Christmas Chaos (Christmas Magic Book 2)

by Alexandra Moody

  “Give it to me!” he roared.

  The sound echoed throughout the cavern, and I could feel the power in his voice. It was terrifying how strong it was, but I tried to remain calm and in control. “Tell me how to fix the barrier and I will hand it over.”

  “Pass it to me and I’ll tell you,” he countered.

  “I don’t think you should give it to him,” Dash murmured to me. “I don’t trust him. We’ll find another way.”

  The nameless one started laughing darkly under his breath. Without any hesitation, he stepped toward the invisible barrier that covered the front of his cell. It lit up with golden magic as he touched it, barring his way. I watched in horror as a dark green magic started to shimmer around his wrists, and he slowly began to push through the golden magic. Inch by inch he pressed his body through the barrier.

  I took a step backward, trying to put some distance between us, but within moments, the nameless one was free of his cell. He lifted his hands up and allowed his dark magic to spark around his fists. It smelled spicy and yet stale, but the intensity was like a punch to the nostrils as he unleashed his magic, causing the air to stir around us. It whipped at my clothes and hair, and tugged at the cube I was holding so tightly in my arms.

  I had thought the nameless was trapped and unable to use his magic and that all he had were powers of prophecy. But I had clearly been wrong. He’d simply been waiting for our return, and now that I had brought him the cube, there was nothing to stop him.

  As the wind became more intense, the nameless one’s hood fell backward, and my eyes widened as I took in the man the cloak had hidden from view. He was startlingly beautiful and young and nothing like the haggard old being I had imagined. The wind whipped through his jet-black hair, and his intense blue eyes were cruel. There was cold determination in them as he focused on the cube, and I began to feel true fear of the being before us. Chills ran down my arms as I continued to try to move away, but the wind had grown so strong that it was almost impossible to move against it toward the exit. Dirt and dust swirled through the air, and the ground beneath us seemed to shake.

  The nameless one smiled as his magic shot out of his hands and flew toward me. In a blinding swirl of green, it wrapped around the cube in my arms. I tried to keep a hold of it, but the magic yanked the cube away from me with ease, and the object flew toward the nameless one’s hands.

  I tried to reach forward to snatch it from the air before it was out of reach, but Dash grabbed a hold of me and pulled me back into his chest. “Don’t!” he warned. But I wasn’t ready to let it go so easily.

  The nameless one’s eyes were glowing as he caught the cube and turned it over in his hands, studying it intently. The wind still whipped ferociously around us, and his green magic still danced on his wrists, but his focus was entirely on the cube. It was like he’d forgotten we were even there.

  “Fine, you’ve got what you wanted,” I yelled at him. “Now tell us how to fix the barrier!”

  The nameless one’s gaze flicked up to meet mine, and he smirked. The wind died down in a heartbeat, and the ringing silence that replaced the constant thrashing in my ears was unsettling. His powers were far beyond anything I’d ever encountered before, and his command of them was terrifying.

  “The barrier is the least of your worries, child,” the nameless one purred. His voice was so much deeper and older than his appearance. I hated the way it made my skin crawl, and I hated the way the nameless one’s eyes lit up with glee as he spoke. “But, a promise is a promise,” he continued. “There is no way to fix the damage to the barrier.”

  “But you told us there was.”

  “No,” he replied. “I said I would tell you what you could do to fix it, and the answer is nothing.” The smirk on his lips grew larger, and Dash tightened his grasp on me as I bristled in reaction. The nameless one was no longer focused on us. He had turned his full attention back to the cube in his hands, which he was staring at with a look of fanatic obsession in his eyes.

  “Clio, I think we need to get out of here,” Dash said.

  But I wasn’t ready to leave. Not without the answers we needed.

  “You’re lying!” I shouted.

  But the nameless one continued to ignore me. I reached out my power to try to summon the cube from the creature’s grasp, but his green magic swirled in front of it, effectively blocking my attempt.

  “Don’t do something stupid, Clio,” Dash growled. “He is too dangerous.”

