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