Witch And Wizard: Fire Part 3

When the surge subsides, I peek at Wisty tentatively. I hold my breath, waiting to see the effects of my power, the color rushing into her cheeks, the familiar wry smile, her own magic emanating from her again. It has to have worked. I felt it.

But she's not moving. I'm not even sure she's breathing.

My pulse quickens. It's like she's already gone. Pearl is looking at me with big, nervous eyes. What if whatever I just did actually killed Wisty instead of saved her?

And then, just as I'm ready to give up all hope, my sister's eyelids flutter open.

I don't know what I was expecting - lucidity, maybe? The magic hasn't made Wisty shiny and new again, or even totally well, but still, something has changed. Her eyes are dazed and feverish, burning into mine.

And they're no longer ringed with red.

"Wisty!" I shout, squeezing her way too roughly in a hug I can't stop.

"Hi, Whit," she chokes out. "I'm okay." Tears slip down her cheeks, and I'm nearly sobbing with relief myself. With that small effort, Wisty pa.s.ses out, but sheer, unfiltered joy floods through my system anyway. Somehow I know she's going to make it.

I have the power to heal. This is what it's like to feel invincible.

Chapter 11.

Wisty IT'S COLD. SO, so cold.

I'm wrapped in blankets, but I'm as icy as a slab of beef hanging in a meat truck: chilled to the bone. The air tastes stale and recycled, but I can't even seem to lift my head to get a better look at this room.

My vision is still a little blurry, but I'm suddenly aware of a figure next to me. I flinch, adrenaline rushing to my head as my body sends out the alert: Stranger. Dark, claustrophobic room. So many people want me dead. And where is my brother?

I squint to focus my eyes.

It's just a kid, I realize with relief. Her eyes are glued to me, a little smile on her grimy face. She has this weird beauty to her, and for a second I think she might be an angel.

Then I see the glint of her knife.

I try to lurch away from her, but my body won't obey. I feel paralyzed. I try to scream for help, but it comes out as a raspy, gurgling moan. The kid raises an amused eyebrow at me. I'm drugged, I think. She's drugged me and is about to carve me up.

She moves toward me. Not knowing what else to do, I grip the covers with white-knuckle panic. A whimper escapes my lips.

"Relaaax," the girl says, her round, gray eyes inches from my face. They're almost hypnotic; I'm still afraid, but I find myself automatically calming down. She sits cross-legged next to me and starts whittling at splinters of wood, the edge of the knife catching the low light of the single candle. I try to slow the blood thundering into my brain, and after a minute she looks up.

"So, you're finally awake. People were placing bets that you'd be dead before sunrise, you know," she says matter-of-factly.

I stare at this morbid little girl, not sure at all what to make of her.

"When Whit brought you in, he said he didn't know how much longer you'd last. But thanks to my help, you pulled through."

"How -?" I cough, then start again. "How do you know my brother?" My vocal cords are hoa.r.s.e from disuse, and my voice comes out as more of a squeak than the threat I had intended.

The big-eyed girl definitely doesn't appear threatened. She prattles on for what seems like forever, relating the list of everything she knows about me and my brother - like how our faces are plastered on every wall in the capital - but I can't seem to focus on her words.

My heart constricts when she gets to the part about how our parents really are dead, but I'm too numb with cold to process much else, and her animated descriptions of deadly Holiday ornaments, the poetry cure, and blood in the streets have my head spinning.

I feel totally drained, like all the blood, energy, power all the magic, has been sucked right out of me. My hands are blue is the only thing I keep thinking. If I could just get warm, work up a little magic, I could figure all of this out.

"Come here for a sec," I croak, interrupting the girl's tirade.

I must sound utterly crazy, because the kid looks like there's absolutely no way she's getting any closer to me right now.

"Come on. Want me to cough some blood your way? Just get over here and help me sit up," I prod.

