Maybe our people were somewhere else entirely. Or maybe they were with whatever creatures had been hibernating in those pods. There were no signs of struggle anywhere—not at the resort, and not in the cave, either. Nothing torn or broken. No blood of any kind. I was beyond worried at that point.
Ben
“What if the travel spell doesn’t work?” I asked, watching Rose as she drew the pentagram in thick lines of chalk on the hard ground outside the cave.
“It brought us in, didn’t it?” she replied.
“Yeah, but the same happened on Neraka,” I shot back. “What if… Ugh, what if this is Neraka all over again?”
Rose looked at me, then scoffed and added herbs and crystals inside the pentagram’s designated points. “I doubt the universe is dull enough to put us through the same crap twice,” she said. “Besides, they’ve got the telescope on Strava, too. If they can’t reach us, or if we don’t come back, they’ll be here by sunrise. And in large numbers.”
I nodded slowly. “You’re right,” I said, looking around us.
The jungle was a beautiful place, with thick tree trunks and rich crowns of waxy leaves, each the size of my palm. Fruits hung from some of them. Ferns and wildflowers surrounded each tree at the base. Patches of grass covered the reddish ground here and there. The area around the cave was a clearing of sorts, but the deeper one went into the jungle, the fuller and taller the grass became.
Shadows rushed in the distance—animals either fleeing or hunting.
“What do you think happened with Mom and Dad, Rose?” I asked.
She sighed. “I don’t know. Part of me is worried it has something to do with those pods. But there’s no sign of a struggle. No blood. Nothing to indicate any kind of peril. So another part of me insists that they’re okay, just… either lost or off the island but without the boats, I guess?”
“What if they’re with whatever creatures slept in those pods?” I replied.
“That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing,” she said. I had to admire her strength. Though she’d been the one worried most about Mom and Dad from the very beginning, she was the one searching for the bright side, even after I’d been proven wrong. “I mean, maybe they’re with them and talking? Discovering a species thought extinct? Who knows?”
“Fair enough,” I muttered. “Do we bring back a search crew?”
“Yeah. And make sure we’ve got a Bowie system set up. Oh!” Rose stilled, then pulled the metallic ball out of her pocket. She pressed the call button on it. “Draven, Viola! Guys! Not sure you’re getting this, but Telluris doesn’t work. We’re on our way back now!”
After she sent the message out, she looked at me, pursing her lips.
“We both forgot about Bowie, I know,” I said, my cheeks burning.
“It’s not like we’re rookies or something,” she replied.
“Yet, here we are.” I chuckled.
Rose smiled, then stood and motioned for me to get inside the pentagram.
I got off the cave’s mound and walked over to her. She muttered the incantation, and a bright ball of white light emerged around us and swallowed us whole. Seconds later, the spell hummed as it lifted us off the ground.
I instinctively took Rose’s hand in mine and held it tight.
“Here goes nothing,” she murmured.
“We’ve got Viola’s protective upgrades on this, though, right?”
“You mean the modifications she made when we went after Harper and the others on Neraka? Yeah. We’re not blowing up if there’s some kind of shield up there,” she replied.
We shot through the sky at an increasing speed. The islands turned into white-and-green dots against the ocean’s turquoise backdrop. We pierced a nearby blanket of white clouds, then sat down as the light orb trembled, shooting through the atmosphere.
“Fingers crossed,” I croaked.
Sparks flew past us. My heart skipped a beat.
We were out!
My entire body relaxed almost instantly, and I looked over my shoulder and saw Strava getting smaller behind us. We were back in the black void of the In-Between, shooting past stars and neighboring planets, clouds of stardust and shapeless, wandering asteroids.
“We did it,” Rose gasped. “So there’s no shield holding anyone hostage on Strava.”
“Thank the stars. I cannot put up with a Neraka 2.0 scenario here,” I muttered.
