Lucas Warbuck, The Prophet's Call, Book 1

by Ariel Roma

WARNING

  When Silence Screams… Listen!

  8

  THE BOOK FRENZY

  THE SPY’S REPORT that Lucas had taken delivery of the book sent Darkotika into a frenzy. Depending on what he did with it, it could be catastrophic for the kingdom. The evil council was furious that this had slipped by them. They hated being caught off guard. A nasty surprise of this kind could easily spell disaster if their position of control was lost. Control was the key.

  It didn’t take much to heat this place up. Tempers were always burning hot.

  “How did this happen!” Scarp snarled and spun around. His eyes flashed. He was just one wicked warlock in a chamber full of many others like him. He was looking over reports posted by the Black Board.

  No one answered him. Maybe it didn’t help that he was big, burly, and beasty. Anyway, they were all busy with their own schemes. They were all hungry, all craving an evil feast. Everyone was working on their next kill. No one spoke unless they had to and they didn’t have to unless they were outranked. Hate had poisoned them. Their sweat was a venom. They were all drenched in it.

  “What’s the difference?” One finally answered Scarp. “There are so many to choose from. If it’s not this one you know it’ll be another. What are you so cracked up about? Look at you, your hair’s even starting to smoke!” he cackled at Scarp.

  Scarp was like a hornet. He knows something. There must be something or he wouldn’t have bothered to answer, he guessed.

  Everyone in Darkotika was suspicious. There was good reason to be. Well maybe good isn’t the word to use. No, you can’t ever use the word good here. No one trusted anyone. You couldn’t. It was horrible. They were all liars and thieves.

  “Anyone can see that this boy has a… meddlesome nature,” Scarp began; his words were slow and grumbling. He gawked at the other’s face for a clue. Nothing. He went on, “It’s plain to see this boy has a fascination for the light. Even his mother knows it, and she’s a Middling,” his voice rumbled like a truck. “Surely you know the power that his Uncle Henry walks in,” he was juiced for a comeback. “Remember they’re blood relatives too,” he coaxed.

  “That despicable man!” the other one snapped back remembering how they had bungled their chance to eliminate Henry.

  “See?” Scarp tugged some more. “We should have taken him out when we had the chance!” he snarled. He snorted, “He tricked us!” Now he was ranting. “He was just this close to selling out completely to us,” he whined pinching his boney fingers together in front of the other warlock’s face.

  Scarp spun around, “We need to get to that book! At the very least we need to sidetrack the boy from reading it. He’s dangerous. Any thoughts and dreams under the light point directly to Morning Star Kingdom. We need a diversion. Maybe someone close to him…. Who does he love?” Suddenly suspicion of the other warlock dropped. Scarp scrambled for a plan.

  It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. Felix meowed out a long lion growl at Lucas.

  “What do you want Felix?” Lucas looked up from the game he was playing. He loved the way he talked to him in his own special cat language.

  Felix was calling from the toy chest where he was sitting like a turkey. When he saw Lucas roll off the bed to come over, he stood up and arched his back into a high stretch. A messy circle of knocked-aside toys circled the comfy book he had just taken his nap on.

  Lucas shouldn’t have been surprised to see the book that Uncle Henry left again, but he was. He had completely forgotten about it. Felix’s heavy feet held it tight to the toy chest lid. Right now it was his throne. He was sitting there tall and majestic, blinking love-eyes at Lucas, settling in for a wonderful massage. So he wasn’t impressed at being hauled up so the book could be stolen out from under him. The second Lucas put him down he jumped away in a fluster.

  There was no wind but the leaves on the tree outside the window rustled anyway. The branch bounced. Two black feathered heads poked up to the glass for a look.

  “Boring! Boring! Boring! They squawked their gig just like it was rehearsed.

  Felix’s instinct was to stalk them but he fought it off. He was still sulking and not in the mood. He shot one of his I’ll chase you later looks at the birds and kept his cool by frantically licking his hind leg and tugging at a tussled piece of fur. He took a sudden break to sniff the red dragon, conquered, still lying face down on the floor where it met its demise earlier. His tail twitched and slapped down hard. He roared another lion-like meow, blinked his intense golden eyes leisurely, and walked away with his tail held high.

  Lucas couldn’t help notice the ravens’ rant, but for the very first time he had an inkling of fascination for the book. He picked it up hoping to discover something, anything that snagged his interest. It still looked boring. The weathered leather cover looked a hundred years old.

  “Cow! Cow!” The ravens screamed.

  Lucas’s thoughts jumped tracks. Instead of thinking about the book, he was thinking about cows. I wonder if this cover was made from cow leather, he thought. He held the book to his nose and sniffed. It smelled musty. He figured it was probably too old to tell. Suddenly his attention was caught up with the mess of things strewn around the floor at his feet. “Felix,” he complained at his cat.

  The spies were satisfied. They had good news to report. It was a close call, but the boy’s attention had been diverted. The tree branch shivered empty again.

