Cassidy did her best to shake off her encounter with Brandon, but even after a quick sprint on her treadmill, she still felt wrong about the whole situation. She wanted to reach out to him, to call him, to let him know she was sorry for keeping secrets from him. Maybe she should’ve told him what Alex had said, or about what Christian was up to. She knew the biggest strain on their relationship had been the fact she wasn’t telling Brandon everything, and her own experience told her how unsettling it was to know someone you care about is keeping something massive from you.
It was too late to go back and tell him now, though. And if she let him read Alex’s letter, he might be even more mad at her than he was already. As for Christian, she needed to check in with him. It had been a couple of hours, and there was a chance he was ready for her to get help.
Still dripping sweat from her sprint, she sat down on the couch and closed her eyes. “You okay?”
“Well, I’m still in a hole in the ground. I can’t see a damn thing. Oh, and a psychotic Vampire showed up a little while ago and called all of my weapons rudimentary.”
“Wait—what? Daunator showed up? Did you kick his ass?”
“Yes, I did. That’s why I’m on my way home right now instead of still stuck in a hole in the ground.”
“You could have kicked his ass and not be home right now because you are stuck in a hole in the ground, smart ass.”
“No, Cassidy. I did not kick his ass! I emptied an entire clip into him and tossed a grenade his direction, and absolutely nothing happened at all, except for maybe a pithy amount of smoke.”
Cassidy was quiet for a second, not sure how to respond. She knew Christian had been counting on those weapons to at least weaken him enough so that he could use his knife or some other secret weapon he’d concocted to take the monster out. “Is it time for someone to come get you now, then?”
“No. Not yet. I need to try again.”
“Christian....”
“Cassidy, don’t. I will find a way to defeat him. Something in my arsenal has to be useful against him.”
She had no idea why he would think that had to be the case, but she could read his moods well enough by now to understand there was no point in arguing with him. “All right. Well, is there anything I can do?”
“Not that I can think of.”
She hated leaving him in that position, but if there was nothing else, she had other things on her list, like telling Eliza that Heather was no help with her minions. She could go talk to Schmitz or someone else about them. “All right. I guess I’ll go then. I’ll check in on you soon.”
“Okay. Oh—one more thing, Cassidy. I’m not alone.”
She had been just about to leave his head when he spoke again. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, there are other people down here. I can’t see them because it’s too damn dark, but I could hear them. And Daunator mentioned them as well.”
“Can you walk to them? Could you find them that way? How many? Who are they?”
“That is a shitload of questions, none of which I can answer. I don’t know who they are or where they are, and I’m sure as hell not going to go wandering around down here in the dark. For all I know, I could end up falling into an even deeper hole.”
The idea that there were other people down there was both intriguing and terrifying to her. “All right. But do you think they’re people? Are we talking a few or a couple dozen?”
“I don’t know!”
“Could you make a reasonable guess?”
“If I had to, I’d say a hundred. Maybe more.”
Cassidy’s mouth dropped open. She hadn’t expected him to say there were that many. “Okay.”
“All right. Talk to you later.”
“Yeah.” Cassidy got out of his head since he clearly wanted to be alone, but the idea that there were at least a hundred other people trapped underground by a monster the likes of Daunator was unsettling to say the very least. She didn’t know how much longer she could go without mentioning this to someone, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t be long, especially since it seemed like Christian wasn’t going to be able to handle this on his own.
* * *
Hannah went back over the footage Mila had sent her one more time before she determined she needed a second, or third, opinion on what she was looking at. She desperately wished Aaron and Cadence were back. In all of her years as a Guardian, she’d never wished to be the leader, not even once. How she’d gotten to be second in command was still a fluke to her. She’d always thought it should’ve been Jamie. But she was the one everyone answered to, at least for the time being, so she decided to call in the rest of the leadership team, the three that were there, and see what they could determine.
Luckily for her, the others weren’t busy and said they’d be over shortly. Unluckily for her, with there only being four of them in the room, the uncomfortable situation between Elliott and Aurora would be impossible to avoid. She really wished the pair of them had never gotten together in the first place, and while she could use her powers to make Aurora calmer than she would normally be around Elliott, she couldn’t persuade him much at all, not since he’d come back from the dead.
Jamie arrived first, a smile on his face that indicated he’d been with Ashley most of the day, followed by Aurora, who looked almost as nervous as Hannah was concerned, and Elliott sauntered in last, trying to look nonchalant.
