Chapter 296
“Christian, who told you to give the Transformation serum to Tara?” Cadence asked. She seemed to have a better understanding of what was happening and what to expect, and I remembered she’d done this for Aaron in Ireland after Christian had told him it was okay to take the Retransformation serum for Guardians that wasn’t working properly yet.
But Christian didn’t answer my sister. Tara continued to thrash on the floor, and Jamie’s hand came off. She was bucking so hard, she was actually hitting Jamie in the head with each shudder. Since Christian was done, he got up and slid Jamie out of the way. I hazarded a glance at Dax, who was standing over near the sofa with a hand over his mouth, clearly unsure of what to think about any of this, which wasn’t much different from his reaction to everything else he’d seen that night.
Christian crossed to a biohazardous waste container and discarded the used supplies, and the rest of the items left over from the blood transfusion. Then he zipped up Jamie’s bag and moved it away from Tara. She was starting to calm a little bit, but I was still very scared for her. I began to shout her name and was doing my best to hold her down, but the thrashing continued.
“Christian,” Cadence said again, this time even more agitated than before. “What? Who?” I got the impression she wanted to know who authorized this.
Now that his task was complete, Christian sighed loudly and said, “Jamie called me a few minutes ago.” I assumed he had to mean on the IAC, which meant even though Jamie looked like he wasn’t with us at all, maybe he was aware of what was going on, or had been when he’d called Christian. “He told me to do it. He said he thought it was the only way to save her.”
“What about the sleeping medicine?” I asked. Tara’s eyes rolled back in her head, and drool started to run out of the corner of her mouth. I was beginning to grow even more frightened. It had been the sleeping medicine that had made me stop thrashing around when Jamie had done this process for me.
“Can’t risk it,” Christian replied, like he was an expert on Transforming the already Transformed. “He said this might last a few minutes.”
I looked at my sister and imagined this was bringing back bad memories for her as well. She kept her mouth shut. I wondered if Jamie was allowed to authorize such things. As far as I knew, nothing like this had ever happened before. “How will we know if it worked?” I asked him, using the hem of my shirt to wipe the spit off of Tara’s mouth as my friend finally stopped shaking so badly, though she wasn’t still yet by any means.
Christian shrugged like it really didn’t matter to him. He was standing on the other side of Jamie, rocking back and forth from his heels to the balls of his feet in his shiny dress shoes. “Well, if she dies, it didn’t work.”
Immediately, rage welled up inside of me, as it had earlier with Shane, and before I knew what was happening, I was hissing at him, my fangs protruding. He stared at me in disbelief, like he didn’t know I was capable of that, and I felt my sister’s hand on my arm. “Cass! He didn’t mean to be so insensitive. He’s a jerk, remember? He can’t help it.”
I closed my mouth and my fangs started to fade away, but I continued to glare at him. Just because he was a jerk didn’t give him license to say such awful things. Maybe Tara was just a new recruit to him, but to me, she was a friend. A good one.
“What the heck?” Christian mumbled as he took a step backward.
Cadence tried to dismiss it by saying, “It’s been a long night.”
Christian kept his eyes on me for a second longer before he nodded his head and said, “Yeah, so I heard. Ashley and I were all the way across town having dinner. I figured there was nothing on my IAC because you guys were leaving us alone, and then a we pulled into the drive in front of our apartment building, a million messages came through. I had no idea….”
His voice trailed off, like he didn’t know what else to say as a ton of questions popped into my head. Ashley had gone out with Christian? Why in the world would such a beautiful woman do such an awful thing? Why was he off campus when there was so much going on? How could the person in charge of all the IACs not know they weren’t working properly? Had he even known this sort of thing could happen?
Cadence was speaking so I turned my unanswered questions off and listened to her. “Cassidy unjammed it, whatever it was,” she said, and I assumed she was talking about the IACs. “Maybe she can walk you through it so you can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
I almost laughed when I saw his face. He didn’t like that idea at all. Tara was still shaking, though, and I didn’t take my eyes off of her for long.
“I’m sure I can figure it out,” Christian said, clearly put out by the suggestion. “Anyway, Jamie said once we administer the serum, we could move her over to the operating room. How long do you think it’ll take?”
Cadence and I exchanged confused glances before she asked, “Me? How long do I think it’ll take to work? I have no idea. For Aaron, it was overnight.” Her face drained of color for a moment before she added. “But… he died first. So, there’s that.”
I glanced at Dax and saw a confused expression on his face before he slowly began to shake his head, and I wondered how long it might be before he declared uncle and got out of here.
“Yeah, Jamie said he hoped he was awake before that happened so he could keep it under wraps,” Christian confirmed, and I thought it was strange that Jamie thought the Transformation serum might kill her before it brought her back to life, but I figured he knew a lot more about this than I did.
Suddenly, Christian’s dispositioned shifted, and he said, “You guys can’t mention this to anyone, got it? Nobody.” He’d suddenly realized he’d helped with something unauthorized and had two witnesses that he couldn’t control. It seemed like my sister already knew there was a possibility this might happen, and even if she didn’t, Christian could hardly threaten her.
Dax sounded flabbergasted when he said, “Mention what?”
Christian winked at him and said, “Exactly,” and I turned to see Dax’s forehead crinkle. It was pretty creepy, the way Christian was acting, but I wouldn’t expect anything less, and I wished Brandon was there so we could laugh at it later.
“No, really, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Dax continued, running a hand across his face as I had noticed he seemed to do when he was especially exasperated.