Rose chuckled softly, then nudged me with her shoulder. “It’s actually a good thing. It means we can go back and forth as much as we want. Nothing’s changed. Oh, wait,” she said, then frowned. “Telluris Draven!”
She was trying Telluris again. We waited for a couple of seconds, and then Rose’s eyes lit up.
I heard Draven inside my head, too, as I’d also been connected to him via the same spell.
“Are you both okay?” Draven’s voice echoed between Rose and me.
We looked at each other and smiled.
“Yeah, we’re coming back now,” Rose replied.
“Did you find Derek, Sofia, and the others?” Draven asked.
“No, but we found something that will be of interest. We’ll need to get a search party back on Strava,” Rose said. “Also, I need you to get Jovi and Phoenix in. They need to help us recalibrate Bowie. I think there’s something wrong with the comms.”
“We’re talking via Telluris, though,” Draven replied. “Do you think a gadget is necessary, still?”
“Yeah,” I interjected. “Turns out Telluris doesn’t work on Strava. We tried reaching out to you earlier, but we didn’t get through, it seems.”
Draven groaned. “That is never a good sign.”
“It’s different this time,” Rose reassured him. “You’ve got eyes on us via the telescope. Plus, we’ve got tech that’s good enough to withstand the forty-something light-years of distance between Calliope and Strava.”
“We’ve learned plenty from our previous missions,” I said.
Draven cleared his throat. “So you didn’t find Derek, Sofia… no one?”
“Nope. But there’s no sign of a struggle and no traces of blood, either. The scent trail is fading, too,” I replied. “We’re trying not to think of a worst-case scenario here, but at this point and with what we found in the jungle behind the resort, a search party is warranted.”
“What did you find behind the resort?” Draven asked.
Rose and I looked at each other once more, then simultaneously sighed.
“You’ll need to see it yourself. Describing it doesn’t do it justice,” Rose said.
“You know what you can do, though?” I added. “Have a second look at that Druid archive of yours regarding Strava and that entire solar system.”
“Sure, but why? Do you think we missed something?” Draven replied.
“You could say that,” I murmured.
Whatever was going on in the jungle behind the resort, I couldn’t help but feel like it was somehow connected to my parents. The coincidence was a little too much. One moment, Mom, Dad and the others are okay, all chatty and discovering the cave with its weird pods, and the next, they’re all gone, including the creatures in the pods. We were missing something, for sure.
Like Rose, part of me held on to the hope that this was unrelated, and that Dad and his crew were simply elsewhere. That they’d maybe forgotten to take Bowie with them on some long trip farther away from Noagh.
But the ominous feeling creeping up my spine wasn’t subsiding, either. My instincts told me that something might’ve gone wrong, after all. And I would never forgive myself if I didn’t check every possible avenue and turn every damn stone on Strava until I found our parents again, alive and well.
Elonora
(Daughter of Ash and Ruby)
An emergency meeting was called on Mount Zur. It was early morning, and I’d barely gotten a couple of hours of sleep after a heavy training session with Harper and Bijarki. The incubus was still glowing like a lightbulb and was somewhat upset that
he couldn’t stay by Vita’s side at all times. She’d actually warned him to give her some Vita-time or “face the consequences.”
Ben and Rose led the meeting inside the main assembly hall of our GASP base. All the remaining Novaks were there, along with our closest friends and family. I had not heard anything from my grandparents, Claudia and Yuri, or anyone else in their vacation group, and the emergency meeting didn’t feel like an auspicious sign at all.
I stood close to Kailani, Harper, and the others in our generation, as the rest of the GASP officers made their way into the assembly hall. The temperature suddenly dropped by a few degrees, prompting me to look over my shoulder. I spotted Nevis coming in, accompanied by four of his Dhaxanian guards. Chills ran down my spine, and I shifted my focus back to Ben and Rose, who were standing on the small, oval podium in front of the crowd.
“Do you know what this is about?” I asked Harper.
She frowned, then shook her head slowly.
