Transformation: The Clandestine Saga Book 1 (28 page)

              Once Cadence and Aaron found their positions, they were suddenly bombarded by club-goers offering to buy each of them drinks.  The constant interruptions were getting to be a bit of a distraction.  Finally, Aaron closed the small gap between them and wrapped his arm around Cadence’s waist.

              She was rather surprised but certainly didn’t mind.  Nevertheless she had to ask, “Whatcha doin’ there, Bossman?”

              “Well, I was hoping that these nice club-goers would start to think that we are a couple and leave us the hell alone so we could do our job,” he replied, his hand on her side but just lightly resting there.

              She was standing in front of him peering over the balcony, scanning the crowd for any of the known members of Holland’s clan and for Sebastian. While she agreed that the French partiers were a distraction, she didn’t know if he realized that he was causing even more of a disruption in her ability to concentrate. Yet, despite the knowledge that she knew concentration was vital, she wasn’t about to ask him to move away.

“You know, it’s easier to hold you when you’re not packing heat,” he whispered in her ear.

              “Are you trying to disarm me?” she had replied coyly.

              “No, not at all,” he resounded. “I’ll just have to figure out some other way to let everyone know you’re presently spoken for,” he said in a more flirtatious tone than she had ever heard him use before.

              “I have a few ideas,” she said biting her bottom lip. She was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t also taking advantage of this charade to momentarily suspend their agreement to go their separate ways.

              “Oh? What’s that?” he asked intrigued.

              Though it required taking her eyes off of the club floor for a few moments, she convinced herself that the believability of their cover story was at stake.  She swiveled her hips around so that she was facing him and placed her hand on the nape of his neck. Pulling him towards hers, she pressed her lips against his and drew his mouth open with her tongue.  After a few moments she released him. “Believable?” she asked, requesting his approval.

              In response, Aaron pulled her back in and kissed her again, this time a bit softer but still just as passionately. Releasing her, he said, “I think that might work. It does make it a little more difficult to see the club floor, but really, there will be other opportunities to kill Vampires.”

              She laughed and turned back to scan the crowd, making sure she hadn’t missed anything while she had been thoroughly distracted. 

“
What the hell are you guys doing?”
Eliza wanted to know.

“Cover story,”
Cadence replied.

“Believability is everything
. “ Aaron noted.

“Am I the only one working around here?”
the third wheel wanted to know.

Cadence couldn’t respond just then though. Her eyes locked in on a face moving through the crowd. She didn’t have a good vantage point from where she was presently standing so she began to move, her instincts kicking in.

Aaron couldn’t see exactly what she was doing, but he knew by now that when she went into this state, it was best to just let her work and try to keep up.

Cadence had a lock.  It was Sebastian. He was winding his way through the crowd, heading down the middle of the dance floor, constantly looking over his shoulder as if he was certain he was about to be pounced on at any second.  And that was Cadence’s first thought, but the fact that he was here must be significant. If something weren’t amiss, he would have never shown up in the club that night, knowing it was bound to be crawling with Hunters and Guardians.

Surveying the location of her teammates, she realized he was about to pass into Jamie’s zone.  “
Jamie, Sebastian, white shirt, middle of the floor, your ten o’clock.”

             
“Affirmative,”
Jamie replied.

             
Jamie was on him in less than two seconds, without the crowd knowing he had instantaneously covered about fifty feet and without bumping into a single one of them. He placed his hand on Sebastian’s shoulder, as if they were long lost pals. “Sebastian, we’ve missed you,” he said, keeping his grip tight as they continued to walk through the crowd. Jamie wasn’t sure exactly where they were going but he knew he wasn’t going to let Sebastian get away.

              “I need to speak to Sabin,” he said, his heavy French accent making it difficult for Jamie to understand.

              “Well, let’s go,” Jamie replied, leading him to where she stood at the backend of the club on the first balcony.

              “God, I really want to go ring his neck, literally,” Cadence muttered.

              “Nice pick up,” Aaron replied. “You can’t kill him just now. We’ve got to figure out what he knows.” He was dying to go interrogate the Turncoat himself, but doing so would mean leaving Cadence and it wasn’t worth it. He would have to trust Sabin to gather and disseminate the information.

              As Jamie reached Sabin, the team switched their primary vision setting to her so they could get the information as quickly as possible. Since they both spoke French, however, it took a bit longer for Cadence to understand the message.

              “Holland is on her way,” Aaron explained, his translating slightly faster than the IAC.

              “Where did you learn to speak such fluent French?” she asked, her smile showing that she was impressed.

              “France,” he replied smartly. “I lived here for a while. A long time ago.”

              “How old are you anyway?” She asked as she continued to survey the crowd. She had been wanting to ask for a long time but never had. She knew this might not be the best time or place, but she really wanted to know.

              “That’s a little rude,” he teased. He had his hand resting on her shoulder, continuing with the façade that they were a couple.

              “It just boggles my mind that you look like you’re in college and you’re like, 150,” she commented, her eyes continuing to fly through the faces in the crowd.

              “That’s a good guess. Let’s go with that,” he replied, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

              She flashed him a disappointed smirk, not pulling her eyes completely away from the crowd.  Suddenly, she realized her heart rate was increasing.  She started to have an unusual sensation in the pit of her stomach, almost as if her insides were itching.  She had never felt anything like this before, but she knew what it meant. “Aaron,” she said, grabbing his arm, “She’s coming alright, and she’s bringing Armageddon with her.”

              “What?” he asked.

