Chapter 47: Chapter 47

Then my sister attempted to be funny. “Except Jamie. If one of us tells him to heal us, he better do it.” Everyone else chuckled to be polite, but not me. It was clear she was trying to say I hadn’t done anything wrong when I’d helped Eliza, but I wished she’d just come out and say that instead of playing to the middle of the issue.

“Did you say you talked to Heather about this?” Elliott’s voice had my head turning back in his direction. At least we were back on topic.

“Yeah, I had lunch with her and asked her about it. She didn’t really have any ideas either.”

He nodded, and the group went quiet for a few moments again as everyone contemplated the situation. “So...” Jamie began, drawing our eyes his direction, “we have hundreds of missing people, and then these creatures show up out of nowhere. That can’t be a coincidence.” He ran his hand across his chin, still thinking.

I agreed with him, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what the tie was.

“Do you think these monsters are our missing people?” Hannah was looking at Jamie, but I got the impression she was talking to whoever wanted to answer. “Why wouldn’t they just turn into regular Vampires?”

“That’s the million dollar question,” Aaron said. If he hadn’t figured it out yet, I didn’t feel so bad for not having any answers. “If Daunator is at the root of all of this, is he capable of turning people into Vampires and whatever these things are?”

I knew what he was saying. Could Daunator choose what his victims became? A thought popped into my mind, and once again my mouth was moving. “All of the Vampires I’ve seen Resurrected recently have come from other Vampires, not Daunator. Honey, for example, was turning people by the dozen until Eliza started tracking her down.”

“Do we have any history on Honey?” Aurora asked, but she was looking at Aaron, not me.

“I’ve never heard of her, but that name seems so odd to me. Her name and picture are in our database, but no other information. I wonder if she’s changed her name recently.” He let out a sigh and shook his head. “I wish Christian were here.” I wasn’t sure if Christian would be able to find anything else out about her or not, but I knew he had resources at headquarters he couldn’t use in the hole in the ground. “Cassidy?”

Aaron was talking to me again. My head shot up from the table where I’d been staring to meet his eyes. I tried not to flinch.

“How deep did you go into her head? Did you see her change?”

“No, I didn’t go that far. Sorry.” I should have, but I had so many tasks to get done, I’d never spent the time or energy it would take to see Honey’s Resurrection. It hadn’t seemed important at the time, and I wasn’t sure why it was now. Maybe they just wanted to know where she may have been hiding during the raids.

“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 for a while?” Aurora was looking at Aaron for an answer again, though I’m sure she would’ve taken a response from anyone.

He replied, “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.” Everyone looked disappointed to hear that response, but I thought we were getting off task a little bit. Why was this so important to everyone else? Honey was dead, after all, and Eliza and her team were on the tracks of the others.

“Who’s Eliza’s team after next? Is it someone whose head you can get into, Cassidy?” Now Hannah wanted me to help? I tried not to make a face at her as she continued. “Maybe you can find out if he’s been dormant all this time like Daunator or if he’s new.”

I wondered why Hannah didn’t already know who the next mark was, but once again, I bit back my true feelings. She didn’t seem like she’d been very involved when she was in charge. “It’s a guy named Sylvester. I can try.” Again, I wasn’t sure why this was important.

“Why would Daunator be giving these people up so quickly if they’ve been part of his clan for so long?” Elliott sounded irritated, like his head was about to explode. I was almost there.

“What do you mean?” Cadence asked. She wasn’t up to speed yet, apparently.

“I mean, if he’s all powerful, more powerful than Holland, why wouldn’t he put a shield around them, like she always did, keep the likes of Eliza from wiping them out?”

I had wondered the same thing but didn’t have an answer.

“Maybe he’s not capable? Or maybe he doesn’t need them anymore?” Jamie speculated.

“No, he’s definitely capable.” I felt certain with that response. “He’s able to produce an even more powerful shield than Holland. You guys, I hope you realize this dude is serious bad news. I mean, he makes Holland look like a knock-off Barbie version of a Vampire, like the kind you can get at the dollar store.” I glanced around, hoping they understood what I was saying. They may have thought they knew what we were up against, but I was the only one who’d been in his head.

***

They were all quiet, taking in my warning about Daunator’s power, until Aaron asked me, “Do you have any idea what his weaknesses are?”

I shook my head immediately. “I’m not sure if he has any.” The team didn’t like that, but it was true.

Hannah tried to sound optimistic. “Christian was working on some new weapons. Maybe those will be helpful.” She shrugged her shoulders, like she knew it was just wishful thinking.