“It might have something to do with Derek and the others,” she muttered. “They were supposed to be back two nights ago.”
“Ugh, Varga’s not going to like this…” I groaned.
“He’s gone to Neraka, hasn’t he?” Harper replied.
I nodded. “Yeah, he took the vampire-fae recruit with him, to prepare for the shift change before the others get there. Extra-training, he said.”
Rose then raised her voice, forcing the crowd’s murmurs to die down.
“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” she said. “We’re going to keep this brief, as we already have enough on our plates. Derek, Sofia and the others were supposed to be back two nights ago, at midnight. Telescope feeds didn’t show anything suspicious, though we’re still scouring the recorded footage. They didn’t respond to our communications, either, so last night, Ben and I traveled to Strava to see what was going on.”
Ben then cleared his throat and pressed a button on the small remote he was holding. A hi-def screen came down from the ceiling, behind them. On it was a highly detailed image of the resort, as seen through the upgraded telescope lenses. Black dots had been circled in red.
“What we’d thought were our parents and friends turned out to be large endemic predators,” Ben said. “We know that wasn’t the case until four days ago, when we last communicated with Mom. When we got there, the resort was empty, except for these large turquoise cats.”
An image of the creatures showed up on the screen. I held my breath for a second, for they were truly gorgeous.
“There was no sign of struggle, no sign of a fight, not a single trace of blood,” Rose continued. “But our group’s scent had faded. They haven’t been in the resort in three days, specifically up until the night before their set departure date. They left all their belongings behind, including their cameras and Bowie, the comms system we’d given them. The escape shuttle is also there, untouched.”
“We did find some interesting footage on all cameras, as well as on Bowie,” Ben said, then pulled up video of our grandparents exploring a cave filled with weird metallic pods.
“Whoa,” I murmured, my eyes widening as I took it all in.
“There isn’t much we know about this place,” Rose explained. “It’s a cave, approximately three and a half miles southeast of the resort, hidden deep within the jungle. Had we not known how to find it, chances are we wouldn’t have just stumbled upon it. It’s quite secluded. We found something akin to solar panels on top, and there are cables running through the entire structure, connected to these pods and what looks like a computer of sorts. All signs of an advanced civilization.”
“Yeah, but they were supposed to be gone or extinct,” Harper cut in. “We didn’t find that cave when we checked the island. We scanned the entire planet before we built the resort, and there were no signs of a still living advanced civilization, besides the ruins to the east.”
“I know, and it’s not your fault,” Rose replied. “Our guess is that these pods blocked out any scanning equipment. Otherwise they would’ve popped up on your screens. We believe they were designed to preserve creatures in stasis, but we have no biological data to back this up. There were plenty of footprints inside the cave, though.”
“So, what happened?” Kailani asked. I could see her aura turn dark red, a shade of heavy concern. It resonated with the worry that had begun to stiffen my muscles.
“We know that our group discovered the cave, with the pods inside and intact, the evening before their set departure date,” Ben said. “We know that they planned on coming back early to grab a research team and go back, so they could study those pods in an environment that would be safe for both themselves and whatever creatures could be stored inside. But that’s all we know.”
“When we got to the resort, they were gone,” Rose added. “Like I said, no blood or signs of struggle. So they might’ve left of their own accord. They might’ve changed their minds and decided to explore some other part of the nearby Prekk Archipelago, for example, even though they didn’t take the boats.”
“Of course, they have Grandma Corrine with them, so the boats could be a little redundant,” Kailani interjected.
“Plus, my dad and Kailyn—perfectly capable fae.” Avril crossed her arms.
“Exactly,” Rose replied. “So, we’re not excluding the possibility that everything is actually okay, and that they’re out there, somewhere, having lost track of time. Based on Mom’s accounts from the previous days, they were already contemplating the idea of staying another week, though no decision had been made at the time. However, Ben and I are concerned about one thing.”
“When we found the cave, all the pods were open and empty,” Ben explained.
