Beautiful Redemption (43 page)

One by one, I touched the row of doors in front of me with my hand. Some felt as cold as ice. Some felt like nothing, like plain wood. There was only one that pulsed beneath my fingertips.

Only one burned at my touch.

I knew it was the right door, before I saw the telltale Caster circles carved into the rowan wood, just like the
Temporis Porta
.

This was the doorway to the heart of the Great Keep. The one place any son of Lila Jane Evers Wate would instinctively find his way, whether or not he was a Wayward.

The library.

Pushing my way through the massive doors directly across from the
Temporis Porta
, I knew it was time to face the most dangerous part of my journey.

Angelus would be waiting.

The doors were just the beginning. The moment I stepped into the inner chamber, I found myself standing in an almost entirely reflective room. If it was supposed to be a library, it was the strangest one I’d ever seen.

The crumbling stones beneath my feet, the stubbled cave walls, the ceiling and floor that grew into stalactites and stalagmites as the room circled back upon itself—they all seemed to be made of some kind of transparent gemstone, cut into a thousand impossible facets that reflected the light in every
direction. It looked like I was standing in one of the eleven jewelry boxes in Xavier’s collection.

Except less claustrophobic. A small opening in the ceiling let in enough natural light to catch the whole room in a dizzying glow. The effect reminded me of the tidal cave where we’d first met Abraham Ravenwood, on the night of Lena’s Seventeenth Moon. In the center of this room, there was a pond of water the size of a swimming pool. The body of milky white water churned as if there was a fire beneath it. It was the color of Sarafine’s sightless opaque eyes, before she died….

I shuddered. I couldn’t think about her, not now. I had to focus on surviving Angelus. Defeating him. I took a deep breath and tried to get my bearings. What was I dealing with?

My eyes fixed on the bubbling white liquid. In the center of the pool, a small stretch of earth rose above the water, like a tiny island.

In the center of the island was a pedestal.

On the pedestal was a book, surrounded by candles that flickered with strange green and gold flames.

The book.

I didn’t need someone to tell me which book it was, or what it was doing here. The reason there was an entire library devoted to only one book, and with a moat around it.

I knew exactly why it was here, and why I was.

It was the only part of this whole journey I understood. The only thing that was perfectly clear from the moment Obidias Trueblood told me the truth about what had happened to
me. It was
The Caster Chronicles
, and I was here to destroy my page. The one that killed me. And I had to do it before Angelus could stop me.

After all I’d learned about being a Wayward and finding my way—this was where it led. There was no way left to go, no more path to find.

I was at the end.

And all I wanted was to go back.

But first I had to get to that island—to the pedestal and
The Caster Chronicles
. I had to do what I’d come here to do.

A shout from across the room startled me. “Mortal Boy. If you leave now, I will leave you your soul. How’s that for a challenge?” Angelus appeared on the other side of the pool. I wondered how he got over there, and I wished there were as many ways to leave this room as there were to enter it.

Or at least, as many ways home.

“My soul? No, you won’t.” I stood at the edge of the pool and chucked a rock into the bubbling water, watching it disappear. I wasn’t stupid. He would never let me go. I would end up like Xavier or Sarafine. Black wings or white eyes—it didn’t make a difference. In the end, we were all bound in his chains, whether you could see them or not.

Angelus smiled. “No? I suppose that’s true.” He gestured with his hand, and at least a dozen rocks rose into the air around him. They fired themselves at me, one after another, hitting with uncanny accuracy. I flung my arms across my face as a rock sailed past.

“Very mature. What are you going to do now? Tie me up and stick me in your old boneyard? Blind and chained like an animal?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t want a Mortal pet.” He twisted his finger, and the water began to spin into a kind of whirlpool. “I’ll just destroy you. It’s easier for all of us. Though not much of a challenge.”

“Why did you torture Sarafine? She wasn’t a Mortal. Why bother?” I shouted.

