Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

There was a loud crack as the bed frame broke and the mattress crashed to the floor. I tried to throw them off. But I was pinned.

Please don’t let it be Hunting.

An arm flew out in front of me, the way my mom’s always did when I was a kid and she hit the brakes of the car unexpectedly. “Dude, chill!”

I stopped fighting. “Link?”

“Who else would risk disintegratin’ into a million pieces to save your sorry ass?”

I almost laughed. Link had never Traveled before, and now I knew why. Ripping must be harder than it looked, and he sucked at it.

Abraham’s voice cut through the darkness. “Save him? You? I think it’s a little late for that.” Link almost jumped out of the broken pile of bed at the sound of Abraham’s voice. Before I could answer, my bedroom door flew open so hard it almost came off the hinges. I heard the click of the light switch, and black splotches blurred everything as my eyes adjusted to the light.

“Holy—”

“What the devil is goin’ on in here!” Amma was standing in the doorway, wearing the rose-patterned bathrobe I bought her for Mother’s Day, with her hair wrapped in rollers and her hand wrapped around her old wooden rolling pin.

“—hell,” Link whispered. I realized he was practically sitting in my lap.

But Amma didn’t notice. Her eyes zeroed in on Abraham Ravenwood.

She pointed the rolling pin at him, her eyes narrowing. She circled him like a wild animal, only I couldn’t tell who was the predator and who was the prey.

“What are you doin’ in this house?” Her voice was angry and low. If she was afraid, she sure didn’t show it.

Abraham laughed. “Do you actually think you can chase me off with a rolling pin, like a lame dog? You can do better than that, Miss Treadeau.”

“You get outta my house or, the Good Lord as my witness, you’ll wish you were a lame dog.” Abraham’s face hardened. Amma turned the rolling pin so that it pointed at Abraham’s chest, like the tip of a sword. “Nobody messes with my boy. Not Abraham Ravenwood, not the Serpent or Old Scratch himself, you hear?”

Now the rolling pin was pushing into Abraham’s jacket. With every inch, the thread of tension between the two of them pulled tighter. Link and I moved closer to Amma on either side.

“This is the last time I’m going to ask,” Abraham said, his eyes bearing down on Amma. “And if the boy doesn’t answer me, your Lucifer will seem like a welcome reprieve from the hell I will rain down on this town.”

He paused and looked at me. “Where is John?”

I recognized the look in his eye. It was the same look I had seen in the visions, when Abraham killed his own brother and fed from him. It was vicious and sadistic, and for a second I considered naming a random place so I could get this monster out of my house.

But I couldn’t think fast enough. “I swear to God, I don’t—”

The wind blew in through the broken window, hard, whipping around us and scattering papers all over the room. Amma staggered back, and her rolling pin went flying. Abraham didn’t move, the wind blowing past him without so much as rustling his jacket, as if it was as terrified of him as the rest of us.

“I wouldn’t swear, boy.” He smiled, a terrible, lifeless smile. “I would pray.”

9.19

Winds of Hell

The wind rushed through my window with a force so powerful it took everything on top of my desk with it. Books and papers, even my backpack, twisted in the air, swirling like a tornado trapped in a bottle. The towers of shoe boxes that lined my walls crashed to the floor, sending everything from comic books to my bottle cap collection from first grade flying through the air. I grabbed hold of Amma, who was so tiny I was worried she might get picked up with everything else.

“What’s happenin’?” I could hear Link yelling from somewhere behind me, but I couldn’t see him.

Abraham was standing in the center of the room, his voice calling into the churning black vortex. “To those who have brought destruction into my house, I invite chaos into yours.” The wind circled around him without even catching his coattails. He was commanding it. “The Order is Broken. The Door is Open. Arise, Ascend, Destroy!” His voice grew louder. “Ratio Fracta est! Ianua Aperta est! Sugite, Ascendite, Exscindite!” Now he was shouting. “Ratio Fracta est! Ianua Aperta est! Sugite, Ascendite, Exscindite!”

The swirling air darkened and began to take shape. The hazy black forms jerked out of the spiral, as if they were climbing their way out of the vortex and hurling themselves over the edge, into the world. Which seemed pretty disturbing, considering what they were hurling themselves into was the middle of my bedroom.

I knew what they were. I’d seen them before. I never wanted to see them again.

Vexes—the Demons that inhabited the Underground, void of soul and shape—erupted from the wind, curling into dark forms that moved across my plain blue ceiling, growing until it seemed like they would suck all the air from the room itself. The creatures of shadow moved like a thick, churning fog, shifting in the air. I remembered the one that had almost attacked us outside Exile—the terrifying scream when it reared back and opened its jaws. As the shadows grew into beasts in front of us, I knew the screaming wouldn’t be far behind.