The Void of Mist and Thunder (The 13th Reality #4) (17 page)

“It sounds like a storm!” her daughter yelled to her. “But how could it be hurting all those people?”

“You mean
creatures.
” Lorena shook her head. “It has to be something more than a storm.”

“Let’s go look!” Lisa shouted.

Lorena frowned at her, thinking her daughter had surely gone nuts. That, or she was still young enough to let curiosity overrule common sense.

Lisa pulled her mom closer and spoke into her ear. “If it’s not just a storm, and if it’s hurting the
bad
guys, then it must be on
our
side. We need to find out who or what it is and let them know that Mistress Jane has Tick!”

Lorena had started shaking her head before Lisa even finished. “No way!”

“But this is our chance! No one’s guarding us!”

“No way,” Lorena repeated. But then she peered into her daughter’s eyes and saw that courage had replaced the fear to a degree. Motherly pride filled her chest and made her change her mind. “Okay, maybe just a peek. But we stop when I say so. Do you understand?”

Lisa smiled, a pathetic little effort. “Okay. I promise.”

Like two spies, they slipped out of the Great Hall and ran down the passage alongside the internal stream, toward the broken door and the gray wall behind it.

Sato pulled up short when he saw the strange anomaly appear right in front of the castle. They’d been marching for several hours, the sun sinking toward the forest on the horizon, the Fifth Army like a slow-moving tsunami behind their leader. Sato had promised them that one day soon, they’d return to the Fifth Reality and take back their world from the Bugaboo soldiers who’d gone insane and ruled with crazed minds.

But for now, the army was pledged to help the Realitants get things back in order. And before even that, Sato wanted to see his friend Tick again. See him safe and sound.

They were cresting the rise of a hill, the land sloping below them toward the castle, when Sato saw something that made no sense, made him doubt his own eyes. Made him wonder if they’d been working too hard and his mind was on the fritz.

Starting at a spot about fifty feet above the ground, close to the ruined castle itself, the air seemed to rip apart like a burst seam, the blues and whites and greens of the world replaced by a stark and empty grayness that spread in a line toward the grasses below. Lightning flickered behind the torn gash in reality, and even from where he stood a mile or so away, Sato could hear the rumbles of thunder. Not just hear it—the noise made the ground tremble and his head rattle.

Tollaseat stepped up beside him. “There’s been rumors of the like, there ’as. Fabric of the world rippin’ apart and whatnot. Sendin’ out destruction for the poor blokes who might be standin’ nearby.”

Sato nodded. He’d heard some of the soldiers whispering about it, but seeing it in person sent a wave of unease through his bones and joints. There was something terribly unnatural about it, and he knew it meant trouble.

“What should we do, sir?” Tollaseat asked. His voice revealed a trace of fear, but Sato knew the man and his fellow soldiers would storm the odd thing if he asked. Which he did.

“We need to know what that is,” Sato said, hearing the strong command in his own speech. “And we need to save Tick. One mission has become two.”

Tollaseat clapped him on the back. “We’ll roll it up and bottle it, we will. Take it back to old Master George with a wink and a smile.”

“That we will,” Sato agreed. “Let’s move out.”

The Fifth Army started marching down the hill.

Tick felt weird following Mistress Jane down the long, winding staircase. He felt weird about being around her at all. He was pretty sure two mortal enemies had never acted like this before, trying to kill each other one week, then chitchatting about the world’s problems before scurrying down some steps to investigate a bunch of noise and fog the next.

He
was
curious. Was it a coincidence that the Void Jane had spoken of—this beast of the Fourth Dimension that represented some kind of pure and powerful energy—would attack her castle just as they had begun to scheme against it? Or did it have more of a mind than Jane thought?

They reached the bottom of the stairs and stumbled out into the main passageway, which was flanked by a narrow river on one side and the castle’s interior stone wall on the other. It was a scene of chaos. Creepy chaos. Dozens of Jane’s creatures, mostly fangen, were running pell-mell along the pathway, many of them wounded, some falling into the water. If the creatures started chasing him, he thought he’d die of fright before he could even think to use his newfound powers. But they all just kept fleeing, heading deeper into the castle.

