Chapter 6 Caesar
The plane shuttered slightly as the haze outside my tiny window told me we were passing through a cloud. I was so used to flying with my own wings, I hadn’t expected to feel so trapped inside this confined cabin. But that wasn’t the only reason for my anxiety as we flew to the other side of the country.
“I really don’t like this idea, Shea,” I whispered to her. “I think there might be a better way to go about this.”
“Nonsense,” she whispered back. “Getting someone on the inside is the best shot we have, and I’m the prime candidate for it.”
My insides writhed in refusal. “Why can’t Janette do it instead?”
All three heads on either side of me in the row turned to me.
“You can’t just volunteer her for something like that,” Kai countered as he paused his perusal of his laptop, making Janette on his right beam for an instant before her expression returned to a scowl aimed at me.
“Exactly,” Shea said. “And Janette has no idea what Julian or Arya look like. She’d have little chance of finding them, let alone convincing them she’s on our side if she did. You couldn’t do it because Hadrian knows you, and Kai would be sniffed out as a shifter in a heartbeat. It has to be me.”
I leaned into my seat, biting my tongue against the dozen retorts I was forming. She had a point. And I knew she was right about this. But I hated the idea of sending her into the lion’s den. Hadrian had already stolen my parents and so many friends and mentors. And here I was, getting ready to hand Shea over on a silver platter.
What if something went wrong? Hadrian could kill her on site just for her knowledge of his kind. He could catch her in the act of just talking to Arya or Julian and rip her throat out—or worse. And it wasn’t just Hadrian I had to worry about; there had to be hundreds of vampires in that compound. One of them could drain her dry purely by accident.
I had to squeeze my eyes shut to stop the myriad of scenarios from playing in my mind. I couldn’t stand to watch them anymore.
Janette leaned over Kai’s open laptop toward me. “Shea is a powerful witch and far more clever than you’re giving her credit for. She can do this.” Her gaze tried to instill more faith than I was capable of attaining right now, but I gave her a nod anyway.
I turned back to Shea and whispered even lower in hopes only she would hear me. “Are you sure you’re not just doing this because of Marguerite?”
Her body stiffened beside me, and I could feel vengeful fury radiating from her.
She looked sideways at me. “That’s just a bonus.”
I sighed, frustration and fear warring within me. “Dispatching Marguerite is not part of this mission, Shea.”
“The Hell it isn’t,” she hissed without looking at me.
I shifted in my seat so that my torso was facing her. “You can’t go after her. Promise me you won’t go after her.”
Her head whipped in my direction, revealing her eyes brimming with angry tears. “And why not?”
I took her hand, holding it gently even though all I wanted to do was squeeze it and never let go. “She’s a powerful vampire, just as old as Julian.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve dealt with vampires before.”
“Like you did the night I found you in the alley?” I quipped, instantly regretting it as her eyes closed tightly against the painful memory. “Hey, I’m sorry, but you need to understand the danger in the vengeance you want. Marguerite isn’t just any vampire; she’s Hadrian’s right hand, and trust me when I say she has earned that position.”
“I don’t care.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m stronger now than I was before. You can’t tell me you don’t want her to suffer as much as I do.”
I shook my head slowly. “No, I can’t. I do want that. But this is not our opportunity to get it. You’re going to be in the very center of hundreds of vicious, bloodthirsty monsters, and if you make a move against Marguerite, they won’t hesitate to—” I couldn’t say the word. I had to pause for a moment to let my throat loosen enough to continue. “If you go after her, not only will you never leave, but you’ll be ensuring that Julian and Arya don’t either.”
She frowned, the truth of that settling over her, however reluctantly.
“So, again, promise me you’ll stay away from Marguerite,” I insisted. “At least for now. Once we have Julian and Arya safely out, we will find a way to end her so she can never hurt Julian or anyone else again.”
She stewed over it for a long moment, chewing her lip as she looked sideways at me. “Fine,” she relented at last. “I promise I’ll leave her alone.”
Something inside my chest eased, even as I already saw the wheels spinning in her rebellious mind looking for a loophole. I at least felt reassured that she wouldn’t do anything reckless. Now that she understood the true danger involved, she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the safety of those she loved, not for something so frivolous as vengeance.
I brought her hand up so I could place a kiss on her knuckles, then she tugged mine into her lap and held it there as she looked out the window.
“Ah, I finally got it,” Kai whispered excitedly to my right.
I turned to see him hunched over his laptop with a wide grin on his face.
“What?” I asked, having forgotten what he said he was going to be looking for when we first got on the plane.
“The schematics for Heritage Prep,” he said, practically bouncing in his seat. “It’s not public record, so I had to track down the private contractor who built it and hack into his surprisingly sophisticated digital storage system. It was a giant pain in the ass, but I got it!”
Janette turned sideways and draped a hand over the right side of Kai’s chest. “I love how smart and tech savvy you are.”
Even in the dim light of the plane’s cabin I could see Kai’s cheeks turning pink when he smiled and chuckled bashfully. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Maybe you could teach me,” she purred.
Kai stammered incoherently, and while he was distracted and flustered, I took the laptop into my own lap to look at the blueprints of the place where soon three of the people I cared about most would be trapped, hopefully temporarily. She leaned against me to look, too.
I didn’t have much experience with blueprints—or any, for that matter—so it was confusing at first to understand what I was looking at. Each floor of the citadel appeared to have its own page, and there were dozens of pages, some of which only consisted of separated circles.
“Those must be towers,” Shea whispered, pointing to one of them.
“Ah, that makes sense,” I agreed.
“And see these labels here.” She pointed to the G23 on the top right corner of the current page. “I think the G means above ground, and the B means below ground.”
It was only after she said that that I understood the order of these pages. There were twenty-three G labeled pages, and then about a dozen B labeled ones directly following, their layouts much larger. I could only imagine what Hadrian needed so many underground stories for.
“These will help make the footage make a lot more sense once I hack into their surveillance system,” Kai informed. “It might take me a while to become acquainted with the setup, but I’ll map everything out so we know where every single camera is.”
“How do you know they’ll have a surveillance system?” Janette asked, and all three of us turned surprised gazes on her. She shrugged. “What? They’re vampires. I just assumed they wouldn’t need such things.”
“Whatever security they would have wouldn’t be for potential outsiders trying to get in—Hadrian is too arrogant to think such a thing would ever happen,” Kai said. “No, it would be for those already within his walls. Vampires aren’t the most trustworthy creatures, and Hadrian would absolutely want to keep tabs on his followers to ensure total obedience.”
And to punish those who disobey, which is why we’re here in the first place.
“Not to mention the hundreds of humans they have living under their roof—or floor, most likely,” I added. “Hadrian would undoubtedly take every precaution to ensure they stayed in line.”
Janette frowned and nodded, casting a worried glance down the row at Shea. Good, at least I wasn’t the only one. If Shea succeeded in enrolling at that godforsaken place, she’d be watched constantly. I couldn’t help but doubt that this plan wouldn’t backfire.
But I kept my thoughts to myself. After all, we couldn’t do nothing. Julian and Arya were depending on us, though Arya didn’t know it yet. I had to believe in Shea, and I had to make peace with the fact that, once she entered those doors, I couldn’t protect her.