The crowd joins in. “Four! Three! Two!” The ground trembles underneath their foot-stomping. “One!”
And now the torch is arcing, end over end, through the air toward the kerosene-doused stack of books, thousands of books, many of which I recognize by their covers.
I tense up and dispatch all of my concentration and energy toward the torch. It takes more effort than I would have thought. But then the torch stops in midair, hovers, and then zooms straight back at the potbellied official. To my utter delight, his hair catches fire.
The crowd quickly goes silent, but we’re not done yet. I see Wisty staring at the book pile. And she closes her eyes and mutters something—I get only a brief snippet of it: something about kissing joy as it flies—and then the books’ pages start heaving up and down. Almost as if they’re breathing… alive.
The covers start flapping… like wings.
They’re flying! The books are flying!
They cascade up into the sky with a glorious rustling sound, like a thousand birds singing with new energy and life. They drift into the form of an enormous V, as you would see geese or swans doing, only of course there are tens of thousands of book-birds in this flock. And then these escaped prisoners—having narrowly dodged execution—start winging toward the setting sun, to the west. Just like us.
“They’re a protected species in Freeland,” says Wisty.
Chapter 74
A GEYSER OF FLUTTERING shapes erupts out of the city ahead of Byron Swain and momentarily casts a shadow over him and his team of N.O. killers. Though calling them a “team�� is being too kind, or at the least is imprecise.
They had certainly been brainwashed to kill the person they had smelled on the broken drumstick that had been thrust into their cages. They were definitely powerful and fast. They had teeth designed for tearing through raw flesh, and they had long, untrimmed fingernails that looked and sliced like claws.
And they were just kids. Once human kids. Byron isn’t quite sure what they are now. Only that they are the best of the best at one thing: killing other kids.
He is certain that any one of them could take apart a full-grown adult in a single pounce. A whole pack of them set loose on one victim is utterly gratuitous, and The One knows it. It is as if he wants Wisty to be brought back in as many pieces as possible, Byron thinks bitterly.
His feral soldiers are always hungry and easily distracted by anything that moves—i.e., potential food. So when the strange flock of boxlike birds sweeps toward the horizon, the little freaks take off running.
“What the…?” Byron wonders, trying to make sense of the enormous cloud forming over the city.
Not birds, but… books? Flapping books?
There is only one explanation for such an outrageous sight. The One has the power to do it, but he would never set an entire library free.
Only Wisteria Allgood can. And she would, too.
“They’re close,” he whispers. At first his heart leaps at the thought. He can save her—it’s what he is meant to do.
And then it crashes again. There is no point in saving Wisty, really.
“They’re close!” he yells, this time to his crew, pointing ahead toward the majestic plume in the sky. “Find her!”
There is no hope for him or for this world, he knows—indeed, he knows so much more than the rest of the innocents in Freeland. So he will proceed with his plan.
Byron Swain and Wisteria Allgood will both die—together—at the hands and teeth of his own feral soldiers.
Byron hangs back a bit farther than usual. The young killers probably aren’t intelligent or experienced enough to notice, but he doesn’t want them to see him cry.
It’s just that… his heart aches so much.
Chapter 75
Whit
ONE THING WISTY AND I learn about looking and feeling old is that it’s not only inconvenient but really problematic for prison escapees like us.
“What is up with this? I feel like I’m about ready to have a heart attack just from walking up this hill,” I pant when we get a few miles outside the town where we liberated the books. “Don’t tell me I’m gonna be this out of shape at age sixty-five. When will this spell wear off?”
“You’re already sounding like a grumpy old fart, Whit. If you can’t hack it, we can try some more sp —” Wisty breaks off when she’s interrupted by the world’s most terrifying screech.
And I do mean screech. A high-pitched, frenetic wail of something that I can describe only as murderous delight.
And they haven’t even begun the murdering part yet, I realize as I turn my head and see a swarm of hunched shapes scampering madly after us at an incredible speed. It’s pathetic that the millions of dollars spent on sports-car design seemingly can’t duplicate nature’s design for the insane charge of starving animals eyeing their prey.
“Run!” I grab Wisty’s arm, and we run—if you can call it running, that is.
You see, running just isn’t the same when you’re a senior citizen. There’s no way we can outpace these things, I’m thinking. They’re like greyhounds from hell.
“Oh my God, Whit!” Wisty gasps as she realizes that our magic, which saved us in the last town, may actually end up being the death of us now.
The fearsome creatures let loose a terrifying group howl, and an electric shiver runs up my spine. I drag Wisty under an overpass and duck off the road, out of sight behind the rampart, but I know the creatures will be able to smell us at any moment.
“Okay, Wisty, I’ve got an idea.” I actually don’t have one. But I’ve got to figure something out this time. My sister’s way too freaked to focus her powers right now.
I peek around the rampart and see that the… strangely shaped humans? baboons?… are still a good quarter mile away. I also spot a figure gliding along behind them on one of those two-wheeled electric scooter things.
I recognize the stiff-backed, pompous posture immediately, even at this distance. “Byron!”
“What?” Wisty spits out in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“He’s behind this!” I hiss.
