Witch and Wizard_ The Fire - James Patterson [64]
Wisty
“THIS WILL BE the end of you, girl,” The One howls over the wind, his arms spread out like a maestro directing the scene as he levitates above the violent eye of the storm. “I can promise you that much. Are you ready to be nothing but a memory — and then not even that?”
Pearce has instructed the troops to block all exit routes, and he strides toward me along the bank, pretentiously flanked on either side by elite N.O. guards, the whites of his wicked eyes flashing furiously at me.
“I think so,” I whisper numbly. Maybe I am ready to be done with all of this.
The clouds race across the heavens faster, and the massive, whirling twister towers above me, just a slight girl battling the whole sky. I open my arms, palms up, a lamb offered for the slaughter, and a deafening clap of thunder bellows its response.
I concentrate on the last sensations I will possibly ever experience, feel the hard rain tearing across my face and sense the cold wind on my eyelids, my tangled hair whipped in the raging gale. I hear the roar of the storm as it grows in strength, but my ears strain to hear something else as well.
Byron. I’d forgotten him.
“Wisty, come right now! You can get away!” he bellows.
I snap open my eyes to see a spectacular flash of lightning strike nearby, and in a magical dance of luck, timing, and sheer adrenaline, I’m able to instantaneously send all my electrical energy into manipulating it.
Debris swirls around us as I hurl the supercharge at The One and his soldiers. The flashing crackle flies from my fingers and finds its target: the river, with the New Order troops all wading through the shallow water. The connection lights up the sky, and for a moment hundreds of men convulse like marionettes as electricity shoots through their bodies.
I feel nauseous. Those were men with families, with hopes. But they were also men who’d done unspeakable things, I remind myself, who’d performed experiments on children and executed their parents.
But is there ever an excuse for mass murder?
I glimpse The One’s face, distorted with anger and … what else? Admiration? And I hear Pearce’s enraged yelling behind him, but then I turn away from them, toward the turbulent river. Toward the Shadowland, and my parents.
Now is the moment when terror finally grips my heart. But there’s no time to think of drowning, to imagine my lungs exploding.
Instead I inhale a giant gulp of air, and Byron grabs my hand as we plunge into the deep, swirling frenzy of water. I kick my feet fiercely and don’t stop until we push through a portal and deep into the Shadowland.
Chapter 70
Whit
THE RIVER OF Forever is not the serene, clear-blue comfort that you’d hope to greet your soul after you’ve exhaled your last breath in the Overworld. Instead it’s a gray mass of angry, roiling waves, ominous and forbidding, surrounded by the anarchy of the dead.
But it’s as if the water has a magnetic pull, too; I stumble toward it as if hypnotized. As I near, I can see an ancient-looking drawbridge firmly locked in a raised position. Who knows how long it’s been that way? There’s a mass of accumulated souls throwing themselves into those furious waters, but they can’t cross. Instead, the river rolls them violently about, tossing them like limp fish back onto the bank. I feel an overwhelming need to jump, too, along with a vague panic at the thought of not being able to control that urge. Celia puts her hand on my arm, shaking her head in warning.
Sasha has taken Ragan and some of the others to rest away from the crowds, but a few of us, including Janine and Celia, have started elbowing through the masses along the bank, trying to find the spot on the river where I remember seeing my parents, in the vision at Mrs. Highsmith’s.
It’s chaotic, with lines snaking back and forth and mobs of the newly dead wandering aimlessly through this antechamber of the afterlife, and no one seems to be able to help us. Some people are weeping, but most are dazed and in shock, nearly unresponsive.
“They don’t get that they’re dead,” Celia explains, nodding at