Chapter 54
WRITTEN IN THE STARS
Disembodied whispers carry on the wind, snatching hats and whipping cloaks. Spiraling gusts kick up dirt and dead leaves, sending debris in violent swirls. Contraptions tick and blink and hum, like the cemetery itself has come alive.
A ghost hunter’s last stand.
Twig’s minefield.
The epitaphs on tombstones glow.
Lantern flame erupts in pale blue.
Party-goers cry out, their bodies flickering and glitching as the ground rumbles underfoot.
A bolt of lightning forks upward.
A speaker explodes.
Teens scream.
Tree roots tear through soil and grass, rising like skeletal fingers from the grave.
Twig shouts my name as the tomb splits open.
Wind shrieks from within.
A black ring of fire ignites around its mouth.
A white flame shoots up from the abyss. Like a firework, it erupts in concentric circles.
They widen, pushing apart the mist and the fog, until—for one heart-stopping moment—the supernatural realm is laid bare.
Winged creatures. Chained souls. Ruined altars.
A terrifying vision that twists into a single beam of pale light that strikes the pearl.
The ruby ignites beside it like a domino.
The comet burns red, bathing the cemetery in a bloody glow.
My heart burns in my chest. Rafe clutches his own.
His knife clatters to the ground as corporeal veins pulse across the sky, emitting a euphoric song and a devastating wail that coalesce, then implode into a single beating ember that slowly sinks into the ruby.
The onyx begins to glow. Every other light goes dim. Lanterns and sparklers snuffed in the wind. Even the comet slips behind clouds as shadows pull free and writhe like snakes across the ground. With a bone-chilling screech, they slither up the archway and crawl into the black stone.
Seraphina’s powers—to see what is hidden, to control human hearts, to manipulate darkness and shadow—have been reunited with their amulets.
Jude clambers to my side. He takes my hand and tries to shield me as the curse swells. I can feel it building like the crest of an icy wave.
The locket beats beneath my shirt—wildly, euphorically—as another rift tears open. A jagged, vertical split through the air, and through its warped shimmer, I glimpse the other side.
A mob of stampeding partygoers scramble for safety, only they don’t know where to run. I spot Twig, working furiously against the wind, adjusting a rigged-up array of copper rods wired to a humming battery. Sparks spit from the panel as wind tears at his clothes.
Shadowed wings unfurl from the tomb. And Seraphina emerges, her eyes aglow. Her skin, pale and luminous. Her long, raven hair whipping in the wind, framing a face that is terrifying in its beauty.
Rafe drops to his knee.
The black ring of flame shrinks.
The wind goes quiet.
So does the chaos on the other side of the veil.
Slowly, she turns to Rafe in a gown woven from shadow and starlight. The hem tattered as though dragged through a battlefield.
“Raphael,” she says in a voice that is both honey and venom, melodic and inhuman. “I thought you wouldn’t come.”
“Of course I came.”
She traces her pale finger down his cheek.
He looks up at her, his eyes reflecting her glow. “You left me buried in a half-life, waiting for the stars to align.”
“I left you? Oh no no, my sweet.” She brings the tip of her finger beneath his chin. “You have your brother to thank for that. Please tell me you made him pay.”
“Him and every generation after.”
She smiles a slow, bone-chilling smile, then turns in our direction. “And who do we have here?”
“The last of Ezra’s line,” Rafe says. “And the girl he bleeds for.”
Fear coils in my gut.
Jude shifts, like doing so might hide me.
Seraphina’s glowing eyes glitter. “Is this love I see? Oh, how delightful.”
She turns to the archway and lifts the onyx between her fingers—obsidian dark, glowing with power. She sighs a contented, blissful sigh as darkness spills from the stone like undulating liquid suspended in the air.
“Do you have any idea how wonderful it is to be reunited with my beloveds after so long without them?” For a moment, the darkness swirls hypnotically.
Then, with a flick of her wrist, it streaks toward me with impossible speed.
