Chapter 69

Following Cassidy through her IAC as she climbed down the face of the frozen mountain hadn’t been easy, but Jo had managed to watch as her aunt shot up into the air, moved to position herself above the center of the palace and then slowly began to come back down. She’d sent her a message to let Cassidy know they were moving so that they’d be positioned near the opening of the palace, if they needed to come and get her, to which her aunt had replied, “Don’t you dare let them come in here with such low numbers. If I get my ass trapped, I’ll stay here until you can go get help.”
Jo was unsure how to respond to that. It seemed like a good idea not to try to get her out if she was detected because they were so grossly outnumbered. There was a good chance all of the Guardians and Jo would be taken out. The Souled would only go down if there were Hunter Assassins inside the palace as well. They’d have no way of knowing unless Cassidy could get in and get out without being seen or heard. If Holland realized she was there, the entire operation would be for not. The queen could simply pick up and go somewhere else. While Jo would do her best to trail her, since they hadn’t had the opportunity to look for an escape passage on the ground, they might not be able to follow her even if her method for fleeing the palace didn’t involve any tunnels through the space time continuum.
Once they reached the bottom of the mountain, the team moved on foot over the frozen ground, flecks of ice and snow scooped up by their feet as they ran as quickly as possible over the earth to get as close to the palace as they dared. Taking their vehicles would certainly make them detectible to the Vampires at the gates, so it was better to go on foot..
The hilly mountainside was dotted with trees. Lucas suggested they take up a position about a mile and a half from the gates, so they followed him. It was far enough away that they should be fine, so long as the Vampires didn’t suspect anything. They could cover the ground between where they were standing and the entryway in less than a minute if Cassidy needed them. Not that Jo thought it would do them any good to do so. As grossly outnumbered as they were, they’d each be signing a death certificate to attack at this point. Elliott would be the lone survivor. Thoughts of what Holland would do to her uncle if she took him captive, knowing who he was and what he meant to Jo’s father, made her cringe, and that was saying something considering all that Jo had seen in her short lifetime.
From Cassidy’s perspective, Jo could see a large chimney coming into view below her feet. At first, she assumed her aunt would come to a halt on one side of the chimney and take up a position on the roof, but then she realized Cassidy wasn’t aiming for the roof; she was inserting her small body into the chimney opening.
“What the hell is she doing?” Brandon asked aloud.
“There’s no fire in it,” Elliott pointed out to him. It made sense that there wouldn’t be. It wasn’t as if the Vampires required heat, and smoke coming from the chimney would just be another indicator that the palace was currently occupied, though anyone passing by could plainly see movement inside and up on the peaks.
“Still….” Brandon stopped talking, understanding that it was futile.
Cassidy didn’t go all the way down the chimney. She stopped a few feet from the bottom and hovered there, her hands pressed out against the sides of the stone tube, either to steady herself or to feel into the palace itself. Her eyes closed, and everyone went silent as she did her best to find useful information.
With their only view now darkened thanks to Cassidy’s closed eyes, all Jo could do was stand still in the snow and hope that everything would turn out for the best. It was times like this when she wished she had the mind reading capability that only her aunt had amongst them.
Or was she the only one? Jo’s eyes flickered to the Vampires standing nearby. She bet Souled Vampires could read each other’s minds. Could they read Cassidy’s?
“Lucas,” she said quietly before shifting her position in the ranks they’d created, coming up beside him. “Can you see inside of her head?”
“Cassidy’s?” he asked, as if she might mean Holland or someone else. The look on his face as she nodded told her that he could, but he didn’t want to. “I haven’t asked permission.”
Jo’s eyebrows arched as she considered what she was hearing. “But… you’re a Vampire. Since when do Vampires ask permission for… anything?”
“I’m a Souled Vampire,” he corrected, not angrily but sternly enough to get the point across. “We are not like other Vampires. You should know that by now.”
“Granted. I’m sorry--I didn’t mean any offense. I was just thinking, if you could see what’s going on in Cassidy’s mind, maybe we’d get an indication as to whether or not this plan to get behind the shield was working or not.”
Lucas stared at her for a moment longer before he slowly nodded and said, “It’s working.”
Jo knew instantly that was all she was going to get. Thanking him, she shuffled off back to where she had been standing, between Zane and Scott, and hunkered down behind a tree. Another question occurred to her; could the Souled Vampires tell if the other Vampires became aware of their positions in time to warn them, or would trying to read the minds of Holland’s forces guarding the perimeter put them all in danger?
She didn’t get a chance to ask it. In her head, she saw Cassidy’s eyes open and the interior of the chimney came into focus even though it was dark in there. Cassidy’s vision was almost as good in the dark as it was in the daytime.
“She’s definitely here,” she said. “I am afraid to do too much probing for fear she’ll recognize that I’m in her head, but I am certain that Holland is in the castle.”
