Anomaly (Causal Enchantment) (9 page)

Checking the name on the ID
badge, I offered, “Thank you very much … Peggy. You’re going to go sit over there,” I pointed to the corner farthest from the door, “and you’re going to stay there quietly until that clock up there reads midnight.” My eyes flittered to her fingers, already beginning to swell. By midnight, her hand would look a fright. I wish I at least had an icepack to offer her. I had other concerns, though. If the fledglings broke free, I’d have more to worry about than one broken hand.

Her head bobbed up and down
and then she strolled over to the corner, turned to face the clock, and plunked down.

This was too easy.

A white coat hung on the prep room just outside the OR. I pulled it on over my clothing and made my way to the stairwell. The basement of this small hospital was exactly as I’d expected: dark, dingy, the heady odor of bleach and used bedpans permeating the air. The lights flickered in and out as I ran down the hall, scanning the room numbers, like a scene out of an old horror film.

Finding room
109, I swiped Peggy’s security badge. When the light flashed green, I barged in.

The steady thump of another human heartbeat caught me off guard
. A tall, lanky man hovered over two metal containers, a clipboard in hand, furiously scribbling something. His plain white uniform and jacket sported a blood transportation company logo. A visitor’s badge hung from his neck. Not sure why he was down here at this time of night, but I wasn’t going to complain. I was simply going to relieve him of his product.

His eyes nar
rowed as he studied my face. He glanced at my borrowed name tag. “You are not Dr. Magnotta.”

I countered with
a light stammer, “Yes, I am.”

He blinked twice.
And then smirked. “Dr. Magnotta is a sixty-year-old Italian man with a beard.” Turning to give me his full attention, he demanded, “Who let you down here?”

I guess
compulsion wasn’t as easy as I had thought.

While
I frantically grappled with what my next move should be, the man set his clipboard down and marched over to take hold of my wrist. “Okay, young lady. It’s time we went upstairs to visit security.”

I swung my arm out, intent on shaking his grip. I
n the next second, his lanky frame sailed backward, crashing into the tall refrigeration unit. With one, two, three blinks, his eyes settled back into his head and he slid down into a heap, the stainless door dented to the shape of his body, a streak of blood smearing where his head had dragged.

I
stood still for a moment, mouth agape, waiting for him to regain consciousness.

But w
hen the constant throb of his heartbeat in my throat faded, I knew that he wouldn’t be waking up ever again. My hands flew to cover my mouth, to suppress the scream from escaping.

I had just unwittingly killed a man.

If I were still human, I would crumble to the ground in sobs. But instead, a warm wave of shock coursed through my body. I embraced the numbness, knowing I needed to get the hell out of there before I accidently hurt someone else. Or worse.

The co
ntainers that the man had been hovering over were filled with blood bags. Maybe enough to tide over Julian and the others. The paperwork suggested that he was here doing an emergency blood transport to another hospital closer to the city. I got here just in time.

Stacking
the boxes, I wasted no time tearing down the hall and up the stairs. I kicked open the exit door and stepped into the cool night air. There, parked in the spot next to the loading dock, was a blood transportation truck.

Wait
… Perhaps … No, that would be too easy.

I
glanced around to find no one watching. Setting the containers on the ground, I ran back inside to the blood bank and rifled through the dead guy’s pockets. Keys!

Despite the somber situation, w
hen I opened the back of the truck, I couldn’t help but smile. It was full of blood. I quickly hopped into the driver’s seat, cranked the engine, and yanked on a lever until a “D” lit up, assuming that meant “drive”. The truck lurched forward.

I tried not to speed through the park
ing lot to where I’d left Max, a mixture of exhilaration and fear coursing through my limbs. Slowing to a stop, I threw open the passenger side door and a large black shadow hopped in.

You’ve never driven
anything before
, Max stated.

“Bumper car
at the local fair,” I countered, gunning it out of the parking lot. It wouldn’t be long before someone discovered the delivery guy or the nurse. I needed to be far away from here when they did. The last thing I wanted were police chasing me. I had no interest in learning what bullets through my body felt like.

What’s the rush?

The back end of the truck fishtailed as I rounded a corner. “I accidently killed a man!”

Killed as in
…

“Slammed his head against a wall. It was an accident. I swear.
I didn’t mean to …” My voice drifted with the weight of my guilt.

