Transformation: The Clandestine Saga Book 1 (6 page)

              “In trouble?  What? From who?”

              “From Aaron,” Jamie explained. “He didn’t want her to say that so, when she did, he told her to stick to the protocol.”

              Cadence still looked puzzled. “So you’re telling me that Aaron, who is somewhere in Villisca or Shenandoah or God-knows-where just told you not to say that to me
through your eye
?”

              They both nodded. “Yes, that’s correct.” Jamie confirmed.

              “And then, all of those strange facial expressions you were making on our way here were because you were talking to him?”

              “Well, I don’t know about strange facial expressions,” Eliza began.

              “Oh, you do!” Jamie agreed. “You always make crazy faces when you’re talking on the IAC.”

              “I do not!”

              “You do!”

              “Alright,” Janette chimed in, bringing them back to the topic at hand. “I think that’s enough about the IAC for now.  I don’t have one. I prefer to communicate the old fashioned way,” she said, gesturing at her house phone. “Cadence, whether you chose to accept its existence right now or not, you will find out eventually that it does exist and it is how Aaron coordinates the thousands of Hunters and Guardians around the world.”

              “Wait, what?” Cadence asked.  She could see her grandmother’s face going back over what she had said, attempting to figure out what her granddaughter was questioning.  “Did you say that Aaron was the leader of the entire Guardian Passel?”

              “Oh, yes,” she confirmed.  “He is the Guardian Leader.”

              Cadence looked at Eliza and Jamie in disbelief. “I thought he was like a shift manager or something, not like, the CEO.”

              Eliza burst out laughing and Jamie did his best to stifle the laugh in the back of his throat, though he could actually hear Aaron laughing, too, which was rare.  “That’s hilarious!” Eliza said, though once she saw Cadence’s face, she attempted to control herself a little more.

              Cadence was thinking back to the night before when she had called him “creepy” and had practically blown her nose on his jacket. “Wonderful,” she mumbled. “I sure hope he never has to save my ass again. He’s liable to let the Vampires have me.”

              “It is a lot of responsibility, that is certain,” Janette admitted, shaking her head.  “Especially now, since there’s no Hunter Leader.”

              “I’m sorry—what? Wait. Did you say there is no Hunter Leader?”

              Again, the three veterans exchanged glances. Janette finally made her remark again.  “That’s right. There hasn’t been one for quite some time.  Which has left the Guardian Leader to do the job of both.”

              “But, why?” Cadence asked.

              The eyes shifted around the room and Janette finally picked up the old photo album that had been sitting next to her on the couch.  “This is a difficult story for me to tell, darling,” she said, “But I do believe you have the right to know.”

              Cadence felt her heart fluttering a bit as she anticipated what her grandmother might say next.  She watched as she slowly opened the album to the very first page.

              Attached to the page of the photo album was a daguerreotype of her Grandma Janette and her Grandpa Jordan dressed in wedding clothes, which seemed to look as early as the mid-19
th
century. “This is you?  And Grandpa?” she asked, waiting for an explanation.

              “Yes,” Janette confirmed.  “This is our original wedding photograph, taken in 1858.  Since that time, we’ve had several others made. Otherwise, well, people would have quickly figured out we weren’t quite the ages we claimed to be.”

              “So, both of you were also members of a Passel?” Cadence said, starting to put the pieces together a little more. “And, just as Vampires don’t age, neither do Guardians or Hunters?”

              “That’s not quite accurate,” Janette corrected.  “Vampires do not age.  They are the same age they were when they were created until they are destroyed.  The original Vampires were in their mid-twenties, and though none of them have lasted these tens of thousand of years, they never looked a day older than the day they were created.  Hunters do age, just not as quickly as humans.  They age just like a regular person until they are Transformed. Once they go through the Transformation process, they age at a ratio about the same as 1 year for every 10 years for a human. So, when I was Transformed at 17 in 1855, I looked practically the same for many decades.”

              Cadence interrupted yet again, “So, Grandma, you’re a Hunter?” she asked.

