The Queen of the Dead and the Damned.
Laughing so hard her black curls slithered through the air, like the snakes on Obidias’ hand. My worst nightmare.
Sarafine Duchannes.
CHAPTER 32
Throne of Bones
Her dark cloak flapped in the wind like a shadow. The mist swirled around her black-buckled boots, disappearing into the darkness, as if she could draw it to her. Maybe she could. After all, she was a Cataclyst—the most powerful Caster in two universes.
Or the second most powerful.
Sarafine pushed back her cloak, letting it fall off her shoulders, around her long black curls. My skin went cold.
“Karma’s a bitch, wouldn’t you say, Mortal Boy?” she called across the pit, her voice confident and strong. Full of energy and evil.
She stretched luxuriously, clasping the arms of the chair in her own bony claws.
“I wouldn’t say anything, Sarafine. Not to you.” I tried to keep my voice even. I hadn’t wanted to see her in one lifetime, let alone two.
Sarafine beckoned with one curving finger. “Is that why you’re hiding? Or are you still afraid of me?”
I took a step closer. “I’m not afraid of you.”
She cocked her head. “I don’t know that I blame you. After all, I did kill you. A knife to the chest, in warm Mortal blood.”
“Hard to remember back that far. I guess you weren’t that memorable.” I folded my arms stubbornly. Trying to hold my ground.
It was no use.
She rolled a ball of mist toward me, and it wrapped around me, closing the gap between us. I felt myself moving forward, powerless, as if she was dragging me by a leash.
So she still had her powers even here.
Good to know.
I stumbled over the ridge of an inhuman skeleton, something twice as big as me, with twice as many arms and legs. I swallowed. More powerful creatures than a guy from Gatlin County had met their fates here. I hoped she wasn’t the reason why.
“What are you doing here, Sarafine?” I tried not to sound as intimidated as I was. I dug my feet into the dirt.
Sarafine leaned back in her throne of bones, examining the nails on one of her claws. “Me? Lately I’ve spent most of my time being dead, like you. Oh, wait—you were there. You watched when my daughter let me burn to death. A real charmer, that one. Teenagers. What are you going to do?”
Sarafine had no right to mention Lena. She’d surrendered that right when she walked away from a burning house with her baby daughter inside. When she tried to kill Lena like she’d killed Lena’s father. And me.
I wanted to throw myself at her, but every instinct I had left told me to stay back. “You’re nothing, Sarafine. You’re a ghost.”
She smiled when I said the word “ghost,” biting the tip of one of her long black nails. “Something we have in common now.”
“We don’t have anything in common.” I could feel my hands clenching into fists. “You make me sick. Why don’t you get out of my sight?”
I didn’t know what I was saying. I wasn’t in any position to be ordering her around. I didn’t have a weapon. No possible means of attack. No way past her.
My mind raced, but I couldn’t find an advantage—and you couldn’t let Sarafine get the upper hand.
Kill or be killed, that was her style. Even when it seemed like we should have moved past something as Mortal as death.
Her mouth curled into a snarl. “Your sight?”
She laughed, a cold sound that rippled down my spine. “Maybe your girlfriend should have thought about that before she killed me. She’s the reason I’m here. If it weren’t for that ungrateful little witch, I would still be in the Mortal world. Instead of stuck in the dark, battling the ghosts of lost and pathetic Mortal boys.”
She was close enough now that I could see her face. She didn’t look too good, even for Sarafine. Her dress was ragged and black, the bodice charred into tattered pieces. Her face was smudged with soot, and her hair smelled like smoke.
Sarafine turned toward me, her eyes glowing and white—milky with an opaque light I had never seen before.
“Sarafine?”
I took a step back—just as she struck me with a bolt of electricity, the smell of burnt flesh traveling faster than her body possibly could.
I heard a psychotic scream. Saw her face, contorted into an inhuman death mask. Sharp teeth seemed to match the dagger she held in her hand—only inches from my throat.
I winced, pulling back from the blade, but I knew it was too late. I wasn’t going to make it.
Lena!
Sarafine stopped short, as if smashed backward by an invisible current. Her arms stretched toward me, her blade shaking with anger.
Something was wrong with her.
I heard the sound of chains as she fell, stumbling back toward her throne. She dropped the blade, and her long skirt kicked open, and I saw the manacles around her ankles. The chains holding her to the ground and pinning her to the throne.
She wasn’t the Queen of the Underworld. She was an angry dog trapped in a kennel. Sarafine screamed, beating her fists against the bones. I moved to the side, but she didn’t even look at me.
Now I understood.
I picked up a bone and tossed it at her. She didn’t react until it hit the throne, falling harmlessly into the pile of debris at her feet.
She spit at me, shaking with rage. “Fool!”
But I knew the truth.
