Annihilation: The Clandestine Saga Book 7

The odor of mildew assaulted her lungs as Cadence Findley made her way through the underground tunnel. Here she still had enough clearance to stand, though she was bent at the waist so that her shoulders were stooped, but up ahead, she was aware it narrowed even further, and she’d be forced to drop to her knees. How her Guardian, Elliott Sanderson, was ever going to make it through the smaller passage, she wasn’t sure, but she thought it might be fun to watch.

“Moist. That’s the word that comes to mind. It smells moist in here,” he said only to her through his IAC, or Intelligence Assistance Communicator, a tiny chip each member of the LIGHTS (Lincoln International Guardian and Hunter Training Station) team had in their eye so that they could speak to each other and share other information without actually having to open their mouths.

“Don’t use that word,” Cadence said, bile rising up in the back of her throat at the offense. “That’s the most disgusting word in the English language.”

“What? Moist?” Elliott said again, just to annoy her. “You don’t like the word moist, Cadence? Does it bother you when I say moist?”

“Seriously—knock it off!” she insisted slowing to throw an elbow at him, which only made him chuckle.

“Fine, if I can’t say moist, I’ll just say the German equivalent. How do you feel about feucht?”

“I feel like if you don’t shut up and let me concentrate, we’re both about to be feucht,” she replied as she sensed the walls closing in on them slightly. Up ahead, there was a corner, and that’s where Aaron McReynolds, the Guardian Leader and her fiancé, had told her the passage would narrow down to about two feet in height. She’d have to crawl on her stomach for approximately a hundred yards before she’d come to a grate overhead, which they could remove, and pop into the tunnel the particular group of Vampires they’d been hunting the last few nights happened to be staying in. The city of Houston seemed to press down on her slightly when she thought about it, and the fact that these tunnels hadn’t been used in ages made her slight claustrophobia flair up considerably.

There were only four Vampires in this group, from what they could tell, and she had insisted that Aaron didn’t need to send anyone else with them. She thought she could handle it alone, but since the Vampires had been particularly difficult to kill recently, what with the return from hell of Holland, or Asteria, as she had been calling herself, Cadence had agreed to let Elliott come with her. Aaron would’ve done it himself except this was one of three such excavations going on at the same time.

These Vampires had lived down here for decades, not really breaking any rules, and even when Holland had called for all of the Vampires all to move, to band together in an attempt to form an army and attack the other two Passels of the Ternion, as far as the LIGHTS team could tell, these folks had ignored her cry. But the rules of the game had changed now that Holland was attempting to kidnap more Guardians so that she could do experiments on them to find a way to kill them, and Cadence and Aaron had agreed they were giving no free passes to bloodsuckers, even those who had always followed the rules and only taken the lives of the underbelly of society. All of the similar raids they’d conducted since that time had been easy compared to the rescue mission they’d embarked on in Melbourne two months ago, where she and her younger sister Cassidy had gone in attempting to save their cousin Paul Larkin whom Holland had been torturing. Instead, Cadence had tangled with another demonic Vampire, Holland’s lover, Carter—or Perses as he preferred--and while Cadence had walked away the victor, it had been a hard fought battle.

This should be a piece of cake.

Thinking of food reminded her that Elliott was going to have a hard time squeezing his girth through the opening they were closing in on, and she wished that Aaron would’ve gone ahead and let him go through with the procedure they’d been discussing ever since the Vampires had raided the tagging center at headquarters and they’d been forced to use a second dose of Transformation serum on one of the young Hunters, Tara, to keep her alive. Aaron had promised that Elliott and Cadence could both do it, too, since it had made Tara so much faster and stronger than she was before, which was saying something considering the superpowers Hunters already had. But Aaron wanted to be one hundred percent sure it was safe, and Jamie Joplin, their resident Healer, still had a few more experiments to do before he could give the okay. Cadence really hoped that would come in the next few days.

“You know, if I was stronger, maybe I could bust through the concrete,” Elliott said behind her. Even through the IAC, she could tell his voice was strained. They were crawling now, through what, she wasn’t sure, but it smelled pretty awful. She’d have to take her purple leather jacket and black pants to the dry cleaner on campus after this—that is, if they didn’t get shredded by claws or fangs.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Cadence admitted, remembering the initial thought that had made her think of the Transformation serum to begin with. What if they got there and Elliott could bust through the ground around the grate instead of trying to go through a tiny opening?

The point would’ve been moot even if they hadn’t just arrived under their location to see that he would be able to fit through, with a little bit of shimmying and luck. Even though she was aware that Aaron had her visuals, she still felt the need to tell him, “We’re at the location.”