All in her head.
Scarlett’s hands were rising in front of her, as if she were being mind-controlled.
But she knew she wasn’t. She wished one of the astrals would take control of her. Inside herself, she was screaming.
Her hands rose, the fingers stretching toward the doctors.
The sound of her laughter was so loud, it was driving her crazy.
“Help me,” she said.
Like those pitiful doctors could do anything.
The ends of her fingers crackled with sparks and burned with hot, white fire.
Chapter 5
Terkun’shuks’pai could not control the body he had created. Could not, as he had planned, animate it. Could not bring it to life.
This shocked him.
The astral material was always so responsive on the astral plane and only slightly less so in the various physical realms where he’d tested it previously, yet now that he was physically on Earth, the astral material defied all reason and control. It absorbed the energy he fed it, but it would not respond to his efforts to give it the spark of life.
He had failed; his plans were all for nothing, and the boy would lose his life. His calculated, awful risk was—
The boy’s spirit, acting in some mysterious way Terkun’shuks’pai could not have predicted, entered the body and made it live.
Terkun’shuks’pai was not so shocked that he was unable to anchor himself in the body and proceed with the next steps in his plans.
But it unsettled him for a few long, essential moments. He isolated himself briefly within the boy’s mind, gathering himself for the tasks ahead.
When his mind had cleared, he slipped into the boy’s mortal senses and viewed the room.
The boy had committed a grave error.
Considering the state of the boy’s hands—bloody—and that of the woman’s chest—crushed and punctured—Terkun’shuks’pai believed the boy had punched through the woman’s chest with his hands. Considering his emotional state afterward, he hadn’t done it on purpose. But life was fragile, and the mortal plane physically unforgiving.
And yet the mortal female lived: the boy had bound his energy to her and was attempting to rebuild her heart from the ruined tissue within her chest cavity. The body in front of them arched upward, her face in a rictus of pain. The boy was trying to save her—but instead he had become the woman’s torturer.
Kill me, her spirit wept. Just let it end.
The boy was making a brilliant, if insufficient, attempt at repairing the heart tissue. He had already begun to create specialized cardiac muscle in shapeless globs that lay against her ribs. But his efforts were doomed to failure; he had created the muscle and even a few blood vessels, but he had forgotten the nerves. Even if he had remembered them and the other essential elements of the tissue, he was working so slowly the rest of the woman’s body would have degraded past use by the time he had finished. The processes of death were doing their inevitable work, despite the life the boy pumped frantically into her.
And his lack of skill was only making the woman’s suffering worse.
Rather than startle the boy, Terkun’shuks’pai planted a subconscious impulse in the boy’s mind to take control of the woman’s energy, rather than her flesh. Currently the strands of her spirit were rigid with worry, agony, doubt, and even self-loathing, which made the life the boy pumped into her cause her pain, rather than offer healing.
The boy’s mother.
While astral beings tended not to have parents so much as progenitors, Terkun’shuks’pai grasped Earth relationships well enough to understand the death of the woman would affect the boy far more than most other deaths, even that of a lover’s, would.
The situation was even more delicate than he had thought.
Pax, following the subconscious impulse Terkun’shuks’pai had planted, grasped a strand of his mother’s turbulent, rotting, grayish-brown energy and lifted it carefully out of her chest. Using his thumb as a guide, Pax drew his hand along the strand, firmly but gently straightening it and smoothing away the knots and tangles, and then pouring his energy into it.
As soon as he had done so, more tangles erupted from the thread, and the energy was dissipated uselessly as pain that wracked the woman’s body.
Waves of disappointment passed through the boy.
Terkun’shuks’pai nudged him to repeat the maneuver. Soon the boy realized the turbulence was less each time, as was the woman’s pain.
The ridges come from the inside, Pax thought, and Terkun’shuks’pai sent a wave of confidence toward the boy. Pax was correct; it was a difficult, repetitive process to heal a physical body via energy alone, but once one had the trick of it, it removed the need for extensive study of each separate species’ physical patterns. A less-than-satisfactory, but perfectly valid, method. A beginner’s method.
Thank you, the boy thought.
Terkun’shuks’pai, startled the boy was even aware of his presence, shuddered at the possible danger to his plans—if the boy could sense him, even now—
Involuntarily, the boy’s hand pressed the vibration of Terkun’shuks’pai’s surprise into his mother’s energy and her mouth stretched wide in agony. Hurriedly, the boy smoothed out the ripples again and released her energy. The thread sank into her now-repaired body. The boy watched it curiously.
The area of her chest that had been rebuilt was as young as that of a woman in the prime of her reproductive years; it bore no stretch marks, wrinkles, discolorations, or scars. It was the body her genetics would have given her, in a perfect world.
The boy’s nostrils flared, his disgust at seeing his mother’s naked chest mingling with Terkun’shuks’pai’s regret at the necessary distortion he had forced on the woman’s body. Time created beauty, not perfection.
The immediate emergency resolved for now, he extended his senses and looked around the room.
It contained a great deal of chaos.
