The women all rode together in silence, Aurora, who had secured the keys from Elliott while Cassidy was still inside, drove, and Cadence sat next to her sister who cradled the baby Vampire like she was her own.
Cassidy’s tears stopped falling about the time they reached the outskirts of Kansas City, but Cadence could tell she was still profoundly upset by what had transpired. This was exactly what she’d been trying to keep her sister protected from. At sixteen, she technically wasn’t even old enough to have Transformed at all, and being just a child herself, how could anyone possibly expect her to understand what had just happened? Not only that, but Cassidy’s conversation with Willamina had left more questions than answers, and Cassidy couldn’t possibly expect them to take this child Vampire back to their apartment and let her live there, could she?
The entire team had basically kept radio silence as they traveled. In all of the hunts they’d been on, even members like Christian and Aaron who had been doing this for ages, Cadence suspected none of them had ever gone through something quite like this. It wasn’t until Cadence saw the gates to headquarters ahead of her, that she asked Aaron, “What are we doing with Bonnie?”
“For now, we’ll have Aurora swing by holding, where the other Vampires who’ve come in to be tagged are stationed, and find her a fitting babysitter,” he replied. His response seemed nonchalant, but Cadence knew this had to be difficult for him. Having lost his own child, he was particularly sensitive to situations of this nature, though that hadn’t prevented him from being the one to officially end Mina. Sometimes being the Leader came with some truly shitty responsibilities.
“You know where you’re going, Roar?” Cadence asked.
“I do,” Aurora responded, and once they made it through the front gates, she took the next left instead of heading straight toward the building where they’d meet later to debrief.
“Where are we going?” Cassidy asked, sitting up straighter in alarm.
Yep—shitty responsibilities, Cadence thought. “We are taking Bonnie over to tagging where she’ll be more comfortable,” she explained, her hand resting gently on her sister’s arm.
“Tagging?” Cassidy repeated, alarming Bonnie who pulled her head up off of Cassidy’s shoulder for the first time since she’d yanked her away from her mother. “Why?”
“Be pleasant,” Cadence warned. “No reason to alarm her.”
“I’m alarmed.” Cassidy’s face confirmed that was the case.
“We need to debrief and decide what to do with her for the long term,” Cadence explained. “You can hardly bring a child to the meeting.” She didn’t see how mentioning said child happened to also be the enemy would help the situation.
Cassidy pursed her lips and sat back slightly as Aurora drove the SUV through a gate down into the tunnel that led to one of the entrances of the Vampire tagging station. Cadence had only been here a few times, but she remembered that this was a high security location for obvious reasons. They passed several stations with armed Guardians whose only job was to keep the Vampires who dwelled here within these four walls until they proved their compliance, were tagged, and had been deemed fit to release back beyond the walls of the facility. They seemed to be going in a back way, not the way Cadence had come when she’d visited with Aaron.
Aurora stopped at a gate and rolled down her window. “Good evening. How can I help you?” the male Guardian dressed in the standard black ensemble and carrying a Beretta asked, his face anything but pleasant.
Cadence didn’t give Aurora a chance to answer. She leaned up between the front seats and said, “Hi. We have a drop off.”
He recognized her immediately. “Yes, Ms. Findley. A drop off?”
“Yes. We… procured a child on the hunt tonight.” His forehead showed his confusion. “What do you need to know to let her in?”
She assumed he was talking to someone through his IAC. This wasn’t the place most Vampires were escorted when they initially came in to be tagged by themselves, she assumed, and if regular drop offs were common, she decided this must not be the routine for that either.
A few seconds later, he said, “Here’s a form I’ll need you to fill out.” She noticed she had a new IAC request for access from someone named Gerald, which she assumed must be this fellow. She granted it and the aforementioned form displayed in front of her eye.
Quickly, she went through the questions and answered them, which was a lot easier with her IAC than pen and paper. “Age—I don’t know. She looks like she’s three, but I’m guessing she’s a lot older than that.”
“Just put three plus then,” he shrugged.
Cadence finished the form and shot it back to him. A few seconds later, he reached inside the booth behind him and opened the gate, wishing them all a pleasant evening.
There wasn’t much that could turn her evening pleasant.
Aurora followed the drive a little bit further until they reached what appeared to be some sort of an intake door. There were two more Guardians there. She shifted into park, and Cadence turned to look at her sister.
Cassidy’s lip was quivering. “Can I go?”
“Of course,” Cadence replied.
“Where are we going?” Bonnie’s voice was small and meek. Even though she’d been crying for the better part of an hour, there were no actual tears since Vampires weren’t capable of that. Still, she looked pathetic, curled up on Cadence’s little sister’s lap.
“We are going to a place where there are more people like you,” Cadence offered with a fake cheeriness to her voice as she pushed open the door.
Bonnie’s eyes flickered between the two Guardians, one of which was a male. “But he’s a bad man!”
“No, no, not a bad man,” Cassidy assured her. “He’s not going to hurt you.”
“Can you… go away for a bit, please?” Cadence asked him quietly. He looked confused, like he wanted to ask his superior for permission. “Don’t make me bother Aaron with this.”
The man scooted around the corner and disappeared out of reach of the two lights that illuminated the door as if he’d suddenly realized who he was talking to. “See? Man all gone,” Cadence said, stepping out of the vehicle.
Bonnie looked only slightly less frightened. Cadence couldn’t remember ever seeing another Vampire so skittish. Generally speaking, they were instinctively fearless. Cadence opened her arms, and Cassidy handed her over, hopping out the other side and reaching them within a second, her arms already extended as she stopped next to her older sister. Fighting the urge to shake her head in disbelief, Cadence handed the little one back.