              “Oh, yes, I was,” Janette confirmed.  “For a very long time.  But, well, after your Grandfather died, I was converted back into a human.”

              “You can do that?” Cadence asked, once again bewildered.

              “Yes, in certain circumstances,” Janette explained. “But it's rare and it doesn’t always work.  Sometimes the individual stays a Hunter and sometimes the conversion kills him or her. I do not recommend it.”

              “And you said you were Transformed into a Hunter?”

              “We will definitely talk about that later,” Janette said, looking directly at Jamie, who just nodded.

              “Guardians age even more slowly than Hunters. It’s about 1 year for every 20 years past Transformation until they reach what we consider middle age and then they won’t grow any older looking.  Once a Guardian is Transformed, there’s no going back. And there’s no way to die either, unless, of course, a Hunter kills you.”  The end of her sentence trailed off and Cadence felt her heart breaking for her poor grandma, unsure of why this was such a sensitive topic but aware of how it was affecting her nonetheless.

              “Now, let me show you another picture,” Janette said, flipping further into the book.  She paused on a picture of her Grandpa Jordan. By the looks of it, it must have been taken much more recently.  “This was taken just a few days before your grandfather was killed.”

              Cadence paused to absorb that information before responding.  “But, we were always told that Grandpa died in a plane crash,” she said.  She had been told that story from the day she was born and she wondered now if her dad even knew the truth.

              “Yes, I know, darling,” Janette said, patting her gently on the knee. “It was much simpler to tell everyone that Jordan had died in a plane crash while traveling for business than it was to tell them the truth.”

              “And what is the truth?” Cadence asked timidly.

              “Your Grandfather was the Guardian Leader prior to Aaron taking over that station, and he was killed by a Hunter.”

              Cadence gasped. “But, how is that possible? If you were a Hunter and he was the Guardian Leader, how could that have possibly happened?”

              The others could tell by Janette’s expression that she really wished to say no more.  She had tears in her eyes and she reached into her pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, dabbing at the corners of her eyes.

              Through their IAC’s Eliza and Jamie could hear an audible sigh from the generally quite Aaron. They knew this was a difficult memory for him as well.

              “It was my fault,” Janette started.  All three Guardians protested, though she only heard two of them. “No, now, let me tell this story. It’s my story.”

              Eliza and Jamie exchanged glances and resolved not to speak as Janette relayed the information to her granddaughter.

              “Before I ever met your grandfather, I had dated a Hunter by the name of Skelton. He was sweet on me, seemed to have been that way for as long as I could remember.  I didn’t really like him so much.  He was a good-looking fellow but I knew for a fact he had been hunting Compliant Vampires, and I didn’t approve of that. Jordan was the Guardian Leader when I Transformed, but he didn’t train me. I didn’t meet him until I had been hunting for several years. Once I established a reputation for being fairly handy with an ax, my weapon of choice at the time, well, Jordan wanted to meet the little lady who took off Vampire heads with ‘one foul swoop’ as he used to say. Your grandfather was quite the character, you know.” She smiled at Cadence and, for the first time since she had walked in the door, Cadence thought she saw some joy in her eyes. 

              “Anyway, about the time that I met Jordan, there was an accident. The Hunter Leader was severally injured by a Vampire when the Guardians didn’t get there in time to assist. Your grandfather was livid. He said we needed new forms of communication, new protocols, what have you. Back then, it was pretty common to lose over one hundred Hunters a year to Vampire kills. We almost couldn’t grow them fast enough to replace them. But your grandfather, see, he was a smart cookie. He got his people working on technology. Did you know that we were using cell phone technology to communicate with each other in the 1940s?  Can you imagine what that type of capability would have done during World War II? Of course, that came much later than what I’m talking about now. But those were the types of things he was working on, finding ways to save more Hunters lives and chase down more Rogue Vampires. And he was very successful.  And so popular with the Guardians and the Hunters alike, he really was.”