Several humans were dying; others were severely damaged. Doctors lay strewn around the room like so much garbage, and more humans, including guards with guns, were on their way to the room.
The girl, who should have been under Akllana’chikni’pai’s guidance, was shuddering and raising her hands as if they were on puppet strings. Her spirit was heavy with heat energy being focused on the remaining humans in the room, who were preparing to make a brave, and probably final, stand to get past Pax’s shield to the woman on the bed. Terkun’shuks’pai could sense the negative energy that filled the girl’s body unbinding itself, controlling her, threatening to unleash fire and destruction.
Events were drifting far from his intentions, farther than he could allow at this time.
A hideous gargling sound echoed around the room: the girl’s laughter. Her mind was shattering along with her control.
If he, Terkun’shuks’pai, had struggled to gain control of the body, and dared do little, lest he disrupt the boy’s balance, what struggles must Akllana’chikni’pai be going through now? She had a particular horror of being trapped inside a body and had a spirit that often turned to rage and pyrotechnics.
She, too, must be spiraling out of control.
Pax, can you hear me? Terkun’shuks’pai asked.
I can, said Pax. Help me. Please help me!
Let me have control, Pax, said Terkun’shuks’pai. I will fix it all, but you need to let me have control for a short time.
How?
Terkun’shuks’pai showed him with a thought. Pax faded back into his own mind, and Terkun’shuks’pai stepped forward to take control of the body.
“Enough,” Terkun’shuks’pai said with Pax’s voice. “Scarlett, listen to me. You can stop now. I will make the doctors leave Pax alone.”
He waved his hand, and the doctors froze, unab
le to take another step forward.
The girl sobbed, her arms shaking, but the negative energy within her continued to disentangle itself from the clever weaves she had trapped it in. It would take more than mere words to help her regain control now.
The doctors, screaming in pain and fear, swarmed with negative energy, as if their spirits were a hive of eels stirred by a hunter’s spear. They were in a blind panic now, their emotions darkening even as Terkun’shuks’pai considered them. In preventing the doctors from attacking physically, he had panicked them, and now they were attacking with all the negative energy they could produce.
This lashed out at the girl, trying to punish her. It was irrational, but she had become the target of their fear and hate.
If anyone, they should be attacking Terkun’shuks’pai.
The girl’s spirit, shimmering black and ready to boil over, absorbed the negative energy and changed it to heat. Her body had become a kind of engine fueled by negative energy—human or otherwise. The girl was not the powerhouse the boy was, but she might prove almost as destructive, if handled poorly.
Terkun’shuks’pai could kill the other humans in the room, which would be the simpler method, or he could create a careful illusion. He chose the second; it was more challenging, and therefore more satisfying.
Terkun’shuks’pai centered himself, gathering energy from the world around him while carefully avoiding the negative energy crowding the room. He drew most of it from a large park outside, from the sun, from a breeze that smelled of water, and from the more ordinary business of life.
Using a delicacy he had developed over eons, he slowed time itself.
It was easy enough for an astral being, if one knew the trick of it. All physical things originated in the astral plane, however indirectly; the astral plane controlled the aetheric planes, one of which was time.
Not many bothered to travel the aetheric planes, seeing them merely as realms that must be traversed on the way to some physical pleasure-realm or another, but Terkun’shuks’pai had not only traveled the aetheric planes, he had studied them. Few astral beings had bothered to reach into the realms below, considering them too unimportant to understand. But Terkun’shuks’pai’s existence had been greatly enriched by his studies—even though sometimes he found the burden of knowledge almost more than he could bear.
Quickly, he healed the dying and injured humans in the room, repairing internal rupturing, straightening bones, renewing skin tissue, and replacing lost fluids.
He did not smooth the ridges of their souls. Humanity should treasure its weakness and anger and irrationality, should treasure the ability to tame it and use it, as these children did.
However, he did repair the room and erase the memories of those around them. As far as the other humans could recall, the boy had had a cardiac event, but had been successfully returned to life once again.
He erased the memories of pain for the woman on the bed but allowed her to remember she had also had a cardiac event. She needed to take care with her new flesh: it should be healthy, but there had already been several events this day that should have gone differently.
He turned to the girl.
“Akllana’chikni’pai? Are you able to communicate?”
The girl looked at him. On the physical plane, her eyes were blazing red marbles, streaked with cat’s-eyes of orange and yellow. The plain, white astral material of her body had become a burnt ember, black and orange, radiating a sheen of heat that became, on her head, a swirling, bulging mass of fire.
Terkun’shuks’pai chuckled. It was as if Akllana’chikni’pai’s spirit had been brought into the physical realm.
“What?” the girl demanded in an antagonistic tone.
He was unsure whether it was Scarlett or Akllana’chikni’pai speaking, but it mattered little. “You are a creature of fire now.”
“So?” she asked. “You should look at yourself. You’re covered in… in white metal.”
Terkun’shuks’pai sent part of his awareness out of the body, as much to see what would happen as to get a better look.
It was true: the boy’s skin—that was, the outer surface of the astral material—had become metallic. He sampled the metal.
