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  Chapter Thirty Three

  I fell to my knees, eyes open wide as pain exploded in my chest.

  “HENRY!” someone yelled, but I’m not sure who.

  There was a gruesome crack, and Aesop was thrown to the ground beside me, a trail of blood leaking from the side of his head. Still not fully prehending what was happening, I turo see Ethan bag away with a look of terror on his face. Anure followed him.

  One wearing dark blue coveralls, and a grinning rubber mask.

  “Henry, no!” Grandpa Teddy shouted, ign Ethan as he hobbled frantically toward me. Legion moved to block his path.

  “That,” he said pointing at Teddy’s hand, “belongs to us.”

  Grandpa Teddy stopped in his tracks, a mixture of fear and rage in his eyes. “Get out of my way, monster, or I’ll—”

  “Ha.”

  A single cloud of gray smoke wafted from the mask, and hit my grandpa square in the face. He froze with a stunned look on his face, and then his hao his throat. He tried to breathe, but could only cough. Arm repced his anger, aook a step back, eyes widening as his white skin began to turn a dull, ashen gray.

  “G…Gr…and…pa,” I croaked, feeling my strength seeping out of me. Blood poured down my back. I tried to stand again, but my legs gave out beh me and I nded face down on the floor.

  Grandpa Teddy went down on one knee as well, the blue of his hair and paintmarks already darkening to bck. I put my hand over my pocket, feeling the lump my inhaler made i. Laughter. Good, pure ughter. It had worked as a cure when Legion had poisoned me. I had to get to Grandpa Teddy…use the inhaler…save him. But as I did my best t myself across the cil chamber, I realized something else.

  I was dying too.

  “Thank you,” Legion said, plug the amulet out of my grandpa’s hand just as he colpsed to the floor. “And now…”

  The masked vilin turoward Ethan.

  “No,” I whispered, uo raise my voice higher than that.

  Ethan looked toward the door. Nothing stood between him and it.

  Ruhan! I thought desperately. Escape!

  But he didn’t. g his fists, he turoward Legion and pnted his feet in grim determination.

  “You’re not going to run?” Legion asked.

  “What would be the point? You’ll just keep chasing me, won’t you?”

  Legion nodded.

  “And anyone who’s around me is just going to get hurt too.”

  “Yes.”

  Etha him. “The’s get this over with now, so I kick your butt and help my friends!”

  Even with a ku it, my heart fluttered when I heard those words. Ethan…he had ged so much from the grumpy, self-tered little jerk I’d met less than a month ago.

  “An admirable choice,” Legion said, making his way over. “Yet pointless.”

  He moved faster thahan ever could have reacted, ramming his ko the poor kid’s stomach. Ethan’s mouth opened like a fish gasping for air, and he fell to his knees with a wheezing groan.

  “We are not a man,” said Legion. “We have bee so much more than that.”

  He reached down and grabbed Ethan by the throat, lifting him off the ground with one hand.

  “Ethan!” I tried to scream.

  “We are a force of nature. Of vengeance.”

  With his other hand, he raised the amulet.

  No. No, it couldn’t end like this! Not after everything we’d all been through together. At first this had been nothing but a way for me to score points with the cil, but it’d bee so much more to me. Ethan had bee so much more to me. He was my friend, and I was his. I couldn’t just y here a Legion win. There had to be something I could do. Some way I could fight back!

  “We are justice!”

  I reached out, digging my nails into the marble floor, and dragged myself an inch closer to them.

  “We are Legion!”

  I reached out again, and this time I touched something. My hand ed around it, pulling it to me. Was that…Yes, it was! Summoning what little strength I had, I forced myself to my knees. Agony tore through my chest, but I ig. In just a few seds, it wouldn’t matter. Nothing would matter except knowihan was safe.

  “And now, Ethan Griggs,” Legion said, “so are y—”

  “LEGION!”

  Legion dropped Ethan and spun to face me. “How are you not dead?”

  “I’m Henry freaking Rider,” I answered. “I’m too stupid to die!”

  And with that, I eled all my remaining magic…every st drop of it…ihan’s spellhammer. It lit up with a brighter blue light than I had ever seen before. Legion stumbled back, shielding his eyes, while Ethan scrambled to get out of the way. Legion’s surprise only sted for a sed, and then he came for me, hand outstretched.

  I closed my eyes, whispered a final goodbye, and released the magic.

  Light as bright as a thousand suns pierced my eyelids. The ground shook beh me like a living thing. My eardrums fought not to implode under an explosion so loud that I felt more than heard it. Heat washed over me, drying my skin and chapping my lips ihan a sed.

  And then…nothing.

  My eyelids felt like they each weighed a ton, but I forced them open. What I saw baffled me for a few seds. Hadn’t I just been inside? Because all I could see in front of me was blue sky and white clouds. I tilted my head back, and realized I was still in the Grand Lark.

  I had just blowher half to kingdom e.

