by ID Johnson
“I believe you’re right,” he agreed. “Now, don’t you have a job to do?”
Shaking her head for clarity, Cadence returned her attention back to Sam at that point, realizing Christian was standing over him with a Glock pointed at his head. Clearly, Christian had trusted Aaron was all right a lot more quickly than she had, and he had not wasted any time returning to the matter at hand. “How do you think Elliott felt?” Christian was yelling at the old man as she stepped over.
“Christian!” she yelled, pulling him back a few feet. “Let me handle this.”
“He deserves to die,” Christian reminded her, jerking away from her.
Meagan, who had actually taken two bullets from Sam, was standing nearby, sniffling back tears. Cadence looked at her sympathetically before stepping back in front of Christian. “No,” she explained. “He wants to die. He deserves to live.”
“What are you talking about?” Christian asked, anger clearly clouding his judgment.
Cadence stepped out of the way. “Look at him,” she replied gesturing at the broken man on the ground. Sam just barely seemed to be conscious. He was bleeding from several places on his head. One arm was twisted awkwardly, and he had a large piece of metal protruding from his left side. “He should already be dead. A human would have died upon impact. He wishes he were dead. Why would we put him out of his misery? Let him suffer for a while, and when Jamie gets here in a few minutes, he can make it tolerable enough for us to move him back to KC and throw him down in the cells with Laura.”
“You mean you’re gonna let him lay there like that till Jamie gets here?” It was Pam’s unfamiliar voice, and Cadence averted her attention from the cowboy for just a moment. “Seems kinda cruel when you could just shoot ‘im in the head and get it over with.”
“Yeah, well, he killed my best friend, so he can lay there for as long as it takes.” Cadence turned to see Aaron had joined them, and she was doubly relieved that he was taking the responsibility for this call and that he was able to make it back to them.
She embraced him momentarily, stepping back then to look him over and check for injuries before stepping away, fighting the thin line between professionalism and raw emotion. Christian clasped his boss’s hand and patted him on the back, and Meagan completely lost it, throwing her head on his shoulder and collapsing in a fit of tears.
“Well, you’re the boss,” Pam replied, throwing her hands up. “Just, if he was a horse, we’d take him out back and put him down.”
“He’s not a horse; he’s a jackass,” Cadence explained, dropping down to one knee next to Sam’s head. “Do you have anything at all to say to us, Sam?” she asked, hoping somehow, some way, there was something he could say to shed any sort of light on his behavior.
Sam coughed, blood splattering his chin as he did so. In a labored voice, he whispered, “Henry… killed… my brother.” Cadence’s brow furrowed, wondering what in the world that had to do with Elliott. After another fit of coughing, Sam tossed himself onto his back, and while wincing in pain, he managed to choke out, “You interfered with our plans to… get him back.”
The realization of what Sam was saying to her hit Cadence like a sledgehammer to the stomach. “You killed Elliott because I killed Henry?” she asked. “But… he had nothing…”
“He defended you,” Sam explained. “Came to your defense that night. Said we should leave you alone.”
Cadence clearly remembered the events of the night in question, even though it had been nearly a year ago. “No,” she said, just above a whisper. “That was the night he demanded I be thrown off the team.”
She glanced back over her shoulder at Aaron, who was still holding Meagan. The expression on his face let her know that he didn’t have any more information than Cadence did. As Sam began to speak again, she returned her attention to the cowboy. “Elliott wasn’t the mark that night. You were. He just got in the way….”
Cadence already knew that was true; she had gathered enough information from Laura to know they had truly planned on taking her and Aaron out, and anyone else was just frosting on their cupcake. She shook her head slowly, formulating an answer, “Well, I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” she muttered, not sure what else to say.
