Spark - ARC (20 page)

“I know why you sprained it.” Niteesh flashed her a smile. “You won’t have to sign autographs.”

“I’m right-handed, goof.” She rolled her eyes at him. “Still, it feels like a cheat, just to show up and do nothing at the concert.”

“Nah. Your fans want to see you. That’s enough.”

“Well, that and the extra VirtuMax swag the company will be handing out.” She yawned. The swaying of the tour bus, on top of her pain meds, was making her groggy.

“Here.” Niteesh handed her a pillow. “I’ll wake you up when we get to the next hotel.”

Spark tucked the pillow under her head and tried to get comfortable. Impatience and worry beat through her, throbbing in time with her wrist.

Jennet hadn’t messaged her back yet, and the taste of failure was bitter ash on her tongue. Some Feyguard she’d turned out to be. She dozed as the bus flashed through quiet towns and winter-bare fields.

Niteesh’s hand on her shoulder roused her from fragmented dreaming.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “Hotel sweet hotel.”

She sat up and rubbed her blurry eyes.

“Hey,” she said. “Do you think you could talk Vonda into letting you have a FullD in your room, for extra practice?”

“So you can sneak onto the system?” Niteesh frowned and glanced at her wrist. “Seriously? You can’t play, Sparky. What’s the big hurry?”

“I have to try.”

“If this is about the Terribles, I don’t think you need to worry about them.”

He glanced to the front of the bus, where it seemed Roc and Cora had been behaving themselves. Spark almost protested that the twins had nothing to do with her need to get back into Feyland. But they provided a good excuse.

“Help me, Nit. Please?”

He blew out a breath. “I’ll ask,” he said. “But no promises.”

***

Aran woke after sleeping for hours. In the real world, he’d call it morning, but that word didn’t belong in the Dark Realm’s unchanging darkness. He pulled on his clothes, then grabbed his tablet. The dinosaur was a comforting lump in his jeans pocket, though he didn’t plan on contacting the human realm today.

No, he was going to concentrate on that wall between the realms. Soon as he opened that, he could collect his reward from the queen and return to the real world a rich man.

And the first thing he planned to do was find Spark Jaxley. They had all kinds of unfinished business between them.

Without waiting for Thomas, Aran tucked his tablet under his arm and left the tent. He was pretty sure he could find his way back to the clearing Thomas had shown him yesterday. And since the queen wanted him to work on the wall, he figured the magic of the realm would help lead him there.

After one wrong turn that dead-ended in a marsh, Aran backtracked along the path and found the clearing. With a deep breath, he stepped into the mushroom ring. The wind rose around him, and he welcomed its familiar, sharp bite.

When the wind stopped buffeting him, he was even gladder to see he’d arrived at the mirror-image clearings. Slowly, he walked toward the middle clearing, one hand outstretched. He encountered the invisible wall and traced its slight curve until he felt the thin crack under his fingertips.

Time to see if he had the skills. Adrenaline rushed through him—half fear of failure, half excitement at the challenge.

He settled on the soft mosses of the clearing, the wall firmly at his back, and powered up his tablet. It flickered to life, showing the normal menu screen. Now—how to get the tablet to display the code, so that he could modify it?

After a frustrating half hour, Aran set his tablet down. Leaning forward, he rested his head against his bent knees. Nothing he tried worked. Not inputting search terms like “faerie realm computer code,” or holding his tablet flat against the wall, or even wading through the guts of the tablet’s operating system, hoping to find a new, hidden protocol.

Something was digging into his thigh. He shifted uncomfortably, then froze. Oh, he’d been an idiot. The dinosaur was the missing link. He knelt and pulled it out of his pocket. Holding his breath, he set the garish toy on top of the tablet.

The display emitted a bright flash, and for a horrible second Aran thought he’d burned it out. Then the light steadied, forming glowing lines of code marching across the screen.
Yes!

Leaning over the tablet, Aran scrolled through, looking for something familiar—a chink he could slide through, a gap in the programming. At last, his vision blurry from staring at the screen, he found it.

Despite the excitement rushing through him, his fingers were steady as he typed out commands. The first two did nothing—just lay there, limp as dead worms. When he ran his third script, he felt the wall beside him shudder. Not only that, it became visible, the code revealed in glowing green rows.

That was the tactic, then: a subversion of the ENOX to PH converter on the back end. He could work with that. A tweak here, a nudge there, mapping to the underlying conversion and adding bigger parameters…

The wall shook again. Then, with a sound like a hundred china plates breaking, the crack widened a full two feet. Aran scrambled to his feet, then turned to admire his work.

The light from the middle clearing spilled through the passage, tangling with the shadows of the Dark Realm to create an intricate knotwork pattern. The air shimmered with magic, and promise.

The way to the mortal world was open.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

S
park’s head throbbed in time to Bella Boingo’s latest hit. The singer’s voice reverberated through the stadium, and the thick, warm air barely felt breathable. Spark hoped the painkiller she’d taken kicked in soon, because her cue to go onstage was in twenty seconds.

The dancers hopped frenetically around the stage, and a synchronized light show flashed overhead while Bella sang. It was so loud, Spark only caught a few of the words—something about boys and candy and flying.

Bella ended the song and struck a pose, her mirrored costume throwing shards of light all over the stage, and the crowd roared. Really roared, like some hungry, devouring beast. Spark had experienced her fair share of adoration, but this was a whole new level of fame. Under Bella’s bubbly-sweet exterior, she must be tough as rocks to handle that kind of adulation night after night.

“I have such an exciting surprise for you tonight!” Bella said into her mic, once the crowd quieted a little.

Spark’s appearance wasn’t really a surprise, but hey—she could go with it. She slipped her wrist splint off and set it on a nearby table, then picked up her mic. No need to let the world know about her injury.

