Chapter 56: Chapter 56

“Looks like I’m giving Tara her blood transfusion. With my own blood,” she said, wishing it was as easy as opening the refrigerator and pouring it down her throat like she’d seen Faye do with Bonnie only the night before.

“Just give me a second,” Jamie said, blinking a few times like his eyes wouldn’t focus.

“I don’t think she has a second,” Cadence replied, pulling up the sleeve of her sweater. The dried blood made a crunchy, ripping sound as she pulled it away, but she did her best to ignore it. “I gave Aaron the shots in Ireland. I can do this.”

“This… is so different.”

She shrugged. “Can’t be that hard. You do it.” She winked at him, hoping to at least boost his spirits with a bit of good natured ribbing even if she couldn’t restore his energy.

Tara had on a T-shirt so there was no need to pull anything up on her. Cadence took one of the alcohol wipe packets Jamie’d carried in and wiped down her arm. “Tourniquet next?” she asked, and he nodded. Looking at what he’d brought, it appeared as if she would be using two needles and some tubing to take the blood out of her arm and put it directly into Tara, rather than going through some sort of fluid bag. She shrugged, assuming he knew what he was doing.

She bent Tara’s elbow and began to pump her arm, trying to get a vein. If only she could scoop up some of the blood spattered throughout the building and reuse that.

The sound of heavy footsteps in the hallway drew her attention, and without letting go of Tara’s arm, she reached into the back of her waistband and pulled out her Glock.

“It’s me,” Brandon called before he got to the doorway, and Cadence dropped her weapon. “Cass sent me to check on Tara.”

“Well, Brandon, I’m not gonna lie to you. It doesn’t look good,” Cadence replied with a heavy sigh. “Luckily, Dr. Findley is here to conduct the world’s first ever self-inflicted blood transfusion.”

“No… just… no,” Jamie said, shaking his head, but Cadence could tell he was trying not to laugh. She didn’t really think this was the world’s first, but she couldn’t imagine it’d been done too often.

“You’re gonna do it?” Brandon asked, skeptical.

“Unless you want to.”

“Hell, no,” he replied. “All right. I’ll go tell her. Anything else I can do?”

“Nope, just go watch for Aurora and Meagan and make sure they get in okay. Help the Healers find all of the Guardians who need them,” she replied. She thought she saw a blue bulge in Tara’s arm and rested the girl’s elbow on her knee so she could try to show Jamie.

“’Kay,” Brandon muttered, turning and heading out the door. He almost collided with Dax, who was coming in, and Cadence didn’t miss the tension between them as they tried to skirt around each other, finally working it out.

“Wonder what that was all about,” she whispered to Jamie, but if he’d seen it, he had nothing to say. “Will this work?” she asked, gesturing at the vein as Dax approached Faye.

Jamie leaned toward Tara’s arm, and Cadence called over his shoulder, “What’s up, Dax?”

“Cass wanted me to see if Faye knows the security code,” he said, looking at the doctor who they easily could’ve mistaken for a corpse if they didn’t know a Vampire couldn’t kill a Guardian.

“I doubt she’s going to be able to help you much, but you can try,” she replied, turning her attention back to Jamie.

He seemed to have more energy now, and without a word, he began readying the needle. Cadence was relieved that he was able to insert it into Tara’s vein without causing so much as a whimper from the girl, and once he was finished with her, he gestured for Cadence to give him her arm and wiped it off with a new alcohol wipe.

“Don’t I need to….” Before she could finish her sentence, the needle was in her arm. “Okay, guess not.” She wondered why it was so easy for him to find a vein for her but knew there was no point in asking right now. A few seconds, and a little bit of tape, later, he was finished, and she watched a steady stream of red liquid flow out of her arm into Tara and hoped it didn’t just start springing out of various holes.

Dax was whispering with Faye, who seemed to be answering one way or another, and a few seconds later, he got up and ran out of the room.

“I guess she’s recovered a little bit.” Cadence tried not to look directly at her own arm. Blood didn’t make her queasy anymore, not since she’d seen it by the bucketful, but the fact that this was her own blood made it slightly different.

Jamie dropped down on the floor next to Tara and placed his hand on her shoulder. Cadence knew that was the best way for him to channel whatever energy he had left into the girl. “Jame, what do I do if you pass out? How will I know when she has enough blood, and I don’t have too little?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes,” he said without opening his eyes.

Luckily, the clock on her IAC was still working. “Okay. Sweet dreams, Sleeping Beauty,” she teased. He smiled and she was relieved to see the grimace on Tara’s face dissipate as his healing powers took over.

The computer wasn’t currently her friend, and Cassidy decided it was best not to randomly start punching in codes that could potentially lock it up altogether. In the distance, she could still hear the alarm that was doing its job and wished she could somehow communicate with it through telepathy.

Brandon’s footsteps were discernible to her ear by now, and she heard him slow down as he approached the desk. “Jamie and Cadence are giving her the blood transfusion now,” he said, standing back a good two feet from the glass partition, his hands in his pockets. “They still don’t know if it’s going to work, but Cadence seemed to be in a good mood.”

“Oh?” Cassidy asked, surprised to hear that.

“Giddy, maybe. She’s probably exhausted and just doesn’t know it yet.”

“Right,” Cassidy replied, definitely knowing the feeling.

