Anomaly (Causal Enchantment) (4 page)

“I am well aware
that we have not seen the last of Viggo. I
will deal with him when the time comes. Quickly and without mercy,” Sofie snapped. “Let’s focus our efforts on the real issue at hand.”

From the corner of my eye, I caught Lilly’s lips purse. There was a long list of people who wanted
to deliver Viggo’s death to him. Sofie, for a hundred and twenty years of misery. Lilly, for the murder of her mother and theft of her ashes.

And me, for
my mother’s murder.

But
Sofie was right. Stopping the fledglings was probably more critical than exacting revenge on Viggo right now.

Mortimer’s long finger jabbed the air.
“Fine, but if there is so much as a hint of him, I am taking Veronique and I am leaving. Understood?”

Sofie blinked once. I supposed that was the only answer she’d give.

I heard a faint clank of metal behind me and my head instinctively whipped around, timed perfectly with Caden’s. I smiled. Finally, we were in the same league.

T
he two figures standing side by side at the mine entrance widened my smile. Not because their arms were laden with metal coolers from their blood bank run, but because these were two friends who I’d previously lost and who’d since been returned to me.

Though
the Fates had saved me at the hour of my human death, Fiona had been left in a charred heap in Viggo and Mortimer’s Fifth Avenue palace after the first sorceress attack. It was only because of Sofie’s deal with the Fates that my friend was now watching me through those mesmerizing violet eyes.

“
Everyone’s out. Every last blood bank in New York City has been tapped,” Bishop announced, his muscular arms bulging through his light T-shirt as he held the metal cooler in the air. Fiona held an identical cooler. “We’re better off hitting up the hospitals outside of the city. Their supply is pathetic, but it’s better than nothing.”

Bishop
winked at me as they passed, already having forgiven me for my part in the deception back in Paris. Thank God all those perverse delusions had been wiped out of his head the moment the spell had been broken. I had yet to ask him if he’d told Fiona. I worried what she might do when she found out that her very attractive eternal boyfriend had kissed me and had wanted to do
a lot more
. Would it damage our friendship?

Another problem
not worth worrying about right now.

M
y ears picked up on a strange and very irregular heartbeat behind me. Spinning around, I saw Kiril standing in the entranceway in his human form. “Is that normal? His heart, I mean.”

“Yeah, all of them sound like that. It’s good. That way you won’t accidently bite them,” Caden
said with a sly smile, “because they bite back.”

I watched the werewolf march past to stand behind Sofie
.

“Someone is one step ahead of us with the blood,” Lilly mused. “The question is, who? The Sentinel? The witches? The fledglings certainly don’t need it.”

A second of worry flickered across Sofie’s face. “Please take that back to the haulage tunnel,” Sofie ordered Bishop and Fiona. “We have it set up with a small generator to keep the refrigeration working, should it last long enough. Evangeline,” she turned to me, “go with them.”

I nodded but stayed my feet as they passed by, my interest in the dire situation more compelling than a cooler of blood. If Sofie noticed, she was too
preoccupied to say anything.

“Is nuclear warfare even an option?” Sofie asked.

“Galen, how long would it take for Isaac and the others to get into a missile control center?” Lilly asked quietly, her baby-blue eyes darting back to meet mine for a mere second. Sofie had alluded to Lilly’s stealthy connections in the past but it still baffled me how the little vampiress—a thirteen-year-old child to anyone who didn’t know better—and her group had ways to get into the most highly classified areas in the world.

Her milita
ry advisor didn’t miss a beat. “There’s a ballistics submarine a few hundred miles off the coast. It’s fully loaded. They can appropriate it within four hours.”

Four
hours
. We could blow up New York City in four hours.

A hiss from Caden had me glancing down to see that my nails were embedded in his forearm. “Sorry,” I mouthed, rubbing the wounds away
until they healed.

Sofie pac
ed. Though I couldn’t imagine her giving Lilly the go-ahead to destroy the entire city of New York, Mage was adamant, and Sofie seemed to trust Mage’s opinion.

“The Fates have the power to stop this at any time but they won’t. They
want
the human world to fall, they
want
their game to play out, so they can move on to the next world, the next source of entertainment.” Her lips furled with disdain. She had remained silent about her encounter with the Fates but, from the hardened glare every time they were mentioned, I quickly deduced that Sofie’s meeting was far more confrontational than mine.

“And
they will get what they want, if we wait any longer, Sofie,” Mage reminded her.

Sofie’s
deceivingly dainty hand pushed through her mane of wild red hair, the weight of this decision visibly wearing on her. I’d never seen her look so anxious. “Where are the witches?”

“There’s a faction in Boston
but they’re harmless,” Lilly answered.

Kiril’s gruff voice filled the room, the words lost to me in his native
tongue. They weren’t to Sofie, though. “Apparently not so harmless after all … The Witches Order boarded planes yesterday from London and St. Petersburg. They might cause additional problems.” I’d never heard of this “Witches Order” before but I assumed they were the more powerful ones. Sofie snapped her fingers at Kiril. “Send ten wolves down there and put a tail on them. I want to know what they’re up to at all times.”

The tall blond werewolf
nodded curtly and marched away, his thumb already punching numbers on his cell phone.

Watching him disappear, Sofie’s
jaw tightened with resolution. “We go in. We exterminate every single one of these fledglings. Burn their bodies and all evidence, without pause, without mercy.” Her nostrils flared. “And without worrying about collateral damage. They will still be traveling in packs. If we have not stopped the spread by sunrise …” She turned cold eyes on Lilly. “We eliminate the city.”

A rash of nerves fluttered inside my stomach. Was I ready for this?

