Beautiful Creatures (33 page)

Ethan—

I had to find her.

A sudden surge of pain. Her voice was growing quieter now. I stumbled, grabbing onto the shoulder of the robed guest next
to me. All I did was touch him and the pain, Lena’s pain, flowed through me and into him. He staggered, bumping into the couple
dancing next to him.

“Macon!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

I saw Boo Radley at the head of the stairs, like he was waiting for me. His round, human eyes looked terrified.

“Boo! Where is she?” Boo looked at me, and I saw the clouded, steely gray eyes of Macon Ravenwood; at least, I could’ve have
sworn I did. Then Boo turned and ran. I chased him, or I thought I was chasing him, running up the spiraling stone stairs
of what was now Ravenwood Castle. At the landing, he waited for me to catch up, then ran toward a dark room at the end of
the hall. From Boo, that was practically an invitation.

He barked, and two massive oaken doors groaned open by themselves. They were so far away from the party, I couldn’t hear the
music or the chatter of the guests. It was as if we had entered a different place and time. Even the castle was changing under
my feet, the rock crumbling, the walls growing mossy and cold. The lights had become torches, hung on the walls.

I knew about old. Gatlin was old. I had grown up with old. This was something altogether different. Like Lena had said, a
New Year. A night out of time.

When I entered the main chamber, I was struck by the sky. The room opened wide to the heavens, like a conservatory. The sky
above it was black, the blackest sky I’d ever seen. Like we were in the middle of a terrible storm, yet the room was silent.

Lena lay on a heavy stone table, curled in a fetal position. She was soaking wet, drenched in her own sweat and writhing in
pain. They were all standing around her—Macon, Aunt Del, Barclay, Reece, Larkin, even Ryan, and a woman I didn’t recognize,
holding hands, forming a circle.

Their eyes were open, but they weren’t seeing. They didn’t even notice I was in the room. I could see their mouths moving,
mumbling something. As I stepped closer to Macon, I realized that they weren’t speaking in English. I couldn’t be sure, but
I’d spent enough time with Marian to think it was Latin.

“Sanguis sanguinis mei, tutela tua est.

Sanguis sanguinis mei, tutela tua est.

Sanguis sanguinis mei, tutela tua est.

Sanguis sanguinis mei, tutela tua est.”

All I could hear was the quiet mumbling, the chanting. I couldn’t hear Lena anymore. My head was empty. She was gone.

Lena! Answer me!

Nothing. She just lay there, moaning softly, twisting slowly like she was trying to shed her own skin. Still sweating, sweat
mixed with tears.

Del broke the silence, hysterical. “Macon, do something! It’s not working.”

“I’m trying, Delphine.” There was something in his voice I’d never heard before. Fear.

“I don’t understand. We Bound this place together. This house is the one place she was supposed to be safe.” Aunt Del looked
at Macon for answers.

“We were wrong. There’s no safe haven for her here.” A beautiful woman about my grandmother’s age with spirals of black hair
spoke. She wore strands of beads around her neck, piled one on top of the other, and ornate silver rings on her thumbs. She
had the same exotic quality Marian possessed, as if she was from somewhere far from here.

“You don’t know that, Aunt Arelia,” Del snapped, turning to Reece. “Reece, what’s happening? Can you see anything?”

Reece’s eyes were closed, tears streaming down her face. “I can’t see anything, Mamma.”

Lena’s body seized and she screamed—at least she opened her mouth and looked as if she was screaming, but she didn’t make
a sound. I couldn’t take it.

“Do something! Help her!” I shouted.

“What are you doin’ here? Get out of here. It’s not safe,” Larkin warned. The family had noticed me for the first time.

“Concentrate!” Macon sounded desperate. His voice rose over the others’, louder and louder, until he was shouting—

“Sanguis sanguinis mei, tutela tua est!

Sanguis sanguinis mei, tutela tua est!

Sanguis sanguinis mei, tutela tua est!

Blood of my blood, protection is thine!”

The members of the circle tensed their arms as if to give the circle more strength, but it didn’t work. Lena was still screaming,
silent screams of terror. This was worse than the dreams. This was real. And if they weren’t going to stop it, I would. I
ran toward her, ducking under Reece and Larkin’s arms.

“Ethan, NO!”

As I entered the circle, I could hear it. A howl. Sinister, haunting, like the voice of the wind itself. Or was it a voice?
I couldn’t be sure. Even though it was only a few feet to the table where she was lying, it felt like it was a million miles
away. Something was trying to push me back, something more powerful than anything I’d ever felt before. Even more powerful
than when Ridley was freezing the life out of me. I pushed against it with everything I had in me.

I’m coming, Lena! Hold on!

I threw my body forward, reaching, like I reached in the dreams. The black abyss in the sky began to spin.

I closed my eyes and lunged forward. Our fingers touched, barely.

I heard her voice.

Ethan. I…

The air inside the circle whipped around us violently, like a vortex. Swirling up toward the sky, if you could still call
it a sky. Into the blackness. There was a surge, like an explosion, slamming Uncle Macon, Aunt Del, everyone onto their backs,
into the walls behind them. In the same moment, the spinning air within the broken circle was sucked up into the blackness
above.

Then it was over. The castle dissolved into a regular attic, with a regular window, swinging open under the eaves. Lena lay
on the floor, in a tangle of hair and limbs and unconsciousness, but she was breathing.

