Allegiance (Causal Enchantment #3)(17)
Author: K.A. Tucker

I’ll be fine, I mouthed with uncertainty. Unless Lilly kills Caden … The thought buckled my knees. Mage’s firm grip held me upright.

Kiril appeared beside us with a handful of towels. Sofie wasted no time snatching them out of his hands. With adept fingers, she wound my arm tightly, careful to minimize my blood on her person. “How are you holding up?” she asked Mage through pursed lips.

“Just get it covered,” Mage said, her nose wrinkled as if she were fighting a repulsive odor. She was, to a degree. My blood, so teasing, so provoking … so noxious.

“Evangeline?” I heard my name called out, but I hardly recognized its owner. Someone was finally acknowledging me. “Are you dizzy? In pain?” the voice asked, like an underwater murmur.

“No …” I answered numbly, thinking that was the right answer as I stared at the pool of blood now formed on the floor beneath me. My toxic, leprous blood. My blood is poison. I am poison. I will kill Caden.

Just like Sofie killed Nathan. Then I’d be like her, laying flowers on a tombstone. The pattern in the marble floor began to swirl and dance beneath me. I lifted my eyes to the gaping hole where Caden had run out. He was gone now. Would he come back? He would be smart not to. It was only a matter of time before I killed him …

“Evangeline!” Sofie called out sharply.

My head snapped up. “What?” I barked, the edge in my voice unintentionally harsh.

She tempered her tone. “How do you feel?”

“Like my arm was just sliced open,” I mumbled, all the while an inner voice inside me screamed at the top of her lungs—uncontrollable, incoherent screeching. I gave my head a shake, trying to silence the rising panic. “What happened?”

“Lilly cut you with a piece of glass,” Sofie explained, “and your blood is exceptionally potent now.” She wrapped another towel around my arm. “Damn it! I wish I could heal this!”

“Exceptionally potent?” I echoed her slowly.

“Yes, it’s more enticing than it used to be. There’s something about it … I can’t peg what it is … it’s harder to resist.” She finished tying the rag, her jaw taut. “There. That should stop the bleeding for now.” I winced. The rag was tight.

“This is another part of this change I’m undergoing, isn’t it?” I couldn’t keep the reproachful tone out of my voice.

She blinked several times. Minty irises lifted to touch my face—unconcealed, raw emotion in them—and back down to my arm again so fast I almost missed it. With a heavy exhale, she whispered, “Yes. I believe it might be.”

Another sign of what was to come. I stifled a sob. “Fantastic. So the Fates have wrapped my diseased body up into a nice big bloody bow for you all!” I was yelling now but I couldn’t help it. It was that or break down and cry.

“You’re not diseased,” Sofie’s voice was now tranquil again but her words flat, dead.

“That’s easy for you to say. It’s not you! It’s never been you going through this!”

She flinched as my callous words slapped her across the cheek. But I didn’t let up. I took it one step further. Reaching forward, I grabbed onto her forearm with my good hand and dug my nails into her flesh. Each word came out slow, precise, and sharp as a razor blade. “You need to fix this. Now!”

Her jaw clenched as she looked at me again, her face an ocean of worry and regret and defeat thinly veiled by her natural strength. She said nothing, though. What could she say? She’d try. That’s what she’d do. And when she did, well … there was a definite pattern here. Ask the Fates for help and they helped, with a side of “new curse” to screw you over in some other way. So she’d solve this—before or after my eyes turned yellow and I killed my friends with a graze of my finger, was up for debate. What next, though?

“What’re we going to do?” I asked softly, my voice, my words, my everything suddenly deflated.

She grasped my good hand in both of hers. “I will fix this,” she promised, her voice shaky. “Please, stay strong.” Her eyes squeezed shut and when they opened, any sign of the vulnerable Sofie was gone. “And you will go get this taken care of. Now. Ivan!” She called through gritted teeth.

