We joined the others.
Claude yanked Gem back when she got too close to the wall. “Careful! Don’t touch it,” he said. “This isn’t like the one we walked through.”
Blue turned in a circle. “This is the incinerator.”
I led them back to Sparrow. Christian lifted the body and propped him on the bench in a comical position, spreading his arms across the back and crossing his ankles.
“Having a wee bit of fun, are you now?” he asked, smacking Sparrow’s cheek. “So you’re Sparrow, the infamous battery charger. Not much of a man to look at.” Christian sat next to him and put his arm around his shoulder. “You can make a lot of fancy weapons, but can you replace the one instrument that you cherish most? Someone hand me a paring knife.”
I sat on the other side and took a moment to breathe. Sparrow’s head, which was tipped to one side, rolled forward when I bumped against him. “You can’t hide in here forever. We could toss you through the wall. Then what happens? You burn up?”
“Not a good idea.” Gem wrung her hands, her gaze fixed on the surrounding wall. “What if killing him doesn’t destroy it? We could be trapped in here forever.”
“Throw one of your balls at it,” Blue suggested.
Gem’s eyes widened. “What if it bounces off? Or worse, what if it feeds off the energy and becomes so massive that it’s more powerful than a nuclear bomb?”
Claude stared daggers at Sparrow. “I say we torture him.”
Christian pointed at Claude. “I’m on board with that plan.”
Blue tossed a wood chip at the wall, and we watched it incinerate. “How is he able to do this with a stunner in him? A Mage can’t hold this up indefinitely. It’ll drain their power. We can wait it out.”
“He’s a Unique,” I informed her. “He said he’s a Summoner.”
Gem gasped.
Christian stood and flung Sparrow onto the ground so that he landed on his back. “I don’t need a dagger. I can eviscerate him through his navel. Break me off a stick from that tree.”
Gem sat next to me, her violet eyes sparkling as she searched my face. “You’resurehe said Summoner and not a Shielder?”
“That’s what he told me. Why? I know Uniques have extra power, but if all he can do is make a few walls…”
“No, that’s not what he’s supposed to do!” She got up and circled him. “People still think Uniques are a myth, but I always assumed Summoners were a misinterpretation of Gravewalkers. There’s an account of a Mage in 1587 who could raise the dead. The passage referred to these Uniques by a few other names in various languages, but they all meant the same thing: a person who evokes spirits. It mentioned portals of light. According to the book, a Summoner’s power isn’t using light as a weapon or building a wall. A Shielder can build walls and protective domes.” She tapped her chin and stared at Sparrow. “I once saw a reference to Architects, but there’s so little knowledge about Uniques that it’s hard to say what’s fact and what’s someone’s muddled down account of history. A Summoner can supposedly lift the veil between the living and the dead, like what Sparrow did to us. He can somehow defy the laws of nature regarding life and death. He might even be able to make dead people pass to the living world—seen but not alive. But Summoners can’t build walls or weapons, not based on any of the material I’ve read.” She squatted behind him and hugged her knees. “What else did he say? Tell me everything.”
I flicked a glance at Christian, who was staring down at Sparrow like he was fantasizing about torture techniques. “He’s also a Stealer, and that’s what he’s always relied on. I guess he didn’t see any point to his other gift. An Infuser sealed some powers to his core light, but he didn’t say which ones.”
“A Summoneranda Stealer? No one should have that much power.” Gem stood and cupped her arms as if she were cold. “Stealers rarely ever find an Infuser willing to work for them. Sometimes they do, but it’s usually for a onetime transaction. What if he stole power from another Unique? Or all of them? Uniques don’t come out in the open, so he might have done it by accident. I bet he doesn’t even fully know what he’s capable of. Just look what he did to us. He threw us in this shadow realm and didn’t know everything that would happen.” Gem stepped over him and looked between all of us. “Youcannottake the stunner out.”
“Then how do you expect him to talk?” Blue asked. “Torture him. Then give him a few seconds to give us the information we need.”
Gem shook her head. “We can’t risk it. You saw how fast he put up this wall. He could throw everyone into another dimension or open up a portal that invites who knows what into ours. We have to stop him. We have to stop him now. If you take the stunner out, he won’t hesitate to unleash hell. That’s what extreme power does—it corrupts.”
I sighed. “So you’re saying we should sacrifice ourselves to save the world? Kill him, even if that means either being trapped in this cage forever or trapped in this realm?”
“Maybe killing him will kill the wall,” Blue suggested.
I rubbed the tattoo on my palm with my thumb. “I don’t think so. It seems like the energy is independent. The hourglass on our hands and the one at Lenore’s home? He creates the energy and finds a way to bind it so it doesn’t dissolve. If we kill him, I think we’ll be sitting in here until the end of time. I guarantee the wall goes underground like the one at the party. You don’t even have the luxury of starving to death anymore, thanks to his curse. Do you really want that?”
Claude paced. “Gem is right. It’s not just about us anymore. We can’t control the damage he’s already done, but wecancontrol what he might do. I don’t like the sound of portals to hell. He might also push this energy wall outward until it destroys everyone on the planet, and we would have no way to stop it.”
Christian fired off a string of profanities.
Claude bared his fangs. “I could bite him. Inject enough poison from two or three fangs but no more. The poison is painful and takes time. He’ll need us if he wants to live.”
“Feck that,” Christian snapped. “I’m not giving this shitebag any of my blood when you’re done with him. I’d rather burn in hellfire than see him walk away from this. Aside from that, what if your venom has no effect? He’ll pretend long enough to inflict more damage.”
The conversation dwindled when we noticed Niko and Wyatt on the other side of the wall. We couldn’t hear anything they were shouting. Viktor’s wolf appeared, pacing back and forth, his paws and face bloody. Wyatt’s look of confidence melted away when Blue tossed a twig through the wall and he watched it turn into flames. That wall might be the only thing that could truly kill us.