“Whit, you don’t know that. Last time we saw him, he saved us!”
“Correction: last time we saw him, he flushed us down the toilet.”
“But maybe he can help —”
“Wisty, we don’t have time to play guessing games. Okay?”
The howling is uncomfortably near, and I press Wisty hard against the wall of the overpass so we’re as flat and as far out of sight as possible. “Listen to me. We’re going to turn ourselves into birds. That’s our only hope. I can’t do it alone, but we can probably do it to —”
And that is as much as I get out of my mouth before the wall where we are hiding falls away. Wisty and I collapse with it, and everything goes mostly dark.
Chapter 76
Whit
NEVER IN OUR ENDLESS days of fighting in the Overworld have Wisty and I accidentally fallen through a portal. I mean, usually they come and go, and when you get in, sometimes it’s like being sucked into an F5 tornado. And you can’t always be entirely sure where you’ll end up.
But this time, I know exactly where we are the second we get through the passageway. I know it from the cold. As if it’s coming from my own bones. In the Shadowland, you feel the chill deep inside you even before you feel it on your skin. That’s just one of the place’s many charms.
The next thing I notice is that we’ve returned to our regular teenage bodies. Maybe it’s hard for a spell to hold through different dimensions?
In this dimension, all we can see is gray, all we can feel is the glass-hard ground, all we can hear for a few minutes is our own breathing.
“God, I’m soooo cold,” Wisty says when she realizes where we are. “This is taking me right back to my death-row stint in The One’s cheery little snow globe at the BNW.”
“Better cold than getting dismembered by Lost Ones,” I say, looking around for any sign of the fo
ul creatures.
“Oh, you can’t fool me for a second, Whitford Allgood,” Wisty says. “You’re happy to be here.” There she goes, reading my mind again. And, yeah, in case you’re wondering, I have already been thinking about Celia, and if she’s close by.
No. I’m not thinking about her… I’m feeling her.
She’s near. There’s a scent that gives me a strange kind of buzz, and a magnetic sort of pull that begins somewhere in my solar plexus. I start breathing faster and take a few steps in the direction where I feel her drawing me to her.
“You swear you didn’t mean for us to end up here, Whit?” Wisty asks. “Be honest.”
I don’t answer her, because just then I hear a voice. The voice I dream of day and night. Not specific words, but the music and rhythm of it, drifting from the fog like the sounds of harps and wind chimes.
“Celia?” I call out, turning in every direction. There it is again. I can find it. I know I can get to her if I move fast enough and follow my instincts.…
But part of the Shadowland’s being an utterly featureless, cold, gray wasteland includes not having a whole lot of useful landmarks—and so, after just a few paces in the direction of the sound, a hand clutches my arm hard enough to crush bone. I whirl around, ready to fight a Lost One to the death, if that’s even possible.
“Whitford Allgood!” It’s Wisty, and her eyes are bulging with alarm. “You were just about to run off without me! What in God’s name are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that Celia can help us. She helped us before.” I remind her of our first big prison break ages ago. But Wisty rolls her eyes and looks at me like an annoyed parent.
“Whit, can you just focus on us for a second and forget about your totally dead girlfriend?” Not too long ago, I would have yelled at her for a comment like that. “And, like, maybe how we’re going to get out of here without becoming Lost Ones ourselves?”
And, right then, as if to put an exclamation point on her sentence, we hear something horrific coming through the fog behind us. It’s different than the pathetic moan of Lost Ones. This time, it’s the unmistakable sound of murderous hunger.
Byron’s creepy animals!
“They’re Curves?” shouts Wisty.
“And they’ve found our portal!”
Chapter 77
Whit
SPRINTING THROUGH THE SHADOWLAND is like skiing downhill with your eyes closed. Pure terror. Our hungry and relentless pursuers might be equally screwed by how easy it is to get lost in this formless landscape, but we’re doubly doomed by their sense of smell, which I have no doubt can slice right through fog. Which means…
My sister and I are about to be torn apart and devoured on the cold ground of the Shadowland.
A low moaning cuts through the mist a stone’s throw ahead. For a second I’m confused and think that somehow we’ve gone in a circle and the weird creatures are in front of us now, ready to pounce and start devouring.
But I’m wrong.
“Lost Ones!” yells Wisty.
And then there they are—their ragged shadows, the glinting light of their eye slits. And there are so many of them—dozens of the ghouls converging on us.
“This way,” I tell Wisty. “As soon as we see the yellows of their eyes, we’re going to the left—hard left.”
“I just hope it doesn’t put us right back into the mouths of those other killers!”
“Me, too. Left, then right. Stay on my back.”
The Lost Ones are looming up and fanning out as we get close, but we’re not yet close enough. “Not yet, not yet, not yet,” I tell Wisty.
And I brace myself for their cold. Fifteen yards, ten yards, five yards—there it is! The cold hits us like a ton of ice.
“Now!” I yell, and wheel left, my hand holding Wisty’s behind me. She’s got to keep up. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—“Back right!”
And then, behind us, the moaning suddenly meets the howling and it’s as if there’s a battle royal going on between all the mummies and werewolves ever conceived.
