A Hero at the End of the World (32 page)

“I could take care of you now and be done with it,” Yates mused. “Then I’d be the hero.”

“This isn’t—” Kaur begin, but raised his hands when Yates turned and pointed the rifle at him. “What are you doing?”

“You don’t want to do this, Agent,” Oliver said calmly. “Put your weapon down, and I’ll come willingly. I’ll confess to whatever you want me to.”

Ewan wondered fleetingly where Sophie was. It would have been a brilliant time for her to jump out and save the day. A trickle of sweat slid down his temple.

“Found another one,” an agent called from across the belfry. Sophie was yanked up by her hair, her face twisted in pain. She looked small next to the armor-clad agent. So much for her saving them.

Yates aimed his gun at Oliver again, looking contemplative. “They’ll build a statue of me,” he mused.

Yates was going to kill Oliver, Ewan realized with stark horror.

“Let the others go,” Oliver said.

Sophie started chanting a spell, but a gloved hand was clamped over her mouth. The skin around the agent’s fingers went white: he was holding her jaw shut. Her eyes went wide.

Until he had watched Oliver be swallowed up by a sea monster, Ewan had thought that the worst feeling in the world had been having his destiny stripped away from him. But that had been a different sort of pain entirely; compared to Oliver dying, it had felt like a pinprick. And now it was going to happen again, and this time there wasn’t going to be a chance that Oliver would appear in the next universe, alive and whole.

Everything had happened so fast in the last few hours that he had hardly had time to process Oliver dying and then coming back—but Ewan did know that it had hurt, and that it had felt wrong, like there had been an Oliver-sized hole in the world.

Ewan also knew that he couldn’t go through it again. Yet without his totem, he was useless—although it wasn’t as though he had been of great use before. It was funny that he felt so bereft without his totem when he had hardly used magic that much anyway. He had taken it for granted, he realized with a pang of regret. He was a coward, and his magic was weak, and now Oliver, who in his last moments was trying to save Ewan, was going to be killed because Ewan wasn’t able to channel magic.

Channeling magic. Ewan glanced sharply at Archie, who still had his hands above his head and looked like he was on the verge of passing out. What was it that Archie and Louise had told him, that Zaubernegativum didn’t use totems or spells? Why hadn’t they actually taught him to do it? He frantically tried to think of something, anything, that he might have forgotten, but all he could remember was Louise calling herself a Destiny Captor Guardian.

Well, he decided, it was worth a shot.

“Wait,” Ewan said to Yates. “You were right. We
are
friends.”

“Well, not anymore, we’re not,” Oliver snapped, glaring at him. “I’m trying to save your life here.”

Silently, Ewan dragged in as much magic as he could. It felt unnatural to do it without saying a spell aloud, and he pressed his lips together tight to keep the words from spilling out.

Unlike the last time had tried this, he didn’t aim for anything in particular—he pulled in energy from everywhere and nowhere, picturing it like glowing strands of light that he could slowly pull out of the air. Gooseflesh ran up his arms.

All at once, he felt it. He could feel every ounce of magic seeping from the bells, the stone of the tower, even the guns in the SMCA agents’ hands. It came from everywhere, from all angles; it seemed to be trickling in from the windows and through the cracks in the roof—magic from the entire city of London.

It flared inside him, white-hot and painfully strong, almost more than he could handle. He concentrated on holding it all in. He had to.

“Who said I needed your help?” Ewan asked, hoping that no one would notice that he was distracted. He visualized the magic inside of him like a white-gold ball, just like the Baahl itself.

Oliver threw an exaggerated look around the belfry. “I can see you have this under control.”

With everything Ewan had, he directed the ball of energy outward, aiming it at Yates’ head like a dodgeball.

Above their heads, the air shimmered.

Where there had been one dragon, suddenly there were four. The original Louise looked at her copies and shrieked piercingly, her forked tongue darting out; the other Louises followed suit, beating their wings. A ferocious gust of wind nearly knocked Ewan off his feet.

