Chapter 17: Chapter 17

The trip back to the hotel went much faster since Jo had work to do on the way. She couldn’t help but wish Lucas had an IAC so she could call him directly, but instead, she had to go through Eliza. Or she could go through Cassidy, who could speak to him directly with her telepathy, but that was also a pain in the ass. Essentially, she told Eliza that they’d found an email that said that Cervene was headed to Skyrty Palac, and she wanted to know if he could figure out what that might be. Then, she was forced to wait on a response.

She’d checked in with Elliott as well and found out he was finally in Russia, just at the southern border, so it would still take a while for him to catch up to them. Something told her that they’d be moving soon, anyway.

Hattie was already working on trying to decipher as much information as possible from the email. While that was important, Jo was more excited to see what she could glean from the laptop. It wasn’t like the Vampires to make these sorts of mistakes. They had to have underestimated LIGHTS to think that after the attack, the Vampires would be walking right back into their mine.

Either that or all of this was another trap.

She didn’t think so, though, and while it wasn’t possible for Cassidy to get to the thoughts of the Vampires closest to the queen because they were all shielded, she could gain a consensus. From the vibes she was picking up from the Vampires she could get a feel for that were associated with the entire mining undertaking, she got the impression that there was now a sense of panic setting in, that there was concern that they had not covered all of their bases.

When they returned to the hotel, she wanted to go to bed, but there were lots of other things she needed to do first.

“Why don’t we all gather in the bigger room and go over what happened?” she suggested as they got out of the vehicles and headed across the snow covered parking lot.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Brandon said on behalf of everyone.

Since there was no way to send Ping’s body back home to his family under the circumstances, they had buried him in the forest, far enough away from the cave opening that they knew the Vampires wouldn’t likely find him, not that they could hurt him now. The remaining two members of the team who had stayed behind were aware of what had happened, having watched on the IAC. At least she wouldn't have to explain to Meagan and Dax why they were coming back one less than they’d left.

As far as Ryker was concerned, he’d probably have some sarcastic comment to make about her leadership skills, but he could go screw himself.

Getting the whole team in the same room was only slightly easier without Ping. Before she began the meeting, Jo’s eyes lingered on the chair where he’d been sitting only a few hours ago when they’d had their initial planning meeting. She had to look away.

“All right, you guys,” Jo began, as soon as everyone was assembled. Hattie was attending from the other room, the one where Ryker was being held, so she could start working on the computer and keep an eye on him as she watched the meeting through the IAC. Jo figured she couldn’t leave him completely unattended, he didn’t need to hear the meeting, and if anyone had a reason to be excused, it was the tech girl. “We definitely need to talk about what happened.” She was sitting on the armrest of the couch, next to Cassidy, who still needed to take a shower to wash the dust off, but other than that, she looked nearly the same as she had before she left, which was remarkable considering she’d just had a mountain come down on her head.

“Those fuckers certainly took us by surprise,” Leo said for all of them, shaking his head.

“Yes, they did,” Jo agreed. “Twice. I should’ve seen at least one of those situations coming.”

“Which one? The bomb or the waiting assassins?” Brandon asked, clearly being sarcastic.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe both.” She thought her father would’ve likely been ready for one or both of those situations.

“Jo, what happened was not your fault,” Mikali said in his thick accent. “These things happen. We know that you are blaming yourself for what happened to Ping, but there’s nothing we could’ve done differently. We needed to go in there to get the information necessary in order to find the queen. Hopefully, we have that now. Even if we don’t, and we have to go back in, that doesn’t mean that this raid was a waste. Also, we all understand that there is an element of danger involved here. We have all seen people die. Ping knew what he was getting into before he joined the team.”

“And…” Mila continued, “just because he volunteered to stay here with the prisoner, that doesn’t mean that he didn’t accept the potential of his own death. He could’ve walked away.”

She didn’t agree with that. Just because he’d followed her order and gone on the mission, that didn’t mean that he was choosing to accept the risk. But she wasn’t going to say any more about Ping’s responsibility versus her own. Instead, she said, “If anyone would like to call for a vote of no confidence….”

“We don’t want to,” her brother said. He didn’t look around the group to gain a consensus, just looked right at her and made the statement as if it was the gospel truth, and he spoke for everyone.

Not accepting that answer, Jo cocked an eyebrow and did the surveying herself. “Anyone? I won’t hold it against you.”

“Shit, Jo. Do you have any idea what it looked like when you were attacking those motherfuckers?” Shayna asked, not caring that her mother was sitting beside her and looked repulsed at her language. “Damn, girl. No one else could’ve done that.”

Jo cleared her throat, uncomfortable again at the mention of the attack she had launched. “Well, I’m sure that--” she began but half of the crowd cut her off with a resounding, “Nope,” and the rest shook their heads.

