Anomaly (Causal Enchantment #4)(27)
Nodding slowly, Cecile continued her assessment of the tunnel. She finally smiled, her face brightening until it appeared almost angelic. “It worked,” she stated. “It really worked!”
A sick feeling stirred in my belly, knowing that her smile would soon vanish forever. She’d likely throw herself into a fire.
A hand slid along the small of my back. “It certainly did,” Caden said with an awestruck gaze. Leaning in, his lips tickled my earlobe as he whispered, “Amazing. You going to do the other one too?”
“He seems adequately entertained for now. Less trouble.” Brian hadn’t moved from his corner, though he didn’t seem to be in such a frenzy anymore, the pile of empty plastic next to him growing at a slower rate.
Caden’s soft chuckle warmed my heart but it faded too fast. “I need to go.” My fingers latched on to his biceps, the muscles beneath tensing in response. “And you need to stay.” He kissed me briefly and then pulled away. “You’re not just a babysitter, Evangeline. Believe me. Stay with them. Keep them safe.” He pointed to the knapsack lying on the ground. “And stay the hell way from that.”
“Why? What is—”
“Merth.”
I glared at the bag with a new level of disgust. It had proven useful to me time and time again as a human, but I was now on the other side of the fence with the silvery plant and I would feel its wrath like a thousand razor blades cutting into my skin.
“Exactly. We won’t need it for the time being anyway.”
I pulled Caden into me, desperate for another second of contact, dread gnawing at me. “How long will you be gone?”
His sculpted jaw tightened. “We’ll be back by sunrise.”
Still hours away. “Call me with updates,” I demanded. “Every hour.” With one last kiss, Caden vanished.
I stared after him for a long moment, my mood crashing as I gripped the phone he’d left me. It was my only lifeline to him now. “I’m going to lose my mind waiting for them.”
Approaching footsteps and an arm wrapping around my shoulders reminded me that I wasn’t alone. “The mountains of Siberia didn’t seem so bad next to this, did they?” I turned to catch Julian’s feeble attempt at a smile.
*
“Amelie brought me here earlier today.” Julian’s rich brown eyes looked out over the blanket of stars, their brilliant twinkle like diamonds in the sky.
“Of course she did,” I snorted, my feet balanced precariously atop the rocky precipice, thinking how very much “Amelie” this treacherous mountain peak was. Lose my balance and I could be sailing off a two hundred foot cliff in seconds.
His arm rested lazily over my shoulder. “Relax and trust your abilities. We’re not going to fall. Vampires don’t fall.”
I inhaled the fresh, cold air, enjoying the much needed space after spending an hour enlightening Celine about the impending doom of our world and witnessing the excited sparkle in her bright blue eyes extinguish.
This excursion hadn’t come without a heated telepathic battle with Max and the need to compel Veronique and Celine from tailing us. At first I hadn’t even wanted Julian with me, afraid of what might happen if he crossed paths with a human. What if I couldn’t compel him? But, after agreeing to stick to the high mountains where risk of running into a human was almost nonexistent, I yielded.
“Do you think there’s another planet like ours out there? One that, in seven hundred years, will be facing human extinction?” Julian asked.
“I don’t know.” It was a good question. Would a girl just like the old naïve, confused me show up in the middle of the woods one night seven hundred years from now, believing that she was sleepwalking, a glowing pendant searing her chest? Would she meet and fall in love with a creature too beautiful to be human? Would she find herself in one trap and then another, and another, fighting for her life and her happiness?
The demise of Ratheus may have begun on a different path, according to Mage, but the path led to the same dilemma we faced today. How many more paths led here? What other games did the Fates have up their billowy sleeves? What entertainment at the expense of entire worlds did they relish?
My gaze shifted southeast, toward New York City. Nothing but black.
Julian groaned. “I’m gonna lose my shit if I don’t get my hands on Amelie again and soon. I just need to be near her.” A pause. “Is it like that with you and Caden?”
“Pretty much.” I bit the inside of my mouth before I blurted out more, fighting the urge to pull out my phone and call any of the numbers programmed in the speed dial, hoping to reach him. It had been an hour and Caden hadn’t called yet. He should’ve made it there by now.
Maybe he had even found Amelie too.
“What’s wrong, Evangeline?”
I dropped my eyes to the darkness below. “Who says anything’s wrong?”
“You’re biting the inside of your mouth. You’re trying not to blab.”
“My, haven’t we become perceptive.”
“You’ve always done that and I’ve always noticed.” Julian smirked, but then his face turned serious. “What gives?”
I sighed, deciding to lessen part of my burden. “The fledglings killed Galen.”
“What?” Julian’s body jerked as if zapped with electricity, the sudden shift in weight pulling me backward.