“Thank you.”
“Tae, do you think these weirdos have been dormant until now, maybe?” Riza asked. Concern darkened her amethyst eyes.
I offered a shrug in return. “Maybe. If so, they’re clearly well organized.”
Cosmos unraveled around us, black and sprinkled with billions of white, burning stars and distant planets. The spell bubble shot through the emptiness at light-speed, bursting through stardust clouds once in a while. A trillion colors exploded in all directions, as we crossed several galaxies and went farther than we’d gone before. We were still hours away, but the ride was already spectacular.
My conclusions so far regarding our mission challenges, however, weren’t at all positive. We had an alarming number of fae in the In-Between that seemed to be part of a deadly cult and appeared determined to stop us from getting to the rogue Hermessi who’d been blowing some of them up. We were dealing with evasive entities that fueled our home planets with the four natural elements, without whom life itself was impossible. We had more questions than answers, at this point.
But we did have a destination. Cerix was bound to yield more desperately needed information.
Eva
I was scared.
As the hours went by inside the interplanetary spell bubble, I realized this.
Never in my life had I ever thought I’d feel like this again, but I was terrified. The last time I’d dealt with potentially deadly conflict had been during Azazel’s reign—and, back then, I’d been carted off to another island for my own safety.
This was different, of course. I was no longer the defenseless princess. I was a GASP agent, trained and conditioned for this kind of stuff. But it was still my first field mission. Part of me felt uneasy, thinking that maybe I’d gone out too soon. I was ready, though. I could feel it in my bones that this was my time. I figured these bits of doubt came with the territory, especially for a newbie like me.
Still, the fear was impossible to ignore. It had nearly crippled me back in the jade building. I comforted myself with the thought that I would eventually get used to it. Serena had taught me that courage wasn’t the absence of fear, but rather our ability to take that fear and do something with it. So, with that thought in mind, I managed to keep my cool. I was quivering on the inside, but my exterior was calm and alert.
Even as the interplanetary spell hurtled us through the vastness of space, I found a strange balance between the inner dread and the outer chill. I had to, not only for my own sake, but for my team. I wasn’t on my own here, so I had to think of the others, too.
There was still a long way to go for me, as far as this new GASP profession was concerned. I had plenty of things to learn. In the meantime, however, I focused on what I could do—in this case, using my Druid magic to help heal some of the superficial wounds that my team members had suffered during the fae attacks. We’d come out with scratches and bruises, mostly, but we had to be in tip-top shape for whatever lay ahead. We all knew this wasn’t going to get any easier. Nothing involving the Hermessi would ever be easy.
“You’re pretty good at this,” Riza said to me as I applied a pale green ointment over the cuts on her forearms. I’d made it myself, with a mixture of herbs from Calliope and a whispered spell. I’d also passed out the first round of nourishments we’d packed to the group—protein bars for the non-vampires, and blood vials for myself, Amelia and Varga. I’d added a touch of magic in them, too, amplifying their nutritional values.
As a Lamia, I’d been taught Druid magic from a young age, in order to get by. My mother encouraged me to use it more, instead of my vampire blood for healing. Though she didn’t like the idea of me becoming a vampire, she’d saved a few words of wisdom about it, for the future. One of them was this tiny but useful piece of advice, to only use my blood when nothing else was available.
Our relationship had soured lately, but I felt like I was meeting her halfway, somehow, by listening to her. She didn’t need to know about it, though. The last thing I wanted from my mother was one of those glad-to-see-you-obeyed-me smirks.
“Druid magic does come in handy,” I replied, and smiled gently.
“You could patch me up, too, if you’d like,” Herakles interjected, showing off a bleeding calf. The leather had been torn to shreds there, but I had a few tricks in my backpack to help with that, as well.
“Sure,” I said, settling on the luminous floor of our interstellar bubble. I took out all the potions and tools I needed to not only heal his cuts, but also to fix his GASP uniform. I had a feeling we’d be out here for quite a while.
I got to work, while the others talked about our near-death experiences. Ignoring the chills running down my spine, I applied the green paste down each cut, then gently blew on it to help it dry quicker.
“If this is a cult, like we’ve more or less agreed, it’ll take more than our team to investigate,” Taeral said, staring out into the starry abyss. “We’re spread too thin already.”
“I’ve asked Draven to send out more crews,” Amelia replied. “I told him the same thing. We can focus on stopping this rogue Hermessi first, then help quell these hostile cults. I’m convinced that the two are related somehow.”
“Me too,” Varga said. “I have a feeling that, if we find a way to stop the Hermessi, the others will fall as well.”
“Provided we find a way to stop a Hermessi, that is,” Raphael said.
“Yeah, we’ve got quite the doozy on our hands.” Amelia sighed.
I felt the side of my face burning. I glanced to my left and found Varga watching me—not what I was doing, but me, directly. His deep blue eyes resembled two flames… and I broke into a cold sweat when I remembered that he could read my emotions.
Inwardly cursing, I shifted my attention back to Herakles, who stood quietly in front of me. He gave me a sympathetic smile. “Thanks for this. It feels better already.”
“We look after one another, right?” I replied.
“Don’t you worry, Eva. I’ve got your back,” Herakles said.
Again, my skin simmered. I couldn’t resist my curiosity, so I looked to my left again. Varga’s head turned away so quickly, I could’ve sworn I heard his spine snap. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
Not sure what that was about, I resumed my patchwork. Fixing the leather wasn’t a big issue for me; I’d packed leather strings and thick silken strings to repair any tear into our suits—Serena’s advice. According to her, we were bound to get scraped up, one way or another. Harper had confirmed, as well. Field missions in GASP always came with some kind of scuffle, it seemed.
“We’ll need to be careful when we land,” Taeral said. “There’s no information about the Cerixians in the Druid Archives, except the coordinates. I think it was one of the last places they discovered before Azazel went dark and crazy. So, we don’t know how they’ll greet us.”
“I think it would be safe to assume they’re not immediately hostile, since the Druids came back with soil samples,” Amelia suggested. “Then again, I may be wrong in the absence of factual data.”
“We’ll let you take the lead, for what it’s worth,” Raphael replied. “Diplomacy is one of your top skills, if I’m not mistaken. You do the talking, and we’ll be ready for whatever follows.”
“But only if you tell them that we come in peace!” Amelia joked.
A smile tugged at the corner of Taeral’s mouth. That was the most we were going to see from him, at least until we made more progress in this issue.
“Is… Is that it? Cerix, I mean,” Amelia said, pointing ahead.
We’d entered a new galaxy. This one was slightly different, looking like a vortex riddled with stars. It was home to thousands of solar systems, each revolving around a large sun—judging by the planets’ distance from their stars, I was inclined to believe that at least thirty percent of them could easily sustain life. Heck, some maybe already did!
Millions of kilometers away, however, was a most beautiful solar system. Perhaps the largest in this galaxy, too. Its star was enormous, three times the size of Calliope’s. The planets orbiting it were big and downright stunning—massive colored marbles in shades of blue and green.