“It worked!” I yell. “So far anyway. Keep watching for them—everywhere.”
And then more happens in the next five seconds than has happened in any other moment of my life, or probably anyone else’s.
We hear Byron scream out, “Call them off, you idiot!”
“You call off yours!” replies a female voice, one that makes my heart race and then go cold in the next beat.
“There’s a portal!” yells Wisty, pointing at the telltale fog swirl ahead.
“That was Celia’s voice!” I gasp, stopping in my tracks.
“Don’t you dare,” my sister snaps.
And then, though I have ninety pounds on her and a whole lot more muscle and sports experience than she does, my little sister hits me with a flying tackle that takes me out at the knees and drives me straight through the portal.
Okay… it’s not quite that simple. It never is.
Chapter 78
Whit
I DON’T KNOW where I am exactly, but somehow I’m not too worried about it. I’m with Celia, and that’s all that matters for the moment.
“I had the weirdest dream about you,” I tell her. “I was running from dozens of Lost Ones —”
“We only have a short time together,” interrupts Celia. “Let’s not waste it.”
She presses her head against my chest, and I’m sure she can hear my heart beating. I’ve missed her so much, so badly, constantly. The only weird thing is, for some reason she put on too much of her perfume. I mean, I love the smell of it, but it’s so strong right now I keep fighting back sneezes and my eyes are stinging.
“I love you,” I whisper urgently. “I missed you so much.”
“We only have a short time together,” she says. “Let’s not waste it.”
Didn’t she just say that? Ah, who cares? We hug, and it feels as if we’re merging into one again. I love that—it’s incredible. Her presence and mine joining together like two clouds intermingling in a sunny sky.
“Have you ever felt this amazing?” I ask. “I haven’t.”
“We only have a short time together,” she says. “Let’s not waste it.”
What the —? Hey, wait a second, is this a dream? Oh no, there’s something wrong with her face! Is that —? Oh God… oh no!
Chapter 79
Wisty
AN AWFULLY LOUD NOISE WAKES me from an almost deathly slumber. I shoot up with a start—and a modest burst of flame. Where am I? Somewhere outside… looks vaguely familiar…
I stumble through the starlit darkness and barely manage to grab a railing. Oh yeah. Okay. I’m on the parapet of an abandoned factory my brother and I found after the portal ejected us into the rubble-strewn borderlands of Freeland.
And I was supposedly on night watch for three hours while poor Whit got some rest.
Down below there’s some sort of scuffling. Panting? Grunting? Oh no! I have to get Whit!
But before I can even make it to the rooftop door, he’s bursting through it.
“Byron and his freaks,” he gasps. “They must have made it through the portal, too. They’ll follow our scent up here. Is there another way down?”
I shake my head. “So we’ll have to use magic, or fight —”
“There will be no fight,” I hear Byron Swain declare haughtily as he casually slips through the door, shutting it behind him. His usual perfect timing.
We hear a rumbling of bodies trampling up the stairwell and pounding against the door frenetically. Byron’s got a Command Pipe, and he plays several bold notes, which seems to settle the monsters down. But that doesn’t stop Whit from pinning Byron’s back against the door.
“We are not going anywhere without a fight, Swain,” my brother says through gritted teeth. “There were a few minutes back at the BNW where I thought you were actually trying to help us. The toilet flush? That one could have gone either way. But then you show up with a pack of mad apes? Y
ou’re not interested in saving us. You’re interested in saving yourself.”
“I’m very sad about this,” says Byron, staring straight at me, and I’ll admit that it looks as if he’s fighting back tears. “To be perfectly honest, you’re partially correct, but that’s only a recent development. My Kill Team”—he nods sideways toward the beasts behind the door—“were to be the instrument of my own death, as well as yours.” He sighs deeply, as if the weight of all this is too much to bear.
And the weirdest thing is, I’m starting to feel it, too. Normally I’d be ready to light up after hearing about his little assassination agenda—but now, his burden, his misery, his… well, his feelings for me, whatever they are… just kind of sock me in the gut and take my breath away. Instead of being scared and angry, I actually feel sorry for him.
“The only one who’ll be dead is you,” Whit spits.
“Shut up, Whit,” I say. I turn back to the weasel. “B., are you looking me in the eye and saying that you intended this night to end with a suicide-murder massacre? Are you really that insane? I’d actually started to believe in you back at the BNW,” I confess.
I think I see a flicker of hope in Byron’s eyes, but it quickly turns dark. “Insane? I don’t know, Wisty. I don’t know what I am. Remember when I said that no one being exposed to The One’s evil for a long time can remain unchanged? I’ve seen things in him, know things about him—and his victims—that have driven me to these lengths. I can’t apologize for it. And… I can say without reservation, your life is better ending now than being forced to be with him. Which is what he wants—and what he will get.”
Okay. He has both my and Whit’s attention now. Whit loosens his grip, but his tone is still harsh. “You have no belief in Freeland, then. In the Resistance. Or in us.” Whit’s eyes flare with so much bitterness that I think maybe he will light up.