Othermoon

by Nina Berry

  “No.” I was almost done. I traced the cuts with my free hand, ready for the metal square to fall into it. “You know the complex better than anyone. You have to make sure everyone gets out safely.”

  “On the way, we’ll destroy that laboratory across from the computer room,” Arnaldo said.

  Siku grunted a deep agreement and November chirped. The only one I hadn’t heard anything from was Caleb. Did he hate me even more now that I had failed them all so terribly?

  The large metal square I had cut fell heavily into my hand. I threw it over the railing in the direction of the accelerator’s tubing. It clanged into the metal there.

  “Go,” I said, moving aside, feeling for the nearest person to find London’s soft, wet fur under my fingers. “Stay safe.”

  London yipped and trotted up the stairs through the open space I’d created.

  A taller presence moved by her side, smelling of gunpowder. “See you soon,” said Amaris.

  Long fingers found my shoulder, and I heard Arnaldo’s unique breathing as he fumbled and found my hand, holding it tightly for a second before he moved up through the door. I squeezed back and let him go.

  Siku came next, walking on all fours, smelling like a fur rug left out in the rain. He grunted, touched his nose to my hand, then lumbered upward. November’s claws tickled me as she ran up the length of my arm, mussed my hair, and raced down the other arm to hop back onto Siku’s back.

  Somewhere, far above, footsteps clattered clumsily on the stairs. Objurers were trying to gather up there. One of them shouted something to another, and then cursed the darkness. “Try one of the flashlights from deep storage. What kind of black magic is this?”

  Then Lazar was there, smelling like clean laundry airing on the line. He found my shoulders with both hands, leaned in, and pressed his lips to my chin. He’d probably been aiming for my cheek. “This is all my fault,” he said, pulling back.

  I reached for his face and found his tousled wet hair, then slid my fingers down to wrap them around the back of his neck. “No,” I said. “He fooled everyone. Mostly me. Keep my friends safe.”

  “I will,” he said, like an oath. Then he moved along with Siku.

  I waited, my heart beating loudly in my ears. Then I felt a familiar presence and caught the scent of the forest before a thunderstorm. Caleb.

  “I messed up everything,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  His hand brushed mine, and I couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or not. His footsteps paused. “Better go tiger. What you’re planning won’t be easy.”

  A tiny thrill passed through me. Even after all this, Caleb knew me better than anyone, and he must care just a little if he was offering advice.

  “Good idea,” I said, my voice thick, forcing myself not to say good-bye. “Thanks.”

  I turned and ran down the steps, not missing one, even in the dark.

  Caleb was right. As Othersphere pressed in on me from all sides, I reached toward it. All the sadness I felt about Caleb, the confusion over what Ximon had said, they only increased the propulsive surge inside me.

  I shifted, clothing shredding across my new shoulders. As I inhaled with larger lungs, I could feel that my tiger form was bigger than it had been before, stronger, faster, senses even keener. I dug my claws into the concrete, piercing it as easily as cloth. I whipped my tail, bumping it into the cool metal of the accelerator tube. My fur rippled, irritated from the steel so close.

  I held completely still, ears cocked. Above, my friends climbed the stairs, their footsteps light but audible to me. Soon they would clash with the three other sets of footsteps coming down toward them.

  Up behind the observation window, Ximon’s voice called out, “I don’t care why, just get that backup generator going!”

  A fist smacked into flesh, followed by a painful grunt. He must be taking his frustration out on his subordinates. My whiskers caught a stir of air. Far ahead, around the curve of the tunnel, someone was coming toward me.

  I dipped my head, calling upon the link to Othersphere at my heart, and then sent it flaring outward. I roared, and the vast set of heavy pipes around me rattled like teacups in their saucers. Metal hissed and sluggishly began to sag, like warm rubber.

  I sprang forward, running down the asphalt trail next to the accelerator and sending out waves of rippling destructive force toward everything man-made in my wake. It felt so good. I’d once tried to rip my back brace apart with my bare hands and failed utterly. Now, here where Othersphere was close, I could do so much more.

