Witch and Wizard - James Patterson [18]
Her name was Princess. She was a shih tzu. And she now seemed like a fuzzy teddy bear that I could have dressed up in doll clothes for a tea party.
“Are those dogs?” Whit asked hoarsely as we started down the hallway. “Or wolves?”
I shook my head. “I’m going with hellhounds.”
“Do you think maybe you could burst into flames again?” Whit whispered.
“I can’t do it on purpose,” I croaked, frustrated. “I’m trying. Not happening.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll go,” Whit rasped back, then blew out a thin gust of air.
“No,” I wheezed. “I’m small and fast.”
Before Whit and I had a chance to finish the argument, we saw a small, indistinct figure appear at the end of the hall. Holding a pail.
“Who’s that?” I muttered.
Whoever it was suddenly darted forward, leaping and dodging and almost crashing against the wall, hurtling toward us at a furious pace. “It” was about thirty feet away when it suddenly tripped and fell.
Instantly several hounds fell on it, snarling and snapping. Just watching the awful scene took my breath away.
“I have to help,” Whit said, making a move toward the hapless soul.
But then the little figure bounced up, pail in hand, and hustled straight toward us again. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, but it was definitely a little kid, maybe five or six years younger than me. Blood streaked the poor tyke’s hair and ragged T-shirt. We stood to one side as he or she dashed past, then collapsed on the dirty floor, huddling against the wall, head and shoulders shaking.
The pail, which had fallen over when the child had tripped, was now completely empty. The hellhounds had eaten or drunk everything the kid had risked life and limb for.
Crying silently, the huddled figure grabbed the empty pail, skittered away on hands and knees to a couple of doors down the hall, and disappeared inside.
Whit and I looked on in shocked silence.
The Matron merely peered at her watch. “Seventy seconds,” she told us. “Ticktock.”
Chapter 30
Whit
HAVE YOU EVER TRIED to think loudly? It seems like a contradiction in terms. But you do what you gotta do when you have to pretend you can’t hear the sounds of vicious snarling and snapping jaws and teeth all around you.
I had to shout in my head over and over as I bolted down the hall with both our pails, Make like you’re doing the hundred-yard dash—at the regional championship. Run, run, run!
Argh! I felt my feet stumble but caught myself and kept sprinting. Not the regional championship, I thought. The world championship.
“Victory, victory, victory!” I yelled senselessly, hoping I never had to explain to Wisty that this was what I occasionally chanted to myself when I was in competition, to psych myself up, to help me pretend to be the all-American boy I thought everybody wanted me to be.
It sounded pretty lame in the middle of an obstacle course of mad dogs, but it was working. Somehow I made it to the end of the hall with only a nip or two. I turned, gave Wisty a psychotic thumbs-up, then plowed through a doorway.
And stopped dead in my tracks.
It was pretty dark. And the room seemed empty. Was this the Matron’s idea of a trap? Good one, if it was. Way to go, Matron.
For a second I felt more vulnerable than ever before. I half expected a mad dog or wolf to shoot out of the dark and tear into my face.
It seemed like an eternity before my eyes adjusted, but I finally detected two troughlike shapes against a wall. The Matron hadn’t lied after all—amazing! I dashed over to them, sloppily filling my pails with sludgelike gruel and tepid water.
I was feeling so good, I dunked my face in the brackish liquid for a hearty slurp. The sensation of my head underwater gave me a rush of energy.
Clutching the pails to my chest, I sprinted out of the room, then down the hall toward my sister, who was jumping up and down like a manic cheerleader.
“Good hellhounds!” I heard her yell through the din of the barking devil dogs. “Sweet little hellhounds, let him through. Go, Whit, go!”
At that very