“Hey, this is Paul. I’m really sorry for taking off like that, but something came up. I wanted you to know that I’m okay. I’ll… I’ll be in touch in a day or two, but… I just had to go. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
“Paul, where the hell are you?” Aaron asked, shocked to have heard from the Melbourne Area Leader at all. “We’ve been worried sick.”
“Are you all right?” Cadence asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. But my IAC isn’t working right. I’m going to switch it off. Just… wait for me to call, okay?”
“Paul, I need to know where you are.”
“I’m on my way to take care of a family problem. It’s fine. Really. Talk to you in a few days.”
“Paul? Paul!” Aaron’s cries went unanswered as the other man’s IAC went dead. The Guardian Leader tried to force it back on, something he could do with everyone’s IACs under normal circumstances, except for Cadence’s, but it wouldn’t come back on, no matter how hard he tried. It had been the same earlier when he’d tried to access the man he’d known for decades and had always trusted to get the job done. Something wasn’t adding up.
“It won’t come back on,” Cadence said, obviously having tried herself.
“Yeah, that… something wasn’t right about that.”
“Cadence, Aaron, I just got a strange message from Paul,” Becky was saying.
“Did he say he had to go take care of a family matter?” Aaron asked the Hunter whose voice was shaking even over the IAC.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t really make sense. Paul isn’t close with his family.”
“No, I don’t have any idea what is happening, but… I think you go ahead with your search, Becky. I’ll have someone here check flights, hotels, that sort of thing, but we’ve had so many odd things going on with the IACs recently, I don’t think we step down our game because of this.”
“Okay.” She seemed relieved that he hadn’t ordered her to back down, which was reassuring to him that he’d made the right call in not buying whatever it was that had just happened. “Are you planning on coming here to help?”
“Cadence and I were just about to discuss that,” he replied, realizing he’d let other matters, ridiculous ones, get him sidetracked. “We’ll get a plan together and let you know. Of course, if you find him, you won’t need us.”
“Right. Hopefully, we will.” Becky didn’t sound as confident as he would’ve liked.
“Be careful, Becky. Remember, these Vampires are a lot stronger than what we are used to. A Guardian can recover from a ripped out throat, as painful as it might be, but you’re not gonna last if it happens to you or another Hunter, even if you happened to have a powerful Healer.”
“We’ll be careful,” Becky assured them. “Especially since Paul is our only Healer.”
“Keep us posted, Becky. And take your cell phone with you, just in case. I don’t know if what they’re doing to the IACs will jam them up as well, or if they won’t think about it, but it’d be best if you have at least two ways of communicating.”
“Yes, sir,” Becky replied, her voice quaking a bit. “I’ll report as soon as I can.”
She left her IAC on so they could access what was going on but went about getting her team together, and Aaron returned his attention to Cadence. “We’re going to have to head over there.”
His fiancée nodded. “We can’t take Christian and Elliott, though. Is there another tech person with similar skills?”
“No.” He wished there was, but Christian really was the best they had, even if what was happening right now sort of made him look like a failure. “It would make more sense to take Christian and leave Elliott.” Her expression said she wouldn’t even hear of it, so he let that idea go. “My second choice would be Hattie.”
“The Guardian from the Billings team?” Cadence clarified.
Impressed that she remembered someone she hadn’t seen in a while, he nodded. “She won’t be as effective, and he will be pissed.”
“I don’t really give a rat’s ass about his feelings at the moment.” She clearly wasn’t letting what he’d said about her sister go. “I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to Ashley yet, but I don’t feel like I owe Christian anything.”
“You didn’t before, did you?”
She shrugged dismissively. “Okay. We have to take Cass, even though it’s dangerous.”
“Right. Which means we have to take Brandon.”
“And Jamie. I’m not walking into God knows what without him.”
“If we leave Cale here, that makes Reno particularly vulnerable.” Keeping both continents strong was a balancing act, and any slip up could be disastrous.
Cadence leaned back in her chair. “Look, I think we need to establish what our objective is here, don’t we?”
“It’s to find Paul, and if they have him, rescue him.” It seemed simple enough to Aaron.
“So it’s not to hunt down whatever came through that portal and destroy it?”
“Do you think it should be? I mean, we don’t even know that the demonic Vampire or Vampires that came through are what have Paul. This could be another situation like with Bonnie where another entity has been strengthened, but we can’t cut off the head of the snake right now because we aren’t sure this is it.”
She nodded. “You’re right.” Leaning forward, she continued “But I have a feeling it is.”
Something about her eyes made him think she might be right, even though there was very little evidence to support her intuition. There weren’t a disproportionate amount of Xs in the Melbourne area compared to any of the other cities that seemed to be on the Vampire hit list, which he’d estimated to be nine or ten, depending upon where the trackers were currently located, data he did not have. “Why don’t we have Cassidy do some probing into the area and see what she comes up with. If she feels like this is the epicenter, then we’ll think about the numbers again, okay?”
She inhaled heavily and weighed her response. “Okay.” Her tone was meditative as she continued, “I have to get back to the operating room now. Tara’s awake.”