  I didn’t go at my full speed, keeping my ears cocked for sounds up ahead, whiskers fanned out like peacock feathers to catch the slightest change in air pressure. The path curved as I traced the circumference of the accelerator. As I rounded one section, feeling the metal next to me melting like butter in the sun, three lights winked ahead.

  A beam illuminated my stripes, and a shout went up: objurers, armed with flashlights. My first flash of destructive power must not have touched them.

  A shot rang out. A bullet pinged into the tubing.

  I growled, and hurled the force of Othersphere forward like a dark blanket. The face of one man, only ten yards ahead, was briefly illuminated, his eyes widening with fear as they traveled up my huge frame to find my narrowed yellow eyes. Then his light went out.

  He screamed and tried to fire at the place where I had been. But his gun was blackened dross. Then I was on him. My paws were bigger than his head. I dug claws into his shoulder and side, and sank my teeth into his flesh, cutting through the sinews of his throat, splitting his spine. Blood gushed out, coating my tongue with coppery saltiness. I gulped it down and felt the power within me renewed. Dropping him like a doll, I looked up to see another man holding a rifle with a flashlight strapped to its barrel, aiming at me.

  I snuffed out his light and leaped upon him.

  Light hit my eyes and something whistled past my ears. I ducked, releasing the limp objurer, as a third man aimed yet another silver rifle at me. If he hit me with silver bullets, this could be the end. I hoped I’d destroyed enough of the accelerator to render it useless forever. I could die knowing I’d accomplished that, at least.

  Then a fourth man, dressed in a long black coat, stepped out of the shadows and punched him in the face.

  Caleb.

  The objurer reeled back. Caleb jerked the rifle out of his hands, pointed it at him, and fired. Blood splattered against the wall, and the man slumped, eyes rolling back.

  Caleb wrenched the flashlight off the rifle barrel and ran the light over me. His wet dark hair clung to his temples, his chest rising and falling rapidly from what must have been a dead run. His eyes in the reflected light were bright gold, assessing me clinically. “Damn, you’re bigger. Amazing. Othersphere effects, I bet. You’re uninjured? Good.”

  Joy rebounded through my heart. I butted my head against him, and his look of focus and ferocity morphed into a reluctant smile. “It didn’t make sense for you to do this alone,” he said. “The otherkin need you alive.”

  My happiness contracted, but only slightly. So he was here for the greater good, not because he loved me. Or so he says. Hope fluttered inside me, like a baby bird that still didn’t quite know how to fly. I didn’t know if I should encourage the feeling or not.

  Caleb turned the beam of light to the accelerator tubing, and I finally saw my handiwork. What had once been shiny and perfectly cylindrical was now a molten, blackened mass, oozing like a dying slug as far back as the curve of the tunnel allowed us to see. Could all that be because of me? For a moment, even I was awed.

  He shined the light up ahead, where the unblemished tube continued on. “Maybe another three quarters of a mile to go. Shall we?”

  I roared in delight. Caleb and I are working together again!

  He winced at the volume of my excitement, cast me a joking look of reproof, then clicked off the light, dropped the rifle, and put his hand lightly on my shoulder. “Let’s go.”

>   So we ran, side by side, through the tunnel. With Caleb there, my energy was boundless. It boiled up and sent the metal before us melting and popping like molten lava. It felt like no time at all before we were back where we started, still in darkness. The entire accelerator lay in ruins around us.

  No sounds came from the window where Ximon had been. He must have left to try to muster his people. Caleb and I found our way to the stairs and began the long climb up. Caleb still seemed as invigorated by the thinness of the veil as I. We panted as we ascended, but our pace didn’t flag.

  Near the top of the stairs, we came across three bodies lying draped over the railing or head down on the stairs.

  A quick sniff confirmed for me they were none of our friends. As Caleb ran his hands over one of them, I mewed in a way I hoped was reassuring.

  “Not them, eh?” he said, getting my meaning immediately. “Good.”

  We traced our steps back to the place where we’d seen the door down into the garage. I was about to continue up the steps to the complex, but Caleb paused.

