Lyra exhaled evenly. "I hope it's that easy." But we all knew that it might prove much more complicated. Our teams filed in during their appointed time slots. Bryce looked refreshed today, but I worried about him after Lyra had let it slip during our heart-to-heart that he was being affected by the vampire's curse. He would definitely want to rescue Arlonne if we managed to get the beast to create the portal.
I still can't hear Kane. I tried to bury this worrying thought, knowing that I needed to focus on this mission. I was glad Lyra had been kind enough to hear me out and believe me. Now, we needed to find Kane among the other survivors, if he was there. I highly suspected he was. Kane, of all people, knew how to adjust to his surroundings, since his entire journey as a vampire warrior had involved him working twice as hard. But he’d mentioned protecting the others. Was he talking about the children that Joseph, Sike, and Lyra had told us about? I’d thought they might be the harvester kids we were with during the meld, but from Joseph’s description, there were humans, vampires, and wildlings as well.
My head spun as our teams came together for our final briefing and I showed Lyra exactly where I had been attacked. The plan was simple. We would use all our vampire comms at the same time, creating a big use of energy that we suspected would draw the Ghost toward us. If it was attracted to interplanar energy, then hell, we would give that thing as much weird plane interaction as it wanted.
Our plan was to allow the Ghost to tear open a portal, but have only one team go through while the other group focused on keeping the monster back. The Hellraisers would try to prevent it from actually leaving the Mortal Plane, using Joseph's new device. The invention was new, and, assuming it even worked, we couldn’t be sure how long the effect would last, meaning we had to act fast. While we held the Ghost off and hopefully captured it, Lyra's team would use the portal to travel to the Pocket Space, where they could rescue the others. The Hellraisers would have to keep the monster alive, of course, since Lyra and her team would eventually call us on the vampire comms for an extraction. If we captured the creature, we reasoned, it could be useful with its portal abilities.
"Remember, if you don't hear from us in a day because the comms don’t work, just plan on extracting us anyway," Lyra said. Dorian fiddled with one of the vampire comms in his hand.
"Got it." We had been over the plan a few times, but everyone was on high alert and on edge. Even Jones looked nervous, with a paler face than usual. If we wanted to succeed, we needed to work together flawlessly, but the plan was full of variables… which didn't make the outlook optimistic. Still, what other choice did we have? We risked losing more lives to the Ghost if we didn't capture it. Sure, Joseph thought it was relatively harmless and bent on balancing energies in a weird way, but he’d also lost his freaking arm. We had to get Arlonne and Kane—if he was there—out of that place. Dan and Jessica, as well. They had gotten themselves into quite a mess by disobeying both the law and common sense, and they were not equipped to survive in such conditions.
"Are we sure this is going to work?" Holt asked me under his breath after we broke away from separate team briefs. He stared at me, worry in his usually kind and calm eyes. "There's so much we don't know about the creature."
I'd give him that. "You're right. There's a lot we don't know, but I can personally vouch for Lyra and Bryce. They have a great team with lots of experience in Immortal Plane conflicts, especially Dorian."
Evans watched Dorian warily over my shoulder. "It's… interesting… to work with vampires." Her attitude about it didn’t surprise me. I remembered how difficult it had been for me, at first, when we worked with the vampires. We had so much propaganda shoved down our throats during training that it was hard to get over those biases. Evans was older than me, so she would naturally be more skeptical.
"Trust me," I told her gently. "We can trust them. Without the vampires, this world would've been blown to hell."
Jones scowled, but he said nothing. I paired him and Evans off to wait on the left side while I put the twins and Holt toward my back. Colin stationed himself in a tree just on the border of the Leftovers, while Chandry and Sike hid with Holt's group. I was to play bait again, since it had worked last time, but I had Dorian and Lyra with me.
"You ready?" Jessie asked over the comm.
"I'm set," I replied. We'd taken every type of Reshi device with us, especially the comms, to attract the Ghost. Lyra glanced at me and lifted her comm. We were ready to start.
We activated the special comms several times. It was strange, standing there and just setting them off without speaking. A few minutes passed quietly. I watched the abandoned house again, but there was no sign of a monster breathing this time.
My desire to talk to Kane was heavy in the back of my mind. Surely, it wouldn't hurt to try while we just waited, right?
Are you there, Kane? Silence greeted me, along with the soft sounds of mortal birds chirping in the distance on the non-Leftovers side of the road. I'm here. I'm with Lyra and Dorian. We're trying to get to you… or, at least, to where we think you are.
There was no reply. I missed his voice more than I liked to admit. After telling Lyra and having her
