The Void of Mist and Thunder (The 13th Reality #4) (12 page)

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.