Chapter 28: Chapter 28

Sitting on what appeared to be a handmade quilt at least a few decades older than her, draped across a mattress that may have been in the old lodge two villages over, the first one that had had an empty room, since Jo’s father was born, she listened to the rest of her team discussing their options, keeping her mouth shut. Ryker had spent the entire drive cussing them out over how much trouble they’d gotten him into, and even when Jo had handed over twice the cash she’d originally promised him, the man hadn’t shut up. He was downstairs in the bar now, likely spending a chunk of the money he’d just earned trying to forget their predicament, a luxury Jo couldn’t afford. He’d insisted on keeping his bags with him, too, saying he didn’t trust them not to go through them.

“I say we leave him here,” Leo was saying, sitting in an old recliner near a fire they’d lit for their human companion when they’d arrived an hour ago, even though he’d only stayed in the room a moment. “We’ll just pay for him to stay here while we go check this location out.”

“We can’t do that,” Zane replied. He was sitting on a faded blue couch that made the one in Jo’s apartment in Colorado look like a designer piece. Ping sat next to him, stroking his chin in deep thought. “Leaving him here is akin to handing him over to the torch carriers. We aren’t that far away from where we found him. They’ll hunt him down and make sure he’s not in a position to tell us anything else. As it is, the second the Vampires find out someone from Talki betrayed them, the whole village will be at risk.”

“How do you know all of that?” Ping asked, turning to look at Zane but keeping his hand on his chin.

Zane shrugged. “I know how Vampires think, Ping. I’ve been fighting them my whole life.” A shadow crossed Zane’s face for a moment before it faded. Jo knew life had never been easy for him, not even before the Revelation. While she’d been living a sheltered, luxurious life as the daughter of the two leaders, he’d been fighting to exist, the son of an exiled Hunter and his Guardian wife. Despite her father’s compliments of his parents’ talents, ever since Zane’s family had had a falling out with Aaron, they’d been on the outs with everyone, which had made Zane’s life harder than it needed to be in a time that should’ve been easy compared to what they were dealing with now.

“Well, if he ends up getting slaughtered, so be it,” Leo said, his voice gruff. “He’s an asshole anyway.”

“He’s the only one who was willing to help us,” Ping reminded him.

“Yeah, a lot of help he was! We don’t even know if the coordinates he gave us will lead to anything. For all we know, this was just another gamble for him. One that blew up in his face.”

“Enough,” Jo said, her voice so quiet, she almost didn’t hear it herself. The men all turned to look at her, though. “We’ll go check the location out tomorrow, during the daylight, and then come back and decide whether or not to take Ryker with us when we go back. It’s not too far from here, and he should be all right for an hour or two.” Her mind was made up, and no one argued with her. Maybe she was getting better at this decision making business after all.

“I’m going to go downstairs and check on him,” Zane offered. “Can I bring you guys anything?” No one took him up on the offer, and Zane headed out the door.

Jo laid back on the bed, ignoring the scent of mildew that permeated her lungs with every movement. She’d checked in with a couple of the other teams in the vehicle on the way to the inn, but she wanted to talk to her aunt. Cassidy seemed to be dragging her feet, and Jo needed to know why.

Using the IAC, she sent a message to the Hybrid, hoping she’d answer. “Cass, what’s going on? Have you made contact with Eliza or Lucas yet?”

“Only mentally,” her aunt replied within a few seconds of the message transmitting. “We are near their home, but we are still debating the best way to approach them. I’ve done some probing, and I have to tell you, I still don’t think this is a great idea. The bitterness in Eliza’s mind has been simmering for years, and she’s not going to be happy to see me.”

Letting out a sigh, Jo reminded her, “You’re not there to see her. You need to speak to him. He’s been known to be more objectionable than most, even of the Souled Vampires. Just make contact, Cass. I need you back here. We may have a location--not of Holland but of a clan that will know where she is.”

“Does that mean you think it is actually Holland your dad saw?”

Her aunt had her there. Jo hesitated. Cass could climb inside of her mind and get the truth any time. “I don’t know for sure,” she said. “But we have spoken to an American who seems to think it could be her. That is, he called her the Vampire Queen.”

“Fine,” Cassidy answered more quickly than Jo expected. “I’ll give it my best shot, but don’t expect miracles.”

