Whit furrows his brow, and I can tell he’s hurt. “What about everything you said last night?”
I sigh. “I know. I just… just give me a minute, okay?”
Whit nods curtly and stalks to the other side of the cell, opening and closing his fists in frustration. “He’s a liar, Wisty,” he warns over his shoulder. “Just remember that.”
I turn back to Heath and narrow my eyes. “Talk fast.”
“Okay…” Heath says. “Well, my mom is a witch, and I guess years ago, she and The One had something like what we have—”
“Had,” I interrupt, and he winces, but continues.
“Long story short, she rejected him—for reasons I won’t get into right now—and he went really crazy, fell in love with his own power instead, took over the City, and… you know the rest.”
Boy, do I ever.
“Uh-huh. And where were you in all this?” I ask.
“My mom kept me on the Mountain with my grandfather, but the old man was just as terrible. Controlling, maniacal. My mother tried to protect me from him, but I still have the scars.”
Harden your emotions, I think, but still inch my hand a bit closer to his on the bars.
“Life on the Mountain was stifling,” he continues, “so I ran away to be with my father. I thought I could win his love, but…”
He clenches his jaw, and I can see the pain there, the rejection, still so raw, and my heart breaks for him. I just want to hug him, to hold him and protect him and… forgive him.
“When he died I just wanted a fresh start,” Heath says. “You know?”
“I’ve heard that before,” Whit huffs.
I shoot my brother an annoyed look, and he holds his hands up and walks to the far end of the cell, pacing angrily.
“But how could you not tell me that your dad was The One?” I ask. “I mean, come on! That’s a pretty big deal!”
Heath shrugs dejectedly. “Because I didn’t want to lose you.” He looks up at me, his brilliant eyes shining. “Because I was in love with you.”
My resolve softens at the sound of those words. We never said them aloud, but I know both of us felt them. It echoes in my thoughts: I was in love with you. Why, oh why do I only have to hear that in the past tense?
“Were,” I murmur, but in my head, it’s a question.
“I’m still in love with you, Wisty. Whether you like it or not.”
He reaches his hand through the cell bars, and I let him touch my face. Even though I shouldn’t, I reach up and put my hand over his.
“Don’t touch her!” my brother growls from a few paces away. “You have some nerve, creep,” he adds.
“As you command, Wizard.” Heath surprises me by gracefully slipping his hand out from mine and withdrawing it from the cell. Ever the gentleman.
I chew my lip anxiously. Can I forgive him? I don’t know if I’m ready to let Heath back into my heart completely right away, but maybe we can start over, try again….
Then I remember something that Heath still hasn’t explained.
“I just have one more question….” I say, and Heath looks at me expectantly. “Why were you working with the Mountain King?”
“What?”
“I saw you, on Bloom’s film. Why were you working for your grandfather if you believe he’s an abusive maniac?”
Heath blinks and lets out a slow breath. “I…” He taps the bars, stalling, and I glare at him impatiently. “I can’t talk about that right now. But I promise, if you just trust me, everything will make sense, soon. Very soon.”
“Trust you?” I repeat, and he nods. “We’re going to war,” I say angrily. “Bloom is going to shove us onto the battlefield and let us be slaughtered by the Wizard King’s army, and you’re working for him. How can I trust you when you’re still lying to me?”
Heath sighs heavily. “Then this is good-bye, I’m afraid,” he says, pulling back from the bars.
Seriously? I scowl at him. I can’t believe I almost forgave this creep.
“Next time we meet, you’ll change your mind about me, though, I know it. I’m going to make all of this right.”
“See you on the battlefield,” I mutter.
Chapter 72
Whit
A BUCKET OF ice water hits me full in the face and I shoot up out of sleep, gasping.
“You’ll regret that!” I sputter angrily, but a kick to the gut with a steel-toed boot makes me double back over.
Two guards grip me under the arms and haul me to my feet. As they start to hustle me out of the cell, I whip my head around, more shocked than when the water hit me, not comprehending what I’m seeing. Or not seeing.
