He shot a glance at Paul, wrinkling up his nose.

Paul returned the sour face, then waved his hand back and forth in front of his nose.

Tick returned his attention to the path ahead of him. The Sleeks refused to walk in front of him, instead pointing every once in a while with a rasping, hoarse croak. Tick just loved it—the things were scared of him. Scared of him!

Shut up, Tick, he told himself. Something’s wrong with you.

He knew he didn’t have time to worry about it, but he felt like he’d ingested rotten milk into his system. There was a taint of . . . evil coursing through his veins. Maybe using Chi’karda—and letting it consume him and take over his emotions, his anger—had a price to it.

He shook it off. Things were changing up ahead.

They stepped past a last bunch of trees into a wide open, muddy space, void of any vegetation. A hundred yards or so away stood a tall, jagged wall of lumber, the thick pieces thrown together as if by accident. The wall ran in both directions for at least a mile before curving out of sight. The only break was a large gate made of twenty or thirty black iron bars, the upper tips ending in spikes. Heads of fangen and other monsters had been impaled on each and every spike.

Tick shuddered. Weren’t fangen and other creatures created here? Then it hit him. Just as you might see several auto models displayed in front of a car factory, so were the products being shown off here.

Tick continued walking without missing a beat, each footstep squishing in the mud, his eyes fixed on the heads on the gate. He wanted to remember them for later, for when he would need something to give him incentive to stop what was going on here. Everything about the Factory disgusted him, and for just a second, he felt a flare of Chi’karda ignite inside him. He put it down and kept moving.

He didn’t break his gaze until they’d crossed about half the open area. He wanted to see what the Sleeks looked like in full light. They still walked right behind Paul and Sofia, their tightly wound coils of smoke looking blacker than ever. Their bodies were impossibly long and drawn out, little puffs of dark fog bleeding off them with every step. They wore no clothes and looked like nothing but a ragtag doll made of old, dirty rope. Their silver eyes were the only things that broke the monotony; they flared just as brightly during the daytime as they had in the night.

Tick caught Sofia’s eyes, then Paul’s, silently telling them that this was it, things were about to get interesting. As he swiveled his head back toward the approaching gate, he wondered about the Sleeks. What were they? Had they been created here in the Factory? Mistress Jane had used her powers to set this all up. Was it something Tick could learn if he wanted to? Surprisingly, the question intrigued him and, for the briefest of moments, excited him. The thought chilled his heart.

Yeah, something’s wrong with me, he thought. He caught a powerful whiff of something totally foul, making words like rotten and decay pop into his head. Pinching his nose shut with two fingers, he took the last few steps until they were standing just in front of the looming iron gate. Oddly, the only thing he could see through the bars of the gate was a grove of trees.

“All right, Sleeks,” he said. “What now?”

One of the smoky creatures walked ahead of him, seeming to float along, then clasped its smoky fingers into fists and leaned forward as it screeched out a breathy series of harsh words, completely indecipherable.

“That guy needs a cough drop somethin’ awful,” Paul said, the first time he’d spoken in a good hour or two.

“How do we know Jane will come here to see us?” Sofia asked. “For all we know, she could just tell them to kill us and be done with it.”

Tick winced at the thought, but he had confidence that wouldn’t happen. “She’ll want to know what I did to ruin her black tree thing. That, or she’ll want to rub it in our faces before she slaughters us herself. She’ll come, don’t worry.”

The Sleek moved to stand with its companion behind Tick and his friends. Tick turned his attention to the gate, feeling each breath draw in and out as he anxiously waited for the thing to swing open.

A low rumbling noise seemed to come from everywhere at once, like the sound of cranked-up machinery. The ground vibrated, then intensified to an outright shake, making Tick’s feet almost bounce in the mud. He warily took a step backward, then a few more. Paul and Sofia did the same until they were about twenty feet from the iron bars. The gate remained closed. The sound of thrumming machinery grew louder.

“Seems like a lot of work just to open a stupid gate!” Paul yelled.

Tick nodded but didn’t respond, his gaze riveted ahead, the anticipation making him feel waterlogged in his chest. His concentration was so focused on the gate itself that he didn’t notice what was happening at their feet until Sofia shouted for them to look down.

A huge section of the muddy ground was shifting, the front edge right in front of the gate lowering, tilting on a fulcrum in the middle of the section. Tick and his companions rose as the other end sank like a giant seesaw. The angle steepened at an alarming rate, approaching forty-five degrees before anyone could react.

“Get—” Tick began, but couldn’t finish, his feet slipping out from under him.

He fell on his butt and scrambled to hold onto something, but his fingers found only wet, slippery mud. He looked up, frantic, and saw a big chunk of black smoke heading for his face. It hit him like a hard shot from a firm pillow, and then he was sliding toward the gaping hole that had opened at the foot of the gate.

He slipped through the slimy sludge, Paul and Sofia right next to him. Down, down, until they reached the edge and plummeted into dark, empty air.

Chapter 42

Strips of Fire

The fall lasted only ten feet or so, but it was the longest and worst second of Tick’s life—a terrifying second when he felt like he’d either drop forever or be smashed to a bloody pulp far below. He barely had time to curl into a protective ball before he slammed into a dirt-packed floor. He felt the wind knock out of him and heard the grunts of his two friends. He only peripherally noticed the section of ground above them slam shut with a metallic clang, leaving them in complete darkness.

Groaning, he rolled over onto his side, knowing he’d been lucky to avoid a broken bone or worse—even though at the moment, his whole body hurt.

“You guys okay?” he called out.

“Fine,” Sofia answered.