Yeti Two appeared immediately. “Please stitch her up. The bathroom at the end of the hall is fully equipped,” she instructed as she tossed the remaining towels over the small pool of my blood on the marble. “And send in the staff to clean this up. Quickly.”

With a curt soldierly nod, Ivan marched over and seized my good arm without a word. I turned back to Sofie.

“Go!” Sofie ushered with a waving hand. “You’re safe with him. They don’t crave blood. Keep pressure on your wound.”

“Okay.” I turned to follow Ivan out the door. The crunch of broken glass under boots stopped me. My head snapped to the gaping window to see Mortimer and Viggo passing through. I waited. And waited, my heart hammering furiously. Come on … please … Please! A third figure came through. Ivan gripped my arm to support me as relief ransacked my body. Caden’s eyes were immediately on me. Beautiful jade eyes. He had come back to me. I hadn’t killed him. I felt a tug on my arm. My legs locked up stubbornly, no longer willing to follow Ivan. I twisted and shook my arm to no avail, desperate to break free and run to Caden’s side.

“They got away,” Mortimer announced, adding in “thankfully.”

“Well, I should say that went well!” Viggo strode over to where the urn used to sit, his face twisted in displeasure. One of her friends must have grabbed it. Not Lilly. She was too busy mutilating me. If my blood still had any impact on Viggo, I couldn’t tell. He didn’t even bat an eye in my direction. He couldn’t care less, I knew that. Lilly could’ve escaped with my head and he’d react the same. I am a fly, an inconvenient pest to him. I was okay with that …

He continued on with his sarcastic tirade. “What’s your next brilliant plan, oh, wise one? Now that she has the one piece of leverage I had over her and she knows what Mage is, why would she ever come back? We have no edge!”

“We don’t want an edge, Viggo,” Sofie spat back. “We need their help. We need them to trust us. That was our peace offering.”

Ivan tugged on my arm again. This time I yanked it away “What happened exactly?”

Sofie sighed. “Mage compelled them to hold still, allowing me to channel her memories through to them. I showed them everything. They saw firsthand what happened on Ratheus. Lilly figured out what Mage is. She knows what an original can do.” Sofie paused. “Her mother was the original vampire.”

My eyes shifted to Viggo as a knot formed in my belly. There was something there … the pieces were sliding into place. Viggo had something to do with the original’s death—that much I knew. That meant he had something to do with Lilly’s mother’s death. He probably killed her. That would explain Lilly’s hatred for him.

The mother-killer stared back at me with a smug smile, likely aware of the puzzle pieces I was putting together in my head. I hate you! I want you to die! I hope Lilly kills you after all of this! If it weren’t for everyone else here, I’d throw the towels on the ground and run toward him. Let my blood kill him! I had to force my hatred down as I dismissed the thought, turning back to Sofie. “So what now? Clearly she’s not happy.” I held my arm up as evidence.

“Now … you go get that stitched up before your blood turns us all mad!” Sofie yelled. She never yells at me. Cowering slightly, I glanced at Caden. He nodded to the door, his jaw clenching as his eyes grazed my arm.

Terrified I’d see those spider veins again, I willingly followed Ivan out.

6. Threats—Sofie

No sooner had Evangeline left with Ivan than Caden appeared by my side, his hands digging into my biceps.

“Fix her!” He hissed through bared teeth.

I flung his hands off my arms. “I’m trying! Don’t you think I’m trying?” I was in no mood for another verbal assault. Evangeline’s had shredded me to rags.

“You’re not trying hard enough!” His roar reverberated off the vaulted ceiling. I noted Mage’s weight shift in my peripheral. I stayed her with a wave of my finger. There was no need for her intervention. Caden’s rage had already collapsed, his shoulders hunched inward, grief laying siege to his fiery spirit. “I almost killed her, Sofie …” Beautiful greenish-blue eyes begged me, shattering my heart.

