by Anna Silver
London gasped. She’d remembered something of Avery from before the Sacrifice, the wings, the green. But it was shifty, as much of her memory from that time still was, and nothing so foreign and sad as this trembling vision before her. “How are you doing that?” she stammered.
“The same way I manifested the moth. As you called the rain.” Avery’s voice was a sigh on the wind, nothing more. “Once you left the city and escaped Ernesto our only hope was to lead you here so we could finish the job ourselves. But the Tycoons are only just beginning to see what I am capable of. If you don’t fight, they may decide there is more use for you alive than dead.”
“But…but you turned on us. You left the Circle. You shouldn’t be able to use its power like this.”
“I am still a daughter of Astral. It always knows its own. I command it, shape it, so that you might see.”
“It was you,” London realized, remembering the misshapen silhouette in the night. “You on the road. You materialized out of the fog. You’re the phantom.”
“We needed to stop you before you reached the settlement. You’d be weaker on foot, maybe injured. It wasn’t my idea.” She offered this explanation as though it were somehow enough that she hadn’t thought of it, even though she was responsible for the accident. “I am no phantom,” Avery’s Otherborn said. “But I am hardly more. And this world is killing me.”
“Why did you come here then? Why risk it if you’re so frail?” London didn’t know if she could trust what she saw. If she could trust Avery’s Otherborn anymore than she trusted Avery.
The vision looked at her, something wistful and tremulous in the egg-white eyes. “We were so, so wrong,” was all it would say.
Then it was gone, and a light London had not even been conscious of seemed to go out in the room. Avery lay in a heap on the floor. Her brown hair a tumbled mess over her face. Her shoulders shaking.
“Were you trying to stop us out there on the road, or kill us?” London asked, horrified.
“I don’t know,” Avery answered honestly, turning her face up to London’s, the blue of her eyes watery and grave.
“And the moth? You did that to lead us here, but not to rescue you.”
“No,” Avery said quietly.
London gulped. Her eyes flicked to the open window of pink glass. Avery followed them, an eerie submission in her face. “Forget it,” she said as she got back to her feet. “It’s too late. I’ve already sounded the alarm. You’ll never get back out.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Traitor
“You’re bluffing.” London narrowed her eyes. “I don’t hear a thing.”
Avery folded her arms. “Just like you didn’t hear the high frequency whine of the Predator Fence along the ridge? It keeps out most mammals, reptiles, and other pests. Unfortunately, we haven’t figured out how to effectively repel humans without making it likewise untenable for the residents of New Eden. Nor did you feel the shudder in the air as you crossed the Percipient Barrier and stepped into the gardens. It detected your entry of course. They were expecting you because of me, so there are guards already out stalking you, checking the perimeters. I’m surprised you made it this far. But my alarm will alert them to your exact location. You won’t elude them again.”
Before London could argue, a door near the vanity burst open and Rye nearly fell into the room. “London, you found her! Thank god. I heard barking out there, dogs. I think we need to go. Somehow they must have detected us.”
He was bent over, hands on knees, trying to catch his breath. He hadn’t even had a chance to take in the opulence of the room or Avery’s metallic gown and smug expression.
When neither girl answered, he looked up and recognized the tension he’d fumbled into. “Whoa. What’s going on?” Rye asked.
London started pushing Rye towards the open window. “Let’s go. Now.”
“Wait. What about Avery?” he said perplexed.
London shrugged, giving Avery a quick glance. “She’s staying.”
“What?” Rye resisted London’s shoves, moving aside and taking a step in Avery’s direction. “Avery?”
But Avery only glared at them with a fierce pride.
Rye shook his head in disbelief. “You…you mean?”
“She sold us out, Rye. It was her all along. She went to the Tycoons, gave us away. Otherborns and all.”
Tora’s head of bright hair popped into view at the window ledge. “We have to go. They’ll be on us with dogs in no time.” She ignored Avery completely and gave no sign of shock at what she saw.
