by ID Johnson
“And we were happily married for over a hundred years, fighting Vampires together, inventing new things, new methods. Old Skelton, well, he didn’t like it. So, he decided to go off on his own. We heard from him every once in a while, especially if he’d make a big kill, some nasty Vampire brought down by his hand, you know. But for the most part, he was out of sight and out of mind.”
“We even decided to raise a family. I was fighting Vampires even at nine months pregnant with both your daddy and your Aunt Lorraine. Can you believe that? Life was pretty good. We were planning on spending the next couple of hundred years together. Of course, I thought for sure your grandfather would out live me and we talked about that. It’s part of being a Guardian. You know most of the individuals you love in your life will be lost to you eventually.” The two Guardians present in the room nodded and listened to see if Aaron made a single solitary noise, which he did not.
“But then, Skelton shows up again. He comes in, wants to talk to Jordan, wants to join forces with him. This is about the time that your daddy was going to make his decision, whether or not to join the family business, you know, or if he was just going to stay a human. As a Hunter, if you don’t Transform by age 21, you lose the ability to do so. Anyway, Skelton shows up. And we worked together really well for several years. Jordan had met Aaron by then and was just real impressed with him. He took Aaron under his wing, you know, training him up in case he ever decided to step aside from Leader and let someone else do it for a while. But what we didn’t know was, this whole time, Skelton’s plotting; he’s scheming away, just looking for the perfect opportunity to get Jordan in a situation where he can destroy him and make it look like it was an accident. And, finally the time came, and, well, I won’t go in to too much detail, darling, I really can’t. It’s just too hard.” She cleared her throat and Cadence nodded, seeing the tears coming back again. “But I will tell you, what Skelton didn’t know and what damned him in the end is that your grandfather was wearing a recording device. Aaron had set him up so that everything he did or said would be relayed back to some big computer that kept track of all of it. So, even though Skelton said it was an accident, well, the tapes said otherwise.” She was dabbing at her eyes again and Cadence wasn’t sure if she was finished or not. She was afraid to interrupt so she just waited. Finally, Janette added, “And now you know about your grandfather, what an amazing individual he truly was.”
Cadence leaned over and hugged her grandma tightly. All these years she had had no idea the true story of her grandparents' love story, and how it spanned the length of nearly a century-and-a-half. “Thank you, Grandma Janette, for letting me know,” she said, still holding her tightly.
Her grandmother said nothing, just patted her gently on the back. Finally, after a few minutes, they let go of each other, and Jamie cleared his throat, attempting to gain Cadence’s attention. “So, about the Transformation process,” he began. “Basically, every Hunter is born with a genetic code in their DNA which will activate one of a few ways. Back in the olden days, before we had the technology that we have today, it took several years for full conversion, unless the gene was extremely strong, such as in the case of your grandmother. She basically willed her way into becoming a Hunter and activated that coding within her genes. Clearly, you can see how it worked for you last night. You needed to accomplish certain tasks, so you did. Now, however, we have developed a serum that essentially let’s us go in and speed up that process, making it much, much shorter."
“Woe, wait, hold on a second, time out,” Cadence was saying, making a t-shape with her hands ad if she were the referee in a basketball game. “Did you say I activated something in my genes last night? What? No, I was just angry. I just did what any normal human being would do when they were in a similar situation.”
Again glances were exchanged between the two Guardians. “No,” Eliza said as they both shook their heads. “You activated your Hunter gene last night. That’s the only way you could have ran up to 30 miles per hour and torn the head off of a Vampire.”
“What? No! I wasn’t running that fast!”
“Yes, yes you were,” Jamie agreed. “You just couldn’t tell how fast you were moving because you have limited experience in judging it. Trust me, you were burning up the path.”
Cadence stopped to consider this for a moment. She did feel as if she was covering a lot of ground last night, but she had no idea she was moving that quickly. “Really?” she asked. “Was I really going that fast?”
She could tell by the pause that there was some conferring going on that she was not yet privy to so she sat quietly and watched Eliza nod, even though she would never admit she was doing so. “Let me pull up the footage,” she said.
Once again Cadence was confused. “What are you going to pop out your eyeball and let me use it as a telescope or something? I mean seriously, how does that work?”
Eliza began to giggle, which turned into a snort, which made her laugh even louder, and finally it seemed that she must have received a directive to get her act together because the laughter halted abruptly. “I can project it,” she said very seriously. She walked over next to where Cadence was sitting on the couch and pressed a few buttons on what looked like a watch. Suddenly, a video appeared in the air in front of her, and though there was really nothing for it to project on to, Cadence could see it very clearly. It was she alright and she was running through the woods.
“But, I’m not going that fast!” she said, as the video didn’t seem to show too much exertion on her part.
