Anomaly (Causal Enchantment #4)(12)
Author: K.A. Tucker

“Exactly. We won’t need it for the time being anyway.”

I pulled Caden into me, desperate for another second of contact, dread gnawing at me. “How long will you be gone?”

His sculpted jaw tightened. “We’ll be back by sunrise.”

Still hours away. “Call me with updates,” I demanded. “Every hour.” With one last kiss, Caden vanished.

I stared after him for a long moment, my mood crashing as I gripped the phone he’d left me. It was my only lifeline to him now. “I’m going to lose my mind waiting for them.”

Approaching footsteps and an arm wrapping around my shoulders reminded me that I wasn’t alone. “The mountains of Siberia didn’t seem so bad next to this, did they?” I turned to catch Julian’s feeble attempt at a smile.

*

“Amelie brought me here earlier today.” Julian’s rich brown eyes looked out over the blanket of stars, their brilliant twinkle like diamonds in the sky.

“Of course she did,” I snorted, my feet balanced precariously atop the rocky precipice, thinking how very much “Amelie” this treacherous mountain peak was. Lose my balance and I could be sailing off a two hundred foot cliff in seconds.

His arm rested lazily over my shoulder. “Relax and trust your abilities. We’re not going to fall. Vampires don’t fall.”

I inhaled the fresh, cold air, enjoying the much needed space after spending an hour enlightening Celine about the impending doom of our world and witnessing the excited sparkle in her bright blue eyes extinguish.

This excursion hadn’t come without a heated telepathic battle with Max and the need to compel Veronique and Celine from tailing us. At first I hadn’t even wanted Julian with me, afraid of what might happen if he crossed paths with a human. What if I couldn’t compel him? But, after agreeing to stick to the high mountains where risk of running into a human was almost nonexistent, I yielded.

“Do you think there’s another planet like ours out there? One that, in seven hundred years, will be facing human extinction?” Julian asked.

“I don’t know.” It was a good question. Would a girl just like the old naïve, confused me show up in the middle of the woods one night seven hundred years from now, believing that she was sleepwalking, a glowing pendant searing her chest? Would she meet and fall in love with a creature too beautiful to be human? Would she find herself in one trap and then another, and another, fighting for her life and her happiness?

The demise of Ratheus may have begun on a different path, according to Mage, but the path led to the same dilemma we faced today. How many more paths led here? What other games did the Fates have up their billowy sleeves? What entertainment at the expense of entire worlds did they relish?

My gaze shifted southeast, toward New York City. Nothing but black.

Julian groaned. “I’m gonna lose my shit if I don’t get my hands on Amelie again and soon. I just need to be near her.” A pause. “Is it like that with you and Caden?”

“Pretty much.” I bit the inside of my mouth before I blurted out more, fighting the urge to pull out my phone and call any of the numbers programmed in the speed dial, hoping to reach him. It had been an hour and Caden hadn’t called yet. He should’ve made it there by now.

Maybe he had even found Amelie too.

“What’s wrong, Evangeline?”

I dropped my eyes to the darkness below. “Who says anything’s wrong?”

“You’re biting the inside of your mouth. You’re trying not to blab.”

“My, haven’t we become perceptive.”

“You’ve always done that and I’ve always noticed.” Julian smirked, but then his face turned serious. “What gives?”

I sighed, deciding to lessen part of my burden. “The fledglings killed Galen.”

“What?” Julian’s body jerked as if zapped with electricity, the sudden shift in weight pulling me backward.

And then I was falling.

I screamed as I plummeted, as the broad expanse of sky loomed over me. It felt like an eternity of falling, fear paralyzing my body.

I eventually found myself standing in front of an equally disoriented Julian.

His head tipped to regard two hundred feet of rock wall as he brushed the snow from his sleeve. “See? Like cats. We always land on our feet.”

Judging by the broken branches and crimson stains on the ground around us, I’m pretty sure we didn’t land on our feet like cats. I’m pretty sure that about five seconds ago, we were two bloody messes embedded in the ground.

“I think that was my fault,” Julian admitted with a sheepish grin, but it faded quickly. “How did Galen die?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Caden didn’t get into specifics.”

“Damn. That’s going to crush Cecile.”

“Yeah. That’s why we can’t say anything. She’ll go nuts.”

Julian’s face screwed up. “But Galen was like a freaking commando maniac. How could a fledgling take him out?”

“Good question.”

“If they can take Galen down, then …” Julian’s face smoothed over.

“Who will be next?” I finished. This was ridiculous. I couldn’t sit around, waiting for Caden to come back. Not when fledglings were obviously so much more dangerous than Caden had led me to believe.

“I want to go help Amelie,” Julian insisted.

“You can’t, Julian! You’ll get distracted by humans and become a target!”

He flung a muscular arm back in the direction of the mine. “But look at all that human blood I just walked away from!”

I groaned. This was giving him a false sense of security. In truth, I could go. I could leave now and run straight for New York City, not stopping until I found Caden. But how could I in good conscience lead Julian there? Sofie and Caden had a valid reason for keeping Julian and the others isolated. It just didn’t apply to me. “You need to stick around here, Julian. Maybe we should head back to …” My nostrils caught the sweet scent of a warm-blooded animal a second before I felt its heart throb inside my throat.

Julian took off through the trees.

Crap! I went after him, pushing through the thick brush, terrified of what I might see each time I cleared another tree. I found him a hundred feet away, hovering over the twitching body of a deer, the scent of freshly spilled blood assaulting my nostrils. Tracks leading off in the opposite direction told me its companion fled the scene.