I stumble backward and fall. Jude tries to intervene, tries to stop what is happening, but how do you fight shadow?
It passes through him like mist.
He shouts my name as darkness curls around my neck, squeezing, tightening, lifting me off my toes.
The world dims.
My eyes bulge.
I choke—unable to breathe.
“Let her go!” Jude shouts.
The darkness releases its hold.
I collapse to the ground, coughing and spluttering as Jude crouches beside me.
Seraphina watches with idle amusement. Then she smiles venomously. “I think it’s time for your friends to meet one of my darlings.”
She lifts the onyx again, high above her head.
From the chasm behind her, something stirs.
A wet, slithering sound slurps across stone.
I watch in frozen horror as a tentacle emerges, slick and glistening, as thick as a man’s torso.
A second tentacle follows. Then a third.
The creature unfurls from the mouth of the tomb like a snake uncoiling from hell itself.
Seraphina raises her hand in a graceful arc, as if commanding a symphony.
And the beast responds. With another flick of her wrist, it strikes.
A tentacle lashes through the veil.
It grabs a girl in a fairy costume.
The tentacle wraps around her waist and with a yank, she’s pulled through the rift.
For one horrifying second, her eyes lock with mine.
I recognize her.
She’s in my AP Lit class.
Her body distorts. Her scream warbles. And with a violent convulsion, she erupts in fire, then bursts into ash.
My mouth opens in a silent scream as Seraphina lifts her hand again, and the second tentacle strikes.
Another girl is snatched.
Lainey Sikes.
Twig lunges for her. With his good arm, he grabs her by the wrist. With his broken arm, he fires one of the rods.
It sails through the rift as he loses his grip on Lainey.
She’s yanked through, her costume a horrible irony.
Dressed like a fallen angel, her mouth twists in a horrifying cry as she, too, combusts in a burst of ghostly flame.
And just as my body catches up with the horror, Twig is grabbed by the ankle.
A scream tears up my throat. I snatch Rafe’s knife from the ground and charge as Twig claws at the dirt, kicking wildly.
But he has nothing to grab. His foot is dragged through the opening.
With a war cry, I drive the blade into the creature’s slimy tentacle.
At the same time, Jude seizes the copper rod and plunges it deep into the tentacle’s base.
With a horrific and high-pitched shriek, it flings Twig across the ground and withdraws, slithering back into the shadows from which it came.
My heart pounds as Twig scrambles to safety and Seraphina plucks the ruby from the archway, like she’s ready for a new toy to play with.
The ember rises. It lifts from the stone and pulses in the air.
She gives her head a sadistic tilt.
Jude gasps.
He sinks to his knees, clutching his chest, his face bone-white. I drop beside him and beg her to stop. “Stop! Please, stop!”
The ember returns to the stone.
Jude sucks in a breath.
“See how weak love makes them?” Seraphina purrs, turning her attention to Rafe, who has remained on one knee, watching the events unfold. She glides to Jude, stops in front of him, and gazes deep into his eyes as though searching for devotion or desire.
They only glow with defiance and disgust.
She pouts. “Same as Ezra, I see. Immune to my charm. A trick of Dante’s I did not foresee. I believe every firstborn of his line carries the immunity. To keep them safe, I suppose. Retain the upper hand.”
Seraphina rolls her eyes. “Better had he made them immune to love altogether. Then perhaps all of this could have been avoided. Ezra certainly wouldn’t have begged me so pathetically to spare his brother.” She sighs. “I did warn him there would be repercussions.”
I feel them—the repercussions.
The curse spreads like ice through my veins.
“And now this dear girl.” She tuts. “One more tragedy in a long line of tragedies.”
The cold is unbearable.
Inescapable.
“I’ll kill your sweet Selah while you watch,” she tells Jude, her voice soft and cruel. “But you can go on in misery. That I will allow. Mind you, it will be nothing compared to two hundred sixty-eight years trapped in there, left to rot.”
Seraphina reaches for the final gemstone as I pull off the locket, my hand tightening around it.
