“This couldn’t be happening at a worse time,” I muttered to Caleb. “It feels like we’re thinly stretched as it is.”
“We’ll get there, Rose,” Caleb replied stoically.
He took my hand, and the gesture reminded me of something he often said to me: Don’t fear what-ifs. There was no point in me panicking about the lack of developments. We just had to keep our heads down and put in the legwork.
But a few hours later, after sifting through more case files, I was back to feeling pretty hopeless. None of them mentioned the group mind-loss that we’d experienced in Murkbeech.
“This is pointless!” Claudia exploded. The little blonde vampire shot to her feet, sending papers skittering across the table and onto the floor. “There’s absolutely nothing here! I can’t tell if any of these disappearances are supernatural or not—there’s no pattern!” She flicked through the files on her laptop at random. “Here’s one about an Abigail Stevens, aged eleven, missing from her home in Plymouth. This one’s Carlito Cabral, aged six, missing from school in Oeiras, Portugal. The only thing they have in common is that they’re both missing!”
“Hang on,” I said, “they’re both coastal towns. Pick another.”
“Okay…this one’s from Brighton.”
“That’s another coastal town,” I replied swiftly. “Yuri, how long would it take to put all the case files on a map?”
“About an hour at most,” Yuri replied, already tapping furiously on his keyboard.
Forty minutes later, we had all the missing persons pinpointed on a map of Europe. Now we could see a better pattern.
“Okay, so the majority of activity in the last few months has been around coastal towns—all facing the North Atlantic.”
“So what does that mean?” Ashley asked.
“I don’t know yet. But at least we have a place to start. The boy said that these creatures came out of nowhere…and if nobody is aware of unusual activity around the portals in these areas, then perhaps they’re coming from the sea?”
“It’s not an impossibility,” Landis murmured. “And we haven’t heard of any other supernatural activity reported in those areas.”
“I think we need to take a sample and try our luck,” I said. “Interview at random, starting with cases that happened closest to the water, and see what we find out.”
The others agreed. It wasn’t exactly the breakthrough that we’d been hoping for, but it was something. Now we had to go out and hunt down some more clues…anything that could give us the slightest indication of what kind of creature we were dealing with.
Hazel
When I woke, dawn was just creeping up over the tops of the trees. The fires seemed to have died out, leaving behind a blanket of white frost that covered everything, coating the land in a blanket of silence that was almost deafening. I felt groggy and disorientated, and looked around for Tejus.
He was standing by the edge of the forest, stroking the muzzle of a bull-horse. He had obviously removed the barriers before I woke, and called for another method of transportation. I looked over at Aria. Her body was now almost entirely frost-covered, her wings glinting in the faint morning light. I felt bad that we were just going to leave her here, but I supposed we didn’t have another choice.
“Are you ready to leave?” Tejus asked, walking toward me with the bull-horse.
“I’m ready,” I said, already shivering. I wanted to get back to the castle and take a bath before I could even contemplate doing much else.
“I’ll get us back as quickly as I can,” he replied. “You need to get warm and eat something.”
I nodded, thinking about Benedict. What kind of state would he be in? Would he be as cold and hungry as I was, but with no way of getting any comfort?
“What about Benedict?” I asked softly, already half-knowing the answer.
“It has to wait, Hazel. You can’t go out again like this. As soon as we’re able, we’ll look for him.”
It wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear, but I knew he was right. I just had to place a little faith in my brother—and, strangely, faith that the entity wanted him fit and well for its purposes. He couldn’t steal any more stones if he was half frozen.
I swallowed. “Okay. Let’s get out of here.”
Tejus lifted me onto the bull-horse, and then jumped on behind me.
“What about Aria?” I asked.
“I’ll send guards back for her. She’ll be cremated at Hellswan,” he replied gruffly.
With that, we galloped off into the forest, picking our way across the dead branches and fallen ferns that littered the makeshift pathways. I was glad our journey would be a quick one. There was a strange kind of beauty to the snow-white landscape, but it was eerie as well—as if everything in Hellswan had died overnight, and that the world was completely empty apart from Tejus and me.