  Ethan y on his back, right at the destru’s edge, panting for breath. Jade’s neckce hung from his hand. Aesop was behiill unscious. Grandpa Teddy was alive, but just barely. I gave him a minute, if that, before the poisonous ughter did its job.

  A puddle of melted, colorful rubber was all that remained of Legion.

  I sighed with relief ahe spellhammer tumble from my numb fingers, king against the soot-stained marble floor. It was all I could do to stay on my knees. If I thought I’d been tired before…this was something else entirely. An exhaustion that didn’t just affect my body, but crept down into my very soul. It smothered my thoughts and feelings, tried to pull me down into a darkness deeper than any sleep.

  And I wao go. I would go. But first I had to finish the job.

  Lurg forward, I was just barely able to flop down beside Grandpa Teddy. My head inning, making it almost impossible to trate, but I mao dig the inhaler out of my pocket. My hand had turned as gray as a maiam’s. The hair that hung in front of my eyes was a lifeless bck.

  I looked at the inhaler, full of delicious, invigorating ughter. But not enough. I’d known that the minute I’d picked up the spellhammer. It would take a thousand io heal the wound Legion had given me. No point in wasting it when there was someo could still save.

  “H- Henry?” I heard Ethan ask. His voice sounded like it was miles away.

  With shaking hands, I brought the io Grandpa Teddy’s mouth and pushed down. Good ughter flooded into him, chasing away the bad ughter, and he finally sucked down a breath.

  Footsteps. “Henry, are you okay?”

  Grandpa Teddy’s eyes flickered open, and I smiled, letting my hand fall to the floor. He was going to be fihey would all be fine. And it was because of me. The thought was enough to make my chest swell with pride, even as I inched closer to death.

  Suddehan was there, grabbing me by the shoulders and holding me up. At least I think it was him. My eyes weren’t fog the way they should have.

  “Oh…Oh no, Henry!” he sobbed, seeing the damage that had been done.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered, smiling up at him.

  “I …I fix this.” He grabbed the inhaler and thrust it into my mouth, but nothing came out. I’d given it all to Grandpa Teddy. “No, no, no!”

  “I don’t mind,” I told him. “So long as you’re safe.”

  A drop of water nded on my face, and then ahey were Ethan’s tears, I realized.

  “Well, I do mind!” he yelled. “I don’t want you to die, Henry!”

  “Too bad, so…sad…” It was getting harder to move my mouth. “Promise me…some…thing.”

  “What?”

  “That you’ll…find a…reason…to ugh.” I looked him in the eye. He had such pretty brown eyes. “Promise me!”

  The room began to grow darker. All I wanted was to sleep. Forever…and ever…and…

  “After Mom and Dad died,” Ethan said, “I didn’t think I’d ever be happy again. That I didn’t deserve to be happy. But you showed me that I was wrong, Henry. There are still things in this world worth smiling for. That life is worth living. I ’t thank you enough for that. I’d have spent the rest of my life wallowing in misery if it weren’t for you.”

  He pulled me closer, and my delirious brain wondered if he was about to kiss me. Somehow, I don’t think I would have minded…

  “And if you think I’m going to let you die now…”

  His voice was getting farther and farther away with every word.

  “…then that’s the fu joke you’ve ever told!”

  He sched up his face, straining so hard that I could see the veins crisscrossing his face. He gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and forced out one single word.

  “HA!”

  His ughter smmed into me. It felt like being run over by a thuorm. All that power, trated solely on me. Like I was being crushed by an avanche made of lightning and fire. It gushed into my mouth, but didn’t stop there. I could feel it pushing its way through my skin, directly into my heart. My entire body lit up with energy. More than I ever imagined could exist. And it just…kept…ing!

  Life flooded into every iny body, yanking be back from the darkness of death, and I gasped for air. My skin began thten to its healthy snow-white shade. A tingle ran through my hair as it turned blue again. Never in my life had I thought I’d be so happy to see the color blue!

  The knife wound pulsed and ached, spilling fresh blue blood with every beat of my heart, but it was fading. Bit by bit, until I knew without having to look that the wound was gone, as if it had never been there at all.

  And then something else happened. Something I wouldn’t have expected in a hundred million years: my forehead began to tingle. I gasped softly, my hand reag up to feel it. The tingling spread from the very ter of my skull, and slowly worked its way outwards, until…

  I looked at Ethan, my eyes widening, not daring to believe it. This was a dream. A wonderful dream that would ruin my whole freaking day when I woke up from it.

  “Henry?” Ethan asked, his eyes shimmering with hope. “Are…Are you…”

  And then I saw it. Just vaguely, so vague that I almost thought I’d imagi. But no, it was there. An image of Ethan, a duplicate of the one who k in front of me. Jade stood on his right, holding his hand. And I was on his left, holding the other. Ethan stood there in the ter, grinning like a mad fool.

  I threw my arms arouhan, hugging him as tightly as I could. “Thank you, Ethan! Thank you!”

  And then I passed out.