Chapter 61

Jo hated crying almost as much as she hated Vampires, so she didn’t let herself do it for very long. The tears that fell were for Ping, for her parents, and for the fact that she had failed. As much as Cadon thought he knew her, that he had recognized the fact that she wasn't trying and that’s why she hadn’t been able to pull this off, it simply wasn’t true. Jo had wanted to complete the task her dad had assigned to her, to be successful. But it was clear now that she wasn’t the person for the job. As soon as they finished their exploration of the cave, they’d head back to the hotel, and she’d tell them that she was recommending someone else take charge. Who that might be, she wouldn’t hazard a guess at saying--Cassidy, Brandon, or Cadon would all do a better job than she had. Mila or Mikali could do it, too, for that matter. Basically, anyone could’ve managed to do what she had, which was next to nothing, other than getting Ping killed and Cassidy close to being killed. Perhaps Sun would want the job….
The driver’s side door opened. Jo swiped at her eyes, already knowing it was Zane before she looked up at him. “Not in the mood for exploring passages that have already exploded on you once?” she asked, sarcastically.
“They don’t need me, at the moment,” he replied. “It looks like you do, though. Jo, you’ve got to know that it’s not your fault Ping died.” He gave her that sympathetic look, the one that had comforted her many a night when she was crying about her mom’s disappearance, or the fight she’d had with her dad.
It wasn’t going to work at the moment, though. It wasn’t going to make her feel any better. “He didn’t want to come,” she reminded him. “He wanted to stay back at the hotel. The only reason he was even here was because I made him come.”
“So what?” Zane asked with a shrug. “That doesn’t mean anything. People don’t just get to hide forever, Jo. If we are going to stop these bastards from taking over the world, we’ve got to all step up. Ping might not have gotten the training he would have during a normal time period, but you’re not at fault for the Vampire Revelation, are you, Jo? Is it your fault they have these damn scandium bullets? Did you invent Hunter Assassins? No, you didn’t do any of those things, Jo, so why the hell are you blaming yourself? People die. It happens. It sucks, but it happens. Leaders can’t carry the burden of that or else no one would ever want to lead.”
“I didn’t want to lead,” Jo reminded him. “I am only doing this because my dad seemed to think it was a good idea. Clearly, spending so much time in the portals has begun to mess with his judgment.”
“No, it hasn’t, Jo.” Zane shook his head, like he couldn’t believe her. “Your dad knew exactly what he was doing when he put you in charge. If you’ve decided you don’t believe that because we lost one person, well, I don’t know what to tell you, Jo, but the others don’t feel that way. Anyone who just watched you take out over half that line of Vampires by yourself has to know your dad made the right choice.”
Jo raised an eyebrow at him. “I just did what I needed to do.” It was actually pretty stupid for her to charge ahead like that. She was lucky she hadn’t been killed, too. At least then, Ping wouldn’t be lying out there under a sheet alone.
“Do yourself a favor and watch the video of your attack. Pretend it’s someone else, and see if you don’t have a shitload of respect for anyone who could do what you just did. No one holds you responsible for the explosion or for what happened to Ping.”
“Tell that to my brother,” Jo muttered.
“We all heard your discussion, Jo. His IAC was on. He didn’t sound like he was holding you responsible either. Only that he didn’t want you to quit.”
Her eyes bulged as she realized what he’d just said. Everyone had heard their argument? “Shit,” she murmured. At least she’d held her tears back until after he’d left, and her IAC wasn’t on when she was sitting in the vehicle by herself.
“I know you want to quit because you feel like it’s the right thing for you to do. But it’s not,” Zane said. “Don’t give up just yet.”
Before she could respond, Mikali’s voice was in her head, “Jo, can you come and look at this? I think we might’ve found something important.”
She blew out a hot breath, wishing he could just bring it out, but deciding there must be a good reason why he wanted her to come in there, and only partially wondering if it was so he could bring the cave roof down on her, Jo said, “Sure,” and reached for the door to the SUV. She might be resigning the moment they got back to the hotel, but she was still in charge for now. And duty called.
