Mickey groans. “This isn’t good. This is really fucking bad.”
“I wish we had more time, but we need to go. We need to check whether this is the place,” Imani says, so I push the car door open and step out where I can immediately feel the Door’s magic. There’s no question, it’s opening here.
“He’s here,” I announce, pulling my scythes free as I start running.
There’s a fence around the place with an opening where people are coming in and out. I shove them out of the way andpush through while a man shouts at me. “You need to pay! Hey! Stop! You can’t bring weapons in here!”
I glance around, but I can feel the magic from the Door surrounding me from all directions as Mickey’s words permeate my mind. Is he saying that there’s someone whosentthe man to my world? A person who commanded the death of my people and is still alive? I need to find the invader of this world, and I need to get him to talk. He needs to tell me where the person who orchestrated this is so I can tear him apart and?—
“Riley!” Imani yells and I immediately turn around, anxiety tearing through me, only to see him waving her off.
“What happened?” I call.
“Nothing, I’m fine,” he says as I slow down so he can catch up to me.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, that strange magic has already hit me.” He flexes his fingers before shaking his head. “But this time, it didn’t erase the magic I already borrowed. It’s like… I have both of them for some reason. Why? Is it getting stronger?”
“Should you go back to the car?” I ask.
“No. Let’s just get this over with quickly… we need to stop him.”
Mickey waves his hand and undead rise from the ground, startling fairgoers who aren’t expecting it. They move out in all directions as Imani rushes to inform security of what is happening and that the fair needs to be evacuated. I begin moving deeper into the fair, feeling like wherever the Door is, it has to be close by. I pick up speed, running toward a more populated area where a crowd of people are huddled, before I feel the ground shake and an explosion throws me and countless others back. I hit the side of a building, slamming into it. But my thoughts are immediately on Riley as the dust settles and I discover that I can’t see him.
Chapter Nineteen
Riley
I see Torin get thrown back as I’m shoved forward by the same blast. I slam down onto my hands and knees, making Kit go flying off my shoulder, and I realize we’re too late when I discover that I’m kneeling next to the hooves of a large stocky white horse. The mist I’d seen seeping out of the Door wraps around the creature’s legs. It’s covered in a tattered black sheet embossed in black feathers, and atop its back sits the man who’s been trying to escape the Door. The horse stops and throws its head, baring its teeth as its red eyes roll.
The man smiles at me like he’s pleased to see me. He lowers his bow toward me, like he’s planning on hooking me with it, but I jerk back.
“You are so very fascinating. He will love to have you as a present,” he says a second before a man comes rushing forward and lifts his hand like he’s going to use some kind of magic to drive the Door crosser back. Swiftly, the man on the horse lifts his bow and draws it back, releasing an arrow I never even saw him nock. The arrow tears through the man, but there’s no blood, no hole… what is ripped out of him is a white orb thatdrifts toward the horseman as the man staggers and hits the ground on his face without even trying to catch himself.
The horseman holds the white orb, but the moment he touches it, black mist invades it, wrapping around it like it’s smothering it, and when he tosses it to the ground, a wolf made of black mist forms beside him.
I can’t even comprehend what I just saw. Did he kill the man? Is that the man’s soul that he… manipulated with his magic to turn into that creature?
“Go back to where you came from,” Torin growls.
“Ah, a stripped god wants to fight? How cute,” he says as he raises his bow and shoots an arrow right at Torin’s chest.
It happens so fast that all I can do is raise a hand while panic squeezes my stomach, but Torin knocks the arrow back with his scythe with ease like he’s merely batting away a fly. The horseman looks startled by this before he smiles.
“Ah, you are the god who killed my brother. I see… no wonder I disliked you the instant I saw you.”
The horse rears up, striking the air as people begin to flee, though a few stay to fight.
“Don’t let them leave,” the horseman orders before the wolf slams into a woman and another white orb immediately floats toward the horseman while her body drops to the ground.
I lift my hand, sending the undead at the horse, but the man easily slaughters any that get near. I feel like I’m throwing paper puppets at him.
Vinny rushes the wolf. When he holds his hand out, a metal rod flies into it that he flings at the beast, but it goes straight through the mist, dispersing the wolf that simply reappears elsewhere.
The beast turns on its haunches and lunges toward Vinny as I press my finger against my pendant’s third notch, causing ice to crystalize in front of my hand. I send it shooting at the monster,causing it to jump back, but another has already taken its place. I still have the power of a necromancer, so I reach down to call up the undead, much as Mickey is doing.
They crowd the beasts that are multiplying by the second, first one and now ten, but when they’re made of mist, there’s nothing our people can do against them when the wolves merely move through them, hunting down the living. Thankfully, they seem unable to go through Imani’s shield, which she throws out to block an incoming wolf from a woman and her child. One of the wolves dashes toward the exit, blocking the path out of here as people scream and run back in toward us.
