“Please!” Ileana managed to sputter between sobs.
I glanced over at Mortimer to see him staring at Veronique’s face, as if he couldn’t hear Ileana’s pained cries—or he was blocking them out. He was good at that. I was not. I so desperately wanted to level Viggo with my magic, but now was not the time to start a physical battle with him.
“When you’re finished your pathetic display of dominance, we’d like to discuss the impending war outside,” Mage said, her normally serene voice carrying a cutting edge. Her words made Viggo release his grip on Ileana’s chin. She tumbled to the hardwood floor, her hair falling forward to hide the burned flesh marring both her cheeks.
“What are you talking about?” Mortimer asked, his tone doubtful. “My spies have said nothing about any signs of an army.”
“Your spies are probably the Sentinel, working undercover to feed you lies,” Mage spat.
Mortimer snorted. “Do you think I’m stupid? I checked their hands. No tattoos.”
She cackled. “Did you check their entire bodies?”
“No, why would I?” Mortimer’s face twisted with doubt. “They tattoo their hands. That’s what they do. That’s what they’ve always done.”
Mage offered him a condescending smirk. “Near the end, before the war on Ratheus, we discovered they began marking their kind elsewhere on their bodies, so they could act as double agents with the vampires.”
I turned to stare at her. You neglected to tell me that, Mage. That meant those eight suicidal zombies in the club could in fact have been the Sentinel.
She continued without batting an eye at me. “The witches would break the vampire compulsion spells and cast their own to protect the spies, so they couldn’t give anything up if caught and interrogated.”
“Well, that’s your world, not ours.”
“Are you so sure?” Mage taunted, smug in knowing what neither of them knew; what none of Evangeline’s friends, standing quietly behind me, knew.
“What does she mean?” Mortimer asked slowly. “Sofie?”
I shrugged. Let them chew on that.
“Sofie?” Amelie’s raspy voice called. I turned to see four sets of confused, scared eyes staring back at me. “What does she mean?”
I sighed, not so content with leaving them hanging. I looked to Mage. With a nod, Mage explained the seer and how she’d single-handedly retrained every vampire remaining into believing that the world they lived in was called Ratheus and not Earth. Six sets of wide, disbelieving eyes bored into Mage by the time she was finished. I didn’t know how they would react.
Mage did, though, so she was prepared when Viggo attacked. In a split second, the two of them squared off against each other, Mage’s hand firmly on the poker that Viggo had intended to drive directly through her skull. She laughed. “Don’t worry, your suspicion was enough to protect you from being compelled—I’ve already tried.” Viggo sneered. “Believe me, I can’t!” Mage exclaimed in mock innocence. “If I could, you’d be lying in the Merth spell next to Rachel by now. I’m curious, though . . . do I look nothing like the original vampire from this Earth?”
Viggo’s mouth twisted as he decided what to say. “No, I can’t say you do.”
So he knew the original, after all . . .
She released her grip on the poker and stepped away, unworried that Viggo might take another swing. “I don’t think any vampire has ever disgusted me as much as you have. Bravo. Fine effort.” Keeping her black eyes locked on Viggo, she said over her shoulder to me, “Explain to me again why this one needs to remain. Because unless there is a good reason, I’d very much like to be done with his melodrama.”
Mortimer quietly observed the scene, clearly as unaware of Mage’s abilities as I was, and likely wondering the same thing I had—had Mage influenced his thoughts?
Amelie and the others were unfazed by the power struggle, still in shock over Mage’s confession. “It can’t be! Everything I remember . . . ” Fiona murmured.
“Is what I planted in each and every one of your heads,” Mage answered softly. “I’ve met you all before. You just don’t remember.”
“So . . . we’re going to end up back in the same kind of world?” Bishop asked, his voice full of grief.
“Not yet,” I said, mustering as much confidence as I could and turning to regard Caden, who had his eyes trained on the floor.
“We wouldn’t have come, had we known,” he whispered distantly.
I reached out to rest a gentle hand on his forearm. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we need to get out of here. Now,” I stated.
“As soon as we get that damn pendant, we can run as far away as possible!” Mortimer boomed.
“Veronique will be fine. No one is getting to her,” I assured him calmly, letting go of Caden.
“She can’t be moved?” Mage whispered.
I shook my head. “No. That spell is bound to its location.” I turned to Viggo. “As much as I’d love to leave you two here to rot, there is a war brewing outside.” I gave them the rundown of what had happened, beginning with the mutants and going all the way to the force outside. “We need to regroup somewhere else until we can get a handle on what we’re up against.”
“All of us?” Amelie asked. “Even the others out there?”
“No.” Mage’s answer came quickly and firmly. “I can only compel them against killing humans for so long, and they don’t have the resolution you four do.”
“So . . . ” Amelie prompted. Everyone looked at Mage.
“So, we leave them here.”
To starve. They wouldn’t die; they’d slowly wither to stationary lumps of flesh, too weak to lift their heads.
The room went silent as we each thought through the plan. Was it a good plan? I had no idea. At this point, running was the only option. “Okay, let’s—” I began, but Leo’s voice cut into my thoughts. Valentina is Ursula. She’s with the tribe now. The connection died immediately, as if someone had taken a knife to it. “No!” I exclaimed before I could stop myself, at the same time that Ileana groaned. Had she heard it?
Seven vampires were instantly on edge. “What is it?” Mortimer hissed.
“Nothing,” I answered before clamping my mouth shut, my eyes glued to the crippled witch on the floor, looking for signs that she’d received the message about Evangeline’s new location. A location I had chosen only as a last resort and never in a thousand years thought Leo would need to use.
Unfortunately Viggo noticed my sudden interest in the witch who had the uncanny ability to trace communications. “Tell us what you know!” he demanded. When she didn’t answer immediately, he grabbed her by her upper arm and, wrenching her up to her knees, he drove the poker through her right shoulder, just under her collarbone. It must have pierced a major artery, because a steady stream of blood shot out, eliciting hisses from those behind me.
I barely noticed, though, more concerned about what might escape her lips. Hairs lifted on my neck as I watched her open her mouth . . . but only a strangled croak came out. In response, Viggo roughly twisted the poker around. I winced, knowing from experience what pain that inflicted. Teeth bared and tears streaming down her cheeks, Ileana worked her mouth as if she were trying to get words out—words I couldn’t allow. I dove for her, fully intent on silencing her permanently. Mortimer intercepted me, blocking my path long enough for her shrill scream.
“She’s with the tribe!”
The sound of the poker and Ileana’s battered body hitting the floor resonated through the suddenly silent room. Viggo looked at me, his blue eyes perplexed. “Sofie?” Normally I would enjoy that look, but not this time. “What does she mean by the tribe? Not the tribe; you destroyed them years ago.”
Mortimer towered over me, glowering. “That’s what she told us. We took her word for it.”
“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.