Wisty is gone.
“What did you do to her?” I yell, wrestling against their grip.
But my body’s weak from the beating it took on the Mountain, and my magic’s weaker. The guards ignore my protests as they drag me down the dark prison hallway, my clothes still dripping.
The prison van they throw me into is packed, and the air stinks with the sour smell of sweat and unwashed bodies. Something else, too. The small space, the hunger, the heat… it starts to mix up inside you, and when it comes out your pores, it smells like fear—mine along with everyone else’s.
Let me repeat: My little sister is missing.
“Wisty?” I call out desperately. “Are you in here?”
No answer. My heart wilts.
She could be scheduled for execution. She could be suffering through torture.
She could be with Heath.
The door’s closing on me now—closing on my chance to find Wisty.
“No!” I lunge, and it smashes into my nose with a sickening crunch. Tears spring to my eyes, and a bright-white pain seems to explode behind them. I stumble backward blindly, but the space is so dim and packed with bodies that I instantly run into elbows and step on feet.
“Watch it!” someone sneers, shoving me. I slam into someone else, and in an already tense situation, it doesn’t take long before everyone’s pushing and shouting.
“Keep it down in there!” A guard’s greasy face leers at us through a mesh screen.
I pinch my nose and feel the blood pooling between my fingers.
“Tell me where my sister is!” I demand, trying to inch closer to the single window.
“In a dark, dark place, with nobody to help her, where nobody can save her.” I can smell the booze on his breath. “But don’t worry,” he says with a grin. “You’ll see her in Shadowland soon enough.”
Then he hits the side of the van twice, and we pitch forward.
From what I can see through the small slit of window, it’s madness in the streets. A group of frantic citizens surrounds the van. We can hear them pleading for help and protection, and when the driver lays on the horn instead, their voices get more threatening.
The van starts to rock, and we bump against the sides and into one another. Then the engine revs and the van surges, and I cover my ears at the terrible sound of what I fear could only be bodies underneath the wheels. And then our tires squeal along the road away from the City.
The van goes absolutely silent, except for the sound of a few people retching. It reminds me of how Mrs. Highsmith described the buses that took my parents to the ghetto.
I look at the bowed heads and slumped shoulders as the van sways. “I’m looking for my sister, Wisty,” I call out into the darkness. “Did they take your families, too? Are they moving us to the barracks to join the other magicians?” But expressions are hard to distinguish in this light, and each prisoner huddles into himself. “Does anyone know what’s going on?” I plead.
“I’m no magician.” A kid sitting on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chin scowls at me. “The magicians took my little brother. I’m not going to let some demon King take everything I have left.”
He can’t mean…
“Where are we going, then?” I press.
The light from the window illuminates the boy for just a moment.
His fingers tighten around a clublike piece of wood—a rolling pin, I think—and his eyes seem to jump from their sockets.
“To the Mountain,” a gruff, older voice answers from the darkness. “To war. Where else?”
And a crude little kitchen tool is this kid’s only weapon.
Chapter 73
Whit
THE FIRST THING that hits me when the truck door opens is the bracing wind raging down from the Mountain. It brings back some seriously bad memories. The guard shoves me out of the truck in chains and I immediately start scanning the swollen crowd in front of me for a flash of Wisty’s red hair.
Hundreds of terrified people are sprawled across the muddy field that faces the Mountain. Up on the front line, the magicians stand chained in snaking rows with stoic expressions. And behind them, the volunteer soldiers from the Gutter toy with their pathetic weapons—lengths of pipe and hunks of brick.
No one is dressed for the icy cold. No one is dressed for battle. This is a disaster already.
“Have you seen Wisty Allgood?” I tug at arms as the guard pushes me forward, my voice rising. “My sister, Wisty? The famous witch?”
