Once the door was shut, Hannah looked down at the paper. “Are we all ready for me to read it?” she asked.
“Nope. Let me get my aluminum foil hat on,” Elliott said sarcastically, getting a chuckle out of almost everyone.
Hannah, still smirking, read, “Daunator.”
“Daunator?” Christian echoed, as if the name had struck a chord with him.
“You know him?” Aaron asked.
“I should say I’ve heard of him, I guess. He is legendary. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him.”
“Enlighten us, Captain Henry,” Elliott chimed in before Aaron had to say anything back to the tech guy to defend himself.
Christian cleared his throat and shrugged. “There isn’t much to say. Just… yeah… I’ve heard he knows a lot, that he has powers beyond your typical Vampire, a lot like Holland. Except, he is said to be able to transcend time and space. I have never heard that he knows how to kill Guardians, but if that’s what she’s looking for….”
“So you do think it’s possible?” Brandon asked.
“No,” Christian answered quickly. “But if it were, he would know it.”
His answer seemed nonsensical, and Cadence decided there was no point in asking Christian to further clarify. “Okay—so is there anything we can do about her looking for this guy?” She was certain she’d butcher his name if she tried to say it, so she didn’t.
“I doubt it,” Aaron replied. “If she’s been searching for him this long, she’s probably found him by now.”
“Especially if you only have to say his name for him to show up,” Elliott reminded them.
“Thank goodness Winona Ryder isn’t with her,” Brandon muttered, and everyone who got the joke chuckled, though it went over Meagan’s head, and Christian didn’t seem to think it was funny.
“So we’ll have to assume she knows something the rest of us don’t know,” Aaron replied. “Maybe you can find something out, Cass?”
“I’ll try,” she nodded.
“Good. That’s one more mystery we need to unravel about Holland. We know she has Sam and Laura, and we’re assuming that’s because she hopes they know something about us she can use, though I doubt they do. I contacted Laney this morning and let her know.”
“How did she handle that?” Hannah asked, a sympathetic look on her face.
“Not well. She asked for a leave of absence so she could go speak to their parents, which Cadence granted,” Aaron replied.
Laney was running most of Africa, and Cadence hadn’t wanted to let her go, but she had to under the circumstance. Their poor parents had already been through so much with Laura’s act of betrayal and subsequent imprisonment. Laney promised she’d be back to her station as quickly as possible, and in the meantime, Cadence would be relying on her second in command, a person with much less experience.
“Let’s look at our attack groups, and then we’ll let those of you who will be going through the procedure get on with it,” Aaron said, and once he was sure he had everyone’s attention, he shifted to the teams the two leaders had already outlined earlier that morning. It didn’t take long for everyone to agree that the squads looked evenly matched, and everyone understood their assignments.
“All right. Let’s assume this whole process takes two days. That means we can plan on moving in on Saturday night/Sunday morning,” Aaron continued, once his entire team was on board. “Unless something goes wrong with this serum situation, in which case we may need more time or to make some alterations to the plan. I’ll let all four of the teams handle getting their people together for the pre-hunt meetings, unless you feel like you need me or Cadence there.”
He looked at Elliott, Hannah, and Aurora, the other designated team leaders, and all three of them shook their heads, indicating they could handle it. “Good. You’re going to be working with a lot of people you’re not used to hunting with, though, so make sure you know who you’ve got,” Aaron continued.
The mention of splitting their team into quarters made Cadence more than a little nervous, but with the extra Guardians, they would all be strong teams. And there were four Healers, so they would all be covered there as well. She’d decided to take Martin with the team she and Aaron would be leading and send Jamie with Aurora’s team, since she was the only Hunter who would be leading a group, and Cadence wanted to make sure she was in good hands.
“You’ll all have plenty of Christian’s grenades and titanium bullets,” Cadence assured them. “The grenades worked great the other night when we went after Spittle.” She smiled at Christian, hoping to throw him a bone, but he was clearly pissed not to be in charge of anything and only glared at her.
“Will you be shipping any of them to the other areas?” Aurora asked. “They might need them, too.”
“The grenades, yes,” Aaron replied. “But not the titanium bullets. There’s too much of a risk with them. Melbourne still has some from when we were there a few months ago, though.”
“Oh, goody. We’re the only ones who might accidentally blow each other’s brains out,” Elliott mumbled, though it was obvious he was kidding.
“Seems ironic coming from you, considering that’s happened before,” Cadence replied giving him a steady look.
“And no one ever put them back,” Christian chimed in from his seat almost directly across from Elliott.
Cadence drew in a deep breath. Part of her wanted to laugh hysterically—because it was a funny comment—but knowing the history between the two, she was afraid the tech guy may have just ignited World War III.
Instead, Elliott burst out laughing, causing everyone else to stare at him, wondering if maybe a screw had finally completely come loose. “Now, that was a good one, Henry,” Elliott said once he regained his ability to speak. “We set you up pretty good on that one.”
Cadence turned to Aaron, who looked relieved since he would likely have to be the one to stop any fight that broke out between the two of them. “Let’s just all be cautious, okay? We don’t want to have to put anyone’s internal organs back inside of them.”