Multiple gasps erupted from the crowd, and for good reason, too.
“Do we know what was in them?!” Hunter blurted, visibly alarmed.
Ben shook his head. “No, but just like with the resort, there was no blood or sign of struggle. According to Corrine’s suggestions, the pods may have been used to preserve specimens of the Stravian civilization we’d first thought extinct. It’s not clear where they went or whether they’re with our group, but they’re definitely out there somewhere.”
“How many?” I asked.
“We counted five hundred and five pods,” Rose replied. “We brought Bowie back for a recalibration. Telluris doesn’t work on the surface of Strava, but we’ve had no trouble going in and out. There is no evidence of hostility of any kind, at this point, and it would be better for the local environment if we didn’t invade the whole planet looking for our people. Any impact we make in large numbers will affect the animals’ grazing and feeding habits, and we don’t want to leave such a mark on Strava.”
“If there are five hundred and five Stravians awake and walking now, the last thing we want is to scare them off,” Ben added. “On top of that, our parents, and everyone else in that group, are highly experienced and extremely powerful. But we can’t find them,” he added, his shoulders dropping.
Rose sighed. “We want to put together a search crew, to not only look for them, but also to study those pods and the technology behind them,” she said. “We want to be discreet and efficient. Given that there’s an upcoming shift change on Neraka, we’re a little bit stretched in terms of personnel.”
Jovi stepped forward, his brow furrowed. “What do you need?”
Ben and Rose looked at each other for a moment, then nodded.
“First, Rose and I will be leading the search mission,” Ben said. “Our parents and uncles are basically missing, and we are personally vested in this. We’ve also seen the cave and are well acquainted with the island. Caleb and River have both been kind and supportive enough to cover our spots in GASP and The Shade for all the ongoing operations that we’re currently managing,” he added, then gave River a half-smile and a playful wink. “Good luck with those daily reports. They’re a freaking nightmare.”
“Hazel, Tejus, Victoria, Bastien, Pippa, Jeramiah… We need
you guys to keep an eye on everything here,” Rose added, nodding at the second-generation crew standing in front of the crowd. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, not only on Neraka, but also here, in Eritopia. The Shade is more or less self-sufficient and has little to no issues. Ash, Ruby, Grace and Lawrence and the rest of the crew there can handle it.”
“Jovi, Phoenix, we need you to scan the entire planet again via the telescope,” Ben instructed. “Make a note of everything that might come across as suspicious or unnatural. With Viola’s lens upgrades, you’ve got a much better view,” he added, then looked at Shayla and Arwen. “That being said, we’ll need eyes on our team, too.”
Arwen nodded. “We’ll put together a second telescope to follow you around. We’ll have the kids take turns and get the footage recorded, as well.”
“Thank you,” Rose replied with a soft smile. “Now, regarding the team we want with us. The planet is 90 percent water, so we need water-friendly creatures to come with us.”
My hand shot up in a flash, as did Kailani’s.
“I’d like to volunteer,” I said. With my brother on Neraka and our parents handling The Shade, I had a duty to go after our grandparents. “I’m no genius with water, but I can obviously swim…”
“That’s fine, Lenny,” Rose replied. “You’ve got Claudia and Yuri there. I get it.”
“Me too,” Kailani chimed in.
Rose stared at us for a few moments, then let out a long and heavy sigh. “I did say water-friendly creatures, but your grandparents are in that group, too, so… Okay, you’re in.”
“We do need a witch,” Ben muttered.
“Rest assured, I’ve got what you need for this mission,” Kale said, her voice lower than usual.
Upon a second look at her, I realized that there was something different about her. Nothing on the surface, but rather a change in her aura. It glowed differently, slightly brighter than the others I could read into as a sentry. I’d never seen it before. The colors were more intense, and, in a way, they all resonated inside my ribcage. I made a mental note to talk to her about it, at some point.
A Shade of Vampire 60_A Voyage of Founders Page 19
