Ethan
And in so many windows, there was nothing. No life. No reality. Just a black void where reality itself had been burned away.
It sleeps.
It wakes.
“I will destroy all that divides and distinguishes.” Jack Allen’s teeth—that awful grinding. “I will create a world unlike any Te’lo’hi can dream.”
Ethan rounded a final bend and found himself on a wide silver thoroughfare. There was a deafening boom of stone to his right: another great spire falling from the sky.
This wide road, at least, seemed more durable than the crumbling streets. Better yet, on the road’s other side, Kyla and Sarah Powers and Fernanda all came sprinting around a bend of their own. Fernanda held a small girl to her chest. It looked like Adeline, Penelope’s spectral sister.
She wasn’t a specter any longer. This girl was solid. Real.
But where was Penelope?
Kyla gave Ethan a curt nod and pointed to the end of the wide road. It ended ten yards away at a tall stone archway, past which was a round courtyard that encircled the column of silver light. The light moaned and shuddered. The air warped and shimmered around it, like heat off a hot Texas road.
Jack Allen stood up ahead, beneath the stone archway, smiling at them all. He held a long knife in his hand. Its blade dripped with blood. When the man opened his mouth to speak, Ethan heard Jack Allen’s voice coming from just behind his own shoulder.
“Mister Cross. Miss Hewitt. A shame you couldn’t make it here any sooner. You might have had a chance.”
Jack Allen moved his arm so fast, Ethan almost didn’t realize it was in motion. With a grunt of recognition, Kyla grabbed Ethan by the wrist and pulled him to one side. Jack Allen’s knife whizzed past Ethan, missing his chest by an inch, and left a ribbon of blood dribbling through the air.
Something small and white went flying back in the opposite direction.
With a wicked overhand snap, Sarah Powers had heaved her grooved stone egg, the one Ethan handed the woman earlier in her room.
The egg struck Jack Allen dead between the eyes.
Even from this distance, Ethan could hear the crack as the egg broke through the bone.
Jack Allen fell backward. His hands twitched. Sarah might have killed him.
“Jesus,” Kyla said.
“Softball scholarship,” Sarah said simply.
“Look out!” shouted Adeline, still in Fernanda’s arms.
Following the girl’s finger, they turned back and saw men descending the road behind them, heading their way at a steady, unbothered pace.
There were six men, all of them dressed in identical gabardine suits, all clutching identical bloody knives.
Ethan had thought he was finished being surprised by this place, but clearly he’d been mistaken.
He stood a moment, staring in shock, at six smiling Jack Allens sprinting his way.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” Jack Allen whispered in his ear.
Kyla had apparently been able to hold on to her handgun on her way through the window, but it did little good. She fired three shots, knocking one of the Jack Allens down, only to stare as two more identical men clambered out a pair of nearby windows. All around them, Ethan heard that steady knock
Knock
Knock.
“This way!”
A new voice called from the heart of the city. As Ethan turned, the column of light let out a moan and a great flash of energy, so that when he saw Hunter, the man was backlit, surrounded by noise, standing beneath the stone archway, his face shrouded in shadow.
Ethan saw two glints of silver in the shadow. For a moment, he thought they were Hunter’s eyes.
“Hurry!” Hunter shouted. Ethan heard running footsteps behind them. Jack Allen was coming.
That awful knock
Knock
Knock never stopped.
A bloody knife flew past Ethan’s ear. Another grazed Sarah’s arm. As Fernanda ran near Ethan’s side, he heard the woman, through panted breath, whispering to the terrified child in her arms. “So the little girl—turned to the sun—and said—”
Nearing the archway, Ethan said to Hunter, “Where have you been?”
“No time.”
Easy as breathing, Hunter pulled the Glock from Kyla’s hand. The girl didn’t protest. She probably knew he was a better shot. Hunter said, “Where’s your other gun?”
“I lost it. I think it fell out of my jeans as I passed through the window.”
“Here,” said a new voice. Stepping through the window of a long house at the end of the silver thoroughfare, Ryan Phan—looking even older than before—tossed Hunter the pistol Ethan had once seen Fernanda carry. In his other hand, he still clutched that hideous hooked staff.
Hunter caught the gun in his left hand, nodded to everyone, said, “Get back.”
He motioned the others closer, past the stone archway and into the courtyard that surrounded the column of light.
The small army of grinning men was growing closer, but Ethan noticed there were no windows in this courtyard, only a tall round wall.
No more portals for more Jack Allens to emerge from. A good place for a last stand.
Hunter stepped sideways, dodging a thrown blade, and glanced upward. He fired two rounds into a crack in the stone archway and brought the whole thing down with a great crash, blocking the road.
He said, “This won’t hold him back for long. You need to go.”
Ethan glanced over his shoulder. Now that he was so close—no more than ten yards away—he saw that the silver light was rising out of a round hole in the center of the courtyard. Kyla was already there. She shouted, “I see stairs!”
Ethan looked at Hunter. “What’s down there?”
Hunter gave him a quick glance. Again, Ethan thought he saw a flash of silver in his eyes.
With a nasty cough, Hunter said, “He’s waiting for you.”
Kyla and Sarah were already on the way down the hole. Ryan stood near Fernanda, a hand on Adeline’s cheek. The little girl said, “What happened to you?”
“I’ve been looking for your sister.”
Tears stood out in Adeline’s eyes. “She’s dead. I killed her.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple.” Ryan gave the girl a scratch on the top of her head. It looked like an old touch of love. “There’s a million worlds out there. I think Penelope’s bound to be in one of them.”
The column of light released a moan that almost shook him to his knees. A face appeared over the rubble of the stone archway. A smiling face. Hunter fired, striking Jack Allen between the eyes, but three more came crawling up beside him.
“Go on,” Hunter said to Ethan. “I’ll keep him busy.”
“We.” Ryan stood next to Hunter, giving his hideous weapon a flick of the wrist.
Adeline said, “Aren’t you coming with us?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Ryan spoke with a grin, and all at once the age and the scars fell away and he was the man Ethan remembered from the motel. “I still have a promise to keep.”
Fernanda bumped her shoulder against Ethan’s. “We must move. Now.”
Hunter gave Ethan a single glance. He seemed to know what Ethan was thinking: there was so much to say, where could he even start?
Hunter nodded. Ethan nodded back.
Ethan turned and ran for the light.