Chapter 147

Jo could hardly believe that she was walking alongside her mother. She kept wanting to quiz the being beside her to see if she really was Cadence Findley McReynolds, or if this was some sick joke played on her by the Vampires. Maybe this was a demon that happened to look like her mom. Maybe it was a Vampire that someone as powerful as Holland was able to make look like her mom. It was just… surreal.
“Do you know where we’re going, honey?” Cadence asked. “I’ve been up and down this corridor lots of times.”
“You have?” Jo was surprised to hear that. “Yes, I think I know how to get back to the other part of the portal.”
“Yeah, for the first… I don’t know how long… I kept trying to figure out how to get out, but after a while, I just sort of gave up, I guess. How long have I been gone?”
Jo cleared her throat. “Ten years. Ish. Give or take.”
Cadence gasped. “Really? God! You do look older than fifteen, but… you’re twenty-five?”
Nodding, Jo said, “Yeah. I am. It’s okay, though, Mom. The world became a really shitty place while you were away. And not just because you were gone, though I’m sure that it didn’t help. Holland was loose, wreaking havoc. The Vampires took over. They revealed themselves to the world, and a bunch of countries started making it illegal to hunt Vampires. We even have a Vampire president.”
Cadence turned and looked at her for a second before she started laughing. “You always did have the craziest sense of humor, Jo. And what a storyteller you are!”
Jo already had her mom’s hand in hers, but she tugged on it now. “No, Mom. I’m serious. All of that really happened. We finally just killed Holland, and now, things are changing. But the world’s a mess.”
Coming to a stop in the middle of the walkway, Cadence turned and looked at Jo. “Are you serious, Jo?”
She nodded. “Unfortunately, yes, Mom. I’m serious.”
Cadence covered her mouth with her free hand. “That’s… insane. How is any of that possible?”
“What can I say?” Jo asked. “Holland was a horrible bitch. But she’s dead now, so she can’t hurt us ever again.” She didn’t bother to clarify that Holland would be able to come back if someone opened the Blue Moon Portal.
“I feel so bad for your dad,” Cadence said as they started walking again. Jo was pretty sure they were almost to the point where she’d come into this part of the labyrinth.
“He was mostly in the portals, Mom. Dad and Christian spent years looking for you. They even figured out that there are a lot more portals that we didn’t even know about when you first disappeared. Obviously, we didn’t know about this place.”
“Your dad kept looking for me?” Cadence repeated. “But who was running LIGHTS?”
“Honestly, no one, Mom. There really wasn’t a LIGHTS for a long time. We were all sort of just acting independently.”
Cadence had to think that over, and that was good because it gave Jo a chance to figure out what else she was going to say--and she needed to concentrate on getting out of there.
She tried sending an IAC message to anyone else on her team that was in the portal, but she couldn’t reach anyone, and as far as she could tell, Cassidy wasn’t poking around in her brain. They needed to get out of there so that they could get Cassidy out of hell.
Jo recognized that they were in the place where she’d come through. She just had to figure out how to get back out. She remembered how she’d fallen through when she’d leaned back against what she thought was a wall. Maybe it would work the same way in reverse.
She turned around and leaned back, but nothing happened. She felt herself falling and knew she’d land on the ground.
“What are you doing, honey?” Cadence asked as Jo caught herself from falling on her butt.
“This is how I got in. I guess it doesn’t work in reverse.”
“If you’re stuck in here with me--” Cadence began with a look of terror on her face.
“I won’t be, Mom. I got in; I’ll get out.” She needed to think about it for a minute, though. She looked around and saw a faint black haze right in front of her that she thought had to be the other side of that wall she’d been up against. It would be possible to keep walking, so she could see her mom walking right past it if she didn’t know to look for it. She’d leaned back and fell in, but leaning back didn’t let her fall out. What if she had to go out the same way she’d come in--exactly?
“Mom, I’m going to try falling forward and see if that works,” Jo said.
“Falling forward?” Cadence repeated, her eyebrows arched.
“Yeah. I know it sounds weird. But it might work.”
Cadence shrugged. “What do you want me to do?”
“Uhm… hold my hand and come with me. Be prepared to fall on your face.”
