“Bishop!” I hiss. It’s too dark to tell for sure, but it looks as if his face has taken on a bluish-white sheen. A quiet crack and pop comes off his skin.
I have just enough time to register that something Very Bad has happened before a chill races through me, as if my veins were made of ice. I can feel my blood suck into my core as icicles spread over my skin and frost mists off my body. My teeth chatter involuntarily before my jaw locks and even chattering becomes impossible.
We’re frozen. Someone has frozen us.
I try to scream, but with my jaw locked, all that comes out is a zombielike moan.
Zeke passes in front of me.
“We hate the Chief, but we really hate Los Demonios,” she says. “Sorry to go back on our word, but we can’t let you ruin our only chance of getting out of this place.”
The truth hits me.
“You traitor!” I growl, but it’s hardly effective when it comes out just a mumble of gibberish.
I want to lunge at her and rip that stupid eighties Mohawk right off her head, but I can’t move. Despite my frustration, my heartbeat slows and my breath turns shallow. It’s like my body is shutting down.
The rebels chortle quietly as they move around in front of us. I spot Sporty. She gives me a pouty face as she passes.
“Don’t worry,” she says, walking backward. “You’ll thaw in a couple of hours. Hopefully, you’re still alive by then.” She winks at me, then turns on her heel to watch the ceremony with the rest of the rebels.
Pixie passes me. I try to catch her eye, but she refuses to look at me. Eminem pulls my knife and dagger out of their sheaths. He grins at me. “Thanks. These might come in handy.”
The rest don’t give us even a second glance. They hunker down just yards away, watching the ceremony with scary intensity.
Why did we for a second think we could trust prison inmates to be good on their word?
The chanting resumes. My heart beats weakly in rhythm with the slow drumbeat.
Oh God. We’re going to be forced to watch the ceremony—forced to watch Paige and the other teens die—and there won’t be a single thing we can do about it. I let out a frustrated groan. I try to look at Bishop, but the muscles behind my eyes are too sluggish to respond to my mental command and eventually I give up. I summon my magic with every ounce of concentration in me, but there isn’t a stitch of warmth in my body.
This must be what it feels like when you’re awake during surgery, I think. Completely alert and aware, yet unable to move a muscle.
The bright light flares again. I try to close my eyes, but my lids are frozen open. White light sears my retinas, which causes tears to slip down my frozen cheeks. For a minute I can’t see anything but spots of black and I think I’ve gone blind, but then the world comes into focus again. A ball of purplish-white light the size of a grapefruit swirls over the top of the stone formation, emitting a misty gas.
And then I see him.
A sorcerer wearing the head of a huge white ox with curling horns steps atop the altar in the middle of the stone circle. The Chief. He holds up a limp body in offering to the light. It blazes a bit brighter.
“It’s working,” one of the rebels says. He starts to move forward, but Zeke grabs his shirt and yanks him back.
“Not until the last minute,” she says. “The portal isn’t fully formed yet.”
The rebels lean forward on the balls of their feet, ready to pounce at any moment. They practically vibrate with anticipation.
The Chief tosses the body to the side. Another teen climbs shakily up to the altar. My mind screams out a plea for him to stop, but the rest of my body behaves like I’m going to sleep. The Chief lifts the boy up to the light.
A stir goes through the ranks of sorcerers. That’s when I notice a robed body slumped on the ground near the back of the huge group, his torch spilled in front of him and an arrow sticking out of his back. Another sorcerer quickly picks up the torch and stomps on its flame, but an arrow pierces his side too, and a second later, he’s fallen on top of the first downed man. Two more sorcerers go down within seconds. A dark shape whizzes across the sky.
“What the…,” Eminem mutters.
Someone’s picking off the sorcerers. Hope flashes hot inside my ice-cold body.
“Stop him!” the Chief yells.
Three sorcerers leap up from the ground and set off toward the mysterious archer. One holds out his hand, and a fireball blasts from his palm. It misses by a wide margin and strikes the mountainside so hard that the ground rumbles under my feet. Huge flames soar into the sky.
The figure moves fast, dodging his pursuers as he circles around the mountain so quickly I can hardly follow his movements. He swoops in close to the stone formation and picks off one, two, three more sorcerers in the span of a second. But in that short amount of time, the sorcerers in pursuit close the gap between them.
They launch another fireball—this time directed right at him. My heart moves to my throat, but the man zips out of the way just in time, and the fireball blasts into the mountainside.
“Who the hell is that?” Zeke asks.
Three more sorcerers fly up from the ceremony to help. They close in on the man from different directions. He’s completely surrounded—there’s no way he could dodge an attack now. I had dared to hope, but how could one person stop this many sorcerers, no matter how incredible his magic?
A half-dozen fireballs flash across the sky, all trained on the man. But an instant before the flames make contact, he disappears into thin air. The mountainside rocks from the blow of the fireballs, pebbles tumbling into the amphitheater. The sorcerers let out angry roars over the chanting still going on below. Flames lick fast along the dry scrub—pretty soon the whole place is going to be up in flames.
“There!” One of the rebels points at a spot on the hillside right behind the stone formation.
“We have to stop him before he ruins the spell,” another says.