The Void of Mist and Thunder (The 13th Reality #4) (7 page)

A Dusty Road

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Paul shouted, holding his hands up as he got to his feet. Sofia did the same next to him. “You haven’t heard why we came yet!”

Gretel cocked the old silver pistol and took a step forward. She kept the barrel pointed directly at Paul. “Don’t need hearing your nonsense, boy. I’m here for a reason, and that reason is more important than two pipsqueak babies begging for their lives on my lawn.”

Paul’s immediate instinct was to tell her she was crazy for calling the mud and weeds on which they stood a
lawn.
Luckily, Sofia spoke up before he could, as calm and collected as a sheriff in an old Western movie.

“You want to shoot us, Gretel? Go right ahead. But you’ll need to answer our question before you do.”

Her words took the lady aback a little, as it did Paul. Was this really the time to ask if they could use her bathroom? Then again, Paul thought it was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard come out of George’s mouth anyway.

“A question, you say?” Gretel responded. “You say you have a question for me?”

“That’s right,” Sofia said. “Just one. May I please use your bathroom?”

The old woman swung her gun away from Paul and pointed it off somewhere in the distance. She pulled the trigger, and a boom rocked the air and smoke puffed up from the gun. Gretel spun the pistol on her finger like a cowboy and smiled, her teeth looking like they’d chewed one too many chicken bones throughout the years.

“Yes, you may, my darling,” she said. “Yes, you may. Do come in.”

Sofia glanced back at Paul, who shrugged. They both headed up the steps of the rickety old porch.

Mothball had always prided herself on being a nice, genuine person who could see the good in everyone. Yes, she loved to tease and rib, but deep down she had a heart of gold, soft and snuggly and warm. At least, that’s what
she
liked to think.

But Sally irritated the living jeepers out of her. How in the bloody tarnations had she ended up with
him
on this mission? The man was like a walking bullhorn, he was.

“So, Miss Purty Legs,” he said as they walked down a long country road in the Twelfth Reality. “Whatcha thinkin’ this old bag of cornfeed’s gonna help us with?”

“Don’t know as yet,” she replied. “Just hopin’ I can hear a bloody word that comes out of his mouth over your yappin’ tongue. No offense, of course.”

Sally bellowed his deep, booming laugh. “None taken, missy. None taken. You should be used to yappin’ after hanging out with that friend a’yorn. Rutger could talk the ear off an elephant.”

Mothball couldn’t help it—she laughed too. Sally always knew how to make her smile eventually. “The wee little fat man can talk, no doubt about it.”

“Anyhoo, why we startin’ with this farm boy again?”

Though she could swear she’d already explained this to him, Mothball did so again. “He’s not really a Realitant, but he’s a friend of ours. Lives out in the boonies so as he can keep tabs better without worryin’ over communications and such. Watches over the world, he does. Has every satellite and radio and cell service you can dream up in this quaint little Reality. We pay him right nicely, too. He’ll know what the goings-on are about.”

“Goings-on are about?”
Sally repeated. “What the heckamajibber does that mean?”

“We need to find what’s the trouble here. We’re on a research mission, silly bones. Clean out them bloody ears, would ya? Master George explained it all right nicely. Gathering information, we are.”

“Well, I sho ’nuff knew that! I’m just tryin’ to figger out how you people speak in them fancy lands a’yorn.”

“I know the feeling,” Mothball muttered under her breath.

They reached a dusty old mailbox on the side of the road with the word “Tanner” printed on the side in faded black letters. A long, gravel driveway cut through a cornfield before disappearing into a grove of trees about a half a mile away.

“Here we are,” Mothball said. “He’s waiting for us I ’spect.”

Thankfully Sally didn’t say another word as they started walking down the long driveway.

Rutger sat in front of his huge screen, reviewing all the data he’d gathered from the instruments spread throughout the Realities. The ones that had survived the destruction, anyway.

He missed Mothball.

Yes, she was a tall sack of bones who took every chance she got to make fun of him. But she was also his best friend, and he hated thinking of her out there without him, especially considering how dangerous things had become. A world suffering from chaos that you
can’t
help breeds chaos that you
can.
The thieves and looters and murderers would be out in full force now that the police, firemen, and other authorities were occupied with search and rescue.

Of course, Mothball was a tough old bear. She’d be fine.

