The Bloodstone Prophecy - Book 2 (complete)

Chapter 21 - Merging

"It's not working!" Kami said, kicking the white sand. "I'll never be ready in time." She knew she was being childish, but she'd been at it for hours and she was so frustrated she wanted to scream. Her friends were counting on her. Who knew how far the Shadow Queen would take this? She might not stop until she dominated the world. Kami thought of her friends back home, of her helpless mother. She thought of her friends in Egypt. She couldn't let that happen. She had to figure this out.

"Are you nervous about tonight?" Chris asked.

Kami nodded. "I'm not convinced we'll be ready to fight the shadow creatures."

Chris swallowed hard but put on a brave face. "Haji's dad said there's been several sightings out here, usually two or three creatures at a time. Abominations, that's what he calls them."

She looked back at the new shadow creature Chris had chosen. It was a desert fox, the fennec. She could tell from the tail and abnormally large ears. It prowled around in Chris's cage and stopped occasionally to stare at Kami. She had tried to whip herself into a fury again, but it was hard. Every time she got angry she'd lose control again. She tried to send commands to the fox, but the only thing she'd succeeded in doing was sucking him into a corner. Not hard enough to destroy it like the shadow bunny because she was more aware and immediately stopped when things got out of hand, but still.

She wondered why she'd been chosen by the bloodstone anyway. It wasn't like she had any special skills going into this that made her an obvious choice.

"It's okay," Chris said. "Just take a break."

"There's no time for breaks. It's almost dusk. The shadow creatures could show up any moment and I still don't know what I'm doing. Tomorrow morning we're heading back to the Shadow Queen's lair. I'm not prepared."

Chris tried to hide a smile.

"What?" Kami scowled.

"You're kind of an intense girl, aren't you?" Chris said.

"Not usually," Kami said. "I think all the pressure's getting to me. I'm scared that I won't be strong enough to pull this off."

"This is coming from the girl who faced down a shadow squid."

"Which is all the more reason I should be able to control a creature this small," she said, sighing. "I'm just getting so frustrated with all this."

"Maybe that's your block," Chris said. "You're trying too hard to force the energy and the bloodstone rebels against that."

"Maybe," Kami admitted grudgingly.

"So, take a load off your feet. The shadow creature isn't going anywhere."

"Fine." She sat down in the sand.

"I wish I could control the bigger creatures," Chris said.

"If you had a couple more people with laser sabers..."

"Yeah, but I meant alone. Samuel and I have been working on something. He calls it a shadow displacer."

"He showed me. How does it work?" Kami asked. Chris answered.

"Samuel studied the creatures and identified their chemical properties. He thinks he's found a way to separate the elements holding the creatures together. Think of it like water. You've got two hydrogen molecules, one oxygen. In solid form, the molecules pack together tightly and form ice. But if that ice is warmed, the molecules still kind of stick together, but they're constantly breaking apart and sticking to other molecules. If you heat up the liquid even more, the molecules move around so fast they can't stick at all and they fly apart. That's the idea. We're trying to break up the shadow."