Othersphere Read online

I chuffed at him, purring louder. It was an admission from him, that my idea to raid the particle accelerator wasn’t a failure after all.

  “Let’s hope this is the beginning of the end,” Caleb said. “But also, Orgoli didn’t count on you being here.” He turned to Morfael.

  Morfael didn’t acknowledge the compliment. His glittering eyes were narrowed at the broken windows, assessing. “There is still cleaning up to do. Finish this quickly,” he said.

  “Once Orgoli realizes that Ximon’s Tribunal troops have been neutralized here, he will bring his Othersphere troops through the veil ahead of schedule.”

  Caleb took a deep breath, a line appearing between his dark brows. “You think he’ll go right for the laser tonight?”

  Again, Morfael did not bother to reply. He expected us to keep up with him now. “Be careful. Orgoli won’t take this kindly,” he said.

  “Careful’s my middle name,” Caleb said with a grin, taking a book and a small pack of cards out of his pocket. He looked at me, hefting them like weapons, the smile hardening into the fierce, joyful determination I remembered from our times in battle together. I whipped my tail, a purr rumbling through my body as I sprang into action once more with Caleb, something I hadn’t ever hoped to do again.

  Morfael was already gliding out the double doors. I ran to the broken front windows and put my front paws on the sill to survey the scene, Caleb striding up beside me.

  The rats had swarmed over one of the white Land Rovers the Tribunal had positioned in front of the windows. I could barely see the automatic rifle they’d mounted in front of the moon roof under the teeming fur and whiskers. Not far from there, a white pickup truck with the windshield smashed in was surrounded by London and her wolves, who were finishing off the three objurers there.

  Thirty feet back and to the side was another white Land Rover with a man standing up through the moon roof, firing an assault rifle at the mountain lions, grizzlies, and lynx pouring out of the lodge’s front door. The bullets hit three that I saw, but their friends dragged them behind other parked cars where they could shift and heal.

  Farther out in the parking lot, I could see Lazar and Amaris over by our SUV, putting together a long, shiny gun.

  Because they’d survived the bomb, the shifters had been able to effectively neutralize the Tribunal with very few casualties. I saw Lazar aim his gun at the man with the assault rifle and fire once. The man’s body shuddered as the bullet hit him in the center of his chest. He crumpled without a sound. The cats and bears slinked closer as the driver of the car fumbled to get the car in gear, hauling on the wheel.

  “Where is he?” Caleb asked under his breath.

  I was wondering the same thing. Orgoli was nowhere to be seen.

  “Either he’s in that car”—Caleb pointed to the Land Rover with the man and the assault rifle—“or he’s hiding nearby, watching.”

  My ears turned, scanning to catch the slightest giveaway sound amidst all the scuffles, rendings, and gunshots. As soon as Caleb said “hiding,” I felt that’s what Orgoli would be doing, allowing his Tribunal men to do the dirty work. He wouldn’t want to draw upon his otherworldly powers around them, lest they realize he wasn’t Ximon after all.

  My eyes settled on the dark woods to our right, which began a few feet from the slushy parking lot.

  “If I were Orgoli, I’d be close to nature,” Caleb said. His dark eyes were resting on the same patch of forest. “Hiding in the trees.”

  I meowed, and jumped lightly over the windowsill to land in the parking lot. The snow on the ground was covered in paw prints. If anyone came by here tomorrow, they’d have to wonder at the comingling of wolf and lynx, of bear and rat.

  Caleb followed. As we ran past the churning mass of wolves, the remaining Land Rover pulled out of its parking space. Its back wheels spun on the slippery ground; then it took off with a squeak.

  But not fast enough. A brown streak of mountain lion and a grizzly the size of a small shed, moving faster than its size would seem to allow, reached the back end of it. The lion used the rear bumper to launch itself onto the car’s roof, clawing through the open moon roof. After the cat was up, the bear leaned onto that bumper and bounced the rear end of the car on its tires like a basketball.

  The lion hung on as the car bounded up and down, rocking the two objurers inside. That gave a smaller black bear time to run up and slam its right paw into the driver’s side window.

  The glass smashed inward. The driver tried to duck, but I saw his terrified, bloody face gaping back at the toothy muzzle at his window. The black bear opened its jaws and lunged for his throat.