              Janette paused then, glancing down at the picture of her late husband and Cadence sat quietly, waiting for her to continue.   “Well, once I went to train with Jordan and he actually started to work with me, you know, go on hunts and the like, well, my popularity grew as well. Whenever you lose a leader, there’re usually at least a few years of transition where the group doesn’t know for sure who they want to appoint as leader, or they are divided.  But for me, it was quick and painless.  Representatives from the other Hunters approached me one evening and asked me if I would accept the position of Hunter Leader.  I talked it over with Jordan to see what he thought, knowing how demanding such a job might be.  Well, he was tickled pink for me, you know. He was real happy. He thought I should accept for sure. And so, I did. And that was a long time ago, back in 1858, same year we got married. You see, darling, there’s a history of that in our Passels.  With very few exceptions, if the two leaders are of different genders, they almost always end up hitching up. Not sure why, but it’s a fact.  Isn’t that right?” she asked the question of Eliza and Jamie who both nodded in agreement.

              “And we were happily married for over a hundred years, fighting Vampires together, inventing new things, new methods.  Old Skelton, well, he didn’t like it. So, he decided to go off on his own.  We heard from him every once in a while, especially if he’d make a big kill, some nasty Vampire brought down by his hand, you know. But for the most part, he was out of sight and out of mind.”

              “We even decided to raise a family.  I was fighting Vampires even at nine months pregnant with both your daddy and your Aunt Lorraine.  Can you believe that?  Life was pretty good.  We were planning on spending the next couple of hundred years together. Of course, I thought for sure your grandfather would out live me and we talked about that.  It’s part of being a Guardian. You know most of the individuals you love in your life will be lost to you eventually.” The two Guardians present in the room nodded and listened to see if Aaron made a single solitary noise, which he did not.

              “But then, Skelton shows up again.  He comes in, wants to talk to Jordan, wants to join forces with him.  This is about the time that your daddy was going to make his decision, whether or not to join the family business, you know, or if he was just going to stay a human. As a Hunter, if you don’t Transform by age 21, you lose the ability to do so.  Anyway, Skelton shows up.  And we worked together really well for several years.  Jordan had met Aaron by then and was just real impressed with him. He took Aaron under his wing, you know, training him up in case he ever decided to step aside from Leader and let someone else do it for a while.  But what we didn’t know was, this whole time, Skelton’s plotting; he’s scheming away, just looking for the perfect opportunity to get Jordan in a situation where he can destroy him and make it look like it was an accident.  And, finally the time came, and, well, I won’t go in to too much detail, darling, I really can’t. It’s just too hard.” She cleared her throat and Cadence nodded, seeing the tears coming back again.  “But I will tell you, what Skelton didn’t know and what damned him in the end is that your grandfather was wearing a recording device. Aaron had set him up so that everything he did or said would be relayed back to some big computer that kept track of all of it. So, even though Skelton said it was an accident, well, the tapes said otherwise.”  She was dabbing at her eyes again and Cadence wasn’t sure if she was finished or not.  She was afraid to interrupt so she just waited.  Finally, Janette added, “And now you know about your grandfather, what an amazing individual he truly was.”

              Cadence leaned over and hugged her grandma tightly.  All these years she had had no idea the true story of her grandparents' love story, and how it spanned the length of nearly a century-and-a-half.  “Thank you, Grandma Janette, for letting me know,” she said, still holding her tightly.

              Her grandmother said nothing, just patted her gently on the back. Finally, after a few minutes, they let go of each other, and Jamie cleared his throat, attempting to gain Cadence’s attention.  “So, about the Transformation process,” he began. “Basically, every Hunter is born with a genetic code in their DNA which will activate one of a few ways.  Back in the olden days, before we had the technology that we have today, it took several years for full conversion, unless the gene was extremely strong, such as in the case of your grandmother. She basically willed her way into becoming a Hunter and activated that coding within her genes. Clearly, you can see how it worked for you last night. You needed to accomplish certain tasks, so you did. Now, however, we have developed a serum that essentially let’s us go in and speed up that process, making it much, much shorter."