The Wicked Will Rise
Page 61

“I . . . I . . . ,” the Lion stuttered. “I don’t . . .”
Nox gave me a wide-eyed look of panic. “Forget me!” he shouted. “I’m not important.”
I looked from him, to the Lion, to Dorothy, making a calculation. Nox was right—this wasn’t about him anymore—but at the same time, what good would it do for me to keep on fighting hopelessly against Dorothy just to let him die?
For her part, Dorothy just looked annoyed at the Lion’s inaction. “Do it, coward,” she said. She gave a sharp yank on the chain she held the Lion with, and I saw a wave of energy ripple through it. So that’s what she was controlling him with.
It gave me an idea: a cord can always be cut. So instead of striking directly at Dorothy again, or at the Lion himself, I stepped forward and brought my sword down on the leash.
A freezing jolt zinged through my body as the metal links shattered. The Lion collapsed to the ground, dropping Nox from his grasp, and Dorothy screamed, recoiling. Whatever I had done, it had wounded her.
I probably should have gone straight for her while I could—hit her while she was down. But I only had a moment to make my choice.
I was now certain that my decision to let the Lion go the last time I’d seen him had been stupid, and I could have weakened Dorothy before now, before she’d had a chance to bring us all together like this. And I should have put him out of his misery when I’d had the chance.
As he heaved on the ground, covering his face with his paws, I blinked myself to his side and in a single, determined stroke, sliced his head off.
I did it with no pleasure. I hardly thought about what I was doing at all, but I was surprised at how little resistance I felt as my dark blade tore through his thick, muscular flesh; at how effortlessly I drew blood.
At how little remorse I felt.
He didn’t even have time to scream: a geyser of blood shot up from the stump at his neck as his head separated from his body and dropped to the smoking rock. It bounced once and rolled over to where Nox was crawling to his knees and staring in disbelief at everything that had just happened.
“Help Polychrome,” I told him tersely. Nox nodded, springing instantly back into action. He teleported across the field to where the rainbow’s daughter was still locked in combat with Glinda.
Based on what I could see of how she was faring, she needed all the assistance she could get. Glinda had surrounded herself behind a barricade of magical protections, and was crouched with a shimmering longbow from which she was letting loose one zinging arrow of pink energy after another. Each one flew through the air faster than the last toward the creature Polychrome had transformed herself into, which was flailing on the field, dodging in vain and stumbling to keep going as light poured from the many wounds that had already pierced its body.
And the moment that Nox materialized at her side was the moment it was all over. One final arrow sailed through the air from Glinda’s expert hand and ripped through the creature’s chest. The creature fell from the air and separated, once again, into two figures: Polychrome and Heathcliff, both of them now limp and inert, landing with two thuds on the ground.
“No!” screamed Bright, who had come to and was now on his knees, watching in horror.
Nox didn’t let it give him pause. He spun toward Glinda, drawing his fist back and bringing it toward her, letting loose a torrent of purple bolts that rained down on the makeshift walls she’d built around herself and shattered them like glass.
I wanted to watch him take down Glinda, to relish her demise, but I had to deal with Dorothy. She had recovered herself, and was now smoothing out her dress. She glanced over at where the Lion’s head lay and tossed her hair.
“Good help is so hard to find these days,” she said. “Just as well, I guess. What use is a Lion who doesn’t even want to eat people?”
She gave the head a kick with a cruelty that made me shudder. “Now, Amy,” she said. “You and I have a score to settle.”
I couldn’t disagree. It was time to finish this. I just wasn’t sure how I was going to do it.
Dorothy and I stared each other down, slowly circling each other. There was something crackling between us now, a repellent attraction that I couldn’t ignore, and I tried to let the battle still raging around us slip away. She was the only thing that mattered right now. I had to fight smarter, not harder.
As for her, she wasn’t concerned at all.
“You know one thing I miss from home?” she asked pleasantly as she reached up and pulled a red ribbon from her hair, letting her ponytail come loose and fall in shiny waves around her shoulders. “Malt shops,” she said. “You have no idea how many servants I’ve been through trying to find the one who could brew me up a decent strawberry phosphate. They never quite get it right. Have you ever had a strawberry phosphate? Do you love them?”
I pictured all the different ways I wanted her to die.
I wanted to drive a stake through her heart like she was a vampire. I wanted to bring my fists together and smash her skull open. I wanted to drop a house on her. It was too bad that I didn’t have one handy. I took a step back, unsure of myself, as she bit her lip and began to twirl the ribbon absentmindedly around her finger.
But it wasn’t as empty a gesture as it appeared: as she twisted it, the ribbon began to take on weight and heft. It began to grow until it was twice and then three times the length of her body, and then she began to whirl it over her head, where it thickened, its satiny texture transforming into something metallic, until it was no longer a ribbon in any way, but instead a thick metal chain just like the one she’d used to bind the Lion, spinning above her.