Anomaly (Causal Enchantment) (19 page)

“Were you in on this?”

Caden’s words—his tone low and thick with accusation—took time to register in my head. When they finally did, I slowly turned to find cold eyes assessing me. “Did she call you to come in? Because she knew I’d come running as soon as I found out?”

“No
… I … are you kidding me?” I stuttered.

“
My sister is
dead
.” His hiss made me shiver. “No, I’m not kidding. Because it would seem that those three,” his fingers jutted out at Mage, Lilly, and Sofie, “were willing to do whatever it took. So … Were
you
in on it? Did you choose Sofie over Amelie? Over me? Is that why you came to New York City?”

My mouth hung open as I shifted my
eyes from him to Bishop to Fiona and back to him. “How would that even be possible? There wasn’t even enough time! There …” This had to be his grief talking.

“She had no idea
what was going on,” Julian mumbled. “Neither did I. If I had, I would’ve stopped it.” A dark gaze lifted to settle on Caden. “And if you were looking out for your sister in the first place, maybe she wouldn’t have gone missing.”

Julian
flew fists-first into Caden, sending them both rocketing back into a dilapidated shed, taking its last remaining wall down. Bishop and Fiona moved quickly to pull them apart, but not fast enough for me to miss the gaping cut across Caden’s bottom lip in the second before it healed. Caden shoved Fiona off him, sending her flying into a nearby tree. Bishop released Julian to go to her.

That freed
Caden to lunge at Julian, sending him to his knees with a kick to the stomach. Grabbing a long piece of wood from the rubble, Caden smoothly drove the pointed end through Julian’s chest.

“Stop t
his!” I yelled as Julian’s face contorted with pain, his hands pawing at the wood. Caden didn’t hesitate to slam his fist into the wood, driving it in again, earning another gasp from Julian.

I
wouldn’t stand by and watch this. I pushed Caden out of the way. “Stop hurting each other!”

Caden’s
body whipped around, his arm cocked and, for a moment, I was sure he would take a swing at me. But then I saw the recognition flash across his face. His body slumped to the ground.

I tore
the stake out of Julian’s body and dropped it on the snow. Neither Caden nor Julian spoke. Whatever rage had fueled their fight was gone as they both sat hunched in the snow, arms draped over knees, heads bowed, both suddenly absorbed by their grief. Raw, overwhelming grief. And betrayal, churning around them like thick, black smoke.

“We don’t know anything yet
,” I began, not ready to let go of all hope. “Amelie could be out of the city. She could be safe. She could be—”

“
Sofie!” Mortimer’s distressed bellow into the night cut me off.

Chapter Fourteen
– Sofie

I should have known.

Shifting my attention from
the GPS tracker to the black knapsack, the last remaining strands of merth snatched, I quietly chastised myself. I should have checked the bag.

I should have known th
at Viggo would do something like this.

But because I hadn’t, t
wo bodies lay in charred heaps in front of me. I assumed they were Cecile and Brian. A mercy, really. They probably would have done it themselves once they learned of Galen’s and Kait’s demise.

More bodies lay scattered around the perimeter. From the looks of it, the
wolves, including Kiril and Ivan, hadn’t been much of a match for a two-thousand-year-old vampire, fueled by revenge.

Neither had Max or his
brothers.

“Max!” Evangeline screamed, diving for the
giant, still heap of fur. “No! No! No!” Her hands jostled him back and forth as if to wake him, shifting him so violently that his body turned. A glint of silver caught my eye and I immediately zoned in on the small piece of merth wrapped around his paw.

Evangeline spotted it at the same time.
“No!” I yelled as her fingers closed over it.

And
yanked it off.

My mouth dropped open.
Did she actually just touch the merth and
not
collapse?

The werebeast was on his feet in a flash,
releasing a baleful howl before nosing his brothers in vain, trying to get them up. Unfortunately, they hadn’t been bound by merth and would not be getting up again.