“I don’t know.” I needed to convey to them that we shouldn’t count on that without tipping them off that I was aware that Christian had already tried to destroy the Vampire. Of course, he hadn’t used his new weapons, but from Christian’s description, it looked like the old one had done next to nothing. “It would have to be something like a nuclear bomb for Vampires.” Christian seemed pretty confident in his new grenade, but since he hadn’t tried that yet, I had my doubts.

“Well, without him here, it’s kind of hard to tell what it might be.” Aaron’s annoyance at the missing tech guy was beginning to help me understand that the Guardian Leader relied on Christian more than I had realized.

My sister spoke up. “My dad might know what Christian was working on. He works with him.”

“We can definitely ask him and the other people who’ve been working with Christian.” I was still waiting for them to tell me to contact Christian and wondered why they hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to suggest it myself. “Back to the monsters. Cass?”

“Yeah?” Why does he always have to say my name like that, like he’s about to ask me something I don’t want to answer?

“I know you said you can’t get into their heads, but we have a list of the missing persons. Maybe you could go through and select a few and see if you can reach them, or see what state they’re in. If they are not still humans or Vampires, then that means they might be our creatures.”

Before I could answer, Elliott said, “Or they might be dead.”

Cadence was trying to tell the funny jokes again. “Know a little bit about that do you?” She jabbed him playfully with her elbow.

He didn’t get a chance to answer her before Aaron said, “That is true. They might be dead, but Daunator wouldn’t send his people out to turn a bunch of people only to have most of them die.”

I hadn’t even had a chance to respond, but I agreed with him. I opened my mouth to say something, but Aurora jumped in. “So do you think we’re headed over there to face him ourselves soon?” She seemed excited.

“Most likely,” Aaron said, and I was glad to hear it, too. We needed to have left already. Days ago. “But if Christian’s going to be gone for another week, that will make it difficult.” He looked down at the papers in front of them. One was a map. Christian was there already....

“Why can’t we go without him?” Elliott asked. “It’s not like he’s that good of a shot, and quite honestly, life is more pleasant without him around.”

“If we decide to leave all of the unpleasant people behind, you can water our houseplants.” The bitterness rolling off of Aurora was unbecoming. It made me feel bad for her.

Elliott stared at her for a moment but thought better of responding, giving Aaron a chance to answer his question. “We need Christian, if that’s at all possible. He’s the most familiar with Daunator. He’s the one who knows what weapons might work, and he deserves to get to go on this trip after what he did with Hines and the portal.”

That settled the question of whether or not Aaron thought Christian deserved to stay on the team. Apparently, he was giving Christian a lot of credit for taking Hines into the portal with him.

Elliott wasn’t ready to go there. “You mean letting us walk in there like a bunch of chumps?” I couldn’t blame him for being mad about the entire situation. In fact, I was struggling to understand why Aaron wasn’t. “I mean, just to clarify, you do know this is the same jerk who knew about the portal but didn’t tell any of us, right?”

“I am aware.” Aaron was still calm, but I could tell he didn’t like Elliott questioning him. “He’s also the same guy who threw himself in there with Hines to try to get me out.”

“But that wouldn’t have been necessary if he would’ve told us about it in the first place.” Elliott and Aaron don’t argue very often, but I didn’t like it. I hoped they’d stop. “Jamie, back me up here.”

My eyes enlarged on behalf of my friend who was sitting next to me and looked just as shocked to hear his name as I had every time Aaron had spoken mine. He raised his hands, a sign he, too, wanted the arguing to stop. “Elliott, I’ve known Christian a lot longer than you have, but Aaron’s known him for the longest. And he probably has a better understanding of why he does what he does than we do. So....”

Elliott didn’t like Jamie’s diplomacy. “That is the opposite of back me up, Jamie.”

“He’s been hurt.”

I looked around, trying to figure out who had spoken, and realized it was me. I’d done it again, let my inner thoughts shoot out of my mouth. They were all looking at me like I was a crazy person. Maybe I was. I needed to work my way out of this situation before I said something Christian would want to kill me over.

But my sister didn’t let it go. “What are you talking about, Cass?”

My head shook back and forth quickly, but my thoughts didn’t clear. “Nothing. It’s not my story to tell. Only... I accidentally saw some things I shouldn’t have. Maybe we’ve been too quick to judge him.” I thought of the woman’s face I’d seen in Christian’s head, how he both loved and hated her, the betrayal he felt.

“Says the girl who ripped his face off,” Elliot muttered.