“Thanks.” He flicked the slime off the end of his rifle and then looked to see who’d helped him. “Faye?” He only gawked at her disheveled and bloodstained appearance for a second before rushing over and sweeping her into his arms. He kissed her on the lips, and wonderful as that was, she really had to get back to saving the world.
She was going to shove him, but she decided the world could wait a few more seconds after all… Okay, back to business. She pulled her face away. “Francis, I need you to listen.”
“What’re you doing here? I haven’t heard from you in months! I thought you might be dead!”
“Francis, concentrate,” Faye ordered. She snapped her fingers for emphasis.
“Okay.” A skinless man was running at them, but Francis floated a pipe up from the ground and hurled it like a spear with his Power. It impaled the creature through the ribs and sent it flying back. “Okay, I’m listening. What’s up?” She pointed at the sky. Francis looked up and noticed the expanding hole in the universe. “Sweet merciful Jesus! What is that?”
“The Enemy’s coming. I need you to think real hard and remember that spell you made that ate Mason Island.”
“The black hole? Browning said that came from a Power called a Nixie. But what—”
“Don’t matter. Just think of the shape in your head. I’ve never done this before, so remember as hard as you can.”
Francis closed his eyes and his brow furrowed.
Faye had never read minds before, so she figured she’d throw a few extra Actives’ worth of Power onto this one just in case.
And then she nearly knocked herself cold. It was like a sucker punch to the head.
Faye didn’t just read that spell clear as day, she read all of the memories attached to it, the frustration and anger at trying to make it work, the brutal fight for freedom, the near-death experience, and then the overwhelming feelings as he was reunited with her, and then the incredible sadness while reading her letter because he really did love her. She couldn’t help herself, she read the surface, and the layer beneath, and the layer beneath, all of the hopes, and strengths, and weaknesses, and frailties, and insecurities, and screw ups, and moments of greatness, and everything in between. She learned every single thing there was to know about who Francis Cornelius Stuyvesant really was and the man that he could hope to be, and most of all, she learned that he truly wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
She snapped back to reality. Francis swooned and nearly lost it. She had to catch him by the arm to hold him up. She’d Read him so hard it had made his nose bleed. “What did you just do?”
“Oh, Francis.” Faye held him tight. “If I didn’t have a reason not to turn evil and destroy the world before, I surely do now.”
“What?”
“I’ll try to come back, I promise.” Hesitantly, she let go, and stepped back into Montana.
The prison yard was still quiet. The spotlights cast ghostly shadows. She’d only have once chance. The Enemy was coming from one reality and heading straight for this one, only she never intended to let it land. Instead, she’d send it someplace else. Nobody knew where the black hole went. She’d only gotten the barest glimpses as she’d tossed Crow inside. It was a terrible realm of endless darkness and cold.
Yet, the god of demons had been strong enough to crawl out of it. Even though it didn’t have a body, the Enemy was infinitely stronger, which told Faye she needed to make this spell that much bigger. That last hole had been big enough to suck in Mason Island. This one would be big enough to swallow Montana. But if she set that off here at the surface, it would kill hundreds of thousands, maybe millions if the calculations in her head map were even the tiniest bit off…
Did that matter? Kill a million, save billions. That was easy math. Plus she’d just absorb all those millions’ Power. It wasn’t like it would go to waste, and she’d still save everybody else in the world from the Enemy. She’d be a hero. The whole world would love her.
Faye shook her head. Those thoughts were dangerous. She needed to get up there where the world could be safe from the dangerous spell. She had to get up in the Enemy’s face. And that meant she probably wasn’t coming back.
So be it. Sometimes heroes didn’t get to come back.
Her head map helped her with the calculations. She was going to have to channel multiple forms of Power at the same time, something not even the Chairman had done before. She could switch between them really quick, but that wouldn’t be good enough. It needed to be several at once or nothing. Failure meant instantaneous death.
She concentrated on the magic of a Fade, imagining herself to be as insubstantial as Heinrich. That would help keep her from being pulled in by the hole’s gravity. Then she channeled the opposite type of magic, that of the Heavy, and imagined that she had as much control over those forces as Mr. Sullivan. Between those two types of magic, she might have a chance to get out. Then she gathered up the vitality of a Brute like Delilah, and knowing that her body would begin taking damage immediately, she asked for the Healing Power of a mighty Healer like Jane. She’d need to keep her body from freezing instantly, so she thought of the energetic magic of the Torch, like Whisper or Lady Origami, and the Crackler magic of Mr. Bolander. And for one last touch, she thought of Barns’ magic, because a little Luck never hurt.
Faye was so scared she couldn’t hardly breathe. So first she folded her connection to be like the Mouth’s Power, imagined she was clever like Mr. Garrett, and said out loud. “I’m gonna be fine. I’m really good at this. The Power picked me for a reason.” And then she immediately felt better.
She said a little prayer in her head, looked up at the monster eating the sky, and Traveled like she never had before.
Nothingness.
And then a billion stars.
It was terrifying. The world was thousands of miles below. The Enemy was before her.
Faye’s head map was screaming in confusion, so she shoved it aside. Her physical magic flared, stronger than any Brute. Her tissues hardened into an impenetrable shield, but even then her skin began to die and the fluids in her body wanted to boil into nothing. She became denser than any Massive. The Healer’s magic went to work. The molecules of her own body which were burning off were energized by the magic of the Torch to form a sort of barrier between her and the nothing.
The Enemy was coming closer, incomprehensible and hungry. It knew the Power had been found, and it had been waiting a very long time for this moment. It wasn’t clever at all, at least not in any way Faye could ever understand. The Pathfinder had been clever because it had been living with humans for so long that it had grown smart. All the Enemy understood was the cycle of eating and chasing. It had been anchored to a point in Montana and nothing would turn it away. The cycle was everything.
Faye was about to break it.
She folded her connection to the Power, over and over, in all manner of convoluted designs. Her mind was working faster than any other living being was capable of, and she knew that was why the Power had picked this poor Okie girl from a dirt-floored shack to be its champion. It was all for this one perfect moment.
Faye created the spell. A hole appeared in space. The other side of the hole was the real nothing. This side was paradise in comparison. The rift grew.
Not fast enough. The Enemy was too big. She needed to block it off entirely. She needed to make a new door, just as big as the hole the Enemy had made, big enough to completely shield the world. She needed the Enemy to be absolutely consumed by the nothing place, and it could never be allowed to escape. Faye gathered up all of her stolen magic, the composite Power of tens of thousands of dead souls, and she shoved it hard against the new spell.