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 evenonegets out, we’re all fucked.”
“Torin can’t do this alone.”
Ihaveto 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.
“Ineedto 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’tsacrifice 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 evenfindthe 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.
