Standing in front of the entire leadership team at the front of the room where Aaron and Cadence normally sat was more than a little intimidating for me. Even though Elliott was right in front of me, and Jamie was to my side, I still felt nervous. Hannah and Aurora looked friendly enough, as if they were glad that I was there to talk about my findings. Christian’s expression was a mix between loathing and boredom I’d rather not dissect.
I had all of my facts straight. I’d gathered all of the numbers. I knew exactly what we were up against—or at least I thought I did. And yet, standing there in front of them with my stack of papers, I felt like a middle school girl presenting at the science fair.
Words were coming out of my mouth, though. Numbers. Cases I’d discovered. I mentioned Havel’s poor wife and the newspaper. I told them about some others that were gone. I mentioned that I’d used Christian’s methods to verify all o
Elliott laughed. He actually laughed at me. I could feel rage boiling up inside of me. This is not at all what I was expecting from him. He asked, “Then why would we go running over to him?”Infuriated, I spat out, “Because it’s our job! How are we supposed to keep people safe from this monster if we’re all the way over here, and he’s in the forests of Hungary building his army?” His remark was meant to be funny—but it wasn’t. it was stupid. He was stupid. They were all stupid.A blast from Hannah’s calming emotional winds hit me, but they didn’t help too much. She was probably just trying to spare the furniture. “All right, Cass,” she said in her soothing clinical voice. “Give me your notes, and I’ll look them over.” She beckoned for my stack of paper with her hand. Part of me wanted to throw them at her; yet another part wanted to say “never mind, take my stuff&rdquo
“Cassidy Elizabeth,” Elliott continued, pointing his finger at me in an accusatory fashion. “So help me, if you do anything of that sort, I swear I’ll fly over there and track you down myself, and when I do, it will not be pretty!” I scoffed at him, like he was going to hurt me. But still, there was a look in his eyes that let me know he meant business. “The last thing I wanna do is call your sister during the one vacation she’s taken since she started, the first one Aaron has taken in centuries, to tell them that our campus runaway is on the lam again. Don’t you dare!”My outrage morphed into defiance for a second as I wanted to yell at him that he wasn’t the boss of me. But I knew I wasn’t going over there by myself. “I told you, I’m not!” I shouted back at him, crossing my arms.“Good. You’d better not!”“You’re not my dad, Elliott!” I could
I didn’t want to be in Lucy’s apartment with my friends. I didn’t want to sit on the couch and hold Brandon’s hand and pretend everything was okay when I knew what was happening on the other side of the world. I wanted to shout for someone to hear me, that this was bad, that this was very bad. I thought about contacting my sister. I could’ve easily jumped into her head, and she would’ve had to listen to me. But she wouldn’t have had to get on an airplane and come home. She could just take the same approach as my other so-called friends, Elliott and Jamie, and choose to wait. So what was the point in interrupting her trip for that? There was none.I could’ve plotted my own trip to Europe, as had crossed my mind earlier. I could’ve bought a plane ticket and headed that way and not even gone to Hungary necessarily, just in the vicinity. Then, they’d have to come—all of them, including my sister and Aaron. But thou
Training was a no go the next day. My alarm went off, and I stopped it without opening my eyes, using my powers, and then buried my head back underneath the pillow. Sleep had been fleeting, and I’d tossed and turned most of the night, thinking about the missing people, the Vampires, whether or not I should contact Cadence, my fights with Brandon. And Alex.So when I finally got up around 10:00, I had a lot of missed messages on my IAC from my friends checking on me. Aurora wanted to make sure I was okay since I hadn’t gone to the gym. On Saturdays, she just works with the newer people, or the ones who really need it, and those aren’t always the same people. She usually only has a handful of recruits, but I think she likes it when I’m there because we can laugh and joke around a little while the others are working out. I wasn’t in any mood to cut up with her at the moment.I told her I was fine. Told all of my friends hey and I’d chat
“You could try to slam the door on me,” Christian shrugged. My eyes slitted to match his. “Please don’t. Listen, I need to talk to you about something.” He looked around like he was suddenly afraid his pounding on my door might’ve brought the attention of the other apartment dwellers. “In private.”I scoffed. “What in the world could I possibly want to talk to you about in private or otherwise? I hate you, in case that scar on your face doesn’t remind you every day.”His hand automatically left the door where he’d been leaning and fingered the small mark by his mouth, the one I’d left there in my rage, the one Jamie couldn’t fix because he had been in the portal—the portal he was in because Christian Henry is a jerkface. I still felt a little bad, though. I had acted like a psycho that day, even if it had been deserved, and it made me feel better....“I realize that,
Giving Christian a minute, I tried to calm my rage a little and look at this from a different perspective. He wanted to help me, didn’t he? So why was I attacking him? Hadn’t he suffered enough at my hand already? It’s not like we could go back now and change what he’d done. The least I could do was try to remain reasonable while he potentially attempted to atone for his mistakes. “What is it?” I asked, hoping he’d elaborate on why he wanted to know more about what I’d found out.His serious expression became even more so as he cleared his throat and raised his eyes so they were at my face level again. “You can’t repeat what I’m about to tell you.”“Oh, good. More secrets.” Maybe I was wrong with what I’d thought before and he didn’t deserve any compassion.“Cassidy, I’m serious. Believe me, you’ll be glad to hear it. But I won’t tell you at al
All of that information would be lovely to have before letting him go to face the monster, but with Daunator, it didn’t come easy. I figured what I was about to say would be disappointing to him, but unlike some people, I didn’t feel comfortable sending him off into battle without all of the information. “For the most part, he hasn’t been doing the turning himself, I don’t think. When I jump into one of these newborns’ heads, I see one of a few other Vampires as their parents, not Daunator himself. I think he has minions, bloodsuckers he sends out to do his dirty work.” That’s about all I could gather from what he’d mentioned, and it wouldn’t be much to go on. I would try again, though, especially now that I thought it might be a purposeful endeavor.“That’s good to know,” Christian said, which surprised me. I thought he’d be disappointed I didn’t have more answers. “Do you think i
I spent the next couple of days trying to find the answers to Christian’s questions. It wasn’t easy, and some of them were basically impossible to find because I just didn’t have access to the sources I needed. A lot of the people who were missing were not accessible, which seemed so odd to me. Normally, if I have a name, I can eventually find someone. Having a name, a face, and a location make it easier. Even with all of that, the struggle was real.But I was able to get a lot of data that should, theoretically, help him, including the names of several Vampires that had been turning the people I could locate, or were just active in the area. The info I had on them was sketchy, and I needed to sit down with Christian and go over it, but I couldn’t bring myself to contact him. I figured he’d have to come back to me eventually if he was serious about this endeavor. Unless he was waiting for me to reach out to him, which I hadn’t been comforta
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,