Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series)

by Silver, Anna

  London more felt than saw Tora and Kim crash into her. Somewhere through the din of angry insects, she heard Kim shouting, “Go, London! Go!”

  Spinning, she sprinted back toward the mouth of the tunnel she’d only just left, pushing through bees like a tide of tiny bodies. They were so dense as they moved around her that she lost almost all sense of direction, even in the cramped quarters of the Beekeeper. She couldn’t be sure she had found the tunnel, until she was certain that she would have hit stone already had her aim been off. She just kept running, feeling the echo of her steps pounding to either side of her and just behind, as she imagined Kim, Tora, and Zen were all in quick pursuit.

  She pressed her lips tight against the pelting of bees, pulling air desperately through her nose, afraid to open her mouth for fear she’d swallow them. She felt hot, close, and crawling. She could feel the bodies tangling in her hair, catching along the cuff of her sleeve and the strap of her pack. But she’d stopped feeling the pain long ago, the sensation of needle thin stingers piercing her hands, her neck, her face. Now, beneath the pressure of them all around, she felt only a tingling numbness and a faraway burn.

  There was no sun to light the way, but the desert moon was a different thing entirely than any other moon. It hung over the mesa with a startling clarity, inside a swath of stars, blanketing the desert hills and rock in a ghostly glow, laying it out like bones before them. It was this light that first pierced the fog of bees and gave London some sense of place and time. She knew she was reaching the precipice as that sheen began to bounce off the bodies flying around her, and then of patches of stone, and finally off the very air itself as the mouth of the cave opened before her and sky and stars all crashed into her field of vision with an urgency she wasn’t prepared for.

  There was no time to think. No time to question, What next? No time to turn and be sure Kim and Tora were there also, that Zen was pressing in behind. There was only the cool, fresh air on her skin, like magic, setting all her bee stings aflame with new feeling. And the gibbous moon above her, a welcome friend in the fray. And the spread of flat-topped hills before her, gleaming like cropped mountains in the night. And the ground waiting more than forty feet below, glassy with possibility in the moonlight.

  Had there been time, she might have considered her options, called stairs into being from the rock to carry her down, edged her way carefully to the cliff. As it was, she barely perceived the rim of rock beneath her feet, barely noticed as it left, falling away from her, barely cared that an empty chasm of forty-odd feet existed between herself and freedom. She simply felt that sharp stone corner bite into the tread of her boot as she was leaving it and let the momentum of her pace do the work as she flung herself over the edge of the precipice and out into the waiting night.

  THERE’S SOMETHING BETWEEN falling and flying that London had no words for. It’s heavier than floating and lighter than sinking, a weighted illusion of suspension that exists when you are midair with your eyes closed. She reveled in it. And then her eyes flew open against the rush of air and she saw the ground approaching and all her illusions were shattered. There was no chance for Tora’s relaxation methods, but something inside her twisted around, just the same, and found that entrance into the Astral, that point that exists at the edge of space and time. It punched through and gripped with everything she had, ripping out anything that could save her.

  She had only a second more to register what was opening beneath her, a second to contort herself, mid-air, in order to lessen the impact. She wasn’t even sure how she knew it had to be done, she simply did. It was just like Bayou Camp Four, when Clark was all over her, and without a moment’s notice she’d acted, out of some part of herself that knew better even if it shouldn’t, even if she had no reference for it. She’d pulled her blade then and found his weak point, that soft space between the neck and clavicle, a steep downward thrust into muscle and vein that, if managed just right, is sure to kill. It was something Si’dah might know. A woman whose people relied on her for the hunt, who looked to her to supply the hidden knowledge about where to stalk and how to strike, to take down the kill that would feed them.

  And this, this was also something Si’dah would understand. Her world was one of valued and protected natural resources. A world of shadowy jungles, open tundra, and crystalline waters.

