The Captain's Forbidden Mate

Episode 41: THE OLD GUARD

LENA

Aiden picked the meeting place this time, which should have been a clue before we even got to the diner.

Not the warehouse, again. Another establishment, this one with menus that were permanently glued together along their folds and a bell that had stopped working when it hadn't worked before, located on the fringes of town save for a single trucker swilling coffee in the corner booth. Aiden already had a seat saved for us, with his back to the wall and a clear eye on the front door to his booth, just as always.

"You look tired," he greeted as Cole and I slipped into the seats across from him.

“I got married last night,” I yawned. "I am, sort of. It's complicated."

His mouth twitched, just barely. "Congratulations again. I meant what I said."

"What we want," Cole said, "is what you saw last night. No nuances this time, okay? Just tell us."

"Watch out for the next twenty-four hours before I do anything stupid," Aiden said carefully, "in case your friend does something stupid, too." He twirled the coffee cup from in front of his saucer, measuring something only he could see. "What I saw was a pattern. A way of holding yourself that could only have developed as the result of long, meticulous observation in the past. A habit, if you will. I have no name for it because I'm not sure I'm right. If I am, I have to make that known somehow. If I'm not, I wouldn't be responsible for what that would do to an innocent person caught in the middle of this. There are two packs that have been circling each other waiting for reason enough to come to blows for one reason only, because of what I could choose to say."

"So what good does that do us," I asked, "if your don't say anything?"

"This narrows it down," Aiden said, shifting his gaze to between us. "What did Cole's father tell you?"

Cole reworded his story just the way he had last night, and Aiden listened, his expression remaining inscrutable until he reached the part about the council being involved in anything that happened twenty-two years ago.

"That makes sense," Aiden said when he was done. "The council is not singular. They're not the seven faces of God - they function in the ways we've been taught, but throughout history, whenever a power vacuum opened up, there's always been an old guard that took over from the inside." His expression was strained when he let out a breath. "The kind of people who had occupied the seats on it longer than either of your parents had been born. People who'd decided that history was handed down the way someone wanted it to be, not the way it had been. People who were now being replaced, quietly, because it happened gradually and it wasn't worth the trouble at the time."

"One of whom is Vane," I said.

Aiden rubbed the bridge of his nose. "The old guard, yes - in fact he's been there for as long as anyone has any recollection. As for Okafor..."

Aiden took even longer to reply this time.

She's part of the newer segment of it, younger even than her predecessor by a significant margin. Okafor took her seat on the council around the time the woman who had occupied it previously passed away, and I don't know much about her personally. Not enough about her to know why she chose you, or anyone for that matter."

That's when Cole frowned. "Which means you already have a theory, doesn't it?"

Aiden's mouth was set in a tight line and for the first time I saw the edge of something like despair beneath the veneer of contained energy that was always a part of him. "Yes," he said, "the woman I recognized last night was not old enough to have been part of the old guard twenty-two years ago. Which means either I was wrong, or the story we've been told about the events of that night are not precisely accurate." His eyes were sad as he looked down at the floor. "In other words, someone significantly younger than Vane was also a factor in this, because that couldn't be true."

At the sudden hush that fell over the diner, heavy with the weight of the unspoken implication, I silently cursed the old man who had chosen this place to meet us. The old refrigerator in the back was making a louder noise than anything else in the room.

"Does that mean you think it was Okafor?"

"She could have been one of several people present at the council meeting last night," Aiden said carefully, "and I can't hold up a name just because I caught one glance of someone from across a room." As if recalling something unpleasant, he let out a mirthless chuckle as he said, "There are too many places for mistakes to creep in when people take ideas they don't fully understand and run with them."

Cole's fingers found mine beneath the table, anchoring me in the way they always seem to. "What happens now?" he asked.

"I think, before you take any steps to try and verify the identity of the traitor," Aiden began, "we should all pay a bit more attention to Okafor." His tone suggested otherwise, but the fact that he was even suggesting it at all told me that somewhere deep down, he thought the woman was just as likely to be as innocent of the charge against her as she was guilty. "Quietly so, and without drawing too much attention to ourselves - discover the source of her influence on the council, the nature of her relationship with her colleagues and superiors, even to the extent of those who helped her rise the way others have before her. If she was wrongfully accused, we'll have that proof and evidence to take down whoever framed her so she can prove herself innocent and we can move on to finding said person of interest."

"Thankfully for all of us," I said with a tired sigh, "Noah can get whatever dirty work is necessary to do for either of our cause accomplished far better than anyone else. He enjoys it, actually."

"Yes," Aiden said, finally taking a long, lingering sip from his coffee cup as if he hadn't realized how stale it had gotten. "And as for you...lena. Whatever information any of us find out, I want you to promise me something."

"What?"

"Don't confront her like this," the former vampire said, "not Okafor, not Vane - not anyone at all. No one deserves to know such things alone." His voice cracked on the last word, but he quickly pulled himself together. "Whoever did this to us has already discovered techniques for getting rid of people and covering for them without drawing too much suspicion. I won't let them get away clean again if they have it in them to do so."

"I promise," I said. Cole gave my hand a final, reassuring squeeze before releasing it and the three of us sat in silence as traffic passed by outside the restaurant.