Othermoon (29 page)

There was a flurry of movement within the trucks. Guns were raised.

Another penetrating screech descended like a thunderbolt as the eagle somehow was
also behind me, falling upon one of the men facing Siku.

But wait—Arnaldo was still to the north, hurtling back up into the sky. There was
a second eagle helping us, one even bigger than he.

A battery of shots came from the objurers. Dirt kicked up around us. Hot pain sliced
into my shoulder. A bullet. No time to think. I moved anyway, putting myself between
London, Amaris, and Lazar and the truck to the east. I looked over at Siku. He glanced
over his shoulder at me. I nodded.

We were the muscle. We would cover as they escaped in the truck.

Siku’s huge head dipped in a small nod to me, black button eyes shining. Turning back
to the men arrayed in front of him, he snorted, pawed the ground, and charged. November
clung to his back like a rodent rodeo rider. I silently wished them good luck.

There was a flutter of silent black wings over by the truck to the west as what looked
like a giant owl swooped down, grabbed a man by the shoulder, and carried him, screaming,
into the air. His legs kicked. The men around him ducked, staring up at the sky with
dread. Two of them tried to aim at the huge, feathered creature, but couldn’t fire
for fear of hitting the man it carried. He tried to shoot it too, but it dropped him.
He plummeted fifty feet to the ground. A cloud of dust lifted as he hit.

To the north, a man shrieked as a huge furry black form—not Siku’s—lunged out of the
darkness and bit his neck from behind.
What the hell?
He dropped instantly, and the black bear reared, clawing the next man across the
chest.

The objurer next to him aimed his rifle at the bear, but something low to the ground
and covered in spikes smashed into the back of his knees. He fell over backwards,
bullet shooting harmlessly into the sky. His astonished whoop turned into a yell of
pain as he fell onto the spikes of the animal. He rolled off, and the giant porcupine,
for that’s what it looked like, waddled over and raked its long claws across his throat,
chittering with what sounded like glee.

Otherkin?
It had to be. But I couldn’t imagine how. Then, near the porcupine, I saw a bony
figure in black tap a long wooden staff on the ground. The truck engine burst into
flames.

Morfael!
This all had to be his doing.

Ahead of me, a woman in white was helping Ximon to his feet, a cloth pressed to his
throat and shoulder, stemming the blood from the wounds Arnaldo’s talons had inflicted.
He could still walk, so he wasn’t as badly injured as I’d thought. The truck’s driver
had climbed out to help him into the cab. Two other men stepped out, lowering rifles
at me.

I leaped.

Aiming for the larger man, I swerved in midair to avoid a bullet and landed on top
of him. His cry muffled by my fur, he thumped to the ground. My claws, longer than
fingers, found his carotid artery. Blood gushed from his neck, and I left him, gurgling
toward death, to find the other armed man wrestling with a mountain lion.
A mountain lion?
Astonishment made me hesitate.

Ximon was in the truck, leaning heavily on the driver, who had shoved it into gear.
The woman who had helped him was climbing into the passenger side when a lithe, spotted,
four-footed form leaped onto her back and sank its teeth into her shoulder.

She yelled in pain and surprise, batting at the creature. It was a lynx, its tufted
ears strangely familiar. It crawled up her back to rest its front paws on her head,
back paws on either shoulder, curving its head down to bite her nose.

The woman squealed, trying to hoist the huge, velvety cat off her, and fell over.
The lynx swiveled its head to catch my eye, and I swore it winked. On the other side,
the mountain lion was finishing off its prey.

I mentally shook myself as the truck engine revved. The wheels pushed it forward.
It was coming right at me, about to run over the body of the man I’d just killed.
I could see Ximon’s eyes, so like Caleb’s, glowering down at me.

“Go!” he shouted to the driver.

I stood my ground, glaring into the headlights, and wrenched deep into the whorl of
darkness inside me. There wasn’t much left to draw on.
But maybe just enough . . .

I roared it out, and with a force almost physical, it slammed into the front of the
truck. The lights flared and went out. The engine sputtered and died.

My power against technology was gone, I could tell. If I did such a thing again, I
might be forced to shift back to human. But it was worth it. In the sudden dark, my
eyes adjusted to see Ximon’s flabbergasted expression.

“God will damn you, Amba!” he shouted at me through the windshield. “You are damned
to hell!”

I lifted my upper lip in a snarl and leaped in a single bound onto the hood of the
truck.

Ximon and the driver startled back against their seats reflexively. The driver scrabbled
at his door, and then shied away as the mountain lion stood on its hind legs and placed
its forepaws on his window.

I drew back my right paw. Smashing into the glass would cut me, but it would be worth
it to feel Ximon’s face under my claws. I couldn’t wait to see the look in his eyes
as I killed him.

A high-pitched squeal, far away, hit my ear, making its way past the frightened beating
of the human hearts in front of me, past the thundering lust for blood pulsing through
my own heart.