Satisfied that they actually did not want her to step down, and resolved to the idea that she was going to have to continue to lead this team, at least for the foreseeable future, she decided to dismiss them for the night. “We could sit here and go over what happened, but I don’t think that’s necessary, is it?” No one spoke up to say they thought it was. “Just be ready to move on tomorrow or the next day. If Hattie is able to get us some information about where Holland might be hiding, we’ll have to move quickly.” She stood and dropped her hands on her thighs dismissively. “Have a good night, guys.”

Several team members stopped by to tell her they thought she’d done a good job or wish her a good night, but all Jo could think about was getting into bed. She was exhausted, and even though she had a million problems to solve, one thing she was certain of was that the problems would all be there when she woke up--and that they’d probably bring some of their friends, too.

Most of the Guardians headed downstairs to the bar while the Hunters figured out where they were sleeping. Jo already had her eye on one of the two beds in the room, and before anyone else could call it, she went over and sank down on the edge, thinking she could fall asleep with her shoes on and be just fine. What everyone else did, she didn’t care. She was sleeping--now.

* * *

The sound of intense pounding jarred Jo awake. “Fuck,” she muttered as she willed her eyes to open. A look around told her it was daylight, but then, in Russia, this time of year, that didn’t mean anything. Her IAC said it was almost 11:00 in the morning.

She ran her hand over her face and her tongue along her teeth, the sour taste making her grimace.

With a deep breath, she pulled herself up out of the bed, her anger growing as she wondered who in their right mind would be banging so relentlessly on her door without sending her an IAC message before they dared wake her. If it was a human, she hoped the person had a good excuse, or else she might just snap them in half.

“What!” she demanded, slinging the door open. Her eyes widened as she realized who it was. “Lucas….”

“Ah, Jo. Hello!” he said, warmly, his arms open as if he might hug her, but he didn’t. There was another man with him, one of the guys who had been there during the meeting at his house, one of the thugs, though this one didn’t look quite as brutish as some of the others. She had no idea what his name was. “I am sorry to wake you, but Adrian and I have been waiting to talk to you for some hours, and having run out of things to chit chat about with the rest of your team, we decided it was time to wake Sleeping Beauty.” His eyes went to her hair for a moment, and it was clear he was trying to hide a chuckle.

Jo’s hand automatically brushed the top of her head. He was right to laugh, she imagined. Even without a mirror, she could feel that her hair was sticking out all over the place. She hadn’t braided it before she went to sleep like she normally did. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt and a pair of Zane’s old boxer shorts she’d stolen a long time ago. She must’ve looked the picture of professionalism and style.

With a sigh, she said, “Please come in while I go… freshen up.”

“Thank you,” Lucas said, waiting for her to step aside so that he and Adrian, a man just a little more broad in the shoulders than Lucas, with dark hair and a couple of inches on the shorter Souled, who hadn’t even pretended to smile politely, could come in. He seemed like a real cheerful fellow--like most Russians she’d met.

Jo grabbed some clothes from her duffle bag and headed to the bathroom, turning the sink on while she did her business so they wouldn’t overhear her peeing. She checked her IAC to see she had several missed messages from her teammates asking if she was awake yet. All of them were from Guardians or Cassidy, people who didn’t need to sleep as much as she did. She wondered if any of the other Hunters were still asleep in the other rooms or if they were all up, bright-eyed and bushy tailed. Leading hunts made a person tired, apparently, and then there was the emotional toll of losing one of her people weighing on her as well.

Jo came back out a few minutes later to hear them discussing something in Russian. They stopped when she entered the room. “Thanks for waiting,” she said politely and took a chair near where Lucas sat on one end of the couch. Adrian was as far on the other end as could be managed between their girth. “Can I get you anything?” She hoped they said no because she didn’t even think they had bottled water in the room. It wasn’t a fancy enough hotel to have a minibar or anything like that.

“No, thank you,” Lucas said. Adrian said nothing, only stared at her, dead-eyed.

“Where’s Eliza?” Jo asked, trying to keep her tone interested but not confrontational as she wasn’t completely shocked that the Guardian hadn’t come along with them.

“She is with some of our other associates, still collecting information,” Lucas replied, not seeming to be offended at the question.

Jo knew that the topic was a sore one because Eliza didn’t get along with everyone on her team and didn’t want to see most of them, let alone have to work with them. “Sorry it took me so long to wake up. Yesterday was… difficult.” She didn’t mention the loss of Ping to them but it was already weighing heavily on her mind, even though she’d only been awake for a few moments.

“That’s all right,” Lucas assured her. “It gave me a chance to visit with some of the others and hear about what happened last night. It sounds like you made the best of a terrible situation.”

