The Wicked Passage (A Blake Wyatt Adventure) (5 page)

“The imperial regent knows what I did! You must hide.
Oh, the terrible danger.”

Blake laughed. This dream couldn’t get much weirder. “Is this imperial regent guy gonna kick my butt? ’Cuz I’ll just use my new superpower, fly around his head or something, and zap him with a ray gun. No problem.”

Hugo Price shrieked. He snapped the cover of his watch closed. “That’s how he knew where to find you. You touched the chronicle!”

“The stupid thing nearly sent me into orbit. I see why you didn’t want me to touch that crazy book. It’s got rocket fuel in it. And, look, I got this wild tattoo on my hand. So who else is gonna be in this dream, a couple of ninjas?”

“This is no dream, Mr. Wyatt. You’re now a sapphire traveler like your father.” Hugo Price touched Blake’s shoulder. “The Parabulls will protect you from now on. They’ll show you the way to your destiny.”

Blake laughed again. That video game he played the night before must have really sent him over the edge. “So, like, what are these Parabulls--aliens or something?”

“No, of course not.
You must ask the chronicle to summon them for your journey.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I must summon them for my jour-r-r-ney,” he mocked.

Hugo Price was solemn. “The Chronicle of the Rellium echoes all that has been in the past and all that will be in the future. The future depends on you, Blake Wyatt.”

“On me?
Now I know it’s a dream.”

“This is no dream, Mr. Wyatt. But where you’ll be going will seem like a dream. It’s a world of shadows, a place that has already been. The Parabulls will open the doors of time for you, and then you will follow them to what is supposed to be.”

“Hey, Book, tell this guy about those totally killer aerial acrobatics.” Blake looked back at Hugo Price. “Listen to this.
The thing talks.”

“Yes, of course, the Chronicle of the Rellium always speaks to the sapphire traveler. I’m a traveler, too, but not like you. You have the power of the Rellium. I’m just a--”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I’m a sapphire traveler. Cool.”

Price checked his pocket watch again. “The imperial regent will be looking for you now that he knows you’ve taken the power. You must complete your mission before he finds you. He craves what you’re protecting, and he’ll stop at nothing to get it.”

Blake raised his chin and folded his arms in a kingly manner. He gazed out the window as though serious issues needed to be solved. “Well, then, we must attack at dawn.”

“May I speak freely?” Hugo Price asked.

“Looks like you’re going to anyway.”

“You do not understand the full weight of your responsibility. I had hoped to have more time to teach you the ways of the Rellium, but now that’s impossible. First you must understand your enemy. The Tolucan
are
crafty and ruthless. They will get their way if you let them.”

“To-luh-can?
So they’re, like, the bad guys?”

“Mr. Wyatt, you are not taking this seriously!”

Blake sat in the chair behind the teacher’s desk and rested his hands behind his head. He stretched out his long legs. “Oh, yeah, history depends on me.
Hmm.
By the way, did you know that I hate history? Is that going to be a problem? Since I got a world to save, shouldn’t I at least be good at it?”

Price sighed. “Forgive me for being so blunt, but the imperial regent will do anything--anything--to get what you possess. All of this must seem like a joke, but we have no time for foolishness.”

He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Do you know why the hands on that clock haven’t moved, Blakemore? You’re no longer in your own time. No one can hear you. No one can see you. Look out the window. No toxic steam from the cafeteria. Nothing from the present is here--only shadows of what used to be. You’re stuck between here and there. This place connects all dimensions--past, present, and future. Time waits here.”

“Yeah, right, that time thing again.” Blake relaxed and stared at the ceiling. That bell had to ring any minute.

“Call the Parabulls and leave!” Price urged. “This will be the first place the imperial regent will look for you.”

Blake snorted. “I’m not going anywhere. Know why? ’Cuz I’m sleeping.”

“You are not sleeping!” the man shot back.

“Look, dude, I’m not stupid. You’re not real.”

“Listen to me, Blake. The imperial regent sent me here to erase you from existence. Every part of your life will cease to exist, just like that, including this very moment. The only thing left will be a wooden monument of who you used to be. Then he’ll take the power of the Rellium and snuff out history--one event at a time--until the chronicle’s power is worthless and history is completely gone and so is the future. And so are you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Figure it out!” Price said angrily. “No past means
no
future.” He buried his face in his hands. “Nothing
like
his father, nothing.”

Nothing like my father?
What’s that supposed to mean? Blake glanced at the clock again. A slap to the face should end this dumb dream, once and for all. He powered off an open-handed smack to the cheek and waited to wake up. Instead pain ripped through his jaw, and his hand stung from the blow.

