“Get her out of here! Get her out of here now!” Cadence was shouting. She pulled me up and started shoving me toward the fire escape, pushing Brandon and Jamie, who just happened to be between me and the ladder, as she went.
She didn’t understand. That wouldn’t work. “He’s down the street,” I said. I realized now that Holland had filled the entire area with an eerie fog. I assumed that was her way of setting the stage and obstructing our view. I couldn’t feel her, though. I was fairly certain she wasn’t anywhere near our location. “He’s headed this way, and he’s not alone,” I said to my sister. The advanced members of Carter’s forces were coming up the road quickly now. “We won’t make it to the SUV in time, Cadence.” I stopped and looked at her. She was more frantic than I ever remembered seeing her. “He’s not after you. Not yet. He’s after me.”
Time was up. A barrage of bullets lit up the street below us, and I knew Margie’s team had come into contact with those advanced forces. “Be careful!” Cadence said, pulling me over to her. She kissed the top of my head and then squeezed Brandon’s arm before nodding at Jamie in a show of confidence.Aaron followed her the last few steps to the fire escape. “Becky wanted to send backup from HQ, but I told her not to. We don’t know for sure where Holland is, and she could be planning an attack there. Remember, Cadence, this was a rescue mission, not the attack. Our objective is to get everyone out alive.”“Right,” my sister said, but I knew she wasn’t thinking about that. she wanted to get Carter again. I couldn’t blame her. I would’ve been thinking the same thing. “I love you,” she said just as a scream filled the night sky. I felt with my mind and saw that it was Steph, and she was hurt
Brandon and Jamie were engaged with Vampires as well, so I was on my own with this dark-haired, vicious woman. Her large claws came at my head, and I stepped out of the way just in time, bringing my knee up to the pit of her stomach. She winced and toppled to the ground, but she was up in a matter of seconds, and as I hit her with a roundhouse kick in the chest, I realized my sister was asking me how many Vampires they had left. It was hard to concentrate on that and beating the witch at the same time, but I managed to tell her she was down to three plus Carter just before witchy came at me again. This time, she scratched the crap out of my cheek before I punched her in the face and sent her flying back again.She wasn’t a big woman at all, and I really thought if I could get her pinned, I could twist her head off. I heard a scream from Aaron’s side of the roof and was glad he had been successful. Brandon was double-teamed by two odd-looking twins in bowler hats a
When I’d finished explaining to Aaron that Holland was coming for me, he sounded as calm as ever, which didn’t surprise me. He is the Leader for a reason, after all. “It’s okay, Cass. Can we make it to the SUV?” Aaron asked.“Go get it, bring it here,” I told him. I didn’t have to say it twice. He was gone in a flash, and I wondered when he’d gotten the keys from Elliott or if they just happened to be in it. Maybe he had some sort of superpowers that made him capable of starting cars without the keys.By the time the rest of us made it down the fire escape, Aaron was pulling the SUV to a stop in front of us. He jumped out, and I knew then he wouldn’t be going with us. He tossed the keys to Brandon, and Jamie hesitated, like he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. “Go help Paul,” Aaron insisted.The sound of fighting down the street was louder here, and it caught Jamie’s attent
As the Vampire Queen closed in on my sister, Elliott, and Aaron, I watched through my boyfriend’s IAC. Brandon pulled the SUV to a screeching halt at the end of the alleyway. “Dad! Come on!” Brandon shouted through the open passenger side window. The four of them were in the SUV in a half-second, and Brandon was pulling away. I don’t know if Cadence was aware that Holland had just entered the alleyway from the other end as the SUV’s tires smoked down the road.“What do I do?” Brandon asked me.I could see that there was no way he could get out without running over a few Vampires. The ranks had closed in tightly, and there’d be no going around. “You have a line of Vampires in the road ahead of you. Do you see them?”“Yeah. How do I go around?”“You don’t.”“I don’t?”“Nope. Can&rsqu
I closed my eyes and focused in on Holland. She was back in her fortress now, though I couldn’t tell where that was. She was so upset that she didn’t have the full capacity to block me. I could see her lying on a bed, her head buried in her hands, crying out for Perses, cursing my sister’s name, vowing vengeance. The rest of her forces were scattered around the city, some of them hunting for us, some of them searching for innocents to turn. Things could get messy; I tried to see if I could contact any of them, to send them home.I realized after about fifteen minutes of deep concentration that my sister and Brandon were nearby. I vaguely recalled having waved her away earlier. I felt bad about it, but I hadn’t done it on purpose.Cadence had a questioning expression on her face, and I realized she wanted an update. “She’s done for the night. I see her lying on a bed covered in red silk, crying. She’s inconsolable, but also outr
In the following weeks, the Leadership team did a lot to plan the upcoming attack. My sister was calling it Annihilation, and I knew they intended to take out every Vampire, regardless of official status or what they had or hadn’t done. It was a sort of “let’s get them before they get us.” Holland was aware of it, too, and she and Hines were doing everything they could to try to figure out how a Vampire could kill a Guardian. I saw their experiments through Hines’s head. Sometimes he knew I was there. Other times he didn’t. He thought he had something at one point but had no way of testing it. I’d told my sister, and everyone was on high alert so no one else was taken.The Guardians from Roatán were amazing to watch. Dr. Levi Morrow, the man who had been working with Christian on the Guardian Retransformation serum, was a genius, and I liked to spend time in the lab just watching him work on projects with Christian, though the
Nothing can ruin an otherwise lovely early-spring/late-winter day like a funeral. Don’t get me wrong, funerals stink any time of the year. I should know. I’ve been to a lot of them recently. But this one was even worse because it was so lovely outside. The flowers were budding, birds were singing, and the grass was green and freshly cut, giving off that pleasant scent that makes you think of baseball and bike rides. Not standing by, helplessly watching one of your best friends in the world cry her eyes out because they’re lowering her daddy six feet into the ground.I sort of tuned out all of the wonderful things friends and family members had to say about Dave Burk. I knew him pretty much my whole life, and I totally agree. He was an amazing man. He was funny and let us get away with way more than my parents did. Not to mention he had a law practice that made great money and provided a mansion-esque home for his family. (Not that Lucy’s mom didn&rsquo
Elliott Sanderson, Brandon’s dad and one of my best friends, opened the back passenger-side door for me, and I thanked him quietly. Brandon went around, and Elliott hopped into the driver’s seat. My sister and Aaron had driven separately with my parents as passengers. We waited just a second for Jamie Joplin, our resident Healer, to finish talking to my sister and head over. It seemed a little odd that the rest of my family was in the other SUV together, but then, the guys in this vehicle were basically my family now.“Well, that was depressing,” Elliott muttered as he followed a long stream of cars out of the cemetery toward the Sullivan house. “Tell ya what, if I ever die again, just skip that, okay?”“You can’t die again,” I said, knowing he was trying to lighten the mood but also remembering how devastated I was sitting at his funeral not even a year ago. “Even if it were possible for you to die again, you