Max was
silent for a moment, likely sensing my distress.
Well, just be careful. We need to get this truck to the mines.

Three wrong turns
, two speeding police cars heading toward the hospital, and forty-five minutes later—it would’ve been faster by foot—I pulled over onto the narrow shoulder. The mine was two miles inbound, with no driveways to get us all the way there.

They’ll be looking for this truck
by now and this road is too busy for someone not to report it,
Max warned.
We need to get this truck hidden now.

As
if to prove his point, blue and red flashing lights appeared in my side view mirror. They were far in the distance—too far to identify us—but they looked to be moving at high speeds. “Crap! What do I do?”

You won’t outrun them.
His long snout pointed ahead.
Hit the lights and put us into the ditch over there
.
No one will see it, unless they’re looking.

“You mean
over that
cliff?
”

Max snorted.
You scared?

“No, just
…” The idea of intentionally driving the truck over a cliff had me all kinds of nervous. “Can’t we run it off some other way?” Maybe a stick and a rock on the gas pedal?

Another quick glance in the side
view showed the other flashing lights disappear into a valley. We didn’t have time for that and we couldn’t still be sitting here when it reappeared over the crest. “I hope this is a good idea, Max.” I hit the lights and punched the gas pedal lightly until the truck rolled forward. The front wheels finally caught the edge and then we were quickly doing a nosedive off the road. The airbags inflated, filling the interior of the truck. An eye-watering pain punched me in the nose. I assumed the force had broken it but the pain lasted only a few seconds before the throb subsided.

I’d never get used to that.

“Max, are you okay?”

Glass smashed
, followed by a loud creak of metal and branches snapping outside.
Of course I am. And so are you.
I pushed on the handle but the door had been jammed by the impact. Throwing my side into it, the entire thing fell off its hinges. I tumbled out, landing spread eagle in the snow. “Isn’t my kind supposed to be more graceful?” I grumbled. Clambering to my hands and knees, I found chunks of the cell phone that Caden had given me lying in the snow, smashed in my escape. “Dammit!” A nauseating ball sprouted inside. How would I get hold of him now?

My hands froze with the
sound of the approaching car. If it stopped, what would I do? I couldn’t simply run. I needed the blood in this truck. I also couldn’t have the police reporting our location and causing problems if they followed our tracks to the mine.

I would have to hurt them, something I had no interest in doing.

When the car sped past without slowing, its colored lights flashing against the night sky, I let out a heavy sigh of relief.

You d
id good tonight, kid. We would’ve been in trouble without this.

“I
killed a man and hurt a woman, Max. That doesn’t constitute ‘good’ in my books.” Maybe it was because I was still new and inexperienced. Or maybe I’d never be as quick-thinking as Sofie or the others.

Yeah, well, with a truck’s
worth of blood, you’ve also saved lives tonight. Don’t forget that.

I smiled. “Thanks for making me feel useful, Max.”

Oh crap. The moment’s over.
Max took off into the woods, in the direction of the mine.

“W
hat?” I yelled after him.

Come
on. We better hurry.

Chapter Four
– Sofie

The boutique hotel was infested. Three steps onto the marble floor of the lavishly decorated lobby, I was already sidestepping bodies. People ran past in various states of dress, the fire alarm ringing through the air. Whoever thought tripping that would be a good idea—likely the desk clerk whose black shoes I could see poking out from his hiding spot behind the counter—was horribly wrong. There was nothing more enticing to a fledgling than humans on the run, their hearts racing with fright.

Christmas season meant the hotel would be filled to capacity, people coming to enjoy the New York City nightlife over the holidays. Unfortunately for these guests, choosing this hotel meant they would die tonight too.

A cursory scan found several fledglings occupying the sitting area with fresh kills, festive gold and silver decorations a perverse backdrop against the splashes of crimson. How many more could be roaming the floors above me was anyone’s guess.

Blue flames ignited on my fingertips.

“We get the humans out of here and kill the fledglings,” I declared.

“
Why waste time on the—” Kait said.

“Go!
” I snapped as I unleashed bolts of fire, charring the five fledglings within seconds, their short-lived screams piercing. I could have destroyed the hotel and been done with it, but that would have meant burning humans alive. I couldn’t bring myself to commit mass murder of innocent people. Not yet.

We would kill these fledglings one by one if we had to.

