Page 136 of The Midnight Knock

Knock.

“Just where do you think you’re going, Miss Hewitt?” Jack Allen said. It sounded like he was right behind her.

Ryan and Sarah and Fernanda and Penelope were crowding into the room’s short hall. Ryan said, “Go!”

Broken glass coated the bathroom’s vanity and the sink and the mirror’s frame. Kyla grabbed one of the towels, gave the counter a single sweep to clear the worst of it away. Through the mirror, Kyla could see a pale statue, some sort of dry fountain: a plaza.

And in the distance, at the heart of the city, she saw that column of silver light. It had never burned so hot.

She felt Ethan grab her waist, help her up onto the counter. “I’ll be right behind you,” he said.

From the other side of the mirror, from the heart of the city, there came a great moan of pain.

Kyla thought,I am awaited.

To Ethan, Kyla just said, “Hurry.” She planted her hands on the mirror’s frame, judged the drop to the silver street from the other side, stuck her head through, and

Part II

ETHAN

He’d never seen the city before. Never seen a city, period. Ethan had grown up in a state with four major metroplexes and yet the largest place he’d ever been was Tyler, a flat little burg of a hundred thousand people that had housed his mother’s oncologist. Ethan had thought the first real city he would ever see was Los Angeles: Hollywood at sunrise, taking shape in a haze of fantasy and glamour. It’s not that Ethan had wanted to be in the movies. He just wanted to live somewhere magic could happen. Somewhere alive.

Instead, Ethan’s first city was here, in the heart of the mountain. He emerged from a window in a low limestone building and found himself at the edge of a strange forest. He never would have expected this.

Stretching before him were oaks and pines and pale ash trees, all lit by tall stone spires that glowed with a spectral, silver-white light. Water bubbled in a lattice of narrow streams, feeding the trees. To his right, he saw what looked like fields of crops, all gone to seed. Looking up, he saw a black sky that had never known a star.

Ethan looked at the watch on his wrist. Its screen was shattered, the hands frozen at 2:02.

Where were the others? This wasn’t the place he’d seen a moment ago. A moment ago, he had been standing in Sarah’s bathroom as the barricades fell, the Guardians breaking through. He had looked into the shattered mirror’s frame and seen some sort of white stone plaza, likely near the city’s heart. He’d climbed inside, Hunter right behind him, thinking it would be a quick run to a column of silver light that had pulsed up ahead.

Now, however, Ethan was alone on the city’s fringes. In a way, he was relieved that Hunter wasn’t here, because Ethan had no idea what he would say to Hunter if they were alone together. No idea what to think. The man had trapped them all here, night after night, for God only knew what reason. Ethan highly doubted Hunter had been hoping to save the world, so why had he gone along withSarah’s plans? Hunter didn’t seem like the kind of person to welcome such an obligation willingly.

Turning away from the spectral forest, Ethan saw that the dead city sat in a basin. Here, on its edge, he could look down on its tall spires and rambling buildings and its spiral lattice of streets. He never could have imagined this place was so big. How many people could have lived here? How large had this tribe been?

A terrible energy thrummed through the air inside the mountain, a hundred times worse than the strange power that had coursed through room 4 as the fire had burned on Sarah’s corner table. The energy here felt unstable. Ready to blow.

He smelled hot ozone. An unnerving tingle climbed the hair of his arms.

Dead ahead, in the city’s heart, the column of silver light surged and trembled. One of those awful moans echoed over the city. Now that he was so close, Ethan could hear the pain in the noise, the fear. Te’lo’hi, the god in truth, was massive, it was hurting, and it was going to destroy the world. As that moan rumbled through the city, a crack spread across one of the white walls nearby. A fine rain of dirt and stones showered the city from the mountain’s peak high above.

Ethan realized his Remington shotgun hadn’t made it through the mirror with him. Had he left it in room 4, or had it simply disappeared in transit?

No matter. It wouldn’t have helped him against what lay ahead.

Instead, Ethan hurried along the city’s perimeter until he found a winding silver street that looked to lead toward the column of light. Te’lo’hi let out another awful moan, and in the distance a tall white spire began a long, slow fall. This place wasn’t going to last long.

Run.

KYLA

Kyla found Sarah Powers seated in the street, her back against one of the pale grooved walls, staring at the stone egg in her hand. The silver surface of the road was so slippery that when Kyla stumbled to a halt, she nearly skidded onto her ass. She got the impression the city’s streets hadn’t been made for people who were ever in a hurry, people who ever needed much of anything at all.

“What are you doing?” Kyla said. “We need to move.”

The woman looked up. Whatever she might have wanted to say was cut off by a deafening crash from somewhere up ahead. One of the city’s great white spires had fallen.

As the sound faded, Sarah said, “Where should I go? I don’t have anything left.”