The Wicked Will Rise (20 page)

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.

Game on. I flung off a fireball as a warning shot, and was surprised that when it emerged from my hands, it burned not red but black as night. Dorothy watched it shoot toward her like it was moving in slow motion and, with her free hand, flicked it away as easily as a normal person would swat a mosquito. As it hit the ground, it exploded into a ring that surrounded us in a wall of black flames.

In the distance, I heard Nox howling in pain. I felt a wrench in my heart. I wanted desperately to help him, but I knew that he was now as much beyond my reach as I was beyond his. Dorothy wanted me alone, and so that was how we would fight.

And even as I felt my body pumping more power than I was sure I could handle, I also felt a spiraling sense of helplessness. All the training and fighting techniques and all the magic that I'd come to rely on felt suddenly like they were useless against her. I pushed my doubt out of my mind, but I knew that if I didn't come up with a plan, fast, I was a goner.

Dorothy didn't miss a beat as I teleported myself through the shadows to a place behind her. She just pivoted on her red heels
to face me, her chain still whistling in the air as she twirled it faster and faster.

“Someone's getting awfully familiar with the darkness, isn't she?” Dorothy singsonged. She cracked the chain like a bullwhip, then swung it toward me.

I dodged, my magic pulsing in my veins like a drug, pushing me to move faster than she—or anyone—could ever possibly anticipate, so fast that it was hard to know if I was actually teleporting or not. I sliced my sword through the air in a graceful arc. I'd used it to hurt her once before; maybe it would work again.

In order for that plan to work though, I would have to actually make contact, and that was easier said than done.

As fast as I spun and dodged and blinked in and out of reality, she swung her chain faster. Whenever I thought I was close enough to slice the thing in two, it slithered out of my reach just in time.

Then it struck, shooting forth and grabbing me by the neck, where it coiled itself tightly around me.

Just like that, my sword disappeared from my hand, and I felt my windpipe closing up. I clawed at my neck, trying to break free, but the more I struggled, the tighter the chain pulled.

“What about tuna noodle hot dish?” Dorothy mused, caught up in some game she was playing with herself. “My aunt Em always made the most delicious hot dish. Tuna noodle hot dish and strawberry phosphate. Now there's a meal I'd waste a few calories on! It's not that I miss Kansas. It will be burned to the
ground soon enough anyway. Just like this place. But, oh, there are a few things it will be a shame to lose for good.”

If I'd been just slightly stupider, I would have thought she'd forgotten I was even there. And if I'd had any breath to speak, I would have asked what she meant about Kansas being burned to the ground. But at that second, it was all I could do just to keep breathing.

Dorothy's voice was filled with smug satisfaction and just a touch of wistfulness. “I'll need a new slave now that I've lost my dear, cowardly companion the Lion,” she said. “And you, Amy Gumm, have more power in you that he had in one of his his teeny weeny pinkie-claws. You'll make a perfect henchgirl.”

She curled a spindly finger toward me, beckoning, and, almost as an afterthought, gave a tug on my leash. As much as I wanted to stay where I stood, I couldn't. There was some kind of power the chain gave her over me. I felt myself walking obediently toward her.

“That's a good girl. I can already tell that you'll make quite the little trained monster.”

I was so tempted to just give in. Nothing could have felt nicer, in that moment, than to stop fighting for good. To let it all go, and be under her power once and for all. To not have to worry about this crap anymore. I kept moving forward, halfway relieved to have it all be over.

And yet, another voice in the back of my head was urging me not to give in. The voice was no one's but my own.
I couldn't give
in
. As much as I wanted to, as good as it would have felt, I knew that I couldn't. Not after all this.

If anything separated me from Dorothy, it was that. We
had
been the same, once, except that she had given up. Had given in. To the magic, to her shoes, to Glinda, whispering in her ear.

I wouldn't.

Now we were eye to eye, so close that the stench of her breath was overpowering as she spoke. It smelled like rancid strawberries.

“I'll give you this,” she was saying. “You've developed a certain
flair
in the short time since I last saw you. A sense of magical style, I suppose. You're really coming into your own. But, like I say, you're leaning too much on the same old, same old. The shadow teleporting thing is getting to be old hat, don't you suppose? A little predictable, hmm? Well, we'll just need to teach you a few new tricks.”

New tricks
. After I had made it to the Fog of Doubt, I'd thought for sure I had been sent there to fail. To lose myself; to give up. Now I realized that I had been wrong. I had been brought there by the Road of Yellow Bricks, and the Magril had been waiting for me for a reason. It was only because I had made it through the fog that I knew now what I had to do. It was simple. It was what the Magril had taught me. I just had to become myself.

