Chapter 71

The den was large with a huge wooden desk in the middle, which had been cleared of the owner’s clutter and had a map spread over it. Lucas said that the house belonged to a friend of his, someone who had fled the area recently, but he didn’t elaborate, and Jo didn’t ask too many questions, content to have a place to stay near the palace that had a bed she could catch a nap in and a space big enough for the entire crowd to congregate.
There were more Vampires there than LIGHTS members now. Reading the faces of some of her teammates told her they weren’t happy, particularly the older members, like Mila, Mikali, and Dr. Ryan, who was standing in the back with his arms folded--near someone else who looked aggravated as hell. Ryker. What was he doing in the room? She had no idea, but she wasn’t about to stop and ask either. She hadn’t spoken to him since Adrian and Lucas had mentioned that his family had been killed by Vampires. Now, he was standing in a room filled to the brim with the bloodsuckers. The idea that she couldn’t imagine what that would be like came to mind, but then, that wasn’t exactly true. Vampires had killed--or kidnapped, anyway--her mother, and that’s why her father wasn’t here. So maybe they had more in common than she’d previously realized.
She couldn’t think about that at the moment. Hundreds of eyes—the majority of them the golden-tinted gray of the undead--focused on her as she approached the map, something not all of them would be able to see so she’d have to be descriptive in her language as well.
“All right,” she said loudly enough to get most of their attention. “Thank you all for being here. I see we have some new faces in the crowd. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Jo McReynolds, and I’m leading this mission for LIGHTS. I’m grateful to Lucas for joining forces with us today.” She gestured to the Souled who was standing to her right, and he gave a small wave, an inconspicuous smile on his handsome face. “We realize that what we are seeking to accomplish would be impossible without your help, so thank you.”
A few scoffs came over the IAC from various members of her team who wanted her to know they disagreed with that statement but weren’t calling her out in front of the bloodsuckers. Again, it was mostly the older crowd who thought they didn’t need any help with the attack. She registered their opinions but went on with what she had been saying, not willing to risk offending the room full of Vampires.
“We believe the Red Queen is being kept at Skyrty Palac, a fortress built into a mountainside that essentially has only one entrance-slash-exit, unless there are tunnels that we have been unable to locate.” Part of the duties assigned to the detail Lucas left behind was to scout the area for any potential routes in or out that they had missed. “We are, of course, more capable of scaling the mountain and infiltrating the palace that way than humans would be, so part of my plan is to send some of you up and over the mountain range, but most of you will be assigned to blast through the gates and large wall that surrounds the front of the complex.” She surveyed the crowd and got several nods of understanding. No one seemed lost or confused so far. “And then there’s the detail I plan to send down the chimney.”
“The chimney?” one of the new Vampires spoke up. A large woman with a blunt red hair cut, longer on one side and quite short on the other, her biceps were bigger than Jo’s head. “What do you mean?”
“With the help of our Hybrid, we can levitate above the palace and come down through the chimney,” Jo explained without giving away too many details. “The force I intend to send in this way will be a small one, led by myself, but their primary objective will be to find and capture the Red Queen before she can escape through a portal.”
“A portal?” another Vampire, a large, older man who looked like a stereotypical biker to Jo, asked in a heavy Slovakian accent. “Is that a possibility?”
Jo nodded. “We believe that it is, though we can’t say for sure. Holland spent many years inside of the Blood Moon Portal, so there’s a possibility she knows how to open and close portals at will now. We think that might be how she escaped.”
There was a bit of chatter as Lucas’s people discussed that possibility in what Jo thought must be Russian. She didn’t have time to pay attention to her IAC translator as it attempted to keep up with all of the different conversations going on. She gave them a few minutes because she knew it was important for them to be on the same page, but then she got their attention again. “Does anyone have any other ideas they’d like to share or questions they need to ask at this time?” As soon as the question was out of her mouth, she realized she was probably opening up a huge can of worms wording it that way, but the damage was done now. She waited to see if anyone had any alternative suggestions for how to coordinate the attack.
“If we think it’s possible to open a portal in the palace, why don’t we go in that way?” Mandy asked, her eyes narrowed as she contemplated the potential answer.
“Because we don’t know how to open portals at will,” Jo said, trying not to sound sarcastic. “At least, I don’t. Does anyone here?” She looked around and wasn’t surprised when no hands shot up.
“But Uncle Aaron knows how to, and so does Christian. Why don’t we get one of them to do it?” Mandy continued.
Jo’s eye’s flickered to her father’s face. Elliott wasn’t even looking at her, or at his daughter, as if he wanted to pretend he wasn’t in the room. “Well, neither of them are currently available,” Jo said, hoping that was sufficient. It was strange to her that Mandy called her dad “Uncle Aaron,” because they weren’t really related, but then, she called Mandy’s dad Uncle Elliott, so it was fitting in an odd way that had never occurred to her before. “If we could open portals and travel that way, life would be much easier,” Jo agreed, “but that’s one skill I haven’t mastered yet.” That was one skill she hadn’t even attempted to learn and doubted she ever would. “Any other questions?”
She fielded some inquiries about weapons, including some about the new shields and helmets that Mikali answered for her because she didn’t know exactly how they worked or how they would be distributed, and then the questions about assignments started. “I will let Lucas decide who he wants to send in from which direction,” she said, deferring to him. “As for my own team, Mikali and Mila will be leading the mountain team, and Elliott will be leading the assault on the front gates, so I will leave it to the three of you to divvy people up, but I will be joining Cassidy in the infiltration of the chimney. Lucas if you have someone you think will fit through the narrow chimney that you’d like to have join us, let me know. I would like a couple of other volunteers to go with us, but I will need slender individuals who aren’t afraid of narrow spaces.”
Jo surveyed her team. The few females who were small enough didn’t shoot their hands up, and she didn’t blame them. She didn’t want to do it either. She could tell by her brother’s expression that he wanted to insist that he could do it, but his shoulders were too broad.
When a hand finally did slowly come up in the back of the room, she wasn’t sure who it was at first, not until the crowd parted. “I’ll do it. I’m skinny enough.”
Her eyebrows raised before she caught them and lowered them. “Okay. Thanks… Dax.” He was tall, but he was thin. He could do it. She hadn’t worked with him much before, but she got the impression he was one of those guys who had nothing to lose, and she could respect that.
With nothing else to say to the team as a whole, she left it to the leaders to agree on their individual teams, realizing neither of her parents would’ve been willing to hand that sort of responsibility over to someone else but deciding she wasn’t either one of her parents, so she’d go with it.
Lucas stopped her before she left his side with a cold hand grasped around her wrist. “I have a female I would like for you to take. She is young and impulsive but fights like hell.”
Jo wasn’t sure those were the exact criteria she was interested in, but she wasn’t going to say no. “All right. Where is she?”
He gestured across the room to a small young woman with blonde hair so light it almost looked white. Her eyes were narrowed, a grimace on her pretty face. He was right--she looked vicious. “That’s her. Ingrid. She’s feisty, but she won’t be stopped either.”
“Perfect,” Jo said, giving him a satisfied nod. She knew she should go over to the girl and introduce herself, shake her hand, that sort of thing. Instead, she headed for the door, needing a breath of fresh air and a silent prayer that somehow this ridiculous plan would work, that they’d capture Holland, and by this time the next day, she’d know where her mom was.