The Forsaken Saga Complete Box Set (Books 1-4)

by Sophia Sharp

  My throat constricted. But it was not from the threat of the gun. It was from my recognition of the man. He was the man whose office I had broken into. The one who bore into me with those scary eyes at the opening day’s assembly. Paul Rosenberg. I was expecting him to be here, of course, but seeing him in the flesh gave the experience a newfound urgency. It was a nightmare come to life.

  I stopped being dragged, and my back was propped up against a hard vertical surface. The ringing in my ears was starting to fade. The sounds of the barnyard were beginning to replace it. Those white spots still hung around in my vision, but they were getting smaller, too. I saw a pair of legs move out in front of me, and tried to look up. My neck didn’t want to respond. Why was I so weak? It could not simply be the effect of the willow leaf! Something else had happened. Was the blow I took really so devastating? Lazily, my eyes rolled back to look at Paul. He still stood there, barrel pointed at me, a smug smile beneath his mustache. But if he was there, then who was it who dragged me…?

  A face appeared before my eyes. It took me a second to process it, to recognize who it belonged to. The name formed on my tongue before the meaning became clear in my mind. “…Chris?” I whimpered. “What… are you doing here?”

  As if by magic, on those words my hearing returned. The spots in my vision faded, and my strength was partially restored. I could feel my arms again as if they were mine, and I could control my neck once more. The effect of the willow leaf was still there. I was still numb. But I was no longer in a straightjacket. Thinking was still fuzzy, though.

  Chris was so close to me that his face blocked out everything else. He moved back a little, and sat on his heels. “Tracy Bachman,” he said slowly. “Why, my father and I had thought you were dead. When our associate did not return with you in tow, we had assumed the worse. Of course, seeing you here in person now makes things so much sweeter.” He smiled cruelly.

  “What are you… talking about?” The fuzziness in my mind was slowly fading. I looked beyond Chris, and saw my friends. All wore ghastly expressions on their faces. Chris’s dad kept his gun cocked pointing right at me. Rob was closest to him. Anger raged in his eyes. But he was helpless to do anything.

  “Revenge, of course,” Chris said sweetly. “Revenge for what you did to me. For the pain you caused me. For your wretched betrayal! For your pathetic ignorance!” He was yelling. Spittle flew in my face. He stopped, visibly restrained himself… and started to chuckle.

  “Chris, what… what happened to you?” I asked. This was not the same person I had met my first week on Traven Island.

  The chuckle became an outright laugh. “Power,” he bayed. “Power. That is what I have now. That is what I possess. You had your chance, Tracy. You could have shared it with me in all its glory. But you made your choice. You threw in your luck with that lot!” He spared a livid glare at my friends. “Pathetic!”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked desperately.

  “Oh? You don’t know?” Chris moved closer to me. He brought his face right up to mine. Beyond, I saw Rob tense. He glanced uneasily – angrily – at Chris’s dad. I could see the conflict on his face. He couldn’t do anything to help, not without risking me, and it pained him. Rob clenched and unclenched his fists, worked his jaw, but could do nothing else.

  Chris brought his mouth right to my ear. “The crystals give great power,” he whispered sweetly, “and thanks to you, I have learned to harness that power. Together with my father. We do not need you anymore, Tracy. We do not need your gifts. Before, you would have been prized above all, but progress has been made.” He exhaled onto me, and I cringed away.

  He leaned back, and casually pulled on a chain around his neck with his pinky. The chain emerged from the neck of his shirt, and I recognized the device Liz had told me about on one end. The red-ruby pendant. The voliar. “This,” Chris said, “is more precious to me than anything in the world. When you used the crystal in the cave beneath Oliver Academy, all the power you used flowed into this. Into here.” He tapped the red ruby. “The trick, of course, was getting it back out. That is what I have been working on for the past months. But how? Is it not true that only females have the capacity to tap into the crystals’ power?” He started to laugh again. “That is what you thought. That is what all of you thought!” he screamed in my face. “Try. Try! You have your crystal, don’t you?” He searched me up and down with those beady eyes. “There!” he exclaimed, and his hand shot for my neck. This time, I did not give him the satisfaction of flinching. He pulled out the leather strip I wore, and ripped the crystal from my neck in one motion. Then, surprisingly, he placed it in my hand. “Try,” he said again, folding my fingers onto the crystal. “Use the crystal. Use it to save your friends. Use it against me.”