“Thanks,” Jo said because she wasn’t sure what else to say. “It was rough.” Deciding now was a good time to change the subject, she asked, “So… what brings you by?”

“We just wanted to discuss with you our next move. We believe we have an idea of what Secret Palace means.”

Jo felt her heart rate accelerate. “You do?” The idea that they might find Holland’s hiding spot soon had her blood rushing. “You do?”

Lucas nodded, and the two men exchanged glances. “There is a castle in the mountains in Bulgaria that has been called the Secret Palace for a few hundred years. We’ve sent some of our associates to canvas the area. If we can get enough information to indicate that might be the place we’re looking for, then we’ll move in.”

She continued to stare at him, not sure what to say. It seemed so simple. It seemed… impossible. “Let me check with Hattie on something,” she said. Lucas nodded, and then the two of them started talking in Russian

She had a few messages from Hattie that indicated she was able to pull some information off of the laptop they’d taken from the cave, but none of them were specific. “Hattie,” Jo said over the IAC. “What do you have for me?”

“Well, I don’t have a lot of specific information, but I was able to find out that the IP address from the email. It’s actually from a town near where you guys intercepted that load of potential reserva de sange.”

Jo’s breath caught in her throat as she remembered the car that had gone past them while they were standing by the side of the road. She had had the distinct feeling that that car was important, that whoever was in it had something to do with the Red Queen. “Do you have anything at all from Bulgaria?”

“I do,” Hattie said, getting Jo’s pulse racing again. “It seems like there were several documents either generated or sent from a remote location that hits the GPS near Belogradchik. It’s not exactly in the town, but somewhere in the mountain range. There are a few other locations that are of interest, here in Russia, though.”

Trying not to let the fact that one of the locations was in Bulgaria, and Lucas had just mentioned the country to her, Jo calmed herself and asked, “Were there any other countries involved?”

“Just a couple of emails that seemed to be sent from Bulgaria to Hungary, but none of those mentioned the queen. Some of the others did mention her, but only rudimentarily.”

“Did they use that same name, Cervene?”

“Yes, but nothing that would be directly helpful to finding her. Just movements she made in the past. I saw an email that mentioned her passing through the part of Russia where Aaron saw her around the time that he was here.”

The hair on her arms stood on end as she thought about what that meant. Further confirmation that not only was it Holland they were hunting, but that name, Cervene, truly did refer to Holland. Putting all of those pieces of the puzzle together not only gave her chills, it renewed her energy. There was no way in hell she was letting that bitch get away.

“Anything else of importance?” Jo asked Hattie, so thankful they had such a talented computer tech person at their disposal.

“I did find something else I think is critical and already forwarded it on to Emma. So, there’s a lot of information about the scandium compounds, how they’re made, how many bullets they’ve produced, and where they’re being stored.”

“How many bullets do you think they have left?” Jo asked, hoping the answer was beneficial to them.

“The last email I saw mentioning them was dated before the last two attacks, so it’s hard to say for sure, especially since we have no idea how many they are able to make at the one facility that is actually processing the scandium, though it doesn’t sound like it’s a quick process. At the time of the last email, they said they had about a thousand processed already. It does seem to be a pretty difficult process that is time consuming. I got the impression that they were not expecting us, that they were making the bullets for future attacks, not because they thought that we were coming here, and they’d need to defend themselves but because they had planned on using them from some sort of infiltration and mass attack on us.”

Jo absorbed that information. It made sense. If her dad hadn’t been in Russia and happened to see Holland, they would’ve never come to this continent, let alone this particular part of Russia where the bullets happened to be under production. “Thanks a lot, Hattie. It sounds like you’ve gotten a lot of great information. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. I still have several hundred files to look through, so it’s possible I’ll come up with more to tell you, but that’s the important info so far.”

“Do you need other team members to help you?” Jo offered.

“No, I don’t think so,” the tech guru said, obviously wanting to look by herself. “If Emma were here, or Christian, I’d appreciate their help, but I wouldn’t trust anyone else to know what they’re looking for. Even scanning emails isn’t that simple because of the encoded information each of them contains. It would be possible for them to miss something without even realizing it.”

All of that made sense to Jo. Knowing very little about technology herself, she wouldn’t feel comfortable doing anything other than reading through emails, and even then, since most of them were not in English, she would be afraid she’d miss something. “Sounds good. If you change your mind, let me know.”

“I will. Thanks, Jo.”

Jo disconnected the IAC and returned her attention to the men on the couch. “All right. There’s information from the laptop that we found that indicates that the location you spoke of in Bulgaria might be the right one. Is it near Belogradchik?”

“Yes,” Lucas said, his eyes widening as he realized the information from the laptop matched up with his own findings. “It’s within fifty kilometers, anyway.”

