Asylum (Causal Enchantment #2)(73)
12. Visions
The man in the tiger head pounded his drum with zeal, and my heart pounded along with him, amplifying the deafening beat. Hungry flames danced below me, taunting me, licking the posts that held the platform up but somehow not setting fire to them. At fifteen feet in the air, my wood platform was high enough that it would not catch fire, but close enough that the scorching heat rising up from the growing fire was now borderline unbearable. Sweat poured down my face and body, mingling with the clear, unidentifiable liquid to leave a sticky film on me. I wasn’t too concerned about that. I was more terrified that any shift I made would rock this contraption and send me plummeting to my death.
The tribe’s chanting grew louder and angrier, culminating in a chorus of hair-raising screeches. From my precarious vantage point, I watched the chief walk up to the flames carrying a basket. One of his hands was gloved with that snakeskin material. My curiosity piqued, I very slowly, very carefully, leaned over, just enough that I could see him pull out a dagger and swipe it across his palm. Blood gushed out of the gash. I squinted. That can’t be right . . . The liquid coming out was . . . blue! He had blue blood?
He held the dagger up against his mouth. His lips moved in a chant. Then he tossed the blade into the flames. His lips still moving, the chief leaned over and stuck his gloved hand into the basket. When it emerged, it was with a jet-black snake coiled around it. With a forceful swing, he threw the live snake into the fire. It writhed in the flames for a few seconds before growing still, succumbing to the fire.
The tribe’s shrieking continued, some of the screeches so high that they rang in my ears, making me cringe. Then the cats joined in, their low roars balancing out the cacophony. I peered beyond the glare of the fire to see the beasts pacing back and forth along the perimeter of the clearing, their tails twitching angrily. But wait—their attention was directed outward, into the darkness, as if something was in the jungle beyond. They watched, waited. Please don’t be Max, I prayed. If it was, he’d be looking for the right moment to do some sort of impossible canine leap up here to pull me down, likely burning himself alive in the effort.
While I watched the tigers and worried about Max, a blue glimmer filled the sky around me and an icy cold sensation kissed my chest. I looked down to find the heart radiating with the same brilliant blue light as it had when I plugged it into the portal. Whatever the chief was doing was working.
Beneath me, the flames rose, leaping closer and closer, tendrils reaching up to caress the edges of the platform. The scorching heat I expected didn’t come, but I cowered all the same, my arms hugging my body as if to protect it. And then the flames reached me. Just as Julian had been engulfed the night before, now the flames crawled up my skin, wrapping my limbs and torso in a fiery cocoon. Surprise dampened my terrified paralysis—I felt no pain. The flames danced over my body without singeing a single hair or a single thread of my clothing.
Allo? a woman’s voice suddenly called in my ear, distracting me from my fiery coat. My head darted side to side as I looked for the source.
“Hello?” I answered tentatively.
Allo? Est-is temps? the woman said. I recognized it as French and I could tell she was asking a question based on the inflection in her voice. “Oui! Enfin!” she cried out.
My eyesight blurred as swirls of bright lights replaced the jungle and the tribe. I blinked repeatedly, trying to focus on the world beyond. Finally the light spots disappeared and my eyes focused. Only it was as if I were underwater, my vision wavy, my hearing muffled. I found myself in the atrium—a horribly mangled version of it; the balconies now heaps of brick and stone, the gardens burned to the ground. Dozens of little fires smoldered all over the heaved cobblestones. And the air! I didn’t know if it was the heavy black smoke that hung overhead, blocking the view of the glass dome, or something else, but a foul stench curled my nostrils.
A group of women stared at me. I didn’t recognize any of them and by the shocked, unfriendly looks on their faces, they had no idea who I was, but they weren’t particularly happy to see me. Discomfort washed over me under their gaze. Fumbling nervously at my side, my fingers grasped folds of soft material; I looked down at a gauzy white dress covering my body. Chunks of white marble lay around my feet—the crumbled remains of the statue.
“Who are you?” a commanding voice shouted. I glanced back up to see a middle-aged woman in black leather staring at me, flames dancing on each of her fingers. A witch.
Veronique, the voice said and I realized that it had come from my mouth. But it wasn’t me; I wasn’t Veronique, I was Evangeline. Where is Sofie? the voice—Veronique—asked tentatively, unsure of her English.
Cold sweat broke out over my body. My confusion grew—what had devastated the atrium, and how was this voice that wasn’t my voice speaking? One of the smoldering heaps on the ground caught my attention. A hand. The heaps were bodies. Oh God . . . My wide eyes drifted over all the little flaming piles, too numerous to count, until one caught my attention. It hadn’t fully burned, and the face was angled toward me, dead violet eyes staring in my direction. Fiona.
I screamed.
13. Lying in Wait
The jungle seemed more dense than I remembered from my last trip here four years earlier, to negotiate the deal with the tribe. It hadn’t been a pleasant exchange—not surprising. They were deceptive, repulsive creatures, programmed by the Fates to hate my kind, both witches and vampires. Even with some level of affinity to me for creating them, it didn’t take long for the chief to threaten to touch me because he didn’t like my “vampire smell.” I was alone then. Now I was bringing four vampires with me.