“You knew,” London guessed when she saw Tora at the window. “After I made you use your Sight in the garden. You didn’t want to bring us at first because you knew.”
Tora’s eyes met Avery’s for a split second. “Yes. I knew. I could have told you, but you would never have believed me without seeing it for yourself. I wanted to spare you this, I’m sorry.”
Rye hitched a leg over the windowsill, preparing to leave when Avery suddenly said, “It’s not too late for you, Rye. You can stay here. With me. London’s stubborn, but you don’t have to be.”
Rye paused and London felt her heart squeeze. What could she offer him really? A life on the run? A premature death? Eternity in the Astral? Certainly Avery’s bargain looked a heap better than her own. Maybe he wouldn’t choose some scraggly Outroader like Tora over her, but what if he chose this? Could she blame him?
Rye ran a fist of slender fingers through his nutmeg hair and blew out a long gust of air. “You know, Ave, as tempting as that is, I’m gonna pass. There’s nothing more beautiful than a girl who’s not afraid to kick a little ass. And London takes the cake on that.”
London smirked and Avery looked stung.
“Besides,” he continued. “This is just temporal. But what I have with her defies space and time. When you can top that, look me up.”
He hopped out the window and was gone.
London had never found Rye more attractive than in that moment. She started to follow him then turned back to Avery once more. “You’re wrong, you know. Even in Capital City, all you knew was the best that they could offer. It’s not this world that’s smothering your Otherborn. It’s you.”
When she hit the ground outside, London gathered two fistfuls of the waxy, fragrant petals and took off sprinting after Rye and Tora across the garden. In the distance, she could hear the baying of many dogs slice the night in a crescendo of peculiar howls. They were definitely too close for comfort.
Reaching her friends, she pushed some of the petals at them. “Here, rub yourself with these as you run. It’s our only chance. They’ll hunt us through the woods if we don’t cover our scent.”
“What about Zen and Kim?” Rye asked, crushing several petals against his face and neck.
“No time now. If we’re lucky, they heard the dogs and made for the truck. She sounded an alarm, so they’ll hunt us first because they know exactly where we are.” London was breathless, but there was a thrill in the air that she couldn’t explain. A freedom. Leaving the Percipient Barrier behind, along with the suffocating luxury of the settlement and Avery’s betrayal, had opened something inside, and her lungs felt as if they’d grown, their capacity for tasting life enlarged somehow.
They coursed through the thickly shrouded ridge, the vines and branches tearing at snatches of hair and clothing. There was no time to consider where they’d go if they managed to escape the Tycoons, or how far the truck would last. They just ran. Blindly. Blankly.
Rye reached back to grasp London’s hand. She was still the slowest because of her weakened condition, but that was nothing a hot meal and a little rest couldn’t fix, when she could find it. For now, her mind was set solely on finding the truck. The sound of the dogs on their heels fell behind but never let up.
By the time they circled back around to where they’d left the truck, it was gone. But fresh tracks led directly to the road where they could see the orange brake lights glowing like the eye
s of some massive beast in the night. A fresh puff of fumes rose from the exhaust as if from a sleeping dragon, and the engine’s steady rumble sounded like a slumbering purr.
London let out a massive sigh as they slowed to a walk on the pavement, but a long howl cut short her relief. A light was rising over the road at the ridge behind them. Shadowed against it was what appeared to be a many-headed dog, a writhing mass of frantic tails and frenzied snorts. The seething of a hell hound.
It took only a moment for her to realize that what she was seeing was not one dog, but a pack, knitted so closely together in the dark, it was hard to separate where one ended and another began. These dogs were nothing like Avery’s little lap mutt, Maltese, back in Capital City. And they were too uniform to belong to the ragtag packs of wild dogs that roamed the Houselands.
They were massive, waist-high to a grown man, and their bodies were an intimidating frame of twisted, knotting muscles just beneath the short, cropped hide. They had flopping ears and long slapping tails. Lips parted to reveal a glint of fangs set in thick, black gums. They were tied in leashed bundles to a clot of approaching guards.
