by I D Johnson
“Little early for that, isn’t it?” Elliott asked, sitting down beside him.
“I didn’t even hear you,” Aaron admitted.
“I’m stealthy, like a cat,” the other Guardian replied. “Due to my girlish figure.”
Aaron laughed, perhaps a little too loudly, and pushed the glass across the table, thinking he’d had too much. Elliott picked it up and finished it off. “See the Brooklyn Bridge over there?”
“Yep. Pretty cool.”
“I jumped off of it once.”
“No, shit?”
“I did. To kill Jack the Ripper,” Aaron reminisced.
“The Jack the Ripper—or like ‘Jack the Price Ripper, buy your new sofa here, today!’?”
Laughing again, Aaron said, “No, the Jack the Ripper. Seems like a million years ago. Guess it was.”
“Yeah,” Elliott acknowledged, just letting him talk.
“There was another pretty blonde with me that day. That’s the one I should’ve given this a try with, not… not Laura. She just… it wasn’t meant to be. You know? I forced it, I guess.”
“Laura’s a pretty girl,” Elliott offered. “But I think she needs to grow up a little bit.”
“A lot,” Aaron admitted.
“What happened to the pretty blonde on the bridge?”
“She got tired of waiting on me,” Aaron replied, leaning back in his chair. “She moved on.”
Elliott nodded. “It’s never easy to get over a relationship when you really loved the person. I mean, my wife didn’t pass away, but I did love her at one time. And then she was gone. I get it. It’s hard. But, hey man, you tried. It’s a good first step. Next time, maybe if it’s the right chick, things’ll be different.”
“Right,” Aaron agreed.
“Just try to pick someone who’s not batshit crazy.”
Chuckling, Aaron said, “I’ll try. I don’t think Laura was crazy though. I think I did that.”
“I don’t think so, bossman. I think she was already like that, and you intensified her inability to control her bitchiness.”
“Maybe,” Aaron said with a shrug.
“Speaking of batshit crazy, Christian made any headway on figuring out what the hell Holland was doing to those morons tonight?”
“He thinks so. He’s running some tests and hopes to be able to install some sort of software that will prevent it from happening again.”
“Hope so. That was some weird-ass shit.”
“I hope so, too,” Aaron replied. “I could do without another night like tonight.”
“If we ever have another night like tonight, I’m going to rough you up myself, bossman. From now on, no whiney-ass bitch girlfriends. Got it?”
“Got it,” Aaron nodded. Maybe a better plan would be no girlfriends at all. Perhaps that was the best way to ensure the events of that night never repeated themselves.
Chapter 17
Shenandoah, Iowa, America, 2010
Shenandoah High School was not that big as high schools go. Only about four hundred kids went to school there. Aaron was sitting on the roof of the ag building, which provided a pretty good view of the parking lot. He had spent a few days here recently, including the first day of school that year. No one had ever noticed, particularly the kids who were so wrapped up in their post-school-day conversations, it was easy for him to go unseen.
She was not one of the first people out of the building, and he assumed that was because she really wasn’t in a rush to get out of school. She’d always done well, got good grades, and this year she was participating in a slew of extracurricular activities, including cheerleading. Cadence Findley was the all-around American girl.
Aaron saw her friends head into the parking lot first. There was Taylor, the blonde, Sydney, with the short black hair, and sometimes another girl whose name he did not know. He also noticed the lanky baseball player who followed at a distance or stood off to the side watching her almost as intently as Aaron was. Almost.
For fourteen years, he’d carefully followed Janette’s instructions. He’d watched trips to the zoo, visits to the park, field trips, and the oh-so-interesting shopping trip to the mall. Caring about Cadence came naturally because she was Jordan and Janette’s granddaughter. While he had absolutely no expectations for her the way that her grandmother did, he took watching over her seriously and constantly listened to the chatter amongst Vampires and resident Guardians and Hunters alike to make sure that Cadence was well-protected.
Now, something seemed different. Sitting atop the school roof that fall day, he realized he was no longer watching a child. Cadence wasn’t the cute little princess with pigtails who’d accidentally let her balloon float away, she was a young woman now. It had happened in the blink of an eye, and yet it was true. And exactly what it was that made him uncomfortable surveying her from a distance he wasn’t sure, he only knew it was time for him to delegate this particular duty off to someone else.
If what Janette said was true, his fate would collide with Cadence Findley’s soon enough, no matter how hard he tried to stay away from her.
Chapter 18
Kansas City, Missouri, America, 2013
“Please, please, please, don’t make me punch you in the face,” Elliott begged. “I told you I would, and I realize it’s been a long time since that club in NYC, but a promise is a promise.”
“It’s fine,” Aaron assured him. “This is different. Laura was overly confident. Eliza is just….”
“Ditzy? Manipulative? Psycho?” he offered.
“No, she’s none of those things. She’s just overzealous.”
“I’m telling you, bossman, you’re not seeing this for what it is. Hasn’t Jamie explained it to you? She’s a Siren—like literally. Just like those damn bitches in the Dracula movie. She’s making your brain all crazy.”
