Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Riley
Something is holding me down. It’s like I can’t breathe or move.
I feel like I’ve been imprisoned. My arms are filled with weights, and my legs can’t be lifted.
My breath is gone from me. But this magic…
so much magic. It ripples and spins around me, and when it touches me, I want to wrench away from it because my hands ache, my legs ache, my eyes ache.
Everything hurts. Why does it insist on hurting me?
It wraps around me, caressing me, pulling me in—
A spark of pain spikes into my cheek as I jolt awake and look up to see Mickey straddling me. It’s not the first time I’ve woken up like this, but I will never get used to it.
“What the fuck was that for?” I ask, raising my hand to the cheek he just viciously slapped before realizing that my hands are shaking badly.
Mickey looks frantic. “You need to get up. The Door has opened.”
I jerk upright, throwing him off me. “Where is Torin?”
“He went ahead.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know… twenty minutes? I tried to follow him, but… Vinny called to tell me that Imani already had the barrier up and she wasn’t going to let me through.”
Panic fills me when I comprehend his words. “What? Who else is in there with him?”
“No one,” Mickey says. “He went alone. Imani said there was really little choice in the matter since it was spreading so rapidly that they had to contain it.”
“She has to let me in.”
“I don’t think she’s going to.”
“No, she has to. I have to help Torin,” I insist, cursing myself for passing out or whatever the fuck happened out in that field. I was trying to comfort Torin, and instead I was hit with this horrible and overwhelming magic again.
I race down to the Door and through it as Mickey hurries after me.
A car with a siren is waiting with Joy already in the driver’s seat.
The second we’re inside, she’s tearing through the city while the few cars that are out on the road hastily get out of the way.
I’m surprised by the lack of vehicles on the normally traffic-jammed roads.
Mickey explains, “Lt. Lindsey has put out a regional emergency alert that all cars must vacate the roadways. Any vehicles out now should be emergency personnel. The subways and buses are still running to get people out of the city, but no other vehicles are permitted.”
I’m still lost in that dream, confused about what was happening in it and questioning why I have to go into this fight with my hands already shaking this much.
My grip tightens on Kit who glances up at me, showing me my own worried expression.
I give her a reassuring pat, even though I’m positive I’m the one who needs to be reassured.
What if Torin dies because of me? What if I can’t make it to him in time?
What if we can’t stop the horseman, even if I do make it to him?
The trip doesn’t take long at the speed Joy is driving. Mickey doesn’t even have time to fall asleep before we reach the area emergency vehicles are crowded around. I have the car door open before it even comes to a stop and leap out, anxiety eating at me.
I can see Imani on her knees, hands held out while she feeds her magic into the barrier that wraps around the small community on the edge of the city.
Her magic meshes with the magic of the person next to her, strengthening the large barrier that wraps around about a half-mile block of houses and businesses.
“Imani, I need to get inside.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t. The wolves are persistent. The second I weaken it enough for someone to pass, they’ll break through. If even one gets out, we’re all fucked.”
“Torin can’t do this alone.”
I have to get inside, but I can see the wolves crowding the barrier. There’s not a foot of it that’s free from a wolf testing for weakness. The instant it goes down, they’ll pass through.
“I need to get through,” I say, and it comes out more like a plea. I know that there’s no way for me to go in and help Torin. I can’t see him. I can’t do anything. All I can do is stand here and beg to be let in to help. “No, no, no… I need to get in. I need—”
Lt. Lindsey cuts in. “No one can get in. It wasn’t the best decision, but it was the only one they could make. Imani said that everything had already spread to this extent and the wolves were coming.”
I see a human inside the barrier leap through the second-story window of a house and onto a porch roof. Imani immediately looks away, and I realize that what this means is that anyone inside also can’t get out.
Lt. Lindsey notices me watching. “We can’t let this spread. This area was already mostly lost. It seems so cruel, but we can’t sacrifice the hundreds of thousands of people who live near here. We have to stand strong.” It sounds like this isn’t the first time she’s said this.
The woman drops from the roof as a wolf crawls out the window. She takes off running toward us and then slams against the barrier, beating her fist against it. “Let me out! Help me! Please!”