“Sofie!” Lilly hollered
, toeing a white-haired body lying between Cecile and Brian.

“Is that
… Jonah?”

“Who cares
who that is!” Mortimer boomed. “Who cares about any of them! Let’s focus on who’s
not
here!”

Veronique was missing.

“Did you know he’s been tailing us the
entire
time?” Mortimer spat, holding up a tablet with a frozen image on it, the cold cobalt eyes staring out at me.

I
knew I couldn’t lie. Not with what may be on that video. “I suspected.”

“You suspected
…” The even measure of Mortimer’s voice was the calm before a violent storm. “And yet you never felt the need to warn us!” His body shook, lips white with pressure, as if struggling to keep the words in. He held the tablet against his chest, the screen facing out, and hit “play.” The hairs on my neck stood on end as the haulage tunnel filled with his revolting voice.“ There’s a benefit to knowing Sofie for over a century,” Viggo began. The wicked smile never came close to touching his cold irises. Seated on a bench, he threw an arm over its back, as if getting comfortable in a friend’s living room. Nothing in the screen gave his location away, but by the occasional horns and distant sirens, he was obviously filming on a street. “Get screwed over by her enough, you begin to anticipate her next move. Her next two moves.” His eyebrows waggled. “Her next ten moves.” He whistled as his eyes trailed an unsuspecting passerby beyond the scope of the tablet’s camera. “And when you can anticipate her next ten moves, it becomes easy to get what you want. I tried to warn her, in all fairness. The pendant tied to the knapsack? Oh, come, Sofie, what did you think that was? A peace offering?” Every gaze in the room shifted to me.

“And I’m sure you never told anyone about that, did you
, my dear Sofie? You would have lost their attention. It would distract them from your big plan to
save the world
. But perhaps, if you had told them, then it would have been harder for me to do this—” The screen suddenly switched to a new scene—a window overlooking the city skyline. The angle rotated, taking in desks, lamps, and filing cabinets.

Until it settled on a female with blond
ringlets, hunched over in a chair.

“Amelie!” Julian cried out
. The camera zoomed in on her limp body, her limbs coiled in a strand of merth, tied upright to the chair by regular rope.

S
ounds of despair filled my ears, my suspicions proven true. Viggo had killed Galen. Viggo had captured Amelie. And Jonah must have been helping him because there was no other way he’d manage with that silver cord.

I guess Jonah had
since worn out his use.

The camera angle moved back to Viggo. “
To be fair, I was trying to get my hands on her brother. You know, because I figured that would hurt the treacherous little
Evie
the most.”

Oh no
…

“I don’t know how you managed to revive her, my dearest Sofie. After all, I felt her little bones snap like twigs. But you obviously must have.
I figured that out quickly. There’s no way you would care about fledglings if your little obsession had died like she should have.”

Viggo’s shoes scuffed along the floor as he pa
ced, the camera still on him. “I almost had him in the blood cellar. Unfortunately, I missed my opportunity by mere seconds.”

Unease
roiled inside me. I knew it! I had felt his presence. Why had I dismissed my senses so quickly? I should’ve burned the rest of the building down. Burned him on the spot.

“
I have to thank Mage for giving me the foresight to your plan, actually,” he said, the twinkle in his eye enough to make me want to destroy the screen with a bolt of fire. “I remembered her telling me once that had she been able to do it over again, she would’ve dropped a bomb on the city that bred the beginnings of the demise. So, it was only common sense that she would counsel you, Sofie, on that strategy. And of course you would listen because you are a weak, uncreative leader who cannot make her own choices.”

Shifting
the camera again, Viggo leaned over Amelie’s shoulder, both of their faces in the screen, as if about to take a close-up. Amelie’s emerald eyes stared back at us, filled with terror.

My stomach clenched.

