The Lost was too slow to avoid this attack. The perfectly thrown weapon was on a direct course with his throat. It would punch through his neck and shatter his spine at the base of his skull. The pale fighter would die, and we could close the portal he’d opened. Whatever horrors were coming, I’d work with the sages to stop them.
I’d won.
Again.
Something brushed my core, twice, in quick succession. It distracted me enough that I missed what happened next.
There was a blur of motion and a metallic clang reverberated through the courtroom. My fusion blade vibrated where it had impaled itself in the wall, deflected by the Eclipse Warrior’s lightning-fast parry.
“I am sorry, Jace.” He looked at the wound my blade had opened in his arm as if surprised he felt anything at all. “If you had accepted your role, this would not have to happen.”
The Lost glided toward me. His hand descended, pointed fingers glowing like white stars of annihilation headed straight for my heart. The man’s dark eyes were narrowed, and I sensed an abiding sorrow deep within him.
He didn’t want to kill me.
But his nature wouldn’t allow anything, anyone, to stand in his way.
A sound like a ripping sheet of paper roared through the air between us. The Lost’s arm plunged into nothingness, just before his fingers would’ve pierced my heart. His momentum carried him forward, and half his body vanished into the narrow portal that had opened between us. He glared at me from above its edge and tried to recoil his arm.
The gateway snapped shut with an electric hiss.
The Lost screamed and fell away from me. His right arm and half his chest were gone, the flesh scooped away to reveal the gleaming white loops and whorls of his innards. The man sagged to his knees, blood spurting from open arteries and drooling from dissected veins.
Abi, Clem, Eric, and Rachel stared at me through a portal just beyond where my foe had fallen. The hole in space showed me the pilot’s station Abi was supposed to be guarding. He carefully lifted his hands away from the control panel, then rushed through the portal with the rest of my friends right behind him.
“I’m really glad that worked,” Abi said, his eyes wide with shock.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said. “None of you should be.”
“You’re welcome,” Eric said. “Next time we’ll wait for the bad guy to kill you before we take him out.”
“Are you okay?” Clem and Rachel asked at the same time.
“I will be.” I was angry at my friends for putting their lives in danger, but I was grateful for what they’d done. As soon as I finished this, I’d figure out some way to show them that.
But, first, I had to deal with the Lost.
I summoned my fusion blade again.
“Why?” he gasped through the blood that bubbled from his lips. “You were meant for so much more. You could have led the next generation, Jace. Why would you throw all that away?”
“You can’t fix anything by burning it to the ground,” I said with a shake of my head. “I couldn’t step aside and let that happen.”
“Killing me hasn’t stopped anything,” the Lost gasped. Pale, almost colorless, blood oozed from his terrible wound. “The hungry spirit horde is coming. It will pour across this world in a flood of death. If we are not here to control it, there won’t be anything left when the waters recede.”
“I’ll stop it.” My blade plunged through the center of the man’s forehead.
Satisfied he was dead, I put my foot on his chest and pushed his body off my weapon.
The Eclipse Warrior collapsed to the floor, his mutilated body curling into itself.
I turned my back on my fallen enemy and strode toward the portal he’d created. Blackness boiled beyond its orange ring, the dark cold of the Far Horizon just inches away.
This is where I should’ve had something heroic to say. Some last words to bolster my friends’ spirits and let everyone know I’d be back right after I saved the day.
But there weren’t any words, and no guarantee any of us would ever see each other again. I had to stop the Locust Court, but I didn’t know how. Stepping into the Far Horizon might very well be a hopeless battle.
But it was my battle.
I’d summoned the Lost back to Earth. This was my mess to clean up.
I rolled my neck on my shoulders, and it crackled like a string of firecrackers. Then I hefted my blade and followed in the footsteps of mankind’s greatest creation and most horrible enemy.
The Host
THE FAR HORIZON WAS a buffer between Earth and everything else that was out there in the universe. Some said it was created by the Empyrean Flame by burning away the worlds that ventured too close to its territory. Others believed the dead space around Earth was proof that humans were the only non-spirit culture in all the universe. I didn’t know who was right, and it didn’t matter at the moment. The dead black plane of glossy stone and gray ash was just another obstacle in my way.
“What can we do?” Clem asked from the other side of the portal, her voice frantic. “I won’t leave you alone.”
I took in as much of the scene as I could stand. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of portals hung in the darkness, their orange frames lit by the cityscapes within. I recognized Dallas, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro, and I glimpsed what might have been New York. Every one of those portals was an attack point for the Locust Court. If I didn’t stop the attack, the hungry spirits would pour across the Far Horizon and