I had to know. It felt like our fates were tied together somehow—mine, Sarafine’s, Xavier’s, and those of all the other Mortals and Casters Angelus had destroyed.

What were we to him?

“Sarafine? Was that her name? I had almost forgotten.” Angelus laughed. “Do you expect me to concern myself with every Dark Caster who ends up here?”

The water churned violently now. I knelt and touched it with one hand. It was freezing cold and sort of slimy. I didn’t want to swim through it, but I couldn’t tell if there was another way across.

I looked up at Angelus. I didn’t know how this whole challenge thing was going to take shape, but I thought it was better to keep him talking until I figured it out. “Do you blind every Dark Caster and make them fight to the death?”

I looked back at the water. It rippled where I had touched it, turning clear and calm.

Angelus folded his arms, smiling.

I kept my hand in the water as the transparent current spread across the pool, though my hand was going numb. Now I could see what was really beneath the milky surface.

Corpses. Just like the ones in the river.

Floating upward, their green hair and blue lips looked like masks on their bloated dead bodies.

Like me
, I thought.
That’s what I look like, right now. Somewhere—where I still had a body.

I heard Angelus laughing. But I could barely hear, barely think. I wanted to vomit.

I backed away from the water. I knew he was trying to frighten me, and I resolved not to look at it again.

Keep your mind on Lena. Get to the page, and you can go home.

Angelus watched me, laughing harder. He called to me as if I was a child. “Don’t be afraid. Your final death doesn’t have to happen like this. Sarafine failed to achieve the tasks entrusted to her.”

“So you do know her name.” I cracked a smile.

He glared. “I know she failed me.”

“You and Abraham?”

Angelus stiffened. “Congratulations. I see you’ve been digging around in matters that are none of your concern. Which means you’re no smarter than the first Ethan Wate who visited the Great Keep. And no more likely to see the Duchannes Caster you love than he was.”

My whole body went numb.

Of course. Ethan Carter Wate had been here. Genevieve told me.

I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “What did you do to him?”

“What do you think?” A sadistic smile spread across Angelus’ face. “He tried to take something that did not belong to him.”

“His page?”

With every question, the Keeper looked more satisfied. I could tell he was enjoying this. “No. Genevieve’s—the Duchannes girl he loved. He wanted to lift the curse she brought upon herself and the Duchannes children who would come after her. Instead, he lost his foolish soul.”

Angelus looked down into the churning water. He nodded, and a single corpse rose to the surface. Empty eyes that looked too much like my own stared back at me.

“Look familiar, Mortal?”

I knew that face. I would’ve known it anywhere.

It was mine. Or actually, his.

Ethan Carter Wate was still wearing the Confederate uniform he died in.

My heart dropped. Genevieve would never see him again, not in this world or any other. He had died twice, like me. But he would never get back home. Never hold Genevieve in his arms, even in the Otherworld. He had tried to save the girl he loved, and Sarafine and Ridley and Lena and all the other Casters who would come after her in the Duchannes family.

He’d failed.

It didn’t make a guy feel better. Not about standing where I
stood. And not about leaving a Caster girl behind, the way we both had.

“You will fail as well.” The words echoed across the cavern.

Which meant Angelus was reading my mind. At this point, it was the least surprising thing happening in the room.

I knew what I had to do.

I emptied my mind the best I could, picturing the old baseball diamond where Link and I used to play T-ball. I watched Link throw a bum pitch in the ninth inning as I stood on home plate punching my glove. I tried to picture the batter. Who was it? Earl Petty, chewing gum, since the coach had outlawed chaw?

I struggled to keep my mind on the game while my eyes did something else.

Come on, Earl. Knock it out of the park.

I glanced at the pedestal, then at the corpses floating at my feet. More bodies continued to rise, bumping into one another like sardines packed in a can. It wouldn’t be long until they were so close that I wouldn’t even be able to see the water.

If I waited, maybe I could use them as stepping stones….

Stop! Think about the game!

But it was too late.

