Chapter 42

“This is what I call a chicken nugget bomb,” Brandon was saying as he surveyed their work.
“Why is that?” Jo leaned against the tailgate of the truck where he was putting the finishing touches on the conglomeration.
“Well, we just took a whole bunch of shit pieces of other bombs and strung them all together. Just like a chicken nugget. Hopefully, when you detonate it and toss it in, it’ll have the expected result. Or… it might just fall apart and do next to nothing.”
Folding her arms, Jo murmured. “That’s great. Exactly what I need.”
He smirked at her. “You’ll be fine. Cass won’t let anything happen to you. She’s about the best person in the world you could have with you for something like this, except for maybe my dad.”
“Your dad?” Jo echoed. “Now why in the world would Elliott be the best person to have in this situation?” She hadn’t gone on too many hunts with her Funcle, as he liked to call himself, but she couldn’t imagine he’d be any better in this situation than Cassidy with her superpowers.
“Because he also can’t die,” Brandon reminded her. “Also, he tends to lose his mind in these kinds of situations and push his boundaries. He wants to see if what they say about the Blue Moon Portal is really true. So far, it has been. It’s a little like that classic movie from the 1990s, Groundhog Day.”
Even though she had no idea what he was talking about, Jo nodded as if she understood. It didn’t matter. Elliott wasn’t there. Her family was always referencing obscure movies from before she was born, and she never understood most of the references. Perhaps someday she could sit down and watch a few of these “classics” but this wasn’t going to be the night for relaxing.
“We ready then?” Cassidy asked, literally floating over. Whether she was just bored or showing off, Jo couldn’t say, but she found the action more annoying than endearing.
“I think so,” Brandon said with a shrug. “Jo, this is the pin,” he said, pointing to a large metal piece on one end that looked nothing like a pin to her. “You should have three seconds once you toss it, so pull it, throw it, and then let Cass get you the hell out of there.”
“And you’re sure I’ll be able to throw the bomb through your shield?” she asked her aunt.
Cassidy nodded. “It’s a one way shield. I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been alive, dear.”
Jo narrowed her eyes at the last part of her explanation. She didn’t need to be belittled. Her aunt wasn’t even that much older than her, just sixteen years. She wondered why she hadn’t used that earlier, but figured there was no reason to ask now. “All right then, let’s get this over with.”
“It’s all yours.” Brandon stepped out of the way and went to his wife. Jo averted her eyes, not needing to see them kiss even if she was an adult and should be able to handle the idea that her relations had relations.
Carefully, she lifted the bomb out of the truck. It was heavier than it looked but she thought she could manage the weight. She should be able to toss it fairly far--not as far as Zane or Cadon could, but far enough. As long as Cassidy could get her deep enough into the cave to cause a cave in once it ignited, but not so far that she couldn’t get out before the roof came crashing down, she would manage.
“Are you headed in?” Zane asked, walking toward her as she spun around, bomb in hand.
“Yes. If you guys can hold down the perimeter, take care of anyone who leaks through, that’d be great.”
“Of course,” he said, but she could tell by his expression he was worried. He scrunched his lips up slightly, his head tipped to the side. “Be careful, Jo.”
“I am the picture of caution,” she assured him, getting a smirk out of him. “I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t try to be a superhero. Listen to Cass, and do what she says,” he continued, walking beside her as she headed back toward the clearing, her aunt behind her.
“I will let her lead the way.” Jo paused and gave him a small smile. A million statements came to mind, but she didn’t let any of them slip through her lips. If she was about to die, there really would be no reason to tell him all of the things that would just break his heart, and if she wasn’t, then there was no reason to say something she’d regret.
Zane squeezed her arm, and she allowed her smile to intensify before she stopped short of the opening they’d use to best access the cave opening. There were still Vampire sentinels posted above the doorway, but with Cassidy’s shield, it wouldn’t matter. She just had to trust that her aunt could keep the bullets away.
“Well?” Cassidy asked, a slow, wicked grin taking over her face. “Ready?”
“Let’s do it.” Jo nodded.
“All right. Stay behind me, and wait to toss that bitch until I tell you to.”
“Got it,” Jo said. She sucked in a deep breath, assuming she’d forget to breathe for the next few minutes, and readied herself to infiltrate the Vampires’ lair.