“I have,” Sam replied, his eyes hooded with pain and weariness. “I’m sorry…” he began, and Cadence wanted to believe him, wanted to believe that maybe he was sorry--sorry he had killed Elliott, that he had shot Meagan, that he had wanted to kill her, “that Laura missed,” he added. With those words, he pulled his Glock out of his waistband, and using every bit of energy he had left, whirled it around to point at her.
Cadence was confused and shocked at first, but her instincts took over in plenty of time to jerk the gun up and out of Sam’s hand. He fired as she did so, and the bullet went straight up into the air, falling down in the pasture nearby doing no damage. Despite his shattered state, Cadence took the opportunity to punch him in the face, and pulling herself to her feet, she kicked him hard in the ribs. She might have continued to unleash her fury if Aaron hadn’t pulled her off. “Okay, Cadence. Stop,” he demanded. Turning her to face him, he added, “It’s over. That won’t bring Elliott back, and if he’s not sorry now, he’ll never be sorry.”
She looked at him absently for a moment before finally nodding her head. With one more glance at Sam, she walked away, Aaron on her heels.
“Where are you going?” he asked as she approached her bike.
“Home,” she replied, pulling the motorcycle up off of the ground.
“We have another plane,” he reminded her, resting his hand on the handlebars as she threw her leg over the seat.
“I’ve had enough planes for one day,” she explained, cranking the bike to life. “See you in a few hours.”
He nodded in understanding, knowing he needed to let her go. Without another word, he stepped back and watched her ride away, hoping that, by the time she got back to Kansas City, she would find a way to make peace with Sam’s version of what happened the night Henry died.
***
Cadence stood in the shower for almost an hour, letting the warm water beat over her, hoping it would somehow bring clarity, though it didn’t seem to be helping. The ride home had also been hours of contemplation. Why had Elliott defended her to Sam and then tried to have her thrown off the team? Why would Sam be so angry about Henry’s death that he would kill a Guardian and try to wipe out their entire team? How could anyone be that angry? What would have happened if Alex had shot Jamie? If Aaron hadn’t have been able to jump clear of the airplane? And then there was the question she’d been asking most frequently for almost nine months: where the hell was Giovani?
As she turned the water off, she realized she wasn’t alone and wondered how long Aaron had been waiting for her. She pulled the shower curtain back just enough to grab her towel and wrapped it around herself, squeezing the water out of her hair before she stepped out of the shower. He was sitting on the counter between the double sinks, still and reflective, the way she had found him so many memorable times before. He looked up at her and smiled as she made her way over but didn’t say anything, and she realized this was one of the few times he’d been able to sneak up on her. Most of the time, she knew exactly where he was whether his IAC was on or not.
“Hi,” she said stopping next to him. “When did you get home?”
“Not too long ago,” he replied, shrugging. “How was your shower?”
She rested her hand on his leg. “You could have found out for yourself!” she teased.
“You seemed like you wanted to be left alone,” he replied taking her hand in his.
“And yet here you are,” she snickered. She laced her fingers between his and stepped between his knees.
Again, he shrugged his shoulders. “I still have X-ray vision, you know?”
Shaking her head, she punched him playfully in the arm. “Seriously?” she sighed. “You’re awful!” He just looked at her sheepishly, and so she r
eturned the original question. “It was all right, I guess. I mean… I didn’t find any answers in there.”
“What sort of answers did you think might be hanging out in the shower?”
She sighed again, louder this time. “I don’t know. I guess I still don’t understand how anyone could turn their back on their team like that. And… what do you think Elliott meant by telling them to leave me alone but then coming after me so hard himself?”
Aaron leaned back against the mirror, still holding her hand. “I’m not sure what that was all about, honestly. I mean, I knew at the time what he had said to them. I assumed he was just being defensive in general--that it wasn't about you, that it was about the team. But now I’m wondering if maybe he didn’t have some ulterior motive.”
“Like what?” Cadence asked, leaning in closer, her eyes wide.
