Nina Berry: Othersphere

I roared. The men hauling on the net around Caleb whirled. Their heads were covered with gray ski masks, but I saw the whites of their eyes and smelled their sudden nervous sweat. Beneath that I could hear the very blood pumping through their veins. I couldn’t wait to taste it.

One of them, with good presence of mind, reached for a gun at his feet. I sprang, faster than his eye could follow, and landed on top of him, swiping at the other man beside him at the same time.

The man with the gun was slammed into the bed of the truck beneath my weight, his scream cut off as the skin of his neck gave way to my fangs. At the same time, my right paw caught the second man in the shoulder, claws slicing through tendon and bone as he twisted away, yelling.

I pulled my mouth from the limp first man, tongue hot with his blood, and bit the first place I could reach on the second man, which turned out to be his waist. His scream hit a new fevered pitch as I lifted him bodily that way, put my front paws up on the side of the truck’s cab, and shook him like a terrier shakes a rat. He stopped squirming and when the truck’s driver poked his head and the barrel of a rifle out his window at me, I tossed the body at him. The driver ducked, giving me time to leap from the truck, turn, and place my front paws on its side.

“Dez . . .” Behind me, Caleb’s voice said my name in a tone that conveyed surprise and anger. I had never thought to hear him speak my name again. I wanted to turn to him, but I had to deal with the closest threat first.

I gave the truck a shove. It rocked, and I heard the man inside yell, saw his hands scrabbling for a hold. Getting a better angle, I pushed up and over again. The weight was almost too much. I called upon the power of the earth beneath my feet, upon the black hole to Othersphere inside me, and strength flooded through me like a river. With a sudden, startling ease, I pushed the huge pickup truck over onto its side, then continued to roll it until it was upside down.

Amaris screamed, “Help me!”

The sound shredded all my sense of power. Even though figures were emerging from the helicopter, I turned away from them to see Amaris being tossed into the back of the other truck like a sack of laundry by two men in gray. They’d bound her up like a mummy with some kind of thick brown twine.

“Amaris!” Caleb yelled.

Caleb was still ensnared by the net, a typical Tribunal weapon infused with silver, which weakened his ability to call upon shadow. He was painstakingly trying to pick his way out of it, even as the truck bearing his sister peeled out, taking her away.

Ximon wants his daughter back. The head of the Tribunal in this area, Ximon was the father of Amaris, Caleb, and their brother, Lazar. Lazar and Caleb were both callers of shadow, powerful conjurers able to change the shapes and abilities of objects and of otherkin. But Amaris was even more valuable. Amaris was a Healer.

“Dez, stop them!” Caleb shouted at me.

I wanted to spring after the truck. I was bigger and stronger than an ordinary Siberian tiger, so I could probably catch the truck while it was this close.

But . . . I glanced over my shoulder, past the upside-down pickup. A silver-haired figure in white strode toward us through the spiraling snow. Ximon looked taller than I remembered, his handsome face so like his sons’, but craggier, harsher.

Four men, two on either side, flanked him, and another truck was pulling up beside them. They would be here in seconds.

“Amaris! You must save Amaris!” Caleb was half out of the net, but he wouldn’t be free by the time Ximon and his men got here.

I growled, shook my head, and jumped over to him. His black eyes were shot with gold, hot points of rage, focused on me. “Goddammit, Dez! Save Amaris! Please!”

The “please” cut into my heart. But I unsheathed my claws and sliced through the remaining metal strands on the net around him. The silver burned my paws. I ignored the pain, taking care not to cut Caleb instead of the net.

Weirdly, the truck with Amaris wasn’t racing away. With one cupped ear I followed the sound as it circled away from us and up to where Ximon and the other truck stood, in front of the helicopter.

Caleb pushed free of the net. “I can take care of myself. Amaris can’t—”

He broke off as I swiveled my ears forward and ran a few steps, using the up-turned truck for cover to see what Ximon was doing. I could hear the man inside the truck thrashing, trying to get free of his seatbelt and open his door to escape.

But he was of no consequence. Caleb moved up next to me, face bleeding from tiny cuts caused by the net, breath coming fast. There was a tear in the sleeve of his coat.

“Five of them, including Ximon, plus the four in the truck with Amaris and another truck.” He shook his head. “How did they find us? And what the hell are you doing here?”

I turned one ear to him, but didn’t move my gaze from the two men lifting Amaris out of the back of the truck. I growled, just low enough for Caleb to hear.

He squinted at them. “We’ve got to stop them from getting her on that helicopter.”

I shook my head, a gesture which felt wrong in tiger form, but which was one of the few ways to communicate when I was in this shape. If they wanted to get her away from us fast, they would’ve driven away.

Caleb eyed me, thinking hard. “No, you’re right. Why not drive away and have the helicopter pick her up down the road, far away from us?”

It hurt having him read my intentions so well. We’d always been in sync, finishing each other’s thoughts, feeding upon each other’s ideas. Why then, were we apart? It was partly Caleb’s fault, for being a stubborn idiot with antique ideas about the Tribunal and the otherkin. But it was mostly my responsibility, for keeping him in the dark, for not trusting him when he needed me to trust him the most. For turning to his brother, Lazar, when I should have turned to Caleb.

“What if we circle around from opposite sides?” Caleb asked. “They’ll never see you if you don’t want them to. I could provide a distraction. . . .” He pulled a postcard out of his pocket, but shoved it aside to display some chewing gum. “These have some interesting shadows.”

It was as good a plan as any. Caleb’s ability to call forth strange and dangerous things from seemingly innocuous items was a game-changer. I chirped and nodded.

“Thank you for coming, Desdemona,” Ximon said, his deep voice easily coming to us over the chop-chop of the helicopter’s blades. Ximon’s voice was his greatest weapon. “Or should I call you Sarangarel?”

I became very still. Sarangarel . That was what my biological mother had called me on two separate occasions. But Ximon hadn’t been there. How could he know?

Ximon was still speaking. “And thank you, Caleb, for leading me to Amaris.”

Caleb’s sun-browned face went gray. “But how could he follow me? How did he know you’d be here, and how could he know that name for you?”

I had no idea how Ximon had tracked Caleb, but Ximon was an expert in predicting my decisions. He’d mistreated his son Lazar, knowing Lazar would turn to me for help, and counting on the fact that I would not be able to refuse him. Because of that I’d taken my friends into a terrible trap in the bowels of Ximon’s particle accelerator. Only my unpredictable connection to Othersphere had saved us, barely. And it hadn’t saved Siku. I still couldn’t quite believe my friend was dead. His killer stood before me.

Without even realizing it, I was snarling.

“Put her there,” Ximon said to his men, gesturing at a nondescript spot on the pavement. Two men in gray dragged Amaris there, still bound in thick brown rope, her mouth now stuffed with cloth.