Macon pulled himself up from the floor, staring at me, stunned. Then he walked over to the window and slammed it shut.

Aunt Del looked at me, tears still streaming down her face. “If I hadn’t seen it myself…”

I knelt at Lena’s side. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. But she was alive. I could feel her, a tiny throb pulsing in her
hand. I lay my head down next to her. It was all I could do not to collapse.

Lena’s family slowly contracted around us, a dark circle talking over my head.

“I told you. The boy has power.”

“It’s not possible. He’s a Mortal. He’s not one of us.”

“How could a Mortal break a
Sanguinis
Circle? How could a Mortal ward off a
Mentem Interficere
so powerful that Ravenwood itself came all but Unbound?”

“I don’t know, but there has to be an explanation.” Del raised her hand above her head.
“Evinco, contineo, colligo, includo.”
She opened her eyes. “The house is still Bound, Macon. I can feel it. But she got to Lena anyway.”

“Of course she did. We can’t stop her from coming for the child.”

“Sarafine’s powers are growing by the day. Reece can see her now, when she looks in Lena’s eyes.” Del’s voice was shaky.

“Striking us here, on this night. She was just making a point.”

“And what point would that be, Macon?”

“That she can.”

I could feel a hand at my temple. It caressed me, moving across my forehead. I tried to listen, but the hand made me sleepy.
I wanted to crawl home to my bed.

“Or that she can’t.” I looked up. Arelia was rubbing my temples, as if I were a little broken sparrow. Only I could tell she
was feeling for me, for what was inside me. She was searching for something, rummaging around in my mind as if she was looking
for a lost button or an old sock. “She was foolish. She made a critical error. We’ve learned the only thing we really needed
to know,” Arelia said.

“So you agree with Macon? The boy has power?” Del sounded even more frantic now.

“You were right before, Delphine. There must be some other explanation. He’s a Mortal, and we all know Mortals can’t possess
power on their own,” Macon snapped, as if he was trying to convince himself as much as anyone.

But I had begun to wonder if it wasn’t true. He had said the same thing to Amma in the swamp, that I had some kind of power.
It just didn’t make sense, even to me. I wasn’t one of them, that much I knew. I wasn’t a Caster.

Arelia looked up at Macon. “You can Bind the house all you want, Macon. But I’m your mother and I’m tellin’ you that you can
bring in every Duchannes, every Ravenwood, make the Circle as wide as this godforsaken county if you want. Cast all the
Vincula
you can. It’s not the house that protects her. It’s the boy. I’ve never seen anything like it. No Caster can come between
them.”

“So it would seem.” Macon sounded angry, but he didn’t challenge his mother. I was too tired to care. I didn’t even lift my
head.

I could hear Arelia whispering something in my ear. It seemed like she was speaking Latin again, but the words sounded different.

“Cruor pectoris mei, tutela tua est!

Blood of my heart, protection is thine!”

11.01

I
n the morning, I had no idea where I was. Then I saw the words covering the walls and the old iron bed and the windows and
the mirrors, all scrawled with Sharpie in Lena’s handwriting, and I remembered.

I lifted my head up, and wiped the drool off my cheek. Lena was still sacked out; I could just see the edge of her foot hanging
over the side of the bed. I pushed myself up, my back stiff from sleeping on the floor. I wondered who had brought us down
from the attic, or how.

My cell phone went off; my default alarm clock, so Amma would only have to yell up the stairs three times to get me up. Only
today, it wasn’t blaring “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It was the song. Lena sat up, startled, groggy.

“What happ—”

“Shh. Listen.”

The song had changed.

Sixteen moons, sixteen years,

Sixteen times you dreamed my fears,

Sixteen will try to Bind the spheres,

Sixteen screams but just one hears…

“Stop it!” She grabbed my cell and turned it off, but the verse kept playing.

“It’s about you, I think. But what’s Binding the spheres?”

“I almost died last night. I’m sick of everything being about me. I’m sick of all these weird things happening to me. Maybe
the stupid song is about you, for a change. You’re actually the only sixteen-year-old here.” Frustrated, Lena flung her hand
up in the air and opened it. She closed it into a fist, and banged it against the floor like she was killing a spider.

The music stopped. There was no messing with Lena today. I couldn’t blame her, to be honest. She looked green and wobbly,
maybe even worse than Link did the morning after Savannah had dared him to drink the old bottle of peppermint schnapps out
of her mom’s pantry, on the last day of school before winter break. Three years later and he still wouldn’t eat a candy cane.

Lena’s hair was sticking out in about fifteen directions, and her eyes were all small and puffy from crying. So this was what
girls looked like in the morning. I had never seen one, not up close. I tried not to think about Amma and the hell I was going
to pay when I got home.

I crawled up onto the bed and pulled Lena into my lap, running my hand through her crazy hair. “Are you okay?”

She shut her eyes and buried her face in my sweatshirt. I knew I must reek like a wild possum by now. “I think so.”

“I could hear you screaming, all the way from my house.”

“Who knew Kelting would save my life.”

I had missed something, as usual. “What’s Kelting?”

“That’s what it’s called, the way we’re able to communicate with each other no matter where we are. Some Casters can Kelt,
some can’t. Ridley and I used to be able to talk to each other in school that way, but—”

“I thought you said it had never happened to you before?”

“It’s never happened to me before with a Mortal. Uncle Macon says it’s really rare.”