Chapter 103

There was no counterattack. The Vampires must’ve known they’d be wasting their valuable resources trying to get the prisoners back, so they stayed put. President Crimson made an announcement to the country, telling them all about how the Australians, along with renegades from LIGHTS, had broken into the capitol and stolen away prisoners that the country had rightfully captured and charged with crimes against the state that required the death sentence. Across the nation, Vampires and their supporters rose up with outcries of injustice. It didn’t matter that most of the Vampire supporters were forced into swearing allegiance to President Crimson and his governmental thugs by threat of death. The state-owned television was full of news reports chronicling what had happened and requesting aid from other Vampire supporting nations to band together against Australia, to launch an attack on the continent while their forces were away in America. The Internet was filled with similar reports and social media posts from Vampires and the like calling for the world to rise up against these instigators.
In a tent a few hours after the attack, Jo sat listening to Margie debrief the attack team. When Margie had begun the discussion, Jo had deferred to her, even though, technically, Jo had been the leader. She didn’t care. She wasn’t really paying any attention anyway. All she could think about was what had gone wrong. Someone had died on her watch. Again. It didn’t matter to her that that someone wasn’t supposed to be there or that Jo wasn’t even around when it had happened. The guilt she felt at knowing her team had lost another member ate away from her so thoroughly that she didn’t even hear what Margie was saying.
The meeting took a hell of a lot longer than it did when Jo was running them, probably because Jo never did it right. Margie definitely understood how to extract the necessary information from the team and teach the important lessons. She knew how to use what had happened here to make decisions about what to do going forward. Jo didn’t know any of that. She was just making it up as she went along, and it was beginning to show. It didn’t matter to her that she’d achieved the objective and gotten the prisoners out--all of them--unharmed. Cassidy had done most of that by herself. Jo had just been along for the ride.
“All right. Get some rest,” Margie finally said. “We’ll be planning our next move in the morning. For now, Hunters get some sleep. Guardians, don’t be out doing anything that’s going to get you in trouble. In fact, I don’t want anyone leaving this camp tonight, got it?” When she asked the question, she was looking at Elliott. He had gotten over the death under his command pretty quickly. His eyes widened and he pointed at himself as if to ask if she was talking to him. Margie cracked a smile. “You know I’m talking to you, Dr. Sanderson.”
“With all due respect, ma’am, I can guarantee I’m not gonna get myself killed, no matter what I do. I could walk into Crimson Crotch’s bedroom and piss on his wife’s head while she’s sleeping, and there isn’t a damn thing he could do about it.”
Margie shook her head. “You’re ridiculous, Elliott. It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s the chaos that seems to follow you wherever you go.”
He couldn’t argue with that, so he didn’t. But Jo didn’t see it that way, not really. She was better at stirring up Pandora’s box than her funcle was.
Most of the other members got up from their positions on the tent floor and hurried off to talk to the prisoners. Scott hadn’t even been at the debrief. He’d stayed with his parents. Jo was so glad to see the Joplin family reunited. She knew that Margie had never been that close to her brother and probably wasn’t dying to rush off and spend any more time with him than she already had, but the others who knew Jamie well--Elliott, Cassidy, Cale--they left pretty quickly. Her brother had gone with them, giving her a look like there was something wrong with her for not finding Jamie and flinging herself into his arms like they were long lost best friends. She had a lot of respect for the Healer, but she also knew there were plenty of other people who wanted to see him besides herself.
She knew a few of the other prisoners, too, from before all of this, when LIGHTS was on top, and the Vampires had been the ones operating in the shadows. Other Healers, like Ona Pierce and Martin Greene, were familiar to her, as well as some of the tech people who’d been forced to work for the Vampires. She didn’t feel the urge to run out of the tent to hug them and welcome them back into the real world at the moment. While she was certain that the freedom they had now would be a bit better than the conditions they were living in before, it wasn’t exactly heaven on the outside either.
“How are you?” Zane asked, sliding down to sit next to her. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were blaming yourself for what happened to that Bianca chick.”
She made a face at him--her lips pressed together, one side of her mouth sucked in. He did know her better--better than anyone else. “Did you see it?” she asked. She could go back and review the IAC video, but she hadn’t done it yet.
Zane nodded. “Happened pretty close to where I was standing, but I couldn’t get in front of her in time, and she was all over the place. Just a mess. I haven’t seen anyone so confused in a really long time.”
Jo shook her head. “I don’t understand how this happened. She wasn’t even supposed to be there.”
“Chain of command. Someone gave the wrong order to the wrong person. It happens, Jo.”
“It shouldn’t happen.” She wanted to say, “If my parents were here, it wouldn’t have happened,” but she didn’t bother. They weren’t there, so it didn’t matter. “It seemed like Elliott didn’t even care all that much.”
“He was doing everything he could to keep her out of harm’s way. But after she shot Cale, she was trying so hard to prove herself worthy of being there, when he told her to get back she would only stay there for a few seconds before she’d come bobbing back out again. The Vampires we encountered were not great shots, but they hit her in the head, and Cale was wiped out at that time, healing himself.”
“How many times did she shoot him?” Jo asked. Normally, it wouldn’t be all that hard for a Healer to heal himself and get on with it.
“Three times,” Zane said. Jo’s eyes widened. “Twice in the shoulder and once in the neck.”
“Jesus,” Jo mumbled. “I want to ask how that happened, but I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“She had an itchy trigger finger. He was in front of her when we came around the corner and encountered resistance. He dropped down to get out of her way, and she dropped down, too. I don’t know why someone in the back would do that, but she did. It was pretty clear she was just a kid who didn’t know what she was doing.” He shook his head. “Really, Jo, no one could’ve done anything differently to save her except for her--and the Vampires that shot her.”
It would’ve been easier if she could’ve just accepted what Zane was telling her. It wasn’t that simple, though. No matter what the situation was, a girl was dead while under her command, and Jo couldn’t just let it go.
“Don’t you want to go visit with the prisoners you just saved?” Zane asked her, trying to cheer her up.
Jo shrugged. “I don’t know most of them. The only one I really know is Jamie, and he’s overrun with friends and family members who want to talk to him. I doubt he wants to see me.”
“I’m certain he wants to see you, Jo. You led the mission that finally got him out of that hellhole after years of being stuck inside there, doing that asshole’s bidding. Besides, he loves you. Didn’t he deliver you when you were born?”
Jo nodded, surprised that Zane remembered that. But then, he did have a good memory. Compared to her, everyone had a good memory. Names and faces she sucked at; deaths of people who bit it on her watch never seemed to go away--apparently. Nor did curse words she’d screamed at her father….
Zane pushed himself up off the tent floor, offering her his hand. “Come on. You can’t just sit here all night.”
“Sure I can. Look. I’m doing it right now,” Jo argued.
He shook his head and laughed, the crooked smile she loved so much pulling at the left corner of his mouth. His hand was still extended. With a sigh, Jo reached up and took it. He was right. It was important to go check on people, talk to them, get to know them, see how they were doing, be seen…. That sort of thing was something her father was naturally good at, even though Jo was fairly certain he could’ve done without most people. One would’ve never known it to see him interact with others. She missed him. If he’d been here, Blanche wouldn’t have died; it was almost a guarantee.
“What are you thinking about now?” Zane asked as they walked along. She’d pulled her hand free of his as soon as she’d gotten up. While it was no secret that the two of them spent a considerable amount of time together, she didn’t like to flaunt their relationship in front of others, especially since she still wasn’t sure they even had a relationship.