James Patterson - The Gift

Using the old hangman’s platform as his stage just digs the knife in. Vaporization is The One’s preferred method of execution-it’s highly efficient-but the nooses are a bonus in our extra-cruel humiliation, the morbid theater of it all.

I so want to burn up with hatred for this monster who has destroyed our life and is about to kill my entire family. I want to use my anger to find my strength, to find my magic, to burn this horrible scene to ashes, to cauterize this place right off the face of this so-called world.

But honestly I’m too terrified to be angry. My courage is crumbling; my light is fading.

Oh God, I don’t want to die right now. I don’t want my family to die. I don’t want to watch them die.

Dad’s still wearing his game face, trying to give me and Whit courage. Mom’s given up attempting to hide her emotions and is quietly crying in grief and fear.

Whit, on the other hand, looks wildly angry, at least when he’s not recovering from repeated blows to the back of his head. Half a dozen times now he’s surged against his bonds, and half a dozen times his hooded handlers have struck him with a billy club, sending him limply to his knees until they haul him back up and he tries to find the focus and strength to surge again.

The ghoulish crowd is loving every dramatic bit of this. The heartbroken mother, the stoic father, the defiant son, the quaking chicken-liver daughter who they have somehow come to believe is a powerful witch.

But now The One Who Is The One raises his long-fingered hands in the air and waves for them to be quiet.

And now he’s doing something else with his hands, a motion I know only too well. Oh God, please don’t let him -

A black rift opens in front of him and rips its way toward us. Or, at least, toward two of us.

And, just like that, Mom and Dad have been vaporized. There’s nothing left but smoke. My mother. My father. Gone.

Wisty

WHIT AND I STARE in paralyzed horror as a wisp of black ash lifts in the breeze and moves out across the sea of onlookers. They’re stomping, fist-pumping, and roaring their approval of the disgraceful murders that just took place.

I’m too decimated by the grief and shock of it to take any joy in the fact that we are-inexplicably-still alive. The One didn’t kill us. He didn’t kill us. It makes no sense.

And then it gets even stranger, even more surreal. Like a dream.

The scene is suddenly awash with painfully blinding light. But it’s a chilling light, if there is such a thing, like a powerful tsunami of sun blasting over a landscape of ice.

Maybe I’m dead after all? Maybe this is that celebrated light at the end of the tunnel?

Or… is it the End of Days?

When the light ebbs, I see that The One Who Is The One is on his knees. Screaming. Only for some reason I can’t hear him. In fact, I can’t hear anything.

Was there an explosion? I don’t know, but suddenly there are hands all over me, cold hands. They’re loosening my ropes. A small army of hooded figures has banded around me and Whit. The New Order guards lining the stage have been toppled by the rush of flooding light and energy.

No sooner have the hooded figures pulled the nooses up over our heads than the hangman’s trapdoors on which we’ve been standing click open. And I’m falling into darkness.

It’s as if I’ve been hanged, but I haven’t been, have I? I’ve just fallen onto my back.

I’m sprawled on the ground with all the spirit and decorum of a discarded rag doll. I don’t care to move. I don’t even care to breathe. I just want this all to end. I want to close my eyes and stop being. I pray for it to happen.

There’s another cold hand on my arm, helping me to my feet. And now my ears are starting to ring, and I hear something else, too-a voice. A familiar voice.

“Run,” the voice says as a door opens and daylight streams in. “Run, Wisteria. Run like there’s no tomorrow… because if you don’t, maybe there won’t be.”

My hearing returns as the sound of massive panic sweeping through the stands hits me. The shrieks and wails seem to have enough power to bring down the entire stadium.

What have they seen? What has happened to their fearless leader?

I stagger outside and join the frantic crowd on the stadium field streaming toward one of the four tunnel exits. I have done this before: escape the scene of my own execution. It seems impossible, but I know I can do this. I know how to keep my head down. I know how to duck and weave. I know how to stay focused in a sea of blind panic.

But I haven’t gone fifty yards when I stop dead, as if my heart has fallen from my chest. Whit! Where is Whit?

I turn and manage to glimpse the plywood hangman’s scaffold. Four empty nooses dangle limply in the breeze. The One is nowhere to be seen.

Neither is Whit.

I haven’t even cried for my parents yet, but now I fall to my knees and start to bawl like a baby. In an ocean of thousands, I’m alone.

But not completely. Again there’s a hand on my arm and a voice in my ear. “Run, Wisteria,” it says. “Hurry. You have to leave this cursed place.”

But this time I resist. I get to my feet, but I’m pushing back toward the scaffold, toward the last place I saw my brother.

I make it only a few steps when somebody-or something-knocks me to the ground.

“Whitford’s fine,” it says, pulling me back to my feet and turning me around. “ Think about it. You can’t be together now. It would make it easier on them if you were together. We can’t risk it.”

The voice has been rational, if insistent. But now it sounds truly urgent. “There’s no time, Wisty. For Whit’s sake, run! Run. You have The Gift. Only you have it. Without you, hope will die.”

And I have to run, don’t I? I have to try to escape. My life matters. My Gift matters. So I run. I run as if my brother’s life depends on it.

As I look back, I finally see the face of the one who rescued me-it’s Celia. Celia!

There she is-that one bright spot in the bitterly dark landscape. I told you I would find it. I told you I would cling to that light for dear life. And I am.

I’ll use it to find Whit. To find my friends. And to make my way to the Shadowland to find my parents.

Because…

Of bad, scary witches who are given Great Gifts, Much Is Expected.

TO BE CONTINUED

ESPECIALLY OFFENSIVE BOOKS THAT HAVE BEEN BANNED

as Dictated by The One Who Bans Books

THE BRAWLERS:The story of a pack of sentient dogs-some stray, some pets-seeking to fulfill a “prophecy.” Thankfully, since New Order citizens are now aware that pet ownership is irrational and a burden on society (and that the only appropriate role for canine beasts is in the employ of members of the Hunt), there is little interest in this series.

GOSSIP GHOST:A series of books that follows a roaming pack of teenage spirits who lie, cheat, and spy on one another. According to the New Order Council for Documenting Pernicious Influences, the lying, cheating, and spying were reasonably well done, but the supernatural elements were offensive. The books were among the first to be rounded up and destroyed in the Great Book Purge.

THE INTERESTING CROSSOVER OF THE DOG TO THE SHADOWLAND:The purportedly nonfiction story of a dog, more exploratory than the rest of his pack, crossing into another dimension. Because of nonsensical references to alternate dimensions, the text was banned.