“I sent Christian a text, but who knows if he even took his phone,” Aaron continued.
“Surely he did,” Aurora said. “Who goes on vacation and doesn’t take their phone?”
“I hope he did, but until he gets in touch, I’ll be a little concerned about him,” Aaron said.
“Why? He just threw you in a portal.” Cassidy was clearly not over the situation, even if Christian had done his best to redeem himself later.
“I’ve known Christian a really long time, Cass. He doesn’t always make good decisions. In fact, he makes a lot of really horrible, dangerous decisions, but that doesn’t mean I want him to get hurt—or worse.”
“I don’t think he’d say the same thing about you,” Cassidy mumbled, and Aaron chose to ignore it.
“Well, I for one could care less if he fell off the face of the earth.” Elliott said it like it was the gospel truth.
“Couldn’t care less,” Aurora corrected him. “If you could care less, it means you care a lot.”
Once again, Cadence found herself squeezing Elliott’s hand. “Want me to list the other things I couldn’t care less about?” Elliott asked, glaring at Aurora.
“Why don’t we see if we can track Christian’s cell phone?” Jamie suggested. “That something Emma could do, Cassidy?”
“Uh, probably. I can ask her.”
“I’ll ask her,” Aaron said in such a way that let Cadence know he was also suspicious of her little sister. “She’s been doing some other work for us. I’ll see if she can track it down so at least we’ll know if he has it with him or not. Where did he go, Hannah?”
“Hawaii,” she said quickly. “He’s supposed to be back next week. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get in touch with him before then.” She looked unsettled, which was odd for Hannah, like she was worried about him.
“Well, we should definitely be able to distinguish whether or not his phone is in Hawaii or Kansas City, assuming it’s on,” Cadence noted.
Aaron finally sat down, which seemed to make everyone a little less nervous, and Cadence would’ve reached for his hand under the table if she wasn’t already trying to control Elliott with her other hand. “Let’s talk about these new monsters. What do we know?” Aaron pulled up the video they’d watched in Hannah’s office on the screens around them.
“They’re all black,” Elliott said.
“They have red eyes,” Jamie added.
“Some of them dress weird,” Aurora said.
“They crawl down walls face first, and they bleed some deep reddish black liquid when you cut them,” was Hannah’s contribution.
“Anything else, Cass?”
“Uh, yeah. They appeared from the rooftops and went back up that way. That’s where Honey was keeping the band of Vampire’s she’d recently turned when Eliza and Sergio first ran into them. It could be related. Also, Heather said they reminded her a little of the demons in the portal, except that these are people and not creatures, and they bleed when they get injured.”
“Can you get inside of any of their minds?” Cadence asked her sister.
“No, I tried the other night during the hunt, but I couldn’t jump from Eliza to any of them.”
“You were watching this hunt?” Elliott asked, gesturing at the video. Something about the way he phrased it made Cadence think he knew she’d been watching a hunt, just not this one.
“Yeah, Eliza asked me for my help in finding Honey.”
“Why didn’t I know about this?” Hannah asked, her forehead crinkled.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, Mila didn’t either.” Cassidy laughed half-heartedly and then swallowed hard. “I didn’t say anything to you because none of you seemed to care about what was going on over there. When I brought the numbers to you last week, you all said just wait.”
“But you didn’t wait,” Hannah reminded her.
“You’re right, I didn’t. What was I supposed to do? Tell Eliza I couldn’t help her?”
“You should’ve checked with me first,” Hannah said. “I was in charge.”
“Technically, since she’s a Hunter, she should’ve checked with me,” Aurora said, her tone not nearly as hostile as it had been when she was talking to Elliott but not her normal carefree self either.
Hannah didn’t seem to want to argue. “All right, so did she check with you?”
“No.” Aurora turned and looked at Cassidy, a questioning look on her face.
“I didn’t check with anyone. I just helped.” Looking at Cadence, she asked, “Am I supposed to help people when they ask, or get permission first? Am I not allowed to decide when I can use my own powers?”
“I don’t think it matters now,” Cadence replied, looking at all three ladies. “I can see why you would just help out in this situation, but if it happens again, make sure you tell me, or Aurora, or whoever is in charge, what’s going on as soon as you can, just to keep us informed. No one is telling anyone else how to use their special powers.” She looked around again and got conformational nods from everyone. “Except Jamie. If one of us tells him to heal us, he better do it.” Her attempt at humor worked to a degree, and everyone chuckled, mostly just to break the tension.
“Did you say you talked to Heather about this?” Elliott asked, refocusing the discussion on the task at hand.
“Yeah. I had lunch with her and asked her about it. She didn’t really have any ideas either.”
“So... we have hundreds of missing people, and then these creatures show up out of nowhere. That can’t be a coincidence.” Jamie was stroking his chin, deep in thought.
“You think these monsters are our missing people? Why wouldn’t they just turn into regular Vampires?” Hannah wanted to know.
“That’s the million dollar question,” Aaron replied. “If Daunator is at the root of all of this, is he capable of turning people into Vampires and whatever these things are?”
“All of the Vampires I’ve seen Resurrected recently have come from other Vampires. Honey, for example, was turning people by the dozen until Eliza started tracking her down.”
“Do we have any history on Honey?” Aurora asked, looking at Aaron.
“I’ve never heard of her, but that name seems so odd to me. Her name and picture are in our database, but no other information. I wonder if she’s changed her name recently. Damn, I wish Christian was here.” He shook his head for a few seconds. “Cassidy, how deep did you go into her head? Did you see her change?”
“No, I didn’t go that far. Sorry.”
