Lisa refused to be intimidated by this servant of the woman who’d tried to kill Tick. “I just want my brother to come back safely too. Make sure he does.”
Mordell considered her for a moment then finally nodded. “I give you my word that if it’s possible in any way to do so, we will. But understand that our master is our first priority, for the sake of you, and your children, and your children’s children.”
Lisa thought of a million nasty things that she wanted to say, but she kept her mouth shut. She could only hope now. She squeezed her mom’s arm, who gave her a nod and a look as if to say, Don’t worry. Tick can fend for himself.
Mordell returned her attention to her counterparts sitting in the circle. “We have with us today the mother of Atticus Higginbottom—yes, we know who you are—with a Barrier Wand constructed by her own hand. She has locked onto the nanolocator of her son, which will serve to benefit us in our search. The Wand’s presence alone will aid us. Now, we must all take hands, including our visitors’.”
Lisa had no problem grabbing her mom’s hand, but she was a little wary of taking one of Mordell’s. She clasped her fingers around those of the woman, which were icy cold and felt brittle, as if they’d collapse into a heap of powder if Lisa squeezed. So she didn’t.
“Let us begin,” Mordell announced. “Close your eyes. Grasp the Chi’karda that flows within this room. Reach into the Realities—reach into the universe.”
The Ladies of Blood and Sorrow began to hum. Lisa was the last to close her eyes, but before she did, a spray of orange light started to glow within the center of their circle.
Tick didn’t know how long he’d been sitting in the icy snow, next to the icy pond, feeling the icy wind. But he felt it all the way to the core of his bones, and icy was the only word to describe it.
He didn’t let it faze him. He thought, concentrated, and focused on the riddle. He knew the fabric of Reality was at his fingertips, waiting for his mind to organize a solution in the way he best understood. The complexities of the universe had been laid at his feet in the form of a riddle.
When the pieces of the puzzle finally clicked into place, the answer hovered within his thoughts, a word as clear as if it were written on a sign hung in front of his face.
Dust.
He opened his eyes and whispered the word to the biting wind, which whisked it away and carried it to whatever ears needed to hear it.
A few seconds later, the world around him was ripped apart, exploding into a horrifying display of noise and light. Tick screamed, but no one heard the sound. Not even him.
Chapter 16
A Rush of Violence
Lisa was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
The rattling buzz in the room had grown to an unbearable pitch, vibrating her skull and shaking the walls and floor of the Great Hall. The rock creaked and groaned, as if the walls might burst apart and spray them with tiny fragments. It took all of Lisa’s willpower not to open her eyes or scream or run away. Even through her closed eyelids, she could sense the bright orangeness of what she knew was the power of Chi’karda.
The Ladies of Blood and Sorrow continued to hum, and Lisa heard a slight rustling, as if the women were swaying back and forth in their trancelike state. What they were doing, she had no idea, and she certainly didn’t know what she could do to help. But she felt the vibration of power inside her body, and there was definitely something big happening.
She squeezed her mom’s hand, and her mom squeezed back. Something hard and warm—almost hot—touched Lisa’s forearm. She opened her eyelids to the slightest, smallest crack to see what it was. Her mom had moved the Barrier Wand closer, wanting to show her that it was heating up for some reason.
Yes, something big was definitely going on.
Tick’s body was flying through a fog.
Lightning and thunder flashed and boomed all around him, streaks of white fire crossing the gray, misty air, barely missing his body. The horrible sounds rattled his head, pierced his ears painfully. He felt the sense of flying in his stomach and head, but there wasn’t a great rushing of wind blowing at him. His skin was cold one second and hot the next. Even his vision would go haywire—everything turning into a grayish blur then coming into focus again, the edges of the lightning bolts sharp and clear and brilliant. It was as if his senses had a loose connection to his brain.
