Anathema (Causal Enchantment, #1) (20 page)

With a growl, Amelie flew across the cave to
land on top of Rachel, claw–like fingers raking at her neck,
drawing blood. Rachel answered with a swift kick and an equally
vicious shriek, intentionally launching Amelie toward the fire.
Luckily Fiona was there to catch her before she could land in it.
Caden’s arms wrapped around Rachel’s body in the next second,
holding her tightly to him, trying to restrain her.

“
Are you insane? I’m stronger than
all of you put together!” she shrieked, her face turning demonic
with rage.

“
Go get some air. I’ll be out in a
minute,” Caden murmured, his hand softly caressing Rachel’s cheek.
I noticed his jaw was clenched, though. “Please,” he added through
gritted teeth.

Rachel snorted and, whirling, stormed out of
the cave.

“
Are you an idiot?” Caden
hissed.

Amelie glared at him. “You brought this on us.
Fix it
,” she responded.

Caden’s face softened, as if Amelie had
reminded him of something he had forgotten. He turned to me, his
eyes full of concern. “Are you okay?”

No, I wasn’t okay. They had just confirmed that
my original fears were true—or mostly true: I was in danger. I’d be
hunted if this Council found out about me. But I nodded.

Those beautiful eyes hardened. “You shouldn’t
be. Don’t be a fool, Evangeline. Whatever this Viggo told you is
likely a lie. That’s what our kind does—we lie. We deceive. We are
evil.” His tone, cold and detached, threw the words like a sharp
slap across my face. He was so different from the previous two
nights.

“
Caden!” Bishop boomed.

I nodded, silent.

Fiona threw an exasperated glare at Caden and
came over to pull me off the bench. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.
This mountain is honeycombed with neat caves.” She linked her arm
through mine.

“
Wait up,” Amelie called from behind
us, doing an impossible leap into the air to grab a
torch.

I looked back once as we left the cavern. Caden
stood by the fire, those jade eyes regarding me without
expression.

I could feel the weight of the mountain above
us as we strolled down a long tunnel, the torch casting eerie
shadows beyond jutting stalagmites and scattered stones.

“
Well, at least the pendant will
protect you while you’re here,” Fiona assured me. “We can’t sense
your blood. It’s as if you’re one of us.”

And what if they could smell my blood? Is
that all that’s keeping them from biting me?
“How did you
figure out I was human, then?” I asked aloud.

“
You were holding your breath
underwater,” Amelie answered matter–of–factly. “We don’t breathe,
so we don’t need to hold our breath. Then you went and knocked
yourself unconscious on that tree root, and—well, we’re not clumsy
and we’re never unconscious.”

“
Not even when you sleep?” I
asked.

Fiona laughed. “Sleep is needed to rest and
rejuvenate the body. We never tire so we never sleep.”

Made sense, I guess. I wondered what it was
like not to sleep.

“
Sometimes we meditate, though, and
we get so deeply into it that it seems like we’re sleeping,” Fiona
added.

“
So, tell us about yourself,
Evangeline!” Amelie said in a musical lilt. It was as if the
near–death skirmish with Rachel five minutes before had never even
happened.

“
Um … there’s not really much to
tell. I’m pretty vanilla.”

“
Oh, come on. Sure there is. Tell us
everything
! What’re your hobbies, your passions, your pet
peeves? What do you like to do? Who is ‘Evangeline’?” she said with
theatrical flair.

I laughed. “You’d make a great
actress.”

Amelie grinned. “I thought so too! I was going
to be an actress, a famous Broadway one. But then this happened.”
She gestured to her mouth, baring white teeth and hissing like a
cat. It should have frightened me, but it was comical. I laughed.
“Anyway, after that, I was … distracted by other things. Now,
there’s not exactly an opportunity.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t
matter. Obscurity is key. You can’t exactly be famous when you’re a
vampire. After all, you can only explain your youthful appearance
with plastic surgery for so long,” Amelie babbled, then waved her
hand rapidly to and fro. “But enough about me. We want to know
everything
about you!”

