Chapter 25: Chapter 25
“And what do you need that I haven’t given you?” I asked Christian. I wanted to be sure we were on the same page. If I was going to be involved in this, it needed to have at least a small chance of working or else I was going to bow out before I got too involved..
“Can you get me the names and visuals for those Vampires you said were turning the others? Last known locations, etc.”
That was easy enough. “I already have that.” I searched through the data I’d compiled and pulled up the spreadsheet he’d just described. While I was working, I was staring at the table, but for a moment, I had the odd sensation that someone was looking at me. I glanced up, but Christian was concentrating on his coffee. My eyes went around the room. I didn’t see anyone. It was odd, but I shook it off and sent him the spreadsheet, pulling my focus back to what we were discussing. “That’s the best I could do using what little camera footage I could pick up on in the areas where they were turned. I went through their minds and our databases and ID’d some of them, as you can see. But I don’t have them all. The main one is that blonde woman. She’s turned the most.” I hoped he’d see the Vampire I was referring to. She was at the top of the document.
“Honey,” Christian read, nodding, not using a term of endearment. That was this lady’s name, assumed name, anyhow. “She seems like a gem.” He snickered for a second before he added, “Actually, I have something to show you, too. But go ahead. Anything else?”
I raised an eyebrow, wondering what he wanted to show me and how Honey had anything to do with it, but I answered him. “No, I don’t know anything else about her.”
“Okay. She has something to do with what I want to show you.”
“So show me,” I insisted. He was being weird again. I didn’t like it.
He sent me a video file. “You’ll wanna watch that later. Anything else?”
I really wanted to open it right then, but I didn’t. “What else do you need?” I had other files I could send him, but I didn’t know how much of it would be useful, and I didn’t want to bog him down if what he really needed to know was in the spreadsheet he had.
“Nothing for now. Just let me know if you find out anything else, okay?”
“All right,” I agreed, though I wasn’t exactly sure what sort of information he was referring to. I’d go home and look through my findings again and see what else I thought was absolutely pertinent. “When are you leaving if you’re going to go?” It sounded like his mind was pretty much made up, but looking over that spreadsheet on the Vampires might change his mind.
“Don’t know. Soon.”
Once again, I thought I should probably be trying to talk him out of this. But I didn’t. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be any more involved. “Are you sure there isn’t someone else you can get to help you?” Maybe he should take someone else along.... I didn’t like being the only one who could reach him.
“There is, and I will. But not with the Daunator part. Just with the others.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but he was done. He finished his coffee, put his cup down, and started to slide out of the booth. “Thanks for your help, Cass.”
I watched him, still a little surprised at his last answer but not knowing what else to ask. “Sure.” He picked up his cup and took it over to the trash can, tossed it in, and headed out of the coffee shop, that look on his face that let me know he was going over the file again and not paying attention to another person in the world.
It was so strange, the whole conversation. Why was he doing this? He had to have some motivation I couldn’t decipher. He wasn’t going to tell me what it was, though. I could jump into his head and look around, but that might be scarier than trying to access Daunator’s thoughts. I decided to take a pass on that—for now.
Instead, I opened up the video he’d sent me. I recognized Honey, the Vampire who’d been doing much of Daunator’s dirty work, right away. There was a woman chasing her up a fire escape, and since the footage was from this other person’s view point, I imagined she must be one of us, though there was nothing on the video to let me know who it was.
Once they reached the roof, a whole new set of Vampires stepped out of the shadows to face the person whose vantage point I was looking from. It would be seven against one, from the looks of it. As they moved in, the IAC I was looking through rose up to meet them, taking six of the seven down, one at a time. It was pretty amazing. I could tell from what I could see that it was definitely a woman, that she wasn’t very tall, and of course she was in excellent shape. It wasn’t until all of the new Vampires were gone and she turned back to face Honey that I realized the voice was familiar. I did know this person. She was a Guardian, one I didn’t really care for. One who’d threatened to shoot a Vampire that was holding me hostage, despite Zabrina’s threats to kill me if she did so. “Eliza,” I muttered, not sure how I felt about this. Was Christian going to ask her for help, too? Could I work with the man whose face I’d ripped off and the girl who’d tried to steal my sister’s boyfriend and stabbed her in the back? It looked like maybe I already was....