Cassidy threw her shield up in front of them. It wasn’t something Jo could see, but she could tell by the way her aunt had her hands up that it was there just the same. As soon as the pair stepped out from between the trees and started walking toward the cave opening, the Vampires above them opened fire. As if hitting a giant bubble, the bullets collided with the sides of the shield and bounced away, falling harmlessly to the ground all around them. The bubble itself wasn’t large, but it was enough to keep them both safe.
“What if they come behind us?” Jo asked as they neared the entryway.
Without a word, Cassidy blew out a hot breath and then shifted, bringing one hand around behind her so that she was turned to the side as she continued to walk, keeping the shield up all around them. Jo had to imagine she’d planned to do that anyway, but she was relieved to know that a Vampire couldn’t jump down from the hillside and run up behind her. She didn’t even have her own weapon drawn since it took both hands to carry the chicken nugget bomb.
As the two women approached the doorway, Vampires began to pour out of the opening, surrounding them and opening fire. Cassidy laughed, but it wasn’t a funny situation to Jo. She’d never been in this sort of a predicament before, and the entire infiltration just seemed too easy. While the Vampires concentrated all of their effort on the two of them, the rest of the team took position behind and within the high branches of trees. Acting like sharpshooters, they began to pick off the Vampires who had spilled out of the cave, taking their time while the bloodsuckers were preoccupied with stopping the attack that seemed to be impossible to stop.
At the entry to the cave, the Vampires attempted to make a barrier, standing shoulder to shoulder, ready to fight. Cassidy used her powers to pick them up and blow them back about twenty feet inside of the cave while keeping the shield intact. “Holy hell!” Jo muttered. “Why didn’t you just do that before?”
“Because before we were trying to kill them. I just moved them out of our way. They’ll be back if we don’t hurry.” She increased her pace, and Jo did as well. They didn’t need to be far inside the cave for this to work. In fact, it would be better for them to blow out the entrance itself.
The ceiling was only about two feet over Jo’s feet, which was also helpful. It should be easier to bring it down that way. She continued to await Cassidy’s signal. They rushed in another five or six feet, the Vampires Cass had tossed regrouping and coming again, more joining them, when the Hybrid shouted. “All right, pull the pin and toss it!”
Jo did as she was instructed, aiming for the center of the tunnel. They only had a few seconds to get out now. She turned to see another wall of Vampires behind her. Cassidy swept them out into the night, holding them up in the air for her teammates to shoot as Jo rocketed out of the cave, her aunt on her heels, both hands still up to guard them.
With her eyes on the tree line, Jo ran at full speed, not looking back. She could hear Cassidy’s footsteps behind her and knew she was also out of the cave, but they were so close to the bomb, if it were about to bring down half the mountainside, she didn’t want to be in the way. Sending a message to the rest of her team to head for the clearing, the mental timer she’d been keeping since she pulled the pin hit zero. The night seemed to go completely silent for a moment, and then a deafening explosion rocked the ground beneath her feet.
Hazarding a quick glance over her shoulder, Jo didn’t see anything in the opening at first except for a few frazzled Vampires trying to escape what they must’ve seen as a no-win situation. Then, the mountainside began to quake. Within the opening itself, flashes of light, fire, silver nitrate, and smoke were visible. Screams from the Vampires left inside, those who would now be burning or smashed beneath the falling debris hit her ears.
“Run!” Cassidy shouted, giving Jo a shove before the Hybrid stopped and turned around, facing back toward the mountain. They were a few steps away from the cover of trees, not that mere timber would stop pieces of the mountain from hitting them.
Jo kept running, but using her aunt’s IAC visuals, she watched what she was doing. As larger pieces of rock began to tumble down from further up the mountain, Cassidy caught them and dropped them in front of what used to be the entryway. There was not an opening large enough for a human body at this point, so much of the cave had come down. As Cassidy continued to use the larger rocks to secure the exit, smoke wound its way through the smaller openings, along with occasional poofs of dust. If any of the Vampires inside the cave had survived the silver nitrate or the initial explosion, it would take them quite some time to dig their way out.