He sat up. “Well, he’d been in the field checking up on Cass. I’m sure he knew you to some degree from that. Maybe he was thinking if he could get you off of the team, Sam wouldn’t be able to come after you. I don’t know. It’s all speculation at this point.”
“But he wanted you to break up with me because he thought I would be a distraction,” Cadence reminded him.
“True. Maybe his reasoning was two-fold. It’s hard to say. Hell, half the time when Elliott explained his thinking to me, I couldn’t understand his logic.”
She snickered, knowing he was only half playing. “I guess I just might not ever know,” she finally acknowledged. “I think I’m also a little worried about all of these Hunters we are losing.”
“What do you mean?” Aaron asked, his eyebrows knit together. “You haven’t lost that many.”
“Six in the last four weeks!” Cadence reminded him. “That seems like a lot to me.”
“Is that including Alex?” Cadence nodded. “Well, I think that he hardly counts.”
“Still a Hunter,” she reminded him. “Still dead.”
“Due to his own stupidity.”
“Nevertheless…” she let go of his hand and picked up her brush off the counter next to him and began to run it through her long brown hair before it started to dry.
“Cadence, that’s really not a lot. I know it might seem like it is to you, but it really isn’t. Historically speaking, statistics for Hunter losses are way down. Before improvements in technology and weaponry, we were running at about fifty percent losses. Now, you’re way below that.”
She was listening, but she wasn’t sure she believed him. She continued to brush her hair, only glancing at him suspiciously out of the corner of her eye.
“How many Vampires have you taken out in that same amount of time?” he continued, determined to convince her.
“Last I checked, about one hundred eight.”
“See…”
“But,” she interrupted, “a lot of them were babies that sprang up when we were all out of whack during the Sierraville Incident and our subsequent trip to Ireland. So, I don’t think it would be that high if there weren’t so many new Vampires to have to hunt down.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he replied, shaking his head adamantly. “You’re taking them out quickly and efficiently. You’ve done a great job of inspiring your Hunters around the world, of providing information when they needed it, giving direction. Cadence, you’re doing an amazing job.”
He had his hand on her arm now, and so she put the brush down and returned her attention to him, wanting to believe his words were true. She exhaled deeply and nodded her head. “Thanks,” she said quietly. “I didn’t do a very good job today, though,” she reminded him.
“You did, too,” he said, the skeptical look back on his face. “You caught up to Sam.”
“Yeah, after you made him crash. I took Jamie out, almost got him killed, broke my own knee, and left before the job was finished. I did a great job!” She was flipping her arms around so adamantly, he couldn’t help but lean back. Water droplets from the ends of her hair splattered against the sink and the mirror, and with a glance at her own reflection, she realized she needed to calm down. Taking a deep breath again, she said, “A lot of things went wrong today.”
He was clearly holding back a laugh, which infuriated her a bit more. However, he had the ability to even her emotions out, and she could feel that he was doing that as he said, “We did what we needed to do. We got Sam; Jamie’s fine. You’re fine. I’m fine. The plane… not so much. But that wasn’t your fault.”
“If I had gotten to Sam before he got in that plane…. Damn pothole.”
“Things like that happen, Cadence. It’s called life. We roll with it.”
She looked into his eyes and knew he was right. They’d accomplished what they set out to do. It was over now. Adjusting her towel, she nodded her head and asked, “What happened after I left?”
“Not much. Local police and the FAA showed up. Hannah bluffed them away. We grabbed Sam and moved him here. He’s hanging out in the cells with Laura.” Her eyebrows raised, and he clarified. “Not with Laura--near Laura.”
“Everyone else was all right to fly back?”
“Yep. Jamie slept the whole way, but I can’t blame him. How’s your knee?”
She glanced down at it as if she could tell something by looking at it. Twisting it in and out, she replied, “Feels fine. He said he needed to look at it, but….”
“You need to let him look at it,” he assured her.