  Dash was right. The nameless one’s power saturated the air around us, making it feel heavy and crackle with energy. I was no match for him, but I didn’t want to give up.

  “We need to go.” Dash tried to pull me away, but I struggled, not ready to leave empty-handed. The world we knew was disintegrating outside the prison. With every day that passed, it was getting worse, and it wouldn’t be long before the damage was irreversible and our realm was left completely vulnerable. There had to be a solution. If I could just get the cube back, I might have some bargaining power.

  I finally broke free of Dash’s grasp and scrambled toward the nameless one. The moment I broke free though, green magic started to spit and sizzle around his hands. The black cube lifted into the air with green magic radiating around it, and I jerked to a stop as I watched it begin to pulse with power.

  A crack began to form in the smooth black surface, and blinding white light leaked out of the fracture. The rupture grew bigger, and other cracks appeared in the cube, as the green magic continued to swirl around the object, and the blinding white light grew stronger as it seeped out of the holes. I took a nervous step backward as I watched the light become more intense. The air around me buzzed and crackled with magic, and the pungent smell of the nameless one’s power was growing stronger by the second.

  “Clio, come on!” Dash grabbed my hand and tried to tug me away. This time, I let him. I could be an idiot sometimes, but I wasn’t stupid enough to stick around when such mighty power was being let loose.

  I went to turn, but as I did, the cube shattered entirely, and a glowing white orb was released from within. The orb hovered in the air, its white light pulsing and growing brighter as the nameless one’s green magic flowed into it. I stopped in my tracks, and my mouth dropped open at the sight. My heart seemed to skip a beat, and a wash of intense fear ran through me.

  “It’s a Christmas star!” I shouted to Dash. “We’ve given him a Christmas star!”

  I wanted to run forward to stop what was happening. I wanted to run away and escape. I was frozen in fear for only one moment, but that one moment was too long. The next thing I knew, the pulsing star erupted in a blinding flash of light. An explosion shook the ground with a deafening boom, and I felt the intense wave of power slam into my chest.

  I fell backward into Dash, and the two of us were flung through the air, over the edge of the precipice, and into the bottomless cavern.

  Air rushed past me, whipping at my face and hair as I fell. I was tumbling so fast that everything was a blur, and I couldn’t tell what was the roof and what was the floor we were plummeting toward. A choked scream echoed from my lungs, and the intense pressure of the air that whipped around me made my eyes water.

  Terror rocked through me, and I struggled to draw a breath. Magic swirled around my wrists, but I was plummeting toward my death, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  I caught a glimpse of the ground, and my heart felt like it shuddered to a stop. We’d fallen from hundreds of meters above, but the cavern floor was rapidly approaching. All I could think was that I didn’t want to die—I wasn’t ready to go.

  The ground was closing in when I felt a strong set of arms slam around my waist. “Grab onto me!” Dash shouted.

  Magic swirled around the two of us as he shifted into his reindeer form. I flung my arms around his neck, desperately clinging onto him as we continued to tumble. I knew Dash could fly closer to Christmas, but it still felt too early in the season for his magic to save us.
We were falling too fast. The ground was too close.

  We were seconds from slamming against the floor when Dash’s magic finally exploded around us once more. The intense fragrance of snow and cinnamon washed over me as our plummet slowed. He managed to reduce our speed but not enough to completely stop our fall. We hit the ground with jarring force, and the two of us landed in a heap.

  My body was shaking as I still gripped onto Dash’s neck. Tears wet my eyes, and my breaths came in short and sharp. Adrenaline was racing through me like I’d never felt before, and I couldn’t believe that my body wasn’t lying on the prison floor in a million pieces.

  Dash shifted back into his human form while I still had my arms wrapped tightly around his neck. “It’s okay, Clio,” Dash said, trying to calm me down. I was shaking as he gently took hold of my arms and lowered them from around his neck. “We’re both okay,” he repeated.

  My eyes were wide as I looked back up at the impossibly long drop we’d just survived. “If you hadn’t grabbed me…” I whispered.

