There. A spark.
He reached for it with mental hands and grabbed it, squeezed it, embraced it. Quicker than ever before, the Chi’karda burst through him, filling his body with a raging burn. It pulsed and throbbed. Tick felt like it was about to explode out of him, devouring first his flesh and then the forest in flames. Tick heard the woods around him shake, heard the same odd bee-buzz sound from months ago when he’d unwittingly unleashed his power in fear, wreaking havoc with molecular structures, melding trees and other things together. The same had happened in Chu’s mountain building.
Tick knew he was losing control.
He screamed and opened his eyes.
The first thing he noticed was that he’d stopped moving. An orange cloud of sparkling mist surrounded him, illuminating the forest. The Sleek had released his ankles and stood several feet away, its silver eyes wide and bright, maybe out of shock. Tick could see the thing’s body clearly now—the seething tendrils of black smoke that coiled and wrapped together to form the elongated body, the hacked up face, the wispy trails of its fingers.
Tick was trembling, his hands balled into fists. He didn’t feel pain anymore, only the surge of Chi’karda threatening to scorch him and everything around him. His jaw clenched as if it had locked closed forever. He wanted to kill the Sleek. Chase down the others and kill them. Rescue his friends. Run away. He almost boiled with the desire.
With a scream of rage, he jumped up and pounced on the Sleek, grabbing it by the neck just as it tried to break apart and whisk away. Tick slammed the creature against the closest tree, knowing he shouldn’t be able to do this, knowing that he was somehow using the Chi’karda to make the Sleek maintain its structure and solidity. The thin neck of coiled smoke felt like shifting sands under his fingers, churning and slipping but staying in one place.
Tick squeezed, feeling the neck crackle, as if it were sand and hardening to glass. That creepy, cackling whisper of a voice escaped the Sleek’s mouth, saying things Tick couldn’t understand. But it seemed desperate and terrified, the sound of it chilling.
The buzzing sound intensified above them. Chi’karda blazed inside Tick. The orange mist swirled around him like a tornado of fire. A wind picked up, seeming to blow from all directions at once, though it did nothing to the cloud of Chi’karda. Tick felt as if the entire world were about to melt into a pool of lava.
He squeezed the Sleek’s neck even harder.
Something tried to click inside Tick’s brain. Tried to tell him that he’d forgotten the whole point of what he’d come here for. That in the pain and terror of being dragged through the forest, he’d let his anger take over. That he’d lost it, completely lost it.
And yet . . . he was controlling the Chi’karda more than ever before. He was controlling it! Kind of . . .
“Tick!”
A voice. A girl. From somewhere to his right. He barely heard it. He didn’t want to look, didn’t have time to look. The Sleek was almost dead, and then he could go after the others. Maybe he could experiment with Chi’karda, see what he could do with it. Strike out with it somehow? Maybe shoot beams of fiery lasers? Yeah, that’d be awesome.
“Tick!”
The voice was too loud to ignore this time, despite the ripping wind and blazing heat inside him, the buzz of things disintegrating and reforming above him. He knew he was doing things to the trees again, but he didn’t care.
“Tick!”
He snapped out of his delirious daze and looked over to see Sofia standing close to him. The smoky tendrils of a Sleek’s fingers were wrapped around her neck. Paul was next to her, also in the custody of a Sleek. The orange glow of Tick’s power made the Sleek’s silvery eyes look angry and red.
“Tick!” Sofia shouted. “You can’t do this! Remember why we’re here in the first place!”
Tick didn’t quite feel like himself. He’d let the burning power of the Chi’karda consume him and take over his bad parts—the anger, the temper, the thirst for revenge—and part of him had liked it. “You’re just saying that!” he yelled over the noise of the wind and the buzzing. “You don’t want them to kill you, so you’re trying to stop me! Well, I can stop them! Look at this!”
He let go of the Sleek and took a step back, gesturing with his arms like a magician. The orange cloud swirled around him and through his fingertips, around his arms and legs, curling, almost caressing. Fire raged inside him. He turned, pointing at the wooden formations surrounding them. Dozens of trees had been blown apart on a quantum level and put back together again like a series of haunting sculptures crafted by a lunatic.