“This is certainly interesting,” said one of the Louises.

“Dear me,” said another, “is this how I look? My scales could do with a good washing.”

“It worked,” Ewan exclaimed.

It almost worked. Yates flinched back, his mouth falling open. He didn’t seem to know which dragon to point his gun at. “Holy mother of Geat,” he said, but then he swung his weapon back at Oliver. “Good try, Abrams.”

Ewan’s stomach plummeted. He had failed to save Oliver.

Suddenly, all of the Louises in the room vanished with a pop. In their place, directly in-between Oliver and Yates, the Baahl was rising into the air. It looked like a bomb ready to go off; it was shaking—small, violent jerks, not the gentle dips and rises that it had done before.

It was much brighter than it had been before, the same as it had been when Oliver had activated it in the Shetland Islands; it wasn’t until that moment that Ewan realized that its brilliance had been gradually fading.

Slowly, Yates lowered his gun. “Is that a disco ball?” he asked.

The universe exploded.

Chapter 32

E
wan came to in a field.

He was lying on cool, soft earth. High stalks of grass fanned out around him, blocking his vision. Above him, the blue sky was crystal clear. He lay where he was for a long moment, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face and the ground at his back, until he remembered exactly why he was there.

He rolled into a sitting position. He had ended up in some kind of empty field. The uncut grass and the large, scraggly bushes told him that they weren’t in a park. The miles of flat grass were encircled by gold and green rolling hills; in the distance, behind a line of thick-trunked trees, was the shiny reflection of what might have been a marsh.

“Hello?” Ewan called. His voice sounded small.

No answer.

A chill seeped into his bones. Something about where he was felt off. Aside from his three weeks in Scotland, he had never been anywhere in the UK outside of London, where even in the parks you could hear the far-away screeching of trains speeding along tracks. In the Shetland Islands, he had discovered, the only sounds you could hear were birds chirping and small animals scurrying through the bush. This field seemed entirely devoid of anything other than plant life. Even the air felt too still.

A lone tree was planted in the ground a few feet away. It looked old; its trunk was twisted and bulbous, and bits of bark were flaking off. Slowly, Ewan walked toward it, circling it from a distance.

On the far side, Oliver was slumped against the trunk, still dressed in his evil villain outfit. The Baahl was resting in his lap, no longer glowing. His eyes were closed.

Ewan’s breath stuttered. “Oliver.”

If after all that, Oliver had died—

He grabbed Oliver by the shoulders and pulled him forward, and suddenly Oliver’s dark eyes snapped open. “Ewan,” he croaked, then coughed violently.

Relieved, Ewan sat back on the ground. He wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, mate.”

Oliver frowned. “Where—where are we?” he asked. “Where’s Sophie?”

“I’ve no id—”

Sophie’s voice cut through the air: “Oliver Abrams, I’m going to
murder
you. I can’t believe you almost died.
Again
.”

She seemed to appear out of nowhere, shoving Ewan aside so she could hug Oliver around the neck, the two of them falling back to the ground in a heap of black leather and tangled hair. Oliver ran a hand up and down her back, pressing his cheek against the top of her head, and Ewan looked away, simultaneously embarrassed over witnessing their intimate moment and grossed out at seeing them all over each other.

“Where’s Archie?” he asked.

A hand slowly rose out of the grass, followed by a blond head. “Here. Are we dead yet?”

“Hopefully not,” Ewan replied.

Archie climbed to his feet. “You know,” he grumbled, “it would be nice if we went to a universe where no one died.”

Suddenly reminded of the Baahl, Ewan bent and picked it up. “Fantastic,” he muttered, tossing it back onto the ground. “It’s broken. We’re stuck here.”

He watched it roll to where Archie was walking out of the grass and into the tree’s clearing. Archie scooped it up. “Perhaps it just needs to recharge?” he murmured, turning it over in his hands.

“Sophie, what did you do to get the Baahl to bring us here?” Oliver said to Sophie as she extended a hand and helped him to his feet.