Jane stopped to assess the situation, looking in the direction from which all of her creatures had fled. Tick did the same, but all he could see was a gray light. A rumble of something loud and booming came from there.

“Come!” Jane yelled, sprinting toward the odd light and the noise. Her robe billowed out as she ran, and her hood fell back, revealing the scarred horrors of her head, where her hair had once grown healthily. Feeling another pang of guilt, Tick followed her.

Lorena pulled up short about a hundred feet from the jagged edges of the broken door, stopping Lisa with an outstretched arm. No matter how much bravery they’d found, the loss of caution would be absurd. They could see better now, and Lorena wanted to understand what they were running toward.

A mass of churning gray air hovered behind the wide opening of the doorway like clouds that boiled before unleashing torrents of rain. Streaks of lightning sliced through the grayness, illuminating the world in brilliant flashes of white fire. The thunder that pounded the air was deafening, making Lorena’s ears feel as if they were bleeding. All the fangen and their cousins had either fled or lay on the ground around the door, battered and dead. Which made her wonder what she and Lisa thought they were doing coming this close to the danger.

The booming sounds stopped so suddenly that Lorena’s ears popped, and the silence was like cotton that had been stuffed in her ears. There was the slightest buzz of electricity in the air, and the gray clouds behind the door were now full of tiny bolts of electricity, a web of white light. Lisa was about to ask something, but Lorena shushed her. Things were changing.

The churning, smoky cloud began to coalesce into sections, filtering and swirling, as if some unseen hand had begun to shape the substance like putty. Soon there were gaps in the mist, the green grass and blue sky shining through from beyond. The gray fog continued its shaping until several dozen oblong sections stood on end, scattered around like a crowd of ghosts. Then heads formed as the misty substance solidified into slick, gray skin. Arms. Legs. Eyes full of burning fire.

Oddly enough, they were roughly the shape of some of Mistress Jane’s creatures that Lorena had seen fleeing. Though these were bigger and more crudely formed.

The one closest to Lorena started walking toward her.

Chapter 25

The Voids

Sato was about a hundred yards away, Tollaseat and the rest of the Fifth Army right behind him, when the mass of fog and lightning in front of the castle started to shift and take shape.
Dozens
of shapes, bigger than most men, were continually refining themselves, their edges sharpening, until they looked like Mistress Jane’s creatures. Arms, legs, wings, the whole bit.

Sato realized he’d stopped without meaning to.

“What bloody kind of business is that, ya reckon?” Tollaseat asked him from behind, a deadly whisper that fit the mood.

“I have no idea,” Sato answered. “But there can’t be anything good about it. We need to get there. Come on!”

Sato burst into a sprint, and his soldiers followed, their feet pounding on the grass like the hooves of a hundred horses.

Tick rounded a bend and finally came into view of the busted door through which he’d been before, a long time ago. Outside of it, dozens of gray shapes that roughly resembled Jane’s creatures stood in the fields beyond the castle walls. He couldn’t quite compute what was happening—they looked
similar
to what Jane had created, but they were also bigger, and . . .
different.
More humanoid.

The few figures in the front were walking forward, through the door. Their eyes shone with brilliant displays of fire, as if they were windows into a furnace. Tendrils of lightning shot across the surface of their slick, colorless skin.

Then Tick saw two people standing between him and the oncoming creatures.

“Mom!” he yelled, breaking into a run to reach her. “What in the world are you doing out here?”

She turned to face him, as did Lisa, and Tick’s heart broke a little when he saw the fear in their eyes and expressions.

“We’re trying to figure out . . .” his mom began to shout, but didn’t finish. She pulled Lisa behind her and came toward Tick until they met. “It hardly matters. What are those things?” She gestured to the briskly walking gray people about fifty feet away.

Mistress Jane joined Tick, her red mask staring with a slight look of awe at the oncoming ghostly figures. The fire of their eyes reflected off the shiny, wet-looking surface of the red metal covering her hideous face.