She reluctantly moves closer and tries to push up the rags behind me with the very tips of her fingers so she can avoid actually touching me. Whatever. If I'm going to die, maybe I can at least warm up a bit first.

I point a finger at the fireplace and catch my companion's skeptical look. I feel a twinge of anger, that familiar heat. That does it. A terrific fire crackles in the hearth, the three-foot flames instantly warming up this damp room.

"Yes!" I give a little uncontrollable squeak of victory. I may not be totally well, but my magic is coming back.

The girl is evidently impressed. "Whoa!" she says with a twinge of awe that makes me way more proud than I should be for just a little fire. "You really are a witch."

"And a scary witch, little girl," I bite back with a self-satisfied smirk, though I'm already collapsing into the rags, exhausted. "Lucky for you, you didn't try to use that knife."

The kid smiles. "It's for cutting kindling. I wasn't going to slice and dice you." Her fingers dance tauntingly over the handle of the weapon. "It's the Holiday, after all."

Chapter 12.

Whit I SET OUT this morning looking like Brandon Michael Hatfield again, still elated with the miracle of Wisty's recovery and confident I could coax the rich, wasteful citizens of the New Order capital to throw me at least enough change to show the Needermans my appreciation. But after three hours on a busy corner in the business district with only a meager handful of beans to show for it, I'm losing faith.

It dawns on me that I haven't really seen much traffic in a while. This morning, herds of businessmen filed by (never mind that their vacant eyes looked right through me), but now, around lunchtime, when my little corner should be jumpin', there's hardly anyone.

Glancing around, I notice that, save for the bored-looking lunch-cart man, I am actually the only person on this block. A newspaper blows across the street like tumbleweed. There might as well be crickets, the road is so quiet.

I stand up, uneasy. This is the middle of the most frenzied, commercial place in the entire capital. Was I so swept up in self-pity I didn't notice things getting seriously weird around here?

Then I hear a laugh down the block, and out of the corner of my eye I notice two smartly dressed, cheery men slipping onto a side street. Curiosity piqued, I amble after them, leaving my cardboard sign in the dust.

Rounding the corner of the alley, I'm totally unprepared for what I find.

The smell hits me first.

That smell. The nauseating stench of burning flesh and singed hair hangs in the air with the plume of black smoke.

I cough, eyes watering. It's almost unbearable.

At first I don't understand where it's coming from. All I see is a large group of New Order citizens, mostly businesspeople, impeccably dressed in sharp suits and mile-high heels, shouting gleefully, apparently enjoying some sort of rally during their lunch break.

Then I see it - her - the thing they're all standing around. In the center, tied to a post, is what looks like a large piece of meat, still smoking. The blackened, pulpy form at the stake doesn't register at first. My mind can't make the connection between a living, breathing human being and that.

And then I see a tuft of hair clinging to the charred scalp, and my head starts spinning.

Not a rally - a witch burning.

My throat goes dry, and I feel paralyzed with horror. I'd heard the rumors, but I'd never imagined there could be people like this. I mean, the men and women who make up the group before me - the mob - just look so normal. Followers of the N.O., yes. Richer than most, certainly. But still they look like people you see every single day in the capital, people with families and jobs. People with some speck of compa.s.sion, surely.

Until you see the emptiness in their eyes.

Who knows who this doomed woman was, or if she even possessed any magic at all? The New Order, with its bold red banners blanketing the Overworld, feeds on bloodl.u.s.t.

These are its children.

Reality finally comes into sharp focus, and my heart races. I stumble forward, frothing with fury and purpose. "Stop!" I shriek, which feels incredibly insufficient. But what else is there to say?

I'm too late, of course.

Then an icy, deep-down fear wraps tightly around my heart and wrings out my breath. The screams I hear now don't belong to the woman; they're the sickening war cries of a mob gone mad. Because they're turning. The frenzied group is turning from the crisp remains of the poor soul strapped to the pillar.

And they're turning on me.

Chapter 13.

