Nina Berry: Othersphere

Caleb was frowning at them over the wheels of the upside-down truck. “What is that they’ve got her tied with? It has a vibration I’ve never sensed before. Something’s wrong.”

My growl deepened. Something was indeed horribly awry. Ximon had Amaris and was about to do something to her. I couldn’t believe he’d kill her. Her healing ability was too valuable, and in his own twisted way, he cared for her. But I gathered all my strength, ready to spring. Caleb noted this and got ready to throw the chewing gum.

Ximon said. “Now.”

That one word pulled me, as if someone had lassoed my gut. Ximon dragged out the word, singing it, howling it.

I reeled, claws scrabbling at the metal side of the pickup truck. My vision blurred. I could barely see Caleb staring at me. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear him. A deep chord of what might have been music filled my head, something so harmonious, so beautiful, I could focus on nothing else.

Beside me stood a huge picture window, cut vertically out of the air between me and Ximon. It was as if someone had laid the world’s biggest, thinnest flat screen between us, connected to us at the outer edges. It cut right through the body of the pickup truck. A breeze warmer than the winter Nevada air wafted out of it, bringing with it the scent of dew, soil, and leaf.

The view through that window was of an expanse of uncut white stone decorated with gnarled trees grown in the shapes of winged beasts, overlooking a limitless dark forest cut by a winding river. In the distance lay sharp sheer peaks, taller than any mountains should be. I breathed deep the sweet night air, and everything else receded into the distance. I was home.

A colossal moon rose, its light sending silver sparks down the river, glinting off waterfalls, polishing the white stone I stood on with a strange and potent glow that penetrated my every pore and filled me with its power. Fear, pain, uncertainty—all fled before the radiance of that moon.

It was not a moon from this world, but another. Its milky surface was shot through with dark veins, which seemed to pulse, as if inside it lay a vast heart filled with the blackest blood.

I knew that moon. The memory jolted me from my reverie. It was the moon I’d seen about a month ago, when my biological mother had briefly crossed over from Othersphere, the world that lay closest to our own, to beg me to return with her.

Something tugged at my arm and called my name. A voice that I loved, a voice that could not be denied, reached out to me. As if through deep water I saw Caleb, his black-clad form wavy and indistinct. All my troubles poured back, filling me up, drowning out the hypnotic energy of Othersphere.

I snapped back to the resort at the foot of the Spring Mountains in Nevada to see Ximon, his face strangely feral, shove Amaris through the window to Othersphere.

Amaris fell through it with a strange, buzzing snap, the rope wrapped around her body tugging at her oddly, as if guiding her through. She landed on the moonlit ground in the other world, eyes wide with terror, pale under the strange light, but alive.

“No!” Caleb leapt over the upturned pickup truck, shooting like an arrow for the doorway to Othersphere.

He slammed into it, as if into an invisible force field. He exploded backwards and skidded twenty feet, head bouncing against the parking lot with an audible thump, and he did not move. I tried to lunge toward him, but was held fast where I stood at the edge of the window. It tethered me somehow, and as long as it stood there, Ximon and I were both stuck.

How could a connection between Ximon and me create a portal to Othersphere? It made no sense, and the buzzy nearness of the otherworld was crowding out other thoughts, muddying my thinking. Maybe I could somehow get through the window to Amaris, even though it felt as if the window was an extension of me.

Ximon said again, “Now.”

The window to Othersphere vanished, and Amaris with it.

The only evidence it had ever existed was that the pickup truck that had stood between me and Ximon now lay in two clean pieces, as if a giant knife had sliced down from heaven and slashed it in half.

Ximon slumped. Something wrenched inside me, like a knot coming undone. Weariness washed over me. I teetered back and sat down, still in my tiger form. Through the space between the two halves of the pickup truck, I saw Ximon begin to topple. Two of his men rushed up to catch him.

Two others moved toward Caleb’s immobile body at a run.

That was all it took. I shook my head, whiskers bristling, mustered the last shreds of my strength, and leapt over the truck to land on one of them. He folded under me like a doll. I didn’t bother biting or slashing him, but instead used his body as a springboard to dive at the second man just as he lifted Caleb by the feet.

The two of us rolled, his cry cut off as the breath was knocked from him. I gripped his shoulders with front paws bigger than baseball mitts and brought my back legs up to rake him with those claws, tearing him open from the belly down.

He made a terrible gurgling sound, which pleased me. In tiger form I was the ultimate apex predator, ruthless to the bone, appeased only once a threat was annihilated.

I spun toward Ximon to put an end to him.

Two more men had emerged from the third truck, and were helping the others carry Ximon toward the helicopter. With a yowl that resounded off the pavement, I bore down upon them, ears back, teeth bared.

A fifth man in gray shuffled in front of me, holding something that struggled. A split second before I slammed him, I realized he had one arm wrapped around the elderly wedding guest’s neck, his other hand holding a gun to her head.

There wasn’t time to stop. I veered to the right, front paws braced as I skidded. My back end, still going faster than my front, circled around, and I came to a stop, facing the helicopter again.

Over the thudding of the rotor blades, I could hear the woman crying. Her white hair was whipping around her, a bruise forming on her cheek.

“Shut up!” barked the man holding her.

A low grr rumbled out of me. My tail lashed. I wanted to wade in, regardless of the consequences to the old woman, and destroy them all. But enough of my human side remained to keep me from doing that. Instead, I paced over to Caleb’s prone form, standing over him as they loaded Ximon into the helicopter.

At the last moment, the man holding the woman released her and leapt into the copter. She collapsed as the helicopter’s landing skids lifted from the ground.

Wrath narrowed my world down to the space between me and the helicopter. I tore through it in two enormous leaps, and with my last ounce of strength, I vaulted upward. My outstretched front paws caught hold of the machine’s left skid, and I held on to it with all my might.

My extra weight tilted the copter drastically. Beneath my dangling back paws, the snowy parking lot swayed. For a dizzying moment I thought we would all crash. It might kill me, but it would be worth it to take Ximon down.

The pilot fought the controls, compensating. We dipped hard, and my back feet hit the ground. But we bounced upward again.

Through the open side of the aircraft I saw the Tribunal men staring down at me, their ski masks pulled up, faces drawn in surprise and terror. I hauled myself upward, biting down on the skid so that I could reach one paw up to grip the fuselage. The man closest to me drew back.

Ximon, awake but clumsy with fatigue, was the only one not frozen with dread. He gave me a crooked smile and shook his head. “Not tonight, my dear.” He pointed his finger at me and hummed a dissonant note. “We send you back, back into shadow. . . .”

Stronger than the wind from the rotor blades, I felt the force of his objuration, pushing my tiger form back into shadow, pulling my human form forth. In a second, I would once again be a teenage girl, naked, hanging from the side of a helicopter. I tried to roar, to cut off the vibrations from his voice, but my strength was nearly gone. I snarled one last time at him, then let go of the skid. Still safely in tiger form, I dropped to land on all fours, about thirty feet below.