“Two things,” Jamie said from his seat across the room. “Look at the speedometer at the bottom of the screen and realize that Aaron is the one recording you so at this point, he is trailing you and he knows how fast he is running, which at this point is 32 miles per hour. And you know how fast he can move.”
“Now look at this footage,” Eliza insisted, fast forwarding a bit. “This is when you enter the clearing. He’s in front of you at that point and can see you approaching.”
“I’m not sure I want to see that,” Cadence said, thinking of the scenes she saw upon entering the clearing.
“He actually edited it for you,” Eliza said, looking at Jamie who made a face as if he were surprised. Cadence wasn’t sure what that was all about, but she agreed to watch the footage as long as she wouldn’t have to see Drew or the Vampire she had decapitated. Sure enough, she came flying through the trees, approaching cheetah speed, dodging tree limbs as if she could just tell where they were going to be.
“Wow,” Cadence said, unable to believe she was seeing herself move that quickly and agilely. “So, why haven’t I ever been able to do this before? I mean, I should have been blowing up the track meets in high school, you know?”
“Because you needed something to activate that gene within your DNA. And just typical adrenalin isn’t going to do it most likely, unless it’s layered on with event after event after event,” Jamie explained. “So, if you decided to undergo Transformation all by yourself, you could probably fully do it on your own within a few months, maybe a year. But, with the serum, you could do it literally overnight and then, you’d be practically at full power before you even complete your training.”
“Now hold on there just one flippin’ minute,” Cadence said, looking from Jamie to her grandma and then back at Eliza. “Just because I have this gene in my DNA, that doesn’t mean I have to use it, right? Isn’t that what you said, Grandma? I’m pretty sure I heard you say that.”
“Yes, that is true,” Janette agreed. She was still on the fence as to whether or not she wanted Cadence to undergo the Transformation. She knew the pros and cons for each and did not want Cadence to make a rash decision.
Cadence could tell that Jamie was listening to Aaron as he was speaking, though she wasn’t sure whether the words he chose were his own or if he was just relaying them. “But Cadence, this really is a bit of a nonnegotiable for you. I mean, first of all, clearly, you are a natural at this. You
were meant to be a Hunter. You come from a direct line of Leaders. This is what you were destined to become. Also, consider the good you would be doing for the world by helping rid the planet of the types of scum that you eliminated last night. It was simple for you because it runs so thickly through your blood. Can you imagine what you would be able to do if you were fully Transformed?” He could tell by her expression that he was not making much progress. He decided to try one more point. “Look, Cadence,” he said, scooting to the edge of his chair and attempting to look into her eyes from across the room. “That horrible bitch, Holland, the redheaded Vampire, she is still out there. And she is partially responsible for the death of your friend. She did nothing to stop Carter from taking Drew. She would have killed all of you last night if she had been given the opportunity. You know what you need to do. The choice is easy. The opportunity to stay young and healthy practically forever, to stay just as beautiful as you are today for decades to come, who wouldn’t want that? We want you. We need you. What do you say, will you join our team?"
Though she was desperately trying not to, Cadence burst into laughter. His face looked so sincere, and yet his words seemed canned and trivial. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t mean to laugh, I just, I need a while to think about this. It’s really a big decision, a life altering decision, and it’s not one that I am willing to make on hardly any sleep in over twenty-four hours.”
Jamie rested his head on his hand. Cadence couldn’t tell if he was thinking or listening. Finally, he turned back to her and said, “Alright then, I understand. Why don’t you go get some rest and we’ll talk about it again tomorrow—or this evening?" She agreed and grabbed the overnight bag she had brought in with her, carrying it up the stairs to her grandmother’s guest room.
As she rounded the corner, she heard Eliza say, “Well, that went over well,” followed by what seemed to be the sound of a pillow being flung across the room.
“At least they get along,” she thought to herself. She knew, if she decided to convert, she would be fast friends with Eliza and Jamie. But the thought of having Aaron in her head twenty-four/seven seemed a little much to consider right now, especially since he seemed to be moving in on his own, even without the technology the others had implanted. She resolved not to think about it again until after at least a three-hour nap, at which point she would be refreshed and ready to make her decision without hesitation.
Chapter Five
There is a small threshold of consciousness, somewhere between waking and dreaming, when one is not quite cognizant of all the waking world holds, nor has one quite lost the grip on those fleeting fragments of dreams that linger. For Cadence, this was the most dangerous and feared state of mind because, she knew, even before she fluttered off to sleep that, upon waking, for just a brief synapse, she would, in fact, forget that Drew was gone. It was in that moment, just before fully rejoining the wakened world that her mind would momentarily allow her to believe that all was as it should be, and then, as the memories rushed in, filling the vacant tide pool of her conscious mind, so too would the realization that something was amiss, an occurrence had transpired. Just as the pounding waves crush and carve the solid stone, so too, would the remembrances force her mind to submit, causing the same rush of initial pain to beat down on her once again.