“Thank you.” Jo didn’t bother to tell her aunt that she’d have to be expecting miracles to have agreed to any of this to begin with because the only way any of this was ever going to work out in the end was with some sort of divine intervention, and since Jo had been doubting God’s existence since she was about five-years-old, their chances of success were similar to Ryker’s chances of survival should they take him back to Talki and drop him off at the tavern.

Whether she liked her chances of success or not, she was here, and there was a Vampire to hunt down, something Jo was better at than most. Resolved that there was nothing else she could do that day to help their cause, she closed her eyes and searched for sleep, the one thing that would likely serve to be even more elusive than the Vampire Queen.

* * *

Voices awoke her well before Jo was ready to open her eyes. The sounds of men’s voices discussing something in hushed whispers across the room mingled with another voice, another male, a familiar one, emanating from her own mind, and she realized she’d fallen asleep with her IAC on. That didn’t happen often. By the time she realized it was her Uncle Elliott trying to get her attention, Jo’s eyes were open, and Leo and Zane were looking at her, wearing matching worried expressions.

Rather than attempting to explain to them that she hadn’t heard a damn word they’d said, she pulled the blankets over her face and focused on her uncle. “What’s up?” she asked, certain the grogginess in her voice wouldn’t be his only clue that he’d woken her. He’d likely figured that out when calling her name eighty-two times had gotten him nowhere.

“Well, if it ain’t Sleeping Beauty awakened,” he sent back, a chuckle audible in his voice even through their eye computers. “Sorry to wake you. Just wanted to see how it was going. Brandon said they haven’t gotten shit accomplished. I was hoping it was going better for you.”

His comment made her wonder if that meant Brandon and Cass had attempted to make contact with Lukas and Eliza or if the two had spoken before Jo had insisted her aunt and uncle go in. “We’ve got something of a lead,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, not that he could see her. “We’ll find out later tonight if it’s worth anything. How are you?”

“Fucked,” he replied, not sugarcoating anything. “I can’t find jack shit down here. If Heather really is on this continent somewhere, she’s doing a hell of a good job hiding.”

Jo wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t quite understand why they needed the second Hybrid anyway. Cass seemed to think she couldn’t cut through whatever was masking the elusive Vampire they were hunting without the help of her long-lost pal, but Jo didn’t think it would make a difference. If Cass couldn’t do it alone, how did she know Heather could help? “Well, that sucks.”

“You can say that again. Anywho, I sent a text to your dad asking him what to do. I’d just as soon come up there and be of help to you guys or get Cass down here to see if she can track Heather. But I’ll have to wait until he’s in a location where the signal can reach him.”

“Right.” Jo had forgotten that it was possible to send texts to people who were in the Blood Moon portal. It depended upon where they were in relation to cell towers on this side of reality, but she knew it had been done before. It was something to keep in mind, should she ever need to ask her dad for advice or need him to get her ass out of trouble. She had no idea what the time delays might be like. “Okay--well, keep me posted, I guess. I understand that Dad wanted you to find this woman, but I could definitely use your help here.” The sound of Leo and Zane having another discussion wasn’t dulled by the thin quilt in the least. It wasn’t like Zane to be angry, so something must’ve happened.

“I will let you know what the bossman says,” Elliott assured her before saying goodbye. Jo disconnected her IAC from him and pulled the blanket down, staring at the two who immediately clammed up again.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked, propping herself up on one elbow.

“It’s Ryker,” Zane said, taking a few steps over to her and sitting down on the bed. “He’s gone.”

Jo’s eyebrows shot up. “Gone as in he left on his own accord, or did someone take him?”

“We don’t know,” Zane admitted. “Ping is downstairs seeing if he can hack into any surveillance footage, but so far he hasn’t had a lot of luck.”

Not sure what to think about any of that, Jo flung her legs over the side of the bed. She hoped Ryker was okay, but then, if he was in trouble, there wasn’t much she could do about it. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t done her best to protect him for giving her the information he’d provided. He was the one who’d insisted on leaving the room.

“So… what’s our plan?” Zane asked, sliding up from the foot of the bed to sit next to her.

“Hell if I know,” she said, wishing she could throw her hands up in the air and be done with the whole thing.