  “I know,” he said. “But I did, and now we need to find a way out of here.”

  The ground around us was still shaking from the explosion, and I looked back up to where the Christmas star had erupted. It was a long way back up to the top of the cavern and the tunnel that was our only way of escape.

  “I still don’t understand,” I said. “Why did he want the second Christmas star? Why did he destroy it?”

  “Because he wants to destroy them all,” someone said behind me.

  I flinched with surprise at the masculine voice and spun around to find Jack standing there. There was none of the usual playfulness in his expression, and he was scowling up toward the roof of the cavern, his eyes filled with disapproval and concern.

  I was shocked to see him, especially after he’d abandoned the entrance to the prison. He was always so carefree and confident when he materialized before us, but now his appearance was disheveled, and he looked frantic. His clothes were dirty, and his hair was askew. His normally bubbly persona was completely gone.

  “Jack?” I asked. “What are you doing down here?”

  “I got here as quickly as I could when I sensed the Christmas star in the prison, but apparently, I was too late,” he replied as the earth around us shook again.

  “Why does the nameless one want the Christmas stars destroyed?” I added.

  “I’ll explain later,” he replied. “Right now, we need to get you both out of here. Follow me.”

  Jack led us toward one of the cavern walls where a stream of lava light was cascading down like a waterfall from the top of the cavern. He carefully edged around the searing hot liquid and beckoned for us to follow him. As I drew closer, I could see there was a door hidden behind the waterfall, which Jack opened and waved his hand at, urging us to pass through.

  I glanced at Dash, and he nodded for me to go ahead. I hesitated though. With the prison barriers down, I thought the frost would be long gone by now. I wasn’t sure if he could be trusted and whether we should blindly follow him, but as the earth quaked again, my doubts dispersed, and I scuttled forward.

  As I followed Jack through the doorway and into a dark passage, his ice blue magic lit up his fingertips. Dash was close behind me, and the three of us raced down the corridor.

  Eventually, we reached the end of the passage, where a single door awaited. A large golden wreath hung over the entrance, and Jack placed one hand on it before gesturing for us to do the same.

  “This is the quickest way out of here,” he said when I hesitated again.

  Jack was an infamous criminal and apparently expected us to trust him without question. I didn’t have much faith in the prisoners of Incarceror though. Not after what had just happened with the nameless one.

  “How do I know I can trust you?” I asked.

  Jack’s ice-blue eyes stared deeply into my own. “Because I’ve spent centuries guarding this prison against what just happened. Because I know the truth about you, and I can give you the answers you need. But mostly because if you don’t take hold of this wreath and let me get you out of here, you will die.”

  His explanation raised more questions than it answered, but I wasn’t stupid enough to ignore the part where Jack had said I would die if I didn’t accept his help. The ground around me quaked violently again, and that was more than enough motivation for me to reach out and place my hand on the wreath.

  Dash followed suit, and once the three of us were holding the wreath, the strong golden magic of the prison exploded out of the object. The magic rushed over the surface of the door behind it, turning the wood into a rippling golden liquid. At the same time, the sparkling golden magic reached out and wrapped itself around each of our bodies. It tingled across my skin and warmed me from the inside before jerking the three of us into the fluid door and tugging our bodies away from the darkened tunnel we stood in.

  I closed my eyes as we disappeared and prayed that I had made the right choice.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When I opened my eyes, we were standing in the mine outside the prison. The sun was just rising, and the sky was a dusky pink and purple color as morning dawned over the black desert around us. We were all still touching the golden wreath that had transported us out of the prison, but Jack suddenly made it disappear in a flash of golden magic. I frowned at the sight. The frost’s magic within Incarceror had been ice blue in color, not gold.

  “What the hell?” Blitz said, jumping with shock as he turned around and found us standing behind him, having appeared out of nowhere.

  Dash ignored Blitz’s surprise though. A fiery anger lit his eyes, and he turned his rage on Jack. “What happened back there?” Dash rumbled.

