Maps with colored Xs created a tablecloth over the conference table, and by the look on her fiancé’s face, Cadence gathered he’d been staring at them for far too long. She’d gone back to their apartment and showered, eaten, even taken a little nap, while he stayed here in the office contemplating what it all meant. Now, with the rest of their most trusted inner circle sitting around looking at the same Xs, they weren’t making much progress. Aaron had suggested everyone take some time to look everything over before anyone said anything at all, and fifteen minutes into their contemplation, the only utterance anyone had made was Elliott who insisted on saying, “Hmmm,” very loudly every once in a while as he moved to a different map. The rest of them tried not to snicker as they were certain it would only encourage him to continue the annoying behavior.
“All right. You all look sufficiently cross-eyed.” Aaron hadn’t been wandering around the tables with everyone else having already seen whatever there was to see. Deciding they’d had enough time to study what he hadn’t been able to make sense of himself, he let them off the hook and asked, “What do we think?”
No one spoke at first, though eyes darted around, as if daring someone else to go first. After a long pause, Elliott said, “I’d go with the blue. It matches your eyes. Of course, you’ll have to buy some new drapes.”
Slowly, Aaron shook his head before saying, “Thank you. Anyone have anything… helpful?”
Aurora cleared her throat, and everyone turned to look at her. Cadence had a feeling she wanted to prove her value, and since she’d invited the other Hunter herself, she was hopeful whatever she was about to say would turn out to be both intelligent and meaningful. “Well, you said the yellow Xs are the last known indication of trackers we are no longer able to detect, right?” she asked. Aaron nodded. “And we don’t know if they’ve been removed or destroyed?”
“We just know we are no longer able to get a signal,” Aaron confirmed.
“Why does it matter which it is?” Elliott asked in a tone that conveyed he really was trying to follow her logic.
“We don’t know if they’ve been removed from Vampires’ foreheads intentionally—dugout and discarded—or if they’ve been disabled so that they are no longer doing their job. The first one indicates a huge problem. The second only a malfunction,” Aurora explained.
“I’m with you,” Elliott nodded.
“So, you’re saying that if the tags just stopped working, we probably don’t have as much to worry about—as opposed to a mass rebellion?” Jamie clarified.
“The tags didn’t just stop working.” Christian was standing at the end of the table, his arms folded, a bit of a scowl on his face. “That couldn’t happen.”
“It’s impossible?” Hannah asked.
“Yeah,” the tech guy, who was dressed to the nines in black slacks and a gray and white striped shirt with a silver tie, his suit jacket slung over the back of the chair in front of him, affirmed. “I designed them myself. There’s nothing that could possibly just make so many of them stop working all at once.”
“How many are malfunctioning?” Hannah asked Aaron.
Before he could answer, Christian said, “Zero. That’s not the problem.”
Hannah sighed. “How many are no longer tracking?”
“About three-quarters as of this morning,” Aaron replied, running his hand through his hair. “Thousands. And it seems like it’s more all of the time. I’ve been running reports every hour, and the number I’m able to get a signal from decreases by a couple of hundred each time.”
“Is there any rhyme or reason to it? Location? Age? Installation date?” Cadence asked.
“Not that I can tell.”
“That means a whole hell of a lot of Vampires just decided to take a kitchen knife to their foreheads for no reason,” Christian said, unwavering.
“Unless….” Every head turned in Jamie’s direction. It took him a moment to complete his thought. With a sigh, he said, “Do you remember what happened at the Blue Moon?” He was looking at Aaron, whose forehead crinkled, and then he shifted his gaze to Elliott before swiveling to Hannah and Christian.
“Not the portal but the lounge?” Hannah asked.
Jamie nodded. “Yeah—I know it’s been ages, and we’ve all probably tried to block it out, it was such a catastrophe, but… we didn’t know the IACs could malfunction like that either, until they did.”
“No way.” Christian shook his head adamantly. “There’s no way something like that could happen on this level.”
“Why not?” Hannah asked. “Jamie’s right. We didn’t know that could happen then, either.”
“Because—when the IACs went scrambled, it only happened in a small vicinity. It wasn’t even strong enough to reach the roof where Elliott was.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Cadence asked, unable to figure any of it out on her own, other than the fact that they had been at an aptly named lounge when their IACs messed up.
“There’s just no way….” Christian repeated.
Aaron let out a sigh, and turning to Cadence and then Aurora, who also seemed clueless, he said, “We were on a hunt in New York City a while back, a long while back, and either Holland or Giovani—maybe both—managed to scramble our IACs.”
“Had most of the team mutterin’ all kinds a shit that didn’t make any sense at all,” Elliott added, shaking his head like he still couldn’t believe it all of these years later.
“It had to be Holland,” Jamie said, under his breath. “If Giovani could do something like that….”
“She never did it again either,” Christian chimed in, his frustration growing with each word that came out of his mouth. “Because I fixed it.”
“But you haven’t fixed the trackers,” Jamie said about as forcefully as Cadence had ever heard him speak. “Which means… that could be what’s happening now.”
Jamie continued. “Whatever came back through the portal, it could be capable of sending out a signal, the same sort of signal Holland used to distract the team that night.”
The mention of Holland made the hair stand up on Cadence’s arms, but she pushed the thought aside. There was little to no chance that of all the Vampires in hell she would be the one to force her way through the portal. “So… you think the Vampires still have their trackers, they’re just scrambled or masked somehow?”