Zane gave her that skeptical look, the one that told her he hadn’t lost all faith in her--not yet. “You’ve got to have some ideas.”

“Well, I was going to suggest we go scout this location, see if we can get any clues as to what we’re up against. But with Ryker missing….”

“Doesn’t that sort of make it easier?” Leo offered. “No fragile human to keep an eye on?”

Jo stared at him a moment, not sure how to respond. He had a point, even if it was unsympathetic and rude. “Yes. But I sort of feel responsible for finding him, especially if he didn’t leave here of his own accord.”

“The asshole probably found someone else he could make a dime off of,” Leo said with a shrug. “I say, good riddance. Let’s move forward with the initial plan. We have the coordinates. That’s all we need.”

He was right, in a perfectly logical sense of the situation, even if Jo felt herself being overly sympathetic to Ryker’s plight. With any luck, Ping would come back and let them know that Ryker had left by himself--because he wanted to. Then, she could do what she needed without having to worry about the bastard.

It occurred to her that she wouldn’t have to wait on Ping if she reached out to her aunt. Checking the time, she figured Cass would have some information for her by now, especially since Elliott had mentioned he’d been in contact with Brandon. “Just give me a moment,” she said, closing her eyes.

Leo chuckled. “Can’t use your IAC and look at the real world at the same time?”

Jo lifted a hand and sent a bird flying his way, which only made him chuckle again. It wasn’t that she couldn’t. She just preferred to have all of her faculties about her in such a situation. “Cass?”

“What?”

Her aunt was quick to answer, though blunt. “Any word?”

“Only exactly what I expected. Eliza pretty much told me to go fuck myself. Lucas seemed a little more willing to help, but it’s not his decision. I’m going to go back there later and try again, but I can’t promise anything.”

“All right.” She had been hoping for better news, but after what Elliott had said, she wasn’t surprised. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Am I not already knee deep in the shit show that was your last favor?”

Jo wouldn’t call giving her aunt an assignment to enlist the help of a Souled Vampire a favor exactly, but she knew arguing would get her nowhere. “Listen, our informant is MIA. Could you possibly locate him for me? I don’t know if he left this chic establishment of his own accord or if he was assisted by the townsfolk who wanted to burn him at the stake last night--or perhaps some pointy-teethed thugs.”

Cass swore under her breath again. “Fine. What’s his name?”

“Ryker.”

“Is that his first name or his last name>”

“Hell if I know.”

She groaned again. “Picture him for me, will you?”

Jo swallowed hard, hoping her aunt didn’t probe around in her mind too much. Would she sense that Jo was initially attracted to the American nightmare?

“Yeah, I sense it.”

Jo could feel her face turning red. At least it was only Cass in her head and not Zane or Leo…. “Can you find him?”

“He’s nearby. There’s a tavern down the road from you. I can’t see the name. Starts with an R. He’s there. He’s fine.”

“Good. Thanks.”

“Yep. So… what’re your plans?”

“I guess we’ll leave him be and go see if the information he gave us is any good.”

“I hope you have better luck than we’re having.”

“Thanks. I hope your luck turns around.”

Cass laughed. “I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have shit for luck.”

Jo knew the sentiment. She disconnected the IAC, making sure her aunt was completely out of her head. “Ryker’s fine. Let’s go find some Vampires.” She stood, headed for the bathroom, hoping it wasn’t as disgusting as the room. She had to pee, but if the shower was as gross as the bed, she’d be cleaner not bothering to use that particular facility.

As she shut the bathroom door, she heard Leo ask Zane, “How the hell does she know he’s okay?”

“She has her sources,” Zane replied, causing Jo to laugh. She used to have her sources. Maybe she was starting to have them again. But the road to absolution was paved with lots of crow she’d have to eat and lots of obstacles she’d have to overcome in order to prove she was worthy of being forgiven.

A glance inside of the shower told her she’d be better off slathering on some deodorant and keeping her distance. Even the toilet was revolting, but that wasn’t something she could avoid. “We’re finding another place to stay tonight!” she shouted.

“Assuming we all make it out alive!” Leo shouted back, laughing.

Jo knew he was trying to be funny, but a bad feeling took over, and she couldn’t help but hope Leo wasn’t good at predicting the future.