Chapter 128
I couldn’t help but smile, thinking about Cadence and Elliott working together to kill some awful Vampire that, in my mind, looked a lot like Bela Lugosi. “Why is that?” I asked, wondering why that was such a crucial event.
“Well, I didn’t realize he was taking me out there just to scare me. Apparently, this Vampire, Barbarosa, has killed a lot of Hunters over the years. He lived in this creepy old house out in the middle of nowhere, and it was like a maze on the inside. So, when I wasn’t scared and thought it was just a typical hunt, Elliott tried to talk me out of it. My instincts had already kicked in, though, and I was in full slayer mode. So… I went in after Barbarosa, and chased him all through this labyrinth and out the other side. He was almost out the door when Elliott cut him off. Barbarosa had him by the neck, and while he couldn’t kill Elliott, it couldn’t have been comfortable. I had to be super careful when I fired not to hit Elliott, and I got the Vampire right before he pulled a gun out of Elliott’s waistband and fired at me. It was just one of those things that can bring you together, taking on a monster with another person. It’s sort of hard to describe. You’ll find out eventually.”
I was already a little tired of hearing about having to wait, but I really did think her story was cool. “So what did it look like?” I asked.
“Barbarosa? Pretty disgusting. He was very pale and had all these folds in his skin, like really long jowls with pussy, bloody gums, and only little tufts of hair on his head. He looked like he was a couple of hundred years old, but I imagine he was even older than that. His fingernails were super long, like talons. And he smelled like a sweaty old man. It was really disgusting.”
I had my nose wrinkled up trying to picture him. Then I realized she could probably show me. “Do you have a photo?”
“Huh? Oh, maybe,” she said, as if she forgot that I knew about her IAC. It took her a minute, but she must’ve found what she was looking for because her face dropped, like she’d seen a picture of Elliott, and then she used her wristband to project a picture of Barbarosa into the air next to us. I was never going to get used to this technology.
“Oh, wow. He’s… vulgar,” was about all I could manage.
“I know. I should make a scrapbook of all the monsters I’ve killed,” she said, turning it off. “Seriously, they might give you nightmares.”
I believed her. It would take me a few minutes to get that image out of my mind. I could tell by the fact that my sister was yawning that she was not going to be up to answering any more of my questions that night. I had made some progress, though, so that was something.
“The team is going to meet tomorrow to start planning to track down the rogue Hunters involved in the ambush at Sierraville,” she said quietly. “I think Aaron’s already arranged for one of our pilots to take you guys home in the morning.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. The idea of just turning around and going back home first thing in the morning when I still had so many questions and wanted so badly to help had left me speechless. “Is Sierraville where Elliott was killed?” I asked, assuming it was. She still hadn’t told me what happened. I wanted to see if she would talk through everything to that point, but since we were bogged down at Jack’s demise, I realized I wasn’t getting anything linear from her. Maybe she’d see that she owed me an explanation regarding the man we’d memorialized today.
“Yes,” she nodded. The pain in her eyes was evident; the last thing she wanted to do was relive what happened.
A patient and kind sister would’ve let her off of the hook. I was starting to run out of patience and my kindness factor was also starting to be irrelevant. “You said a male Hunter shot him? Who was it? What’s his name?” I tried to keep my questions level, like I wasn’t an interrogator for the KGB, whatever that is, but I must’ve been a little harsh. She went from sad to exasperated.
“Listen, Cass, I know you have a lot of questions. I’m not sure I can go through all of that right now.”
“I understand it’s gotta be hard for you to talk about, to even think about. I just wanna know how he died, Cadence. I think… I think I deserve that.” I was being assertive, standing up for myself, my rights as Elliott’s former ward, or at least that’s how I justified being so demanding.
Cadence opened her mouth and then closed it. She rolled her eyes and then closed them, resting her head on her hand again. I thought she was going to ignore me completely but a few moments later, her apartment door opened and Aaron calmly walked in. For a moment, I thought it must be nice to be able to summon the man you love with only your thoughts at any hour of the night or day, but then I remembered why he was there. She must’ve asked his permission to tell me what had happened to Elliott, and I tensed up, avoiding making eye contact with him. My sister’s eyes slowly opened, and she stood, walking toward him.
If they said anything to each other, it was all internal, and I was growing more and more annoyed. After a relatively quick, silent conversation, Aaron wrapped his arms around her, and she put her head on his shoulder for a second before stepping back away from him. I tried not to stare, but I had no idea what was going on, and it was beginning to annoy me.
