The Vampires who had escaped the holding cells seemed more powerful than usual, but nothing compared to Bonnie. Whatever was happening had given them enough strength to temporarily overpower the Guardians on duty down there, though there were only a couple, and then they’d come up the stairs. Bonnie had been waiting for them in the hallway, and she had been the one to tear the necks out of most of the Guardians they encountered in the hallway. Another Vampire, a big brutish man named Hal who had been here for decades seemed more powerful than the rest of them and he got a few shots in himself. When Cassidy entered the building, the rest of them had fled while Bonnie headed straight for Faye, taking out a few Guardians along the way, including the one who’d accidentally shot Lena before Bonnie chased him down the hall and left him in a pool of his own blood.
Aaron shook his head and ran his hand along his throat, thinking about what it had been like to come around that corner and be hit head on with the force of a freight train. Bonnie was small, but she was certainly one of the most powerful Vampires he’d ever encountered. She’d been chosen for this infiltration for a reason. His neck had healed completely now, but the memory of the pain was fresh, as was the look on Cadence’s face when she’d laid him down on the linoleum floor.
None of that mattered at the moment. They needed to figure out what was happening with Australia. Aurora arrived first, Hannah right behind her. He greeted them both but didn’t say more until the other three came in the door. Cadence walked straight to him and wrapped her arms around him, which was comforting. Having only seen her for a few minutes since all of this started, he longed to shut the rest of the world out and surrender to her embrace. But that couldn’t happen. Not right now anyway.
“You okay?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah. You?”
“Fabulous.” Her sarcasm wasn’t quite as fluent as Elliott’s but he got the picture. She let him go and took her seat, and he decided the carpet had enough wear on it for now, following suit.
“What’s goin’ on, bossman?” Elliott asked leaning back in his chair. “Problems down under?”
Aaron fought the urge to roll his eyes at what he could only assume was a double entendre. “Yes, actually. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“That seems like par for the course,” Aurora said, shaking her head.
“I saw some of the messages from Becky, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.” Cadence ran a hand through her hair. “Has Paul reported?”
“No, that’s the problem,” Aaron said, folding his hands in front of him. “Paul is missing.”
“What? How is that possible?” Hannah asked.
With a sigh, Aaron tried to relay what he knew. “Apparently, the team went out on a routine hunt at an old abandoned movie theater. There were six of them on the ground, Paul on look out. The place seemed clear, so the team called to vacate, and he never answered. It was like he just disappeared.”
“What about his IAC?” Christian looked baffled, and Aaron couldn’t help but remember how he had insisted nothing could mess with the trackers the night before. Now, they had both trackers and IACs to worry about, and not just here.
“It went dead halfway through the hunt. They were all reporting interference problems, just like we had last night,” Aaron replied.
Shaking his head, Christian said, “I don’t understand how this is happening.”
“We know that they can jam them sometimes. They’ve done it before,” Hannah reminded him.
“I don’t know how….” Christian looked as if he was about to start pulling his hair out. “I went back over the tracker problem, ran a whole bunch of different frequencies. I have no idea. Even after I went back over what Cassidy did to fix the jamming situation with the IACs, none of it makes any sense.”
“Okay, well, I’ll get you out of here pretty quickly so that you can work on that, but we need to figure out what’s happened to Paul. And that might mean some of us head that direction.”
“To Melbourne?” Aurora clarified.
“Yes. I understand it’s risky when we know that the Vampires who escaped here last night could be planning another attack on headquarters, but there’s a chance, if we can find him, we’ll find whatever came through that portal. Besides, I’m sure Cadence will want to get over there to help out since he is her cousin, after all.” He looked at his fiancée’s face, expecting to see deep levels of concern, and while she did look like she was worried about Paul, he also saw shock and realized she had no idea Paul was related to her. He’d thought she knew, that her grandma had mentioned it, but recognized now that if Janette had said anything at all, Cadence had forgotten.
“Yes, I’d definitely like to go help out with that,” she nodded. The only person who seemed to catch on that she didn’t know was Elliott, who covered a smirk with his fist.
“Okay, I’ll get back on the horn with Becky, whose taken over temporarily, and see what they’ve got going on, and we’ll need to decide who goes and who stays,” Aaron said, moving off of the topic before anyone else noticed Cadence was clueless.
“Look, if we think whatever came through the portal might be waiting for us in Australia, I don’t think we can hold back,” Elliott spoke up. “I mean, if we cut the head off of the snake, the body will die. So, if we can get over there and annihilate this thing before these assholes get a chance to reform….”
“Yeah, but what if we can’t?” Aurora reasoned. “What if we all go over there, and then here they are on our back doorstep and all we have is a few dozen brand new recruits?”
“I’ll definitely have to look at numbers and also see if we have any Independents who would be willing to come in and help out.” Aaron’s head was beginning to hurt. It was worse than staring at Xs.
“Can we even trust them?” Hannah asked.
“Hell, I don’t know,” Aaron admitted. “I don’t have any idea who we can trust.”
“I agree with that, and after last night, I don’t trust your sister either, Cadence. I just don’t.” Christian’s eyes were boring through Cadence now, and Aaron raised an eyebrow, not sure what he was talking about.
“My sister wouldn’t have to hiss at you if you weren’t such an asshole,” she shot back.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Elliott asked, his hands flattened on the table like he might come unglued on Christian.
“Cassidy got a little upset at Christian last night and let him know it, that’s all,” Cadence explained.
“She bared her fangs at me and hissed. And she did the same thing to Shane, too.”
“He is also an asshole,” Cadence replied. “You don’t need to worry about Cassidy, all right? Besides, she has to go with us to Australia. She’s our best chance at tracking whatever it is we need to find.”