I didn’t know where to begin. No one had ever
asked me to summarize my existence so directly. No one ever asked
me much about myself at all anymore. I switched schools so
frequently that no one noticed when I came or left. It was as if I
didn’t exist.

“
Amelie’s excited, if you can’t
tell,” Fiona said, chuckling. “We haven’t met someone we’ve liked
in seven hundred years.”

‘Someone we’ve liked.’ Are they
just staying that?

“
Start with something easy. Your
family.”

I faltered. “I live with a foster family.
They’re kind of strange. I don’t really know them, to be
honest.”

“
And your parents?”

“
Gone.” I offered a small
smile.

Sensing my discomfort, they changed gears. “Do
you have a boyfriend?”

I shook my head. No boyfriend. Ever. Not even
an interested party.

“
Okay, tell us about your friends.
What’s your best friend’s name?”

“
Oh … um …” I faltered again. “It’s
tough to say …”
No it’s not. It’s easy. You have no friends.
You’re a leper
. The truth was, I used to have friends, but
they vanished after my mother’s death. I blamed myself for
unintentionally alienating them while dealing with my loss. The few
times I had attempted to start conversations and cultivate
friendships since then had failed, the intended participants
unresponsive. It wasn’t until I began volunteering at the shelters
that I achieved some level of human interaction. And then there had
been Sofie …

A hollow ache filled my heart as I remembered
the high expectations I’d set, the night I met her and the days
following, until the moment I learned her true
intentions.

Luckily, Fiona’s voice interrupted my pity
party. “Okay, let’s start with an easy question.” Fiona glanced at
Amelie. “What’s your favorite flower?”

I smiled wistfully. Finally, one I could
answer. “Daisies.”

Amelie’s eyebrows rose. “Really? They’re so
plain.”

“
I prefer ‘simple and
elegant.’”

Amelie thought about that. “Yeah, maybe.” She
skipped gaily down the path.

“
Favorite music?” Fiona
asked.

“
Jazz. I know …” I said, grinning
when I saw Amelie turn around to give me a baffled look. “But it
reminds me of my mother.”

She smiled wistfully, her thoughts wandering
somewhere for the moment. “Fair enough. Favorite food?”

“
Anything in a pie.”

And so it went as we walked, Fiona and Amelie
drilling me on every trivial detail they could think of. It was the
conversation of normal girls getting to know each other—albeit
quiz–like—not two vampires and a cursed soul.

“
You know who loves reading as
well?” Amelia asked as I mentioned my unhealthy obsession with
books. “Caden. There could be a train wreck two feet away and his
eyes wouldn’t have lifted from the page.”

“
Really?” My heart skipped a beat at
that tidbit of information. I was hungry for more—as much as
possible. “So … he doesn’t like reading anymore?” I asked
casually.

“
Oh, I’m sure he does, but there
aren’t any books to read,” Amelie responded.

“
Evangeline, you don’t understand.
This world … it’s like living in medieval times, only worse. We’re
moving in reverse. Nothing’s left—no books, no phones, no
computers, no electricity, no cars, no music. Bishop would kill for
music. I used to sing to him. Apparently I’ve ruined classic rock,”
Fiona said, a grim smile on her face.

“
I’d kill for a long, hot shower …
literally,” Amelie added.

My foot caught a pebble then and I listened to
it skip along the ground. This world was sounding more dreadful by
the minute. And here I was, feeling sorry for myself and my
five–star prison waiting back home.

We turned a sharp corner in the tunnel and
Fiona held up a hand. “Stay here,” she instructed before
disappearing into the darkness.

“
What’s she doing?” I whispered to
Amelie.

She turned to smile at me, her green eyes
twinkling with excitement. “You’ll see.”

Flame after flame suddenly appeared as if on an
automatic remote, illuminating Fiona as she moved quickly around,
lighting torches. When dozens were lit, when they cast enough light
on the area, I gasped, all thoughts of prison and curses vanishing
as my eyes glimpsed paradise.