Another shriek, this one more desperate than the last.

I pivoted, leaped off the truck, and bounded over the desert toward the sound.

Two men lay dead on the ground as Siku sluggishly swiped a paw at a third. He missed,
but came back with the other paw, hitting the man in the shoulder, knocking him down,
to lie bleeding and cursing on the ground. A fourth man was getting up at that same
moment, reaching for a rifle that lay a few feet away.

Siku was bleeding from his left shoulder and his right haunch. I spotted two darts
lodged in his fur. A foot-long pod-shaped bundle of fur and whiskers leaped right
onto the face of the fourth man, clawing at his eyes.

Yelling in panic, he tried to grab November bodily, but she wiggled away and slid
down inside the front of his shirt.

“Gah!” he yelled, plucking at the cloth.

He pulled a pistol from a holster on his hip and pointed it at Siku, who was turning
his way with heavy effort. But the man winced as something bulged down near his belt;
he writhed, and fell, grabbing desperately for November.

No mysterious otherkin had showed up in this group to help. Siku and November were
fighting for us all. And I was almost there.

A fifth man, the driver of the truck, left the cab and ran out, pistol drawn. He wavered,
first pointing the gun at Siku, then at the rodent in his ally’s pants. Siku stumbled
and fell on his side, chest rising and falling in huge, uneven gasps.

Satisfied that the bear was no longer a threat, the driver turned the pistol on the
squirming protuberance traveling over the body of his friend, trying to angle the
shot to hit only November.

The man on the ground put his hands up toward the gun, kicking himself backwards.
November squirmed back up into his shirt. “No!” he shouted. “Don��”

The driver fired.

His friend screamed, clutching his chest. The bulge that was November wiggled down
the leg of his pants. He fell back, blood spreading in a red pool around him.

“Damn it!” the driver said; his face blanched. He drew a deep breath, girding himself.
“You won’t die in vain.” He pointed the gun once more, right at November.

I was still too far away.

“Hold still, little demon. . . .” The driver closed one eye, finger tightening on
the trigger.

Behind him, Siku thrust himself off the ground, eyes glinting red, looming like a
ziggurat.

Too late, the driver sensed something and turned. He screamed in terror, and fired
point-blank.

Then the bear fell upon him.

The man disappeared beneath a hillock of fur, blood, and muscle. Bone cracked, and
everything was still.

I ran up. November peeked out from the pants leg and saw Siku lying next to her. He
wasn’t moving.

She chirped once, a question, and scuttled over to place a pink paw on his ear. She
chirped again, more urgently, crawling up his neck.

The air around Siku warped and bent. The bear was gone. A tall boy with wide muscular
shoulders lay there now. His broad chest was marred by a gaping hole near the heart.
His long black hair fanned in wild disarray around him. His dark eyes stared out at
nothing. He was dead.

CHAPTER 24

I was standing, on two human legs, wrapped in a heavy black cloak, staring down at
the body of my friend through a kind of tunnel. He looked very far away, even though
I knew he lay right at my feet. Someone had covered most of him with the white coat
taken from a dead objurer.

November, also human and wearing a long black coat, lay next to him, face buried in
his neck, sobbing. London, clad in rumpled sweats, tears coursing down her cheeks,
crouched behind her, patting her back helplessly. Amaris hovered nearby, her blood-spattered
hand pressed to her mouth, as if trying to stuff down her feelings.

I tasted salt. Someone pressed something into my hand. A handkerchief. Mechanically,
I raised it to wipe my eyes and my nose. An angular face, hollow with weariness and
covered in brown dust, appeared in the circle of my vision.

Morfael.
It was his cloak I was wearing. I must have shifted involuntarily when Siku died.
November had done the same.

Dizziness overwhelmed me. I dropped down to squat on my heels. “I think I’m in shock,”
I said. My voice was strangely clear. How was speech even possible now that Siku was
dead? How could anything go on?

Morfael hunkered down next to me. His opalescent eyes glittered with what might have
been tears, his nearly transparent hair waving in the cold wind. “Yes,” he said. “That’s
why you feel so distant from everything. Why you can speak about it.”

I looked over at November. Her narrow fingers clutched at Siku’s black hair as deep,
inconsolable sobs wracked her body. Her moans sounded like they came through a filter,
as if my ears didn’t want to hear them.

She was wearing Caleb’s coat. He’d put it on her, unless . . .

“Caleb!” I said. “Where is he? Is he . . . ?”

“He’s fine,” Morfael said. “He’s getting the truck. No one else was badly hurt. You
had a bullet in your shoulder, but it healed when you shifted. Ximon has fled.”

A round-bodied woman with gray tufted hair dressed in jeans and flannel shirt walked
up to stand behind Morfael. I’d seen her recently, glaring at me through a computer
screen. Now she gazed with pity down at Siku, shaking her head. Then she looked at
me, and I recognized the tufts of her hair, just like the tufts on the ears....

