking a short nap.”“Do you think he thinks there’s something going on between you and Dax?” she asked.“I think he does.”“Is there?” Emma asked, and I wished I could see her so I could give her the snake eye.“No! We are just friends.”“Just checking,” she said, and I could hear her shrugging.I heard the front door down the hall open and couldn’t help but smile when I saw it was Elliott. “Girls, I’ve gotta go in a second. Elliott just walked in.”“Oh, put him on!&rd
Cadence was glowing, holding both of her babies, one in each arm. I smiled at her and then focused on Josephina. She wasn’t crying now, but her little face was wrinkled as if she might burst into tears at any moment. Aaron had his hand on her back, beaming with pride as he looked at his little family. Jamie and another Healer, Ona, were cleaning up a tray table, but I caught his eye, and he winked at me. I hoped he could tell how grateful I was. If it wasn’t for him and his life saving blue magical healing powers, not to mention his medical skills, Cadence never would’ve come back to life.“Where’s my new favorite lil girl?” Elliott asked beside me.“Hey! I’m your lil girl. You’re going to have to think of something else to call her.” I threw an elbow at him.“Oh, I’m just teasing,” Elliott assured me. “Still, she is definitely lil. And she is my girl.”“I&rsqu
I’ll never forget the day my sister died. Even now, eight months later, sitting outside of Jamie’s operating room with Brandon’s hand in mine, every time I think about what happened that day, I get tears in my eyes. So many things could’ve gone differently, if only one of us would’ve made a different choice. I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on what I could’ve done differently myself that day, and even though everyone tells me there’s no point in dwelling on it, what’s done is done, it still haunts me sometimes when I’m trying to fall asleep at night, when I can so vividly see Cadence hanging there in the air before she plummeted to the ground, the whoosh of power that left my hand just missing its mark.The new Hunter Leader is a guy named Daniel Bower. He came in from California a few months ago. He’s awesome. I’ve known him for a while. He’s the one who helped capture Professor Stewart after th
I continued to beg and plead with her to come back to us. At fifteen minutes, Scarlet’s whispers were loud enough for me to detect what she was saying to Cale. “How long will he give it?”“I don’t know.” Cale seemed agitated and upset, certainly more connected to my sister than Scarlet. “Not yet.”“Please... Cadey, please.” I felt as far and as deep as I could, thinking about how I’d had to go so very far into her brain to plant that dream. The clock continued to tick. Cadence still wasn’t breathing, and Jamie began to sound desperate. At twenty-five minutes, when Jamie said “thirty,” his voice broke. He knew that the chances of her coming back to us now, after this long, were minute at best. He couldn’t give up, though. We couldn’t give up.Aaron blew two breaths of air into my sister’s lungs, and Jamie started counting again.Something was diff
After Aaron finally moved forward, I followed, staying back a little bit. I didn’t want to see her like that. I had never seen a person’s body after they’ve fallen that far, but I could imagine what it was like.Only when I finally did take a few hesitant steps around the trees, Brandon’s hands on my shoulders, she didn’t look like I expected her to at all.Cadence was lying flat on the ground with her hands folded over her abdomen, sort of like Snow White. Her feet were out straight, and her hair was blown out around her. She looked absolutely beautiful. And still. So very, very still.Jamie was doing chest compressions, and when it was time to breathe, Aaron did that for my sister. Some sort of automatic pilot must’ve turned on for him because his movements were very robotic. Jamie would say thirty, and Aaron would breathe into my sister’s open mouth twice before Jamie started counting again.Tears were rolling
“No!” My scream echoed across the mountainside as I watched in horror as my sister fell. I cannot guide what I cannot see, and I didn’t have a chance to get a grip on her before she plummeted. My hands shot out in her direction, but the surge of power I’d sent to grab her went over her head. I saw a streak of blue do the same and knew Jamie had missed as well.Fumbling through Cadence’s stream of consciousness, I tried again, hoping I’d be able to figure out how to get my powers around her before she hit the ground, but she was moving too fast, and without my eyes on her, I wouldn’t be able to get a grip.Part of me wanted to at least jump into her head, to be with her, to let her know she was okay, but then, the thought of what she was about to endure, when she hit the tops of the trees and then cascaded down through them to the earth, I couldn’t bear the thought, and I knew she wouldn’t want me to see it.I
“Brandon!” I shouted, floating over to where he had disappeared. He didn’t answer, and I realized he must’ve fallen all the way in. “Dang it.” I looked around the battlefield. I knew he was safe down there, but I hated that he was in that miserable place. Cadence was firing at Daunator now while Christian moved in, to place the grenade, I assumed, so I thought perhaps she’d be safe for a few minutes. I decided to help Brandon.“Are you all right?” I asked, using my telepathy.“Thank goodness,” he thought, probably not even to me. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just really dark in here.”“I know. Hold on, and I’ll get you out.”“If I hold on, won’t it be harder for you to get me out?”“All right smarty pants.” I needed to focus all of my energy if I was going to do this
“You okay?” Brandon shouted to me as he moved a little closer to where I was standing. The holes in the ground were not shaking now as much as they had been before, but they were still an obstacle we had to consider. I didn’t want him to get too close because of my tornadoes, but I was glad he was nearby.“Great,” I called back, sending another pile of creatures over the side of the mountain.Aaron was fighting his way through the crowd of black creatures, working his way to Cadence. The path was getting clearer, as far as the minions were concerned, but once he got within about a hundred yards of Cadence’s location, one of the Vampires that had been engaged with our forces closer to the top of the mountain broke off, clearly on his way to intercept the Guardian Leader.Whether he liked it or not, Aaron wasn’t alone now. I wasn’t sure where she’d come from, but Eliza was running parallel to him, fighting off
Moving the black creatures off of the ledge worked well, and I was just starting my second round when I realized my sister had taken off running toward Daunator. Christian had reached him already, a grenade in his hand. I prayed he didn’t get sucked down into another hole. The fact that Cadence was so far away from Aaron was worrisome, but he was busy with the creatures. While Cadence was slowed a few times by the minions sinking their teeth into her arm or grabbing at her heels, for the most part, they seemed to be letting her through, which seemed like a bad sign to me. Did Daunator want her to fight him?A blast of light illuminated the mountain, and then a wave of smoke obscured my view of Christian and Daunator. He’d thrown a grenade, the old kind, the ones he knew wouldn’t work. When the smoke cleared, Daunator’s laughter echoed through the air, and Christian went flying twenty feet in the air.Paul’s voice came over the IAC as I tos
Christian’s eyes widened. “Get out of here? We can’t. We have to get Daunator.”“We will. But for now, we need to go back and regroup. The most important thing is that you’re safe now,” Cadence explained to him.Christian was starting to freak out again. “No, Cadence, you don’t understand. We can’t just leave from here! We can’t just let him go!” His eyes were wild, and he reached forward and grabbed my sister’s shoulders. That lasted about half a second before Aaron grabbed him and pulled him off.“Listen, Christian, I agree. It’s important we come back and end this, but you need medical attention. And a good visit with Hannah.”And a shower, I thought to myself. But I was staying out of this one for the moment. I felt a stirring in the ground and a shift in energy somewhere further up the mountain. The argument was about to be moot.“No,