That was how we proceeded as I chased my tiny army up the stairwell. Floor by floor, room by room, our dark clothes quickly earned a layer of both fledgling and human blood, until every living human left—which wasn’t many on the first two floors—was exiting the front door and every fledgling was left in ashes.

*

“Well, that was easy,” Bishop said sarcastically. From the shadows across the street, we watched the firefighters battle the blaze. I had torched the building to eliminate evidence. They’d be at it for hours. The kind of witch fire I used burned hot enough to turn bone to dust in minutes and took longer to extinguish. They’d find no remains. It had drained my magical reserves.

It actually had been easy.
Too easy. “I counted forty-two,” I said. They had fought well, better than expected for such young creatures. That was more than a little concerning.

“And
no Jonah.” Mage’s eyes scanned the streets. “I can’t imagine where he would be, if not with his horde.”

“Unless that wasn’t
his only horde,” Caden pointed out, wiping fledgling blood from his cheek. “What if there’s a larger one out there?”

A collective groan escaped
just as the bright purple light of another tracking bracelet ignited on my wrist. “Here we go again,” I muttered.

*

“I can’t stand being underground,” Kait grumbled as we moved down into the subway system, unsure what would be waiting at the bottom. Thankfully, only a few late-night revelers lingered on the platform, all of them alive and well, if not a tad drunk. Wherever the bracelet was leading us, it was happening within the subway tunnels.

“Th
ey must be on a train,” Galen said, leaning over to check the tunnel in both directions.

“Then we go after the train.” I hopped
onto the tracks, earning gasps from the unsuspecting humans. I ignored them. “Avoid that one unless you want to find out what six hundred volts of electricity feels like,” I hollered back, pointing to the third rail as the rest of the group followed.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Mage hissed as she
ran alongside me. “Stick together so we leave together when the time comes.”

Footsteps trailed behind me
as we tore through the tunnels, the purple glow the only light within the darkness, until finally, the back of a moving subway train came into sight ahead. “They must have reached the driver already,” Kait hollered as the train whizzed past the platform. Confused scowls dressed the faces of waiting patrons, all of them completely unaware how lucky they were to not be boarding this train.

We ran for it, easily hopping onto the back. I pushed through the doors to enter the last car.

The fledglings had been here all right.

“Come on.” I charged
forward through the car with grim determination, doing my best to ignore the carnage left on the seats and the floor. Car after car, the scene was the same; the fledglings had swept through like locusts. Not a single heartbeat pounded.

The only thing I could be thankful for at this point was that it was late at night and there
fore not as busy.

We finally found
the fledglings in the last train car. Dozens of them, still finishing off the last few passengers. They’d be easy to kill. But many others stood in the aisle, their eyes glued to the windows.

W
aiting.

Those wouldn’t be as easy to kill.

They turned as one, their hideous crimson eyes locking on me. Assessing me. They couldn’t possibly mistake me for human. But would they realize that they were in danger before I killed them all?

“That’s the one,”
someone hissed, his reedy finger jabbing the air at me. “That’s her.”

“Me?” I touched my chest in mock concern as flames shot to my fingers.
I now knew that someone was dispensing instructions regarding a redhead who wasn’t afraid of them. The question was, who? “Get back, all of you!” I ordered behind me as the closest fledglings leapt forward. Spurts of fire shot out from my fingers, engulfing the vampires.

The flames sparked instant
chaos, the fledglings’ shrill screams piercing. Several farther back in the car crashed through the windows of the speeding train.

In my haste, I hadn’t thought to
build a shield around myself and now they were pushing closer in an act of defiance. If I wasn’t careful, I’d burn with them.

“Sofie!” An arm around my waist
pulled me through the door and into the car behind us. Mortimer shoved a metal bar through the sliding mechanism, keeping them from following us.

I unleashed as much fire as I could,
cloaking the outside of the last car to keep the remaining fledglings inside as I forced the flames in through the broken windows, reaching like tentacles. I could hear their screams but I closed my eyes. They all needed to die.

Behind me, Amelie
yelled about something up ahead. I opened my eyes in time to see the tunnel open up into a dimly lit station. The platform was crawling with fledglings, most likely the ones who’d escaped from the car ahead.

A
melie and Galen crashed through the window, as the fledglings had, to land on the platform just before we were plunged back into the tunnel’s darkness.

I
counted how many of us remained in the car. Seven. “Where’s Kait?”

“She went after the first fledglings that jumped,” Lilly said.

