Chapter 9 Poe
POE
“See anything?” I asked Bram.
He peered through the night-vision binoculars Rafe had given us along with a duffel bag full of weapons, and Kevlar, that latter of which we hadn’t bothered bringing.
I’d thought it was dark in Blackwell Falls, but the darkness of the mountains surrounding our hometown was nothing compared to the void of the countryside in Romania at night.
“No movement outside,” Bram said. “No guards either.”
“Dumb motherfucker,” Remy muttered, obviously referring to Ethan’s lack of security.
“Let me see,” I said.
Bram handed me the goggles and I adjusted the angle until I caught sight of the looming structure in the distance.
Jesus, Ethan Todd really was holed up in a bona fide castle, albeit an old and crumbling one.
The towering stone structure sat in a clearing surrounded by overgrown grass, the clearing itself ringed by towering trees.
From our vantage point in the woods, it was easy to imagine the place as it had once been, torchlight flickering around the castle’s now-toppled outer walls, the path leading through the forest filled with men on horseback instead of the black Land Rover that had been parked outside in the satellite footage Rafe had sent over.
We owed him, Nolan, and Jude big time. There was nothing we couldn’t do in Blackwell Falls, but tracking Todd across the world to a defunct castle in Romania — and getting a bird’s-eye view of that same castle — would have been next to impossible without them.
They played in a different sandbox, brought different tools to bear, and those tools had been key to tracking Todd and planning Maeve’s rescue (or as Rafe called it, her “exfil”).
Bram was right: the place was quiet, minus the heat signatures that would have indicated the presence of guards, although I did catch sight of a few small animals — eerie smudges of red in a sea of shadow — in the overgrowth surrounding the property.
Remy shifted on the ground next to me. “Think there are guards on the inside? Or just Vladescu?”
Anton Vladescu was by all accounts Ethan Todd’s right-hand man and primary muscle.
“Only one way to find out,” Bram said, rising to his feet.
I stood and stuffed the goggles into my jacket.
“Not going to be easy to clear such a big place.” I lowered my bone mask over my face.
Each of us became someone else — something else — when we wore them. Behind the carved bone, we weren’t human: we were animals, our instincts turned primitive and primal.
Track. Hunt. Claim.
Except this time we were hunting not to claim but to kill, and we were hunting to save Maeve, the most important goal of all.
Remy’s face disappeared behind his own mask. “The good news is that if it’s just Todd and Vladescu, we can take it slow.”
“We’ll be quiet,” Bram said. “At first.”
We shrugged on our packs — another contribution from Rafe — and I adjusted my knife in the sheath around my waist. We’d brought the guns too, but the knives were part of our hunts, and we’d brought them without even talking about it.
“You’ve got the thermite?” Bram asked Remy.
“I’ve got it.”
“Then let’s go get Maeve,” Bram said, starting through the cleaning surrounding the castle. “And then let’s burn this motherfucker to the ground.”