Jude meets my gaze.
His love burns like a flame, the only warm thing within me.
Seraphina lifts the pearl.
The air around it ripples, and I know what’s coming. The locket may be tucked inside my fist, but once she wields the power of the pearl, I won’t be able to hide it any longer.
She narrows her eyes. “What is that you have in there?”
I open my hand.
The silver chain dangles between my fingers.
Behind Seraphina, Rafe shifts, as though to get a look for himself.
“Oh, how splendid,” she says with a smile. “Are you one of my own? And is that your protection? Unfortunately for you, your life matters not to me. My bloodline has become quite vast. Ridding the world of you will do nothing to diminish my power, silly girl.”
“It’s not for my protection.”
She frowns, as though she can’t imagine why it would be for anything else.
I pick up Rafe’s knife and cut my finger.
Blood drips onto the silver.
The locket begins to glow.
Then it opens, and the wind returns and alarm ignites in Seraphina’s eyes.
Evil may have corrupted what is good, but it doesn’t get the final say.
Seraphina turned love into a weapon of destruction.
But all my life, love has given me strength.
Maybe not from my mother, but certainly from my father, who has been there always, waiting up on his recliner.
And Twig, my co-adventurer, who not only believed in the wild things but explored them with me.
And the Calloways, who made sure a warm supper would be waiting for us after every expedition.
And Jude, the steadfast skeptic, who in the end, would battle all the things he doubted to keep me safe.
With the strength of that love, I lower my finger to the tiny beating heart—fates entwined by the touching of blood.
But something happens then that I do not expect. That I did not anticipate.
Jude grabs my arm, his eyes blazing, steady and fierce. Before I can object, before I even have time to react, he takes the opened locket with the very same hand he cut with a rock.
“No,” I gasp, like a sucker punch to the gut. The kind that doubles a person over.
But it’s too late.
A bolt of white-hot power bursts from his chest. It lashes through the air and wraps around Seraphina’s wrist like the creature she drew forth, only this one is made of light. A luminous strand of supernatural energy stretched taut and crackling with heat.
With a scream, Seraphina tries to escape.
But she can’t break the tether.
Rafe shouts and lunges forward only to be lashed back. He hits the ground hard and rolls into shadow.
Jude draws me close and brings his mouth to mine.
The curse ignites.
It surges inside me like ice-fire.
Ready to feed.
Ready to consume.
But not me.
As his fingers tangle in my hair, the icy cold begins to drain, as though being drawn out.
Siphoned from me into him. There’s a spark of icy blue where the tether meets Jude’s chest, and like frost racing across glass, it moves down the length of the lasso.
Until the entire thing pulses with an eerie, electric cold.
The curse is moving.
Passing through Jude.
Coming straight for her.
With an ear-splitting cry, Seraphina tries to flee. But there’s no escape. She is trapped, entwined, her fate written in the stars—not with mine, but Jude’s.
Light fractures through her skin like broken glass. She is fissuring from the inside out, pressure building like steam in a kettle. And then, with a sonic boom, she bursts into pieces. Completely obliterated as the curse that has plagued generation upon generation, at last, turns upon its maker.
The world around me buckles.
Light and shadow ripple and split, then tear completely. With a thunderous snap, the veil between dimensions disintegrates.
The tether fades to nothing.
The air is cold.
The sky, full of stars.
For a moment, there is silence. So deep, it feels like the earth itself is holding its breath. I turn to where Rafe lay, and watch him disappear in fading pixels. Like a dream. Like my mother. Until he’s gone. And it’s just me and Jude.
For one whole, impossible second, he stares at me—triumphant, glorious. “Ezra never said it had to be you,” he whispers, his voice weak.
So very weak.
Then his gaze softens.
“Jude?”
He sways.
Then he falls.
I drop to my knees beside him and cradle his head in my arms. “Please, Jude. Please stay with me.”
But the light leaves his eyes and he’s with me no more.
The price has been paid.
No mortal can touch the divine and live.