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She grew serious. “Everything is in place. They are assembling the weapon and it will be transported to the air base. ETA 24 hours until lift off.”

There was a moment of silence between us, heavy with things unsaid; the implications of how these actions would affect us were enormous.

All I knew was that I had 24 hours to find Ruby or she would die. I was sure she was somewhere in the South, most of which would be turned radioactive in one day.

“I have to leave for a few hours,” I said, not looking at Tick. “I will be back for the launch.”

“You can’t leave now!” her voice was panicky.

“Everything is in place,” I said reassuringly.

“But… but,” her eyes grew wide and I had to speak firmly to her.

“I need to find Ruby, Tick. She is down there, I have to get her out of danger.”

“What if you don’t make it back in time? It’s too dangerous!”

I nodded. “Then so be it.”

She stared at me, open-mouthed. “No, you can’t be serious! You can’t go, we need you!”

“I appreciate that you don’t get it,” I said, looking at the dark sky over the mountains again, “but my work here is done. I’ve arranged everything, systems are in place. Now it will all go according to plan and if it doesn’t, you or Harris or any of the very competent generals can sort it out.”

She was blinking furiously.

“I have to try to find her.”

I couldn’t tell Tick that the thought of being without Ruby was inconceivable. Living in a world without her, knowing that I didn’t do everything in my power to try and save her? I was responsible for upending her life like this, for putting her mother in danger. It was my responsibility to look after her now but more than that, I loved her and didn’t want to live in a world if she wasn’t in it. It was as simple as that.

Tick hung her head. “Just answer your phone, please,” she begged me.

“I will,” I said and smiled at her. “I promise you, everything is in place.”

She didn’t look convinced and quite unexpectedly, I put my arm around her shoulder and gave it a clumsy squeeze.

“Come on, kid. Shoulders back. You can do this.”

“Fuck you, of course I can,” she came back, visibly bucked up.

I was glad to see it. I didn’t want to have to worry about her falling apart while I ventured into the lion’s den down south.

I winked at her and launched myself into the air, heading down south as fast as I could. The big problem was that I didn’t know exactly where to go. It was frustrating, but for some reason, my connection to Ruby was not as it was before. I didn’t know exactly where she was, I could feel her but it was fuzzy, an almost dull ache but when I tried to follow the sensation, it seemed to move away. She was somewhere in the South but figuring out where was proving to be difficult.

My first location was near Buzzard Creek. We had launched an attack on the town and there were houses on fire and car wrecks lining the street. I checked her house, which had not been damaged, but which clearly was unoccupied. It seemed she was even further South. I didn’t want to go too close to Sunny’scompound as it increased my exposure to shifters.

I had spent the previous evening at the peace talks organized by the Human Council and had seen very quickly that the humans had switched allegiance. The shifters had sent a negotiating team led by a slick character with an oily voice who demanded that vampires relinquish not only all property and assets in the South but also pay the shifters reparations for all kinds of perceived damages.

It was preposterous.

The human delegation seemed to think this was reasonable, which it clearly wasn’t.

I told them I would take the offer to the king, but I had no intention of doing that. I called Harris and told him we had to move fast to attack the shifter stronghold in the south. I told him what Saufin had told me and he agreed.

“Let’s nuke ‘em.”

But I had to try to get to Ruby.

Beyond the swamps, I arrived at a small town on the outskirts of a river. It was close to the coast and uncomfortably hot. The sun was beating down and I would have preferred to get out of there as soon as possible but I could feel Ruby was close by. I still couldn’t get a clear fix on where she was, but I was definitely closer. I wished I had an idea of where she was. We didn’t have much time. She’d obviously gotten rid of her phone and I had no other way of tracking her.