How could any of this be happening? He inched over to the book and gently touched the cover. It was still warm, and the jewels glistened.

Price quickly grabbed Blake’s right hand and looked at the tattoo. “Yes, you’re connected now. Reach inside yourself, Blake. You know this to be true.”

“I know this to be weird.”

“Close your eyes! What do you see?”

The two bulldogs were still in his mind, and so was all that strange purplish-blue grass. Then he saw a man who looked like his father approach the bulldogs. He was limping and struggling to remain upright. The man said, “Blakemore, I don’t have much time. Please, I need your help.”

“Dad?”
Blake blurted out as the images faded.

“Yes, Blake, that was your father,” Price said.

Blake felt his skin tingle. He hadn’t heard that voice since he was three years old.

“My dad says that he needs my help . . . if that was my dad.”

The old
man snapped open
his watch again. “We’re losing precious minutes.” He glanced at the door. “Those fools from the grand assembly will send more guards as soon as their pea brains figure out that I escaped. That police officer who took me away was one of them. He returned to the grand assembly. Now they know where I’ve gone. We must hurry before Dagonblud finds you.”

Blake studied the old man, and a sensation of awareness unmasked inside of him. He was Michael Wyatt’s son. What if he belonged to something bigger than himself?
 
He remembered the pain he saw in his father’s face and made a decision. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “What do I need to do?”

“You need to go to the only place where you can be safe from the Tolucan--Saphir Pré, the den of the Parabulls.”

“Is that where I saw my dad?”

“Not exactly.
 
Your father is . . . gone from us.”

“He just talked to me! I know that was him.”

“The figure was a reflection.”

“No it wasn’t!”

“I’m sorry, Blakemore.”

“But I could feel him--”

“Please, we must hurry. Place each fingertip on a jewel. You’ll feel current in your body. That is the power of the Rellium. Once you are connected, you ask the chronicle to summon the Parabulls. They will collect you for your journey.”

“But my dad . . .” Blake peeked at his tattooed hand again. The image was still there, and his face still stung from his own wallop.

As Blake reached for the book, a black flash exploded through the door, along with a low, loud howl.

Price snatched the chronicle. “He found us!”

“Who?”
Blake screamed over the howling whoosh that blasted into the classroom.

“Imperial Regent Dagonblud!” the petrified man shrieked, stuffing the glistening text into Blake’s arms and cowering behind him.

The howl became louder, and darkness swallowed nearly all the light. The book felt hot in his arms. The only light in the room radiated from its jewels.

“Now, Blake!” Price yelled over the droning sound. “Connect to the Rellium! Summon the Parabulls! Put your fingers on the jewels!”

“I can’t! The thing keeps falling out of my hands! It’s too heavy!”

“Let it go, Blake! The chronicle’s power is strong. Trust her.”

Blake dropped the chronicle and watched the jewels hover and glisten in the darkness. The howling was deafening. He placed his fingers on the gems and waited for the Rellium’s current to course through his body again but felt nothing this time. “It’s not working!”

“Try again.
Now!”

“I’m trying! I still don’t feel anything!” He whirled around in the direction of the howl.
“What stinks?!”

“Zounds! He has the black diamond!” Hugo Price screamed over the storm. “You must connect! It’s your only way out.”

“Let’s just get out of here!” Blake said, grabbing the floating book and racing for the door.

A deep, menacing voice filled the room. “You’re too late for that, Blakemore Wyatt. Now give me that book.”

CHAPTER 4

THE GIANT WITHIN

Disrespect, doubt,
attitude
--all of them vanished when gritty charcoal-colored soot and sand flew everywhere, spinning around the desks like tiny tornadoes, sandblasting Blake’s skin and eyes with stinging black dust. He kept the chronicle firmly pressed against his chest, nestled next to his pounding heart. The black sand vanished after several miserable minutes, and the newly restored calm revealed the source of the chaos: an enormous creature in some sort of a military uniform.

“Holy cow, you’re a--” Blake could hear the word giant in his head, but it wouldn’t come out his mouth.

“Blakemore Wyatt,” it said in a low, syrupy voice, “I’ve waited many years to see one of your
kind
again. The young Wyatt--so much promise, so much hope, so much power--but oh so useless.”

The thing looked eight feet tall with long black hair hanging over its massive shoulders. A red velvet jacket covered its upper body, and tight tan trousers clung to its thick-muscled legs. It was wearing shiny black knee-high boots, and a brown leather sash with medallions rested across its enormous chest. An amulet that looked like a bird or a lion hung from its neck.