People shrug me off or scowl or stare blankly ahead. Their silence can’t mean anything good, and my mind jumps to the worst. What are you hiding? Is it so bad you won’t say? I want to shake them, to scream in their faces, but the guard keeps shoving me forward.
He locks me into one of the back rows of magicians—with the so-called traitors. Like everyone else, I keep stealing nervous glances up the Mountain.
Where’s the man who dragged us here?
I spot Bloom’s sour-faced cronies first. They’re the only ones who are really armed. Still in their suits, they hold salvaged guns from the old arsenal in a delicate two-handed grip, at least a foot away from their bodies. Every time one of them turns, the row of people behind them duck for cover.
There’s Bloom. He’s actually near the back of the army with the stragglers, the coward. I can just see the gray blob of his toupee floating back and forth as he paces. Finally, our fearless leader faces his ragged army and clears his throat directly into an oversize microphone.
“Good citizens! The Mountain Wizard rides today, but not to fear! The magic makers swear their dark power can be used for good.”
There are a few crass protests from the hoodlums in the back. Bloom holds up his hands for order, but at the same time, he nods.
“I know, I know. But they claim to love our fair City, and I say let them prove it! Let them stand on our front lines and protect our honest citizens! And if any traitors have been aiding this villain, let them suffer at his hands!”
They’re really going to sacrifice us all? That’s Bloom’s war strategy?
I feel the panic building all around me, in the soft tinkling of chains as foot shifts to nervous foot. In the twitching muscles of almost still faces. I feel it in my bones before I can even hear the sound of horses’ hooves.
Panic. Echoing closer. And closer. And closer.
I clench my fists together furiously, and flex every muscle against the chains. I want to fight, but not in the Wizard King’s war; I want to fight back now. I want to start a riot right here, to lock our arms and rush the stage and strangle Bloom with these chains until his nose bleeds and his cheeks turn blue.
But I look around and see that the other magicians Bloom’s holding hostage are teachers and salesmen, artists and doctors. Grandmothers and little brothers. I see faces numb with shock and eyes wet with grief. They’re leaning on each other, propping one another up. Sure, some of them have enough power to levitate a little or read your palm, but they’re not soldiers. Not killers.
And their chains won’t budge.
Then, in the row behind me, a sweet whistling sound reaches through the devastation like arms cradling me—it’s pure, so comforting, so familiar. I turn around.
“Dad?”
The whistling stops, and my father blinks at me through swollen eyelids.
“Dad! Are you okay?” Before he can even respond, I lunge toward him to give him a hug. I’m jerked back by the shackles, but it doesn’t matter. If my dad’s here, we can figure this out together.
“They took Wisty,” I report breathlessly. “I don’t know who did it, but she’s gone, and my powers are suppressed by the chains, and…” I swallow and collect myself. I shouldn’t make Dad feel worse. He doesn’t look well. “It’s just really good to see you, Dad,” I tell him anyway. “Where’s Mom?” I look around us. “Did you guys get separated—”
“Your face,” my dad interrupts in a sad, bewildered voice. I’d forgotten—my nose must be a mess of bruises and dried blood. As Dad reaches a hand toward me, he lurches to the right, and I hold his forearm to steady him. He looks a lot worse than before, I realize. The sunburn has turned to oozing blisters, and he seems a lot older. So thin and so frail. He hasn’t shaven, and his stubble is coming in patches of white.
“Dad, what’s going on? Are you sick?”
He smiles, cracking the scabs on his lips. For a second, that smile, shocking as it is, reassures me. Then he looks up at the shifting clouds and says, as casual as anything, “Nice day for a war, isn’t it?”
Okay, I’m no longer reassured.
That isn’t something my dad would ever say. I blink at him and look closer. His eyes are unfocused and his breathing sounds ragged. He’s delirious.
“What did they do to you?” I murmur.
“Oh, look,” Dad says brightly as he nods over my shoulder. “Here they come!”
Dizzy with dread, I turn and see a mass of black dots in the distance, spilling out of the forest and swarming over the few rolling hills that separate us.