She’s facing me, begging me. She’s a mere foot in front of me, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to help her.
But before she can say another word, the wolf stalking her crashes into her, and that white orb is released while her body drops to the ground.
I press my hand against the barrier, and it’s as though the orb is seeking us even after she’s met her fate.
It bumps against the barrier, also unable to pass as it hits the spot my hand is pressed against before drifting into the darkness, likely toward the horseman and Torin.
I turn and nearly run into Mickey, who looks like he wants to say something.
“What?”
He shakes his head.
“Mickey, tell me,” I say. “Do you know something else?”
“You know if you go in there, you’ll probably… die, right?”
“I have to help him. Torin can’t do this alone.”
“Get in the car.”
“What does that solve?” I ask.
“Just… get in the car,” he repeats as he shoves me toward it and gets into the back with me. “Joy, take us home. Fast.”
“On it, boss,” she says, and the tires squeal and spit up gravel before she leaps back onto the road and flies toward Mickey’s house.
I turn toward him. “Are you going to explain what you’re planning?”
“It’s really fucking risky… you might… who knows whether you’d even make it to the Door inside that barrier.” Mickey has the book that I’d taken from Torin’s library and is flipping through it, though not even looking down at it. Then he slams it closed and looks at me.
“You could enter the barrier through the same Door the horseman came through. It’s the only way to get inside.”
I hesitate as this sinks in. The only way to get inside the barrier is through the Door that’s already open in it.
Which means I have to go through another Door to get into the realm the horseman belongs to, then back into mine through the Door inside the barrier.
I was briefly in that realm when the wolves dragged me in earlier.
My interest in returning is extremely low.
Mickey, seeing that I’m catching on, continues.
“I… I can’t make a Door from scratch, but the closed Door is still in Torin’s realm, right?
Maybe we could repair it. But are you willing to go into a strange realm in an attempt to find the other Door?
And… I don’t know how distance correlates between Doors from different realms, so I don’t know if we’d even find the other Door. We might just… walk right into death.”
“I’ll go,” I say without hesitation.
“You are being absolutely reckless doing this, you know? You could die. Torin could win while you needlessly died.”
But I know that Torin isn’t strong enough to do this on his own yet. He did this in an attempt to give us time to acquire enough people to defeat the horseman. He’s sacrificing himself to give us time to prepare and stop the god when the barrier inevitably comes down.
The car stops in front of Mickey’s house, and Mickey is out and through the Door as fast as I am. The moment he ends up in Torin’s realm, he calls up two beasts and climbs onto one of them.
“It’s that way,” I tell him, pointing.
I’m given no choice as I clamber onto the other creature that races after Mickey, who is already twenty feet from me and gaining. I cling on, convinced I’m going to die before we even make it to the Door at this speed.
We reach the area where Torin and I had been earlier—just a desolate field locked in time. When I drop off the creature’s back, the petrified flowers turn to dust beneath my feet. I hurry forward to the spot where I can feel the remains of the Door. “It’s here,” I say.
Mickey nods as he dismounts, digs through his bag, and opens a different book. “I’ve never opened a Door before.”
“Do you even have the magic to?”
“Not to create a Door, but using this book and this very handy mage I’ve brought back from the dead, we’re going to give repairing this one our best shot.” He waves a woman I hadn’t seen appear over to help him.
While he does that, my attention drifts back to the spot I’d been drawn to earlier.
I know I shouldn’t go near it since the last time I did, I lost myself to the magic and ended up unconscious with Torin carrying me back.
But before I can stop myself, I find my way back to it, the strange magic buzzing around me as I reach down and try to scoop the dirt away.
Whatever it is that is pulling me isn’t very deep, hidden more by the passage of time versus someone burying it.
When my fingers touch something oddly cold beneath the surface, I bring it up and brush my fingers over what appears to be a metal medallion about the size of my palm.
It looks like it was once connected to something, but I don’t have much time to examine it before Mickey calls me over.
“Well… it’s open,” Mickey says, staring at the newly repaired Door. “Not… quite sure how good of a plan this is.”