“I’m going to go see if Aurora and Meagan have gotten the other Healers over here yet.” He was backing toward the door. Obviously, he was more bothered now than he had been before everything unfolded tonight, and Cassidy assumed it was because of Dax. Maybe by the time this was all over with, she’d feel like talking, but right now she couldn’t think about that any more than she could the fact that her arms ached for the precious child she’d never hold again. At least she hadn’t been there when Bonnie had passed, though she had heard her screams, and if she’d wanted to, she could’ve tapped into her mind.

She could tap into Brandon’s right now, though not in the same way. “Be careful,” she said, despite being sure all of the Vampires were gone except for one who was too scared to run. He was hiding in the basement, but he wouldn’t be for much longer as Aaron and Elliott were closing in on him. How she knew it was them, she wasn’t sure, but she did.

“You, too,” Brandon replied, bringing her out of her head. He approached the doors, but rather than use the one that was still intact, he used the butt of his Glock to knock the loose shards of glass hanging down from the broken one. They tinkled to the ground like a spill of ringing bells, an almost pleasant sound compared to the cacophony she’d encountered earlier, and even though she knew he’d broken the window out of frustration at her, she was almost glad for it.

Sitting there, waiting for Dax to return with the passcode, Cassidy closed her eyes and reached out into the darkness again. This time, she wasn’t feeling for their proximity but rather a reason. What had caused the Vampires to choose this time for their uprising? Had Bonnie been a plant, sent here to infiltrate them, or was it something else? Voice flooded her mind, snippets of conversation, angry frantic voices, and she assumed she was tuning in to the Vampires who were escaping. They seemed to be looking for others, perhaps to regroup and try again at a later date. She got phrases like, “child was defeated,” and “unsuccessful attack.” They did seem happy that the “communications were jammed.” Other voices made less sense, though she felt one in particular was stronger than the others. It almost seemed as if it were calling to her directly in a way. Cassidy concentrated harder, trying to pick up the distant voice. The words were fuzzy, not making any sense; as the melodic sound of the female’s voice sharpened, she picked up what sounded like, “born of the desert,” and remembered her dream, the one Mina had mentioned as well. With all of her concentration, she caught what seemed like, “come together soon.”

“Okay!” The sound of Dax’s voice jarred her back to Lena’s office. He was running in, speaking before he reached her. “It was really hard to understand her, but I think she said, the code is 10290315.”

Cassidy grabbed a pencil and a scrap of paper and wrote the numbers down, just to make sure they didn’t forget what they’d started with. Turning to the computer, she took a deep breath and typed them in. “Access denied. Dang it!” she said, slamming her hand down on the table.

Dax leaned over and looked at the numbers she’d written. “I’m pretty sure that’s what she said.” He puzzled over the numbers.

“Did she say anything else at all?” Cassidy asked, looking at the digits and trying to see if there were any numbers that might’ve been close enough to these in pronunciation that he could’ve misheard.

“Uh, she was trying to say something else, but I couldn’t understand her.”

Cassidy turned to look him in the eyes. “Like what? What did it sort of sound like?”

“I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Uh, maybe, bird ways, bird says. It didn’t make any sense.”

“Bird says?” Cassidy repeated. She turned back to the paper. “Bird says? What does a bird say?” Glancing at what she’d written down, she couldn’t put any of it together with fowls of any variety. “Bird… bert… birth… birthdays? Could she have said birthdays?”

“Yes! I bet that’s it!” Dax exclaimed, patting her on the shoulder. “But whose?”

“Good question,” Cassidy agreed. “Well, I’m guessing October and March are probably right. Because no other numbers really sound like zero or three. So, who has birthdays in October and March that would have anything at all to do with this place?”

“Aaron? Your sister?” Dax offered.

“I have no idea when Aaron’s birthday is,” Cassidy admitted. “And Cadence’s birthday is in September. But…” she wracked her brain trying to come up with who else might be important enough to have their birthdays be the code. “Wait a minute! This place has been here since before my dad was born.”

“So?” Dax asked, looking at her in confusion.

“So… it might not be Aaron’s and Cadence’s birthdays—it might be, my grandparents’ birthdays! October 29 was my grandma’s birthday, and I think my grandpa’s birthday was March 19.”

“Okay, well let’s try it.” Dax seemed just as enthusiastic as Cassidy did.

She spun around in her chair and typed in the new numbers. Drawing a deep breath, she hit “Enter,” and waited.

It seemed like the computer was taking forever, and she felt both of Dax’s hands on her shoulders but didn’t move. “Come on, come on,” she muttered.

“Alarm system off!” Dax read it aloud as Cassidy saw the same message pop up in front of them. Instantly, the buzzing in the hallway stopped, and Cassidy watched as her IAC flickered to life.

Overjoyed, she leapt out of her chair, thankful that something had gone right for a change. She threw her arms around Dax. “We did it!”

“You did it!” he replied as both of them jumped up and down with excitement. “That was awesome, Cass!”

“I couldn’t have done it without you!” She smiled up at him, still bouncing on the balls of her feet, but then she realized they weren’t alone. She slowly turned her head to see Brandon standing in the middle of the waiting room, his face ashen and his eyes wide.

“Congratulations,” he said, his tone conveying more than the simple word, and without another utterance, he headed back the way he’d come.

“Brandon, wait!” Cassidy yelled after him, but he didn’t stop, and she felt torn. As much as she wanted to chase after him, she needed to go check on Tara.

“Sorry,” Dax mumbled, clearly not needing an explanation as to what had just happened.

“No, it’s not your fault,” Cassidy assured him. With a deep breath, she forced a smile and said, “I’m going to go check on Tara.”

“Mind if I come with you?”

Cassidy turned to look back at the remnants of doorway where Brandon had disappeared before saying, “No, not at all.”