Beautiful Creatures (66 page)

Surprised, Ethan? You think Lena’s the only Caster on this channel?

Sarafine’s voice began to fade.

Let her try to stay Light now.

As I drifted away, all I could think was if you stuck me in a Confederate uniform, I’d be Ethan Carter Wate. Even down to
the same stomach wound, with the same locket in my pocket. Even if all I had ever deserted was the Jackson High basketball
team, rather than Lee’s army.

Dreaming about a Caster girl I would always love. Just like the other Ethan.

Ethan! No!

No! No! No!

One minute I was screaming, the next, the sound was stuck in my throat.

I remember Ethan falling. I remember my mother smiling. The glint of the knife, and the blood.

Ethan’s blood.

This couldn’t be happening.

Nothing moved, nothing. Everything was frozen perfectly in place, like a scene in a wax museum. The billows of smoke remained
billows. They were fluffy and gray, but they went nowhere, neither up nor down. They just hung in the air as if they were
made of cardboard, part of a backdrop in a play. The tongues of flame were still transparent, still hot, but they consumed
nothing and made no sound. Even the air didn’t move. Everything was exactly as it had been a second before.

Gramma was hunched over Mrs. Lincoln, about to touch her cheek, her hand hanging in the air. Link was holding his mother’s
hand, kneeling in the mud like a scared little boy. Aunt Del and Marian were crouched on the lower steps of the crypt passageway,
shielding their faces from the smoke.

Uncle Macon lay on the ground, Boo crouching next to him. Hunting was leaning against a tree a few feet away, admiring his
handiwork. Larkin’s leather coat was on fire and he was facing the wrong direction, halfway down the road toward Ravenwood.
Predictably running from, rather than toward, the action.

And Sarafine. My mother held a carved dagger, an ancient Dark thing, high above her head. Her face was feverish with fury
and fire and hate. The blade still dripped blood over Ethan’s lifeless body. Even the drops of blood were frozen in the air.

Ethan’s arm was stretched out, over the edge of the crypt roof. It hung, dangling, down toward the graveyard below.

Like our dream, but in reverse.

I hadn’t fallen through his arms. He was ripped from mine.

Below the crypt, I reached up, pushing aside flame and smoke, until my fingers interlocked with Ethan’s. I was standing on
my toes, but I could barely reach him.

Ethan, I love you. Don’t leave me. I can’t do this without you.

If there was moonlight, I could have seen his face. But there was no moon, not now, and the only light came from the fire,
still frozen, surrounding me on every side. The sky was empty, absolutely black. There was nothing. I had lost everything
tonight.

I sobbed until I couldn’t breathe and my fingers slipped through his, knowing I would never feel those fingers in my hair
again.

Ethan.

I wanted to scream out his name even though no one would hear me, but I didn’t have a scream left in me. I had nothing left,
except those words. I remembered the words from the visions. I remembered every one of them.

Blood of my heart.

Life of my life.

Body of my body.

Soul of my soul.

“Don’t do this, Lena Duchannes. Don’t you mess with that Book a Moons and start this darkness all over again.” I opened my
eyes. Amma stood next to me, in the fire. The world around us was still frozen.

I looked at Amma. “Did the Greats do this?”

“No, child. This is your doin’. The Greats just helped me come along.”

“How could I have done this?”

She sat down next to me, in the dirt. “You still don’t know what you’re capable of, do you? Melchiz-edek was right about that,
at least.”

“Amma, what are you talking about?”

“I always told Ethan he might pick a hole in the sky one day. But I reckon you’re the one who did that.”

I tried to wipe the tears off my face, but more just kept coming. When they reached my lips, I could taste the soot in my
mouth. “Am I—Am I Dark?”

“Not yet, not now.”

“Am I Light?”

“No. Can’t say you’re that, either.”

I looked up in the sky. The smoke covered everything—the trees, the sky, and where there should have been a moon and stars,
there was only a thick black blanket of nothing. Ash and fire and smoke and nothing.

“Amma.”

“Yes?”

“Where’s the moon?”

“Well if you don’t know, child, I sure don’t. One minute I was lookin’ up at your Sixteenth Moon. And you were standin’ under
it, starin’ up at the stars like only God in Heaven could help you, palms raised like you was holdin’ up the sky. Then, nothin’.
Just this.”

“What about the Claiming?”

She paused, considering. “Well, I don’t know what happens when there’s no Moon on your birthday on the Sixteenth Year, at
midnight. It’s never happened before, far as I know. Seems to me there can’t be a Claimin’, if there’s no Sixteenth Moon.”

I should have felt relief, joy, confusion. But all I could feel was pain. “Is it over, then?”

“Don’t know.” She held out her hand and pulled me up, until we were both standing. Her hand was warm and strong, and I felt
clear-headed. Like we both knew what I was going to do. Just as, I suspect, Ivy had known what Genevieve would do, on this
spot, more than a hundred years ago.

As we opened the cracked cover of the Book, I knew immediately which page to turn to, as if I had known all along.

“You know it’s not natural. And you know there’s bound to be consequences.”

“I know.”

“And you know there’s no guarantee it’ll work. It didn’t turn out so well the last time. But I can tell you this: I’ve got
my great-great-aunt Ivy downtown with the Greats, and they’ll help us if they can.”

“Amma. Please. I don’t have a choice.”

She looked into my eyes. Finally, she nodded. “I know there’s nothin’ I can say that’ll keep you from doin’ it. Because you
love my boy. And because I love my boy, I’m goin’ to help you.”

I looked at her and I understood. “Which is why you brought
The Book of Moons
here tonight.”