“Would you go through with it, if the beloved Amelie’s life was at stake? For sure you suspected me all along, Sofie.” Again, the eyes around me weighed upon my conscience. Viggo turned to Amelie. “Don’t you wonder? Should we find out?” He paused, as if waiting for an answer. “Yes, let’s find out, shall we? We’ll leave you here, in this Manhattan office building.”

Another gasp sounded, this one Julian’s.

Viggo planted an amiable kiss on her cheek and then stood, patting her shoulder. “If Sofie doesn’t go through with it, then here’s the address. You can come get her.” He captured a plaque on the wall with the broker firm’s address on it. “And if that vixen Mage manages to whisper sweet nothings of destruction in Sofie’s ear and she goes through with it, then, well …” The camera took one last shot of Amelie. “Say goodbye to this beautiful little face, folks. I figure the nuke will be coming from the Atlantic. Maybe Amelie will get to see its approach.”

Fiona
moaned behind me but I couldn’t pry my eyes away from the pretty little vampiress in the chair, my own heart—having held onto a shred of hope—now breaking. We had our answer. Isaac had unleashed a sizeable bomb on New York City. Manhattan was at the epicenter.

Amelie would never have
survived the blast of fire.

The screen changed
to a scene I recognized. Firefighters battled flames spurting out from the gaping hole in Second Avenue, shouting about the heat and the fire’s resilience. I knew it was resilient. It was my fire and it would burn for hours.

“It’s a little hot here, don’t you think?” Viggo’s voice called out in t
he near background. The camera angle turned to take in a blond, wide-eyed Kait, a metal rod through her chest, sapping her of her fight. “Let’s make this quick!” Without further preamble, Viggo shoved Kait’s body off the edge. We watched in horror as she tumbled into the flames.

The screen cut over as Lilly’
s scream echoed through the dark, empty mine.

“
And, if Sofie wasn’t such a deceptive, secretive creature and had warned you that I was near, it certainly would have been harder for me to do this,” Viggo called out as the camera panned over the scene in the mine. It couldn’t have been taken that long ago. The wolves lay silent, already dispatched. Cecile and Brian lay on the ground, their arms coiled in merth.

Mage
hissed as we watched Jonah appear on camera, holding a red tank over the two fledglings. The mutant poured gasoline over them, even smiling as he struck the match on the stone wall and tossed it carelessly. The two burst into flames.

“Why, thank you, Jonah!”
Viggo’s blue eyes suddenly appeared again, dancing with vicious delight. “He’s been a real help. Mage, you trained him well. And for that … my gift to you.” The camera jostled slightly and when it came into focus again, it was on a gloved hand holding out a heart, Jonah’s body in a heap in the peripherals. He tossed the heart into the fire.

“
But my biggest thank-you of all is to whoever left the bag with the GPS tracker here.” My insides churned with dread as the camera captured a form with long, curly brown hair and olive eyes. Veronique, bound by merth and curled in a ball. “I knew I’d get to her eventually. I just didn’t think it’d be this easy.”

Caden
hung his head, his jaw clenching against the realization that, by leaving the knapsack in the mine, he’d led Viggo straight here.

“I’m sorry, dear old friend.”
That teeth-grinding smile was meant for Mortimer who, by the way his eyes squeezed shut, had already watched the entire video. “I was never a gracious loser. I figure, with enough time, she’ll come around.”

Viggo set the tablet down, angling it
to capture him approaching Veronique. With a long stick, he tore off the merth, latching on to her arm before she had a chance to run. She struggled, twisting and turning, kicking at him, but he held tight. “Now, now, Vee. You’ve seen what I’ll do to get to you. Don’t put up a fight now. It won’t end well for you, or anyone else. Do you want to see any more of your friends hurt?”

W
hat little I could see of her face, my poor sister was playing the scenarios in her head and quickly deduced that she couldn’t win. Slowly she rose to her feet. We watched in silence as Viggo slipped an arm around her waist. Her shoulders pulled in as she recoiled. He didn’t seem to mind, leaning in to lay a long, lingering kiss on her mouth. Mortimer looked like he may be ill.