Anathema (Causal Enchantment, #1) (19 page)

“
Why?” Caden asked, his eyes
widening.

“
I don’t know. Apparently Sofie was
messing around with magic and fried their venom. Now they can’t
‘breed.’” I shuddered. “I’m supposed to come here and find a way to
fix it.”

Silence filled the cave.

“
You’re handling this well,” Fiona
said softly.

“
I’m glad it looks that way,” I
answered, staring down at the fire.

“
Are you afraid?” Caden asked
quietly.

“
Yes, terrified,” I answered
truthfully, looking up into those beautiful, vibrant green eyes.
Good vampire. Definitely has to be a good
vampire.

“
And you
understand
what
we
are?” he asked, his jaw taut. He hadn’t enjoyed asking
that question.

“
You’re … like Viggo and Mortimer
and Sofie?”

He nodded once. “Viggo and Mortimer …
yes.”

I swallowed the giant lump blocking my throat.
Well, there’s no denying it now.

“
But Sofie … not quite. You said she
was also a sorceress?”

I nodded.

“
Interesting.” Caden’s eyes
flickered to his sister’s but their expressions were
unreadable.

“
Why?”

“
Because sorceresses can’t become
vampires. It’s impossible. The venom kills them.”

So Sofie was still lying to me. I should have
known.

“
In my experience, humans tend to
freak out and run the other way, crossing themselves in prayer
repeatedly when they find themselves in the company of a vampire.
They don’t willingly share a campfire with four of them.” Amelie’s
tone was light, but her eyes were earnest, as if she expected me to
turn and run at any second.

“
I still might, but right now it’s
too cold,” I said, a small smile on my lips.

Laughter filled the cave.

“
We won’t hurt you,” Amelie said
softly.

Could I believe her? Looking at that angelic
face and kind smile, there wasn’t a part of me that felt I was in
peril. Then again, I had felt safe with Sofie. My sense of
self–preservation wasn’t exactly top–quality. “Well, I figured you
guys were the good kind.”

“
What?” Caden’s voice rose, his face
screwing up.

“
Viggo told me most of the stuff
about you guys is myth.”

“
And you believed him?” I didn’t
miss the scorn in his tone.

“
Caden,” Amelie warned.

“
You’re so sure we won’t attack
you?” Caden continued, on his feet and pacing now.

“
Caden,” Amelie said through
clenched teeth.

I glanced warily at her. “Well, you didn’t
attack me yesterday and you can’t get much closer than that, so
…”

Caden’s eyes widened in surprise.

“
After I was bitten, I mean. With
all the blood!” I stammered, realizing that it sounded like I was
referring to everything leading up to it.

Bishop barked out laughter. “We don’t have time
for that right now. You can test it out again later,” he said,
followed by, “and I
don’t
mean after you were
bitten.”

I felt my face blaze, likely a hideous shade of
beet red.
Why
would Caden tell him? Or maybe Bishop was
reading my mind. Maybe that wasn’t a myth.
Oh God, I hope Caden
can’t read my mind
.

Caden gave Bishop a shove in response, sending
him flying into the cave wall. Chunks of rock crumbled to the
ground as Bishop’s back made impact but the blonde vampire simply
stood up and brushed himself off, smiling broadly, proud of the
ribbing. It was such a pleasant smile that I cringed when it
disappeared, his face twisting up in disgust.

I found out why when an unwelcomed voice sang
out at the cave entrance, “What’s got you so upset, my
love?”

“
Oh good, you’re back,” Amelie
answered dryly.

Rachel glowered at her. “You’re lucky Caden
feels an odd sense of obligation to you, otherwise I’d—”

“
Look who’s back!” Caden said,
pointing in my direction.

Rachel turned to glance at me, her smile
falling short of genuine, before turning to bestow a loving gaze on
Caden. “It seems your scheme with the statue switch worked,” she
purred, forcing him onto the bench and climbing onto his lap. She
planted an inappropriately long kiss on his lips.

I averted my gaze, not because of the
uncomfortable public show of affection but because the twinge of
jealousy pained me a thousand times more than my injured hand or
even the bite from the night before.

It went on, even as Bishop cleared his throat
loudly and Amelie let out an exasperated sigh. I had to find some
way to peel Rachel off Caden. “Sofie said the pendant is magical,”
I blurted, ignoring Sofie’s warnings. “It gets me here and it
protects my human traits, like the scent of my blood and my
heartbeat. It takes time to adjust sometimes, though.”

It worked. Rachel stopped mauling Caden. “Like
when you get all flustered and red near my Caden?” she asked
sweetly. My face felt like it had burst into flames as a renewed
surge of humiliation struck. “Seems it hasn’t adjusted yet.” She
giggled viciously.

“
How does it work?” Amelie quickly
asked.

“
Um … I don’t know. Every night my
necklace begins to burn and I fall asleep. Then I wake up the next
morning back in my bed.”

“
The time in between your visits is
weeks here,” Fiona commented, frowning.

“
And if one of us were to put that
necklace on, I wonder what would happen,” Rachel murmured, eyeing
my pendant keenly.

Memories of excruciating pain had me shaking my
head with panic. “No, I’m sorry. It can’t come off, not even for a
second, or I’ll die.”

“
Only the quickest of seconds …”
Rachel said, off Caden’s lap and standing over me in an instant, a
hand clamped over the chain.

“
Leave it alone,” Caden said,
appearing beside her. His hand closed over hers, stopping her from
yanking the chain off and killing me.

Her left eyebrow arched severely. He replied
with a hard stare of his own.

I turned to look at Amelie. Her eyes were
locked on the two of them; she looked ready to spring.