  “Wait,” he said. I heard his hand land on the door to the garage. “Let’s grab one of the trucks and drive it up. Assuming I can hot-wire it. We’d get to the surface a lot faster, maybe be able to join everyone. Do you think any of them will start?”

  Remembering how I’d gotten machines to turn back on during my lesson with Morfael, I trilled back at him encouragingly. If we made it to the surface in a truck and our friends weren’t there, we could go back down into the complex faster than if we climbed up on foot.

  “Here we go.” He pushed the door open, feeling his way to the stairs down into the garage. I could tell from the absence of other sounds that no objurers lurked there.

  I reached out, feeling with my mind for a light, and released it. Illumination flooded the wide-open area of the garage.

  “Woo-hoo!” Caleb jumped down the stairs three at a time, coat sailing out behind him.

  I bounded from the top of the stair right to the bottom, beating him down. I lashed my tail at him and crouched as if ready to pounce.

  “No fair!” he said, his tone playful. “Oh, wait!” He began to take off his coat. “Did you want to . . . ?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to shift back to human yet. Being a tiger felt too wonderful, especially this close to Othersphere. And something about being in tiger form made it easier for Caleb to be with me. I couldn’t let that go. Not yet.

  “Okay. Then we’ll need a slightly larger vehicle.” His liquid eyes lit upon a large pickup truck. “We can bring it back for Raynard! Let’s go.”

  Pulling his coat over his fist, he smashed it into the driver’s side window of the truck. The glass flew. He opened the door, got inside, and reached under the dash for the wires to get it started.

  I leaped into the bed of the truck. It rocked like a boat in a storm, and I mentally released the truck’s engine from the dark binding of Othersphere.

  The engine roared to life. Caleb turned and pounded triumphantly on the back window of the cab at me. I put my paw up to the glass, and roared. He gunned the motor, and we took off.

  CHAPTER 23

  We wound our way upward by the twin beams of the headlights, which meant some of the power around us was working again. It worked well enough to lift a metal door for us when we hit the sensor. As we drove past where we’d first entered the complex, I saw four slumped bodies dressed in white near the table with the playing cards. We’d left one there, and one at the top in the desert. So three of them were new.

  Which meant that some or all of our friends had made it that far on their way out of the complex. Impatience beat on me as the truck curved up the drive to reveal a square of starry sky above. The rush of cool fresh air was a blessing. They must be okay, all of them. Or I would never forgive myself.

  Caleb slowed as we approached the exit. The objurer London had killed still lay to one side, but there was no way to know what else had happened up here. Some kind of animal noises and shouts came from not far away. Caleb stopped the truck just below ground level.

  I jumped out and padded up beside the truck to peer over the edge.

  The light of the full moon blazed down onto the desert, casting a hard black shadow from the observation tower. The shallow pool of water nearby reflected the silver beams like a mirror. Everything was shockingly sharp to my eyes, as if I’d suddenly put on glasses after years of quasi-blindness. The nearness of Othersphere heightened everything.

  Something scuffled far behind me. I turned and crept out farther to look. Then in the distance: a ferocious bark and whine. London. A furry brown mountain moved into view, chasing something two-legged in white. Siku.

  Caleb raised his eyebrows inquiringly at me, and I nodded. Then I sprang back into the bed of the truck. The tires spun, and Caleb peeled out, swerving in the direction I’d been gazing in.

  I put my front paws up on the roof of the cab, wind ruffling my ears, to get a better look as we thumped over hillocks and small cacti. From here, I could see Siku turning from the prone body of an objurer next to a truck, which acted as a shield between him and seven other armed objurers.

  Amaris was peeking around the back of the truck, taking shots at the men in white, pinning them down. I didn’t see Arnaldo or November, but London was limping near three prone figures in white. She weaved slightly, like she was drunk, and then fell over. My stomach clenched. Was she drugged or something much worse?

  “Shit!” I heard Caleb say inside the truck. He floored it as one of the objurers fired three shots at Amaris. Another person in white, a woman, ran toward London.

