Witch and Wizard_ The Fire - James Patterson [44]
“You mean I’m not next?” I manage to get out.
“Of course not,” she says matter-of-factly. “You’re our savior. Why would we eat you?”
Chapter 47
Whit
“YOU ARE THE healer, aren’t you, Whit?” The Lost Girl peers at me with her hollowed eyes, and I shiver as she touches my face, the flesh on her arm falling away from the bone. “Can you heal me? Fix all of us? Can you free us from the Shadowland?”
These poor creatures, I think, despite my revulsion. These decaying, monstrous beings somehow believe I can make them better.
But … what if I can? What if this is what I was brought here to do?
Something Mrs. Highsmith said echoes in my mind: You shouldn’t fear the dead. Is this what she meant?
The girl reads my hesitation and pounces. “Help me, Whit. Set me free,” she groans urgently.
The other Lost Ones, sensing that this girl might be awarded something they want, scramble over one another greedily. They plead to be the first to be saved, and paw at my face and still-bound arms. The stench closes in on me, and I’m gagging, trapped.
“I don’t know how to help you!” I shout, panic rising in my voice.
A Lost Woman shoves the others aside, her stringy hair peeling back from her forehead, her yellow eyes haunted. She claws at my shoulders, shaking me. “If you are the child of the Prophecy, you must heal me!” she demands. “This wasn’t part of the deal!”
“Don’t listen to them, Whit!” Sasha shouts over the crowd, and I remember that he has a lot more experience with these creatures than I do. “Why do you think they’re here? They don’t deserve your mercy!”
“What do you mean, this wasn’t part of the deal?” I turn back to the Lost Woman, still confused about how she and the others got this way.
“For strangling the children. I was supposed to live forever,” she answers in a detached voice. “I want what I deserve.”
“Children? You murdered them?” I whisper, thinking of Celia.
“I was only following The One’s orders.” She smiles, revealing blackened, chipped teeth with sharp points. “But I promise I won’t do it again.”
“And you think I’m just going to heal you, to send you back into the world?” I ask, bitterness creeping into my voice. The other Lost Ones eagerly shuffle toward me again at the mention of being healed.
“Don’t you get it?” I shout. “This is what you deserve. It’s not just your flesh that’s rotting, it’s your souls, because of what you’ve done. All of you. I wouldn’t set you free even if you tortured me, if you ripped me apart limb from limb.”
“We could arrange for that,” the woman says darkly.
I steel myself for the attack, but it doesn’t come. Instead, the Lost Ones lunge for the Resistance kids, wrenching Emmet and Sasha and the others to their feet.
Sasha pushes against them in fury, his hair whipping around his face, a revolutionary to the end. But Emmet, normally a big teddy bear, looks at me steely-eyed, his jaw set into tight resolve. He shakes his head once, as if to say, No deals. Never give in. No matter what.
“Whit!” Janine shouts as they seize her.
“Janine!” Her name tears through me.
She shakes her head. “It’s okay. You’ll survive this, and the Resistance will live on.” She’s trying to be so, so strong, but her arms grasp at the air in protest, and terror dances in her eyes. I can’t pretend this’ll end well.
The Lost Ones drag the group into an enclosed pen in front of me, untying their wrists from the rope. They actually want their prey to move around — something about tenderizing the meat — but the sharp metal mesh that lines the cage looks like it’ll prevent any of them from breaking free.
The Lost Ones select the first kid — a boy around twelve with light, dirty hair — and drag him near the pit. He’s struggling fiercely against these creatures, but they pin him down with ease, tying him to the roasting spit I saw earlier.
Panic erupts, and the kids in the pen get hysterical, throwing themselves against the cage, wailing to be freed, reaching out toward their friend on the stake, whose unthinkable fate awaits each and every one of us. But the Lost Ones