I could. And I would. I didn't need my blade to do it, either. The blade was a part of me.

“How's this for tricks?” I croaked at Dorothy, tearing with my bare hands at the leash. From out of my fists, a swirling
blackness enveloped the shackles that bound me, and the links in the chain began to crumble. There was a snapping sound as I freed myself, and the leash she held me by crumbled to pieces and fell to the ground, melting into shadow.

Dorothy recoiled in shock, and as my knife returned to me in a flash, a look of even deeper surprise crested her face.

In her moment of confusion, I drew the knife back and plunged it through her heart. I pushed it straight through her body until I saw the bloody tip come out the other side.

Dorothy screamed, doubling over in pain. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes bugged out; her smooth, china-white skin began to sag and wrinkle as she aged what looked like twenty years in the fraction of a second. She began to turn green.

I had done it. I had killed her.

I towered over her, raised my fist to the sky, and called down more of the darkness, letting it rip through me. I had done it. I had killed her. This was who I was. This was who I was meant to be.

Then she stood up.

Dorothy looked as surprised at her condition as I felt when I saw her get back up to her feet.

She wasn't dead. I had given her everything I had, and it hadn't been enough. She seemed as shocked I was.

She stared at me, then looked down at herself, where my knife was still lodged in her body. She began to laugh at the absurdity of it.

Then, with more strength than she should have had left in her, she kicked me in the stomach with a spiky heel and sent me flying onto my back. As I struggled to my feet, she flicked her wrist and shot a bolt of energy at me, hitting me square in the rib cage. My whole body seized in convulsions, pain shooting through my every nerve as I fell back down again.

Dorothy yanked my knife from her chest. Blood was squirting everywhere, but she didn't seem to be feeling any pain. She held the blade aloft, looking at it curiously.

She shouldn't have been able to do that. The knife was a part of me. No one else was supposed to be able to touch it unless I was using it to slice them open.

Then again, Dorothy shouldn't have been alive either, after what I'd just done to her.

“Well,” she said. “I don't know
what
just happened, but I guess it didn't work. Cool knife, though.” She rested the hilt against her palm. “Looks like magic. The black kind.”

Now she was advancing toward me, brandishing my weapon. All I could do was lay there waiting for her, twitching. Her red shoes were sparkling with magic, and with every step she took she seemed to grow more powerful. Without even looking like she was trying to do it, she was drawing down a storm of lightning bolts from the sky, all of it flowing through her body and into her shoes like she was a living conduit for all the magic Oz had to offer.

Was it possible that I had somehow just made her
more
powerful?

“So. It seems that you have a bit of a problem. It
looks
like you can't kill me, now doesn't it? I think this is the part where you cry uncle.”

“Not on your life. Assuming you even have one anymore,” I said.

But I knew she was right. Maybe I still needed the Scarecrow's brains, just like the Wizard had said, or maybe something else was the problem, but I wasn't going to be able to beat her. Not like this.

All I could do was retreat to the one place I knew I would be
safe. So, old hat or not, I pulled the darkness over me, feeling it envelope me like a familiar blanket. I burrowed into it as far as I could, closing out the flames, the smell, the screams—closing out the whole world until everything, everything, everything was pitch-black.

Everything except the one thing I was really trying to hide from. Against the utter nothingness of the shadow world, Dorothy looked Technicolor. Her eyes were so blue they vibrated, and her face—which had formerly been tinged with a sickly olive pallor—was now a vibrant, clownish green slashed with lips red as cartoon blood. Her shoes were the reddest of all. They were so bright I had to look away.

Even here, I couldn't escape from her.

“You think you're the only one who knows about the Darklands?” she asked, seething. “Oh, honey, this dimension might as well be my living room. Have to admit, I've never met anyone else who could get in here—even Glinda doesn't get it. I guess it's a Kansas thing!”

It's hard to describe the powerlessness I felt just then. This was a different kind of powerlessness than I'd felt when Dorothy had me wrapped in her chains. Instead of feeling hypnotized—held in her thrall—I just felt hopeless, like nothing I could do would make a difference, so why bother trying?

She looked down at my knife curiously. Watching her touch it gave me a strange, awful feeling, like when you're a little kid and you wiggle your tongue around in the hole where you just lost a tooth.