***
Christian got in touch with me a couple of times the next day to ask questions about specific Vampires that weren’t in the spreadsheet, stuff I hadn’t considered until he asked. So I spent a lot of time in and out of their heads, trying to answer his questions. I knew he was going, so it didn’t surprise me a couple of days after our meeting at the coffee house when he popped into my head to tell me he’d gotten Hannah’s permission to take a trip to Hawaii. He didn’t tell me more. I had no idea when he was leaving, whether he was flying on an airline or private, or when he’d touch down. I just assumed he’d let me know when he needed me, if he needed me, and if he didn’t, well, I prayed he’d be okay. Because even though I am not a fan of Christian Henry’s, there was something more to the man than what I’d originally noticed. I wanted to dig around in his brain and try to figure out what it was that made him the way he was, but I hadn’t gone there yet. Jumping into people’s minds without their permission is a task I try to leave for the enemy whenever possible, not my teammates, no matter how tempting.
Brandon and I hadn’t really talked much in the few days since I’d stormed out of his apartment only to find myself in the coffee house with Christian. My boyfriend and I needed to sit down and have a heart-to-heart chat. I needed to tell him what I was working on, and I needed to tell him what Alex’s note had said and how I felt about it. All of those conversations would be hard, though, so it was easier to immerse myself in this project with Christian than it was to face them. So I stayed in my apartment for the most part, though I did help out at training. That was where I was when I found out Christian had left.
Aurora wasn’t even talking to me. She was chatting with Shane, the other trainer, a Guardian I do not like in the least, and she said she couldn’t believe Christian had actually decided to take a trip to Hawaii. “Maybe he won’t come back,” Shane had joked.
“Maybe you won’t come back,” I muttered under my breath several feet away, far enough he didn’t hear me. I wasn’t even sure what that meant since Shane wasn’t going anywhere. Nor did I understand why I suddenly felt compelled to stand up for Christian. Maybe it was the fact that we were working on something together, something no one else knew about, that made me want to protect him.
I hadn’t said much to anyone after that. I was so lost in my thoughts, trying to calculate when Christian might get there, which was hard because I didn’t know when he’d left or what kind of a plane he was on. There was no reason for me to assume he’d reach out to me, either. I could try to get him through his IAC, but I was pretty sure he’d disabled that already. I could always use my telepathy, but I’d wait a while on that one. I doubted he’d even landed yet, and if he had, he wouldn’t have made it out to the mountains where Daunator was known to reside.
On my way home from the gym, Hannah reached out to me. “Cassidy, all of this data is very impressive, and it looks like it could be problematic. I’m in close contact with Mila, the Guardian Leader in Budapest, and we are monitoring the situation closely. If you can continue to keep us abreast of what you discover, that will be very useful when Aaron and Cadence get back.”
So we weren’t going. I knew that already, of course. It had been obvious that Hannah wasn’t taking my findings seriously and the only reason she’d offered to look the data over was to get me to sit down and shut up. I was disappointed, despite the fact that I saw it coming. It did help that I was aware Christian was already on his way to do what he could. We could’ve done a lot more if we’d gone together, as a team, with or without my sister and Aaron.
Saying all of that to Hannah would be a waste of breath. So I said, “Okay, I will. Thanks,” and ended it that way as I walked into my apartment. It really seemed like we were failing a whole lot of people by continuing to ignore the situation, but I’d said everything I could think of to try to convince the ones in charge of that. Short of seeking my sister out on her honeymoon, there wasn’t really anything else I could do, and while that wasn’t completely off the table, I’d decided I’d let Christian see what he could accomplish first. If he actually could take Daunator out by himself, there wouldn’t be any reason for us to go. I didn’t think that would happen, but who was I to question what one determined person could do on his own?
By that evening, I still hadn’t heard from Christian, and I was starting to get a little worried. I’d asked Jamie earlier if he happened to know when Christian left, trying to sound completely casual, like I just couldn’t believe the loser had actually left for a while, and Jamie said he’d been gone since late the night before. So... he should be there. But where, exactly, I wasn’t sure. Was he driving through the mountains? Had he taken to the trails? The only way I’d know for sure was to find him and jump into his mind.
I went into my room and closed the blinds, trying to block out as much of the light as I could, and sat down on my bed, reaching out into the Czech Republic, not necessarily trying to find Christian, but just listening to the world, gathering clues and information. Sometimes, I’d get lucky in a quest like this, and I’d pick up on enough pointers from the thoughts of others I could figure out the answer to my question without being completely invasive. I wasn’t having a lot of luck, though.