Chapter 295
Dax and I made our way back to the playroom, but on our way, I decided I should check in with Aaron and make sure he knew what was going on down there. I meant to reach out to him through his IAC, but that’s not what happened. Perhaps it was because I had recently spent so much time walking around inside of Vampires’ heads, but when I reached out to Aaron, it was with my own mind, not my IAC, and I didn’t realize it until he answered me.
“Aaron—you see him, don’t you?” I asked, and then realized my IAC hadn’t connected to his yet. I was shocked when I heard his voice in my mind.
“I do.”
I sort of jerked back a little bit, and Dax put a hand on me to steady me, but he didn’t ask what was going on. I was glad, too, because I couldn’t have explained it. Rather than going the IAC route, I finished, “He’s not going to try to hurt you guys. He’s just scared. His name is … Vern.” I hoped I was right on the name, but either way, I figured he knew who the Vampire was. I wondered if I could even transmit a message that long to a non-Vampire using only telepathy.
When Aaron replied, “Thanks, Cass,” I got my answer. It was so surreal, realizing I could communicate even to my own teammates without my IAC. If I stopped to think about it too long, I would probably weird myself out, so I didn’t do that. Nor did I stick around in Aaron’s head to see what he and Elliott were doing, as much as I wanted to.
My sister was in the process of pulling what looked like an IV tube out of her arm as I walked in. I rushed over and asked her, “Do you need help?”
Cadence’s eyes were a little blurry, like they wouldn’t quite focus. I wasn’t sure if she was tired or if it was from blood loss, but she didn’t answer me at first. I started to take the catheter out of Tara’s much-too-still arm, but finally Cadence was back with me, and she said, “I don’t know if we’re supposed to take it out or leave it in.”
“Why wouldn’t we take it out?” I asked, holding the end of the tubing up in the air so the blood that was still in it wouldn’t spill all over the carpet, even though I guess it really wouldn’t have mattered. Tara’s breathing was shallow but even. She had a little more color in her face but not much. Jamie was completely unconscious, his hand still resting on Tara’s shoulder, and I knew he wouldn’t be able to even begin to restore himself as long as he was touching the Hunter. Behind me, Dax was pacing, and Faye was gone. Only a blood stained sofa and floor served as a reminder of what had happened here earlier.
“What if they need the line for something later?” Cadence answered. She was holding a cotton ball on her arm, trying to get a Band-Aid out of the wrapper and not having much luck. I looked at the tubing, trying to decide if I could lay it down to help her when Dax came over.
He dropped to his knee. “Here.” He pulled the plastic out of the paper and helped her secure the cotton to her arm.
“Thanks,” Cadence said with a smile, but she looked almost as gone as the other two. I hoped she recovered quickly because we still had a long night ahead of us. I wondered what we were supposed to do now. We were sort of trapped. I heard over the IAC that Shane had gathered up all of the wounded Guardians and moved them to one location so the Healers could do their best to help each of them, but we couldn’t really move Tara, and without Jamie to tell us what to do with her, we were sort of at an impasse.
I was about to ask Cadence what we should do when we heard rushed footfalls in the hallway. All of us reached for our weapons, and when I saw it was Christian, I momentarily forgot I wasn’t supposed to shoot him. I remembered in time.
He came into the room in a blur, Jamie’s doctor bag in one hand, and knelt down, unzipping the bag without saying a word. He was dressed as nicely as I’ve ever seen him in black slacks, a white shirt, and a suit jacket, though he wasn’t wearing a tie, and I wondered where he’d been this whole time.
“What the heck?” Cadence asked.
“Hey.” He said it like he’d just noticed we were there. “Sorry. No time to explain.” He pulled out two vials and a syringe before yanking the tubing away from me and saying, “Oh, good. You’ve got a line.”
I instinctively slid backwards on my keister out of the way, but part of me wanted to ask him what in the world he was doing. My sister looked at me sharply, like she was handling it, and I let her, though she was a little irritated when Christian yanked the tubing out of Tara’s arm and a spurt of fresh blood hit her. I’m not sure why—we were all covered in it, except for Christian.
“Do you mind telling me what you’re doing?” Cadence asked, staring at her shirt like she’d never seen blood before.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he filled the syringe with what I assumed was Transformation serum and attached it to the catheter in Tara’s arm. As soon as he pressed down on the plunger, Tara started to shake violently.
I had been through this myself, but not under these circumstances. Tara had already Transformed, so I had no idea why he thought it was necessary to go through the process again. “What are you doing?” I shouted at him. Tara was vibrating so ferociously, it looked like she was having a seizure. I put my hands on her legs in an effort to calm her, but it didn’t make any difference. “You’re killing her!”
“No, I’m saving her,” Christian insisted, his voice nice and even as he repeated what he’d just done with the second vial.
