Love Croakies Sam Cheever (red queen ebook txt) 📖

too late. The anomaly gave one last, jerking hiccup, and then started to spin so hard and fast it pinned us to its sides and locked us there. Even our cheeks blew back from the resulting force.

Osvald and his book slammed to a stop, hovering above the direct center of the rotational sphere. With a twisting, wrenching sensation, we all fell to the floor, and the incredible force started to drag us slowly but inexorably toward the magical book.

With a jolt of pure horror, I realized we were all going to be joining Osvald in his book.

Not one, but six heads floating above every page. Goddess in a wet suit. It would be chaos!

Then I had a worse thought. Sebille and Osvald would kill each other.

“Narina!” Archie screamed, his knuckles white from clawing at the ground.

The circular vortex dragged me another inch closer to the perfectly still book at its center. Osvald hovered above the pages, his black eyes wide with panic as he watched the five of us being helplessly and unavoidably pulled in his direction.

Against my will, my arms were pulled straight, fingers scrabbling uselessly against the smooth surface of the anomaly in an attempt to stop my forward progress.

Beyond the bubble of the abnormal void, chunky flares of green, blue, and white flashed past, the colors of the sky and trees merging into one dizzying kaleidoscope that hurt the eyes and threatened to seduce me into a catatonic state if I stared at it for too long.

“Narina!” Archie screamed again. “Counter vortex…now!”

Beside me, the wind sorceress turned a confused hazel gaze to her brother-in-law, her brow furrowed. “I don’t understa…”

A shrill scream tore through the heavy sound of the whirlwind. My head whipped around in time to see Sebille’s fingers, elongated beyond reality and twisting like fleshy pretzels before our very eyes. The whirlwind’s core had grabbed her, and it was trying to twist her into its grip.

Panic tearing away any small semblance of calm I still retained, I turned to Narina and screamed, “Do it, mom! Whatever Archie’s talking about, do it now. Before this thing takes Sebille.”

Narina’s beautiful face stilled for a beat, her eyes finding mine and softening, and then she nodded. Without hesitation, she lifted her hands, sending a silver wash of energy into the anomaly. Her body jerked forward and her eyes went wide. What little resistance she’d managed to create was gone, and whe was immediately sucked toward the core.

Narina plunged into the core with both arms, the anomaly’s magic twisting her limbs in a tortuous and no-doubt excruciating grip. She threw back her head and screamed, the sound sending ice along my spine.

Gritting my teeth, I jerked one hand from the ground and clamped it around her arm. On my other side, Archie was trying to hold onto Sebille the same way. I gritted my teeth against the whirlwind’s insistent pull, screaming in frustration as it continued to drag me closer.

With the first dregs of true fear, I felt the core get hold of the tips of my fingers, a yanking, twisting, burning sensation that brought a scream immediately to my lips.

A big, warm hand found my wrist and yanked, wrenching my fingertips free of the violently coiling magic. I looked into Eddie’s eyes. What I saw there made my mouth go dry and my pulse spike.

His dark blue gaze was fractured, pixilated with roiling, animated shapes that reflected color and movement in a vertiginous medley of chaotic movements. Energy built in the chaos, power that swelled his skin, enlarging his form in short, dense effusions of power.

“Calm down, son,” Archie warned in a gruff rumble of a voice. “It’s working, Eddie. You’ll only make things worse.”

Working? I tore my gaze from my brother’s and glanced frantically around at the slightly slower flash of exterior shapes and color. The vortex was slowing. Sebille’s screaming had stopped, and she was slumped on the ground, Archie’s hand still pressing her skin white where he gripped it.

A sudden whip of power shot from Eddie to me where he had hold of my wrist. It tore at my insides, ripping and scalding. My back bowed on the front edge of that phenomenal power and my lips and eyes went wide. But the scream shredding the back of my throat never emerged. It was weighted down by his power, snagged on the sharp edge of the energy passing through me and emerging from my palm. It was as if Eddie had used me like an electric cable, sending energy to his mother through me.

I felt as if I’d had ten thousand volts of energy ripping through my flesh.

The power shooting from my palm bowed Narina’s back as it had mine, but her screams tore free in the face of it.

With a pop of displaced air, Narina’s arms came free of the twisting core, and she shot backward, slamming into the anomaly’s clear wall.

She ripped me away with her. For a beat, my arms were nearly yanked from their sockets as Eddie held onto me.

Then, with a tight jaw and gritted teeth, Eddie forced his fingers apart and I hit the ground, skidding toward Narina.

The anomaly’s rotational pull fell away with a sigh. The world outside its walls stilled.

Osvald’s book slammed to the floor with a decisive thump.

The buffer between us and the world disappeared, leaving behind the rich scent of earth and the sweet smell of broken vegetation. My flesh felt the cool softness of grass beneath it, and the tension in the air disappeared.

We all lay perfectly still for a beat, panting and wide-eyed. My limbs were so heavy I didn’t think I’d ever be able to move them again.

“Well then,” Osvald said in his snotty, English professor voice. “That’s better.”

Something sounded different about the good professor. But I was too weary to look at him. “No giggling in the anomaly,” I murmured. “Got it.”

A deep, rumbly sound thrummed the air.

Laughter?

I dragged my head off the ground to find the source of the rumble