The Gift

Chapter 40

Whit

I WHEEL around immediately. I'd rather face a troop of charging bears than The One Who Is The One. Heck, I'd rather face a lake filled with piranha, a full stampede of tyrannosaurs, a mechanized infantry division… I could go on and on.

But even as we turn away, the trees of the forest weave their yellow-leaved branches and trunks together and seal up the path as if it had never been there. There's no way through, no way out.

The ground buckles and sends us sprawling backward toward the middle of the clearing. Wisty topples off my back and lands with a whimper on the ground.

She's still too messed up by the drugs to stand, but The One doesn't cut her any slack-tree roots shoot out of the ground and quickly smother her in a dirty wickerwork of wooden tendrils.

"Whit!" she screams. "I'm trapped! I can't move!"

There's nothing worse than hearing someone you love scream your name in desperation. Rage boils up inside me. I spin and charge. Five hundred pounds of furious Siberian tiger ready to snap his bald-headed neck like a toothpick, ready to send my sharp teeth into whatever part of him I can reach first.

Unfortunately, The One Who Is The One has other ideas. Suddenly the wind kicks up so fiercely I have to close my eyes. And it's as if I'm a stuffed tiger, flimsy as a carnival prize-and somebody has turned on a giant leaf blower. I'm flipped into the air, and I can't tell up from down. Leaves and dirt are pelting me, stinging me, cutting through even my dense fur, and then-wait!-the wind has stopped already.

For a split second I can see the sky.

And then, oh no-I can see the earth! I make out Wisty's form so far, far below, pinned on the hilltop way down there like some human sacrifice. I must be a thousand feet above her.

I hear laughter. His laughter… echoing up as if the entire forest is mocking us.

And then I'm no longer a tiger.

I'm just me in my torn clothing.

Falling.

Helpless.

He's taken away my mojo, my magic, probably my life.