by ID Johnson
“How am I going to remember that?” Cadence asked.
“July fourth, seventeen-seventy-six,” Christian said, making sure the safe was locked and standing up.
“Is that your birthday or something?” she asked.
“No! It’s America’s birthday!” he exclaimed. “Seriously, a history book!”
“Okay, I’m sorry!” Cadence said in a whisper. “Stop yelling.”
“I’m not yelling. I’m just… this is very stressful.”
“You’re telling me.”
“I mean, if Aaron finds out….”
“Christian, I’ll handle Aaron,” Cadence assured him. “You just worry about keeping him out of here. I might not have known the significance of that date, but he will, and he’ll guess it right off.”
He nodded. “I guess I should change the combination on my front door, too, then,” he muttered.
“Oh yeah, I’ll need that, too,” she realized. The IAC could only unlock the door with a special code.
“It’s the same.”
“Okay. Reset it. But switch the first seven and the four. I can remember that, but it might take him a while to guess it.”
“No, that’s the date in British. How about 17760074? Could you remember that?”
Cadence realized what he had done with the numbers and nodded. “Yes, I can remember it.”
“All right, I’ll change the door right now,” he said, and she took one more look at the safe where Elliott was now hidden and pulled the closet door shut, following behind him.
“It’s changed,” Christian said a second later.
“Great. Okay, well thanks a lot, Christian,” Cadence said, hugging him.
He seemed rigid at first, as if the embrace had caught him off guard, but then he wrapped his arms around her as well. “Sure. I’m on your side, Cadence. I have been all along.”
“Here’s to hoping there’s no need for sides,” she said letting go. Christian said nothing, only laughed nervously. “Don’t tell him I was here.”
“I won’t. Have a good night.”
“You, too,” Cadence replied as she waved goodbye and made her way to the elevator. The only way this could possibly be a good night is if she were willing to let it go. In light of everything Christian had just told her, she wasn’t sure that was possible.
Aaron still wasn’t home by the time she got there, which she thought was strange because Jamie had said the meeting wouldn’t take too long. She wondered if maybe he had filled Jamie in on the details of her discovery and they had started discussing that. Normally, she would check in with him on the IAC, but not now. She was still pretty upset that he’d not only been keeping this from her, he’d told at least one other person not to mention it to her as well.
She cleaned up the dining room table and started the dishwasher and then decided to just go ahead and get ready for bed. On nights when they had a hunt, she was rarely asleep before 3:00 in the morning, but tonight she was tired, and she wanted to check in and see how the training program was going in the morning, so in bed before 11:00 sounded like a good plan.
A few minutes after her head hit the pillow, she realized she wasn’t alone. Rarely did she ever hear him open the front door. He had a way of just suddenly being there, although she almost always sensed him before she saw him or heard him. It had been that way for most of their relationship, and though she had no explanation for it, she found it comforting.
Aaron sat down on the bed next to her. “Are you still awake?” he asked quietly.
Without turning her head away from the wall, she said, “No.”
“Oh, okay. I guess I’ll ask you what Christian had to say tomorrow then.”
Shooting up to sitting, she turned and said, “You told him not to tell me!”
“I did not,” he replied, defensively. “I never told him not to tell you anything.”
“Oh, really? Because he said that you told him not to tell me anything, and if there was something I needed to know, you’d explain it.”
Aaron ran his hand through his light brown hair, a sign to Cadence that he was losing patience. “That’s not what I said. But fine. I don’t care. Maybe I told him not to tell you.”
“Why wouldn’t you want him to tell me?” she asked pounding her fist into the blanket.
“For the same reason I didn’t tell you myself, Cadence. I don’t want you to do this.”
Shaking her head, Cadence said, “And what if I do it anyway?”
He held her gaze and replied, “I will do everything I can to prevent you from doing this, Cadence.”
“Stop saying my name like that. I hate it when you say my name like that.”
“Like what, Cadence?”
She growled at him. “Well, what if I foil your plans and do it anyway?”
He sighed and turned away from her, clearly frustrated. “What do you want me to say? I think it’s a really bad idea, and if you go through with it, and I’m right—and I’m right, by the way—then, I’ll have to help you clean up the mess.”
He was looking at her again, and she had to look away. She hated to see that disapproving look in his eyes. She pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned her head back against the headboard. “But you will help me clean it up, right?” she asked, without looking at him.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Sure. You could make me clean it up myself.”
“Yes, I will let hundreds or thousands of innocent people die while you try to take care of a demonic Vampire on your own.”
She turned her head sharply to face him. “Demonic?”
“That’s just what we call them when they come back from hell.”
Nodding, she turned away again. “No, I’m sure you’ll help me take care of the problem. That’s not what I mean.” She realized she was twirling her engagement ring.
“Cadence,” Aaron said, sliding closer to her and gently taking her face in his hands, turning her to look at him. “I’m not going to lie and say I won’t be upset, but it’s not going to change anything between us.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, placing her hand on his thigh.