He began scrolling through the data—everything from weather reports to measurements of quantum anomalies in atmosphere particle waves. The data was haywire, still settling from the massive disruptions caused by that red-faced Mistress Jane and her attempt to sever the Fifth Reality from existence. What a disaster that had been, saved only by the inexplicable powers of Master Tick. However, it seemed as if saving the universe from one final and all-ending catastrophe had created lots of smaller ones.

Something caught his eye.

He zoomed in to take a look at one of the measuring stations located in an old forest in the Third Reality; a box of instruments had been left there almost a decade ago. There’d been an absolute
flurry
of activity there just a couple of days earlier, spiking the Chi’karda levels through the roof. And then it had ended abruptly, going from immeasurably high to zero in an instant. Rutger read through it all, trying his best to interpret what it could mean.

He noticed that the information had an attachment: a photograph. Many of the instrument boxes had cameras installed nearby, but Rutger was surprised to see that something had been taken and sent before whatever had happened to end the data flow. The box had to have been destroyed eventually.

He was so anxious that his fat fingers hit the wrong key twice, but he finally opened up the attached picture.

There were trees—lots of them. And down the middle of the photo, a gash, as if someone had painted over the forest scene with an image of a beach. And on that beach was Mistress Jane, looking toward the camera with her menacing red mask. Over her shoulder, standing a ways behind her in the sand, was another figure.

Rutger quickly zoomed in, leaning forward to get a better look. His gasp echoed throughout the entire Realitant headquarters.

It was Tick.

Chapter 10

Probing

The air around Tick hummed.

He, Chu, and Mistress Jane had been holding hands for more than an hour, eyes closed, the campfire slowly dying. Tick could barely hear the last flickers of its flames over the thrumming sound that came from the Chi’karda that burned between the three linked humans. Anyone who might have observed the group from afar would have seen a massive cloud of tiny orange lights, a fiery mist that churned and boiled around them.

Chu, of course, had no power whatsoever over the realm of quantum physics. He had never known any kind of power unless it was manufactured with technology. But Tick and Jane were a different story. They both had control over the mysterious force that ruled all existence—Jane, because she’d been forever melded with the largest Barrier Wand ever created, and Tick, because of reasons no one had quite figured out yet. Master George had merely said he was on to something that might explain it and that it involved soulikens.

But they’d never really had a chance to talk about it, had they?

Tick couldn’t allow his mind to wander. He pushed away the thoughts trying to barrel their way in and focused on the task at hand. Escaping the Nonex.

Jane and Chu had agreed to his plan without argument. It seemed they both had grown desperate to get out and were willing to rely on Tick’s idea. He had, after all, worked directly with the Haunce and saved the entire universe.

And that’s what Tick was banking on. Mistress Jane had channeled her Chi’karda—every last drop that she could muster—into Tick for him to use as he needed. Tick had gathered it in, mixing it with his own until he had more of the natural force around him—and within him—than any human should be able to endure. A few weeks ago it would’ve killed him instantly.

But he had learned so much.

The Chi’karda raged. It was pure power, collected into one place like a newborn star ready to explode with heat and energy. But Tick kept it at bay, probed it, felt it, soothed it in some way. The feel of it was pure and clean, like an inferno burning inside his chest.

He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but he had a good idea. A sense more than anything. Tick felt like someone was standing right behind him, just inches away. His eyes couldn’t see them, but he knew someone was there all the same.

The Haunce had taught him a valuable lesson. Reality spoke to you in interesting ways—not in the formulas and equations of mathematicians and scientists, nor in the dry, lengthy descriptions found in dusty old textbooks. Reality was on another level altogether, at one with our minds. It spoke to you in the best way your own self can speak back. And that’s what Tick wanted as he probed things he didn’t understand with the power of Chi’karda.

He was looking for a riddle.

Lorena Higginbottom knew her stuff.

She’d suspected from the very second they’d appeared on that rain-slicked grass that her Barrier Wand had winked her and Lisa into the Thirteenth Reality. Something about the smell and feel of the place had been her first clue. The big forest—with no signs of technology or civilization around—had been her next clue. And then, when they’d stumbled up to the top of that ridge and had seen Mistress Jane’s ruined castle, any remaining doubt had vanished.

She knew that castle because she’d been there before. Just once. But that had been enough.

Now it was a collapsed shell of its former self, broken and crumbled. Fangen and other creatures swarmed what still stood, but they were too far away to know exactly what they were doing. But if she could help it, Lorena wouldn’t take her daughter one step closer to find out.