Authors: Veronica Rossi
But I couldn’t let him do that. One passed-out security person at LAX wouldn’t raise suspicion. But three? I didn’t want to bring that kind of heat on us. There was already too much outside of my control.
“
Gideon,
” Bas started in again.
Daryn moved to his side and mouthed,
Bas, quiet.
The men went silent. I locked eyes with Marcus, who I knew could fight. A fight would be better than an arrest, but neither were good. I shook my head, telling him no. I imagined for an instant telling Cory this story, what was happening right now, and how he’d howl. I hoped I’d get the chance to do that someday.
The men picked up their conversation and walked away.
I rechecked the GPS. Last burst. We hustled to the 757 I’d spotted earlier. As we closed, I heard the engines running. That meant the plane was leaving soon—a good thing. I took everyone right up the ramp, then scanned the hold—pallets, boxes, no people—clear.
Or maybe not.
I heard whimpering, coming from deeper inside the plane.
“Get behind this and wait here,” I said, indicating one of the containers. Then I took out my knife and moved toward the sound. The cargo was stashed in steel pallets to either side of a central corridor. It grew darker as I went, and the whimpering became louder. I followed the sound to a metal cage and knelt.
Silence.
Gold eyes stared from the darkness. I pulled my penlight from my pocket and clicked it on. A shepherd. I recognized the breed—Belgian Malinois. They were used a lot as combat dogs. “Hey, buddy. Just hang tight, I’ll be back.”
I checked a few labels on the boxes around me and confirmed we were on the right plane. F
IUMICINO,
R
OMA
IT. Marcus, Bastian, and Daryn hustled up.
“People were coming,” Daryn said.
I heard them. The ground crew at the rear of the plane, going through the preflight checklist.
I motioned them to stay put and continued down the length of the cargo hold, moving toward the cockpit. I had three main objectives now. First, make sure the dog was the only other living cargo aboard—confirmed. Second, I didn’t think the pilots would come back into the cargo hold but I had to secure the door from our side—I did that with some nylon rope from my pack. Third, find a place we could hide during the flight—located.
The floor had electric tracks—a kind of pulley system for loading the pallets—but about halfway into the hold, the tracks stopped. There, the plane had steel girders as big as railroad ties across the floor, a reinforcing belt right down the center that created a clear corridor about three feet wide. In front of this space were more pallets, which must have been loaded through the nose of the plane. I noticed a candy-bar wrapper and a cigarette butt on the floor. It looked like we weren’t the only ones to have traveled this way.
I found the others and brought them over. “It’s tight, but it should work.”
The whine of the rear doors closing made Bastian jump. The bright overhead lights shut off, leaving only the weaker emergency lights on, plunging us into near darkness. We scattered around the narrow space and hunkered down. In ten minutes, we were in the air, the engines roaring loud and steady.
Sebastian shoved me in the shoulder. “That was
sick
! I didn’t realize that was going to be so
fun
!”
“Maybe try not to yell? There are pilots flying this thing,” I said.
“Stop trying to act like that wasn’t awesome because it was!” He pushed me again. “You’re such a badass, Gideon!”
I had to smile. “You did the hard part.”
“Yeah, but you were like, ‘Hold here everyone, just be cool
,
’” he said, adopting this super intense look that I really hoped wasn’t me. “It was
sick
!”
Down the aisle, Daryn leaned forward and smiled. She didn’t chime in with any praise, though, and it seemed like the moment she would’ve if she were going to. But that was okay. A smile was good.
Great, actually.
We’d done it. We were on a plane heading for Italy.
Reaching into my backpack for my wire cutters, I hopped to my feet.
“Where you going?” Bas asked.
“Canine rescue mission,” I said, and went for the dog.
“You went for the dog and…?” Cordero says, when I stop.
“I got her out. It was a female.”
“Nice of you, Gideon. What I’d like to know more about is the key you mentioned.”
“I’ll get back to it in a second. I was just wondering something.”
Why is Daryn here?
