Anomaly (Causal Enchantment #4)(15)
“I’m fine.” He grimaced. “For now.”
Giving his shoulder a pat, I stepped over to the edge to watch the latest excitement. More police had been called in to guard the perimeter and several new military trucks rolled in. We had no reason to go back in now, though.
“What happened in there?” Lilly asked.
“You were right—the Sentinel is everywhere. We can no longer trust our powers to compel,” I muttered, not really answering her question. “I’m going to kill every last witch on this planet, if it’s the last thing I do.” They were the catalysts for this human revolt, giving them power they otherwise wouldn’t have. If the humans would just live in ignorant bliss, we wouldn’t be dealing with this.
The witches would never be satisfied. Ironic, given it was their causal enchantment—their need for immortality and youth and beauty—that created vampires to begin with.
If I killed the witches, this human army would lose much of its protection and intelligence. They would fade into the background and, after eliminating a few key leaders and letting generations pass, we could hope they would disappear forever.
Of course, the Fates would not approve of this, I was sure. Without witches, there would be no causal enchantments cast. Without causal enchantments, the Fates had no permission to meddle in our world, no reach to wreak havoc. I’d learned that from my brief encounter with them and I fully intended to use it.
I would never cast a causal enchantment again.
“Any sign of Viggo?” Mortimer called out.
Not trusting myself to speak, I shook my head no, unable to keep my gaze from flittering to Mage. She was watching me. Lying was the right thing to do and yet I dreamed of the day that honesty would take over. I’d been surviving in this web for far too long.
“I suppose that’s good.” Mortimer closed the distance to tower beside me.
I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Where do you suppose he is right now?” That sixth sense hadn’t faded since the blood vault. I presumed that it had to do with the quarter-sized pendant tucked within my pocket, suddenly as heavy as a boulder. It wasn’t that I didn’t expect to face Viggo again. It was that I hadn’t expected it this soon. And I wasn’t one hundred percent sure how to interpret the meaning of the pendant left there. Was his plan to elicit fear?
Mortimer’s mouth twisted. “If this were the calm and unruffled Viggo, then I’d suspect he was already halfway across the world, biding his time.” The calm and unruffled Viggo had patience that could rival a Tibetan monk. He would wait years, decades, even centuries, to get what he wanted.
But we both knew that we no longer had that version. We had the one who had lost Veronique’s heart, who had been outsmarted by a human, and who would be desperate for revenge. On Mortimer, on Mage, on the world.
War or not, I knew that I wouldn’t rest until Viggo was dead. I wish I’d incinerated him. He’d vanished the second his hands left Evangeline’s neck, before her body crumbled to the cobblestone, before I had a chance.
“Why?” I felt Mortimer’s penetrating brown eyes settle on me and I knew I had stepped onto very thin ice, asking about our adversary.
“Just strategizing. But, let’s focus on the immediate task. Jonah.” Calling on my magic, I quickly recreated my simple tracking spell that had served us so well in finding Jonah the first time. If we could find him and his horde, we could be done with this quickly. I held the glowing purple bracelets out. Looking for multiple deaths would logically—in my spell-casting mind anyway—require multiple blood sources. “I need you all for this one.” We couldn’t waste our time with one-offs right now; we needed to find places where large groups were attacking.
A screeching metal sound filled the air—Caden and Bishop, tearing strips off a nearby solar panel. They handed them out. Those who knew what I needed from previous experience—Mage’s and Evangeline’s friends—slit their palms and held their hands above the magic coils, blood droplets splattering down.
“More! I need more!” I demanded, looking to Mortimer and the others, who quickly followed suit.
I set loose twenty tracking rings and slipped the sister links over my wrist. Leaning against a half wall, I settled in to wait for an alert, my arm a sleeve of glow-in-the-dark bangles.
We waited in silence.
And waited.
And again, my mind wandered, not to the witches or Jonah or the sanity of this plan, but to Viggo. What exactly was he up to, so boldly warning me? What was his plan of attack going to be? I didn’t doubt for a second that he had one and that it would be malicious in intent and vicious in delivery.
Could he be watching us right now? My eyes roamed over the surrounding rooftops and shadows. If he could see Caden or me right now, would he know that Evangeline wasn’t dead? He was certainly smart enough to realize that neither of us would care about a war if he had succeeded in killing her.
Mage sidled up to me. “Something caught your attention?” The woman could read me like a book. Maybe she’d been lying all along and could tap into all of our heads, reading our thoughts.
“Just my fears. Keep your eyes peeled.”
“Any chance your magic is going to be useful sometime soon?” Galen muttered, less than five minutes later. The scowl hadn’t left his face since the mines, deepening whenever his eyes drifted in my direction. If I had to guess, he was bitter with me for forcing him to leave Cecile in a pool of her own vomit.