Anomaly (Causal Enchantment #4)(58)
Lilly’s face settled on me. She wore the same unnerving mask that she wore through our first meeting in Paris, when I couldn’t tell if she was deciding to answer or attack. “I will not authorize any more missiles unless that is what Evangeline wants.”
“And I won’t want that,” Evangeline said, her piercing yellow eyes landing on me, as if evaluating my reaction.
“Then we will not be unleashing any more nuclear missiles,” I stated firmly. There was no missing the eye twitch, the grit of her teeth. Evangeline didn’t believe me. There was nothing I could do about that. I’d just have to prove it. If it took me a thousand life times, I would keep trying. I would never give up.
In a wide sweeping motion, I cleared the newspapers, the loose cutlery, a few random glasses—evidence that humans once lived here and participated in things that didn’t involve strategizing against the end of the world—off the table. Everything fell to the floor except a box of children’s cereal.
Dumping the colorful rings out, I dropped into a spare seat and began sorting the colors. I needed a visual plan. “Purple is Sentinel, green is sorceresses, yellow is army, orange are the wolves, and we,” I placed a pile of blue rings in the middle of the table, “are here.”
“We’re planning an attack with Froot Loops?” Bishop muttered, his natural wide smirk like a breath of air.
“No.” I locked eyes with Evangeline again. “We’re planning to end the war with Froot Loops. And we’re going to do it together.”
“How?” Caden slipped an arm around her waist. A reminder that they were a package deal, a warning that he wouldn’t let me hurt her again.
“Simple. We go in. We get rid of the fledglings buried within the subway tunnels. And then we kill every one of those sorceresses.”
And the Fates will never have a reach into our world again.
Chapter Twenty – The Fates
“She cannot do that!” A’ris released a screech that rippled the image pool, the player Sofie’s face shimmering before dissolving. “Can she?”
Incendia and Terra exchanged glances.
Terra’s player had provided them with years of entertainment, her volatile temper and wild emotions guiding her to act rashly, begging for their help time and time again. They gladly “helped,” giving her what she asked for while upping the excitement of the game. And, like the control-hungry creature that she was, she kept coming back to them.
But would she go so far as to kill their lifelines to this world by eliminating the many vessels remaining?
“It must not happen before the game has ended,” Terra confirmed with a clenched jaw. “Afterward … it does not matter. They will all be gone soon enough.” Without the sorceresses, the world was dead to them.
“They’ve been no use to us so far. They are afraid to ask for our help,” Incendia grumbled. All eyes shifted back to the faces in the image pool, congregated in a small, windowless room, discussing the possible whys for the bomb. They were the Fates most powerful conduits next to the player Sofie. “If they would just ask, we could perhaps stem this issue with my player before it becomes a real problem.”
Though the girl continued to advance with her abilities, she remained in the dark.
“And what if your player should win?” Terra began a casual stroll around the vessel containing the many worlds and universes within their realm. “Can we simply leave her to her own devices? Allow something like that to remain within our dominion?” Four sets of kaleidoscopic eyes returned to the image pool as the girl’s yellow eyes stared back at them.
No. They certainly could not. It disrupted their order of things.
The order that ensured the Fates remained on top.
Chapter Twenty-One – Evangeline
The enemy camp was just as Lilly had described it, right down to the wooden barricades and the never-ending row of heavy artillery surrounding the stadium.
Funny that I should think of it as an “enemy” camp. I hopped out of the back of the vehicle that we’d commandeered some miles back, my boots crunching against the compacted snow, flattened from countless tire treads. We were all working for a common goal—eradicate the last of the fledglings and save as many human lives as possible. But thanks to the witches and their Sentinel puppets, our strategy to achieve that skewed in different directions.
Namely, they wanted us all dead.
Another truck rolled in behind us, this one with three vampires and seven wolves in human form, dressed as military personnel. They would be our eyes and ears at the base.
We passed the processional of outbound emergency vehicles, the same endless line we’d passed on our way here, transporting thousands of injured people from the peripherals of the blast radius. I didn’t want to think about how many might not survive or what lay ahead for their recovery. Or demise.
The stadium was still intact, given its size and distance from the epicenter. Still, the charred signs and ash against the concrete walls proved that it had not escaped completely unscathed. Generators hummed, pumping electricity into the structure and to the giant emergency spotlights outside while crews worked on the transformers in the area.
Beyond the stadium, I saw the first hints of the true destruction to come. Burned-out residential areas, the houses now grimy hovels, empty of life, not one window remaining whole; charred trees, no longer recognizable for their type or true size; cars left sitting in the middle of the street.