Chapter 10: Secrets

“Ooh, that doesn’t sound good,” Aaron said, his eyes narrowing. “What did I do this time? I know I didn’t leave the seat up.”

She couldn’t help but giggle, but she only let him distract her for a second this time before she returned to her stoic, serious countenance. “No, uhm, my grandmother mentioned something to me today that I think you probably know about, and I was just wondering why I’d never heard of it before.”

“And what would that be exactly?” he asked, suddenly as serious as she was.

“I think you probably know.”

“Cadence, there could literally be thousands of things that both your grandma and I know about that you don’t. We’ve both been around a really long time, and there’s no way we could possibly tell you everything.”

“This one is super-duper important,” she replied, pushing her chair back and crossing her arms.

He leaned back in his chair as well, seeming to rack his brain, and Cadence started to think perhaps he honestly didn’t know what she was talking about, which made her even more upset. “I have no idea,” he finally said, shrugging.

“Really?” Cadence exclaimed, jumping up out of her chair. “You have no idea what secret you could possibly be keeping from me that would make me furious to find out about? Seriously?” She took off toward the living room, where the fireplace was, and the hearth—which held Elliott’s urn. “How about now,” she asked, standing in front of the fireplace and gesturing at it wildly. “Does this jar anything?”

“Cadence, calm down,” Aaron said in the same pristinely tranquil voice he used to keep the team composed on the battlefield. “If I had any idea what you were talking about, I wouldn’t be standing here staring at you like an idiot. But I really don’t know.”

Telling her to calm down generally had the opposite effect, and this time wasn’t any different. “Okay. How about this… how about, my grandmother told me that she has actually spoken to my grandpa. Recently. How about that?”

“What?”

“Yeah. Now, how could that be? Hmmm. I wonder. How could she have possibly done that?”

“You’re saying that your grandmother recently spoke to your grandfather?”

“Yep.”

“The one that died before you were born.”

“Uh huh.”

“Cadence, are you serious?”

Feeling her anger begin to bubble, Cadence had to turn away from him. She stared into the roaring fire, taking some deep breaths. Realizing that, for some reason, he honestly didn’t seem to be understanding what she was saying, she reached into her jacket pocket and took out the letter. “Read,” was all she could manage to say.

Cautiously, Aaron took the letter out of her hand. It only took him a few seconds to read the whole thing. When he reached the bottom, he muttered, “Oh, dear God.”

By then, Cadence had regained some of her composure. “Now… now do you remember?”

“Cadence, I understand why you are upset….”

“Angry.”

“Okay,” he said, folding the letter up and handing it back to her. She snatched it from his hand. “But you have to believe that I didn’t know that either one of them knew.”

“Knew… what?” she asked, baiting him.

One hand resting on the mantel near the urn, Aaron let out a deep sigh and said, “Knew about the portal.”

“Ah ha!” Cadence shouted. “So you did know!”

“Of course I knew.”

She turned around and walked away from him, but since she had reached the front door, she was forced to turn around and walk back. “So just because you didn’t think there was anyone else who could tell me about it, you thought it was okay to keep this from me?”

“No.”

“No? So there’s some other reason why you thought you should keep this from me?” she asked, just as angry at him now as she could ever remember being.

“Yes,” he replied, still as calm as ever.

“What?” Cadence exclaimed. Realizing she was still holding the precious letter and may likely accidentally tear it, she crossed the room to set it gently on the coffee table.

“Cadence, sit down,” Aaron said, coming up behind her and resting his hands on her shoulders. “Let me explain.”

She jerked away from him. “What is there to explain? Clearly, I was never meant to know this information. So why tell me now?”

“Because now that you do know, you need to understand why I didn’t tell you,” he replied, giving her some space.

She glared at him for a moment, arms crossed, lips pursed. She knew that the only way she was ever going to get an answer to her most burning question—why didn’t he want to bring Elliott back—was to let him attempt to explain, so she tossed herself backward onto the sofa. “Talk.”

It was a large wraparound sofa, so giving her ample space, Aaron sat down on the other side leaving several feet between them. “You know who Alexander Hamilton is, right?”

Cadence couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What?”

“Alexander Hamilton. You know, the guy from the Broadway musical?”

“What the hell does Hamilton have to do with the blue moon portal?” Cadence asked, about to lose her mind again.

“Everything,” Aaron replied, still serene. “He has everything to do with it.”

Cadence shook her head and leaned back against the sofa, resolved not to say a word. She had an idea of who he was, but she was never good with history, even though she enjoyed hearing about it, and she certainly hadn’t found time to go to a musical.

“In 1804, Aaron Burr accidentally shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a famous duel, right?”

“Sure.”

“Except that’s not what really happened.”

“Of course not.”

“Hamilton was a Guardian, and Burr was a Hunter. They had pursued a particularly vicious Vampire, along with a small band of similar individuals, to Weehawken, New Jersey. Burr thought he had a clean shot at the Vampire, but Hamilton got in the way. The wound was, of course, mortal, and Hamilton died.

“For obvious reasons, they couldn’t tell the public what had actually happened. The story is recorded in history as a duel where Burr killed Hamilton in cold blood. Burr never mentally recovered, and he spent years trying to find a way to bring Hamilton back.

“Eventually, his journey brought him to an ancient Guardian, in England, who told Burr about the blue moon portal. As far as we know, that’s the first anyone in recent times had even heard of the portal story. Well, Burr was desperate to bring Hamilton back, even if he couldn’t clear his name, so despite the Guardian’s warnings not to go through with it, he did.”

“And did Hamilton come back?” Cadence asked, finally feeling herself calm down a bit now that she was beginning to get a bit of an explanation.

“Yes, but what neither of them considered was the warning that the Guardian gave them along with his explanation of the legend,” Aaron continued, leaning toward her a bit.

“What warning?” Cadence asked, finally uncrossing her arms.

“When the portal opens, the Guardian is not the only one who can step through. Anything can. The second Hamilton passed through the portal, another portal opened up somewhere else in the world, likely Eastern Europe, which allowed another being to pass through.”

“Who?”

“The most infamous Vampire of all time, one that had been nearly indestructible the first time when he reigned in the fifteenth century. Now, having come back from the depths of hell, newly named and ready to unleash his fury on the world, it took us nearly a hundred years to destroy him the second time.”

It only took Cadence a second to realize what he was saying. “So… when Hamilton stepped through the portal, so did… Dracula?”

“Yes.”

“Vlad the Impaler back from hell?”

Aaron nodded.

“And you think that, if I open the portal to get Elliott back, some other monster will come out of the depths of the netherworld, and we’ll be forced to kill him or her all over again?”

“I don’t think it. I know it.”

“How do you know it?”

“Because I was there.”

Cadence was confused. “I thought you said Dracula wasn’t true.”

“No, I said the book wasn’t true. I said Stoker got most of it right, but not all of it. But, yes, Dracula was very real.”

“And you helped hunt him down?”

“Not as much as I would have liked, but yes. I was there for part of it. Along with Van Helsing and the others.”

“Van Helsing was a real guy?”

“Yes, she was real.”