The meeting was over and everyone except for Christian was sitting around chatting about nothing in particular when the sound of hurried footsteps approaching from the hallway caught their attention enough to make Elliott pause mid-sentence, which was significant to Cadence. A few seconds later, the office door burst open and Brandon flew in, out of breath. “Why the hell isn’t anyone answering their IACs?”
“What are you talking about?” Cadence asked as everyone leapt to their feet. She’d been getting plenty of notifications all night from several different area leaders.
“What’s going on?” Aaron asked already standing in front of Brandon even though a nanosecond earlier he’d been all the way on the other end of the table.
“Cass… the tagging center. Something’s wrong at the tagging center.”
Immediately, Cadence tried to reach her sister and had absolutely no luck even forcing a signal. There was a stash of weapons in a locker across the room, and Aaron was handing them out as she imagined he was also trying to make contact with the Guardians who worked in the outer building.
“What’s going on over there?” Elliott asked his son, resting his hand on his shoulder to steady him.
“I don’t know. She said she couldn’t get ahold of any of you. Something bad happened. I only got a flicker of what was actually going on before her visuals cut out, but it looked like there was a lot of blood.”
“Holy hell,” Elliott muttered.
“Aurora, stay here,” Aaron said as the Hunter reached for a weapon.
“What? Why?” she asked, clearly shocked.
“Because we don’t know what we’re walking in to. I don’t allow Hunters over there for a reason. Stay here, get on the PA system and make an announcement that all available Guardians need to arm themselves and move to the tagging centers. All Hunters are to stay inside with their doors locked until given the all clear.”
“But it’s our job to fight Vampires,” Cadence argued.
Aaron turned and looked at her. “You don’t know what you don’t know, Cadence. Until we get this straightened out, I’m not putting anyone at risk who doesn’t have to be.”
“And what about me?” she asked, staring into his troubled blue eyes.
Shrugging, he said, “I know I can’t make you do anything.”
“Aurora, make the announcement. Stay here,” Cadence said to her friend who nodded but still seemed more than a little disappointed that she wouldn’t be allowed to go with the Guardians.
With no more time to think about that, Cadence joined the group of Guardians and headed toward the stairs, which would be faster than the elevator. Their heavy footsteps echoed off of the concrete, all of them stepping almost in unison except for Aaron who was long gone before the rest of them even hit the first floor.
“Damn. It’s like watching lightning, isn’t it?” Elliott asked, holding the door open for the rest of the team as they hit the hallway and then the front door.
Sprinting to the tagging center took less than a minute, and they were almost there before Aurora’s announcement came over the PA and a similar one flooded all of their IACs. However, the second they stepped through the gate, which Cadence assumed Aaron must’ve left open for them because it was ajar when they arrived, all IAC activity stopped completely. Even the information she’d been getting from other areas faded away. She made eye contact with the rest of her team and realized they must’ve all lost their signals simultaneously.
“Yeah, they’re fail proof all right,” Jamie muttered beside her.
“If I start talking about monkeys or shit, go ahead and shoot me again, Cadence,” Elliott joked, and she assumed he was alluding to whatever had happened in the Blue Moon nightclub.
The door to the facility was open, too, and Cadence felt uneasy about leaving the gate and the front door standing open. “Brandon, stay here,” she said. “We can’t leave this unsecure.”
“But Cass is in there,” he argued, turning to look at her, his eyes searching.
“I know. And as soon as anyone else arrives, you can leave them here and come in, but I don’t like leaving our tails exposed.”
Just as Aurora’s protest had been silent, so was Brandon’s and he gave a slight nod, keeping his feet planted as he shifted so that he could see both the door and the gate. She had no doubt he’d be behind them a few seconds later, regardless of whether or not another Guardian showed up to take his place.
It didn’t take them long to find the first hallway splattered with blood Brandon had mentioned, and then the source of the blood. Just as Cadence was pausing to assess the welfare of the four Guardians in the hall, a commotion down the hallway toward the office area had them all moving again. A scream she recognized as her sister’s pierced her in the heart, and Cadence found it within her to speed up so that she thought she might even be able to beat Aaron in a footrace like she could before Ireland.
They rounded a corner, and the office doors came into view in front of them. Cadence was far ahead of the other three now, but as she was questioning how many Guardian’s worth of blood it took to turn the doors such a macabre shade of red, the frosted glass on the left side shattered and Aaron came flying through it.
Instinctively, Cadence tossed her Glock up into the air behind her, reaching out with her left hand to catch him, securing him against her chest with her right. As if it had been rehearsed, Elliott snatched her weapon out of the air, just as Cadence went flying backward into Jamie, who was able to brace all three of them against the wall.
Once she regained her balance, Cadence realized the sound of gunfire directly beside her was filling her ears, but she couldn’t pull her eyes off of her fiancé. He was coated in a thick, red, sticky substance. Blood. And it was his.
His throat was ripped open almost completely across. Cadence stared in horror as she lay him down on the ground. Jamie had moved around her, as had Hannah, chasing after whatever Elliott had been shooting at, but Cadence couldn’t stop staring slack jawed at Aaron. His blood spilled down the front of his shirt, the one she’d brought him back from their apartment after dinner just a few hours ago so he wouldn’t be wrinkly for their meeting.
“What… what?”
“Go—” he somehow managed to whisper. “Bonnie.”
“Bonnie?” Cadence repeated. “Bonnie?”
He nodded, and she realized if the child Vampire had done this, he would live, though the wound looked ghastly. She decided Jamie must’ve somehow come to the conclusion this was the work of a Vampire more quickly than she had or else he never would’ve left the Leader’s side.
Pulling herself together, Cadence took two deep breaths and took off after the team, which she thought had turned left in front of the office, but having no IAC, she didn’t know for sure.
“Cadence!”
She’d just turned the corner when she heard Cassidy’s voice behind her. She stopped in her tracks. “Are you okay?” she shouted, running back toward her. There was blood all down the front of her, and it looked like her arms were bleeding.
“I’m fine, but we need Jamie. It’s Tara! She’s dying!”
“Okay. Where?”
“In the playroom.” Cassidy was trembling, and Cadence wanted to stay with her, to comfort her, but the sound of gunfire down the hall told her that the other three were likely in trouble.