  Maybe it wasn’t London who was controlling her body now, releasing the pack with a desperate fling, straightening her limbs into a rigid arrow, tucking her chin tight against her throat as she elongated her neck, preparing to slice the surface with her hands and take the brunt of the impact along the hard curve of her skull as the rest of her flowed behind like a ribbon of silk.

  Maybe it was Si’dah who knew about lakes and pools and bodies of water. Maybe it was Si’dah who knew how to dive. Maybe it was Si’dah who was saving her life.

  With her chin tucked, she couldn’t see the rippling surface of the waters anymore, but the unmistakable sense of wet crested over her fingers and relief flooded her as she poured herself easily into the waiting desert lagoon. But this was no shallow reach of tropical sea. It sunk deep into the rock hard sands, dark as ink in its depths, and glowing like silver along the surface.

  London curled inward within the water, righting herself, and then soared back up toward the surface, reaching out to pluck at her boot strings. She pulled desperately at the heavy boots, tugging them off and kicking hard to make her ascent. When she broke the water she simultaneously took the biggest, most coveted inhale of breath of her life. Between the bees and then the pool, her lungs were desperate for oxygen.

  Beside her, London saw the white reflection of moon skitter apart as a disturbance under the water troubled the surface. Suddenly, the relief of her situation changed to dread. She had known how to dive and how to swim because she had Si’dah. But what of her friends? Certainly Zen and Kim had never experienced a lake or pond before, or even a pool, and she had no idea if Tora had.

  Splashing in circles she bobbed up, swallowing air, and then dove back under the water to her right, fighting the bubbles on her way down to where someone was flailing wildly. Hair soft as feathers waved around her fingers, dark and deadly looking under the water. Kim. She clutched at it and pulled until her other groping hand caught hold of his arm. Sliding both hands under his arms, she heaved his weight toward the surface, praying his frantic thrashing would help and not hinder her rescue effort.

  Within moments they emerged in the night air and Kim gasped and heaved, retching water as she drug him along to the edge where Tora was already crawling up onto land, drenched head to foot and shivering. London pulled at Kim’s arms until he could rest, head above water, along the shallows. She half shoved him toward Tora and said, “Take him! I’ve got to go back in and look for Zen.”

  Before Tora could respond, she was already slinking into the water, diving under and popping back up like the otters she’d seen on TV, searching frantically for some sign of where he hit. Kim was long and lithe and not so hard for her to pull up, but Zen’s bulk would be another story and she was terrified that she wouldn’t be able to make the surface with him on her own, if she found him at all.

  She was under water, searching, when the first bullet streamed by on her left. Then a second one submerged to her right, trailing rapidly down just in her peripheral. London turned back for the shore where she’d left Kim and Tora and skated along just under the surface, until it was too shallow to hide her any longer.

  What had felt so graceful and swift in the water was instantly turned to a clumsy drag out of it. With her sopping clothes hanging off of her and no shoes, she scrambled up the smooth bank, her feet pounding the packed, cracked sand beneath them as she followed Tora and Kim up ahead, running for the cover of a nearby rock formation that jutted out from a neighboring mesa. Above them, regiments at the precipice fired with abandon, until a shout stopped them.

  But London didn’t have time to look back and see who had given the order to cease fir
e or even wonder why. She was too grateful for the opportunity to escape to wonder how or why it came. Beneath the precipice, she, Tora, and Kim were easy targets, their wet bodies and clothes glinting in the moonlight. Their cover was nearing, but was still far enough to give the regiments an advantage. If they’d kept shooting, it was unlikely they’d keep missing.

  She rounded the rough stone border, thick patches of scruff scratching at her ankles. A low overhang of stone up ahead allowed them to duck into the shadows, scurrying along its length like rats until it ran out. They crouched beneath it for a moment to catch their breath and London turned to Kim and Tora.

  “I…I have to go back,” she managed between gulps of air. “Z—Zen. He’s back there s—somewhere. In the water still.” Her teeth had begun chattering hard, slapping rapidly against each other as she sucked in breath. From cold or shock, she couldn’t say.