These weren’t the same who’d been attempting to follow them through the forest. London was certain they’d lost those guards some ways back, the flowers’ perfume cloaking their scent and confusing the animals. But only she and Rye and Tora had the flowers. These dogs must have been tracking Zen and Kim.
The truck lurched forward at the sound of barking and London grabbed at Rye’s arm. “They’re leaving!”
But the back doors flung open just as she and Rye and Tora thought they were abandoned, and Zen’s panicked face leaned out. “Come on! Hurry!”
They took off behind the vehicle, slamming their feet against the blacktop with such force, London thought for sure they would send chips of asphalt flying. The guards were shouting now, running. At the command of one, they let loose the dogs, who came tearing up the road behind London as she faltered in her step, leashes dragging.
Tora was the fastest. She pulled ahead and leapt at the back of the truck, which was picking up speed, catching Zen’s arm with her own. He heaved her inside without looking back and reached out again, one hand gripping at the door frame to keep steady.
Rye was just ahead of London. He could have reached up and touched Zen. Could have been pulled inside. Could have known the safety of the truck.
“Rye, come on!” Zen shouted over the roar of the engine and the din of the dogs, but Rye shook his head.
He threw a hand back toward London and she stretched to take it, just barely brushing her fingers against his.
Rye threw his hand back again and this time London caught it. With a show of strength he slung her forward towards the truck and Zen leaned out, grabbing her at the elbow and heaving her inside like a ragdoll. She fell against the toppled boxes, heart thudding out of her chest. She could still feel the spittle of the dogs as they barked on the back of her calves just before Rye grabbed her. Only a second more and she’d have been kibble.
Rolling over, London expected to see Rye pulled in behind her, but instead, she saw Zen leaning out as far as he humanly could, grasping for Rye who was just beyond his reach.
Then she understood. In his attempt to save her, Rye had slowed only a little, but it cost him several paces that now he couldn’t seem to make up for. London scrambled up and crawled to the edge of the truck, shouting to him, “Rye! Come on!”
The dogs were gaining, two pulling out in front of the others, only inches from Rye’s legs. Rye reached a long, rope-like arm towards Zen but it wasn’t enough. A shot rang out from behind, where the guards were doing their best to keep up. Kim panicked and floored the pedal, and the truck surged ahead leaving Rye too far behind to stand a chance. Within moments the dogs were on him. He went down on the blacktop as London watched helpless, and was lost in a flurry of haunches and jowls.
It took all of Zen’s strength to catch and hold London as she tried to throw herself from the truck.
~
They rambled along the Ten under a listless dawn. Kim had picked up enough watching Rye to maneuver the truck himself. But the other three sat in silence among the chaos of the back, a litter of boxes and tickets and cans of fuel which Kim, ever the opportunist, had heisted from the settlement. London was, at first, inconsolable, and, at last, catatonic. Only one thought played repeatedly in her mind: saving Avery had cost her Rye.
It was the one sacrifice she was unwilling to make.
Especially for a traitor bitch.
The only thing that kept breath in her lungs, kept her from simply giving in to the desire to let go, was the thought that maybe, just maybe, Rye had survived the attack. Avery said they might prefer to keep the Otherborn in New Eden after seeing what she was capable of. Maybe Rye could convince them that he was worth more alive. Maybe she could still save him. Maybe he would wait for her. At least they would always have the Astral.
Zen observed London with heavy, gray eyes, and Tora kept watch on them both, as though waiting for the time bomb to finally go off.
At last, Zen said, “We’ll go back, London. I promise. We’ll find them both.”
Her eyes were hollow pits, dark and fathomless, when she answered, “Not Avery.”
Zen perked up. He’d never heard about what passed between them in the settlement. London figured he just assumed that they’d been unsuccessful, like Kim and himself, before the guards and dogs put an end to their search.