He tried to quell the rising fear and panic that threatened to consume him. He had no idea what was happening or where he was, much less how he could use his newfound powers to help the situation. He was hurtling through a void of nothing, surrounded by an angry, powerful storm of energy.
He twisted his head left and right, trying to see any sign of Chu or Mistress Jane. They were nowhere near him, according to what his eyes told his brain, but on some deep, deep level, he felt as though he were still holding their hands. That maybe the storm was simply an illusion and nothing more.
He continued his flight. Nausea filled his belly. He tried to speak, but his voice was lost in the noise of the chaos around him. He had the horrible thought that maybe this was how he’d spend the rest of eternity—that maybe the Nonex, in the end, was nothing more than this.
Tick flew through a void of mist and thunder.
Mistress Jane didn’t understand what was going on, and nothing on earth caused her more distress than uncertainty. She was a scientist, blood and bone, to the very core of her soul and mind. A scientist. And being here, surrounded by a world of mist and lightning and sound, she didn’t have the slightest guess of what was going on. It made no logical sense. And that made her angry.
She looked to her left, though all movement was strange in this inexplicable void. Her senses told her she was moving at great speed, yet she felt no rush of wind. And her surroundings didn’t seem to shift at a pace that made sense with the movement of her head.
Reginald Chu was a few feet away from her, keeping an even pace. His eyes were still closed, and he held his hands out before him like Superman. But he didn’t look peaceful or asleep. His face was pinched, like someone waiting to jump off a bridge with a bungee cord. Sweat trickled down his brow, giving Jane even more evidence that their motion through this fog didn’t match the physical effects on their body.
Jane knew Tick had done this somehow. He had vaulted them from the Nonex and thrown them into a place that was obviously even worse. Maybe she’d made a huge mistake trusting him to help her.
She closed her eyes and reached into the void with her senses, reaching to take back her Chi’karda from Tick’s control. Surprisingly, it was there, waiting. She filled her body with the power, sucking it in, keeping it at bay until she needed it. Kept it there like a bomb waiting for a lit fuse.
The Great Hall had continued to buzz and vibrate, the Ladies humming, the orange power of Chi’karda burning the air with energy. Lisa could only sit and wait, though it was agonizing.
Mordell suddenly spoke up beside her with a voice that easily cut through the other noise in the room.
“We’ve found her! We’ve reconnected with her nanolocator! Reginald Chu is there as well. We need everyone to focus. Begin to pull them back.”
The woman paused, and Lisa didn’t dare ask the obvious question. Not because it had been forbidden, but because she was terrified of the answer. Mordell answered her anyway.
“There is, unfortunately, no sign of the boy, Atticus Higginbottom.”
Chapter 17
Finding Tick
Lorena knew something was happening with her Barrier Wand, and it wasn’t just that the Drive within it was helping pool the power of Chi’karda for the Ladies of Blood and Sorrow. Something else was at play. The metal surface was hot, almost too much to touch now, and the Wand had a hum of its own.
Mordell’s words had been like a death sentence. Lorena had suspected the truth from the start, and the people here obviously had different priorities than she did. They wanted Jane back, at any cost. Even if the cost was the life of Lorena’s son.
And she didn’t plan to let that happen.
Breaking her handhold with both Lisa and the stranger to her left, Lorena opened her eyes and straightened the Barrier Wand in her lap. She quickly ran through the dials and switches, adjusting and evaluating, making educated guesses since she was in such an unprecedented situation. Sweat poured down her face.
“What are you doing?” Mordell shouted, the echo ringing along the walls and ceiling of the black, rocky room. “Rejoin hands this instant!”
Lorena gave the woman a nasty glare. “Back off, lady, or you’ll be seeing and feeling a lot of blood and sorrow today.”
A quick glance at Lisa showed that her daughter was smiling.
Tick felt something tugging on his heart.
Not like despair, or love, or missing someone. It was a literal tug, as if someone had sunk a hook into his heart and cinched it tight with a strong rope. And then the rope started pulling.
