Beautiful Darkness(122)

I hadn't been so sure about Leah, but Lucille had never let me down. She was a good judge of character, even if she was a cat.

A Caster cat. I should have known.

Leah tucked the staff under her belt, and I knew the time for talk was over. “Ready?”

Macon reached out his hand, and I took it. For a second, I could feel the power in his grip, as if we were in some kind of Caster conversation I couldn't comprehend. Then he let go, and I turned toward the cave, wondering if I would ever see him again.

I led the way and, motley or not, my friends were right behind me. My friends, a Succubus, and a mountain lion named after a volatile voodoo god. I only hoped it was enough.





6.20





Dark Fire


When we reached the base of the cliff, we hid behind a rock formation a few yards from the cave. Two Incubuses were guarding the entrance, talking in low tones. I recognized the scarred one from Macon's funeral. “Great.” Two Blood Incubuses, and we weren't even inside. I knew the rest of the pack couldn't be far away.

“Leave them to me, but you may not want to watch.” Leah signaled Bade, who loped to her side.

The staff flashed through the air like lightning. The two Incubuses never saw it coming. Leah had the first Incubus on the ground in seconds. Bade lunged, catching the other by the throat and pinning him. Leah rose, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, and spat, a bloody spot marking the sand. “Old blood, seventy, a hundred years. I can taste it.”

Link's mouth hung open. “Is she expecting us to do that?”

Leah bent at the neck of the second Incubus for barely a minute before she was waving us on. “Go.”

I didn't move. “What do we — what do I do?”

“Fight.”

The entrance to the cave was so bright, the sun could have been shining inside. “I can't do this.”

Link looked into the cave nervously. “What are you talkin’ about, man?”

I looked at my friends. “I think you guys should go back. This is too dangerous. I shouldn't have dragged you into this.”

“Nobody dragged me anywhere. I came to —” Link looked at Ridley, then turned away awkwardly. “To get away from it all.”

Ridley flipped her muddy hair dramatically. “Well, I certainly didn't come here because of you, Short Straw. Don't flatter yourself. As much as I like hanging out with you dorks, I'm here to help my cousin.” She looked at Liv. “What's your excuse?”

Liv's voice was quiet. “Do you believe in destiny?”

We all looked at Liv like she was crazy, but she didn't care. “Well, I do. I've been watching the Caster sky for as long as I can remember, and when it changed, I saw it. The Southern Star, the Seventeenth Moon, my selenometer that everyone at home teased me about — this is my destiny. I was supposed to be here. Even if … no matter what.”

“I get it,” said Link. “Even if it wrecks everything, even if you know you're gonna get busted, sometimes you gotta do it anyway.”

“Something like that.”

Link tried to crack his knuckles. “So what's the plan?”

I looked at my best friend, who had shared his Twinkie with me on the bus in second grade. Was I really going to let him follow me into a cave to die? “There's no plan. You can't come with me. I'm the Wayward. This is my responsibility, not yours.”

Ridley rolled her eyes. “Obviously the whole Wayward thing hasn't been explained to you properly. You don't have any superpowers. You can't leap over tall buildings in a single bound or fight Dark Casters with your magic cat.” Lucille peeked out from behind my leg. “Basically, you're a glorified tour guide who's no better equipped to face a bunch of Dark Casters than Mary P. over here.”

“Aquaman,” coughed Link, winking at me.

Liv had been quiet until now. “She's not wrong. Ethan, you can't do this alone.”

I knew what they were doing — or more like not doing. Leaving. I shook my head. “You guys are idiots.”

Link grinned. “I'd have gone with ‘brave as hell,’ myself.”





We stayed pressed against the cavern walls, following the moonlight pouring through the crack in the ceiling. As we rounded a corner, the rays became impossibly bright, and I could see the pyre below us. It rose from the center of the cave, golden flames encircling it and licking up the pyramid of broken trees. There was a stone slab, which almost resembled some kind of Mayan altar, balanced on top of the pyre as if suspended from invisible wires. A set of weathered stone stairs led up to the altar. The snaking circle worn by Dark Casters was painted on the cave wall behind it.

Sarafine's body was lying on top of the altar, just as it had been when she had appeared in the woods. Nothing else was the same. Moonlight streamed through the roof and hit her body, radiating outward in all directions as if refracted by a prism. It was like she was holding light from the moon she was calling out of time — Lena's Seventeenth Moon. Even Sarafine's golden dress looked like it was stitched together from a thousand shining metallic scales.

Liv breathed. “I've never seen anything like it.”

Sarafine seemed to be in some kind of trance. Her body rose a few inches above the stone, the folds of her dress cascading down like water, past the edges of the stone altar. She was amassing some serious power.