Aaron couldn’t help but laugh. While he had heard Jamie’s theory, he knew it couldn’t be true. Eliza Wrath was a new Guardian who had completed her training about three months ago. Cute and spunky, he’d immediately taken to her. She had short, curly hair that fell around her face in curls, which she liked to keep a dark purple color. She had style, and while he wasn’t usually interested in women who cared so much about fashion, Eliza knew all about the different stylists and designers, and he enjoyed looking at fashion magazines with her and discussing the season’s new looks.
Perhaps most importantly, with Eliza, he’d finally been able to get past his fear of intimacy. She’d helped him understand that Aislyn would want him to be happy, and that having a healthy sex life was part of being happy. This was a point she liked to drive home fairly consistently, sometimes more than once a day.
Aaron smiled. “I know we can become passionate in our discussions sometimes, but trust me, we will not argue during the hunt tonight, okay? We’ve already talked about it. It’ll be fine.”
They were sitting in the conference room preparing for a pre-hunt meeting, and Elliott had shown up early in an effort to persuade Aaron that he needed to find a way to escape Eliza’s clutches, but so far, the words were falling on deaf ears.
Jamie and Hannah walked in, and Elliott said, “Oh, good. Just in time. Jamie—tell him what you told me. About Eliza.”
“I already told him,” Jamie replied, sitting down in a chair across the room from them, facing the projector where Aaron would be presenting shortly. Hannah pulled out the chair next to him. “He doesn’t listen.”
“What are you talking about?” Hannah asked as she sat down.
“They think that the only reason I’m with Eliza is because she is manipulating me,” Aaron replied, looking out the door to make sure Eliza wasn’t on her way in yet. He’d called all the Guardians in a few minutes before the Hunters tonight to go over this particular hunt, and she should be there by now. But, as usual, she was slightly late.
“Well, I can help you with that, if you really want to find out,” Hannah said.
“How’s that?” Elliott asked, leaning
forward in his chair. “Tell me more.”
“It’s quite simple,” Hannah shrugged. “I have the power to regulate emotions. In this case, I just block any incoming emotional manipulation so that, if Eliza is sending some sort of signal, I can intercept it.”
“Yes, do it. Do it now,” Elliott demanded.
“Well, I need Aaron’s permission…” she began.
“No, you don’t. Do it now.”
Aaron shook his head. “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “I’m telling you, I know how I feel about her. It’s genuine.”
“Then it won’t hurt to let Hannah do her voodoo, will it? Or her anti-voodoo, whatever-the-hell-you-wanna-call it.”
“How about we call it ‘emotional blocking’?” Hannah explained in her clinical voice.
“Whatever you wanna call it, just do it. Aaron, say yes,” Elliott said grabbing his arm and forcing him to look him in the eye.
“Say yes to what?” Eliza asked, bounding in the door. “Sorry I’m late.”
She smiled, and Aaron felt himself go warm all over. “It’s okay,” he smiled. “Have a seat.”
“Say yes!” Elliott repeated.
Knowing full well why he felt the way that he did about Eliza, Aaron had no qualms about giving Hannah permission, so long as she didn’t actually make him feel anything he wouldn’t otherwise, and he trusted her not to do that. “Fine. Go ahead.”
“What are they doing?” Eliza asked, leaning over to Jamie, who was sitting beside her.
“Nothing,” Jamie replied, “just an experiment.”
Eliza nodded. “I guess that’s okay,” she replied, eyeing her boyfriend quizzically. “He better explain it later though.”
Jamie nodded, as if her demands were more than reasonable, and they both turned their full attention to Aaron who was ready to begin the meeting.
Within minutes, he began to feel a little bit different. While he still found Eliza very attractive, some of the things she said, the questions she asked, were no longer cute or endearing; they were annoying. He realized she was asking basic questions, things she should know by now. Clearly, she wasn’t paying attention while he went over the first part of the meeting, because once the Hunters joined them, she asked about some of the topics he’d already covered. It was too early to admit it, but he realized there was a possibility that Elliott and Jamie might be right.
Eventually, Eliza ran out of questions, stupid or otherwise, and the team loaded up and travelled to the zoo. Even though he was beginning to wonder about his relationship with Eliza, she sat next to him as he drove one of the two SUVs full of team members, and when she reached for his hand, he gave it to her, hoping he’d feel different about the possibility he was being manipulated once the hunt was underway.
The task should’ve been a simple one. There had been reports of strange behavior at the local zoo. Two of the chimpanzees had died recently under mysterious circumstances, and while they usually wouldn’t intervene on behalf of animals, they had good reason to believe that the culprit was a known noncompliant Vampire, an insane older man by the name of Wigdon. In the past, he’d fed on other innocents, even children, and so following him into the zoo late at night to dispatch him was well within their boundaries, even if his most recent victims were primates.
Aaron would direct the hunt from atop the gorilla house across from the rest of the primate cages. At night, most of the animals went inside to sleep, and so he’d placed his teammates in locations where all entry and exit points were covered. Likewise, he had Elliott in an observation tower that surveyed most of the zoo in case Wigdon decided he preferred another mammal this evening.