“Why not Avery?” he asked pensively, carefully addressing London as though he were handling a wild animal. But he could read the implications in her tone.
“We found her,” London said, her voice flat and monotone. “She’s already dead.”
Zen pounded a deadly fist into the metal wall of the truck and buried his face in the crook of his arm, muffling the sobs he could not contain.
London’s gaze wandered away from his anguish to Tora, who was sitting just behind the driver’s seat on an upturned couple of boxes, her legs stretched out before her. She stared intently at London.
With a bold expression, London dared the Outroader girl to challenge what she’d said, to tell Zen the truth. But Tora simply stared back with razor-green understanding and eventually looked away.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Homecoming
London awoke from the dream with a start.
In it, she had been Si’dah, wandering alone among the fertile fields of the Midplane, following the meandering flight of a solitary moth, a mirage of the Astral, surely. Something about the moth defied its playful behavior, but her curiosity drew her onward, in spite of her instincts.
Only the moth disappeared inside a ring of redwood trees, nine to be exact, and when Si’dah followed it inside, her memory, which, heretofore, had only flickered at the distant fringes of her consciousness, came barreling back on her like the rush of a tsunami.
She knew these trees. It was the grove. And the stones inside, where the Circle once sat in contemplation, she knew those too.
And she knew the moth. So soft and lovely. So innocent and beguiling. Yet, so deadly to behold. It was Avery.
Only it wasn’t.
This time, when she recognized the moth, it had fluttered its way to the opposite end of the grove, which seemed an unlikely distance now, almost too far to see. And instead of becoming Avery, or even her milky-green Otherborn, it materialized into a large, bearded man, scantily clad. His strong features met her willowy ones from across the grove, and his frosty eyes seemed full of words his mouth could not speak. She felt she could read a library of feeling in those eyes. But before she could call out, Roanyk, before she could stop or reach him, he turned his back on her and vanished. Leaving Si’dah alone in the grove once more.
London pushed herself up and straightened against the wall of the truck. She tried to force the torturing images from her mind, but they stubbornly dug in their heels and would not go. Over and over, her memory replayed it. Rye just out of reach. Rye
falling under a tangle of dogs. Rye staring at her from across the grove. Strong. Silent. Then turning his back to her and vanishing. She had no sooner wrapped her mind around the fact that she’d been to the Midplane again, alone, than Kim started up once more with his bitching.
“I don’t know why we’re doing this, London. I don’t think it’s smart,” he complained from the driver’s seat.
“If I wanted your opinion, Kim, I’d ask for it,” London groaned, rubbing at a serious crick in her neck.
By now, Tora had moved up front to join Kim in the seat, leaving London alone in the back with Zen, who would not speak or even meet her gaze. He was still reeling with the news of Avery’s death, an announcement London felt sure was far kinder than the truth.
“I told you,” Tora reminded Kim. “It’ll be fine.”
Kim huffed but said no more. It was hard to argue with Tora’s Sight, and without Zen to back him up, the girls had him outnumbered.
They were just outside of Capital City. The skeletal remains of the Houselands rising up to meet them in jagged peaks here and there from the dense forest canopy. The concrete walls of their old home baking in the afternoon sun.
It was risky, true enough. But London didn’t care. They owed Rye’s dad this much.
And Tora had piped up quick to assure them her Sight saw no harm in it. They could make it in and out again before anyone realized. So long as they kept to the outlying roads like Bagby and Cross and didn’t wander too far into the City Central. ‘Course, she had her own reasons.
The Interstate Gates were another issue.
Kept on lock-down unless the Tycoons themselves were touring in the city, they weren’t yet sure how they’d get the truck inside. London hoped halfheartedly that the Tigerians had left them unhitched when making their raid on the Outroaders’ camp. But when Kim finally pulled the truck to a stop just a few feet away from the shining aluminum bars, she saw that they hadn’t been so lucky. No doubt, any Tigerians not permanently stationed at the campsite had already returned to the city and walled it off again in their wake.