Lilly nodded curtly. Though she had pledged her allegiance to me, I had in turn demanded she follow Sofie’s guidance as it related to this war.

I hoped Sofie knew what she was doing.

Sunrise couldn’t be more than twelve hours away.

“Let’s get ready. It’ll take at least an hour to get to the city on foot.” Everyone
mobilized.

“
Wait …” Kait and Galen stepped forward, exchanging hard glances. “There’s a matter of a deal,” Galen said.

“
Oh, for God’s sake! We don’t have time for that,” Mortimer objected harshly.

“It takes seconds,” Galen insisted.

“And what will they feed on? We don’t have enough to feed five fledgl—”

Kait’s shrill screech drowned out Mortimer’s objections.
“I’m not leaving here until I know Brian is safe!”

Brian
?

Sofie’s ey
es flickered to Mage, who shrugged and said, “A deal’s a deal.”

Sofie heaved a sigh. “Where are they?”

“At an inn, in town. Ten miles away. We didn’t want to bring them near with the fledglings,” Kait explained, throwing a look of disdain my way, as if I were leprous.

“
Bring them here and Mage will do it. But you and Galen are coming with us and we are leaving immediately after.”

“And what? Leave them unguarded? No,
” Galen argued.

“They will not be unguarded,” Sofie snapped. “But we
cannot lose time waiting for their transformation. I need every able body.”

“We’ll come after they’ve transformed.”

“You will come immediately after and that is an order!”

I didn’t hear the rest of the
argument as Caden led me in the direction that Bishop and Fiona had disappeared.

*

“Nothing at all?
Still
?” Caden yelled over the generator, its loud roar amplified by the long, narrow tunnel. Dark and dank, it smelled of cold earth and stale air. Far from comfortable.

Caden
’s and Amelie’s intense gazes drilled into me. Waiting for my reaction. For my pupils to dilate, for the whites of my eyes to turn crimson, for the veins to throb.

For the eyes of a ravenous vampire
to appear.

I shrugged,
more concerned about what had happened to my friend and the delicate Veronique. The last time I saw them, upon awakening, there were smiles and an exchange of words and affectionate touches. Now the two sat hunched over their small coolers like coyotes over a corpse, their backs to me, empty medical bags tossed haphazardly to the ground. I couldn’t see their faces but I heard the small grunts and groans.

O
ne word replayed in my head: feral.

It wasn’t a state I
ever wanted to be seen in.

“
I can smell it.” I inhaled as if to make my point. “It smells like …” Human blood certainly hadn’t had a scent before. Now, it smelled deliciously sweet. There was no mistaking a burning desire growing in the pit of my body. If I were human, perhaps it would inspire hunger pangs. “… like something I’d like.”

“Something you’d
like
?” Amelie’s springy blond curls bounced as she cocked her head, her emerald-green eyes dissecting me. Apparently there was something wrong with me, though I wasn’t too upset about it. In fact, if anything, I was relieved. Elated!

Then again,
if I wasn’t a blood-crazed fiend by now, then what was I? Had the Fates found a way to perverse things yet again?

Amelie
thrust a bag into my hands. She’d always been the exuberant one of the bunch. “Maybe you just need to taste it for the first time,” she said, her voice raspy, goading me like a puppy. “Go on … try it!”

Caden’s hand
held mine. “Maybe we should talk to Sofie about your … differences first.”

M
y fingers gently squeezed the bag of red liquid. And then I looked at Veronique and Julian again. If I tried the blood, would I morph into a feral creature with the first taste? “How long will they be like that?”

Amelie’s eyes followed mine.
“It should ease up after a few days, but …” Her face fell. “I miss him already.”

“
They’ll be fine soon,” Caden said, his hand rubbing gently against the small of my back. “It’s a blink in our time, really.” I knew what he was really telling me. It’s not forever.
I
would be fine. Eventually.

I gritted my teeth with the thought of Caden seeing me with
those eyes
, the bag in my hand suddenly feeling like a lead weight. I’d be hideous. But, there was no point in stalling this any longer.

Shaking my head, I muttered, “Let’s not bug Sofie.”
With everything else she had on her plate? She worried more than any biological mother ever could. “I want to get this over with.” My attention was on the red bag but I didn’t miss the sharp look between Caden and Amelie. I was probably the first reluctant fledgling in all of vampire history. I was probably also the first one to question how gross this might taste. “How do I open it?”

Amelie smirked. “Just bite it.”

“But I don’t—”

“Just bite it!”

Trusting my friend—a seven-hundred and fifty-odd-year-old vampire who knew more about this than I obviously did—I held the bag to my open mouth. With wary eyes on Caden, and a glib mumble of, “See you in a few days,” I sunk my teeth in, anticipating resistance.

My teeth sliced through
the thick plastic and liquid burst out unexpectedly, rushing into my mouth, a small amount trickling down along my chin. Trying to stem the sudden flow, I took several long drags of the sweet liquid. It was like nothing I’d expected and nothing I could describe. It reminded me of a high-quality maple syrup, but without the sickly sugariness. I certainly couldn’t guzzle a bottle of maple syrup and yet here I was, draining the bag with little effort, my mental conflict dissolving as I felt the thick fluid flow down my throat into … where? How did this new body of mine process it?

Within seconds, my
muscles felt stronger, my mind felt more alert. I felt more
alive.

When nothing but a flimsy pouch remained, I pulled it away from my mouth.

“So?” Caden’s brow furrowed deeply. “How do you feel?”

“
Fine. Great, I guess. Stronger?”

“Here
.” Amelie tossed me another bag. It came fast and to the far left and yet all I had to do was think about catching it and it was in my hand. I drained four more bags in under five minutes and waved Amelie away when she moved to toss me a sixth, earning a hard look from her.