“Help me welcome superstar gamer Spark Jaxley to the stage!”

The crowd went wild again as Spark strode forward into the blinding lights. She could just make out some members of the audience waving magenta light sticks in her honor, and the sight turned her smile more genuine.

She waved to the crowd, then turned her mic on and joined Bella.

“Thanks for sharing your stage with me tonight,” Spark said. “It’s a real pleasure to be here in Landover.”

Bella put her hand on Spark’s shoulder. “Thank you for emerging from the amazing world of Feyland to say hello. Speaking of which—we have some killer footage of Spark in-game. Check it out!”

The stage lights dimmed as the screens flared to life. Spark wasn’t sure she liked the implication that she was actually a character inside a game, but whatever. VirtuMax and Bella’s PR people had scripted the dialogue, and they generally knew what they were doing.

The audience screamed and applauded as highlights of Spark’s SimCon demo played. Her defeat of the basilisk got a cheer that vibrated the bones of her skull.

The vid finished, and in the split second before the stage lights came up, everything went sideways.

A mournful wail cut through the air, loud enough to bring the crowd’s cheers down to a low murmur. Spark’s breath caught in her throat as an unwilling shiver raced over her skin. The call of the Wild Hunt! She looked wildly around for a weapon. The nearest thing was a backup singer’s mic stand.

Spark ripped the mic off the stand, handed it to the startled singer, then took up a position next to Bella. Despite the hot twinges of pain in her wrist, Spark hefted the stand, holding it crosswise like a staff.

The air in the center of the stadium roiled, forming an unearthly ball of light. It hung, suspended in the middle of the vast space. Then red-eyed hounds emerged from the sickly glow. Baying, they lunged forward through the thin air, heading straight for the stage. Behind them, mounted on horses with flaming hooves, came the rest of the hunt: elfin lords and fey creatures, their terrible beauty almost too much for mortal eyes. And towering above them all, the antlers of the huntsman. Spark gulped in a breath of sweaty air.

Thing had just gotten very, very serious.

“What’s going on?” Bella asked, keeping her mic off. “Is this some kind of VirtuMax special effect?”

“Get ready to fight,” Spark said. There wasn’t time to explain.

The first hound reached the stage. Spark swung at it, using the heavy base of the mic stand for momentum. She connected, and the hound went flying. Beside her, Bella kicked out, her high-heeled boots surprisingly effective.

The rest of the band got into the action as hounds swarmed the stage. The musicians and dancers were laughing and shouting, bashing away with mic stands. They had no idea it wasn’t a VirtuMax special effects show, but something far more dangerous.

Floating in midair, the huntsman watched from the center of the stadium, his eyes black pools. He raised his ivory horn to his lips and blew a sharp blast. The hounds turned and ran back to their master, and the audience went into a frenzy of clapping and cheering. Damn—they all thought it was part of the performance.

Spark’s breath came in quick bursts, and she set down the heavy stand. The fingers of her left hand were numb, and she hoped she hadn’t damaged herself beyond repair.

The huntsman gestured, and this time the riders of the hunt galloped across the air. Instead of targeting the stage, they began to fan out over the audience, pale hands outstretched. Fear spiked through her. They were looking for humans to harvest and take back into the realm. There was no way she could stop them, not by herself.

“No!” Spark yelled. “Elder Fey, help!”

A thunderclap shook the dome, and the Wild Hunt halted, some mere inches from their intended victims. From the darkness at the roof of the stadium, a dim form took shape. Winged and ancient, outlined in eerie purple light, the creature spoke.

*Cease,* it said—though it was more like a voice sounding through her bones than any word said aloud.

“Our prey,” the huntsman said, his voice the shadows of deep night.

*No. Begone.* The Elder Fey clapped its wings together, sending a blast of wind screaming through the stadium.

Spark closed her eyes against that fierce gust. When she opened them again, the Wild Hunt was gone—the last hound leaping through the portal. The glowing ball of light shrank to a pinpoint, then winked out.

The audience went mad—jumping to their feet and shouting until the stage vibrated. Beneath that surge of sound, the creature spoke to Spark.

*The way between this word and the realm is open, Feyguard. You must close it.* As suddenly as it had appeared, the Elder Fey was gone.

Somebody at the light board was quick-witted enough to bring up the flashing stage lights. Bella’s drummer laid down a beat, and her rhythm guitar player started strumming along.

“Nice show,” the singer said to Spark. “VirtuMax has some prime special effects.”

“Yeah.” Spark hung on to the mic stand, suddenly dizzy.

“Thanks for coming,” Bella said, then flicked her mic back on. “Let’s give Spark and the whole VirtuMax crew a Bella Boingo wave!”

The singer lifted her arms high overhead, then brought them down. Most of the stadium followed her action, the glow sticks and illuminated messagers flashing in a river of light.

Spark waved goodbye, careful not to move her left arm. Keeping her head high, she strode off the stage as Bella segued into the next song on her set list.

For all everyone knew, VirtuMax had just put on an incredible holographic show. Spark swayed, lightheaded and sick. She had to get that gateway closed.

***

“You did what?” Thomas shouted—actually shouted—and jumped up from the table, spilling his cup of tea.

Aran took a step back toward the tent door.

“I reverse-hacked the wall between the realm and the human world. Just like the queen asked me to. Now, will you come with me or should I go talk to her by myself?”

Even though he’d been successful, the Dark Queen scared Aran. He’d rather have someone else along when he went to demand his reward. Although Thomas wasn’t exactly being supportive.

The bard’s eyes flashed with anger and he clenched his fingers into fists, then uncurled them, over and over.

“You stupid, stupid boy. The mortal world is completely unprepared for the havoc the fey folk will wreak. Oh, had I but known—”