Maybe they were on the good guys’ side. Our side.
But Jingo Jingo took that magic, all of it, into the disk in his hand, mixed with his blood, and every discipline and expression of magic. His eyes were wide, desperate, as if this one thing, this last thing, was his only chance. He pointed the disk at the pile of disks and the crystal in the center of the field.
He chanted a spell that made my ears hurt.
Light seared through the air—a hot talon carving a hole through space. Light burst out of the opening, swirled with metallic colors reflected on my arm. A gate between life and death opened.
More than opened, the gate had been made real. Solid. It was made of iron and stone and glass. And magic.
I glimpsed a figure standing in the gate, ghostly thin. A fair-haired boy with eyes as blue as summer. Cody Miller. The Hand who had pulled magic through my bones, the boy who was still alive, and currently living with my friend Nola on her farm in Burns. The boy who had eyes too much like Sedra’s eyes. Too much like the eyes of Mikhail, the dead leader of the Authority.
It wasn’t all of Cody—his mind had been Closed by Zayvion because he had been deemed too dangerous to use magic. So while his body, and part of his mind, did live with Nola, this part of him, a piece of his soul, a piece of his spirit, his mind, that could use magic, was in this gate between life and death. He’d jumped into the gate when I had been tested into the Authority. He had sacrificed himself to keep the gate closed. And to keep Mikhail, the Hungers, and other horrors of magic out of the living world.
He looked out across the scene. And locked eyes with me. I can’t, he mouthed. I am good at reading lips. His eyes were filled with sorrow, but also with anger. I can’t stop this anymore. You have to do it.
He rocked forward, as if something huge had hit him from behind, but all I could see behind him was a swirl of colors that matched the light from the gate.
He rocked again. And then I saw what bore down upon him. Eyes. Fangs. Claws.
The Hungers.
He was holding them back. Keeping them from entering our world, just as he had kept the gate closed. But now the gate was open, and real, he couldn’t hold on any longer.
We’d fought the Hungers before, when the gate had opened during my test. Even with all the magic users gathered and on the same side, thank you, we’d nearly lost. I didn’t have any hope we would win this time.
All this, all the things I’d seen, had taken up maybe a minute. But it felt like years. I was running, to save Maeve, to try to pull Greyson off her. Shame was still running too.
Hayden got there first. He’d sheathed his sword. Grabbed Greyson by the throat and tore him off Maeve’s still body. Pinning Greyson to the ground, Hayden pounded the hell out of him.
Chase yelled out. And Greyson smiled through bloody lips and broken face. Another gate opened—one of Chase’s gates. Not beside Greyson. Below him. It swallowed Greyson and Hayden. Chase closed it. I did not see where they reappeared. I didn’t have time to look.
Shame, at a dead run, threw everything he had at Jingo Jingo. Jingo, his hand still extended to keep the gate open, staggered.
Shame was good. A master. Even though he had been Jingo Jingo’s student.
Jingo turned, faced Shame. Looked surprised. Maybe he didn’t know that his student had become so skilled. This would be the end of one of them—that, I knew.
Shame still looked like hell. He’d added a cut across his cheek and a bruise over one eye, and his skin was still sunken against bone. He looked like the walking dead. Like at any moment he would fall. But his eyes told me that it was not the strength of his body that was fueling him.
Yes, one of them would fall. But from the fury pouring out of Shame, it wasn’t going to be him.
Shame chanted. He pulled his hands, a blade in each, across his chest, his head tipped down so that only his eyes burned through the ragged, bloodstained curtain of his hair. He looked like a dark angel, head bowed in prayer. And maybe he was. The grass at his feet crackled