Chapter 291
Boots in the hallway had my two sentinels readying their guns again. “It’s just me!” Cadence shouted, looking at them like they were a bit too jumpy. I couldn’t blame them, though. Especially Dax. This was his first day, after all, and it had been the craziest one on record.
Cadence took in the scene, and now that my eyes were open, I traced the room with her. Jamie had made a lot of progress on Tara’s wound, but he was fading fast. Faye appeared to be a corpse.
Even with all of the work Jamie had done, Tara still looked bad. Cadence asked, “How is she alive?”
“I have no idea,” Jamie said, his voice so quiet it was hard to hear him. “I honestly don’t think she will be much longer if we don’t do something really quick.”
I hoped he had an idea what “something” might be. Tara didn’t deserve to die like this. She was so excited, so full of life. It just wasn’t fair.
“Is there anything I can do?” Cadence asked.
“Actually—yes.” I was surprised Jamie’s answer was positive. I hoped he wasn’t going to say pray. “You’re O negative, right?”
“Yeah. How in the world did you know that?”
I wished my sister would stay focused. Jamie replied, “I’ve put you back together a few times. And I still have access to my own IAC. I think she needs a blood transfusion. But it has to be from a Hunter.”
“Okay. Do we need to move her to your office?” Cadence asked.
“No, she won’t make it.” Jamie glanced around, and then we all heard a gurgling sound behind us. It was Faye. Whatever she was saying must’ve somehow made sense to my sister.
“Right. Surely, she has everything you need in whatever place they do the trackers, doesn’t she?” Cadence asked Jamie.
I thought they would have medical equipment here. For the first time in a long time, I felt hopeful.
“Maybe.” Jamie didn’t look convinced at all, but after a moment of contemplation, he said, “Okay—I hate to leave her to go get it. And… we have other problems.”
“What’s that?” Cadence asked. I didn’t think I wanted to know what he was going to say.
“The Vampires. They all had to have escaped, for one thing,” Jamie explained. Of course, I already knew that was the case. “And then there’s the scrambled IACs.”
“Escaped? What do you mean?” Cadence asked, her hands on her hips. “I thought the people who came here to get tagged were fine—they chose to come here.”
“Not them. The other ones,” Jamie said, though I knew for a fact there were no Vampires here just for tagging, and Cadence should’ve remembered that, too. “We have holding cells downstairs… similar to the ones Sam and Laura are being kept in. Only these were for informants. Vampires who traded away their secrets for safety.”
I looked at my sister sharply so she’d understand. “And they aren’t on our side anymore.”
“Okay,” Cadence said with a deep breath. I supposed she assumed Bonnie had done all of this on her own up until now. “Do you think that’s where Aaron’s sent the rest of the Guardians? To look for them?”
“I think so. And then… there are the other areas. We can’t be sure something similar hasn’t happened elsewhere,” Jamie reminded us.
It was a good point, one I hadn’t considered. I thought maybe I should reach out to some of the other areas that had tagging facilities to see if everything seemed calm there, but I didn’t want to tip any of the other Vampires off either.
“There are other tagging facilities in other areas?” Cadence asked, and I wondered why she didn’t know that. Just because Hunters and Guardians would travel from around the world to train here didn’t mean a Vampire would get on a plane and come overseas just to get tagged. She must not have considered it before. She didn’t wait for an answer before she said, “All right. Chances are, Aaron’s already thought about that, but we need to make sure.”
“And then there’s the fact that we have more torn up Guardians than I can count. How’s Hannah?” Jamie asked.
I wondered what had happened to Hannah, but my sister answered before I could even ask. “Uh, not good when I left. But it looked like a Healer was with her. A blonde girl.”
“Good. That’s Sicilia. She’ll fix her. We don’t have any other Guardian Healers on campus right now.” Jamie concentrated on Tara for a moment, and I forget I had even momentarily been worried about Hannah, knowing she wouldn’t die. He continued, “There are two Hunter Healers, though. They could help if we could get them here safely.”
I was pretty sure all of the Vampires that had been downstairs were gone, but I decided to check and make sure. I put up a finger to pause them and closed my eyes, feeling out with my mind. The more I did it, the better I became at it, and when I opened them again, I was sure of myself. “They’re all gone. Except for one. And he’s no problem.” I had felt one more quivering soul in the basement. He was more frightened than I had been when Zabrina grabbed me in the restroom stall.
Perhaps it was my tone, or maybe my expression, but my sister said, “I’d ask if you’re sure, but I don’t think that’s necessary. What are the Healer’s names?”
She wouldn’t remember them. I rolled my eyes as Jamie said, “Ona Pierce and Martin Green.”
“All right. Brandon—I need you to go outside of the front gate and contact Cale. See if Aaron’s sent anything out to any of the other areas to let them know what’s going on, and if he hasn’t, then tell Cale to let the other Area Leaders know if they have a tagging center, it needs to be on full lock down.”
His eyes flickered to me for a second before he said, “Okay.”
“Be careful, and hurry,” Cadence ordered.
He was off in a flash, and I took a deep breath, not happy to see him go, but also glad I was no longer distracted by him being in the room at the moment either.
My sister continued. “You—guy whose name I can’t remember….”
“Dax,” he said, and I could see he was terrified she might tell him to do something complicated or risky. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was on the next flight to California.
“Right. Find a phone. Dial extension 011. You should get Aurora. Tell her to arm herself, get Meagan, and go to the trainee apartment complex. Tell her we need Ona Pierce and uh…”
I knew she wouldn’t remember. Jamie shout-whispered, “Martin Green.”
“Martin Green,” Cadence nodded. “As soon as possible. Tell them to be extremely careful.”
“Okay.” Dax looked around, lost and scared. “A phone….”
We were short on phones since we all had IACs. He wouldn’t be able to do that himself. And I needed to get to a computer. “I’ll go with you,” I said, and he sighed in relief. “There’s a phone at Lena’s desk, and I think I might be able to use her computer to fix the IAC problem.” I was already on my feet, though I had trouble tearing my eyes away from Tara.
“You do?” Cadence asked, surprised at my tech skills.
“Yeah. I saw what happened to it, and I think I can reverse it.” I caught Jamie’s eyes and asked something that had been bothering me since I started jumping around in the other Vampires’ heads. “Is his name really Spittle?” The guy who had taken down the IACs was a large, burly man with a nearly clean shaven head, tattoos, and a nose ring.
Jamie smirked, and I thought I might’ve actually impressed him a little bit with my infiltrating skills. “That’s what they call him, yeah.”
“Who is Spittle?” Cadence asked.
“A Vampire,” I explained. “He did something to make the alarm system jam the IACs. It’s running some sort of interference signal. If I can get into it, I might be able to turn it off. That one alarm, the one that’s still going off, it didn’t work, and I think that’s why my IAC worked when I was standing over there.” It was the only explanation I had for why I was able to reach Brandon earlier, even though that didn’t quite seem right to me.
“But Cass, Brandon wasn’t even in here, and he couldn’t reach any of us,” Cadence explained.
I didn’t have an answer for exactly what it was then. “That’s weird,” I admitted. But I still felt that if I turned the interference off, I would be able to get our IACs back. Someone else might have to figure out the other anomaly.
“The whole thing is weird,” Cadence muttered, shaking her head. “Go. Do your best. Be careful.”
I bit the sarcasm on my tongue and glanced at Tara one more time before I pressed Dax out the door, keeping my hand on him to steady him, and we ran to Lena’s desk.