“Oookay,” Cadence said, taking Jo’s hand back in hers.
With a deep breath, Jo closed her eyes and fell forward.
She landed hard on her face, and from the ooph sound her mom made, she figured she must have, too.
When Jo opened her eyes, the floor in front of her was black.
“Yes!” Jo exclaimed, hopping up. “We did it, Mom!”
“That better have been worth it,” Cadence muttered, sitting up and wiping at her face. There was a little bit of blood on her cheek from the rough floor.
“Sorry.” Jo reached over and wiped it off.
“So this is the Blood Moon Portal? I was out cold the first time I came in here.”
“Actually, it’s not the real Blood Moon Portal. That’s above us. We’ve got to figure out how to get back out of this tunnel that’s below the real portal.” Jo watched her mother’s confused expression and wished that she could further explain, but she was just going to have to figure out a way to show her.
“Do you know how to do that?” Cadence asked.
Jo shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”
It didn’t take long for her to lead Cadence to the place where she’d fallen into this tunnel from the one overhead. The light she’d followed down here was still glowing above them, even though it wasn’t nearly as bright as the light in the tunnel where she’d found her mother.
“All right,” Jo said, taking a deep breath. “If we have to go back through the same way we came down here, that means head first.”
“But it’s so high above us,” Cadence pointed out. “Can you even reach that if you jump?”
Both of them were very good jumpers, but it was pretty high. Jo could probably touch the ceiling, but in order to get out, she’d have to basically jump through the ceiling headfirst, and that might be harder. “I’m not sure how to do it, Mom, but we’ll figure it out.”
Jo stood under it for a moment, just thinking, calculating, and then she figured out what she thought they needed to do. “All right. I’m going to lift you up, and you should be able to go through head first. Then, you can go get Cassidy, and she can levitate me out.” Jo hated levitating, but it was the only way she thought she’d ever be able to reach that height with her headfirst. She also hated the idea of sending her mom out into the tunnels by herself, but she’d have her IAC to help her. She should be able to communicate with the others once she was through the hole.
“You can’t honestly think I’m going to go through that hole and leave you down here by yourself? Do you, Jo?” Cadence had her hands on her hips and was making that mom face. Jo hadn’t really missed that expression so much.
“Yes, Mom. You are going to. It’s the only way. I’ll figure out how to get out, but you have to get out of here, now. Ten years is ten years too long.”
“Jo--”
“Mom, come on! Don’t argue with me, please. Do you have a weapon?”
Cadence checked her clothes. It seemed to Jo that she probably didn’t, but she wanted to make sure. “No,” her mom replied.
Jo pulled one of her guns and gave it to her mom who shoved it down the back of her pants. “Come on.”
Cadence was still grumbling as Jo prepared to pick her up. “Where do you think Cassidy is? Through the door to hell?”
“That’s right,” Jo said. “Don’t go in there looking for her, though. Find Christian or Scott or Zane.”
“Who?”
“You’ll see their IACs when you get up there,” Jo reminded her.
“Yeah, I know that. I just don’t know who Zane is.”
“He’s… a friend of mine.”
“Oooh,” Cadence said, raising an eyebrow. “Well, I guess I have a lot to catch up on.”
“Mom… it’s not….” Jo stopped talking for a second. “Can we just get out of the giant hole in the ground, please?”
“Okay, but does your father like him?”
Jo took a deep breath in through her nose. Yes, her father had liked him. Had liked him. “I think so. Come on, Mom.”
With a look that told Jo that Cadence didn’t like this idea, she put her foot in Jo’s folded hands and then stepped up on her daughter’s shoulder. It wasn’t hard for Jo to lift her. All LIGHTS members were super strong, and Cadence didn’t weigh that much. In a few seconds, she was standing on Jo’s shoulders, and her head was almost through the hole. If this didn’t work, Cadence was going to have one heck of a headache.
“All right, you think I can just jump up through that hole?”
“Yes,” Jo said, “And then you’ll have to move out of the way pretty quickly because if you step back on the light, you’ll fall back through.”
“Okay.” Cadence took a deep breath and jumped up, propelling herself toward the circle of light on the ceiling.
Jo felt the weight shift as her mom left her shoulders, and then, she was gone.