I fell back on the tiny stretch of dry land, exhausted. For a second, I was too scared to move.
Then I saw Angelus standing there, glued to the book, reading in the light of the flickering green and gold flames.
I knew what I had to do. And I didn’t have long to do it.
I pulled myself to my feet.
There it was. It was open on the pedestal, right in front of me.
In front of Angelus, too.
THE CASTER CHRONICLES
I reached for the book, and it burned my fingers.
“Don’t,” Angelus growled, grabbing my wrist. His eyes were shining, as if the book had some strange hold on him. He didn’t even look up from the page. I’m not sure he could.
Because it was his page.
I could almost read it from where I stood, a thousand rewritten words, one crossed out over the next. I could see the quill, ink-stained at the tip, almost twitching in his fingers next to the book.
So this was how he’d done it. How he’d forced the supernatural world to bend to his will. He controlled the story. Not just his, but all of ours.
Angelus had changed everything.
One person could do that.
And one person could change it back.
“Angelus?”
He didn’t answer. Staring into the book, he looked more like a zombie than the corpses did.
So I didn’t look. Instead, I closed my eyes and pulled on the page, as hard and as fast as I could.
“What are you doing?” Angelus sounded frantic, but I didn’t open my eyes. “What have you done?”
My hands were burning. The page wanted to rip free from me, but I wouldn’t let go. I only held on tighter. Nothing was going to stop me now.
It came off in my hands.
The ripping sound reminded me of an Incubus, and I half expected to see John Breed or Link appear next to me. I opened my eyes.
No such luck. Angelus reached for the page, shoving me in one direction while pulling my arm in another.
I grabbed a dripping candle from the pedestal stand and lit the bottom of the page on fire. It began to smoke and flame, and Angelus howled with rage.
“Leave it! You don’t know what you’re doing! You could destroy everything—” He threw himself at me, punching and kicking, almost ripping my shirt off. His nails raked my skin, again and again, but I didn’t let go.
I didn’t let go when I felt the flames sear their way down to my fingers.
I didn’t let go when the ink-smeared page crumbled into ash.
I didn’t let go until Angelus himself crumbled into nothing, as if he was made of parchment.
Finally, when the wind had blown every last trace of the Keeper and his page into oblivion, I found myself staring at my burnt, blackened hands.
“My turn.”