“What happened to staying together?” I yelled in disbelief just as a purple glow bloomed on my arm—a tracking bracelet igniting, followed quickly by a second.

And
then a third.

I stared at my wrist with dismay.
How many hordes were there?

“
Let’s go,” Mage said, tugging at my arm.

“
Are you nuts? We need to stop this train!” On fire, with no driver, moving at high speeds, the train was a missile. “I can slow it down.” I reached forward with long magic tendrils, intent on seizing the brakes.

“We
don’t have time!” Mage barked, her sudden acidity breaking my concentration. My magic evaporated. “That will drain your magic. You can’t waste your reserves on the nonessential.”

“Mage!” I argued, my hand flying out ahead of us.
“This will kill a lot of people.”

“That was another sizeable horde of fledglings and Jonah was not there.
” Her black eyes flashed. “I think the fledglings are already evolving. And if that’s the case, then we cannot save these people anyway,” she said, unwavering. “We must go now.”

Three more bracelets lit up
, as if to emphasize her point.

With great reluctance, I followed them
down the length of the train and onto the tracks, running back toward the platform where Galen and Amelie jumped off, leaving the speeding train to its destruction.

Just as we reached the
platform, an explosion rattled through the tunnel. The train must’ve plowed into the one ahead. The ground shook with the magnitude of a mild earthquake. Bits of dirt and concrete rained down as the underground tunnels struggled to hold. The terrible, high-pitch screeches of metal dragged on for an eternity.

I
winced at the horrific images that filled my mind.

And then I
clenched my jaw at the horrific reality in front of me.

T
his had been a busy station with a lot of people waiting. Left behind was a platform of corpses. So many corpses, a person would have to pick a path to get out. And not a single fledgling, which seemed improbable.

“Amelie!” Caden
’s deep voice echoed through the station as he hopped up onto the platform. He stood frozen. No raspy answer came. “Amelie!” Turning to me, he yelled, “Where the hell is she?” Not waiting for my answer, he darted between the bodies, inspecting their faces.

He stopped dead in his
tracks, his mouth opening wide.

M
y insides roiled. Leaping onto the platform, I ran to join him. Maybe I could save her, maybe there was something I could do. Maybe …

I gasped with relief when I saw that it wasn’t Amelie. It wasn’t
even a female.

The relief was only short-lived
. As I took in Galen’s lifeless face, a gaping hole in his chest, dread slammed into me.

“
Lilly!” I called out, my voice cracking.

She appea
red next to me almost instantly. I turned in time to watch her childlike face crumble. “This doesn’t …,” her head shaking back and forth, “… make sense.” Kneeling beside his body, she lifted his hand and then let it go, watching it drop to the speckled tile. “A fledgling can’t kill a thousand-year-old vampire. This just …” Standing, she peered first at me and then at Mage. “This doesn’t make sense.”

A prickle of worry
ignited inside me—she was right. Fledglings couldn’t do this, especially not while on the run. I didn’t care what Mage said about their evolution. They weren’t strong or smart or controlled enough to take down someone as skilled as Galen.

There was
, however, one person who was.

But t
he only way he could claim responsibility would be by being one step ahead of us, lying in wait. I hoped I was wrong.

Because
Amelie was missing.

“You need to c
ome take a look at this,” Bishop called, his foot nudging the body of a young Asian man. I stepped around the bodies, closing the distance just as vomit shot out of the man’s mouth.

“He’s changing,” I stated,
my gaze rolling over the other bodies. “Check the others.” Mortimer, Bishop, Fiona, and I inspected the litter of bodies and found five more already wearing their stomach contents; another six were convulsing. “Twelve of them are changing.”

In their killing spree, the fledglings had managed to create twelve new vampires.

“They are evolving,” Mage whispered without even a hint of “I told you so.” There was nothing to gloat about here. If those fledglings could go from mass murder to using their venom while on the run, we were in real trouble.

With a thought and flicker of my fingers, twelve individual pyr
es erupted on the platform floor, the smell of burning flesh curling my nostrils. I stopped on Galen, waiting until Lilly gave her silent nod. When she stepped away, I ignited him too.

He
’d been a pain in the ass but he didn’t deserve this.

“Caden, have you tried calling
her? Maybe she went after a stray.” I prayed that everyone else was too distracted to connect the dots.

With a shake
, Caden pulled out his cell. And frowned.

“What’s wrong?”