He brushed her hair back behind her ear, his fingertips grazing her cheek. “Nothing you could do would ever make me stop loving you.”
Before she could respond, his lips had found hers, and her anger and frustration turned to passion. Suddenly, she couldn’t get enough of him. As his mouth traced down her neck, she fumbled for the shirt buttons she’d fought with earlier, determined that no one would interrupt them this time.
***
The next morning, she awoke to find a handwritten note, a rose, and a blueberry muffin, her favorite, on the nightstand next to her. It wasn’t at all unusual for Aaron to leave hours before she even woke up, and while an IAC message would have gotten the job done just as effectively, she always preferred a note.
Picking a chunk of muffin off the top and plunking it into her mouth, she swung her feet out of bed and stretched before picking up the note and reading it. It only said that he would be in his office working for a few hours and that he’d like to meet her for lunch if she wasn’t too busy training. Setting it back down on the nightstand, she went to take a shower and prepared to head over to the training facility.
It was a quick trip, but on her way she managed to set up a time to meet Jamie that morning and also to go through the notes from her area leaders. She was handling things a lot differently than Aaron did, and so far it really worked for her. Area leaders handled all of the day to day tracking within their region. They completed reports every night to let her know movement of Vampires, any injuries on the team, discipline issues, basically anything significant. They were responsible for everything that happened within their zone. She was in the process of calling each team in for recurrent training and she also met individually with each area leader in person so that he or she knew what was expected of them. While it was a lot different than the hands-on approach her fiancé used to run his
team, Cadence liked the fact that this gave her more time to focus on what was happening in her own area, and it also gave her time to do things he never did—like sleep and eat. Eventually, she planned on creating continent leaders, and since her team members were aware that there would be room for promotion, many of them were really stepping things up.
She’d also been very focused on recruiting lately. She had Jamie and Christian both working on identifying dormant Hunter and Guardian bloodlines so that more people who had the potential to Transform could be approached with the opportunity.
The program was definitely working, and they’d had dozens of new recruits pouring in each week to the point where she had to put some people on a waiting list. Jamie was calling in Healers from around the globe as well and instructing them on how to administer the Transformation serum so that more of the recruits could go through the change process while still in their home areas and then come in to complete training. That step was still in the beginning stages, but Cadence thought it had a lot of potential.
The gym was already buzzing when she stepped inside. Shane was still the primary trainer, but she had assigned her good friend Meagan to help him, which worked out well, despite the fact that she often caught them making eyes at each other. They’d been dating for several months now, and even though Cadence wasn’t always a huge fan of Shane’s, she thought they worked well together.
Aurora also helped out with training whenever she could, and Cadence spotted her very tall, redheaded friend next to the treadmills encouraging a slew of new recruits to run faster and harder. Catching her eye, Cadence nodded, and Aurora returned the gesture as the leader made her way across the room.
“Hey, you’ve got them working hard this morning,” Cadence said, noticing the sweat pouring off of several of the runners.
“Well, you know, we’ve got to work hard if we want to be top-of-the line Vampire Hunters,” Aurora replied. She carried a clipboard and wore a whistle, which Cadence found slightly amusing considering she could more easily record data through her IAC and alert them that she need their immediate attention through the device each of them had implanted as well.
“Shane got the Guardians on the obstacle course?” Cadence asked, looking out the window of the training room she was standing in through the glass parallel into the gym.
“Yep. They’re outside in the muck right now. Meagan is in the gym working a team on the hill.”
Thoughts of running up the hill when she was a new recruit both made her want to puke and reminded her of how lucky she was to have Aaron as her trainer. He was so damn hot…
“Cadence?” Aurora was asking. “Did you hear me?”
“Sorry. I was… on the IAC.”
“Right, I said these guys are going to go do some laps in the pool if you want to join us.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I’ll go check on Meagan and Shane, and then I’ve got a meeting to get to.”
“Everything all right?” Aurora asked, giving one recruit who didn’t seem to be going full speed the stink eye.
“Yes, just need to talk to Jamie about some things we’ve got going on.”
Aurora nodded. “Any idea when we might be headed back to Philly?”
“No,” Cadence sighed. “Gibbon still hasn’t surfaced. We’ve got a few bodies that might be his doing, but it’s hard to say. And none of them are innocents, which doesn’t quite seem to fit his MO.”
“Maybe he’s working with someone else now,” Aurora mused. “Or maybe he’s relocated.”
“Maybe,” Cadence shrugged. They’d travelled back to Philadelphia at least once a month since they’d left in October, but all of those trips had been a waste. Gibbon was definitely good at keeping a low profile, something he might have learned in the days before he turned Vampire, back when he was a serial slayer.
“Keep me posted,” Aurora said, returning her full attention to the runners. “Pick it up, now!” she shouted. “If you’re having trouble at twenty-five miles per hour, how are you going to keep up with Cadence when she can easily run thirty-five miles per hour for a sustained period of time?”
Cadence laughed, a bit embarrassed. She knew that Aurora was trying to use her presence to inspire, but she sort of felt like a heel standing there in front of all of them as if she were famous or special somehow. She gave them all a little wave and then made her way out the door and across to the gym before Aurora could say anything else.
