Chapter 115

Zane was looking at her like he thought Jo was crazy. Perhaps she was. After all, she’d just knocked on a door where she thought the Vampire Queen might be hiding and asked if she was inside.
Of course, there was no answer.
“Why don’t we try blowing this door open, like we did the last one?” Zane suggested.
“All right,” Jo agreed. “There’s not a lot of places to duck out of the way, though,” she said, looking around the hallway.
“True. We’ll have to do the best we can.”
Zane pulled a grenade out of a pouch hanging from his utility belt. It was a normal grenade, so it wouldn’t have any effect on either one of them, other than blowing shards of wood at them, which would be annoying but not fatal.
Jo backed up down the hallway, assuming Zane would be the one to throw the grenade, but before she made it more than a few steps, all of the other doors along the hallway opened up simultaneously, hitting the walls with a force to make the hall vibrate.
“Shit,” Jo muttered, knowing exactly what this was.
Out of the rooms poured an army of Vampires and Assassin Hunters, armed and coming at both of them. They were grossly outnumbered and beyond trapped.
All she could do was start shooting. Jo opened fire on the group closest to her as the Vampires attempted to shoot at her, but she was moving too quickly for them to aim. Besides the bullets flowing from her gun, her feet were flying as well. She kicked one Vampire in the stomach while she shot another and sent her elbow into the face of the next closest one. Two of them tumbled to the ground while the one she shot exploded in ash. With the three closest Vampires off of her for a moment, she had a second to toss as silver nitrate grenade down the hallway. Behind her, Zane was shooting at the attackers on his end of the hall. He didn’t have as many because there were only a couple of doors that had opened that weren’t on Jo’s side.
The silver nitrate grenade exploded. Jo protected her face with her arm, and the flash of light and liquid metal ignited several of the Vampires. The Assassin Hunters were not harmed, but they were distracted. They shielded themselves for a few seconds and then stepped around their fallen comrades.
Jo began to shoot again. The titanium bullets she had in her gun were effective against the Hunters that were attacking her, trying to get to the Guardian behind her. They were still outnumbered by at least twenty to one, but in her IAC, Jo could see that they were about to have help on their side.
Zane’s back hit hers as he was backing up toward her. “Do you think I should throw the grenade?” Zane asked. “I’m down to three on my end.”
“We can’t back out of the way unless we go that direction. I’ve got more than I can count!” Another Vampire came at her, wielding a knife in his grip. He swung it at her midsection. Jo was fast enough to dodge out of the way. As he brought the blade back around, his gray eyes wide and his teeth bared, she grabbed hold of his arm and yanked as hard as she could. Rather than the knife coming loose, his hand popped off. Jo let go and punched him in the face and then fired into his torso. He exploded, blinding the assailants that were coming at her from behind him.
The next thing she knew, she was being lifted off of the floor from behind. Her first instinct was to fight, but then she realized it was Zane. He was moving her out of the way. “Take cover!” he shouted, and Jo instinctively put her arms over her face and turned her head away from the door.
It exploded and blew the Vampires and Assassins on the other side of the door back a few feet. It didn’t take them long to recover and come at them again.
With the door open, Jo didn’t hesitate to duck inside. She knew Zane would stay behind her and do his best to prevent anyone following her.
But there had to be more than just Holland in this room.
And even if the Vampire Queen was the only one, she could take Jo out with a blink of her eyes.
It was a bedroom. Jo surveyed the room quickly and saw a large bed with the same red bedspread as the last time she’d infiltrated the Queen’s boudoir.
There had to be another door here somewhere. It wasn’t sticking out to her upon first glance, but once Jo utilized her X-ray vision, she saw it across the room from her next to a dresser.
She was almost out of grenades, but she needed to use another one to blow through this door. Pulling the pin, she tossed it across the room. It exploded, and shrapnel flew into the air, mostly wood but also plaster and a few strips of wallpaper that were on fire, lingering in the air before they went out and the ash fell to the ground.
Jo headed down the tunnel, wondering where the hell it went and if she had any chance of catching up to Holland. She was hoping there was no escape tunnel here, as there had been last time in the Sky Palace, but she couldn’t imagine Holland would run deeper into the cave without a way out.
Jo’s stomach knotted up. She was definitely getting closer to a Vampire, and she had the feeling it had to be Holland because of how intense the uneasiness inside of her felt.
“Jo!”
Her aunt’s voice in her head had her slowing. “What?”
“Hold up! I’m almost there,” Cassidy said.
In her IAC, Jo saw her aunt tossing Vampires and Assassins out of the way as she sprinted down the hall.
She’d seen what Holland did to Cassidy the last time they’d met, and the idea that she would be there to help didn’t make her feel that much better, but Jo slowed anyway. It would be better than facing Holland alone.
Only Cassidy wasn’t the only one tearing down the hallway without concern for what could potentially happen. Her dad was, too, and Aaron was ahead of Cassidy. He always had been the fastest person on the planet.
“Shit,” Jo mumbled. “Dad! I told you to stay back!”
“And I’m not going to let you get killed today, my darling daughter,” he said, flying around and between the Vampires without them even realizing he was there. Enough of the rest of the team was in the hallway now that it was only a matter of time until the Vampires and Assassins were down. Then, the rest of them could help move in on Holland--assuming she didn’t find a way to escape.
Knowing that her dad was coming and Holland likely wasn’t alone wherever the hell she was, Jo decided to keep moving forward, even without her aunt who was just about to the door where Zane was standing guard, having a hell of a time holding off the bastards who were trying to fight their way in.
But her dad was almost to her location. Jo picked up speed, letting her instincts guide her, and ran down the tunnel. There were offshoots of natural caverns occasionally, but she knew not to turn. She knew that Holland was in front of her, and the fact that the uneasy feeling wasn’t dissipating made her think that Holland wasn’t moving away anymore.
Maybe there was no outlet after all.
With her heart in her throat, Jo moved forward knowing that whatever happened that day, someone was going to end up dead.