But its face was almost transparent. Every few seconds the mouth or the eyes or sometimes the whole face would disappear,
then
reappear. Blake gasped.

“You do not speak?” The wall of a whatever-it-was said, exposing its blocky teeth.

“Don’t let go of the chronicle, Blake!” Hugo Price shouted from a corner. “He’s trying to scare you so you’ll give up the chronicle without a fight.”

The giant spun around and calmly moved toward the old man. “Ah, what do we have here?
A traitor, perhaps?”

Price scrambled back, covering his face with his wiry arms. “Use your powers, Blake. Use them now!”

“Silence!”
The giant extended a long arm and tossed out a streak of the same black-dirt storm it had ridden in on. The blackness coiled around the old man like a huge spider web, changing the cowering man into a statue of charred wood. “He looks good in black,” the giant said.

It turned back to Blake. “So this is what the great Michael Wyatt’s son looks like. Not very impressive, I must say.”

Blake gripped the book tighter. His heart was thumping so loud, he could swear it was beating through the cover of the book. He stared at Price’s rigid, burned body. “Is he . . . dead?”

“No. But I suspect when I release him, he’ll wish he were.”

Blake swallowed hard. He needed to get out of there. Maybe he could outrun this thing, but after seeing what had happened to Hugo Price, that didn’t seem like an option. He wasn’t going to stand there and get fried by this giant blowtorch. If he had all this power, then surely he should be able to use it.
But how?

“Just hand it over, Blakemore
Wyatt,
and this will all go away,” the creature said, reaching out.

“No!” Blake tried to make a path through the rows of desks.

The giant laughed. “Typical Wyatt, stubborn and stupid, just
like
your father.”

“My father was not stupid!” Blake clutched the chronicle. Somehow he knew his life depended on it.

“Well, Mr. Wyatt, although this has been delightful, I no longer have time for your antics. I am going to ask you but one more time. Hand over the chronicle.
Now.”

Blake recoiled into the back wall, hitting his elbow on the old pencil sharpener screwed to the cinder block. Everything normal was telling him that none of this could be real, but the pain in his elbow definitely was real.

“The book’s mine!” Blake shouted back.

“Mr. Wyatt, you can make this easy or difficult. I can only assume you’d prefer to make it easy, and certainly less painful.”

The jewels pressing into his chest from the chronicle were burning holes through the fabric of his Clover Heights football jersey. He smelled the singed fabric. The current of the Rellium started to resonate through his bones
again,
stronger than before, like some sort of shield around him or like he was wearing full football gear, shoulder pads and all.

The giant continued to morph grotesque faces. “Fighting is so uncivilized. Flesh collects under my fingernails. Bloodstains blemish my jacket. And my boots always get scuffed.”

Blake hoped it wouldn't be the same one-sided fight that turned Hugo Price into a piece of charcoal. He glanced at the old man, sacrificed, lifeless, with just a few small puffs of dark smoke rising from his scorched jacket.

What if that’s what happened to Dad? What if Dad didn’t have a chance against this thing, either?

But now wasn’t the time to think about that. The battle was on. He wasn’t going down without a fight. Blake planted his stocking feet firmly on the floor and prepared himself for the attack. “You want a fight? You got one!”

The giant grinned. “Fine, you’ve made your decision.” It retrieved a small black ball from inside his sash and smiled, twisting apart the black, lopsided sphere.

Blake stepped back. Something in that ball stank. The light in the room suddenly extinguished. He knew he was in serious trouble.

Blake tried to focus in the pure blackness. “You think I’m afraid of you?” Fear gripped his throat. It was hard to talk. He coaxed out the last of his courage and rasped, “Big deal, you turned off the lights!
So what!”

“You are amusing, Blakemore Wyatt, but your time here has come to an end.”

Blake tried to find the clock on the wall, a desk, Hugo Price, but even though his eyes were wide open, he could see nothing. Then, looking down, he saw a speck of light from the jewels of the chronicle peeking out from beneath his tight hug. As he loosened his grip on the book, more light from the jewels cut through the blackness. Shadows of objects in the classroom dimly appeared: a desk, the stuck clock, a chair, and the towering monster in front of him.

“Yeah, well, I got power, too. And I’m gonna use it if you don’t get out of here.”

The verbal battle ended when the creature incinerated the two desks next to him, leaving two heaps of smoldering ash.

“Give me that book, you filthy little roach.”

