Cassidy Findley sat alone on the top of the trainee apartment building in a comfortable wicker chair with thick pillows Brandon Keen, her boyfriend of about three weeks, had set up for her here. She decided that the higher the elevation, the nearer the atmosphere, the quieter, the more alone she felt, the better her chances of feeling into the darkness to see what she could discover. It was more than a little comforting, however, to know that he was just on the other side of the door that led back into the building, should the process freak her out.
Her older sister Cadence had asked her a few hours ago to see if she could figure out what was going on with the Vampires. Cadence had gone over how Aaron had discovered there were a lot of incidents occurring around locations having to do with travel, and the Leaders wanted to know if there was anything she could find out by probing into the darkness. So far, since she’d made contact with Gibbon in Philadelphia about three weeks ago, Cassidy hadn’t tried to use her gift to reach out beyond her own consciousness. From time to time, she would catch snippets of conversation, but it was nothing like it had been leading up to the blue moon, when she’d been actually trying to figure out what was happening. For some reason, she’d felt fairly calm about everything, as if the Vampires were content with their own existences and were just going about their lives, trying to be like normal people. While she was aware she’d had a bad dream the week before, she couldn’t really remember it and didn’t see the point in trying to drag it back to memory unless and until it became necessary.
The stars were visible above her, even with the bright lights of downtown Kansas City off in the distance. A slight breeze stirred her hair, and she closed her eyes, trying to reach her thoughts out into the night, searching for those like her.
Initially, nothing happened, but then she began to hear static, like on a radio station that’s not quite tuned in. Snippets of conversation followed—nothing that seemed important. Sometimes all she could make out was the rhythm of discussion, the back and forth between two voices, without knowing what they were saying. Every once in a while she’d catch a word or phrase.
Cassidy reached her mind out further, thought about the RV park her sister had mentioned to her. Tried to think specifically about Butler, Missouri, a town she’d never visited but had looked up on her IAC. “What’s going on?” she called into the darkness. “Who’s there?”
It took a moment, but a jarring sensation sent her gasping for breath as visions filled her mind. A small house on a hill, a long time ago. Women in flowing dresses. Tall grass blowing in the wind. A dark night—an attack. And then… a change. She’d seen these things before, twice now. It was like she was stepping into the memories of that Vampire, and she realized she was in the mind of an older woman, one who’d been turned long ago, perhaps in the early 1800s.
“Who are you?” the woman asked, her voice crackling with age and distance, perhaps a bit of caution.
“A friend,” she replied. Cassidy had no way of knowing whether or not the woman could also see her own thoughts, how she’d been turned. If so, she might see more than just Zabrina scratching her. She might see Jamie injecting the Transformation serum that had saved her. Cassidy tried to concentrate on Zabrina’s face as her jaw had stretched beyond the limits of human capacity so that, if the other Vampire could see into her mind, she might think she was just like her. “Where is everyone going?”
If the woman was suspicious of her, there was no indication of it in her response. “The time is now,” the woman replied, each word measured. “We must get into place.”
“Into place for what?” Cassidy asked. More images flickered in front of her. She saw a crowd around a campfire, ten, maybe twelve laughing smiling faces. People of all ages, drinking, joking. Telling stories. Behind them, she could see RVs parked in rows. Cassidy got the impression this is where the woman was now. These people were not people anymore, not in the true sense of the word.
The television station in her mind began to flicker. The picture was gone, but then back again. Cassidy concentrated, trying to tune the frequency. “Into place for what?”
As the woman began to fade from her grasp, a one word answer came through loud and clear. “Destruction.”
Elliott headed back to headquarters late in the afternoon the next day. He’d originally wanted to storm out of Amanda’s house and never look back after the way she’d dismissed his offer of help, but he realized that there was no way he could leave her to fend on her own, not in the shape she was in, so he’d taken care of a few things before starting the drive back to KC, which would’ve taken about twice as long if he’d been a human.
He pulled to a stop in front of the apartment building about a quarter till six, which left him more than an hour to get himself together in time to head to the pre-Hunt meeting Aaron had told him about earlier in the day. Part of him wanted a good stiff drink; the rest of him never wanted to touch alcohol again for the rest of his life. And if Aaron was right, that would be a really, really long time.
Juan Diego Arriaga, one of the humans who worked on campus, came out the door, and Elliott tossed him the keys. The guy was always real nervous around him, and Elliott heard rumors he was convinced he was a ghost. Even though Elliott couldn’t remember ever meeting him, apparently, he’d seen him carry Cadence into the hospital when she’d gotten shot by Laura Comer and been the custodian at the school where they’d taken out Cowboy Sam—after Elliott had died. Now, Juan Diego was always nice enough to help out by re-parking the cars Elliott brought in, but he never wanted to chat and certainly wouldn’t have shook the Guardian’s hand.
