Page 29 of Claiming Chaos
8
ASH
My brain throbbed in my skull, and I pressed the heels of my hands to my temples, countering the pressure. I opened my eyes to bright white light, and my stomach lurched. Sitting up, I dry heaved, thanking the goddess my dinner didn’t splatter on the floor.
“Ash?” The familiar voice calmed me, and I looked up to find Chaos standing behind a set of iron bars.
I blinked and rubbed my eyes, trying to focus. “Where are we?”
“Are you okay?” He started to grab the bars but fisted his hands, dropping them to his sides instead.
“I think so. What happened?” My vision returned to normal, and the pounding in my head lessened to a dull ache.
He exhaled, some of the tension releasing from his shoulders. “We’re imprisoned in a coven house. The cells neutralize magic, even mine, and the bars are enchanted with some sort of pain spell. I don’t advise touching them.”
“Sounds like you know that from experience.” I stood and took in my surroundings. My cell had three wooden walls and an iron gate. A cot sat on the hardwood in the middle of the small space, and an unnecessarily bright light fixture hung from a beam above.
Chaos stood across the hall in an identical enclosure, his jaw tight, a vein protruding from his forehead. “Only an elemental witch would be powerful enough to contain me for this long.”
“Yeah, the New Orleans covens are run by water witches.” I turned to the back wall and lifted a hand to knock my fist against it.
“Don’t.”
The moment my knuckles met the wood, an electric jolt zipped up my arm and exploded through my body like a million needles jabbing me from the inside out. “Son of a bitch!”
I clutched my chest, making sure my heart still beat. The sensation felt a lot like the electrification spell in Boston.
“The walls are enchanted as well,” Chaos said.
“No kidding.” I opened and closed my fist, the pain slowly subsiding as I rolled my neck. “I don’t remember anything after the shadow rolled over us. Do you?”
“I was mildly coherent through it all. Though my vision blurred too much for me to identify the culprits, their voices sounded like the ones we encountered yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” I snapped my gaze to his eyes. “We’ve been here all night?”
“When I leaned against the bars, I saw the door at the end of the hall. I assume daylight illuminated the edges, though it could have been a yellow electric light.”
“Crap. Crappity, crap, crap, crap. Chrys must be in Salem by now. Has she summoned Mayhem? Can you sense him?”
“I sense nothing outside these walls.”
“We need to warn my sister.” I slapped my back pocket. Of course they’d taken my phone. “Ugh! What are we going to do? Chrys could be using Mayhem to destroy everything as we speak. We have to get you home. You’re the only one who can stop him.”
His lips twitched. “They have not only electrified the bars and neutralized our magic, but they have also cast a containment circle around each cell. I’m afraid we’re at their mercy until they arrive to retrieve us. They want to question us.”
“Of course they do. We’re fire witches who know about the rifts.” I sank onto the cot and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay, let’s get our story straight. I had no idea the rifts were spreading, and they’ll surely blame us. Who knows what Chrys told them.”
He crossed his arms. “My chaos magic normally works through any containment or suppression spell. Unless they know what I am and have guarded themselves against my power, I will be able to drive them mad. If you’ll allow me, I can make it so they don’t remember we were ever here.”
“And then what?” I dropped my hands into my lap. “Unless you can control their minds and make them let us out, we’ll still be stuck in here.”
He frowned. “No, my magic is about disorder, not control. I cannot command anyone in a maddened state.”
“They’d end up killing each other, and we’d be left to rot.”
He arched a brow. “Unless one of the witches who dies is the one whose magic has trapped us.”
I laughed dryly. That Chaos. He always looked on the bright side of destruction, didn’t he? “As tempting as that sounds, I think our best bet is to tell them what’s going on. We can blame it all on Chrys, tell them she’s summoning the demons, and we have to go to Salem to stop her.”