  Was this some sort of trick? A way to extract more of the crystal’s power from me? I was not sure, but with the crystal tight in my hand, I thought for a fleeting moment I could feel its power once more. I opened my mind, readying for the flood that the crystal would bring, and… nothing happened. It was like a stone wall stood between me and the crystal, blocking me from the source.

  Chris’s lips twitched into a sinister smile. “You cannot! You cannot! You know nothing of the crystals! Oh, you and your girls might pretend to, but you are bathed in ignorance! You know nothing of the science behind it. And why should you? You’re just a child. This is but a toy to you. You haven’t studied the crystals the way I have. You don’t know how they function. Where their power comes from. You see them as something magical, mystical, an otherworldly device linking you to some special reserve of power. Don’t you? Don’t you!” He screamed in my face. Again, spittle flew from his lips. “The crystals are much more precious to me. They give unlimited power, boundless energy. You can control the world with that! They will give me power. Power. Money. Influence!”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. That was exactly what Rob had said. He had been right! The intensity in Chris’s eyes frightened me. “You know nothing about true power, Tracy. You know nothing about what the crystals can do! You see, the one you have on you – the one from Traven Island – has one fatal flaw. It can be blocked.” He snickered. “Would you like to know how? This will be beyond your understanding, of course,” he said derisively, “but I’ll give you a chance to try to understand. The crystals work by emitting a quantum frequency. It is what lets your mind connect to them. Imagine a bell. A chime. When struck, it makes a pitch so high that it is beyond hearing. Does that mean the sound is not there? No! Of course not.

  “That is what the crystals represent. To you. To me. They are chimes operating on a certain frequency. Female minds are innately tuned to that frequency. That is what allows you to access the crystal’s power. But…” he smiled, “…I have found that the frequency can be altered. Lowered, if you will. And made accessible to men! And thus, your abilities are given to me! But, even more importantly…” he was laughing, “…even more importantly, is that an interference pattern can be set. So that the crystal’s pitch is changed. And then the crystal becomes blocked to you. Blocked for you, but not for me!

  “Do you want to know how, Tracy? It’s so easy, a child can do it. A sheet of metal, shaped into a tetrahedron, with a magnet in the middle…” He took out a small four-sided shape in the form of a pyramid. It had a silver glisten to it, and was about the size of my palm. “This is what bars you from using your crystal, Tracy! You cannot draw on it any longer. But… I can.” His eyes grew wild, and suddenly the blue light burst from him. From the end of his chain. I shielded my eyes against it. It wasn’t possible! How could he use it, when I could not? Men could not use the crystals any more than fish could fly! The light retracted into his device.

  For a moment, Chris looked visually shaken. But then he straightened. “I can tap into the stored reserves with the help of the tetrahedral. And you… cannot.” He laughed again.

  “Chris… I don’t understand. What do you want? You can use the crystals now. What more do
you need?”

  “What do I want? Revenge. Revenge, for what you did to me!”

  “What I did to you?” I asked uncertainly. I noticed Arthur moving his hands surreptitiously behind his back. He was careful not to attract Chris’s dad’s attention. His eyes were glued to me. “What do you mean?”

  Chris blinked. “You did not see?” He actually looked surprised. He took a grand step away, and stood up for the first time. My eyes widened at what I saw. His back was horribly disfigured. One of his collarbones stuck out awkwardly, giving him a permanent hunch. He turned on the spot slowly, and then took a few agonizing steps away from me. “This is how I will walk forever because of you, Tracy. Because of what you did to me in the caves!” His voice boomed. His face was the same, but the boy I once knew was gone forever. There was a terrifying coldness in his eyes. I did not feel fear any longer. Only pity.