  Jack didn’t look the least bit intimidated as he met Dash’s fierce gaze. The frost looked just as angry himself.

  “What happened was that you just gave Belsnickel his powers back,” Jack growled. “And now, we’re all screwed.”

  “Who?” Blitz asked.

  “Belsnickel,” Jack replied. “The nameless one.”

  “So, he’s not nameless then?” Blitz asked, tilting his head with confusion.

  “Now’s not the time for jokes, Blitz,” Dash said, his eyes still on Jack. “Who is Belsnickel, and why are we all screwed?”

  I wasn’t really concentrating on the boys’ argument though. As soon as Jack had said the name Belsnickel, I’d felt a strange tug of déjà vu.

  “Why does that name sound familiar?” I murmured. It was awfully similar to the name of the yule god the chest had belonged to, Bethalial. But it felt familiar for another reason too. I searched my memories trying to find the source of the recognition, and my eyes grew clouded with worry as it hit me.

  “Bels…” I said, suddenly focusing back on the others again. “My mother appeared to me the morning we were going to Incarceror to see the nameless one. She said not to go near Bels but then disappeared before she could finish her sentence. She tried to warn me about Belsnickel.”

  “Well, your mother’s a smart woman,” Jack replied. “Because that yule god is nothing but trouble, and now that he’s free, he’ll try to find and destroy the third and final star.”

  We all stared at Jack in shock and were silent for several moments as we tried to adjust to the fact that we’d just been in the presence of a god. An apparently evil one, at that.

  “He’s a god?” Blitz asked, breaking the silence.

  “Yes,” Jack replied.

  “You already told us about Bethalial,” Dash added. “Now Belsnickel. How many other secret yule gods are there?”

  Dash folded his arms across his chest, and his tone indicated he still didn’t fully trust the frost.

  Jack blew out a breath as he rubbed his face with frustration. “It’s like talking with children,” he muttered to himself before he looked up and focused on us all once more.

  “The gods you’ve all been told about are no more than a bedtime story,” he started. “The truth of
the gods is a far darker tale than the one you know, and it has been firmly erased from all memory in an attempt to make certain that Belsnickel was never freed.”

  I felt myself leaning in closer as I listened to him, intrigue and confusion overpowering me. I’d never been sure about whether I believed in the yule gods, and this wasn’t the first time Jack had said that the nine gods we were always taught about were a farce. That wasn’t what troubled me though. It was the history that had been covered up and the creature we’d just encountered that caused my heart to thud with concern.

  “Jack, what are you talking about?” I asked. “Who is Belsnickel, and why was he locked away?”

  Jack turned his focus on me, his light blue eyes growing troubled as he answered. “Belsnickel is one of the three true gods,” he replied. “Belsnickel, Bethalial, and Belphia.”

  “They were here at the beginning of our world and created all beings. The light beings were the children of Bethalial, while Belphia was the mother of humans and other non-magical creatures. The dark beings were Belsnickel’s creations. He wasn’t ever content with only being worshiped by his own people though. He wanted the whole world to bow at his feet, and he started a war to try and take the Northern and Human Realms for himself.”

  Jack took in a deep breath before he continued. “There was a terrible battle to try and stop him. It was the kind of war that ended worlds and wiped out populations. He couldn’t be killed, but he could be stopped, and the other two gods worked together to bring an end to Belsnickel’s revolt.

  “Bethalial and Belphia created three powerful Christmas stars to contain Belsnickel. Each star had a purpose. One weakened his army, the next took his powers, and the final star kept all Christmas beings locked away in their realms. With Belsnickel finally powerless and unprotected, the gods were able to capture him and trap him in Incarceror.”

  The three of us stood in rapt silence as we listened. I felt like I was listening to a myth more farcical than any of the ones I’d heard growing up. But, Jack was so serious and certain as he spoke. There was also no denying that we’d already encountered the two Christmas stars he spoke of. I’d just witnessed the kind of magic the nameless one held, and I knew beyond doubt he was something far more ancient and powerful than anything I’d encountered before.