              But she didn’t have time to answer. There was a brilliant flash of white light and the front doors of the club came crashing open, a chilling wind blowing in so furiously, club-goers were knocked to the ground and strewn about like flower petals in a storm. The music abruptly stopped, the lights flickered, and then, there she was, standing in the entryway to the dance floor, the crowd parting in haste to make way. Her flowing white dress illuminated in the lights from the dance floor lending a sense of irony as she resembled an angel, long red tresses bellowing in the wind. “You want me? Here I am. Come get me!” She turned and looked straight at Cadence, her long, bony finger beckoning in her direction.

              The crowd stood petrified with fear, as Holland’s legion filled the area around her. There must have been at least fifty of them, if not more.  Cadence glanced back at Aaron. Bad intel, once again.

             
“We got this.”
Cadence blasted to the entire team.

              “You sure?” Aaron whispered next to her.

              She nodded, pulling the Beretta’s from behind her back. She knew they were grossly outnumbered, but the Vampires had no weapons while they had semi-automatic rifles.  Perhaps more importantly, they had Cadence and she was pissed.

              Unfortunately, the Vampires had chosen to take this fight out in public where there was a pretty good chance dozens of humans would be injured or killed.  Even as this thought crossed her mind, the Vampires began to shriek, a sign they were about to attack. Their faces contorted, exposing their spike-like teeth, their talon-clad fingers ready to slice through the crowd. 

              As the Vampires charged into the crowd, the humans began to panic. The Compliant Vampires were suddenly forced to choose a side, predator or prey. Many of them instinctively chose to go along with the rest of their Passel and Cadence turned her head slightly to see a man sinking his teeth into his date. She trained her weapon on him and fired. Though it was too late for the woman who now had a gaping hole in her neck, at least this particular villain would not have a second victim.

              Elsewhere, the previously clubbing humans were screaming, trampling each other, trying to find the closest exit.  The Vampires were fighting through the crowd, spreading out attempting to get to the Hunters. The Hunters and Guardians were limited to using their Beretta’s because the Glock’s might kill the humans. Nevertheless, the room was illuminated in bursts of silver-blue light as the LSI searched out target after target. 

              Cadence had only one objective and she didn’t have time for the stairs.  She leapt over the balcony, dropping the two stories as if she were a child jumping off the bottom step of a stairwell.  She didn’t see Aaron shaking his head in disbelief and calculating whether or not he could follow. After a second’s hesitation, he bounded after her, though his landing was a bit rougher. Eliza belted for the staircase.

              Trusting her aim, Cadence replaced one of the Beretta’s in its holster and pulled a Glock out of her right hip holster.  The hell with protocol at this point; she could take out more Vampires faster with the handgun. She was heading toward Holland, but she was picking off Vampires right and left as she went. 

              Stormy was also proving why it was worth it to have her difficult ass around. Christian and Jamie had been assigned to cover her, though Jamie had been stuck in the back with Sebastian when the altercation had first started. He had rushed through the crowd as quickly as possible, considering he was swimming upstream, to get back to his station. Yet, neither one of them were able to add much protection for Stormy as she engaged Vampire after Vampire either at close proximity or with her guns.  All they could do to assist was try to take out some of her peripheral attackers before she had the opportunity.

              Chantal and Genevieve had also joined the engagement, procuring weapons from members of the French team.  They worked well together and were managing to take out quite a few bloodsuckers. Sabine was fighting her way towards them, the three of them preferring to work together.

              Though it was the primary responsibility of the Hunters to kill the Vampires and the Guardians to protect the Hunters as they did so, under these circumstances it was completely permissible for a Guardian to engage any and all attacking Vampires.  All of them posed a threat at this point, and so most of the Guardians were on the offensive as well, seeking out the predators before they could turn their attention to the Hunters they were assigned to.

              Aaron was forced to take this position as well because he couldn’t keep up with Cadence.  He had planned on situating himself so that, should he need to step in between Holland and Cadence, he could do so, but it was becoming increasingly more difficult for him to judge exactly which path she was taking to reach her goal and for him to head Cadence off.

              Cadence knew she would probably have a clear shot at Holland within twenty yards of reaching her, which she was closing in on now.  But she understood that Holland was betting she wasn’t planning on using a gun to kill her. Otherwise, she would have never called her out. The rest of the Vampires knew that Cadence was off-limits, and after seeing how quickly she was taking out any of them that entered her proximity, most were staying as far away from her as possible.

              Many of the humans had either fled the scene or had fallen victim to the Vampires within the first few minutes of the battle.  Originally, they had made good screens for the Vampires to wind their way through to close in on their Hunter targets. However, with fewer humans, there were fewer places for the Vampires to hide, and their numbers were starting to dwindle. Though Holland’s strategy to outnumber the enemy almost four-to-one sounded good on paper, it wasn’t holding up against the far superior weapons her enemies employed.

              Not all of the Vampires were having such bad luck though. Chantal was engaged with a towering brute; his club like fists had knocked her weapon out of her hand, and before either of her teammates were able to train their guns in his direction, he had severed her arm, plucking it from it’s socket as if he were de-feathering a chicken. Hearing her scream, Sabin turned and fired, making the attacker pay with a direct hit to the heart.  She rushed to her friend’s aid and Genevieve covered them with her guns as Sabin attempted to stop the bleeding.

              Aaron was standing close by. He couldn’t stop to assist because he realized what Cadence was about to do. “
Jamie, we need you in the back by the stage.”