Hunkering down on a fallen tree trunk, I sat quietly and watched my best friend as he partook in an urge that not long ago he had condemned.

So much for being able to handle it.

I lasted five minutes before I insisted, “That’s enough, Julian. You’ve had enough.”

He dropped the carcass to the soft snow. I knew that wasn’t typical fledgling kill behavior. They’d normally suck the creature dry. That meant that I had compelled him. I didn’t even have his full attention and I managed to make him stop.

I couldn’t explain this ability but my instincts were telling me it could be of some use in the city. That or my conscience was searching for a good excuse to break my promise and run for New York now.

Julian didn’t immediately stand or talk, kneeling in front of the dead deer, head hung. And then I heard it, just a light whisper. “I hate not being able to help myself. I feel like some sort of addict.” He turned and I sighed with relief when his pretty brown eyes settled on me. “How are you not affected, Evie?”

I shoved my hands into my pockets and ambled over to regard the body. “I guess the Fates gave me a break. For once.”

He admitted in a low voice, “I don’t want to kill anyone, but part of me just wants to get it over with. Just so I know how much control I actually have.”

Or how much control I might have over him.

Was it worth it to try? If I could help him, then we could track down Caden and the others together.

“Come on.” Reaching out, I roped an arm through his. “I have an idea.” Probably the dumbest one I’d had yet.

Chapter Six – Sofie

“Dear God.” The words slipped from my lips as we stood in a roughly erected doorway. A set of metal stairs led down to the ground of the Second Avenue subway construction site, a cavernous space three stories below street level.

And it was crawling with vampire fledglings. There had to be a thousand or more. “Kait says they’re filling up the tunnels too,” Lilly informed us. “She’s down in one right now.”

Thousands.

“Tell her to get out of here. It’s too risky if they discover her.” I scanned the sea of heads. With this many, it was relatively quiet, a low buzz permeating the space. They all seemed too preoccupied with buckets of red to hear our guarded whispers. Discarded plastic and upturned coolers littered the ground.

“I guess we know where the city’s blood supply went to,” Mage said, her black eyes drifting over the crowd, narrowing as she surveyed faces. I knew who she was looking for. Her right hand, the mutant who had betrayed her. It wouldn’t be hard to spot him if he was here. That gaunt demonic face would stand out anywhere.

A chorus of snarls erupted, pulling my attention down to a tall, dark-skinned man who walked among the fledglings, tossing bags at their feet like dogs. Several more were doing the same in other areas.

“They must’ve been the first of Jonah’s,” Mage said. “They’ve evolved. They’re his soldiers now.”

Soldiers. So Jonah has been preparing for war since day one. From the corner of my eye, I saw a fledgling leap on another one, kicking and punching and raking eyes as they fought over the delivered blood.

In the far corner, one of Jonah’s “soldiers” rallied a group of fledglings. They seemed more interested in getting back to their blood but as his lips moved, saying something I could not hear, their focus changed. The fledglings shifted excitedly on their feet, flocking toward the soldier.

He pushed open a door and waved them through. I counted as they passed, until the door closed. “He just released forty fledglings.”

“Smaller groups move fast and scatter farther,” Mage explained. “If Jonah was trying to keep us from discovering this, having us run all around the city would certainly help.”

“Why bother with all the bags, though?” Fiona whispered, her pretty face stark. “There’s a city to feed from out there.”

“He’s building their strength and their dependency on blood. When the bags stop coming, they’ll get really restless. I’m sure that’s when Jonah plans on unleashing them.” Black eyes full of warning shifted to me. “It’ll be near impossible to staunch this horde if they get out.”

“But why would he want to do this?” Fiona pressed. “He knows what will happen to our world. He lived it!”

Mage’s head shake was almost indecipherable. “Mutants tend to lose their grip on rational thought. Perhaps it’s as simple as that.”

“Or maybe someone has convinced him that it’s a good idea,” Mortimer suggested, hitting too close to my own thoughts. Viggo. A silver-tongued, revenge-riddled psychopath who probably convinced Jonah that this was his best way of distracting Mage. Viggo didn’t care about the repercussions. He wanted war.

Enough to form allegiances with a creature he despised more than anything else in the world.

“We need to get rid of them. Now.” Mage’s tone was uncompromising.

“I agree, but how? How do we do that without letting the ones in the tunnels escape?” I was powerful—some would argue the most powerful witch in existence—and yet even I knew my limitations. To ignite this entire space in one shot would sap me, allowing them a chance to run. Or attack.

As I pondered the “how,” Lilly was on her phone again. Rushed words were exchanged and she hung up. “She made it to the next station construction site.” Blue eyes flashed to me. “It’s full of fledglings too.” I closed my eyes, another wave of despair crashing over my shoulders. How had this happened so fast?

“Look! They’re already rounding up another group to release.” My eyes opened in time to see that Mortimer was right, another soldier snapping his fingers, kicking the fledglings to get them up.

“Can you close this entire station off?” Mage asked.

“That won’t kill them,” Bishop argued.

“No, but it may buy us some time,” she countered. “The next station is within a minute’s running distance. We take this one down, burn them, and then go and do the same thing there before they know what’s happening. There, there, there.” She pointed out all the access points, all the ways this plan could fail if not done correctly.

Failure was beginning to feel like the only path out, and yet Mage had such confidence in my ability, I couldn’t help but want to try. If we could win here, this could soon be over.