The trip back to the hotel went much faster since Jo had work to do on the way. She couldn’t help but wish Lucas had an IAC so she could call him directly, but instead, she had to go through Eliza. Or she could go through Cassidy, who could speak to him directly with her telepathy, but that was also a pain in the ass. Essentially, she told Eliza that they’d found an email that said that Cervene was headed to Skyrty Palac, and she wanted to know if he could figure out what that might be. Then, she was forced to wait on a response.
She’d checked in with Elliott as well and found out he was finally in Russia, just at the southern border, so it would still take a while for him to catch up to them. Something told her that they’d be moving soon, anyway.
Hattie was already working on trying to decipher as much information as possible from the email. While that was important, Jo was more excited to see what she could gle
The sound of intense pounding jarred Jo awake. “Fuck,” she muttered as she willed her eyes to open. A look around told her it was daylight, but then, in Russia, this time of year, that didn’t mean anything. Her IAC said it was almost 11:00 in the morning.She ran her hand over her face and her tongue along her teeth, the sour taste making her grimace.With a deep breath, she pulled herself up out of the bed, her anger growing as she wondered who in their right mind would be banging so relentlessly on her door without sending her an IAC message before they dared wake her. If it was a human, she hoped the person had a good excuse, or else she might just snap them in half.“What!” she demanded, slinging the door open. Her eyes widened as she realized who it was. “Lucas….”“Ah, Jo. Hello!” he said, warmly, his arms open as if he might hug her, b
Jo had a few messages from Hattie, the tech guru, that indicated she was able to pull some information off of the laptop they’d taken from the cave, but none of them were specific. “Hattie,” Jo said over the IAC. “What do you have for me?”“Well, I don’t have a lot of specific information, but I was able to find out that the IP address from the email. It’s actually from a town near where you guys intercepted that load of potential reserva de sange.”Jo’s breath caught in her throat as she remembered the car that had gone past them while they were standing by the side of the road. She had had the distinct feeling that that car was important, that whoever was in it had something to do with the Red Queen. “Do you have anything at all from Bulgaria?”“I do,” Hattie said, getting Jo’s pulse
Time to process the information about Ryker was fleeting. Jo stared at the two men in front of her for a long moment before they reiterated that they’d be waiting downstairs, and she closed the door, still blinking, trying to will herself to make sense of what Adrian had told her. It wouldn’t compute. How could Ryker’s family have been killed by Vampires, and yet, he spent so much time cooperating with the same type of creatures who had killed them? Either he hated his family, or there was so much more to this story, Jo probably wouldn’t have time to hear the whole thing until after she caught Holland, which might take years.While she got herself ready to go on the next leg of the journey, she messaged almost everyone who would be accompanying her to let them know that she was expecting them to be packed and ready to go in a few minutes. None of them were particularly excited to be leaving, though Zane didn’t make a fuss. T
The trip to Belogradchik was a long one. Lucas, Adrian, and their associates took their own vehicle, and since Elliott insisted on driving theirs, Jo sat in the back this time. Waking up with a bit of drool at the corner of her mouth, finding out she’d made herself comfortable on Zane’s shoulder was slightly embarrassing, but not as bad as it would’ve been if she’d been sitting by Scott and fallen asleep on his shoulder, but he was sitting in the passenger seat in front of her, thank goodness. She didn’t even remember unbuckling her seatbelt and scooting this close to Zane, but here she was.She wiped her mouth, gave Zane a wide-eyed apologetic look, which he brushed off, and looked out the window to see it was dark and snowing. Hard. “Where are we?”“Middle of a snowstorm,” Elliott said quickly. “If you’da been awake earlier, you’da seen the middle of a different s
It was still dark by the time they arrived at their destination, a mountain range on the outskirts of Belogradchik, but that wasn’t because it wasn’t daytime. In most parts of the world, the sun would’ve been climbing the sky overhead as they reached the top of the mountain Lucas suggested they use as their first observation point, but due to the way the earth was perched on its axis at the moment, and the storm that continued to rage, it may as well have been nighttime.The climb up the mountainside had not been that bad, except for the constant spiking of snowflakes in the face, which felt a little like darts of ice clocking Jo in the soft flesh of her cheeks and occasionally right into her eyeball. The snow itself wasn’t a bother since temperatures were not a factor. All of them were coordinated enough to climb the slick, rocky surface without much need for ropes or picks, and there was no worry that anyone would be out of brea
“Jo?”The feeling of someone tapping her boot had her struggling to get her eyes open, but they were not being cooperative. When she finally managed to pry them open, it was dark outside again. But the snow had stopped.It was Elliott who had been attempting to wake her for who knows how long. She imagined it couldn’t have been too long because the kicking of her boot was still relatively gentle. She looked around and noted she was the only one still under the wind shield. How long had she been sitting there? How long had she been asleep?He offered her his hand and pulled her to standing. “Not that long,” he said, in answer to her last two questions that she hadn’t asked, she supposed. Most Vampires did need to sleep some, but all of Lucas’s friends were wide awake, as if they hadn’t been up all night. Even if all of them had been asleep in the vehicle on the way here--l
Following Cassidy through her IAC as she climbed down the face of the frozen mountain hadn’t been easy, but Jo had managed to watch as her aunt shot up into the air, moved to position herself above the center of the palace and then slowly began to come back down. She’d sent her a message to let Cassidy know they were moving so that they’d be positioned near the opening of the palace, if they needed to come and get her, to which her aunt had replied, “Don’t you dare let them come in here with such low numbers. If I get my ass trapped, I’ll stay here until you can go get help.”Jo was unsure how to respond to that. It seemed like a good idea not to try to get her out if she was detected because they were so grossly outnumbered. There was a good chance all of the Guardians and Jo would be taken out. The Souled would only go down if there were Hunter Assassins inside the palace as well. They’d have no
With Lucas’s help, it wasn’t difficult to find a house for the team to occupy, instead of trying to fit into a cramped hotel room. After the scouting mission was complete. Lucas called in even more Souled Vampires to assist them, so the extra space was even more useful.It took some of her teammates nearly a full day to arrive from the caves they’d been deployed to. Lucas left a few of his colleagues near Skyrty Palac to keep an eye on the situation. While they reported some cars coming in the day after the expedition, no one left, as far as they could tell. Jo was worried about tunnels they couldn’t see, and about portals, but she knew there was nothing they could do about that. If Holland stayed put until they had a chance to move in, there was a possibility they might actually have her this time.She didn’t let herself get too excited. It wasn’t as if things usually worked out for her the first tim