She groaned. Sometimes the fact that he was also her boss was a real pain in the ass. Of course, he wasn’t technically her boss anymore, but she always deferred to him when there was a question. She decided to change the subject instead of arguing about her knee, which was clearly just fine. “Now if we can just find Giovani, we can put all of this behind us.”
Though his expression revealed that he realized she had just ignored his remark, he agreed. “I’m glad your sister volunteered to go through all of that footage from major airports, but I don’t think he’s going to turn up in any of it. I’m sure he has his ways of getting around that, especially since that’s how we caught him last time. He can’t stay hidden forever, though. We’ll find him.”
Cassidy had wanted to help so badly in finding Sam and Giovani, Cadence had agreed to let her pour through surveillance footage of all the major airports. So far, it had turned up nothing. “It’s like he fell off the face of the earth.”
“There’s a chance someone at the Eidolon Festival might know something,” Aaron explained. “I doubt they’ll be willing to talk, but if he hasn’t turned up by then, it’s worth a shot.”
“So, we just permit Vampires to gather and do whatever they want to do once a year? Is that how that works?” Cadence asked, needing clarification. Despite the fact that she had first began her Transformation process at the Eidolon Festival in Villisca, Iowa, she had never asked a lot of questions about how it worked.
“Not exactly,” he replied. “We do let them gather a few times a year in various places, so long as no Innocents get hurt. But we usually don’t patrol it very closely, and if something does happen, only the Vampire who committed the crime can be punished.”
“You mean, even though Holland clearly let Carter take Drew away from us, you wouldn’t have been able to do anything to punish her? I thought you just couldn’t get her because you were too busy trying to rescue my friends and me.”
“Carter is the only one who broke the rules, and you took care of that for us. I was able to step in and keep Holland from hurting anyone else--at least, I thought I had,” he added, remembering that Jack had also become a victim from that night. “But I couldn’t hold her responsible for what Carter did.”
Cadence was shaking her head now. “I hate that there are so many stupid rules.”
“The rules are there for a reason,” Aaron replied adamantly. “Remember, the only reason Guardians fight with Hunters is because Vampires continuously break the rules. If we were to get ourselves into a situation where Hunters were breaking the rules, then we’d have to
fight to defend Vampires.”
Cadence shuttered at the thought. “That seems crazy to me. We are the good guys; they are the bad guys; end of story.”
“That’s the way it seems right now, but the Ternion is a delicate balance. Each piece has a job to do to keep everything in harmony. Right now, the Vampires are stepping out of bounds. Our job is to bring them back, not destroy them.”
Rubbing her temples, Cadence shook her head. “Whatever you say,” she said. “My head hurts. I don’t want to think about any of that technical mumbo jumbo right now. I just want to kill Giovani and any other Vampire who happens to be preying on innocent people.”
“That’s your job,” he agreed, and Cadence was relieved that he didn’t take offense at her use of the term “mumbo jumbo,” or at least, if he did, he let it go. “I think we should go see the Pryor High School Football Tigers take on the Wagoner Bulldogs next Friday night and maybe take on a local bloodsucker who has been terrifying the residents the last few weeks.”
“Say what?” Cadence asked, taking a step back in confusion. She knew she must be missing something.
He pulled her in closer. “It will give us a chance to get away from everyone else, get some work done, and enjoy some small town high school football.”
“Why would we…,” and then she realized why they would go all the way to Oklahoma to watch high school football. “Does Brandon Keen happen to play for the Tigers?” she asked, a broad smile spreading across her face.
“Maybe,” he replied, returning her smile.
“Oh, that would be awesome!” she practically squealed. “That’s the best idea you’ve had in a long time!” She grabbed both of his arms and squeezed, unable to wipe the smile off of her face.
Still laughing at her excitement, he took both of her hands back in his. “Well, I have other ideas,” he said coyly. “Other… fun ideas.”
She tipped her head to the side, still smiling, his intent obvious. “I guess we’re okay then?” she asked quietly.