Amma nodded, slowly. She reached toward my neck with her hand, and pulled the necklace holding the ring out from inside Ethan’s
Jackson High sweatshirt, which I still was wearing. “This was Lila’s ring. He had to love you somethin’ fierce to give it
to you.”

Ethan, I love you.

“Love is a powerful thing, Lena Duchannes. A mother’s love, that’s not somethin’ to be trifled with. Seems to me, Lila’s been
tryin’ to help out, as best she could.”

She ripped the ring off my neck. Where the chain broke, I could feel a mark, cutting into my skin. She slipped the ring on
my middle finger. “Lila would’ve liked you. You have the one thing Genevieve never had when she used the Book. The love a
two families.”

I closed my eyes, feeling the cool metal against my skin. “I hope you’re right.”

“Wait.” Amma reached down and pulled Genevieve’s locket, still wrapped in her family handkerchief, out of Ethan’s pocket.
“Just to remind everyone that you’ve already got the curse.” She sighed uneasily. “Don’t want to be tried twice for the same
crime.”

She laid the locket on the Book. “This time we make it right.”

Then she took the well-worn charm off her own neck, and laid it on the Book, next to the locket. The small gold disc looked
almost like a coin, the image faded with wear and time. “To remind everyone, if they’re messin’ with my boy, they’re messin’
with me.”

She closed her eyes. I closed mine. I touched the pages with my hands, and began to chant—at first slowly, then louder and
louder.

“CRUOR PECTORIS MEI, TUTELA TUA EST.

VITA VITAE MEAE, CORRIPIENS TUAM, CORRIPIENS MEAM.”

I spoke the words with confidence. A certain confidence that only comes from truly not caring whether you live or die.

“CORPUS CORPORIS MEI, MEDULLA MENSQUE,

ANIMA ANIMAE MEAE, ANIMAM NOSTRAM CONECTE.”

I called out the words to the frozen landscape, though there was nobody but Amma to hear them.

“CRUOR PECTORIS MEI, LUNA MEA, AESTUS MEUS.

CRUOR PECTORIS MEI. FATUM MEUM, MEA SALUS.”

Amma reached for me, taking my trembling hands in her strong ones, and we spoke the Cast again, together. This time we spoke
in the language of Ethan and his mother, Lila, of Uncle Macon and Aunt Del and Amma and Link and little Ryan and everyone
who loved Ethan, and who loved us. This time, what we spoke became a song.

A love song—to Ethan Lawson Wate, from the two people who loved him most. And would miss him the most, if we failed.

BLOOD OF MY HEART, PROTECTION IS THINE.

LIFE OF MY LIFE, TAKING YOURS, TAKING MINE.

BODY OF MY BODY, MARROW AND MIND,

SOUL OF MY SOUL, TO OUR SPIRIT BIND.

BLOOD OF MY HEART, MY TIDES, MY MOON.

BLOOD OF MY HEART. MY SALVATION, MY DOOM.

Lightning struck me, the Book, the crypt, and Amma. At least, that’s what I thought had happened. But then, I remember it
feeling that way to Genevieve, too, in the visions. Amma was thrown back against the wall of the crypt, her head knocking
against the stone.

I felt the electricity course through my body and relaxed into it, accepting the fact that if I died, at least I would be
with Ethan. I felt him, how near he was to me, how much I loved him. I felt the ring, burning on my finger, how much he loved
me.

I felt my eyes burning, and everywhere I looked, I saw a haze of golden light, as if it were coming from me somehow.

I heard Amma whisper. “My boy.”

I turned toward Ethan. He was bathed in gold light, just like everything else. He was still motionless. I looked at Amma in
panic. “It didn’t work.”

She leaned against the stone altar, closing her eyes.

I screamed, “It didn’t work!”

I stumbled away from the Book, into the mud. I looked up. The moon was there again. I raised my arms above my head, toward
the heavens. Heat burned through my veins where there should have been blood. The anger welled inside me, with nowhere to
go. I could feel it eating away at me. I knew if I didn’t find a way to release it, it would destroy me.

Hunting. Larkin. Sarafine.

The predator, the coward, and my murderous mother, who lived to destroy her own child. The gnarled branches of my Caster family
tree.

How could I Claim myself when they had already claimed the only thing that mattered to me? The heat surged up through my hands,
as if it had a will of its own. Lightning streaked across the sky. I knew where it was going even before it hit.

Three points on a compass, with no North to guide me.

The lightning exploded into flame, striking its three targets simultaneously—the ones who had taken everything from me tonight.
I should have wanted to look away, but I didn’t. The statue that had been my mother a moment before was strangely beautiful,
engulfed in flame, in the moonlight.

I lowered my arms, wiping the dirt and ash and grief from my eyes, but when I looked back she was gone.

They were all gone.

The rain began to fall, and my blurred vision sharpened until I could see the sheets of rain hitting the smoking oaks, the
fields, the thickets. I could see clearly for the first time in a long time, maybe ever. I made my way back toward the crypt,
toward Ethan.

But Ethan was gone.

Where Ethan’s body had been lying moments before, now there was someone else. Uncle Macon.

I didn’t understand. I turned to Amma for answers. Her eyes were enormous, frightened. “Amma, where’s Ethan? What happened?”

But she didn’t answer me. For the first time ever, Amma was speechless. She was staring at Uncle Macon’s body, dazed. “Never
thought it would end like this, Melchizedek. After all those years, holdin’ the weight a the world on our shoulders together.”
She was talking to him as if he could hear her, even though her voice was tinier than I had ever heard it. “How am I gonna
hold it up on my own?”

I grabbed her shoulders, her sharp bones digging into my palms. “Amma, what’s going on?”

She raised her eyes to meet mine, her voice barely a whisper. “You can’t get somethin’ from the Book, without givin’ somethin’
in return.” A tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek.