Witch and Wizard_ The Fire - James Patterson [13]
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 compassion, 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 bloodlust.
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 scum shall hereby be cleaned from these Orderly streets, including practitioners 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 identity. “And that includes you, scum.”
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