The Wizard King is almost here.
Chapter 74
Wisty
“LET ME OUT OF HERE!” I shriek as I feel the ground shift under my feet.
The goons are hauling me—and the cage I’ve been in all morning—out of the vehicle, and I inhale sharply as I squint through the sudden flood of light.
The vast Mountain army fans out across the snowy hills as far as the eye can see, its white banners whipping in the wind. Leopards prowl along the front lines, and behind them are foot soldiers and horsemen and archers—thousands and thousands and thousands of them.
I resist the temptation to retch at the sight.
My cage sways as they carry me across the field between the two armies—if you can even call them that. Anyone can see Bloom’s “army” is a cruel joke compared to the masses we’re facing.
This isn’t going to be a war. It’s going to be a massacre.
My stomach drops and my mouth goes dry at the hopelessness of the situation. But what finally breaks my heart is this:
Heath is sitting on top of a horse, right in the middle of our enemies.
He winks, and I scowl. The last thing I want to see before I die is Heath’s traitorous face, but the spikes around my head won’t even let me turn away.
“Wisty!” My brother’s hoarse voice rings out, shaking my attention from Heath. Despite the fact that I can’t see him, relief floods through me. He’s alive.
“Whit!” I yell back. “Where are you?” I grip the bars and strain against my binds.
“With the magicians. With Dad. We thought you were…” He breaks off, trying to hide his emotion, but then I hear him call out with new resolve. “I’m going to get us out of this, Wisty, I swear!”
The war hasn’t started yet, but at the mention of my name, objects start to fly at my cage—rocks and sticks and clumps of grass. The worst part is I don’t know which side they’re coming from. Which people hate me more?
“Stop it!” Whit is screaming.
“I’m okay! It’s going to be okay,” I reassure him, but my eyes are welling with tears.
Inside my cage, handcuffs chafe my wrists, chains weight my feet, and there are sharp points inches from my body in all directions. To top it off, my magic is still all screwy. Nothing is remotely oka
y.
A splintered piece of wood lands in my metal cage. I kick at it angrily, but then I realize what it is: a broken drumstick, just like the one my mom gave me when I first discovered my power. A sort of wand.
Mom? I look through the bars at the terrified and devastated faces below, and know she’s among them. The citizens may have turned on me, but these are still my people. The tired and the broken. The unlucky and the abused. My family.
“Lead,” my mom’s voice echoes in my head. It could be my imagination, but I swear, the drumstick twitches.
I swallow. Pearce isn’t anywhere in sight, and despite the binds, I can still feel a hint of my own magic in me, strong, just below the surface.
Maybe… just maybe…?
My eyes bore into the scrap of wood. I feel another power wrapping tighter around mine, trying to choke it off, and the chains singe my skin. I grit my teeth and focus so hard my head feels like it might explode, and somehow, the drumstick starts to rise. Up and out of my cage, higher and higher, until I’m sure everyone can see it.
“Listen to me!” I shout as the men parade me in front of the ranks. “I know it seems like there’s no hope for this fight….”
Like it’s all over.
My voice wavers for a moment as I think of Heath fighting for the other side. Nervous eyes in the crowd are looking toward me now, though, looking for hope, and I push my own pain down into the pit of my stomach.
“But… think of all you’ve been through!” I remind them. “The New Order sanctions! The bombs and the prisons! The ghetto!”
The tip of the drumstick starts to smoke as my magic pushes through the unseen barrier a bit more, and a tiny flame flickers to life. That strange other power working against me now flexes inside my guts, trying to extinguish the faint flicker, and I wince from the pain—but still, my fire glows. It gives me the strength to continue.
“What makes you special is not just your magic! You may not be trained soldiers, but if you’re here right now, it’s because you’re a survivor!”
The City people are silent now, focusing on my drumstick vigil, hovering above them.
Witch & Wizard 04 - The Kiss Page 18