Making her way back inside of the cave felt a little like walking into a tomb, knowing you’re about to be shut in and putting one foot in front of the other anyway. The debris from the cave-in was still everywhere, even though Cassidy had blown much of it across the forest floor. She followed her IAC back to where Mikali and Mila were digging through papers in another vault much like the one in the first cave they’d raided. It seemed like this one might be more important than the first, though. It was larger, and there were more files. “How did you guys get in?” she asked as she joined them at a desk littered with stacks of papers.
“Door was open,” Mikali replied.
“I don’t think they expected us to make it this far,” Mila noted.
The room was off of the main passageway quite a bit, so the Vampires had to assume that it wouldn’t be struck by the explosion. “Do you think they were planning on coming back, once we were all dead or gone, and getting back to work?”
“I don’t know,” Mila admitted. “But the door was open, and there are a lot of important papers here.”
“Like what?” Jo asked, leaning closer to take a look.
“Like receipts for manufacturing parts, equipment, maps, lists of where they’ve sent their inventory,” Mikali rattled off. “Oh, and this.”
He handed her a single sheet of printer paper with a few lines printed at the top in another language. It didn’t look like Russian to Jo. “What is it?”
“It’s an email,” he said, as if she was stupid.
“I can see that.” At least, that’s what she’d assumed it was. “But what language is this? And what does it say?”
“It’s Czech,” he replied. “And it says, ‘Will be returning to Skyrty Palac seventeen. Cervene.”
Most of the words he’d said were still in Czech, from what Jo could tell. “What’s Skyrty Palac?”
“Secret Palace,” Mila said, a small smirk on her face.
“And… Cervene?”
The two exchanged a knowing look before Mikali said simply, “Red.”
It took Jo a moment to process that. “Wait--this is an email from Holland?”
“Or one of her people who is allowed to speak as her,” Mila nodded.
“Okay--but it just says she’s returning to the palace. We don’t know where that is. We don’t know when this was sent or from where or from who. And we don’t know which seventeenth she is referring to. It could be this month--which is tomorrow--or it could be last month or two years ago.”
“Or it could be that we use that IEP address to figure out where it was sent from,” Mikali said, looking at the top of the email that had some code in it that Jo never paid any attention to.
“And it could be that we use this laptop to see if there are any other such messages,” Mila said, holding up the device in question.
Jo’s eyes widened. “Okay--those sound like good things to do.” Emma was still in Moscow working on the scandium situation, but Hattie was every bit as capable of doing such a task as the other tech guru.
“And… we need to let Lucas know that we believe Holland is hiding in some place called the Secret Palace so that he can see if there’s any chatter about where that might be.” Mila handed over the laptop, and Jo took it, thankful that it hadn’t been destroyed in the explosion.
“Thanks, you guys,” Jo said, holding onto the device like it was her oxygen tank and she was underwater scuba diving for the first time. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Are you kidding?” Mikali asked, his eyes the size of dinner plates. “If you hadn’t just taken out about thirty Vampires all by yourself, we’d all be dead.”
“Really, Jo, I’ve never seen anything like that before, and I’ve been around a long time,” Mila concurred.
Jo wasn’t sure what to say. “I was just… doing my job.”
“Well, you did a hell of a job doing your job,” Mikali said with a shrug. “No one else was brave enough to do that.”
“Or stupid enough,” she said, pointing at him.
He laughed. “That, too.”
“Let’s see who else can come in here and help you get this stuff collected to take back to the hotel. You never know what might be useful on down the line. I want every scrap of paper catalogued and uploaded into the IAC library.”
“Whatever you say, leader,” Mila said with a smile.
Jo returned the gesture and headed out of the vault, sending a message to the rest of the team to see who else could come and help as she went. She still regretted the fact that Ping had died and planned on to discuss it with the team when she got back to the hotel. If anyone thought she should step down, she would consider it. But for now… Zane was right. She was still the leader, and she had work to do.
The idea that they might finally have a lead as to where Holland was hiding made her both excited and nervous. Excited that she might finally be able to find the bitch and either bring her in for questioning or end her once and for all, and nervous that she might screw it all up.
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