All this superpower stuff was new to Blake, but he knew what the pros did.
So why not?
Nothing else was working. Winding up his right arm, Blake shot his open hand squarely at the giant. “Think again, Dragonbreath. You’re going to find out what I can do.”

Nothing happened except for a deafening, jeering laugh from whatever stood before him, ready for murder.

“Terrific,” Blake muttered.
“Superpower that doesn’t work.”
He retreated to the corner.

“Knowledge is your power,” the book whispered.

“Whatever. Some help you are,” Blake said to the book. He tried to contain the violent waves of vibrations coming from the book’s bound pages. He felt like there was going to be an all-out war between this book and the giant, and he was caught in the middle. He struggled to hold the book close to his body, but it wiggled from his grip, shooting streaks of colored light in every direction. Maybe he should just hand over the stupid thing and get the heck out of there.

“All right, you win,” he told the monster. “Say I give you this book. You’ll let me out of here? No zaps, no microwaves, none of that flame-throwing stuff?”

“I give you my word.” The creature twisted together both sides of the weird, shiny black ball.

As light slowly returned to the room, Blake loosened his grip on the chronicle. The book was sweet, but no way was it worth any of this. No one was going to believe him anyhow. Touching the brilliant stones one more time, he carefully set the Chronicle of the Rellium on a desk and stepped back. “There!
Ya happy?”

The giant moved quickly to the glowing book, smothering the radiating jewels with its huge, thick fingers, blotting out the brilliance. “Now you’re
mine
forever,” the creature said, shoving the book under its arm.

Blake backed up a few more steps and tried to squirm around the creature, but the giant moved in front of him. “Going somewhere?”

“We had a deal!”

“I don’t make deals.”

Blake looked around at what used to be his history classroom. Quietly he moved his hand into his pocket and slid out his cell phone. Pressing 911 without looking at the display, he waited briefly before quickly smashing the phone to his ear. “Hello! Hello! Come on . . . answer! I need help!”

The giant hissed. “If I weren’t in such a rush, I’d find your pranks humorous.”

Blake looked at the display on the phone. A text message was buzzing: You’re mine! Then the giant’s laughing face appeared on the screen of the phone just before it burst into flames. Blake threw the burning phone to the floor.

Why couldn’t he make his so-called power work? Glancing at the clock, he saw the hands were stuck--just like him. And he had given away the only thing that could’ve saved him: the Chronicle of the Rellium.

“You’re a sapphire traveler, Blakemore Wyatt. Use your powers,” the book urged weakly from under the arm of the giant. “Strength comes from within.”

Blake glared at the book. “What powers? You give them to me,
then
they don’t work.”

“How enchanting,” said the
creature.
“The great Chronicle of the Rellium speaks to the boy Wyatt, but it’s useless.”

Blake hung his head. Now he knew why Hugo Price had told him not to open the dumb thing. He was totally clueless about this good-for-nothing strength. Even superheroes knew what they could do, but he was defenseless, and the silence outside the classroom destroyed any hope that someone would come to his rescue. Maybe he could talk his way out of it--the only ability he definitely knew how to use.

“Okay,” Blake said, smiling. “You really got me. You’re obviously smarter than me, so I’m sure you see that if we put our powers together, then we really got something. If you knew my father’s strength, then you know what I can do. Whatta ya say?”

The creature bombarded the remaining desks in the room with fireballs and incinerated them.

“Whoa, I’ll take that as a no.” Blake stepped back. He had no more ideas . . . except one. Take the creature head-on. He’d probably end up like a marshmallow stuck in the fire too long, but what else could he do? He did know how to strip a football. The coach drilled that maneuver just last week. Pop it out from behind and then grab it and run. Simple enough, but this was an eight-foot, giant blowtorch ready to kill him--not some wimpy thirteen-year-old kid on the school’s football team. That didn’t matter. It was all he could do.

Leaping forward, Blake slammed the edge of the book with his fist, launching the chronicle. The colorful lights returned to the sacred text as it spun upward, turning the room into an enormous kaleidoscope. He grabbed the book before the creature snagged it. “Take that, barbecue man!” Blake yelled. “I own you, dude!”

Protecting the glowing text in his arms, Blake darted around the furious giant and dodged skyrockets whizzing past his face. He grabbed the sizzling metal door handle and immediately let it go. “Aaaahhh!” he screamed, his skin seared. He had to get out of there. Ignoring the burning pain in his hand, he forced the handle down and pushed his way into the hallway.

“Whoa!” Blake's feet began to sink into something squishy. It definitely wasn’t the hallway.