Whit TIME STOPS, AND every muscle in my body tenses as hundreds zero in on me like bloodthirsty piranhas, ready to pick me clean to the bone.

"Aren't you Brandon Michael Hatfield?" a woman asks, awe creeping into her voice.

I let out a long breath, nodding. I'd forgotten about the spell.

My relief lasts only a second, though, since the next thing I hear is a whistle. Out of the corner of my eye I see a van pull up, but just as I register what the words painted on the side - N.O. SANITATION SQUAD - actually mean (sanitation as in wiped out as in one of The One's infamous Death Squads), a billy club smashes into my right temple.

My vision returns just in time to see a steel-toed boot connect with my abdomen, knocking the wind out of me and making me feel like I could puke up a kidney.

Or all of my large and small intestines.

The crowd pulses and sways in front of me as a man with a greasy black mustache and thin little lips, seemingly the leader, yanks my hair back, his cold eyes inches from my face.

"By order of The One," he spits, reading from an official-looking paper, "all sc.u.m shall hereby be cleaned from these Orderly streets, including pract.i.tioners of the forbidden dark or expressive arts, those individuals formerly known as celebrities, and all others posing a threat to the integrity of the New Order." He scowls, taking in my mask of Brandon Michael Hatfield's chiseled features - apparently almost as offensive as my real ident.i.ty. "And that includes you, sc.u.m."

I manage to cough up enough phlegm to douse him with a good spray in return, which I'll probably regret in about five seconds.

The other Death Squaddies move in, and now the real party begins.

One yanks my arms behind my back while two more take turns kneading my face into pizza dough, blood pouring from my nose like marinara. Things are happening too fast for me to register the pain of each injury, but as I'm wrenched to the side I definitely feel my bad shoulder dislocate from its socket, the bright pain shooting through me like an ax.

I could attempt to hurl a spell at them to hold them off, but something tells me that life will be much, much worse if they know who I really am. I try to focus on something else besides the fists raining down on me, but the only other thing I can see is the murderous mob just beyond the soldiers' circle.

A woman in a mink stole and garish lipstick shouts at them to "finish him off!" and the image of the witch's smoking corpse flashes in my memory.

I'm not ready to be "finished off" quite yet. Even with Celia waiting for me in the Shadowland.

Celia. The thought of her is like another kick to the gut, but imagining her sweet smile and her warmth - and remembering exactly who took her from me - is enough for some vengeful spells to come to mind.

There's no choice now but to rely on the magic, which is pretty, well, stressful, considering point-and-click hasn't exactly been working for me lately.

Celes, I might be seeing you sooner than I thought.

Chapter 14.

Whit I'M NOT MUCH more than a b.l.o.o.d.y pulp on the ground at this point, but I hurl every ounce of magic I've got left in me at these brutes. I'm mumbling through chants and curses and poems, forcing out everything negative I can muster.

And it's kind of terrifying.

I feel this dark energy building within me, growing into a power that needs to get out and find a target. I finish with a poem that always seemed particularly gruesome: No more a flashing eye - no more a sonorous voice or springy step; Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination Before I can finish Wallace Shipton's words, the New Order thugs double over, spewing their lunches across their shiny black boots, and blood dribbles out of the citizens' lips, staining their fine clothes.

"The Blood Plague!" I slur through swollen lips. "They're all contaminated!"

When this registers, the citizens and squaddies, equally panicked, quickly and brutally turn on one another. I limp away from the chaos just as the beatings start, soldiers and businesspeople scrabbling like dogs, all trying to go for the jugular.

I pause for a second on the corner, listening to the cries coming from the alley. Guilt at having created even more violence eats at me; this isn't the sort of work the Prophecies intended, I'm sure of it. I hesitate and consider going back to heal them all.

Then I think of that pitiful, blackened form strapped to the stake, and my heart hardens with a bitter new understanding of the world we're living in. Let them destroy one another.

I allow my disguise to fall away as I walk. But somehow I still don't feel like myself.

Chapter 15.