I could see that Dorothy understood my discomfort. “I doubt
I can hurt you with it,” she said, “But I'm guessing as long as I'm holding it, you won't be able to put up much of a fight. Shall we test the theory?”

She extended an arm and touched the tip of my knife to my collarbone. I didn't resist. She drew the blade across my neck, pressing hard enough for me to feel pressure. But there was no blood, and no pain.

“I figured,” she said. “You get a feel for these things after a while, you know? Anyway, it doesn't matter. I'll just have to get creative.” She paused.

“Oh, never mind,” she said. “You can't kill me, I can't kill you; how predictable can it get? There's probably some dull prophecy about it—there always is, isn't there? Chosen ones and blah blah blah. Who can keep track? Good thing I don't need to kill you anyway. Oh, I'd
like
to, but as Glinda's constantly reminding me, a girl can't have everything she wants. Not even me. But you've got your wants, and you've got your
needs.
And all I
need
”—she grabbed the strap of my bag and yanked it hard, snapping it—“is this.”

“No,” I said.

“
Yes,
” she said, digging around inside. “Let's see. One mechanical heart. Check. One artificial tail. Check. And . . . a French textbook? I mean . . . I guess that could come in handy, too. You never know when a girl might want to aim for higher education.” She brushed a lock of hair from her face and the blackness began to fade.

As the world returned, I saw that the battle was over. Really
over. The floating island on which it had been waged was now just a scorched, charred husk of dirt and rock, with only a few small flames lingering in the wreckage.

Polychrome lay still in the middle of it, her delicate hand wrapped around Heathcliff's lifeless tail. Nox was kneeling beside them in defeat, his face bloody and covered in dirt and ash, his formerly wild hair singed to almost nothing.

The battle was over, and we had lost.
I
had lost. Glinda stood above us, arms crossed at her chest in a pose of both victory and impatience.

“
There
you are,” she said as Dorothy stumbled out of the shadows to join her at her side. “I was just about to wonder if I was going to have to leave without you.”

“I got what we came for,” Dorothy said, holding up my bag triumphantly.

“And yet the girl lives. Curious.”

Dorothy shrugged. “You know how magic can be.
Annoying
,” she said, finishing her own thought.

“So it can,” Glinda agreed.

“Must be some dumb rule no one remembers. She couldn't kill me either, by the way.”

“It makes no difference. The girl is no more than a nuisance now. So what do you think? Should we take them with us?” Glinda asked. “Put them to work? The Order's little warlock can wash windows, the witch from Kansas can serve, and the beautiful boy behind the boulder”—she waved a hand and a large rock disappeared from the periphery, revealing a sheepish
Bright's hiding spot—“could make a
very
interesting plaything.”

Even as she said it, I could see that it was, at least in part, bravado. She and Dorothy might have won, but they hadn't come out of this unscathed. Dorothy looked aged and decrepit, her skin still a sickly green, and even Glinda looked exhausted. Her bun had come undone, her armor had been pierced in several places, and she had a giant gash running from her shoulder to her elbow. If she'd had the juice left in her, she could have done whatever she wanted to us. But she didn't. Which meant that this was a stalemate of sorts, whether or not either of them wanted to admit it.

Dorothy shook her head with an exasperated groan, trying to act like she seriously didn't give a shit. “They're too much trouble,” she said. “Ozma is back in our control. We have the things we came for. The rainbow fairy and her familiar are dead, and this horrible so-called paradise has been burned to a crisp. Soon, we'll have done the same to the place I used to call home. I say, let's get out of here.”

“Your wish is my command,” Glinda said. She turned gloatingly to me: “Toodle-oo! Polly's been the
mostess
of hostesses, but even the most delightful teatimes must come to an end. And Dorothy and I are late for a very important appointment, aren't we, dear heart?”

“We sure are.” Dorothy lowered her eyes toward the bodies on the ground, then shot a glance at me. “I hate to leave it such a mess, but I guess a girl from the trailer park has slung some slop
in her day.” She gave me a barely perceptible wink. “Not that I know what that's like.”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Ozma let out a screech from where Dorothy still had her chained, where Pete had been earlier. It had taken her this long to come to her senses, but now, she finally seemed to understand that she was being held prisoner.

“I command you!” she shouted. “With the Old Magic that . . .”

“That's the royal spirit we like!” Glinda said, looking like she wanted to explode with laughter.

Dorothy waved a hand, the chains pulled tighter, and Ozma was silent.

Then Glinda snapped her fingers and, in a puff of pink smoke and a shower of glitter, all three of them were gone.