After checking in with Meagan and Shane, both of whom were very busy kicking butt, she made her way out of the building and across one of the expansive fields that bordered the facility. Though they were situated fairly close to Kansas City International Airport, very few humans had any idea what went on here. The large lot of land and group of buildings was gated off and it was impossible to see what was back here from the road outside.
She loved walking through this field any time of year, even though the grass was dead this late into winter. Still, thoughts of spring and renewal invaded her mind as she considered the possibilities on the horizon. Was it really possible that she could see Elliott again? That he could come back to them? While it was tempting to imagine him home again, she didn’t want to dwell on it. So many things could still go wrong.
It was winter, but she didn’t get cold anymore. She wore the same black leather jacket she typically wore, particularly on hunts, no hat or gloves, and she was perfectly fine. She did wish, however, she’d thought to put on some boots instead of her sneakers. The ground was damp and she soon had the uncomfortable squishiness of wet socks to deal with.
Jamie was sitting on the fountain. She could see him from a distance as she approached. Though she felt like she knew him better than most of her other team members, there was still a lot she didn’t know, and she realized she wanted to. Aaron had always encouraged her to get to know them better, but it was sort of a standing joke that she didn’t know history and didn’t really care to know the details of the hundreds of years of pasts some of these people carried around with them.
He waved as she approached. She always thought her teammates looked out of place when they weren’t wearing all black since most Guardians wore it almost all the time. But he was wearing light gray slacks and a red button down shirt and could have been any professional out on a break from work, not a Healer capable of bringing teammates back from the brink of death. He had saved her once, saved Aaron, saved Cassidy—saved so many. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to do the same for Elliott because Jamie was shot on that hunt himself. They had been very lucky to only lose one member that night when three others had been wounded so severely.
“Hey,” Jamie called out as caught up to him. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”
She smiled and sat down next to him. “My own thoughts and those of a thousand voices.”
“I can imagine,” he replied with a chuckle. “How’s all that going?”
“Really well,” Cadence nodded. “I think the new structure is really working out. The area leaders seem to like it, and we’re making a lot of progress in some places where the Vampires had started to run amok”
“Oh yes, a muck. Lovely in the spring but just terrible this time of year,” he joked.
Cadence laughed. “Since when are you funny?”
“Some people have always thought I was funny,” Jamie replied, shrugging. “I’ve been laughed at for years.”
That made her laugh harder, and she realized this was a side of him she’d never seen before.
As she struggled to catch her breath, he asked, “So Cadence, what is it that you wanted to talk about?”
“Well, Jamie,” she began, “you’ve been around a while…”
“Not that long. Compared to Christian and Aaron, I’m a spring chicken.”
“Right. Still—longer than me. And I highly respect your opinion. I just wanted to know your opinion about… what I should do.”
“What you should do about what?”
Cadence
sighed and shifted her position on the cold cement beneath her. “Oh, come on. I know he didn’t spend that many hours with you last night and never mentioned our discussion.”
“That Aaron is a tough cookie to crumble,” Jamie reminded her.
“Are you saying he didn’t tell you?”
“No, he did,” Jamie smiled. “You already talked to Christian, right?”
Cadence nodded.
“And your grandmother?”
“Yes, she’s the one who told me about it.”
“Well, what did they recommend?”
Cadence ran her hand through her hair and tried to secure it behind her ears, though the wind had different ideas. “My grandmother didn’t say one way or the other if she thought I should do it, though I got the impression she thought I should at least talk to Elliott. She’s used the portal to talk to my grandfather several times.”
“That’s interesting,” Jamie nodded.
“Christian wants to remain neutral. I could tell he was uncomfortable talking to me about it. He’s already on Aaron’s list, and I think he’s doing everything he can to try to prove himself again after a few really bad decisions.”
“I can definitely agree with you there,” Jamie said. “And Aaron is whole-heartedly against it, right?”
“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed, “to the point where he said he would do whatever he could to prevent me from doing it.”
“Wow, that sounds pretty serious.”
“I know.” Cadence was still a little concerned that she could ruin their relationship—again—if she went through with her plan, even though he’d assured her last night that nothing could come between them.
“Well, if you want my honest opinion,” Jamie began, meeting Cadence’s gaze, “I think you should at least talk to Elliott.”
“You do?” Cadence asked, surprised. She really wasn’t expecting him to say that. She thought for sure the fact that Aaron had gotten to the Healer first would brainwash him into saying that Aaron was right, no matter how he actually felt.
“Sure. Why not? I mean, Elliott’s fully capable of making his own decision as to whether or not he wants to come through, you know? At least if you get a chance to see him, you can have some closure.” Cadence nodded as Jamie continued. “Now, I wouldn’t go telling Elliott about what happened to Cassidy or that he has a son on the team now. That might influence him to come through when he normally wouldn’t. But I would tell him that it is an option, so long as he understands that there’s likely no going back.”