Asylum (Causal Enchantment #2)(45)
Instead, I leaned forward and grabbed hold of her slender waist, heaved her up, and tossed her tiny body over my shoulder. I stepped onto the window ledge and paused, inspecting the dark alley below for any witnesses. None. Thankfully the mutants hadn’t busted out of a room facing onto Fifth Avenue.
At three storeys up, it was a long way down. For a human.
I jumped.
The heels of my boots cracked against the pavement beside a dumpster, the impact jarring my knees. Almost immediately, Mage was fully functional, pushing free of my grasp to stand beside me. She smoothed her black, mock turtleneck sweater. “Thank you for not stabbing me in the back.”
Despite myself, I grinned. “Anytime.”
Her eyes scanned the dark alley. “No bodies here. Good start.”
“Okay, wait right here. I have to get the others.” I hesitated. I had just unleashed a five thousand-year-old vampire with unique powers upon New York City and was about to leave her unchaperoned.
Mage rolled her eyes, such an uncharacteristic act for her. “Stop wasting time!”
I nodded once, then scaled the wall to get Evangeline’s friends.
True to her word, Mage didn’t abandon me while I transported the others down. Soon they stood with me in the dark alley, the ability to satisfy their insatiable thirst lying open ahead of them. No Merth held them back; nothing kept them from bolting. And yet each stood frozen in place. In control.
Fat snowflakes began floating from the sky to speckle our clothes and hair. The temperature was dropping rapidly. It was December, after all; almost Christmas. It would have been beautiful, if not for the situation. But at least the streets would be relatively quiet.
“Okay, so now what?” Amelie whispered, her large, emerald-green eyes widening as a late-night reveler passed the entrance to the alley.
“If you’d just escaped prison and were looking for fresh blood, where would you go?” Caden asked.
Great question. I began walking toward the street, the five of them trailing me like shadows in a V-pattern. I stopped when we reached the sidewalk and scanned the vicinity, analyzing every structure, every object, every movement. Across from us stretched Central Park. The trees along the edge were lined with thousands of twinkling lights to mark the holiday season but beyond them, the heart of the park was vast, shadowy, and concealed. The perfect place for a massacre. Would there be one there tonight? There had already been one small massacre in Central Park recently, the day Ursula and the Sentinel attacked Evangeline.
My stomach instantly twisted into knots, remembering the day I almost lost her. Had it not been for Max, I would have. I was busy appeasing Viggo and Mortimer, toiling with my magical weaves to give the illusion that I was trying to solve Evangeline’s next steps on Ratheus. I wasn’t doing that. I already knew the answer to that. I was busy trying to dismantle the entire spell when the normally obedient girl hoodwinked Leo, turned Max’s allegiance, and snuck out.
Would Central Park appeal to the mutants? Every direction one turned was crawling with fresh, warm blood. Did the mutants have the sense to hide their faces? I pricked my ears, listening for the bloodcurdling screams I expected to come from any human encountering those demonic white eyes. Nothing. That was a good sign. But it wouldn’t last long.
“Let me try something,” I murmured, calling on my magic for a spell weave I had discovered in my regular witch years. It was the result of a moment of madness, after I’d accused Nathan of cheating on me because he refused to convert me. He had taken off in a huff. In a fit of fear-filled rage, I’d concocted a tracker spell and used it to find him in the woods nearby, feeding on a coyote. I wasn’t sure if it would work on mutants, but it was worth a shot.
I stepped back into the alley, not wanting to attract attention. Gathering a hundred helixes together, I held my hands out in front of me. The tiny purple coils appeared between my fingers for all to see. I began weaving them together in an intricate figure eight pattern until both sides were perfectly symmetrical. There. Now for something to track. To find Nathan, I had used his scent as the target—easy, because his scent lived on everything I owned. But now I had no scent to track the mutants. An idea struck me.
“Quick. I need blood,” I called out. Mage’s hand was there in an instant, a sharp piece of metal in her other hand. “On the links. Lots of it.” She ran the jagged edge across her wrist without flinching, opening up a wide gash. Blood streamed out onto the magical links, saturating them before her wrist naturally healed over. “That’s good. Thanks.” I hoped it would work, given I had used vampire blood instead of human. There was a chance the links would pick up on regular human-to-human violence in the city. Still, it was the best option. I broke the figure eight in half, flinging one bloody, glowing half outward.
“Wow,” Fiona and Amelie murmured in unison, watching it float away. The guys were busy surveying the streets, Caden with his arms folded tightly over his chest and Bishop with his hands deep in his pockets, rocking back and forth. Both looked anxious but completely in control. This was a good sign.
“It’s a tracker,” I explained. “Not exactly subtle, but anyone out at this time will be too drunk or high to be suspicious.” Unless they recognize magic. My eyes shifted nervously to the trees across the street, watching for movement within the shadows. The foliage had long-since disappeared into a mass of blackness—perfect cover.