My panic was interrupted by Tara’s next statement. “By the way, while you were sleeping, one of Holland’s planes took off. We tracked it to Fiumicino.”
“Fiumicino?” my sister repeated. I wondered if she knew where that was. She seemed to. “All right. Did anyone get off of it?”
“Yeah, but no one we recognized. Italian LIGHTS is in pursuit.”
“Thanks for letting me know. I’m going to go talk with Ward before I interrogate Stewart. Keep up the good work, Tara.” My sister flipped off her IAC and faded from my mind.
“Why would they be in Rome?” I asked Tara.
“No idea. But we should think about going there, too. It seems like they’re always a step or two ahead of us on this thing.”
“I guess. But then... if Holland knew the portal opened every six hours, why did she bothe
Tara and Lucy both looked up like I was crazy, running into Christian’s office at full speed. “I need to use the computer for a minute.”“What about the planes?” Lucy asked me, puzzled.“It won’t take long.” They moved aside, and I pulled up our search engine, which is way faster than anything I’d ever seen before I joined LIGHTS, and started searching for the names Stewart was spewing out in his mind. He was dismissing some of them as he went. There were a couple that stood out to me, and I immediately felt into their brains at the same time. Within seconds, I’d found her.I typed the woman’s name into the search engine. I was surprised she was a normal human woman, a librarian in fact. Short, middle aged, with a brown bob, she didn’t look like the type of person who would help a Vampire Queen take over the universe. But it had only taken me a few seconds inside of her head to know she&rsqu
“Go on,” Lucy said, waiting for me to explain what Christian had figured out about the portal openings.It really was pretty smart. “Christian, Hannah, and Ward also used the latitude and longitude of all of the openings they’d figured out from the cell phones as well as the ones they figured out from the book. When they listed all of that information, they discovered that the portal is opening in a pattern from one location to the next, south to north. So it doesn’t matter how far east or west the location is at all—it only matters which one is directly north of the last portal opening.”“They don’t know where it opened at noon, though, because there was no cell signal,” Tara reminded me.“Right—the portal is also rotating as it opens, so sometimes it opens way up in the sky or way down below the ground or the ocean. They think the last opening was super high, but the next one might be clos
A fourteen hour flight is really only good for two things—eating and sleeping. And I intended to do both. Sitting next to my sister, who was not holding back either, I sank my teeth into a turkey and cheese sandwich the size of Elliott’s head—and that’s pretty big.I assumed we were going to Rome, even though my sister kept saying she didn’t know yet. For the first few hours of the flight, she was undecided. So I ate and tried to fight the butterflies in my stomach that had nothing to do with the breaded masterpiece before me. I sensed something major was about to happen, and I didn’t like the unsettled feeling it created.The plane was noisy. There were a ton of people on it. Tara, Ashley, Amanda, Aurora, Hannah, Christian, Cale, oh, and in the back, tied and gagged, Hamish Stewart. He was about to get a real insider’s look at this portal he’d helped open not so long ago. I liked jumping into his head just to see how ter
Cadence handed her phone to Ashley behind her and then headed for the cabin. I didn’t really need to know what the texts said because Brandon was out of the portal now. I assumed there must be a reason why only three of them jumped, but if Elliott and the others were in danger, now wasn’t the time to clue me in on this. Ashley started sobbing behind me; maybe I needed to know after all.I turned to look at her. “Jamie’s still in there,” she said between gasps.“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Are you watching the fight?”“What fight?” She wiped at her tears with the back of her hands. “There are demon hunters in there now, and they sound terrifying.”“Brandon and Dax are under fire at the Colosseum. Brandon’s leg is shattered from the fall.”“At least he’s out.” She wasn’t really listening to me, so I decided to turn around and focus on Brando
Just as the Vampire was closing in, Dax launched himself off of the lowest rung of the amphitheater and stabbed it in the back. He started sawing through the monster’s neck and eventually brought it down before turning to Brandon. “We need to get you out of here.”“I can’t walk.” Brandon gestured at his shattered leg.“That’s all right. I can carry you,” Dax insisted. He didn’t give Brandon a chance to respond before he leaned down to pick him up, but the second Dax moved Brandon’s leg, he screamed, and Dax had to set him back down. My nails dug into my palms.“Sorry. It’s not gonna work. If Heather can block Holland, we should be able to mow them down.”“She doesn’t know how to do that,” Dax replied.“That’s okay. She can do it.”“Why not just ask Cass?” The gunfire was getting closer, and it was hard for me to
The monster’s knees buckled, and he fell to the ground. Brandon winced when his broken leg contacted the earth, but then the giant of a man rolled over on top of him, and any sort of scream was choked off. I realized I was watching my boyfriend throw up all over the place because of the pain he was in and had to switch my IAC to someone to else for a minute—anyone else—not just because it was gross but because I was certain he’d want some privacy for that. I knew I would.When I switched over to Lex, it became evident why the Vampire had weakened. Heather had managed to get the shield up. All around the battlefield, the tide shifted, and the LIGHTS members were easily able to cut down their assailants.I went back to Brandon to see Dax kneeling over him. The Vampire was gone, and Brandon was covered in ash—and a little bit of puke—and lots and lots of blood.The other Vampire, the one who’d been hollering a minute ago, d
I wondered if Cadence was listening in to all of this, too. I looked around the plane briefly and didn’t see her. Maybe she was still in the cabin, or maybe she was in the bathroom.I returned my attention to Brandon. I saw Antonio headed his direction through Dax’s IAC and was glad Brandon would be getting some relief. “You hanging in there?”“Yeah. Did you see all of that... like all of it?”Part of me wanted to lie to him. But I couldn’t. “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to be fine really soon.” Antonio was unzipping his bag, and Brandon and I were both relieved to see he had some morphine. “He’s got the good stuff.”The shot hit him pretty quickly, and I knew he’d get loopy soon, and with any luck, he’d pass out. “Where are you, Cass?”“I’m in your head.”He ch
I’ve always wanted to visit Rome. I thought of Brandon and I taking in the ancient sights together, maybe jetting over to Venice, spending the night in Paris.... Okay, different country, but much closer to Rome than Shenandoah, Iowa. Never would I have imagined I’d be visiting only to retrieve my boyfriend after a portal sucked him up in West Virginia and spit him out on another continent.We rode to the Roman team’s headquarters in one of their SUVs, and it was a tight fit, even though Cale volunteered to stay at the airport with Dr. Stewart. It was basically silent, except for Ashley sniffling every once in a while. I tried to focus my attention out the window. I was still angry at her. And Tara was driving me crazy with all of her giggles. She was actually not riding next to me, which would’ve been strange if I hadn’t purposely waited until she picked a row and then got in another one.The view out the window was amazing, even if I was