  “Chris, I’m… so sorry,” I said. Truly I was. Never in my life had I wanted to inflict something like that on anyone. Not even Chris. Not even his father. It was a terrible, horrible way to live. Shame bubbled inside me, because I knew that I had caused his disfigurement. “If I could take back what I did, I would in an instant. In a heartbeat! I’m sorry, Chris! I never wanted that to happen to you!”

  His eyes widened momentarily. In… surprise? For the briefest flash, I could see the shy boy I had first met in those eyes. But then he shook his head gruffly, and the window was ruthlessly shut. “You’re… sorry?” he asked dangerously.

  “Yes! Of course, yes!” Arthur continued to squirm with something in the background. What was he doing? Just then, I picked up a flash of red in his hand. His crystal! It was different from the one I had. I knew that! Nobody was paying any attention to him, and he was intently focused on me. I moved my head to the side, searching for the women on the ground. All of them were watching me and Chris. Not one of them moved. The villagers were beyond my line of sight. All of a sudden, one of the seekers turned her head to Arthur, and recognition dawned in her eyes.

  Chris had his back to me. He was playing with something at his waist. He turned his head over his shoulder, and I saw the light reflect off a silver blade in his hand. “Your pity,” he said, face twisted in an angry scowl, “is OF NO USE TO ME!”

  Everything happened at once.

  Arthur’s eyes met mine, and in one smooth motion he threw me the crystal. Chris’s dad, startled by the movement, aimed his gun and fired. Rob leapt at him just as the gun blast shattered the air.

  The crystal flew to me. The seeker who had notice Arthur yelled at me, “Surrender to the flame!” Chris let out a wordless scream and lunged at me with the knife. The crystal got to me first, and I snatched it from the air. I squeezed my eyes shut in anticipation of Chris’s attack, and with desperate haste embraced the crystal. It worked!

  Overwhelming heat and energy pounded through me. Fire churned in my veins. It was ready to consume me. A hot, red, deadly fire as thick as magma. I tried to fight it, to restrain it, but I could not. It was too powerful. It would not be controlled.

  The seeker had yelled something at me. Surrender to the flame? Suddenly, I realized what she meant. It was impossible fight the fire of the crystal. The only way to survive… was to embrace it.

  It was so counterintuitive, so much against what I instinctively wanted to do, that it seemed crazy. But, I had to try. I relaxed my mind, and for the first time, surrendered to the surging heat. The fire did not overtake me. The malice was gone! I was one with the crystal. The fire, the energy, the heat flowed through me like water in the bank of a river.

  My eyes ripped open, and everything was frozen. But this time, what I saw was bathed in a red light. The light from Arthur’s crystal. Fire burned on the edge of my vision. I knew heat, and flame. It roiled through me, but I danced with it, matching it turn for turn. The red light was nothing like the soothing blue I was used to. It was an angry, toiling red that pulsed and throbbed with unimaginable power. And it begged to be released, to be channeled into something. It would not exist within me forever.

  I became aware of acute pain. My pain. Everyone’s pain. The connections that I expected from the crystal were there. But, they were… just on the edge of awareness. They had been pushed back to make room for the awareness of pain. I knew the bruises on the Seekers’ faces as if they were my own. I felt the stiffness in Chris’s neck. And, to my terror, I felt Rob’s newly-taken wound. Rob! He had taken the bullet in his side. He was on the ground. The pain that radiated from him to me was unimaginable. It was worse than anything I would ever experience. Worse than the pain in my leg. It was magnified by the crystal, amplified a hundred times over, until it boiled within me and threatened to consume me forever.

  Rob’s pain, everyone’s pain, all of it twisted and converged into one within me. I felt horrible pain, the most terrible agony, the worst gut-wrenching torture. It streamed into my body. I was taking it in from the surroundings. That was the malice of the crystal given new life. The pain came and came, until it threatened to overtake even the sensation of fire that the crystal gave. I knew if it did that I would lose control.