He cried out, feeling a fire ignite within him that scorched his insides with pain. He clutched his chest with both hands, gripping his shirt and pulling his fingers into tight fists, pressing on his sternum. It did no good. The pull on the rope was getting stronger.
It hurt so bad. The gray mist swirled around him; lightning bolts exploded through the air as the thunder thumped and boomed. His body continued to fly through it all.
And his insides screamed with pain.
Mistress Jane knew something had changed. She felt a presence within her, as if some other soul had joined with hers, trying to fight her for occupancy. She looked at Chu, who was still close to her, just as his eyes opened. He’d felt it, too.
He yelled something at her. His words were utterly lost in the deafening noise of the storm around them, but she could read his lips: Save me.
Jane thought of the Ladies of Blood and Sorrow and the things she’d trained them for. The endless possibilities they could accomplish within the Great Hall of her castle, where Chi’karda gathered so powerfully. And finally, something logical clicked into place for her. The Ladies had combined their efforts, pooled all their power, and had reached out for her nanolocator. Tick had pulled them out of the Nonex into some no-man’s-land barrier between it and the rest of Reality. Just close enough to reestablish contact.
Jane smiled, knowing exactly what expression was on her red mask: joy.
Chu reached out a hand to her, his mouth still moving with unheard words. Fear enveloped him, and sweat covered his face even more than before.
Jane felt ashamed for him. Embarrassed by his weakness. But she knew what the man was capable of. And they’d come so close to partnering before. So close. Until the boy Tick ruined everything, including Jane’s body.
Chu—her partner. Utopia—her mission. She twisted her body, straining to reach out with her arm.
Mistress Jane took Reginald Chu’s hand.
Lisa watched as her mom worked furiously over the Barrier Wand, adjusting the instruments, fine-tuning them with the slightest of movements. The Ladies around the circle had continued their efforts, ignoring the mutiny of Lisa and her mom. Mordell and the woman who’d been sitting next to Lisa’s mom had simply moved closer until they could reseal the ring of held hands in their magic circle. Maybe they figured they could deal with the turncoats later.
“Mom, what are you doing?” Lisa asked. She’d been scared to interrupt her mom’s concentration, but she couldn’t wait one more second.
“I’ve almost got it.” She had her tongue pinched between her lips, and sweat trickled down both sides of her face. “I can’t believe it, but his signal is there. Before it wasn’t missing so much as showing that he didn’t exist anymore. But he’s there, no doubt about it.”
“Really?” Lisa tried not to let her hopes leap to the sky.
“But it’s so weak. So weak. I’m trying to latch on, trying to pull him closer. But I don’t dare try to fully wink him in yet. His body could literally tear apart and turn into an atom soup.”
Lisa’s heart dropped. “Mom, please get him. Mom, please.” She’d never realized until that moment how much she loved that stupid brother of hers.
“We will, baby,” her mom said. “I swear it.”
The buzz and hum and orange light of Chi’karda filled the room like a nebula.
Things started to change around Tick, even as the pain inside his chest grew worse, like needles piercing his heart. His shoulders shook from the ache of trying to muffle the sobs that wanted to escape him, but he tried to push aside all the pain and focus on his surroundings.
The gray mist had thinned out, allowing his vision to reach much farther away. The bolts of white fire shooting through the air had not ceased at all, and he saw more of them than ever—a rain of lightning that continued for miles and miles. Violent sounds shook the gaseous world and continued to hurt his ears and splinter his brain with the worst headache he’d ever experienced.
And in the distance, coming straight toward him, were . . . things.
Dark objects. Huge objects. They looked like bulky chunks of broken spaceships, destroyed and shredded, hurling through empty space. There were dozens of them, flying through the gray air, rushing in. As they got closer, Tick could no longer tell if that was true or if he was actually hurtling toward them. But then he saw that they were less like spaceships, and more like floating mountains torn from their foundations—the edges rocky and broken, the centers filled with vegetation and trees.
