Page 146 of The Midnight Knock

Time came to a halt on the stone platform. The grinning men pursuing Ethan and Kyla halted in mid-step. A knife hung in the air above Fernanda’s back. The blade held to Te’lo’hi’s neck went nowhere. Nothing moved.

Nothing except the man coming down the spiral stairs.

“Hey.”

It was Hunter. He was bloodied and bruised: an eye scabbed shut, a great gash across his chest. He held a knife whose blade had broken off at the hilt. He seemed to notice it was broken at the same time as Ethan. He threw it aside.

Everyone else on the platform was frozen in place, but when Hunter came to a stop at the foot of the stairs, he hesitated, held out a hand, and Ethan realized he could walk. He took one step through this strange bubble of suspended time. Took another step. Another.

The moment he was in arm’s reach, Hunter grabbed Ethan and pulled him close and squeezed him harder than he’d ever held Ethan in all the time they’d known each other. Ethan could feel Hunter’s lungs rattle and scrape in his chest. He felt blood seeping through his shirt.

Ethan said carefully, “I figured when Jack Allen turned up here, it meant you were dead.”

Hunter let Ethan go, wouldn’t meet his eye. “Yeah. Funny story about that.”

help!

Te’lo’hi was squirming in Jack Allen’s grip, still held aloft by his silver hair. Hunter crossed the platform and pried the knife from Jack Allen’s outstretched hand. Jack Allen let it go. It was obvious he could do nothing to stop this.

The widening shock in Jack Allen’s eyes, however, proved he knew what was happening.

Hunter swung the knife against Jack Allen’s other hand, the hand holding Te’lo’hi in the air. He swung at the wrist, specifically. Jack Allen stood, frozen, as Hunter struck the wrist with the knife again and again and again until the bone cracked and the tendons tore and the mangled hand ripped loose from Jack Allen’s arm. Its fingers opened, and Te’lo’hi was free.

The little god-creature landed on his feet, silent as a cat. A few strands of his silver hair had come loose in the struggle and had melted into a silver puddle. When the boy kicked the water, the puddle sang softly with a sound like wind chimes.

Hunter finally looked in Ethan’s face. His eyes glowed with a brilliant silver light.

“Can you guess where I turned up when we went through the mirror this evening?”

Ethan looked around at the platform. “Here?”

Hunter nodded.

“You drank a little bit of Te’lo’hi, didn’t you? Just like Jack Allen did in ’55.”

It was Te’lo’hi that answered. Scowling at the half dozen Jack Allens still standing around the platform, the child said

this man was a fool

he thought he had stolen a piece of my power

taken it by force

he never realized that i gave it to him willingly

he was not the only one of his ceremony to learn what was happening

through time and study

they all realized they were trapped

it is how this woman came to be my new Attendant

the way the engineer shattered the mirror for Kyla

it was

a disaster