Cadence shot straight up off of the hammock she’d been dosing on and nearly flipped it over. If Aaron hadn’t been awake and alert, they may have both ended up in the sand.
“Cadence? Are you all right?”
Despite the fact that she was lounging on the beach during the hottest part of the day, and the tropical sun was almost right above her, goosebumps covered her arms, and the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end. “I don’t think so.”
“What’s the matter?” Without rolling the hammock, he managed to sit up, too, so he could look her in the eyes.
“I just had the craziest dream I’ve ever had in my entire life. And that’s saying something.”
“I’ll say. What happened?” He tilted his sunglasses down so she could see his eyes, and there was nothing but concern within those clear blue orbs.
Cadence settled back, and Aaron did the same, keeping his arm around her as she thought about the nightmare. It had all seemed so real. “I was on a hunt. I’m not sure where. A city—but an unfamiliar one. I was after some woman. I can’t remember her name.... Something edible, like Sugar, or Sweetie. But that wasn’t it.” She glanced over at him, and Aaron nodded, showing he was following. “She wasn’t that hard to take down, but for some reason, as I was battling her by myself, the rest of the team I was with took off running. I didn’t get a very good look at most of them, so I’m not sure if they were really members of LIGHTS or just people my mind made up. But anyway, I thought it was so weird that they all took off. Until the Vampire was dead, and then I realized I was hearing a weird sound, and I looked up at the top of the buildings.”
“What did you see?” He was stroking her hair, which was comforting, but it didn’t do much to keep the vivid images out of her head.
“There were these creatures crawling down the sides of the buildings, on both sides of the street where I was standing. There had to be dozens, maybe hundreds of them.”
“What did they look like?”
“They were all black—like they’d been burned, but not charred. Just all the color of a black crayon. Their clothes were all black, too. And some of them looked like they were wearing costumes, like clothes from a really long time ago or something. Anyway, I tried to back down the street, to get away from them, but they caught up to me. Bullets took them out, but there were so many of them. And when they clawed at me, or bit into my skin, it hurt. There was blood—from me. Their blood, from them whenever I landed a slash with the knife I was carrying, was a dark red, almost black color.”
“That’s really weird.” Aaron tipped his head back, thinking about it for a moment, and Cadence wondered if he’d ever seen anything like it before. From his response, she’d say probably not. “Did you get away?”
“Eventually.” She thought back to the SUV pulling up behind her and how she’d fought her way over to it. “The team came back to get me, in a vehicle.” Another memory came back to her then, out of nowhere, and the strangeness of it had her staring up at the sky for a moment, puzzled.
“What is it Cadence? Why are you making that face?”
“When the guy opened the door and yelled for me to come on, he didn’t call me Cadence.”
“What did he call you?”
“Eliza.”
* * *
Cassidy opened her eyes, a cold sweat drenching her from head to toe, and her heart pounding inside of her chest so hard, she thought she might be having a heart attack. She grabbed her iPhone off of the nightstand next to her bed and opened an app she’d installed that monitored her heart rate and saw that it was 230 beats per minute, way too fast, especially since she was just sitting on her bed. But going that deep into someone else’s subconscious, something she’d only meddled with a few times before, was a huge strain.
Taking deep breaths, she did her best to bring her pulse to a reasonable rate, and after a few minutes, she tried again and saw that it was down to 180 and dropping fast, which was much more reasonable. Normally, her heart rate was slower than average, at around 50 beats per minute. Even when she was sprinting on the treadmill, it didn’t climb above 200, but this little adventure she’d just gone on had clearly demanded more of her body than one might’ve thought necessary.
It had worked though. She could feel it while she was planting the images in her sister’s brain. She’d tried contacting her the old fashion way—first through her IAC, which hadn’t been answered because Cadence’s was still off, and then through telepathy. But that hadn’t worked because Cadence was asleep. Which is why it was necessary for Cassidy to infiltrate her dreams.
It hadn’t exactly been the IAC footage from the hunt she’d plugged into her sister’s mind. Rather, it was her own interpretation of what had happened, how she remembered it. If she could find a way to take actual footage and put it in someone’s dream, that would be amazing. But it also might make her heart explode, so there was that. Still, she’d gotten her point across, and when Cadence woke up in a panic, it was because the dream had seemed so real. Hopefully, it would be enough to make her sister get her butt on a plane.
Granted, they were supposed to head home the next day anyway, but it was a long flight, even on a private jet, and Cassidy needed Cadence to get there now so they could figure out what the hell those black monsters were and how they could stop them if they attacked in a large mass like that again. Besides, Christian was having no luck with Daunator, and Cassidy had a feeling the two were related. She just didn’t know how.
Christian had said not to contact him, that he’d reach out if he needed her. But Cassidy couldn’t help but drop in on him every once in a while. He’d been roaming the forests near Klet for several hours now and hadn’t had any luck at all. He seemed to be under the impression all he’d have to do was show up and announce to the monster that he was open for business, and Daunator would come out to fight him. Cassidy wasn’t surprised it wasn’t working that way. She’d try her best to give him until Cadence and Aaron got back to interrogate him, but she couldn’t promise she’d wait that long. As it was, she was pretty sure Eliza had already reached out to him to see if he knew what those creatures were. Cassidy never probed deeply into his mind because she wanted to stay undetected, but he was puzzling over something as he traipsed through the forests in the dead of night, and it wasn’t what he was going to eat for breakfast.
She ran a hand over her forehead, not surprised that she was still clammy, even though her pulse seemed back to normal. It skipped a few beats when she remembered the conversation she’d had with Brandon earlier. She should go talk to him. But then... he hadn’t seemed to want to talk about it. The whole thing was her fault. She’d been so distant lately, since Alex had died, since Brandon had come back. She needed to get her shit in one sock, as Elliott liked to say. But something was keeping her from doing that. The idea that Brandon wouldn’t be patient and just wait for her to figure it out was a stab in the gut. Maybe he was right, and they did need a break. Maybe they needed a long one. Or maybe she needed to run down to his apartment and beat the door down.
Tossing herself backward onto her pillows, she closed her eyes, trying to decide whether or not she should reach out to her sister again. Was it really so bad to ask her to come home one day early? Was she having so much fun in Fiji she wouldn’t want to know there was a new kind of monster on the prowl in Eastern Europe?
For now, Cassidy decided to just be still and let the universe do what it was going to do. She could do that. She could be patient... for an hour or so. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to wait too much longer than that because it was driving her crazy.