“Titanium,” he said. “An excellent material.”
He extended his senses toward the aetheric planes. He wished to extricate the two of them from the large, densely populated hospital. The girl had been speaking almost intelligibly, but she was still shaking. It was obvious, despite her calm—if somewhat rude—tone that she was still on the edge of losing control.
A nearby park would provide him with a great deal of natural, positive energy.
Terkun’shuks’pai stepped through the aetheric plane to make the journey less confusing for the mortals around them and pulled the girl along with him.
In a moment, they were standing on a layer of thick, green grass. It had begun.
Not Central Park!
Bringing Scarlett here right now was a bad idea. A phenomenally bad idea. It would have been safer, and probably just as easy, for Terry to take them to the North Pole or the Sahara Desert, or someplace where they wouldn’t blow up a million people if something went wrong.
But it was too late now because Scarlett was on fire, and two kids had seen them and were running right toward them, and Pax didn’t know how to teleport. Pax tried to send his thought to Terry again—beam me out, Terry—but Terry wasn’t receiving.
Birds were chirping, the sky was blue, flowers were blooming, Pax appreciated the fact that he wasn’t sneezing…
But no matter how nice a day it was, those two kids were going to die.
School must have just let out. The two kids were in matching gray and blue uniforms with gold trim. They were maybe ten years old, a black kid with a shaved head and big ears, and a white one with a beak of a nose and no chin. They were both holding long, greenish willow branches with the bark peeled off.
“Whoa! Look at that lady! Is this some kind of special effect? Is this a movie?” the black kid yelled.
Scarlett waved her burning hands in front of her. “Stay away from me!”
Pax stood in front of her with his arms spread out. If he’d been human, the heat would have blistered his skin, blackened his clothes, and caught his hair on fire. The air already smelled like something was burning.
“No!” he shouted, sounding like an idiot. “Stop!”
The kids stopped on the other side of Pax and peeked around him.
“Yow, lady, you’re hot!” yelled the white kid and they both laughed honking, goosey laughs.
The white kid tried to poke Scarlett with his stick but Pax grabbed it, broke it in half, and flung it away.
He threw it so hard the two halves of the stick flew up and over the trees, disappearing over the edge of the park.
“Wow!” said the black kid. “What are you? Superheroes? Where are your superhero suits?”
“You’re naked, dude,” the white kid added helpfully.
Crap. In the middle of all this, he’d forgotten about clothes.
“Just back off,” he said.
“Gimme your stick,” the white kid said. “They’re not superheroes. It’s just special effects. Here.” He reached toward the black kid, took his stick, and swung it at Pax.
The stick made his skin ring like a church bell. Donnnng!
“Holy shit,” the white kid said.
“Stupid kids,” muttered Pax. He flicked his fingers, and a blue wave of energy slammed into the two kids, carrying them backward and throwing them into the grass.
“I told you they were superheroes!” the black kid screamed at the top of his lungs as he sailed through the air.
A dozen other heads were turned toward Pax and Scarlett now.
No,
no, no!
He threw up a shield. It resisted slightly when he tried to surround Scarlett, but he pushed, and it snapped over her. Now he and Scarlett were inside the sphere. Hypothetically safe, all their problems solved. Except he wasn’t sure how much damage the sphere could withstand…
…and it didn’t seem to be doing anything about the dark tentacles pouring off the people around them.
The tentacles were black and kind of wet-looking, like slugs, and they oozed over the grass and even through the air toward the two of them. When the tentacles hit the sphere, the shield rippled and gave way, allowing them to ooze through.
Scarlett stumbled backward with her burning-coal hands held up in front of her until she hit the wall of the sphere and slid down it, landing on her ass on the charred ground. The tentacles shoved themselves onto her. Some of them latched onto her feet. Others onto her thighs. The ones she tried to push away just stuck to her hands.
They were absorbed into her charcoal skin with sick, bulging twitches, like leeches sucking up blood.
Negative energy.
The black kid ran toward the shield at full speed and hit it with a spray of blue sparks before being thrown backward.
The shield flickered. Brightened.
The kid got back up again. The white kid stood beside him. They looked determined, like they were getting ready to fight the bad guys. They were stupid. They were ten.
Both the kids charged the shield. This time they were joined by several adults, some of whom were trying to catch the kids to stop them, and some of whom seemed to be charging at Pax’s sphere on the general principle of “If it’s weird, kill it.”
The sphere sent up more sparks as it threw the group of people back. Dimmed. Brightened.
But not quite as bright as before.
The kids were dragged off by a group of adults, but that wasn’t the end of it. The sphere was still being charged by several adult men who all wore orange and white shirts and looked like they were on the same soccer team. One of them charged the sphere and got flung back by the sparks—but the blow pushed the sphere a few inches off the lawn and toward the trees behind them. The next man charged, and the sphere slid farther. There was no sense to it. No reason for it. They were doing it just because they could. Pax was trying to save their lives, and all they could see was a giant soccer ball.
I Am Titanium (Pax Black Book 1) Page 6
