Chapter 425
Aaron had been talking to Elliott on the video Christian was showing us of what happened right before they disappeared. I couldn’t hear either of their voices, but I could tell by Elliott’s expression that he was worried about something. I’m not an expert lip reader, but I thought he said he was leaving, maybe going back to the B and B.
The image bobbed up and down, and I supposed that was Aaron nodding before he turned his head. Out in front of them about twenty yards, a girl came into view. She had the same build as one of the Vampires I’d talked to earlier, but she wasn’t wearing her face.
“That looks like me,” my sister said, her mouth hanging open.
“Right,” Christian agreed. “Elliott sees the same thing. They start walking in a hurry, and then, at 2:32, just as the moon hits its culmination....” He stopped talking and we watched as Elliott noticed something on the ground and then vanished, right in front of Aaron. A split second later, Aaron’s IAC went dead.
I felt a heaviness in my heart watching Elliott disappear again, and Aaron, too for that matter, but I couldn’t imagine what it was like for my sister. I was hopeful we wouldn’t have to watch Brandon’s IAC go all fuzzy. I wrapped my arm around my sister’s neck and tried not to notice the tear she swiped away.
Hannah’s voice was still calm. “Thank you, Christian. Do you have similar footage from the others?”
The tech guy nodded. “From Dax’s perspective, Brandon and Jamie are gone for a few seconds before Dax goes barreling in behind them, and then, if you switch to Alex, he turns his audio on and mutters a few old school swear words before he jumps in, too.”
Cadence’s face showed her confusion, and I was there with her. “So... you think Alex knows what this is?”
“I guess he had enough experience with portals to figure it out,” Christian shrugged.
Christian’s confidence was confusing me. Of course, I was suspicious that we might be dealing with a portal, too, but I wasn’t ready to make that conclusion yet. And I had noticed earlier, when we were watching Aaron’s footage, Christian happened to know the time of the blood moon’s culmination—at exactly 2:32. There was something wrong....
“How do you know it’s a portal?” I asked him, trying to control myself. Before he even answered, I decided to go for a little stroll through his mind. Cadence tightened her grip on my shoulder.
Christian shrugged again and began to fidget with his fingers. “I mean... I think it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Clearly the Blood Moon Portal exists after all, and they just walked into it.”
I didn’t appreciate his nonchalance. It had been his job to determine whether or not there might be a portal, and he’d said there wasn’t. In his mind, I could see him in the archives, looking through books, working on the assignment Aaron had given him. “What do you mean after all?”
He looked from me to Cadence and then back again, adjusting in his chair, swiveling back and forth. “Nothing. I just mean... we didn’t think there was such a thing. But I guess there is.”
I saw him looking through a particularly old, leather bound book. The words were written in another language, but there was a phrase in particular that stood out to him. He ran his finger under the words, and in his mind, the words, “Blood Moon Portal,” and then a realization washed over him that there truly is a Blood Moon Portal. His next thoughts were diabolical—not to tell Aaron so that maybe he would go away forever.
I stood there, looking at the smug smile on his smug face, lying to all of us, making it seem like he’d simply made a mistake. And I couldn’t take it. It was all his fault—if it hadn’t been for Christian, Brandon would still be here, my sister would be on her way to her wedding, Elliott wouldn’t be gone again.... I completely lost control of myself.
My sister couldn’t hold me back. I launched myself at Christian, screaming at him. “You jerk! You liar!” Before I even realized what I was doing, I scratched his face and his neck, deep, not with my normal fingernails but with a set of Vampire claws that seemed to drop from nowhere, just like the fangs that filled my mouth. The blood wasn’t enough to shock me back to my normal self. I knocked the chair over and we both tumbled to the floor.
Cadence grabbed me by my waist and pulled me off, but I continued to fight against her, trying to get back to him. “You knew about this! I see it in your head!” I lunged for him again, and it took everything Cadence had to keep me from clawing his face off.
Job and Oswald each grabbed an arm, and Cadence let go to step in front of me. “Calm down, Cass!” she shouted at me, looking me in the eyes.
My fangs were aching to sink into his flesh, and it was all I could do to try to breathe deeply and fight for control of myself. The men were strong, probably not as strong as me if I really wanted to fight them since they hadn’t had that second dose of Transformation serum, but they held me back.
Christian was wiping at blood while he screamed at me. “What is wrong with you, you psycho?”
That had me ready to fight again. Hannah leaned over the guys and wrapped her arm around my collar bone. She’s as strong as I am on my own, so that was enough to keep me off of him, despite my best tries. I wondered if I could levitate them all off of me, or pull him to me....
Lisa and Trina were doing their best to stop the bleeding with a roll of paper towels. “She’s a Vampire?” Lisa asked, looking at me like I’m some sort of freak.
“No, she’s a Hybrid,” Cadence replied, still standing between us.
“What the heck is a Hybrid?” Trina asked.
“The sort of monster that will rip your face off if you lie about Blood Moon Portals that can eat her boyfriend!” I shrieked as the Guardians continued to hold me back.
I should’ve noted in Job’s tone just how freaked out everyone else was, but I was too mad to care. He said, “Trina, go find Keith. See if he can put Christian’s face back together.” I didn’t know who Keith was but I was hoping he was a crappy Healer, and Christian was going to look like Dawn of the Living Dead for the rest of his life. “Cadence, what do we do with your sister?”
It made me even more angry that they all thought there was something wrong with me. Stupid, I know, but true. My sister said, “Hannah?” like she thought the Guardian could shoot some of her good vibes juju at me, and I’d suddenly become a little girl skipping through the flowers.
“I’m trying,” Hannah said, “but she’s really angry. Whatever she saw in Christian’s head must be really, really bad.”
They had no idea. And in my agitated state, I wasn’t even able to tell them. I could feel Hannah giving it another try, and for a moment, I thought about calming down a little bit. But then I saw Christian sitting there, bleeding all over the place with that same haughty expression, and I was ready to tear into the other side of his face.
“Where’s Ashley?” Cadence asked. I wondered what Ash had to do with anything but was too busy trying to free myself to ask.
“She’s downstairs with the Vampires,” Job said, his fingers biting into my arm.
“All right. Let’s take Cass down there, get Christian cleaned up, and I’ll see what the heck is going on.” My sister gave Christian a sharp look, and I think she realized then that I had a reason for being so mad, though she would argue I hadn’t gone about it the right way.