“I wouldn’t try it.” Angelus watched me from the other side of the pool. “No Mortal can survive that water. You need the bridge to cross, and as you can see, it’s been removed. A security precaution.”

He held his hand in front of him, twisting the air into a current I could feel all the way across the water.

I had to brace myself to stay on my feet.

“You will not retrieve your page. You will die the same dishonorable death as your namesake. The death all Mortals deserve.”

“Why me, and why him? Why any of us? What did we ever do to you, Angelus?” I shouted at him over the wind.

“You are inferior, born without the gifts of Supernaturals. Forcing us to stay in hiding while your cities and schools fill with children who will grow to do nothing more than occupy space. You’ve turned our world into our prison.” The air picked up, and he twisted his hand further. “It’s absurd. Like building a city for rodents.”

I waited, picturing that stupid baseball game—Earl swinging, the crack of the bat—until the words formed, and I spoke them. “But you were born a Mortal. What does that make you?”

His eyes widened, his face a mask of pure rage. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.” I turned my mind to the vision I’d seen, forcing myself to remember the faces, the words. Xavier, when he was just a Caster. Angelus, when he was just a man.

The wind increased, and I stumbled, the edge of my sneaker splashing at the edge of the pool of bodies. I braced myself, willing my feet not to slip.

Angelus’ face had turned even paler than before. “You know nothing! Look what you sacrificed—to save what? A town full of pathetic Mortals?”

I closed my eyes, letting the words find him.

I know you were born a Mortal. All those experiments can’t change that. I know your secret.

His eyes widened, hate raging across his face. “I am not a Mortal! I never was, and I never will be!”

I know your secret.

The wind picked up, and rocks flew again through the air—harder this time. I tried to shield my face as they pelted my ribs, smashing against the wall behind me. A trail of blood ran down my cheek.

“I will tear you to shreds, Wayward!”

I screamed over the din. “You may have powers, Angelus, but deep down, you’re still a Mortal, just like me.”

You can’t harness Dark forces like Sarafine and Abraham, or Travel like an Incubus. You can’t cross that water any more than I can.

“I am not Mortal!” he screamed.

Nobody can.

“Liar!”

Prove it.

There was a second, one terrible second, when Angelus and I stared across the water at each other.

Then, without a word, Angelus flung himself into the air, lunging across the corpses in the pool—as if he couldn’t contain himself a moment longer. That’s how desperate he was to prove he was better than me.

Better than a Mortal.

Better than anyone else who ever tried to walk on water.

I had been right.

The rotting corpses were packed so tight that he ran right over their bodies until they started to move. Arms reached for him, the hundreds of bloated hands rising up out of the water. This was not like the river I had crossed to get here.

This river was alive.

An arm slithered over his neck, weighing him down.

“No!”

I shuddered as his voice echoed against the walls.

The corpses tore at his robe desperately, pulling him down into the abyss of loss and misery. The same souls he had tortured were drowning him.

His eyes locked on mine. “Help me!”

Why should I?

But there was nothing I could do, even if I’d wanted to. I knew those corpses would drown me. I was Mortal, just as Angelus was—at least part of him.

Nobody walks on water, not where I come from. Nobody except the guy in the picture frame in Sunday school class.

Too bad Angelus wasn’t from Gatlin; he would’ve known that.

His hands clawed at the surface of the water until there was nothing left but a sea of bodies again. The stench of death was everywhere. It was suffocating, and I tried to cover my mouth, but the distinct odor of rot and decay was too strong.

I knew what I’d done. I wasn’t innocent. Not in Sarafine’s death, and not in this one either. He was reading my mind and
I had pushed him to this, even if his hate and pride had propelled him into the pool.

It was too late.

A rotted arm slid around his neck, and within seconds he disappeared under the sea of bodies. It was a death I wouldn’t have wished on anyone.

Not even Angelus.

Maybe just him.

Within moments, the pool turned milky white again, though I knew what was lurking underneath.

I shrugged. “Wasn’t much of a challenge after all.”