The Blade of Shattered Hope

Chapter 58

Tick fell to his knees, both hands gripped around the hilt of the knife, his hands wet with warm blood. He didn’t dare pull it out. Clumpy fluid lodged in his throat, cutting off his breath along with the panic that choked him. He tried to suck down air through his nose, but it ended in a cough every time. Bugs of light swam in front of his eyes.

He couldn’t speak. He didn’t know what he’d say if he could.

Jane crouched down to the ground, the mud caking her robe. “Subtle. That’s what I told Frazier. I knew I had to wait until the right moment when you weren’t on guard and ready to strike back with your Chi’karda. A knife deep to the stomach-such a simple and beautiful thing. So old-fashioned. It’s almost impossible to find help in time. You’re dying, Atticus. Tick. Nothing can help you now.”

Tick collapsed to the side, and a fresh, striking burst of pain burrowed through his entire body, as if the knife had sprouted steely vines that coursed through his insides. On the outer rim of his consciousness, he realized he’d never come close to understanding the fear of dying. Death had never truly seemed real. And now it was here, ready to drag him away like a stolen bag of gold.

Jane leaned over until the cool metal of her mask touched his ear. She whispered, “The rest of my plan is for the good of mankind and the Realities. Except for one thing, one item on the list-revenge, Atticus. Revenge. I want your last thought in life to be this: to know that I will hunt down each and every member of your family and kill them. Your friends as well. I’ll kill them just like I did you. Good-bye.”

She stood up, though Tick could barely see her. His vision blurred, dark specks swirling like a cloud of stinging gnats. He felt his life slipping away, a physical dwindling as if he were made of sand and it was slowly leaking out of a puncture in some outer skin. He thought of soulikens and how those small and permanent stamps of electric pulses and energy might be the very thing he felt seeping out of him into… wherever they went. His Alterants’ soulikens had come to him, according to the Haunce. Maybe now they would go to that odd, ghostly creature of eternity.

Jane was walking away, stabbing her Staff into the mud.

Tick hated her.

Life was running away from him. He closed his eyes, wondering if he would ever open them again. What he saw appear out of the patchy darkness was Kayla. And Lisa. His parents. Paul and Sofia and Sato. He saw them as if he looked at a TV screen.

The Chi’karda exploded within him.

No build-up this time. No slow burn that escalated like stoked flames. It was an absolute detonation of power. His whole body became a conflagration, a perfect and consuming inferno of force and might. He didn’t know he’d done it, but he was suddenly standing. A tornado of orange, fiery air swirled around him. He heard himself speak as if he were an outside observer.

“Jane, you’re not going anywhere.”