  Kim squeezed his eyes tight, unable to speak yet. He’d almost drowned in the body of water London had warped and his face was pale and ragged.

  Tora tucked the pack against him for support, which had miraculously missed the water when London released it in her dive, and which she must have grabbed before she and Kim started running. She kept shaking her head at London. “N—no,” she said, her own teeth hammering against one another in the dark under the rock. “C—can’t.”

  “Tora, I h—have to. I d—don’t think he c—can swim.” Their speech was slow and halting and London didn’t have time to argue at all, much less through the tight, rusty working of their tired jaws. She turned to move back the way they’d come, but Tora threw herself on her, knocking them both into the dirt, dusting them with a little puff of desert.

  London grunted with the fall. “Tora! Get off!”

  Tora dug her fingers into the wet fabric of London’s shirt. “N—no! You don’t understand,” she stammered.

  London rolled over and found the glint of a sliver of moonlight reflected in Tora’s eyes. “What don’t I understand?” she whispered.

  Tora sighed. “He’s not t—there. He never made it.”

  London blinked. “Never made it? You mean, he didn’t jump? He didn’t make it off the cliff?”

  Tora shook her head and little spatters of water from her hair dotted the rock. “No. I mean, he never made it out of the room.”

  London gave a little gasp, bewildered. She instinctively reached into her pocket to feel for the geode piece he’d given her, to search for the truth in Tora’s words, but it was gone. She must have lost it in the fall.

  “I’m sorry, London,” Tora said, her voice hoarse. “He was right behind me when they got him. I turned just in time to see. The bees were so thick, there was nothing I could do. They held the regiments back a bit, but someone pushed through and Zen was the first one they reached. He was last because he’d waited a moment to press his weight against the door, to give us even a second longer to get ahead.”

  London felt all the air rush out of her at once. Zen was still back there somewhere…in Tycoon custody.

  Chapter 22

  * * *

  Sanctuary

  LONDON CONCENTRATED UNTIL she could feel the pool shrinking, sucking back through her into the Astral plane from where it had come. She couldn’t leave it, in case the men attempted to follow them. And now that she knew Zen wasn’t there, she had to try to cover their tracks and unwarp as easily as she’d warped.

  It worked, she could sense it, but there was no telling how many men, if any, had made the leap in after them. They could be drudging up onto the bank now, sloshing their way toward the rock that sheltered her, Kim, and Tora.

  “We have to keep moving,” London said, hating the words as she spoke them.

  They were all exhausted and cold. Kim had gone from dead white, to a sickly green, to a sallow pasty color. Unlike the girls, he hadn’t known how to contort his body as he entered the water. He’d tucked his knees and smacked into the pool like a cannonball and was likely to suffer some serious bruising from the force of his impact, on top of nearly drowning. His eyes shot daggers at her now but even he knew she was right.

  “The truck,” Tora whispered. “If we can make our way around the mesa to the camp entrance we can find where we left it.”

  London shook her head. The truck would be no use to them anymore. “No. There’ll be regiments crawling all over that mesa. They will have found the truck already. We’re going to have to foot it out of here.”

  “Where?” Kim managed. It was little more than a croak. London thought he sounded more like his Other, Atel, than himself.

  London peered out into the flat stretch of crumbled wasteland before her. The silhouettes of spiky desert grasses broke the open expanses between the alien mesas, but little else. There wouldn’t be another camp for miles. Another anything for that matter. Except…

  She turned to Kim. “You were right. We’ve worn out our Outroader welcome. There’s little they can offer us at this point anyway. But there’s one network of people we haven’t tried.”

  Kim shook his head, a slow roll against the rock where he was leaning. “No clue who you’re talking about.”

  “Scrappers,” London said. “They’re the only other people even remotely outside of full Tycoon control.”