“Great. Then get the fuck out of there!” Brandon said to his wife. Jo glanced over to where he was kneeling on one knee, his weapon already in his hand, ready to take off for the gate the second she needed him, his dad’s hand on his shoulder, as if Elliott could somehow will him to stay back.
“Give me another few minutes!” Cassidy replied, which only got a sputtered curse as a response from her beloved husband.
In times like this, Jo had no idea whether it was her duty as the leader to intervene and insist Cassidy come back right away, even though she couldn’t make her do anything, or stay silent and let things play out. She asked herself what her dad would do and realized that he would’ve never let Cassidy go into the chimney to begin with, not with such minimal forces outside to get her out should it be necessary. No, if Aaron had been there, they would be employing some other brilliant tactic that would be far more successful and probably allow them to bring Holland in right away.
But he wasn’t there, and they were left with bumbling, fumbling Josephina instead. She shook her head, trying to regain her focus, considering sending a secret message to Cassidy begging her to come back.
It wasn’t necessary. Cassidy said, “The possibility of opening portals here is in the back of the minds of some of the guards closest to the Red Queen. They are thinking about the ways they can get her out if necessary. They know there’s a possibility we’ve deciphered the emails we found, but they don’t know for sure. The head of her defenses is a tall Vampire with glasses and a jagged scar on his face. They call him Komandir Chepin, but that’s not his real name. He’s… not nice.”
“Then get out of there before he realizes you’re poking around in his head and decides to keep you for a while!” Brandon shouted at her.
“He doesn’t know I’m here. None of them do. I’m probing the guards, not him. Or her. There’s something else, though, something none of them understand but that they know is a problem…. A threat. Something she is afraid of. Not something, someone. A higher power.”
“Someone she is afraid of?” Jo asked, thinking that odd. “Who in the world would that be?”
“I don’t know, and neither do any of them. The only way I’m going to find that out is if I go into her head.”
“And you’re not doing that, so get out here!” Brandon sounded like a parent screaming at a toddler to stop tossing a ball in the house. On the outside, he hadn’t moved a muscle since the last time Jo looked at him, but it was clear, he was about to lose his shit, which seldom happened. When it did, it seemed like Cassidy was always at the root of it.
Cassidy didn’t respond. She went silent again for several minutes. Jo’s eyes wandered back over to Brandon. He was glaring at her now, as if he wanted her to do something. Jo shrugged. If anyone else out here knew she had no idea what the hell she was doing, it was him. What did he expect her to do? Short of creating a diversion and ordering Cassidy out, there was nothing she could do, and if the Vampires realized they knew their location at the present, they would move, and they’d have to start all over again, which wasn’t something Jo was willing to risk at the moment.
“All right. I’m coming out,” Cassidy said, already using her levitational skills to move her body up the chimney.
Jo had a million other questions about who it might be that Holland was afraid of, but she wasn’t going to do anything to distract her aunt from extracting herself from the situation she was presently in. She’d have to go fairly high into the sky in order to escape detection from the guards.
It didn’t take her long to flutter to the ground a few yards behind them. Jo breathed a sigh of relief to see that she was out, and as far as they could tell, she hadn’t been detected. Other than some soot in her hair and on her clothing, she was no worse for the wear. They all stepped over to meet her, Brandon rushing in to wrap his arms around her and simultaneously scold her for putting herself in danger, while the Souled Vampires hung back a bit.
After a few moments, they began the trek back to their vehicles. They’d find a place to stay far enough away that they didn’t think word of their presence would reach the palace and call up the others to join them so they could plan the assault. In the meantime, Jo wanted to hear more about who this other threat might be.
“I couldn’t get much of anything out of them,” Cassidy said as they made their way through at least two feet of accumulated snow. “But I have an idea. I don’t think you’ll like it, though. I don’t think any of us are going to like it.”
Her expression told Jo she shouldn’t even ask, but if Cassidy thought there was a bigger threat out there than Holland, then Jo wanted to know who it was. “Tell me.”
“Based on the fear and anxiety I felt from the other Vampires every single time they thought of this creature, there’s only one other Vampire in history I think it could possibly be.”
Jo braced herself, a couple of answers coming to mind, but neither one feasible. Both of those Vampires had been killed and sent to hell. Still, if Cassidy had a theory, she needed to hear it. “Who?” she asked.
After a hesitant pause, she drew in a breath, and even though she wasn’t using her mouth to speak, pulled it to the side in a grimace. “Daunator.”
Jo shook her head. “That’s impossible.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I saw him die, Jo. Or at least I thought I did. But… what if he didn’t? What if he’s still out there?”
“How is that possible?” Jo wanted to know. “He exploded. He dropped Mom off of the mountain and blew up, right?”
Cassidy nodded. “That’s what we all thought. But what if he didn’t explode? What if he just… vanished?”
“Vanished? But he didn’t have the ability to do that, did he? Vanished how?” Before the question was even completely out of her mouth, Jo knew what Cassidy was going to say, and it was enough to give her chills, something even the frigid temperatures hadn’t been able to do.
“Through a portal.”