After the debauchery at NYC, Aaron had done his best to recruit better Hunters. He hadn’t made a lot of headway, but he did have an older gentleman named Rusty and a woman named Connie on the team now. Both of them were in position, paired with Hannah and Eliza respectively. Jamie was nearby in reserve, only there at all in case someone was injured.
Rusty was a bit slow, and Connie was hit or miss, but both took direction well, which his teammates appreciated. Not having any argumentative teammates was a plus from their perspective.
He had heard recently that Laura was trailing Giovani across the country, that she’d recruited her sister to help her. She seemed to think she needed to destroy Giovani in order to show everyone that it was Aaron’s fault she’d been confrontational and dropped the ball that night. He’d wondered why she blamed Giovani when Holland was clearly the ringleader, but he supposed it was easier to hunt the local Giovani as opposed to chasing Holland across Europe.
He hadn’t heard a thing about the redheaded Vampire queen since she disappeared out of the club that night, but he was pretty sure she was still out there wreaking havoc, just more below the radar than she had been before.
“We have movement by the front gate,” Elliott called.
“Affirmative,” Aaron replied. “Everyone is in position.” He had resolved recently to give less direction and let his team work, and it seemed to be a positive change. He did find himself clarifying a lot for Eliza, however, and he attributed that to the fact that she was relatively new.
“We are going in first, right?” Eliza asked only him.
“No, Connie and Hannah are team one. You are team two.”
“Right,” she said. “I forgot.”
“Forgot or weren’t listening,” he muttered aloud. Usually, he found her forgetfulness cute, but tonight he found it annoying and distracting.
“Here he comes,” Elliott warned them.
Through Elliott’s IAC, Aaron could see the dark figure of an older man, hunched over, with crazy black hair, slithering towards the chimpanzee cage. He weaved in and out of the shadows and seemed to do a dance step now and again.
“Man, this guy is a nut,” Elliott said, only to him.
Team one had directions to move in just as soon as Wigdon made entry into the monkey cage. Aaron almost always preferred weaponry these days to combat. It was safer, and while most Vampires did not use guns, there was little threat of a shootout. Tonight, he insisted the teams be careful with their weapons because they didn’t want to injure or scare the animals.
Once Wigdon was in the chimpanzee cage, they recognized an intruder and began to cry out to each other. “All right, move in,” Aaron directed, assuming everyone was on the same page and team one would attack.
That’s not what happened.
As Connie and Hannah began to sneak up on the Vampire, Eliza flew across the cage, her weapon drawn, and knocked the Vampire to the ground. The chimpanzees began to scream, and Wigdon, who was caught off guard at first, began to laugh. A few minutes later, he stood, the gun in his hand, and began to wave the weapon around in a circle, shouting, “Bam! Bam!”
Eliza jumped up, and as Aaron ordered her to fall back out of the way so that Rusty or Connie could take the shot, she lunged for her weapon. Expecting her to go the opposite way, Connie fired, and the bullet just missed Eliza’s head.
With the sound of the gun going off, the chimpanzees shrieked even louder and began to jump up and down, swinging from a faux tree, and throwing whatever they could get their hands on at both Eliza and Wigdon.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Wigdon made for the same fence he’d just scaled to gain access in the first place, an attempt to escape.
“Dammit!” Aaron shouted, and unwilling to let this one get away, he sprinted the length of the gorilla building, knowing Wigdon would likely pass by in a second. As soon as the Vampire appeared beneath him, Aaron launched himself off the roof, taking the Vampire completely by surprise. Before he could even make a sound, Aaron had him by the head, and a few seconds later, there was nothing left but a pile of ashes.
Without a word, he dusted his hands off on his pants and made his way out of the zoo toward their vehicles.
Eliza was crying, apologizing, making excuses. “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand. They were sitting at a table in
a small storage room just outside the conference room. He had told the rest of the team they could debrief without them, and Elliott was going over things with them now.
“I just… you said we were team one,” Eliza continued.
“No, I did not say you were team one,” Aaron insisted. “I said you were team two.”
“You said team one,” she repeated.
“Would you like to see the recording?”
“No, I just… fine. I guess I just didn’t have enough training.”
“Eliza, you’ve completed your training. It’s not that you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, you just don’t listen. How many times when we get out in the field do I have to repeat my instructions to you?”
“I thought you liked having those private conversations with me,” she replied batting her eyes at him, even though tears continued to stream down her face.
“I like it when people pay attention the first time.” He ran his hand through his hair and slammed his hands down on the table. “Listen, Eliza, a lot of people think I should have assigned you to another area.”
“Aaron, no!” She said his name as if it had three syllables. “How can you say something like that? You love me.”
“Do I?” he asked. “Eliza, is what everyone is telling me true? Have you been… doing something to me? To my mind?”
“Yeah,” she said, leaning forward and putting her hand on his arm. “It’s called love.”
The look in her eyes had shifted, and though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, he could see that she was doing something. Yet, he felt nothing. Maybe his friends were right all along. Regardless of what had happened before, he knew how he felt right now. “Eliza, I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”