But I can’t ask Cordero that. I look at Texas, then at Beretta. I took the gold-medal oath. “I just told you seven demons are roaming the earth. Don’t you have any questions about that?”
Cordero smirks. She opens her mouth to speak, and then closes it. “I’m waiting,” she says finally. “I’m waiting until you’re finished.”
“Are you interested in knowing the Kindred got the key? That at the end of this, they took it in Norway? That they have it right now?”
“Of course it interests me. That’s why I’m still listening.”
She’s listening all right, but that’s kind of not even the point. Is she
believing
me, is the point. If she believes me, why isn’t she freaking the hell out? Taking drastic measures? But if she
doesn’t
believe me, why sit here?
Cordero rises from her chair. “Let’s take another short break. I’m sure you’re getting hungry. That granola bar can’t have gone far. Let me see what I can do.”
She leaves and takes Beretta with her.
I count to sixty before I address Texas. “Just tell me one thing. Did Daryn come here on her own?”
He ignores me. The radiator goes on and clicks for a full minute before Texas gives me a nod that could be measured in nanometers.
Now I’m wondering
why
. Why did she come back? The Kindred got what they wanted. We lost. They won. So why is she back? Are we going after them?
Beretta returns with a cold slice of cheese pizza. I’m just finishing it when Cordero comes back, like a category 5 perfume hurricane. I’m breathing flower shops and fruit stands and turned earth smells and I can’t help myself. I wince and then unwince, but it’s too late. Cordero’s seen.
She sits down and adjusts her chair, and sets a number two pencil on top of my file. When she opens my file the pencil rolls off the edge of the table and clatters to the floor.
I see red bricks. My dad falling through the air. And instantly, violently, the pizza tries to kick its way up my esophagus.
Somehow, I manage to keep it down.
Texas steps forward and picks up the pencil. His eyes pause on me before he gives it to Cordero. Beretta is watching me, too.
Cordero picks up on the tension. She looks at each of us, then it dawns on her.
“Oh, Gideon!” she says. “I’m sorry.” She slips the pencil into the pocket of her jacket and takes out the pen she’s been using. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
I shake my head because I can’t talk. It doesn’t seem like her not to think. Did she do that
on purpose
? But why would she have?
There’s a sense of urgency inside me, an inner burn. I was thinking of something important. Now all I can think of is my dad falling from the roof of a yellow bungalow.
“Ready?” Cordero says.
The cargo plane was cold, uncomfortable, and loud. A lot like a military plane, in other words. The engines roared like a dozen jackhammers going off at the same time, exhausting even with the earplugs we’d bought. Marcus popped his in and zoned out ten minutes after wheels-up.
I gave Sebastian dog duties. The shepherd, Lia, had been so scared of flying she could barely walk when I got her out of her cage. I’d had to carry her over to our area. I put Bas in charge of petting her and making sure she was okay. It was what I wanted to do but he was still amped from the rage shot I’d given him. I thought maybe soothing Lia would soothe him, and I was right. They were curled up together in no time, completely sacked out.
I spent a little while locating the other radio because it still might come in handy. I found it in one of the shipping containers as we flew over Scottsdale, Arizona. It was starting to get late by then, but I couldn’t sleep. I noticed that Daryn, who was on the other side of the center aisle past Marcus, couldn’t either. She had her penlight out and she was writing in her notebook. I slid the radio across for her to keep. She looked over at me, dropped the radio into her backpack, and went back to her journal.
I sat back and thought about what she’d told us that afternoon at the diner. We were fighting
demons
. I’d been so focused on keeping us safe and on getting us on this plane, I hadn’t had a chance to think about it yet. Now all I had was time.
As a soldier in the US Army, I was prepared to do whatever was asked of me because I believed, down to my soul, that the uniform I’d wear as a Ranger represented the defense of liberty and freedom, and the country I love. I’d chosen to serve because I could fight and because until wars stopped happening, people like me were needed. I had zero problem doing whatever it took to keep harm from coming to innocent people. Zero problem. Period, exclamation point, and freakin’
hooah.