He didn’t understand why, but he felt a weighty sense of dread, and not just from the prospect of smashing into the stony chunks of land. There was something ominous about those massive rocks, like they were alive and wanted him dead.
The nearest one was only a few hundred feet away when hundreds of vines shot out from the nooks and crannies of the rock’s craggy surface, like an army of snakes striking out at a predator. Their tips tapered to a point. The vines coiled in the air then came for Tick.
Lisa jumped when her mom suddenly cried out, a sound that was impossible to tell whether it was good or bad. She was tight-faced and sweating as she ran her hands up and down the Barrier Wand like it was some kind of musical instrument.
“What’s going on?” Lisa asked.
“I’m latched to him,” her mom responded. “I just can’t seem to wink the boy in.”
Chapter 18
Cords of Light
The vines flew through the air, coming at Tick as if they were magnetized ropes and he was a big piece of metal. He’d been sort of complacent since being pulled into the massive gray void, watching and observing, wondering what Reality was going to do to him now that he’d solved the riddle his consciousness had presented in his mind.
But the vines looked deadly, the massive structures of rock and vegetation were hurtling toward his body, and he had no more time to sit back. He’d mastered his control over Chi’karda. It was time to use it.
The ends of the first vines reached him and quickly coiled around his arms and legs. They cinched tight and jerked him forward even faster, throwing his body at the rock from which they’d emerged.
Tick struggled against the strength of the ropy chains, looked at the jagged granite chunk rushing up at him, and tried not to panic. He relaxed his arms and legs, letting his body go limp. Reaching down, deep inside his heart, he found the spark that had become so familiar to him, that burning flicker of flame that he knew he could ignite into an inferno.
Pure power exploded away from him, streaks of orange light and fire. The surge of Chi’karda slammed into the massive rock, detonating it into a million splinters of stone, which Tick whisked away with a single thought. Like a flinty cloud of smoke caught in a gust of wind, it flew to the right, gone from his vision. The vines that had imprisoned him were incinerated; not a single trace was left.
But there were dozens more of the floating mountains, and each one had more of the vines popping out of their surfaces, pointy ends focused on Tick. He took hold of his power, pulled it all back within his chest, sucking it in like
a great vacuum. Then he used his eyes and mind to start destroying.
Looking this way and that, he hurled streaks of Chi’karda outward with each glance. They shot forward like streams of fire, arrows of might, smashing into each of the massive hunks of stone, dirt, and vegetation. The flying structures exploded, obliterated into dusty clouds that whipped away like the first one had. Tick barely had time to make sure he’d succeeded in destroying one before he had to look at the next threat.
Explosion after explosion, he destroyed them. Reaching with all his strength, he was able to send the Chi’karda beams farther and farther out, killing the vines as soon as they came into view.
Without warning, and just as he began to feel like he might get out of the mess, everything changed as quickly as one wink of his eye.
The endless gray sky disappeared, along with the fog of debris from the countless erupted balls of rock. Blackness replaced it, a sea of stars in the background, as if he floated in the deepest realm of outer space. His sense of movement also stopped, jarring him at first. Pulling in a deep breath, he heard the sound of his own gasp and felt his insides twist until he regained his equilibrium. All was silent as he hung there in the empty void.
Several seconds passed. Then each one of those pinpoints of light around him stretched out into a long beam of brightness, all of them pointed at Tick and moving at a blistering speed.
Lorena stood up, her mind so focused on the Barrier Wand that it felt as though she’d become one with it. The orange light of Chi’karda filled the room, blinding her vision. She couldn’t separate what the Ladies of Blood and Sorrow were doing from the power generated by her own efforts with the Wand. She’d never experienced anything like it. She wondered if this was how Tick felt when he was controlling the Chi’karda directly. She’d quit adjusting the dials and switches without even realizing it.