Once the ground stopped moving and the mountain settled, Jo stopped running. She wasn’t completely to the clearing yet, but she knew she was out of the way of the landslide. Through her aunt’s IAC, Jo could see a few Vampires lay on the ground outside of the cave. Those that had been killed by gunfire or the explosion would’ve already been mounds of ash, so these bodies had to be the wounded. Satisfied that she had completed her work with the bomb, Cassidy drew her Glock from its holster and took careful aim at each of the figures on the ground. Even at a distance, she had no problem hitting them, one by one, taking them out. Toward the end, a few recovered enough to stand, trying to fight or flee. She mowed them down where they stood, each of them exploding in a shower of ash as they screamed their final goodbyes into the night.
“Jo, are you okay?”
She turned to see Zane coming toward her, slinging his Beretta over his shoulder as he wound through the trees.
“I’m fine,” she said, glad to see he was, too. She hadn’t seen any injuries amongst her teammates on her IAC, but she wanted to make sure. “How are the others?”
“Fine,” he assured her. Zane wrapped his arms around her in a quick hug. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for now.
A few seconds later, Cassidy caught up to them, moving at a leisurely pace. Jo turned to look at her, thinking the only way she could look like more of a badass was if she had been smoking a cigarette. “That was incredible,” Jo said. “I don’t know why you need any of the rest of us.”
Cassidy scoffed. “I definitely can’t do all of this by myself. Besides, you’ll recall I failed at my initial assignment.”
Realizing she meant her attempt to convince Eliza and Lucas to join them, Jo could only shrug. “That’s okay. This more than made up for it. Thank you.”
“Sure,” Cassidy said, still acting like it was no big deal that she’d just blown up an entire cave full of Vampires. “The sucky part is, we won’t know if there was any useful information in that cave.”
“True.” While that seemed to be fine for this particular cave, it couldn’t be the case for all of the rest of them. They’d found some valuable information in the last cave, so Jo would like to figure out a way to keep from ruining the opportunity for the remaining locations. “We’ll figure it out,” she said, confident there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do after that show of power.
“I hope so,” Cassidy murmured. She patted Jo on the back and continued on her way back to the others.
“What’s the matter, Jo?” Zane asked, reading her expression.
She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just… we have so much to do, and time isn’t on our side.”
“I know, Jo, but so far you’ve proven yourself more than capable of handling all of it. Now that we know what the scandium is for, we can figure out a way to prevent the bullets from being made or a way to defend against them. One step at a time.”
She nodded, but Jo wasn’t convinced it would all work out the way they had planned, the way they all hoped. With a deep breath, she said, “Can you give me just a minute?”
“Sure.” Zane stared at her a moment, turned as if he were about to leave, but then turned back. In one swift motion she almost didn’t see coming, he took hold of her face, one palm on each of her cheeks, and leaned down, pressing his lips to hers. It was a quick, simple kiss, and then he was gone, disappearing between the trees, leaving Jo with one more situation to contemplate.
Now wasn’t the time to puzzle over her relationship with Zane, though. As she turned back toward the cave, a plume of smoke caught her eye. She watched it filtering out of the mountainside, her view obscured by the trees but not entirely, as it snaked into the darkness and disappeared, swallowed up in the moonbeams.
The moon. There it was, hanging in the sky above the mountain, not quite full, not the faintest hue of blue. Weather didn’t affect her, but a shiver went down Jo’s spine as she stared up at the orb. She moved her boots closer together, shoved her hand in the pockets of her leather jacket, and focused on that majestic, mysterious form. “Are you up there, Mom?” she whispered.
All of these years, ever since that tragic day when her mom had disappeared and her life had changed forever, Jo had been certain she had to be dead, that there was no way her mother could’ve survived the sort of attack that left that much blood behind. Now, the world had convinced her there were possibilities she never would’ve considered before. For the first time in almost a decade, Jo looked at the moon and felt a sliver of hope. Maybe there was a chance Cadence Findley McReynolds was alive.
“If you’re out there, Mama, I’m gonna find you,” she promised, her eyes still focused on the moon as her gaze narrowed with conviction. “I’m gonna find you, and I’m gonna find that bitch Holland and make her pay for ever taking you away from me.”
With a renewed purpose in her step, and a refined confidence in her purpose, Jo McReynolds blinked once and then turned to walk away, vowing she would find both of those two women--if it was the last thing she ever did.