Worlds Collide (The Land of Stories #6)(65)
Rook collapsed, rolled down the side of the hill, and never got up. He had gone to the hill hoping to save Alex. Tragically, his mission was even more of a success than he’d intended. Alex stared down at her friend’s body in shock.
“Rook?” she said softly. “Rook, please get up! Please get up!”
The farmer’s son didn’t move, and Alex realized that her worst nightmare had come true: Someone she loved had been hurt. A tsunami of emotion rushed through her body, and the witches’ curse returned. Her eyes glowed brighter than ever, her hair flickered above her head like the flames of a rocket, and power she had never possessed before surged through her veins.
Alex pointed at the sniper in the distance, and the building he stood on imploded underneath him. The man jumped and made it to a nearby rooftop only a moment before he would have plummeted to the ground.
“Alex, please, you need to calm down!” Conner yelled up at the hill. “You’ve got to control your emotions before they control you!”
His sister clapped her hands, and a bright spiral of light like the Milky Way Galaxy appeared above her. Alex and the lion statues disappeared inside the light, and the spiral whirled out of Central Park. With no witches to control her, the curse had transformed Alex into a destructive force without bounds—and she was loose in New York City.
“We need to find her at once!” Emerelda told the others. “If we can’t find a way to break the curse, Alex could destroy the city—and maybe herself in the process!”
Conner, Bree, Froggy, Red, Mother Goose, Merlin, and the Fairy Council ran out of Central Park and headed in the direction of Alex’s light. Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table knelt beside Rook’s body to pay their respects. Cornelius nudged his friend with his snout and waited for him to wake up, but Rook never opened his eyes again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WAR OF THE WORLDS
While the fairies battled the witches in Central Park, General Wilson and his Marines were up against the fight of their lives. The Literary Army had the strongest, fastest, and most efficient opposition the United States soldiers had ever faced. The flying monkeys swooped in from the sky and yanked the Marines’ weapons out of their hands before they even knew what was happening. The Jolly Roger blasted their cannons at all the Marines’ Hummers and tanks, and at the rooftops where the pirates spotted snipers. Once they were virtually defenseless, the Winkies and card soldiers rounded up all the Marines in Midtown Manhattan and forced them to kneel in the middle of Fifty-Ninth Street on the edge of Central Park.
The Winkies and card soldiers surrounded the captured Marines while the Jolly Roger and the flying monkeys watched them from the air above. The literary soldiers only parted as the Wicked Witch, the Queen of Hearts, and Captain Hook came to have a word with the prisoners.
“Which one of you is in charge?” the Queen of Hearts asked.
Against his sergeant’s advice, General Wilson got to his feet and addressed the literary villains.
“I am,” he announced. “I’m General Gunther Wilson of the United States Marines. Who the heck are you people?”
“Now, now, General,” the Wicked Witch said. “That’s no way to speak to your new commanders.”
“The United States Marines only answer to one commander—and that’s our commander in chief,” General Wilson said.
“And where is he?” Captain Hook asked, and looked around the New York street. “He must step forward immediately and surrender the Otherworld to us!”
“She is in Washington, DC,” General Wilson said. “And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’ll never get close to her. You see, we’re just a fraction of the United States military; the rest of it is surrounding the city as we speak. The minute you step off this island, you’ll all be annihilated.”
The Wicked Witch, the Queen of Hearts, and Captain Hook were amused by the general’s remarks. The villains looked at one another and howled with menacing laughter.
“Then we’ll disarm them just as easily as we’ve disarmed you,” the Queen of Hearts said. “This isn’t the first world we’ve conquered, General, and it won’t be the last. Soon the heads of your precious military and commander in chief will be mounted on our wall!”
“But you and your men don’t have to perish in the process,” the Wicked Witch said. “You and your men could join our army and be part of our great empire.”
General Wilson took off his sunglasses so the villains could see every inch of his disgusted and impassioned scowl.
“We’d rather die than join the likes of you!” he shouted.
“So be it,” Captain Hook said. “Mr. Smee, prepare the cannons!”
The pirates aboard the Jolly Roger loaded the ship’s cannons and aimed them at the Marines. The general and his soldiers closed their eyes and braced themselves for a massacre.
“On my count of three!” Captain Hook ordered. “One… two…”
Suddenly, the Dolly Llama descended from the sky and shielded the Marines from the Jolly Roger’s cannons. The floating ships were so close to each other, the pirates could see the whites of one another’s eyes. Peter Pan stood beside Captain Auburn Sally and Admiral Jacobson on the upper deck.