I hadn’t had that kind of clarity since I’d become War, though. I hadn’t known what I was fighting for—or really, against. But sitting in that dark cargo plane, it started coming together for me. My enemies were demons, but it was still my duty to protect the innocent. Realizing that was a huge relief.
After chewing on that for a while, I still wasn’t tired. I thought about how Bastian could call up his scales and his horse so easily. I needed that kind of proficiency with my tools. For a while I tried to summon my sword by focusing on the cuff and thinking,
Here. Appear. Now.
Then I tried praying, which I hadn’t done in a really long time. That didn’t work but I felt better afterward, like I’d been missing out. Then I tried meditating, which I’d never done and ended up sucking at. Nothing worked. The sword eluded me, so.
I moved on.
At the airport, I’d asked Daryn to buy me a travel guide of Italy. I pulled that and my penlight from my pack and spent a couple hours reading it, paying extra attention to the maps of Rome and to the major transportation outlets—train stations, bus stations, waterways, et cetera. I’d always done okay in school, but my mind worked much better for missions. When details mattered, I was capable of storing away a ton of material. I sucked that guide down. By the time we were over Arkansas, I had a solid map of Rome in my head and some ideas for how to handle getting us safely off the cargo plane onto Italian ground.
With my eyes burning from the lateness and the reading, I put the book away. Aiming the penlight at my companions, I ascertained that Marcus and Sebastian were still asleep. Marcus was twitching like mad, having the nightmare of his life, which pleased me greatly. A few feet past him, Daryn was only pretending to sleep. This I deduced because when I put the light on her face, she flipped me off.
I sat back, smiling at the darkness for a minute. Then I grabbed my radio, and brought it close to my lips before I could talk myself out of it.
“Special Agent Daryn Martin. Come in please, Ms. Martin. This is War. Over.”
Over the drone of the engines, I couldn’t hear my message register on her radio, but she did. I saw her digging around in her bag. A few seconds later, her voice came through my radio.
“Yes, Gideon?”
I pressed the talk button. “You will?”
“I will what?”
“I just asked you to come over here and you said yes.”
“You didn’t ask that.”
“But you answered anyway. Come here.”
“No.”
“You’re messing up the balance of the plane. We’re going to fly in circles unless you come here.”
“Your ego’s weighing that side down just fine.”
I laughed. “Is that another no?”
“Affirmative.”
“What did you write about me in your notebook?”
Now she laughed but not into the radio. I heard it far away, under the sound of the engines.
“Actually, I was writing about you. You were really great tonight. Thanks for getting us here. I knew you would, but … thanks.”
I stared at my radio. Had she written about what I’d
done
or about
me
? There was a pretty big difference. But it was still awesome. It’d been a long time since praise had hit me that hard. Weird, because she was basically still a stranger. I’d been with her for days and I still knew almost nothing about her. That gave me an idea.
I pressed the talk button. “Daryn. Tell me three things about yourself. Think of it as my reward for a job well done. Just three. They can be anything.”
There was a long stretch of nothing but engine drone. I kept waiting for her to tell me no. Bastian and Marcus were still sound asleep.
“Okay,” she said, finally. “Three things. First one … I have a sister. Her name is Josie. Josephine. She’s four years older than me and she’s a science nerd. Ask her anything about the planets, or about the weather, or the periodic table or
any
random sciency thing, and she knows the answer. She’s
so
smart. She knew from the time she was little that she wanted to be a doctor. I bet she’ll be starting medical school soon. She wanted to go to Purdue. I bet that’s where she’s going. Josie—she does the things she says she’s going to do. She’s amazing like that and … and I miss her.”
“When was the last time you saw her?” I asked.
“Two hundred and eighty-one days ago. And that should count as the second thing since I just answered another quest—”
I hit the talk button. “That was a subset of the first thing and don’t joke around about this. I busted my ass for these so no cutting corners.”
“You get mad so easily,” she said, laughing.
“You drive me to it. That’s why.”
“So, it’s not because you have a temper?”
“Don’t change the subject. Thing number two, go.”