  With a spirited effort, I pushed all awareness of pain aside. I had done something similar with my own crystal before—restricted all the connections to a small portion of my mind. I did it again. I tucked all the agony into a faraway corner of my mind. The effort it took made me want to double over and hurl, but I did not have time for that. Not now. The battle raged inside, fire and heat threatening to overtake me, my control of it threatened by the agonizing sensation of pain that grew in the back of my mind. But that was not what concerned me the most.

  No. Chris had activated his crystal at the same time I had. A blue light burst from his neck, and it mixed with my red into a miasmic, churning cloud of evil hues. Time was still for him too. Both our minds were in overdrive. A malicious snarl warped his face. He could not move any more than I could. But, the blue light from his neck started to pool around his blade. It solidified into an extended tip before my very eyes, and started to come for me.

  I knew I would not survive if it touched me. I had to defend myself. I forced the energy from my crystal toward Chris… but, I felt a resistance from my crystal. It was fighting what I wanted to do.

  No. That was not the way. I could not force the energy. I had to let it flow, give it shape gently like the bank of a river. I cleared my mind, seeking calm, and surrendered to the fire. It flared through me with an angry burst, but it was my anger. Suddenly, I was surrounded by an impenetrable shield of flame.

  Then the scariest thing happened: The small ruby on Chris’s neck… sucked in the protection I had created. The shield dissipated. I thought I saw the smile on Chris’s face widen. The tip of his blade, coated in an icy blue, kept coming for me, angling toward my neck. I had no idea what I was doing. I was stumbling in the dark. I had never used this type of crystal before, never explored its true power. And so I did the only thing I could think of. I drew more of the heat, more of the flame, to create another shield around myself.

  Chris’s voliar took this one in just as easily. The ruby hanging from his neck sucked it in like a vacuum. I knew, at that very moment, that I could not simply defend. I had to attack.

  Eternal fire raged inside me. An internal battle for my very life. The red crystal gave power, but I would get swept away if I was not sharp. Very carefully, I directed the raging power toward Chris. At the knife in his hand.

  Once more, his voliar soaked up the power I put out. It shone every time it did so, like a miniature sun capsuled in transparent rock. This time, I knew I wasn’t imagining things: Chris’s smile actually widened. The voliar at his neck sucked in everything I gave out.

  Suddenly I realized what he was trying to do. The true purpose of his attack was not to hurt me – though surely he would not mind that – but rather it was to charge his voliar once more.

  The thing must have a limit. Everything had a limit! My only chance, my only hope of survival, was if
I could overwhelm it. I channeled at it everything I could, making the fire flow from my crystal toward Chris, directing the heat, the flame, the burning agony – everything – at him. I ripped out the pocket of pain from the back of my mind and hurled that at him, too.

  The voliar simply took it in. I felt his greed ripen as I directed as much as I could there. His face, somehow, was shifting – moving – and it was now twisted with unimaginable ecstasy. I directed more power at him. More. More!

  All the pain I had tucked into a small ball burst in my mind. I wanted to scream. Suddenly, I could feel his pain again. There was pressure building up on the inside of the skull. Strain from taking the power of my crystal in. He was near his limit.

  That gave me hope. I directed even more energy at him. I threw everything I could there. The effort left my mind raw and bleeding. Everything I had left in me, everything I could draw through the crystal, I directed at Chris – at his voliar. The device sucked it all in. The pain inside Chris’s head grew and grew and grew. It was quickly becoming unbearable. And then… it hit the breaking point.

  A blinding burst of light exploded before my eyes. The crystal flew from my hand. Pain from my leg crashed into me like an avalanche the second I lost the crystal. I cried out, but the sound was stifled by a shockwave that slammed into me from the explosion. My entire leg was afire in the worst kind of pain. I tried to push it aside. It was somebody else’s pain, somebody else’s bo—I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ignore the agony. My eyes popped open. Time was back in line with reality.