Chapter 489
Giving Christian a minute, I tried to calm my rage a little and look at this from a different perspective. He wanted to help me, didn’t he? So why was I attacking him? Hadn’t he suffered enough at my hand already? It’s not like we could go back now and change what he’d done. The least I could do was try to remain reasonable while he potentially attempted to atone for his mistakes. “What is it?” I asked, hoping he’d elaborate on why he wanted to know more about what I’d found out.
His serious expression became even more so as he cleared his throat and raised his eyes so they were at my face level again. “You can’t repeat what I’m about to tell you.”
“Oh, good. More secrets.” Maybe I was wrong with what I’d thought before and he didn’t deserve any compassion.
“Cassidy, I’m serious. Believe me, you’ll be glad to hear it. But I won’t tell you at all if I can’t trust you, and even though I know you hate me even more than you hate Daunator himself, I’m serious. I want your help. I need your help. But I’ll manage without it.”
I knew he was serious now, the way he was looking at me while he was speaking. He should’ve known I could just jump into his head and find out whatever I wanted to. But I wasn’t going to do that. I have no idea why he thought he could trust me. He should’ve hated me as much as I hated him, but apparently, he didn’t. I repeated my question, hoping he could see in my face that, regardless of what he was about to say, I wasn’t going to run to the bosses and tell them. “What is it?”
He took a deep breath, looking at me, and then at the floor, back at me again. When he spoke, his voice wavered slightly, showing his insecurity about the statement. “I think I want to go after him.”
This was the best news I’d heard in days! I literally bounced off of the ground with joy. “Great! You’ll help me convince the others?” I asked, clapping my hands together.
I noticed he was already shaking his head before I landed back on the floor. “No, I mean, alone. I think I want to go after him by myself.”
I tipped my head to the side and studied him for a moment, trying to figure out if he was joking again or if he meant that. It sounded like the stupidest thing I’d ever heard in my life. “What? You can’t be serious!”
“I am serious,” he replied, looking me in the eye again. “And don’t call me Shirley.” I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but before I could ask him what he was talking about, he said, “It’s a.... You know, Airplane!?”
“What?” He had completely lost me, but I filed the reference away for later, hoping I could figure it out.
“Never mind.” He waved his hand at me. “Cass, I think I want to go find him myself, see if I can destroy him without having to get anyone else involved. It’s a long shot, but I’ve got some new weapons I want to try out. If I can’t do it, maybe I can at least keep him busy for a while. When Cadence and Aaron get back, they could get a team together, and we could all attack with whatever knowledge I bring back.”
Still struggling to comprehend, I went back over what he was saying. It still seemed like a super stupid plan to me. “He could kill you.”
“I don’t think he can do that,” he said, his hands still deep in his pockets and his voice fairly confident.
“So you’ve said. But Schmitz would disagree, and he knows a lot more about Daunator than you do.” I could distinctly remember what Schmitz had said in that meeting, when Alex had gone to get him to see if he knew about the monster in question. The man had been sure Daunator was capable of killing Guardians, even though Vampires shouldn’t be able to. Christian hadn’t mentioned knowing anything about Daunator until after Schmitz brought him up, which made me think he had no idea what he was talking about now.
Undeterred by my comments about Schmitz, Christian’s cocky attitude returned. “No, he doesn’t know more about Daunator than I do.”
“See, there you go again, thinking you’re smarter than everyone.” He was really starting to get on my nerves again, despite my promise to myself that I would be nice. “You didn’t even think of him until Schmitz came into the meeting that time, and even then, you couldn’t tell us anything the rest of us couldn’t have accessed in some Vampire Wikipedia.” It didn’t matter that there was no such thing. I had a point.
His tone changed again. This time, he sounded almost sympathetic, like he wished I wasn’t so stupid or naïve. “Cassidy, I can understand why you’d think that, but believe me, I know Daunator better than anyone else.”
My natural instinct was to argue with him, or at least disagree. But there was something in his eyes that made me think maybe he wasn’t bluffing, maybe he really did know more about Daunator than he had been willing to disclose during that conversation in the conference room, before the portal and all of that. Instead of disagreeing with him, I asked, “And you know he can’t kill you?”
His confidence slacked just a bit but he still said, “I’m pretty sure,” before adding, “does it matter—I mean, to you?”
“No.” It was an awful answer, one I instantly wished I could take back. How had I gotten to be so mean? It was already out, though, and I wasn’t going to apologize. Instead, I changed the subject. “What do you want to know?”
He could’ve called me a name for being so rude to him, but he didn’t. He let my snide answer go. “Anything and everything you can tell me,” he said, his eyes perking up again. “If you’re able to access the Vampires he’s recently turned, you must have information about him, what he’s capable of, precisely where he might be, anything that might let me know his weaknesses.”