“That seems pretty close to me,” Jo said, not even knowing for certain how big of a country Bulgaria was. “So… what would you like to do?”

“Well, I believe we should take a very small team of your best people to Belogradchik. I will have a small force there as well. We need to scope out the location, and then, if we determine she is there, we can bring in larger forces and attack. It is my understanding that you hope to take her hostage, not destroy her, is that correct?”

Jo hesitated. That was her order, but it wasn’t what she wanted to do. Still, she had to remember that her father had given her specific directions to bring Holland in for interrogation to see if they could find out information about what had happened to her mother. However, up until recently, Jo hadn’t thought there was even the slightest possibility that her Mom was still alive, so there would be no point in bringing Holland in. She would’ve been more apt to finishing what her mother and Aunt Cassidy started over twenty-five years ago when they thought that they had killed the Vampire, but apparently, they had not. Rather than getting into all of that with the Souled Vampires sitting in front of her, one she barely knew, the other she had only met one other time and didn’t get good vibes from, she said, “Those are our orders.”

Lucas smirked at her. She could see why Eliza had fallen for him, despite the fact that he was created to be her sworn enemy. He was an attractive dude. “All right, that makes sense to me,” he said. “So… who do you think you want to bring with you?”

Those types of questions always threw her for a loop. “Uh… I don’t know. How many people do you think I should bring?”

“I would say four or five tops, including you. While you’re gone, there is still plenty for your team to do here, isn’t there?”

She nodded. With all of the mines still left to explore, she could keep the rest of her team busy for quite some time. “Will Eliza be with us?”

“No,” Lucas said, resoundingly. “She will be helping, but not with this part of the operation.”

That was probably for the best. “I definitely need my A team,” she said. “Would it be possible for me to give it some thought and get back to you? When did you want to go?”

Rather than answering her, Lucas turned to Adrian and the two of them had a quick discussion in Russian. Jo couldn’t keep up, even with her IAC doing its best to try and translate. When he returned his gaze to her, he said, “We think we should move quickly before she moves on. We would like to leave here within the hour.”

“An hour….” Jo shook her head. “All right. Give me a few moments.”

“Would you like for us to leave you alone?” Lucas asked.

“No,” she said quickly, not wanting to be rude. She’d been able to tune them out while she was thinking. She tipped her head out and considered each member of her team, not just in contemplation of what they could bring to the task she needed to accomplish but also in regards to how the team she’d be leaving behind would fare.

In the end, she thought she knew what she needed to do until she got an IAC message from Elliott. “We are about ten minutes out from your hotel, Lil Jo. You awake?”

His presence changed what she was about to tell Lucas because that meant there were other teammates that she’d have to help out Mikali and Mila, who she planned to leave in charge while she was gone. When she returned her attention to Lucas, she asked, “Can I have six?”

Again, he looked at Adrian and the other Souled reluctantly nodded. “All right. That will work.”

“Good,” she said. “It’ll be me, Zane, Cass, Brandon, Scott--and Elliott.”

At the last name, Lucas’s eyebrows arched, and then he chuckled. “We’re pretty lucky Eliza is not with us, aren’t we?”

Jo smiled at him, knowing there was bad blood between her uncle and Lucas’s wife. “Yep--that’s why I asked.”

“All right then. Glad you were able to decide so quickly. Do you know who you will leave in charge while you are away?”

“I do. Mikali and Mila can handle it.”

“Very good.” Lucas stood and shook her hand. Adrian bowed his head but did not offer his hand, so she didn’t extend hers either. “We will be downstairs in the bar when you are ready to go. Hopefully, before 12:30?”

Jo looked at the time. That gave them about forty-five minutes. She should be able to get the people she’d named ready to go by then. “Sounds good.”

Jo walked them to the door. As they were about to exit, Adrian said something else in Russian, something else Jo didn’t understand, except for the last word. Hearing it made her blood run cold.

“Oh, yeah!” Lucas said, nodding at him. He turned to Jo. “We were just wondering… what in the world are you doing with John Ryker?”

“Ryker?” she repeated. “How do you know him?”

Lucas shrugged. “It is a long story. When we ran into him in the other room, we were shocked. He would only tell us he is being held against his will, and unless we were here to release him, we could go fuck ourselves.”

“It’s also a long story how we came to be here, too. But… we found him with a load of humans and Vampires, being taken somewhere to be turned into reserve de sange.”

Lucas’s eyebrows raised. “Really? That is surprising, considering what happened to his family.”

It seemed like the surprises wouldn’t stop coming. “What happened to his family?” she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

It wasn’t Lucas who replied to her. It was Adrian. In a deep voice and a thick Russian accent, he said, “They were killed--by Vampires.”