And yet . . . he was controlling the Chi’karda more than ever before. He was controlling it! Kind of . . .
“Tick!”
A voice. A girl. From somewhere to his right. He barely heard it. He didn’t want to look, didn’t have time to look. The Sleek was almost dead, and then he could go after the others. Maybe he could experiment with Chi’karda, see what he could do with it. Strike out with it somehow? Maybe shoot beams of fiery lasers? Yeah, that’d be awesome.
“Tick!”
The voice was too loud to ignore this time, despite the ripping wind and blazing heat inside him, the buzz of things disintegrating and reforming above him. He knew he was doing things to the trees again, but he didn’t care.
“Tick!”
He snapped out of his delirious daze and looked over to see Sofia standing close to him. The smoky tendrils of a Sleek’s fingers were wrapped around her neck. Paul was next to her, also in the custody of a Sleek. The orange glow of Tick’s power made the Sleek’s silvery eyes look angry and red.
“Tick!” Sofia shouted. “You can’t do this! Remember why we’re here in the first place!”
Tick didn’t quite feel like himself. He’d let the burning power of the Chi’karda consume him and take over his bad parts—the anger, the temper, the thirst for revenge—and part of him had liked it. “You’re just saying that!” he yelled over the noise of the wind and the buzzing. “You don’t want them to kill you, so you’re trying to stop me! Well, I can stop them! Look at this!”
He let go of the Sleek and took a step back, gesturing with his arms like a magician. The orange cloud swirled around him and through his fingertips, around his arms and legs, curling, almost caressing. Fire raged inside him. He turned, pointing at the wooden formations surrounding them. Dozens of trees had been blown apart on a quantum level and put back together again like a series of haunting sculptures crafted by a lunatic.
Tick couldn’t believe it. He was close to understanding how it all worked, close to really being able to control it. So close. And he had no idea how—it was just . . . instinct.
He turned back to face Sofia and Paul, their necks still ensnared by the cuffs of smoky fingers. “I know I’m a little bit weird right now,” he said. “But check it out. If I can really do this—”
“Dude, you gotta save it,” Paul said. “You’re freakin’ me out here, man. You’ve got the crazy eyes.”
Sofia tried to step forward, but the Sleek yanked her back. She let out a choking cough then said, “Tick, he’s right. Something’s wrong—on a lot of levels. Just let it go and stick to the plan. Let the Sleeks take us to Mistress Jane. Okay, Tick?”
Tick dropped his eyes and held out his hands to look at the glowing orange mist of Chi’karda swirling around his arms and through his fingers. Hunger burned within him almost as strong as the power itself, a fierce desire to wreak havoc on Jane and the rest of his enemies. But somewhere in the nooks and crannies of his mind, he realized that something wasn’t right about the way he felt. Something on the cusp of evil.
“Okay,” he said, barely a whisper. Then louder, “Okay.”
He closed his eyes and imagined the cloud of sparkles retracting, absorbing back into his body. He pulled it all inside, then let it go, releasing it to whatever place it lay dormant in the quantum realm, where it would wait for him to snatch it up again. When a refreshing coolness rushed through his body and filled the void left by the Chi’karda, he had the thought that he’d just extinguished himself.
He opened his eyes and noticed the stark silence and darkness of the forest. Sofia, Paul, and their spooky captors remained still, staring at him. He could just see the two sets of wide eyes and four pinpoints of silver.
“All right,” he said, amazed at how incredibly thirsty he was. “We’ll go with the Sleeks, nice and easy. But this time we’re walking. Don’t make me mad again.”
Chapter 40
Frazier’s Good News
Mistress Jane wasn’t happy. Everything had gone horribly wrong today, and the only thing that could make her feel better was for someone to pay the consequences. Anyone. Whether or not they were actually at fault for the debacle was a minor point she didn’t care too much about at the moment.
She sat at the window of her room in the Lemon Fortress, looking out at a land covered in night, no moon to break up the darkness. The earthquakes and shattering lightning storms had finally stopped, though the damage they’d caused would take months to repair and rebuild. It was a miracle the castle still stood at all. She wondered if it was foolish to be up here. Who knew what had happened to the foundations and inner structure—the whole thing could collapse at any moment.
Her foul, foul mood darkened to black.
What had gone wrong? After months of preparation, the tireless, tedious work required to retrieve and alter the dark matter into the form she needed, the time to find and secure every single one of her Alterants in the major Reality branches—after all the planning and sacrificing and
risking . . .
It had all gone wrong in an instant. The Blade of Shattered Hope had failed her.
That was the worst part. The second worst part was the fact that she didn’t really know why it had failed. The Higginbottom boy had done something—she knew that much. But her instincts told her that his meddling alone had not caused the catastrophic change in direction. His trickle of Chi’karda had not ruptured the connection of the Blade, causing its apocalyptic damage to explode from its course and spread throughout each and every Reality and the barriers between.
No, it wasn’t just him. She’d . . . missed something, done something wrong.
There—she’d admitted it to herself. But it didn’t make her feel any better. It made her feel worse. Angrier.
Maybe, just maybe, the Blade could’ve overcome this fault if the addition of Higginbottom’s usage of power had not occurred. Yes, maybe.
And that was enough for her. She had a focal point on which to exact her vengeance. Not that she really needed anything to make her hate the boy any more than she already did, but still, it helped.
The knock she’d been expecting finally rapped at her door.
“Come in!” she yelled.
She heard a thump then a small scrape. The big door was stuck because of the shifting of stones from the earthquake. With barely a thought, Jane dissolved the wood particles into the air to allow Frazier to enter the room. Once he was inside, she put the door back together again.