Page 181 of Remnants: Disruption
Whoever this European company was, they were at least letting us fly under DAEMON’s technofascist radar.
Nearing the Casket, will update you when we know more.
The phone slides easily into the padded cargo joggers and I look up again to see Azazel studying me again.
“It’s hard to tell if you’re asleep or looking at me,” I say, trying for a smile that I know is forced. No one in this truck is exactly excited about walking into a battlefield. Especially in a city where everyone seems determined to see us die.
“Do you truly love her?” Azazel’s question sort of pauses my brain mid tangent.
I don’t answer right away. Not because I’m not certain or because I have lingering misgivings. I don’t even really care about whatever she did to the dhampirs—if I’m to believe Varun anyways.
No, I want to make sure that Azazel comprehends the vast lengths I would go to for Cassandra Alta. For Bloody Mary.
“It didn’t really hit me how badly losing her would hurt until she died in my arms,” I say, and I feel the attention of the others in the car shift. “And Iknowshe died, Azazel. I can feel those things.”
When no one responds, I squeeze my eyes shut. My chest aches from the memory. From the moment she’d just—
“I lost it,” I whisper, eyes burning behind closed lids. “She was gone and I was just left holding her. Just wondering what the fucking point was. Why this was happening.”
The truck goes deathly silent.
“But then there was something else, Azazel,” I say, raising my eyes to meet their impassive mask. “Her soul. Her tether. Andjustbefore it slipped through my fingers, I pulled it back. I pulledherback. I went into the afterlife and brought her back to me.”
I can feel their eyes on me. The others in the truck are staring at me like I’ve gone mad.
“I don’t know how I did it,” I say, jaw tight. “But no one will ever take her from me again.”
Azazel seems to consider me for a few moments before nodding slowly.
“She is important to me,” they say and there’s a tune of wistfulness in their otherwise bland voice. “Yet, she has never told me her true identity. Nor her history or background. I only know what I have experienced over the last twenty years.”
I had figured as much. Especially since they clearly didn’t know she was a vampire. And they likely didn’t know about the Romanian village, either.
“I have several hundred years of things to learn about her, too,” I say, smiling a little at the prospect of it.
Though, I suppose I won’t exactly live as long as she will—which is to say: forever.
I shake the thought from my head. Borrowing trouble won’t help me now.
The car makes a sharp move, and we slide a little in our bench seats.
“Lady Hiraeth,” the driver calls, glancing at me through the rearview. “You might want to see this.”
I duck low and poke my head through the space between the two front seats.
The Casket is technically beside Old Chicago. The issue is that, even with no traffic, it’s probably a thirty-minute drive from the Old Father clock tower to the Casket’s outskirts.
Which means we got here just a few minutes too late.
The mega-building that holds the majority of New Chicago’s Remnant population is the densest part of the community.
And it seems RISE knows that too.
“They’ve got a checkpoint,” the driver says, nodding to the first of the vehicles along the side of the road.
Sure enough, there’s several men with large weapons standing around a vehicle with a turret atop it. Just further ahead sits the entrance to the mega-building with what looks to be five or so more vehicles with similar-looking weapons.
The entire place is crawling with RISE agents.