  “Guess we don’t need to worry about that car anymore,” Caleb said as we got to the edge of the parking lot. Overhead, several raptors were circling, wings wide.

  We turned to the thicket of trees, bordered by a meadow to our left, but stretching out as far as my excellent night eyes could see before us.

  I tuned out the sounds of final struggle going on behind us and concentrated on the woods as I scanned, looking for anything too regular in shape, anything that might be a vehicle, or a person. I could hear Caleb’s even breathing and how his battered dark coat slid against the crisper cloth of his cotton shirt.

  Other things were breathing, too, over fifty feet away, deep in the woods. Three hearts were beating somewhere behind a clump of fallen logs and bracken. I ruffed gently at Caleb, stepping forward on silent paws. I didn’t have to look at him to know that he was letting me go first because I was the one with the superior hearing and sight, because I was the one able to move as silent as the moonlight.

  He let me get about fifteen feet ahead of him, then he, too, stepped as quietly as he could onto the snow-covered pine needles that carpeted the forest floor. He had the paperback book in his right hand, and the playing cards in his left. To someone who didn’t know how callers could pull the shadows of ordinary objects from Othersphere, it would have looked completely incongruous, even comical, as if he and the huge tiger were headed into the woods for a game of bridge or a book club. I didn’t know what the book and cards could become, but if Caleb brought them, they must be useful.

  I didn’t approach the screen of logs and bracken directly, but circled around to the side, avoiding stepping on any noisy sticks, my tail snaking through the low bushes. Caleb moved very quietly for a human, and his black coat helped him blend into the dark places between the gray trees, but to my tiger ears his movements were as clear as gunshots. At least I knew exactly where he was, in case he got into trouble, and Orgoli was probably using Ximon’s inferior human ears at the moment.

  The three heartbeats remained in place as we approached, with no change of rhythm. Wood creaked as someone leaned on it. Something flashed like a glass reflecting moonlight, and I paused. Caleb straightened behind me. His breathing sped up.

  I focused, and edged closer, and human shapes came into view. The three figures were in the dark, using binoculars to peer through the spaces between the fallen logs that lay piled haphazardly between them and the parking lot.

  We stood twenty yards to their left. If they turned, they would see us, but their gazes were fixed ahead on the rout of the Tribunal forces. It was the lens of one of their binoculars that had caught the light through the branches above. About thirty yards back, a dark-hued truck sat parked, empty, on a dirt track.

  I smelled gunpowder and traced the outline of shoulder harnesses and guns on two of them. Long rifles were laid on the logs beside them. The third man stood a little apart from them, both feet on a log so that his white-haired head was higher.

  It was Orgoli, still wearing Ximon’s body like a Halloween disguise. Perhaps he didn’t wear a gun because he was from Othersphere and, like me, he had a tendency to destroy worked metal.

  Was there anything left of Ximon in there, as he witnessed the death of so many of his followers at the hands of the otherkin? Whether Orgoli succeeded or not, we were witnessing the end of the Tribunal’s power on this
continent. Did Ximon know that as Orgoli stared out at the slaughter through his eyes?

  One of the men grunted in disgust at what he was seeing and grabbed the rifle at his side. He shouldered the butt and slid the tip through a hole between the logs, squinting through the sight.

  “Don’t be a fool.” It was mostly Ximon’s deep voice, speaking quietly, but now that I’d heard Orgoli speak, I felt the difference in the vibration in my gut. “One gunshot will bring them all down upon us.”

  “How can you just stand there and allow this?” the objurer hissed. “Your plan has destroyed us!”

  Orgoli took the binoculars away from his face. It was very dark, but my tiger eyes saw clearly that although he was not happy with the outcome, he wasn’t horribly distressed either. “There was no way for me to know Morfael would be here,” he said. “My spies told me that shifters don’t trust his kind, and he wasn’t invited. I knew the girl and her friends were strong in battle, but I underestimated their ability to bring the otherkin together. In all the Tribunal’s research, they never anticipated this.” He turned to the two men. “It’s more your failure than mine.”

  “The research is yours,” the other objurer said, and by her voice I could tell she was female. “All of it was directed by you.”