It was for this reason alone that she had been thankful to forgo true sleep for as long a she had. In her experience, being physically exhausted was much easier to deal with than even the briefest moment of reliving the horror she had felt the day before in realizing that Drew was dead. But after a few hours of sleep, she was brought crashing back to reality, reliving those moments all over again as her mind let go of one world and focused in on another.
As her eyes flittered, she slowly arrived back where she had left off. The sun poured through the cracks in the curtains, a reminder that she played such a small roll in the cast of the universe that it mattered not how she felt or her degree of grief, the march of life clambered on despite her.
And yet, after her discussion with her grandmother, Eliza, and Jamie, she did feel slightly less insignificant. She rolled over on the small twin mattress, adjusting the blankets and attempting to block some of the sun’s rays from her eyes. If what Jamie said earlier were true, perhaps, she may have it within her to make a significant impact on the Clandestine Ternion. Even after seeing herself on the footage Eliza had provided, she was still having difficulty believing she had performed all of those feats of skill. She had always been a naturally gifted athlete when she had attempted to play sports as a child, but she never stood out. If she had been able to run that quickly up and down the basketball court, perhaps her Optimist Basketball league team would have won the Fifth Grade tournament.
Even though her grandmother’s house was decent sized, it was also old and noise traveled easily. She could hear voices coming from downstairs and she was certain there were more than three. In fact, she was positive she could hear at least two more voices, one of which she did not recognize, the other one becoming increasingly more familiar. Perhaps it had been this deeper booming voice that she didn’t recognize which had jarred her back to reality. Aaron’s voice was much quieter and more controlled. She could hear him, though she couldn’t make out what he was saying. Each time the other man spoke, she could understand every single word.
From what she could gather, it seemed that these two were reminiscing with her grandmother about battles from long ago. It had been difficult for Cadence to place Aaron in the same age category as her own grandmother, to accept that they could be contemporaries. He looked like he was just a few years older than her, and yet, from what her grandmother said, he had to be over one-hundred. It was just another piece of this enigma she couldn’t quite understand.
Occasionally, she would hear the chipper lull of Eliza’s voice and, in some ways, it reminded her of Drew. They had a few commonalities. They were both fairly happy, with bubbly personalities. They were both what Cadence considered “little and cute” in that they were petite and attractive. They were both easily amused. And they both seemed to over-react a bit when they got their feelings hurt. One of the things that had crossed Cadence’s mind as she pondered whether or not to go through with the Transformation was that it would provide her with an opportunity to walk away from the painful parts of the life she had known before, while simultaneously ripping her away from all that she had known and loved. This was a delicate balance and one that needed to be weighed carefully. It was appealing in that, given the opportunity to begin afresh, she would no longer carry the burden of familiarity—no longer be forced to see the things and the people that reminded her of Drew. She would still be working to vindicate her death, which would keep her at the forethought of her mind, but it may also provide her the solace of pretend, as distance often allows one to do. If she could somehow believe that Drew was truly back safe at home, sitting on her bed reading a magazine and petting her little Chihuahua, Muffin, then, the pain of losing her would be a bit more manageable. Even though refusing to Transform meant going back to college, returning to class and the pursuit of her teaching degree, she would still be periodically faced with the things that reminded her of where she had been before. Even catching the eye of a fellow Shenandoah High graduate across campus might be enough to send her reeling back into reliving Drew’s final moments again and again for years to come.
There were a lot of considerations to be sorted through, and she was hopeful that she would be given all of the time she needed to come to her own conclusion without the pressures of those who thought they knew what was best for her.
She finally decided it was time to go join the others. She stood and stretched, realizing she should probably change her clothes since she had slipped into a T-shirt and linen pants to nap. She pulled on a pair of jeans from her bag and changed her shirt. Just as she was deciding it would be a good idea to stop by the restroom at the end of the hall on her way down, she heard a tapping at her door and w
ondered how he could possibly have known she was awake.
Despite the fact that she was completely annoyed that Aaron couldn’t at least let her come downstairs without bombarding her with requests to join the good fight, she caught herself glancing in the mirror over the dresser and straightening her long brown hair before she crossed to the door. Catching her breath, she pulled it open unsure of exactly how she knew it was he. But she was certain.
“Hi,” he said quietly, standing quite a few inches back from the door. She was surprised to see he was wearing jeans and a red long sleeved t-shirt. She had just assumed that all Guardians always dressed completely in black. “Do you have a moment?” he asked running his hand through his light brown hair. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he had been slightly nervous waiting for her to open the door.
She contemplated what he would do if she told him no, something she was pretty sure he was not used to hearing, but of course she did have a moment, so she opened the door and let him walk past her into the small guest room. There were no chairs, hardly any furniture other than the small twin bed she had just hastily remade and aforementioned dresser so they stood just inside of the door.