  Nearby, two objurers were moving in, using the truck and a large cactus as cover, to surround Amaris. They had holstered their regular pistols and pulled out tranquilizer guns. Ximon’s orders must be to capture her alive. The other three people in white were moving around the end of the truck, two of them firing darts at Siku. The small lump on his back had to be November. The other one was firing real bullets at Lazar.

  But they hit nothing, distracted by a winged streak of feathers falling out of the sky. With an earsplitting screech, Arnaldo grabbed the silver gun in his talons and flew away. In the moonlight I tracked him as he zoomed back up, leaving an objurer with a bloody, empty hand.

  “You get the one on London!” Caleb shouted, swerving to avoid a clump of saguaro. “I got the ones on Amaris.”

  As our truck approached the prone wolf, the female objurer near London turned, hearing our engines. She raised her tranquilizer gun as I launched myself into the air, using the truck’s momentum and my own power to leap over thirty yards. She gaped at me, firing almost as a reflex, and her dart whizzed past my ear. I cannoned into her so hard the impact sent us both rolling like tumbleweeds.

  I got to my feet to see Caleb speeding the truck right at the two men stalking Amaris. They veered in different directions to avoid getting run over, but one of them was not fast enough. The truck rammed him, hurtling him thirty feet to lie broken on the ground. Caleb swerved to track down the other one.

  My objurer had rolled to her side, blood pouring down her face, and fumbled with trembling hands at her gun. I gathered up the darkness inside me and growled at her.

  Up here, the veil was slightly thicker. I could feel it. And the well of power inside me that could destroy technology without a touch was drying up. But the gun in the objurer’s hand blackened and warped. She dropped it as if it burned her. The silver cross around her neck sizzled. She screamed, tore it off, and threw it away from her.

  “The devil!” She pushed herself away from me, face pale. “You’re the devil himself.”

  Herself, I thought. But I settled for a derisive tiger snort. From the angle of her left arm, it looked like her collarbone was broken. She was no longer a threat. I looked for Caleb and saw him drive down the other fleeing objurer. He braked and downshifted just enough to bump the man hard. He fell with an audible snap. Caleb had to haul on the wheel to avoid running over hi
m.

  Closer to the Tribunal’s empty truck, Lazar had gotten one of the objurers in a headlock, using the man’s body as a shield between him and the other two.

  Meanwhile, Siku, with November on top of him, moved with his surprising speed around the truck to come up behind the other men. One turned and fired. The dart buried itself into Siku’s front leg. The other objurer ran.

  That saved his life, for Siku let loose a bellow of rage and lashed out at the man who had shot him. His long claws hit the man near the neck and tore his head off with a heavy spurt of dark blood.

  I ran over to where London lay. One sniff told me she was unconscious but not dead. Thank the Moon. A dart had speared her shoulder. Her jaws were covered in blood, but from the odor, I knew it was not her own. But her front paws were bloody from dozens of cactus quills. Reverting to her human form would cure those wounds and push the needles from her body, but she was out cold and unable to shift.

  Caleb. He could send her wolf form back to Othersphere. He was turning the truck in a wide circle, bringing it back toward the objurer who had fled Siku. Lazar had knocked out the man he’d had in the headlock and dropped him to the ground.

  In the distance, I heard other engines, at least four large ones, coming from the entrance to the accelerator. The Tribunal was coming, in force. We have to get out of here.

  There were other noises too, coming from a different direction, that didn’t make sense to me. No time to worry about that now.

  Amaris came running up, holstering her gun, to kneel beside London. “Is she . . . ?”

  I shook my head as she felt for a pulse. Tension drained from her as she found it, and she buried her face in the wolf’s fur. She’d been even more worried than I had been.

  I mewed. No time for that! She sat up and wiped angrily at the tears running through the desert dust on her face. “She needs to shift. Her paws are shredded. Or maybe we can get her into the truck. . . .”

  I uttered a short, negative growl.

  “What? Oh!” She saw what I was looking at—four sets of very bright headlights coming our way. I had no idea how we were going to get out of this.