After a few tense seconds, Caden’s shoulders
visibly relaxed. He wrapped his free arm affectionately around
Rachel. “If she dies, we’ll have to wait for this sorceress to send
another one.”

I flinched. I was replaceable, like a
goldfish.

But his callous words worked. Rachel’s icy
glare melted into adoring eyes and a childlike giggle. Then those
snake eyes turned to me. “So you can bring us back with
you?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but Sofie’s
warning rang loudly in my mind:
Don’t trust our kind
. My
instincts told me to heed the warning and, though those instincts
had proven to be equivalent to those of a lobotomy patient, I
decided to listen. I looked straight into those yellow eyes and I
shook my head. It was easy to lie to her. Enjoyable,
actually.

My lie prompted crestfallen expressions, which
didn’t make sense. I looked around at their faces. “Why would you
want to come back with me?”

Something unspoken passed between them,
conveyed only with a look.

“
Because you’re the only one left,”
Fiona answered quietly.

I frowned. “Only what left?”

“
Human.”

My jaw dropped.

Amelie sighed heavily. “Where do we begin? In
our world—Ratheus—humans are extinct. You have been for seven
hundred years.”

I swallowed hard, unable to blink. “Why? …
How?”

“
We caused it,” Caden answered
coldly, having moved away from me to stand on the other side of the
fire. “We killed them, every last one.”

A
shiver ran down my spine.
That’s why Jethro reacted the way he did when he saw me.
Now it made sense.

“
Not us, specifically. Our
species—vampires,” Bishop clarified, the last word coming
softly.

“
We did our share, though,” Caden
said, turning to pace, head lowered.

“
Why?” I heard myself
croak.

“
Vampires were no more than a myth
for thousands of years, characters in horror movies. But then
drained bodies with bite marks started showing up, left out for
display. There was a new generation of our kind—one that didn’t
care, that wanted people to be afraid. The humans fought back in
the only way they knew how: war. One that escalated so quickly, it
was too late to reverse the effects, by the time we found out.
Vampires converted humans by the hundreds to build their army.
Humans killed any vampire they could catch. They even killed other
humans, if there was any doubt as to what they were.”

“
So your kind can be killed?” I
asked, my folklore facts not yet up to speed.

“
It’s hard, but yes. With nuclear
warfare, everything within the blast radius will die, including
vampires. The radiation did nothing to us, but it was deadly to the
humans. Between the blasts and the radiation, few humans survived;
most of the world was destroyed within a few months.”

I asked into the silence, “How did you get
away?”

“
There was this large island in the
middle of the ocean, thousands of miles from anything else. It was
inhabited by people, but not overly developed—a Third World
country; under the radar, so to speak. Many of us fled here,
betting that it would survive. We were right. We brought humans
with us, to breed. But humans take too long to reproduce and their
blood is too tempting. They didn’t last long.”

“
So now you live off animals? Like
Viggo and Mortimer?”

A cynical smile touched Caden’s lips. “Just
like them. But we’re starving—always starving—without human blood.
Some of our kind experimented with feeding off other vampires. It
mutated them into something altogether evil. You saw it …
Jethro.”

I shuddered, those white, veiny eyes flashing
in my mind. “How many of you are left?”

“
A lot less than there used to be.
There’s this self–formed Council composed of the strongest and
oldest of our kind. They decided the population needed shrinking.
We,” he gestured at the others, “hid well and survived. Since then,
for over seven hundred years, they’ve been searching for a secret
human civilization, hoping some survived somewhere in the world.
But we know there aren’t any left. Deep down, we all know that. No
human can survive in this world.”

I noted the present tense, and his silent
message. I was human. I couldn’t survive here.

Caden’s next words confirmed it. “There is no
‘good and bad’ of our kind. We’re all bad.”

“
Caden!” Bishop warned.

“
And if the Council got hold of
you,” Caden continued, ignoring him. “They’ll do anything to get to
this world of yours, to have a new crop of humans to feed off. It
isn’t safe to be around us.”

“
Stop saying ‘we’ and ‘us,’ Caden.
We aren’t like
those demons
,” Amelie said, throwing a
withering glare in Rachel’s direction.

“
I’m here, aren’t I? And I’ve helped
you so far, haven’t I?” Rachel retorted haughtily.

“
Us or yourself?” Fiona
muttered.

“
You’re a Council member,” I said
slowly. “So was Jethro,” I added, recalling his greeting the other
night.

“
Yes, and I killed him. For you. So
you can trust me.” Again, that sickly sweet smile that made my skin
crawl. Hearing those two words, the same two words the vampire
uttered before he sank his teeth into my neck, had the opposite
effect. I had never trusted anyone less.

Here I was, a one–way ticket to survival for
some lucky vampire. If I could bring back only one of them, how
would I tell them? Or could I bring more than one? I had no idea!
And, save for Rachel, how would I choose between the others? Would
they make me choose?

Grateful I had listened to Sofie’s warning, I
said quickly, “Well, none of them can come back with me.” I forced
down the lump that rose in my throat with the lie. “No one
can.”

Amelie put her hands on mine. “It’s okay,
Evangeline. We’re not like them.”

“
So … you don’t want to come back
with me?”

“
Oh no, we do,” Amelie answered
firmly. “But not to feed off humans.”

“
Then why?”

She paused. “To feel like we’re alive, instead
of just …”

“
Existing,” Fiona finished for
her.

“
And we’d never hurt you to get
there,” Amelie added. “But we, the
four
of us, are in the
minority here.”
Another dig at Rachel.

Rachel grinned back viciously. “You’re such a
convincing liar, Amelie, that I almost bought it.”