Cadence reached for her Glock at the same time he moved, rushing her and dragging his claws across her face as he wrapped his hands around her neck. She should’ve been faster, should’ve realized this was another trick. But she’d let her emotions interfere with her judgment, and now, she found herself in a compromising position as this Vampire twisted her around to face the building, blood dripping from both cheeks.
She wondered why he didn’t attempt to kill her right then, not that she wouldn’t fight him to the bitter end. He was strong, and she imagined Holland was doing everything within her power at the moment to strengthen this one beast. But as he spun her around, she could see his dilemma. Aaron came bursting out the hole that used to be the warehouse door, and though she could see he was struggling, blood stains all down his left side, he had his Glock pointed at the monster behind her.
“Go ahead! Pull the trigger. I’m sure you’re lovely won’t mind being bitten by titanium.” Cadence glanced up to see he’d taken his regular form, or at least he didn’t look like Alex anymore. His build was similar—tall and lithe—but he had stringy blond hair and a pock-marked face. She wanted to reach over and bite his cheek just to see him squirm, but instead she decided to hold still and let the Guardian Leader do what he did best, negotiate. In the meantime, she knew she could take this asshole, despite the fact that he had a gun pointed at her temple.
“Let her go, Fergus. You know you can’t walk out of here alive,” Aaron said, his voice deceptively smooth as she noticed the hand by his side shaking.
“But won’t my mistress be so proud to know I managed to take out both of you on my way out?” he countered, and Cadence realized what he intended to do. It wouldn’t be easy, even with all of Holland’s power coursing through his veins. Use her hand to shoot Aaron, and then kill her. She would never let it happen.
Aaron had figured it out, too, of course. “She could knock you out right now if she wanted to. You’re not stronger than her. Holland has no idea what she’s dealing with.”
“Doesn’t she, though? Don’t you think she knows everything you do? And her name is Asteria!” With that, he stretched his claws up from around Cadence’s neck and grabbed a lock of her hair, ripping it out. Cadence’s scalp stung, and she felt more blood spilling down the side of her face as he let what looked like half of her hair fall to the ground.
Pissed, she delivered a blow to his ribcage with her elbow. He stumbled back but kept his grip on her and brought the end of the pistol he held down hard into her bleeding scalp. Cadence saw stars and thought she might throw up. Maybe he was stronger than she’d thought.
Without her IAC, she couldn’t communicate with Aaron to know when to move so he could get a clear shot. She noticed they had drawn attention from the top floor of the warehouse though, and she wished some of those people were down here so they could sneak around behind this ass, but by the time one of them got downstairs and went all the way around, she might be unconscious already. Her head was pounding so hard, she could hardly keep her eyes open. If only Jamie were here with his fancy blue pain-relieving orbs.
They were negotiating, or at least Aaron was trying to. It was hard to hear what was happening with the fuzz in her head. She felt herself starting to weaken, her knees wanting to fold, but tried to keep herself conscious. She needed to be able to fight. An electrical pulse seemed to vibrate throughout the Vampire, and Cadence assumed that meant Holland was pooling her power here. It would just be a matter of time until Cadence slipped into oblivion, and then he could use her hand for whatever he wanted. Surely, Aaron would be fast enough to get out of the way.
Her head began to bob, and the Vampire didn’t seem to like that much. He crashed the butt of the gun into the bloody mess of flesh he’d already assaulted twice, and Cadence felt her skull crack, heard the crunch in her ears. That was no way to keep her conscious, and as her head slumped forward once more, she heard the explosion of fire mingling with gunpowder, and the whole world went black.
* * *
Elliott was floating, and not in the sort of way one feels when they’ve been on a boat and their feet are back on dry land again, but his body was literally being picked up off of the floor and made to stand upright. He managed to crack one eye slightly and saw that Cassidy was next to him, her hands out in front of her. “I thought I told you to stay put,” he reminded her.
“I’m not known for listening or following directions.”
Willing himself to become conscious was quite the feat, and he hadn’t made it there yet, but another yelp from Meagan had him coming to much more quickly, and he tried moving his arms only to find Cassidy must’ve placed his Glock back in his hand. “If only I could move it.”
“Tell you what, I’ll move you, and you put everything you’ve got into aiming that gun, okay? I am pretty sure the stuff in your DNA that won’t allow you to die can combat whatever the hell was in that syringe. You just gotta want it.”
“Well, don’t you sound like a fitness commercial. All right. Let’s go.”
The funhouse looked even more ghoulish with his eyes slitted and everything fuzzy. He was glad he didn’t have to worry about any of the uneven floors as Cassidy moved him toward the sound of crying and a commotion in another room. They rounded the corner, and he saw Sam with a gun pointed at Meagan, Brandon in a standoff with him, negotiating, but getting nowhere.
“Jamie’s less than a minute out,” Cassidy said in his head, and he was thankful he didn’t need to expend any energy to discover that for himself.