  “Like Ernesto?” Tora whispered, her green eyes full with remembered terror. Ernesto was the king Scrapper of Capital City. He was also head of the notorious City Central gang, the Tigerians. It was his dirty work that had caused Degan and Pauly’s deaths, by Tycoon order. And he’d tracked the rest of them too, nearly raping London in the woods outside Tora’s camp. It was his truck they’d stolen and were now being forced to abandon.

  London frowned and pushed down the bile rising in her throat at the name. “No. No more gangs. Just straight-up Scrappers. The houselands and cities are full of them.”

  Kim laughed silently and humorlessly, his chest jostling under his wet clothes in noiseless fits. “Where are we going to find those? There’s nothing for miles to draw a Scrapper.”

  London smirked. “I beg to differ, old friend,” she mused, pulling one of several books from her pack.

  “You stole those!” Tora said but Kim beamed with pride.

  “Good girl,” he managed before dissolving into silent laughter again.

  “Obviously,” London began, tucking the book back into their pack, “they’re not going to know to come here. So we’re just going to have to go to them. Mesa City can’t be far.”

  Suddenly Kim started, black eyes wide, and Tora whispered to London, “Are you crazy? You want to go back behind the walls?”

  London huffed. “I know, it sounds nuts. Just hear me out. The last place they are ever going to expect us to be is inside one of the walled cities. I’m not saying we can stay forever. Of course we can’t. But it can buy us some time. And we’re going to need supplies to strike out on our own. For now, Mesa City is probably the safest place we can go. We can hide, we can trade, and we can think behind the walls. Beyond that, I don’t know. We’ll figure it out along the way.”

  In her mind, she added silently, I just need some time, Zen. Give me a little time and I’ll figure something out. Be strong. She didn’t know if Zen would trust her to rescue him. After all, they’d failed Rye miserably. But she wasn’t going to let that happen again. She just needed time to think and a place to let Kim rest and recuperate.

  Tora pursed her lips and nodded. Kim, too.

  “Great,” London said, wiping at the dirt that had settled over her sleeve and hand when Tora tackled her. It smeared into a long brown line after mixing with the moisture on her skin. Not bad, London thought. I like me in brown.

  Tora had been gazing out into the lonely landscape. “How are we ever going to get to Mesa City without being spotted?”

  London looked at Kim’s sallow face and Tora’s bright hair and then back to her own hands, one ghostly white and one now sandy brown. She grinned. “I have an idea.” Then she began clawing up handfuls of dirt and spr
eading the muck all over herself, particularly around her face and over her hands. It was cool and soothing to her stings which were already beginning to swell. She’d scraped three stingers out of her hands with her nails, two on one and one on the other, another from her cheek, and one more from her neck. It had only been a matter of minutes since she’d left the hive behind, but already her stomach was cramping and a cough was beginning to burble up from her constricted chest.

  She didn’t want to say anything, with Kim looking so weak and Tora’s eyes full of worry every time she looked at him, but right now London was just praying she made it to Mesa City at all. If the Tycoons didn’t get her, the bee stings just might.

  “What are you doing?” Tora asked, horrified, as London covered herself in dirt smears.

  London dumped a handful over Tora’s head, spreading it through the strands as she pulled down. “What you’re about to,” she said. “You need to cover up that yellow hair. And Kim needs to cover his face and hands good, like me.”

  Tora backed away, swatting at London’s dirty fingers. “Why?”

  London coughed, trying to pretend she didn’t notice the wave of dizziness that took her, making her head spin as she answered Tora. “Camouflage.”

  * * *

  THE SUN BAKED the desert dirt to their skin, making a crust of browns and reds all over them, like an exoskeleton. Even the pack, an undyed canvas weave, had been generously coated in mud. It looked disgusting and felt pretty gross too, but so far it had worked. They criss-crossed the desert from one mesa to the next, hiding in thick tufts of high grass or under the stony arms of the plateaus whenever the whir of helicopters sounded nearby. Eventually, they stopped hearing them altogether. As London suspected, their trackers never believed they would move this far northwest because only one thing lay in their path, Mesa City.