Chapter 127
“Right, the talk. Grandma will give me the same talk she gave to you,” I said to Cadence, still shocked to think of what those pictures must be like. “Then what happened? What’s this Transformation process everyone keeps mentioning?” I already knew way more about that than I probably should’ve, but she had no idea that was the case.
“Well, like I said, Grandma is the perfect person to explain all of this, so I don’t want to confuse you, but basically once a person who has the ability to Transform either into a Hunter or a Guardian is in danger from a Vampire, their body starts the Transformation process. Jamie just sped mine along with a shot.”
I nodded. Had she worked it out on her own, then, that this wasn’t really a choice? I remembered Aaron saying to my parents, way back at the beginning, when he thought I wasn’t listening, that they wanted Cadence to choose to join them. Even if she’d chosen college, she still would’ve Transformed, at least that’s the impression I’d gotten. I didn’t ask that question at this point. “Did it hurt?”
Cadence let out a loud sigh and brushed her hair back off of her forehead, propping her hand against the back of the couch with her hair sticking up all over the place. “For me, yes. It usually doesn’t, but I am special.”
“Great,” I muttered. “Hope I’m special, too.” Of course, at this point, I was willing to do just about anything to find out. I definitely thought I could handle some pain if it meant getting to become a Hunter. “And then what? You went to Paris. Why?”
“Because… remember the Vampire I told you I decapitated at the festival?”
“Yeah, the one that killed Drew.”
“Right,” she confirmed. “His name was Carter, and his girlfriend, I guess you could say, her name was Holland, and she was in the process of amassing a Vampire army with the idea of coming to destroy me, amongst other things. So… we went to her.”
“And you killed her?”
Cadence nodded. A shadow swept over her face. Her voice dropped, like she was fighting through some bad memories, as she continued. “After I killed Holland, a Vampire informant we’d been using grabbed a gun from a Hunter and used her hand to pull the trigger. He was shooting at Aaron and I, so since they both fired, the bullet could’ve killed either of us.”
I thought through what she was saying. A Vampire can’t kill a Guardian, but a Hunter can. With normal silver bullets, a Hunter can’t kill another Hunter, though apparently they can with these new titanium bullets, but since a Vampire can kill a Hunter, that bullet was lethal to either target. “What happened?” I asked.
She swallowed hard. “Aaron protected me, like he was supposed to. He threw himself on top of me.”
“And did he get shot?” I asked, leaning forward a little bit. I wasn’t overly concerned since I knew he was okay now, but it was still a surprising story. It must’ve been very difficult at the time.
“Yes,” she nodded. “It hit him in the lungs.” I honestly thought she might start to cry, but she took a few deep breaths and recomposed herself. “Up until that time, that was the most blood I’d ever seen.” She met my eyes. “Vampires don’t bleed. They just turn to ash. And by the time I’d gotten to Drew, there was no blood left, just a few drops. Aaron was bleeding… everywhere.”
“Oh, my gosh,” I said quietly, scooting over to put my hand on her knee. “That must’ve been horrible to see.”
“It was. Even though I hadn’t known him very long, I already had feelings for him. Pretty intense ones, too.” I felt like that comment was more for herself than for me. “Jamie fixed him, but it took a long time, and we weren’t sure there for a while. It was pretty terrifying. Of course, it’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me since all of this started.”
My sister’s eyes were focused somewhere over my shoulder, and I wondered what she was thinking about. While I can imagine Elliott dying had to have been worse than Aaron almost dying, something told me that wasn’t what she was getting at. I didn’t go there, though, not yet. I knew she’d tell me when she was ready, if I could keep her talking. “But, hey, he’s okay now, right?”
“Yeah,” she nodded, and I thought she was going to cry again. “Listen, Cass, a lot has happened, and I want to tell you all of it, but it’s kind of hard for me to talk about it all.”
I thought she was cutting me off. The part of my brain that thinks about other people’s feelings wanted to comply, let her off the hook. But this was the first time in months someone was actually answering my questions, fully answering them. Elliott had never been this specific. He couldn’t be. So rather than cutting her off, I said, “That’s okay. Take your time,” and squeezed her knee. “It must’ve been hard to go through that and then come back to find out about Jack.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned Jack. She didn’t have any idea that I knew the truth about Jack, or that Elliott had told me about how she’d shot and destroyed him. She also didn’t know that I was aware that she’d gotten shot by another Hunter during that episode. While she might be able to get away with leaving out information about Jack being a Vampire, she would have to tell me about Laura eventually, I thought, because Cadence being shot had led to the discovery about titanium bullets. If I was going to be a Hunter someday, I’d have to know about that. So I patiently waited to see if she would start talking again.
“Finding out about Jack was really hard,” she nodded. “It was when I went to Lincoln to be with his family and the rest of my friends that Elliott and I went on a hunt together and got a pretty vicious Vampire which solidified our relationship. If that had never happened, I’m not sure Elliott and I would’ve ever become friends.”
I was shocked to hear that. I’d never imagined Elliott and my sister didn’t get along at first. He always seemed so fond of her. “Really?” I asked, sitting back a bit. “I thought… he treated you the same way he treated me.”
“Not at first,” she said, shaking her head. “Heck, at one point, he asked Aaron to have me removed from the team. And I was suspended for a few days.” Her eyes wandered off. “That was my own fault, though.” I didn’t ask for clarification. Something told me it wasn’t as important as the rest of what she had to say. “Anyway, we got this old Vampire, nastiest guy I’d ever seen in my life, at least up until then, and from then on we were best of pals.”
