Witch and Wizard_ The Fire - James Patterson [45]
If I won’t heal the Lost Ones, they’ll force me to hear every shriek, to smell the sulfurous stench, to feel the whole grisly event as each of my friends goes up in flames. As the Resistance is entirely extinguished in a gruesome holocaust.
My body buzzes with grief, and my heart breaks in defeat.
“No!” I roar. I won’t let this happen. I thrash against the ropes, and they gouge lines into my wrists. I summon all of my strength and buck frantically, but nothing budges. I’m in position to watch the horror show unfold.
My head hangs, despair washing over me, and just when the situation seems most dire, the Lost Girl who was talking to me earlier reappears, holding a bucket. And then, with a grisly smile plastered across her skeletal face, she slathers sauce and spices all over my dearest friends.
She’s basting them.
Chapter 48
Whit
THE RED FOG presses in claustrophobically, and beyond, the bones of the forest stretch upward, like arms clawing their way out of this hell. Lost Ones swarm around us, and the smell of burnt hair gags me as they add discarded animal pelts to the flame. I ache for a spell, for a way out, but my magic doesn’t seem to work on the dead. The fire pit grows hotter, and hope is just a pipe dream.
“Whit?” Janine whispers from the pen five feet in front of me, and I drag my eyes away from the macabre preparations and look down at her gorgeous, strangely calm face.
“Yeah?” I murmur.
“It’s okay.” She grips the metal mesh of the pen, her knuckles white with the effort. She needs to believe that it really is okay. But I can’t. I can see the pit from here, and they’re wrapping that poor boy tighter and tighter on the spit.
“What do you mean?” I ask, despair creeping into my voice. “Janine, look at where we are. Nothing is okay.”
“It’s going to be, though. Even if we don’t make it,” she says, that strong, determined look that I know so well returning to her eyes, “we’ll still have won. Because we’ll never be this.” She looks around.
“You’re right.” I nod. “We’ll never be like them.”
“But before they … take us” — her voice cracks —“t here’s something I want to say.” She takes a deep breath. “I think you’re stupid. And crazy. And crazy stupid.” I know she’s desperately trying to find a way to make me smile, as if it’s what she wants her last sight of me to be before a tragic end. “And I’ll never forgive you for coming back here after you promised me a million years ago that you’d steer clear of this wretched place. What kind of pigheaded guy tries to take on not only the totally corrupt ruler of the Overworld but all of the evil in the Shadowland on top of it?” I chuckle weakly. It’s what she wants me to do. “But I must be crazy stupid, too,” she goes on, “because I actually think you can do it. Because you always made me believe in you in the worst of circumstances.” She peers out at me through the cage, her face sincere.
The confession hangs between me and Janine as Sasha’s hoarse voice screaming insults at the Lost Ones from the other side of the pen drowns out everything else.
“You’re not stupid. Or crazy,” I say. “You’re amazing, and you —”
“And you’re going to get out of here, you know,” she interrupts. “And when you do, you’d better not give up the fight, because this is not the end, and —”
“We’re both going to get out of here,” I say stubbornly, even though it’s clearly a lie. “And regardless of what happens, don’t act like you’re just some lackey falling by the wayside. You are this cause, Janine. You’re the whole brains and passion behind it, and without you, The One would’ve wiped out every shred of the Resistance a long time ago.” She looks at the ground, and I swallow. “And you’re so, so beautiful,” I say before I can stop myself, memorizing her features.
“Beautiful, yeah right.” Janine manages a self-deprecating laugh, looking down at her body. “These grubby combat boots and this unwashed hair, and now the last image you have of me is with basting sauce.”
“You look beautiful,” I