Chapter 290
I could tell Dax had moved her a little bit, maybe to get her out of view of the hallway, in case Bonnie came back. I sat down next to her and inspected her wounds. It was bad—to say the least. I looked around and saw some towels folded on a shelf and grabbed one. I held it against her neck and shoulder. She was losing blood quickly and had already lost so much. If Jamie didn’t get here soon, there was no way she was going to make it.
“What happened?” Brandon asked.
“Bonnie,” I replied, not able to explain everything, not really wanting to think about it. In the back of my mind, all I could think was this was all my fault. If Tara didn’t make it, her death would be due to my ignorance.
“How did she….”
I didn’t want to talk to him right now. “Why don’t you go over there with Dax? Make sure she doesn’t come back? And can you reload my Glock?”
He nodded, picking my gun up off the floor as he walked to the door. I could tell he didn’t like it, but I couldn’t have him hovering over me. I was pressing on Tara’s wound, trying not to hurt her while slowing the bleeding, but I didn’t think it was working. She was pale, her upper lip and brow sweaty, and her breathing was shallow.
I heard footsteps in the hallway and prayed it was Jamie. Dax and Brandon both readied themselves, and when I heard the Healer say, “It’s okay. It’s just me,” they relaxed and I thanked God.
Jamie was on the floor next to us in a moment, though I saw his eyes flicker over to Faye for half a second before he moved my hands aside gently and pulled back the towel. “Hmmm,” was all he said, but I could tell by his forehead he didn’t like this.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” I asked, thinking that was the understatement of the year.
“Cass, why don’t you help Dr. Faye for a second? I know you can’t do anything for her wounds, but if you lay her on that couch over there and put a sheet over her, that might help her be more comfortable.”
I thought he was probably just trying to get me out of his way as he assessed how bad it was, but I complied. Brandon handed me my reloaded Glock, which I shoved in my waistband, before turning to the Guardian on the floor. Faye’s breathing was gurgly, but her eyes were open. I easily picked her up and laid her down on the couch. She did seem to like this better. I grabbed a sheet I found in a closet and threw it over her then returned to Tara.
Jamie had begun to put her back together. I could already see a dramatic difference between how open her wounds had been when I left her a few moments ago and how they looked now. But he was getting tired, only a few minutes in, and he still looked very concerned.
“This is gonna be tricky,” he said quietly. “I’m not sure, Cass.”
I nodded. “What can I do?”
“Pray,” Jamie said, and I thought that was at least something, so I sat down so that my leg was touching Tara’s, and I tried to do just that, but it was hard. When I closed my eyes, I saw Bonnie flying at Tara’s neck. I saw her attack Aaron, too, at least what I had caught of it before the door closed.
“How’s Aaron?” I asked as Jamie worked. “It looked like he was healing faster than the other Guardians.”
“Yeah, he was up when I came over,” he said. “And they got Bonnie.” He didn’t need to explain what that meant. The child wouldn’t get a second chance after this. They would destroy her.
I closed my eyes. Glad to hear that Aaron was better. I remembered how I had been so mad at him just a few hours ago and how stupid that had been. I had let Mina manipulate me, and I don’t know how I had missed all of it. This was my fault. I’d completely failed all of them. I needed to do something to fix it.
I thought about the other Vampires, the ones that I’d seen in the hallway, and I decided to see if I could figure out exactly where they were now. If they were headed toward the apartment buildings, other Hunters could be at risk. They were different than anything these people had faced before, empowered somehow, ruthless. Bonnie should never have been able to do what she’d done to Tara, certainly not Aaron. But it all seemed so easy for them. Something was making them capable of more than regular Vampires, and I assumed all of this had something to do with the Blue Moon Portal.
The more I concentrated, the more things began to fall into place, and a picture took shape. I was able to reach out with my mind and find the Vampires who had been here in holding earlier. I could see them in their cells, minding their own business, just a regular evening. And then something changed. It was like a switch went off in their minds; it was Lena’s husband who had started the escape, freeing them all from their cells, but they’d worked together to get out.
Lena hadn’t been a part of it, though. As soon as Bonnie knew the others were free, she’d started her own rampage. The other Vampires had come in, too, chased by the Guardians. Shots were fired, and Lena was taken down because if one Vampire is bad, they must all be. I saw Bonnie attacking Faye, saw her take out a few of the other Guardians before returning here, waiting. For me.
It was one of the Vampires in the holding cell who had used a computer downstairs to utilize the alarm system and somehow use it to jam our IACs. I could see him doing it, see him running some code that didn’t make any sense to me since I don’t know anything too technical about computers, but in viewing his memory, I could see what he’d done. The one alarm that continued to blare in the hallway hadn’t been tripped properly, so it wasn’t broadcasting the jam frequency.
But it wasn’t just in this building that the IACs were failing. Something else was going on with them as well on a broader scale. I’d have to figure that out later, though. We needed to unjam the IACs here so we could communicate with each other. And if that alarm didn’t stop soon, I was going to lose my mind.
