Chapter 311
The sky had turned dark by the time Brandon got me settled in my wicker chair atop the apartment building. This was the same place where I’d contacted Mina, but I was going into this differently. No longer naïve that the other side didn’t know about my gifts, I was determined to accomplish my own goals while not allowing them to use me for anything.
Brandon had been hesitant to leave me, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the task at hand with him staring at me, so he reluctantly went to wait on the other side of the door with strict instructions to come back to me if I wasn’t done in half an hour. I knew I would have to go in pretty deep to find what I was looking for, and part of me was concerned I might not find my way back again without help from the outside world. Mina had told me all of the answers were in my own head, but to find Paul, I’d have to reach into the minds of the undead, possibly the demonic Vampires who had come through the portal, and it seemed both difficult and dangerous. But I would do it. I had no choice.
I spent a few minutes looking up at the stars. They seemed to brighten as I took them in. Something about the cosmos made me feel more connected to other people’s minds, but I didn’t know if it had to do with the Blue Moon Portal or just the night sky in general.
Breathing in deeply, I closed my eyes and began to stretch my mind. The more I do this, the easier it becomes, and it wasn’t long before I started to pick up bits of conversation.
The first Vampires I encountered were the ones who had recently left our campus. They seemed confused, like they weren’t sure why they had behaved the way they had. And yet, they still wanted to come back and end all of us. They weren’t anywhere near here now, though, having run all night and all day. I got the feeling they would regroup and be back, but not soon.
Flickers of the attack faded into the same images I’d seen in Mina’s head. Fields of flowers, a pink dress stirring in the breeze, a flicker of blonde hair I knew to be Heather. Then, the images grew clearer, and I realized I was gone from North America. I was in the hull of a boat, rocking back and forth in the waves. I could smell salt water. I had no idea whose memory this was, but I stayed with it until it morphed again. Next, I was in a musty mausoleum, cowering in the corner as a line of torches and pitchforks went by a small window. Shouts of “Kill her!” and “Find the monster!” filled the air, and I felt so misunderstood and alone.
I didn’t know how long this would go on if I didn’t pick a direction. While I wanted to continue to explore, I decided I had a job to do. I may have already answered Aaron’s question about the locals, but I needed to find Paul. “Melbourne,” I whispered. “I need to reach Melbourne.”
I felt like the thousands of miles between us may as well have spanned the moon, but as I concentrated on Paul, pictured his face in my mind, which I’d looked up using my IAC, the miles seemed to fall away, and all of a sudden, I was with him.
Part of me felt like I’d just plunged into the abyss of a cold dark sea as I struggled to make sense of where we were and what was happening. In my mind, I couldn’t open my eyes, and I got the impression he either couldn’t or wouldn’t open his. The sharp scent of iron I knew so well from recent hunts filled my lungs, and I tasted an aluminum, acidic substance in my mouth. Blood and vomit.
“Paul!” I shouted with my mind, relieved to have found him, but it wasn’t enough. I still didn’t know where he was. Worse yet, I knew he was in an unbelievable amount of pain. It was radiating out of every fiber of his being. “Paul, where are you?” I asked, trying to access his thoughts and memories the way I had the Vampires. Whether it was different because he is a Guardian or if I am just not able to do that, I’m not sure, but I wasn’t able to tell exactly where he might be.
I continued to feel, this time more around him than in his own mind. There were certainly Vampires nearby, though I didn’t know if they were aware of me. They were responsible for this pain he was in, and they were doing anything they could to keep both his local team and the rest of us at bay. Why they wanted him, what their purpose was, I didn’t know. But they’d taken him because he was close to their location. Which meant they hadn’t moved him far from the place where he’d been captured.
I thought back to the message my sister had shared with me as Brandon and I were walking over. It was supposed to be from Paul to Aaron and Cadence, but I could tell immediately it was a fake and had been sent by his captors using a method similar to whatever they had used to jam all of our IACs the night before. I followed that thought out of his head and sent out a question, hoping someone nearby would pick up on my question and answer it, whether intentionally or not. “How are they scrambling the messages?” I asked.
No answer came to me, which wasn’t surprising. I knew what I needed to do next. The only way I would know for sure what the monsters who had stepped through the portal were up to was to enter their minds and probe around. I didn’t know if I’d be strong enough to do it, but I had to try.