  Caleb placed the hand holding the playing cards on the top of my head, hefting the paperback book in the other. Our gazes met, and he mouthed, “Close your eyes,” slowly shutting his own eyes as he did so. I looked back quickly at Orgoli.

  He was smiling with Ximon’s teeth, a hungry smile. “No, it was not my research.”

  “But . . .”

  “Come!” He began to turn toward us. “We need to get to Livermore. Now.”

  I closed my eyes.

  Beside me, Caleb’s body coiled and threw the book. Simultaneously, he called out a single bright note. I wished I could see the expression on Orgoli’s face as he heard it, as he turned toward the sound he knew had to be the voice of Ximon’s son.

  The back of my eyelids flashed brilliant white, and instinctively I scrunched them closed more tightly. The book Caleb had thrown must have been a dazzling light source in Othersphere.

  Orgoli cried out a sound like a combination of Ximon’s scream and a tiger’s painful roar. The male and female objurers also yelled in surprise and pain.

  “Open them slowly, but go!” Caleb said to me.

  With my whiskers fanned out and my ears cocked, I was nearly as functional blind as I was with sight. If I could get Orgoli before he shifted into that glassy black rock form, I just might be able to take him. He cut off his yell quickly and took quick, fumbling steps toward his car.

  I could see it in my head, exactly where he stood. In a split second, I mapped out the route I would take, moving around the tree directly ahead of me, leaping over that bush, and then...

  I took off running. The light still beat against my eyelids, so I kept them tightly shut. I dodged around the pine tree, feeling its branch brush over my back, exactly as I’d anticipated. As I jumped over the bush, I heard Ximon calling out, “Shoot! Shoot them, over to the left!”

  I heard the objurers fumbling with their guns. One already had a rifle in hand, but both would be shooting blind. I had only one more leap. Ximon’s footsteps moved faster, tripping over logs.

  But the air in front of me was warping, changing. A breeze brushed my whiskers that shouldn’t have been there. It smelled of a forest older than this, of a river. . . .

  I slowed and cracked my eyes open. Light flooded my senses, but I was ready, focusing only on the area where I knew Orgoli to be. A man-shaped form stumbled across my vision, blurry still, but it was he. I gathered my muscles to leap, pulling my lips back in a ferocious snarl, so ready to sink my fangs into the man who had killed Siku, who had kidnapped me and Amaris, who had tortured his children and forced Lazar to murder his own mother. In my tiger form I had no doubt—Ximon would die as I killed Orgoli. That was as it should be.

  My eyesight sharpened, and I saw where the breeze was coming from. Orgoli had opened a window to Othersphere. It was small, three feet high, three feet wide, but he stooped and was halfway through it. If I leaped upon him, my momentum would carry us both through. Since we both had shadow walker blood, we didn’t need a rope or anyone’s help to step into Othersphere.

  In a split second I had to decide—go through the window and possibly kill Orgoli and Ximon with the blow, or if I failed in that, be stuck there with an Orgoli fortified by Othersphere, an Orgoli I couldn’t kill if he became a tiger the size of a mountain.

  “Dez!” Caleb called. There were other sounds, behind him. The two objurers had gotten their guns. They fired once each, but I heard the bullets whistling past Caleb.

  The bright light went out. Nothing but moonlight. My pupils opened wide. I knew I had to do everything I could to kill Orgoli, no matter what the risk.

  Everything seemed to slow down, each moment fraught with meaning and decision. I turned to get one last look at Caleb, to say good-bye with a glance before I pushed the monster through the window and went with him.

  Let’s be done with this.

  Caleb was looking right at me, his face falling into lines of horror as he saw what I was doing. I saw love, acceptance, and terrible, terrible loss.

  He was probably going to lose me if I went to Othersphere now and faced Orgoli. I was going to die. He knew it, and he would never get over it.

  But he accepted it.

  I knew in that instant that I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone or anything. This was the boy who knew me best, who loved me no matter what my shape, who would fight by my side without me asking, yet knew when I had to travel my own path. He wasn’t perfect, but he was the one for me.

  The one I would probably never see again.

  At the same time, in my peripheral vision, I saw the objurers raise their rifles. The woman aimed at me. The man pointed his rifle at Caleb.