  It was another school day. Radger arrived to class ahead of the bell. He switched on his photo-optic lenses and image scanner and captured everyone filing in to take their seats. No one paid any attention to him huddled, fluffed-up and comfy outside on the window ledge. The fidgety kids were rowdy. It was Friday and they were ready for the weekend even before the nine o’clock bell.

  “Gee-eez. Doesn’t anyone remember how good nice feels?” Sloane was upset.

  She had just heard Jenny Mistalk call Shannon Whiteheart a horrid name and then trip her just be-cause she let someone cut ahead in line. And Harley Gangman just went berserk on John Morkind after he banged into him by accident. John was only catching up with a runaway soccer ball. For the first time ever there was a lunch-money thief in the school. Sloane just found out she was the target.

  Even the science class creatures were acting up. The ant farm tipped over and cracked open and all the ants left the ranch. Somehow the three snakes had escaped from their aquarium. One was found half slithered between the bars of the mouse cage. The other two were still on the loose. The morning announcements advised students to be on the look-out. Everyone was excited. The Nimmers danced like ragdolls!

  The sad thing was that they didn’t remember “how good nice felt.” Things were going from bad to worse. The not-so-long ago days of presumed innocence were becoming legendary.

  Miss Goodwin noticed it too. She was baffled by the changes she was seeing in her class. She couldn’t understand what had gotten into them. She always thought they got along pretty well most of the time. Now every day it was something. She had never seen such nit-picking.

  Miss Goodwin tried to figure it out. She skimmed over the room. Lucas, Sloane… Maxx… they seemed the same, but most of the others were plain miserable. The back-talking, teasing and back-biting, she tried to remember when it started. It’s like they all have monkeys on their backs, she thought. She was right.

  The Nimmers were still there. They weren’t leaving. No one told them to. Their tiny ears were hawkishly listening for trigger-words. Trigger words toted trouble. With a bunch of trigger-happy kids all in one place, there would be a gun-fight!

  The truth was the Middlings had forgotten just how good nice feels and besides that anything that looked-like-nice was starting to feel, well… boring really. It wasn’t that they wanted bad to touch them. But from the safety of the sidelines they tingled and tickled with the prickling of bad. The lure was charming. To be sure, when bad even hints at feeling good, you know you have a problem. And unless you hit the brakes, it’s gonn
a be a big one!

  Miss Goodwin strolled the room. She was always trying to invent new ways to get through to her kids. They were like wet cement. This wasn’t just a job to her. She was making an impression on them every day.

  Her voice was firm when she called the class to attention. “Listen up everyone,” she began. “This is serious,” she told them. She casually wandered the alleys between the desk rows while they tuned in.

  “Your mouth is like a wild animal so you need to tame your tongue.” She started into it. “How many of you know that words can be like weapons? Some words are like a loaded gun.” She wanted them to get it. She stopped patrolling the room and waited, every word was targeted. “Did you know that it’s possible to say something to someone today… and they could remember your words for the rest of their lives? …I want you to think about that. Make sure your words build people up.” She stopped to let her message soak in before going on.

  Miss Goodwin was on a combat mission. “Choose your friends wisely, friends that know how to talk right. Hanging out with bad-talkers will have you bad-talking too. It’s just the way it works.” She wanted to be straight with them. “There’s been too much bullying going on here lately. It needs to stop.”

  “What is she saying? Caldron sneered, “That pretty little teacher is a trouble maker… she’s teaching those kids far too many tricks. What’s wrong with the Nimmers? Why don’t they do something to shut her up?” The live flick reeling across the Darkot-atron had wizard Caldron smokin’ mad. Miss Goodwin’s moving speech to the class lit a spark in him. What she said next flared the flicker to a flame.

  The silence in the classroom screamed so loud you could hear it. Miss Goodwin was gaining ground. The Nimmers dunked back into their safe-zone.

  Miss Goodwin took a risk. Maybe they wouldn’t grasp it, but what if they did? “Bad… evil…mean… it’s a poison. It hurts others, yes…” she knew they could get that part, but the rest… it could be a lightning-bolt. She went for it, “…but if you’re the one dealing-it, little by little you’re poisoning yourself. Your own heart is turning black. Until one day, you find yourself thinking upside down. You start to believe bad is good and good is bad.”

  Silence was ringing off the walls. Miss Goodwin was shaking inside. She was almost done. She had to make them see the truth. “Trust me,” she said. “Your words are alive. Your words have power. You can’t control anybody else but you can control you. Today’s Go-Dream rule is: Talk Right… Walk Right. Write it down.”

  “She’s on to us!” Caldron shouted. “We need to get rid of her. I want her out of that classroom!” He cursed a string of vulgar lines. “Somebody grab her book!” he demanded. “We’ll re-write it if we have to!”

  He was pale faced and ghostly against his black cloak. The stiff lifted collar at his neck meant he was important. He outranked the lowly gray faced group around him. His outburst scared them to death. They scattered. All of them, racing for the library where the Black Hearts Books of Demise were shelved.