“
At least we have this,” Amelie
sighed.

Directly ahead of us, a waterfall at least
thirty feet high quietly tumbled down a wall of rock into a small
lake, the water glistening invitingly in the torchlight. Several
large boulders rose from the surface of the lake, creating private
little alcoves. Steam rose off the water’s surface. The entire
scene looked man–made, so perfect in design and so out of place,
deep within this cave, that I half expected palm trees and
ferns.

“
What is it?” I heard my awed voice
ask.

“
Don’t know, but it’s beautiful,
isn’t it?” Fiona crouched down to test the water with her
hand.

I could only nod in agreement.

“
Go swimming if you want,” Amelie
offered.

“
You have bathing suits?” I asked in
surprise.

She laughed. “It’s just us girls
here.”

“
Maybe later,” I said, glancing back
at the cave entrance. I wouldn’t risk being caught naked in front
of Caden again. I had already filled my quota the other
night.

“
Fiona and Bishop practically live
in here.” Amelie smirked, winking devilishly at the crouching
vampire, who returned the wink.

“
No wonder Jethro’s had designs on
this mountain for seven hundred years,” Fiona quipped, laughing as
she rolled off her feet to turn up the torn ends of her pants and
dip her legs into the pool. Amelie mimicked her and reached her
hand out to me, beckoning me to join them.

I happily obliged, sitting down between them to
take off my sneakers and socks before sliding my feet into the
warm, soothing water. “It’s like bathwater,” I murmured.

“
I know. We can’t explain it,” Fiona
said.

“
It’s definitely warmer than that
river you found me in, right?” Amelie said, kicking the water
playfully to splash me.

“
Why did Jethro want to drown you,
anyway?” I asked.

“
Oh, he wasn’t trying to drown me,”
she answered matter–of–factly.

“
He tied a cinder block to your
ankles and dropped you in the river and he
wasn’t
trying
to drown you?” I asked skeptically.

“
We can’t drown, Evangeline,
remember?”

“
Oh, right. I forgot. Sorry. It’s
going to take some time to get used to all this.”
I’m never
going to be used to this.

Amelie continued. “We can starve, though. The
stuff they tied around my wrists and ankles is called ‘Merth.’ It
saps all of our energy. And it hurts. My God! Like a thousand tiny
razor blades, cutting into our skin.”

I grimaced.

“
Exactly. No vampire can touch it.
Well, except for mutants like Jethro. When they mutate, they become
immune. It falls apart under a human’s touch though, as you
noticed.”

“
Oh. So why did Jethro want to
starve you, then?” I amended.

“
He was teaching me a lesson for
killing a grizzly in his territory.”

My gaze dropped to Amelie’s slender frame,
trying to picture the diminutive thing wrestling a ferocious
grizzly bear with her bare hands. It was impossible; I just
couldn’t see it. There was nothing intimidating about her, aside
from her outlandishly beautiful face.

All of them—save for Rachel—seemed so normal.
So human
. Had I witnessed one of them tearing Jethro and
his friends up, or if I had seen Caden skewer and torch the ape
man, maybe I wouldn’t be so comfortable right now. But I hadn’t
seen it. I’d only seen the aftermath and in my mind, the two didn’t
connect. Even with Caden’s grave warning and his change in attitude
toward me, I wasn’t afraid of them. Except Rachel. Was my intuition
that
pathetic? Or were they tricking me?

“
Are you guys using your powers on
me?” I blurted.

They both laughed. “No, we wouldn’t do that.
But we don’t blame you for being paranoid. Besides, we can’t,”
Amelie said.

“
So that’s a myth?”

“
Oh no, it’s not. But it won’t work
on you. We think it’s because of your necklace. Caden tried the
first night, before Jethro came, to keep you quiet, remember? But
you started yammering away again.” Amelie’s hand opened and closed
like a yapping mouth, teasing me.