Asylum (Causal Enchantment #2)(57)

“Who is the tribe?” Caden whispered.

“Shhh,” I warned, eyes still on my two deadly adversaries, wondering how long it would take them to figure it out. Not long, apparently.

“Have you gone absolutely insane?” Mortimer exploded.

I stalled. “Whatever do you mean?”

“There’s only one ‘tribe’ that bastard butler could be referring to. We should have known you didn’t kill them!” Viggo hissed.

“Don’t you realize they’re just as likely to kill her as they are any of us, you fool?” Mortimer added.

“What?” All four of Evangeline’s friends yelled in unison, Mortimer’s words panicking them.

But I ignored them, still focused on the two vampires in front of me who now knew where Evangeline was. “Desperate measures,” I answered coolly.

Viggo’s lips curled back in a hideous smile. I hated that smile. “Well, at least we know she’s reachable.”

“Not while you’re in here,” I reminded him.

The smiled only grew larger. “If not by us, then by someone else,” he taunted, displaying his cell phone.

Without thinking, I shot a helix out, knocking the thing into the fire. “I’ll fry every phone line in this place, too,” I added spitefully.

“No worries.” Viggo grinned. “I’ll just go get her myself.”

It was my turn to smile. “How? You can’t get past the Merth.”

“Didn’t we just discuss this? We need to escape from this impending doom of which you speak.”

“Change of plans,” I shot back, not missing a beat.

“Sofie,” Mage warned in a low voice.

“No!” I snapped. “They’re not getting anywhere near her. I won’t allow it. Ever. They can sit in here and wait for whatever is going to happen. They’re more trouble to me out there than good.”

A faint chuckle drew everyone’s eyes to the frail little body crumpled on the floor. Her cheek resting in a pool of her blood, Ileana smiled and whispered, “Here they come!”

Alarm bells went off inside my head. Who was coming?

“I never did get along with my mother,” Ileana murmured, her eyes closing. “She never accepted me with my powers. It was the perfect trap. And now you’re finally all going to die.” As if a cover had suddenly been lifted, magic began radiating from her body—not as if she had just now cast a spell, but as if the spell had always been running and only now could I see the tiny coils—hers were mauve—dancing around. What exactly had she been masking, though?

A split second later, the walls of the library shook as an explosion in the atrium rocked the building. Bishop and Fiona dashed out to the atrium with all of us close behind, crashing through the magical sound barrier and the glass into a maelstrom of thick smoke and bits of burning building.

That didn’t concern me. What concerned me was the crowd of several hundred humans in dark clothing spilling through the gaping hole in the wall, all with those same dead eyes as the humans at the club. In their hands they carried machetes—nothing permanently damaging to us, but I had a feeling we weren’t the weapons’ intended targets. Sure enough, I watched them turn on each other and attack, hacking and swiping at one another, opening deep, bloody gashes in their flesh. In no time at all, rivers of red snaked over the cobblestones, too much to ignore, even for me. They were bait in a trap, meant to lure the vamps in, stop them from running or fighting intelligently. But to what end? Unless . . . My stomach turned in knots as I put two and two together. Viggo had led the real enemy right through our gates. Ileana’s wicked giggle replayed in my head. Here they come, she had said. She wasn’t talking about the Sentinel.

Bishop and Fiona tore off toward the crowd. My arms flew out to grab Caden and Amelie before they could follow. “Out of here—now.” Easier said than done; their eyes were morphing into hideous veined orbs. Mine likely matched theirs.

“We can kill them all, easily,” Caden growled, jerking toward them.

I tugged them back, hard. “Stop!”

“What are you doing?” Viggo hissed behind me. “Go on! Decimate them with your magic!”

“Them I can, yes. That’s the point—they’re a distraction.” I watched the battle unfold. The Ratheus vampires had taken the bait, flying onto their victims, oblivious to the stabs from the machetes as they fed, assuming they’d heal after they gorged. But they weren’t safe. Far from it.

“Here comes the cavalcade,” Mage murmured beside me, eyeing the door. She had figured it out as well. “The witches. We need to get out of here.”

“But, Fiona and Bishop!” Amelie cried, eyes on her two friends in the thick of it, unable to resist.

“I’ll get them.” In an instant, Mage was standing over a feeding Bishop. She wrenched him away and dragged him back to us. Distanced from the frenzy, Bishop appeared to snap out of the blood lust.

“We need to leave, Bishop,” I yelled over the noise. “The witches are coming.”

He nodded, eyes wide. “Fiona!” he bellowed.

“I’ll go and get—” Mage began, only to stop abruptly, her black eyes on the tunnel entrance. I turned.

Like a wall of magic, a row of twenty-two women materialized in the chaos, fire at the ready, hands raised, pointed.