Sophie shook her head, brushing soil off of her jeans. “That wasn’t me.”

Oliver turned to Ewan in blatant surprise. “
You
did that?” he asked. “Whatever it was, you saved my life.”

“Me?” Ewan asked. “No, I made the dragons.”

“How? Yates took your totem.”

“I, uh...” Ewan looked away, shuffling his feet. He knew exactly how Oliver was going to react. “I used Zaubernegativum,” he mumbled.

Oliver didn’t disappoint: his eyes rounded with anger and his hands clenched into tight fists. “You. Used. What?”

“He took my totem,” Ewan repeated defensively.

Oliver put his head in his hands. “It’s evil magic. You used evil magic.”

“It’s
not
,” Archie protested, looking miffed. “How many times must I say it: Zaubernegativum isn’t evil. You only think it is because you’re one of the uninitiated.”

Oliver dramatically rolled his eyes. “Oh, that makes it all right then, does it?”

“I hate to say it, but Archie does have a point,” Sophie said.

Oliver squinted at her. “He does?”

“
Thank
you,” Archie said brightly. “The Government is keeping the truth from the people. There are people out there bent on destroying Zaubernegativum.”

“Not about that, you zealot,” Sophie replied. She shook her head. “There’s no such thing as evil magic, only evil people. Zaubernegativum didn’t
make
Ralph the Ravager or Louise Gardener Hobbes evil. It became an attractive alternative source of magic
because
they were evil.” She paused. “And lunatics.”

Louise had seen reason in the end, Ewan remembered. Archie’s mouth screwed up as if he were trying to stop himself from saying something, probably thinking the same thing.

Oliver’s lips thinned. “But—”

“Did you think we were investigating Louise Gardener Hobbes because she practiced Zaubernegativum?” Sophie crossed her arms over her chest and gave Oliver a pointed look. “Because
I
was under the impression it was because she asked nine people to sacrifice themselves and claimed that it was going to give Ralph the Ravager infinite amounts of power.”

“Erm, she what?” Ewan asked. He glanced at Archie, who looked away innocently.

Oliver and Sophie locked eyes. Both of them had stubborn looks on their faces, and the air between them grew thick with tension. But whatever passed between them made Oliver nod slightly—just a small downward tilt of his chin—and Sophie’s face softened.

It felt strange to watch them. Ewan remembered knowing every nuance of Oliver’s body language; even now, he recognized that the nod meant that Oliver was admitting that Sophie was right.

“Ewan used it to save you,” Sophie added a bit more gently. “Ralph the Ravager used Zaubernegativum to lure people into a cult that wanted to destroy the universe. There’s a world of difference there.”

“That’s right,” Oliver said with wonder in his voice. He stared at Ewan like he was seeing him in an entirely new light. “You saved us.”

“I just made the dragons,” repeated Ewan, feeling uncomfortable at Oliver’s sudden awe. “I was trying to distract Yates so we could get away.”

“You behaved like a proper hero.”

Ewan shook his head. “I wasn’t saving the world, was I?” he replied, frustrated. He wished Oliver would shut up and stop reminding everyone that his so-called plan hadn’t worked. “And the illusion only lasted a second, anyway. I was hoping for... more.”

“I didn’t know you were capable of doing that,” Oliver said quietly.

“Cheers,” Ewan said flatly.

“No, I mean—did you really mean what you said back there, about me ruining your life because I couldn’t share the spotlight?”

Ewan’s stomach fluttered with anxiety. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, yeah. I did say that.”

Yet instead of tearing into him, Oliver looked troubled. “Remember when I took Claire Frimpong to the Valentine Day’s dance even though I knew you fancied her?” he asked out of nowhere.

“Who?” Ewan asked, his mind drawing a blank.

“Claire, you know, the one you used to make eyes at? Tall, gorgeous, good at art?”

It slowly came back to Ewan. “Oh,” he said, “you mean Hot George’s sister?”