Her white eyes saw nothing.
Her pupils were fixed.
She was blind.
Maybe it was from the fire that had killed her in the Mortal world. It all came flooding back to me—the terrible end of her terrible life. She was as damaged here as she was when she burned to death. But that wasn’t all. Something else had happened. Even the fire couldn’t explain the chains.
“What happened to your eyes?” I watched her recoil when I said it. Sarafine wasn’t one to show weakness. She was better at finding and exploiting it.
“My new look. Old blind woman, like the Fates or the Furies. What do you think?” Her lips curved over her teeth, into a growl.
It was impossible to feel sorry for Sarafine, so I didn’t. Still, she seemed bitter and broken.
“The leash is a nice touch,” I said.
She laughed, but it was more like the hiss of an animal. She had become something that didn’t resemble a Dark Caster, not anymore. She was a creature, maybe even more of one than Xavier or the River Master. She was losing it—whatever part of our world she’d known.
I tried again. “What happened to your sight? Was it the fire?”
Her white eyes burned as she answered. “The Far Keep wanted to have their fun with me. Angelus is a sadistic pig. He thought they would even the odds by forcing me to battle without being able to see my opponents. He wanted me to know how it would feel to be powerless.” She sighed, picking at a bone. “Not that it’s slowed me down yet.”
I didn’t think it had.
I looked at the circus of bones surrounding her, the bloodstains in the dirt at her feet. “Who cares? Why fight? You’re dead. I’m dead. What do we even have left to fight about? Tell this Angelus guy to go jump off a—”
“Water tower?” She laughed.
But I had a point, if you thought about it. It was starting to feel like those old Terminator movies between us. If I killed her now, I could imagine her skeleton dragging itself across this pit with glowing red eyes until it could kill me a thousand more times.
She stopped laughing. “Why are you here? Think about it, Ethan.” She lifted her hand, and I felt my throat beginning to close. I gasped for air.
I tried to back away, but it was pointless. Even with her dog chain, she still had enough power to make my not-quite-a-life miserable.
“I’m trying to get into the Great Keep.” I choked. I tried to inhale, but I couldn’t get a real breath.
Am I even breathing, or am I only imagining it?
Like she said herself, she’d already killed me once. What was left?
“I just want to take my page. You think I want to be stuck here forever, wandering through a maze of bones?”
“You’ll never get past Angelus. He’d die before he’d let you near The Caster Chronicles.” She smiled, twisting her fingers, and I gasped again. Now it felt like she had a hand around my lungs.
“Then I’ll kill him.” I grabbed at my neck with both hands. My face felt like it was on fire.
“The Keepers already know you’re here. They sent an officer to lead you into the labyrinth. They didn’t want to miss out on the fun.” Sarafine twisted around at the mention of the Keepers, as if she was looking over her shoulder, which we both knew she wasn’t. An old habit, I guess.
“I still have to try. It’s the only way I can get home.”
“To my daughter?” Sarafine rattled her chains, looking disgusted. “You never give up, do you?”
“No.”
“It’s like a sickness.” She rose from her throne, crouching on her heels like an evil, overgrown little girl, dropping the hand that was choking me. I collapsed onto a heap of bones. “You really think you can hurt Angelus?”
“I can do anything if it will get me back to Lena.” I looked straight into her sightless eyes. “Like I said, I’ll kill him. At least part of him is Mortal. I can do it.”
I don’t know why I said it that way. I guess I wanted her to know, in case there was any small part of her that still cared about Lena. Any part of her that needed to hear I really would do anything under the sun to find a way back to her daughter.
Which I would.
For a second, Sarafine didn’t move. “You actually believe that, don’t you? It’s charming, really. Shame you have to die again, Mortal Boy. You certainly amuse me.”
Light flooded into the pit, as if we really were two gladiators competing for our lives.
“I don’t want to fight. Not with you, Sarafine.”
She smiled darkly. “You really don’t know how this works, do you? The loser faces Eternal Darkness. It’s simple enough.” She sounded almost bored.
“There’s something Darker than this?”
“Much.”
“Please. I just need to get back to Lena. Your daughter. I want to make her happy. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, and I know you’ve never wanted to make anyone happy but yourself, but it’s the only thing I want.”
“I want something, too.” She twisted the fog around her in her hands until it wasn’t fog at all but something glowing and alive—a ball of fire. She stared right at me, even though I knew she couldn’t see. “Kill Angelus.”
Sarafine started to Cast, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Fire shot from the base of her throne, spreading in all directions. It moved closer and closer, turning from orange to blue and purple flames as it ignited bone after bone.
I backed away from her.
Something was wrong. The fire was growing, spreading faster than I could run. She wasn’t trying to stop the flames.
She was the one making them grow.
“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Are you crazy?”