“I sent Christian a text, but who knows if he even took his phone,” Aaron continued.
“Surely he did,” Aurora said. “Who goes on vacation and doesn’t take their phone?”
“I hope he did, but until he gets in touch, I’ll be a little concerned about him,” Aaron said.
“Why? He just threw you in a portal.” Cassidy was clearly not over the situation, even if Christian had done his best to redeem himself later.
“I’ve known Christian a really long time, Cass. He doesn’t always make good decisions. In fact, he makes a lot of really horrible, dangerous decisions, but that doesn’t mean I want him to get hurt—or worse.”
“I don’t think he’d say the same thing about you,” Cassidy mumbled, and Aaron chose to ignore it.
“Well, I for one could care less if he fell off the face of the earth.” Elliott said it like it was
“Is the database something we can look through and see if we can determine if these lead Vampires, or whatever you want to call them, are recently turned or have been around a while?” Aurora asked.“Yeah, we can do that. But it’s not very intuitive, and without Christian here, whoever takes that task on might be here a while,” Aaron explained, getting disappointed looks from everyone.“Who’s Eliza’s team after next? Is it someone whose head you can get into, Cassidy?” Hannah asked, leaning forward in her chair. “Maybe you can find out if he’s been dormant all this time like Daunator or if he’s new.”“It’s a guy named Sylvester,” Cassidy replied. “I can try.”Elliott sighed. “Why would Daunator be giving these people up so quickly if they’ve been part of his clan for so long?”“What do you mean?” Cadence asked, no
Ward turned out to be a plethora of information, so much so that Elliott spent way more time in the archives than he’d spent in a library, collectively, in his entire life. By the time he left, he had dozens of pages of notes—all photo snippets pasted together in his IAC, rather than actual handwritten notes—and plenty of reason to think he was just as indestructible as he’d thought before, unless of course he found himself back inside of the Blood Moon Portal.By the time he headed home, he was starving, and it was well past midnight. He intended to go in, eat something, watch some ESPN, and then let Aaron know what he’d found out. But the TV was on when he walked in the door, and he found his son sitting in front of it, not even watching but staring at his phone instead. These sorts of meetings were getting a little old.“Hey, Brandon. How’s it going?” His first instinct had been to ask why he still wasn’t hanging
Cadence couldn’t sleep. Whether it was because she was still on Fiji time, had slept a little on the plane, or was still leery of having another dream like the one she’d had the other day--that hadn’t been a dream--she couldn’t quite tell, but rather than attempting to sleep anyway, she was sitting on the couch, drinking a glass of wine, and going over what they knew and what they didn’t know with Aaron.“So this silver nitrate bomb is implanted under the skin, and when it explodes, it’s supposed to ignite the Vampire from the inside out. That sounds pretty deadly to me,” Aaron said, holding up the design blueprint they’d gotten earlier from Cadence’s dad.“I agree. But I don’t understand why Christian would leave in the middle of production. And Dad said that they’d made fifty so far.”“And yet we could only locate forty-five.” Aaron was shaking his head. “He w
Elliott chuckled. “That Eliza sure is a piece of work. I’m so glad we got rid of her when we did. Don’t you go thinking she’s earned her way back here, now. That was impressive what she did to those Vampires on the roof the other night, but that don’t make her a gold star student.”“I won’t,” Aaron said, and Cadence knew that to be the gospel truth. Eliza could do all the good deeds in the world, but she wasn’t coming back to this team.“All righty. You two have a good night.”“Bye, Elliott,” Cadence called, finally snapping out of her thoughts enough to remember her manners.Aaron told him goodbye, too, and closed the door behind him. He stood with his hands in his pockets for a moment, staring at Cadence.“Do you think...?’“I don’t know.” He came back toward the couch but didn’t sit yet. “God, I hope not. Surely, s
Cassidy was growing frustrated with Christian. He’d been in that hole so long now, his brain had to be turning to mush. Even after he’d told her about the attack, how he’d tried to blow Daunator up with one of his grenades, and it hadn’t done a thing to the monster, he still refused to let her tell anyone he was down there.She decided to try again. It had been a couple of hours since she’d contacted him. She’d spent a lot of that time talking to Eliza, but since the Guardian said she didn’t want her help anymore, now that Aaron and Cadence were back and might be upset about the entire situation, the hunt had fallen through. The team hadn’t been able to find the mark and had gone back to regroup.Despite her decision to leave Cassidy out of it from now on, Eliza had been very chatty, and Cassidy had had to cut her off so that she could work on the other assignments Aaron had given her. She was used to having the bulk of t
Tears sprung to Cassidy’s eyes as she admitted to herself for the first time just how devastated she was not to be with Brandon anymore. Talk to Christian about it was the last thing she thought would make her feel better. Maybe it did.... Then again, maybe it only made her feel worse.“Yeah, well, you can compare those two things, but until someone has actually done it, you have no idea.”Cassidy had no idea what Christian was talking about. “What do you mean?” She was lost. Until someone had actually done what?“Nothing. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Don’t tell them where I am. Lie to them. Tell them you’re in my head, and I’m relaxing on the beach, all right? Just do it Cassidy.”She didn’t know what else to say, so she agreed. “Fine. I’ll check on you later.”“Don’t bother. I’m fine.”
The fact that these were actual people Daunator and his minions had stolen off of the street over the years also explained the clothing. Who knew when Daunator had begun to make these minions? Some of them could’ve been in shafts like the one Christian was currently in for hundreds of years. While she was fairly certain Christian couldn’t be turned into anything else, it was still terrifying to think that this horrible fate could befall anyone she knew.Cassidy tried to contact him, but when she jumped into his head, he was still singing the same horrible song as before. “Christian, listen, I need to tell you something. Will you shut up for a moment and listen?” He continued to sing. “It’s really important! It’s about the others, the ones you heard screaming!” She had a feeling he could hear her, but he didn’t stop his antics. “They’re people—but he’s turning them into monsters
Brandon had been staring at the TV for so long, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d moved. His dad came in not long after he’d left, muttered something about Christian’s shenanigans, and disappeared into his room. It had been a while since that happened, but Brandon had lost all track of time recently. Ever since he broke up with Cassidy, his days and nights ran together. He hardly did anything. His friends invited him over, but he always declined. Sitting on the couch staring at the TV or his phone and trying not to feel anything at all was eating away at his life, but it was all he ever felt like doing.A loud banging on his door tore him out of his daze. He glanced down the hall to see if his dad was coming but realized, whoever it was, they probably couldn’t hurt him. It wasn’t like Daunator had just shown up or anything. He got to his feet and pulled the door open, shocked when Cassidy came flying inside, her hair as wild as h