  One bullet would not kill me. I had only to shift.

  But at that distance, so very close, the shot would kill Caleb.

  The window to Othersphere was five feet away. Orgoli had only one foot left in this world. If I was going to kill him, I had to do it now, while he was still in his most vulnerable, human form.

  But if I did that, Caleb would die.

  He’s going to die anyway.

  There wasn’t time to save Caleb, but I couldn’t vanish and just let it happen.

  My momentum kept me charging forward, but instead of going through the window, I leaped right over it, swinging my hindquarters around so that I faced the way I’d come, flying backwards.

  As I landed, the window snapped shut. Orgoli was gone.

  Caleb looked taken aback. He didn’t understand why I hadn’t gone. Then his dark eyes swiveled to see the muzzle of the gun pointed at his face.

  I wasn’t going to make it. Even as I gathered every fiber of my being to leap upon the objurer firing at Caleb, I knew I couldn’t stop it.

  Something else was going on, farther away. Footsteps were running toward us. I couldn’t tell exactly, and it didn’t matter. Caleb was about to die, and I loved him, and he would never know.

  He turned his eyes away from the gun and looked right at me. Something in his eyes, still sparking with gold, told me that he knew. He saw my love for him in my own eyes. He felt it.

  The female objurer moved to keep me in her sights. The male objurer’s finger tightened on the trigger as he stared down his barrel at Caleb. I jumped for him.

  A gunshot rang out. Caleb’s face took on a startled look.

  But he was still standing. No bullet wound appeared on his body; no blood blossomed on his clothes.

  The male objurer collapsed. The rifle fell from his hands as I dropped to the ground beside him. He was dead. A bullet had buried itself into his temple.

  Somehow Lazar was on top of the pile of logs holding a long silver rifle. The barrel was still smoking as he swiveled and fired once at the female o
bjurer. She fell over, a red hole in the side of her head, her eyes still open.

  All I heard for a moment was my own breathing, my own heartbeat.

  Then there was Caleb’s heartbeat, his blood pumping safely through his veins. He stared up at his brother, who hoisted his rifle onto his back and climbed down off the logs.

  “You guys okay?” Lazar asked. Behind him, Amaris’s concerned face appeared as she climbed up and over the log pile. “We saw you walk into the woods and figured we’d follow in case you needed help.”

  “Glad you did.” Caleb strode forward and held out his hand. “Thanks.”

  Lazar looked a little startled at the gesture. As he shook Caleb’s hand, an incredulous smile crept over his face. “You’re welcome.”

  I bounded over and butted my head into Lazar’s side. He laughed, grabbing the fur at my neck. “You, too.”

  “Where’s Orgoli?” Amaris asked, coming to stand with us.

  “Stepped into Othersphere,” Caleb said. “Pesky shadow-walker abilities. But he’ll be back soon. He said something about attacking Livermore now, tonight. Didn’t he, Dez?”

  He turned to me. His cheekbones were slightly flushed from the excitement, his black and gold eyes bright. They seemed to speak without a word, reminding me of all that had passed, also unspoken, between us just now.

  I couldn’t contain myself. I purred and pushed my head against his waist. I wanted to shift, to be a girl again and throw my arms around his neck, to whisper that I loved him in his ear. But the lack of clothing I would have in my human form, along with the presence of Lazar and Amaris, would have made that more than a little awkward.

  Especially because Lazar was my boyfriend, and he’d just saved Caleb’s life.

  Caleb laughed, scratching the ruff of fur at my neck as he knelt down and kissed my forehead. “I know. It’s kind of hard to think about strategy and our next move after all that.”

  “All what?” Amaris asked.

  “Oh, man, you should have seen it!” Caleb stood up. “Just as Orgoli was about to step through and vanish into Othersphere, Dez was jumping for him. It was fifty-fifty whether she’d get to him while he was human and take him out, or if they’d go through the window together and he’d shift into mega-tiger first. I thought . . .” He paused for a second, and it sounded like his voice nearly choked up before he got control. “I thought she was gone, and then she saw that guy with the gun aimed at me and let Ximon go. But she couldn’t have reached him.” He turned to Lazar. “You saved my life.”