I tentatively reached up to lay one hand on his broad shoulder, the other cupping his jaw. “I’ll fix this. I have to fix this.” I realized I was trying to convince myself more than anyone else.

“Forget the human!” Viggo cried out, his arms spread wide. “What are you going to do about Lilly? What’s your brilliant new plan?”

“She’ll come to her senses. Give her a day or two,” Mortimer answered for me, offering the briefest smile and head nod. Who would ever have thought that I would come to appreciate his company?

Viggo wouldn’t let up, though. “She’s a child nurturing a century-long grudge. She has no sense.”

“A grudge?” Mage’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “You murdered her mother.”

“She wasn’t her real mother,” he retorted, but the fire in his voice was gone. He wasn’t an idiot. Whether he felt the tiniest bit of remorse, he knew this was all on him. I had only learned the reason of Lilly’s hatred for Viggo upon leaving the Tribe’s island, after I gave him the ultimatum of pledging allegiance to me or dying. Even then, I thought I’d have to tear off his toenails to get the truth out of him.

That’s when he finally admitted to killing Lilly’s mother, who was also the original vampire. Apparently she betrayed him, though my instincts told me there was another, more plausible side to that story. As if that weren’t enough to earn Lilly’s wrath, he stole the body, burned it, and hid the ashes away where Lilly could never find them. For what? Only the Fates knew …

“We will give Lilly a day or two to come to her senses, and then I will hunt her down if I must,” Mage answered calmly.

I sighed, as glad as ever to have Mage in my corner. “And while that’s happening, I’ll be busy trying to fix Evangeline and Julian. And Bishop.” Or I’ll die, trying …

7. Torture All Around—Evangeline

I trailed Ivan as he led me down the hall to a main floor bathroom. Without warning or asking permission, he slid his hands under my armpits and hoisted me onto the counter as if I were a child. I sat quietly, putting pressure on my wound as instructed, and watched him rifle through the cabinets below until he pulled out a sizeable rectangular white box with a red cross on the front. A first-aid kit—a strange thing to find in a palace of vampires, though perhaps not so strange with the ever-prepared Sofie.

Ivan unraveled the bindings around my arm in silence. Part of me wanted to keep the wound hidden, afraid of what I might see. The bleeding had stopped, thankfully. He tossed the soaked towels into the sink with one hand and reached for a giant syringe with the other. He gestured to my arm. Grimacing, I nodded my assent but had to turn away and grit my teeth against the sting as he pricked my arm in several places. Within minutes, my arm was completely numb.

Ivan continued rummaging through the box, pulling out various things—thread, gauze, ointments. He went to work, cleaning my wound and the skin around it with an antiseptic and cotton pads. With the blood cleaned up, it didn’t look as horrific. Still, the gash had to be a good four inches long, stretching from just below my elbow joint to halfway down my forearm.

I watched with fascination as my werewolf-nursemaid threaded a needle through my skin with the grace and delicacy of a plastic surgeon. In the eighteen years before I met Sofie, I hadn’t had one stitch. Since meeting her, my hand had been cut open, my neck punctured—twice—and now my forearm mangled.

“I’m going to look like Frankenstein’s monster by the time this is done,” I muttered to myself as I studied the long, thin pinkish scar across my palm.

Ivan looked up, his golden irises revealing nothing about whether he understood me, whether he even knew who Frankenstein was. “Scars build character. They make you human.”

He speaks English! I smiled, both at his gentleness and at his attempt to console me. “Well, that’s good. I thought they just made me ugly.”

One corner of his mouth twitched into a crooked smile as he went back to work on my arm. Within minutes, twenty precise, neat stitches closed up the gash Lilly had so stealthily granted me.

“Thanks … Ivan,”

He grunted, thrusting a small white pill and a glass into my hands. “For the pain.”

I accepted it with a nod, tossing it back and chasing it with the water. “So all this blood doesn’t bother you?”