It must have been she, jumping on that objurer’s back, along with the mountain lion.
But what was she doing here?

I got to my feet, Morfael’s hand at my elbow to keep me steady, as Arnaldo walked
up, wearing a set of clothes that didn’t fit him too well. Next to him was another
familiar face, dark eyes sharper than I’d seen them before, bronze bald head gleaming
under the moon.

“Mr. Perez?” I asked.

It was Arnaldo’s father. An unusually large red-tailed hawk swooped down, hovered
above them for a moment, then landed on Mr. Perez’s shoulder. It turned its head to
gaze at me with one bright eye that also looked familiar. With the lynx here from
the Council, I could only think this was the hawk from the Council as well. But how
could that be?

“Yes,” said Mr. Perez. “I’m sorry we came too late to help your friend.”

I looked at Morfael, amazement bumping up against my sorrow and shock-induced detachment.
So that’s where he had been going as we headed off to the accelerator. Somehow Morfael
had gathered some adult otherkin to help us.

Arnaldo, his eyes red, had moved over to put one arm around London, the other hand
reaching out toward November. Caleb’s stolen truck pulled up behind them. An enormous
black bear shuffled up. Was that the bear-shifter from the Council? Although she wasn’t
a family member, she halted at the sight of Siku, then uttered a mournful huff and
ruffled the boy’s hair with her nose.

“I’m so sorry.”

Behind me a petite young woman walked up, twisting her long black hair into a slippery
bun.
The rat from the Council.
The only one who had voted in my favor in the last meeting. She gazed down sadly
as November tried to huddle closer to Siku, stroking his hair.

“Poor girl. I e-mailed her parents that she’s uninjured, but that’s not really true,
is it?”

“What . . .” I struggled against the tightness in my throat. “What are you doing here?”

“Morfael told me you needed some help tonight. I told Jonata there. . . .” She pointed
at the lynx. “And she gave the rest of the Council a stiff lecture. The wolves were
no help, but Alejandro found out Arnaldo’s father wanted to help.” She indicated the
hawk on Mr. Perez’s shoulder. “Add in the bear from the Council, a mountain lion,
and an owl I haven’t yet been introduced to and you’ve got yourself a nice little
army of shifters swooping in to save the day.”

“Well.” She squinted hard down at Siku, as if that might keep her from crying. “Maybe
saving isn’t quite the right word. But Morfael did help me learn to take on a second
form. Did you know porcupines are rodents?”

So she had been the huge porcupine I’d seen earlier. Even the adult otherkin were
learning how to shift into more than one form. It was another piece of information
to process through my numbness.

“You did it, Dez,” Caleb said, walking over from the truck in his shirtsleeves. He
didn’t look as if he felt the cold. Behind him came Lazar.

Arnaldo looked up at me. “At least you brought some members of the shifter tribes
together, Dez. I know it may not look like much, but my father . . .” He choked up
as emotion overcame him. “My father came.”

“This is unprecedented,” the lynx, Jonata, said. “It’s a tremendous beginning.”

Mr. Perez cleared his throat. “It’s kind of a miracle,” he said. “And I just wanted
to add my thanks, and to apologize.”

I shook my head at him. Him apologize to me? I was the interfering one, the one who
caused all the trouble, the one who got Siku killed. But Arnaldo gave his father an
encouraging glance, and he took a step toward me.

“I was wrong to say those awful things to you when you came to my house the other
day,” he said. “I’ve been deeply mistaken about many things lately, and I have a lot
of work to do. But I wanted you to know I’m sorry.” He bowed his head, shutting his
long-lidded eyes almost in prayer.

I dipped my head. “Thank you for coming.” I had no idea what else to say.

“If there’s ever anything you need from me, just ask.” He turned to his son. “I should
get back, Arnaldo. Lots to do still. But walk with me, and we’ll talk about your brothers?”

“Sure, Papi,” Arnaldo said. “Let’s go.”

He put his hand on his father’s shoulder. They walked away with similar strides. One
day soon Arnaldo’s gawkiness would smooth out into something like his father’s angular
grace.

“Here.” Wiping her eyes, Amaris pulled my spare set of clothes out of her backpack.
“Come back to the car and you can put these on.”

I looked around at them all, standing in a circle around Siku. The intense light of
the moon, now directly above us, hollowed out their eyes and cast their shadows in
starkly outlined puddles at their feet.

London pulled at November’s shoulder. “Come on, ’Ember. It’s time to take Siku home.”

November, her face puffy and red, turned and clung to London, who pulled her gently
away from Siku’s body and toward the stolen truck. The rest of us looked down at Siku,
lying there alone.

“Help us,” said Morfael to the bear.

I turned away as the others moved in to lift Siku up. Amaris and I walked back to
the truck. London was helping a blank November into her clothes. I threw on jeans,
shoes, and a hoodie, then wrapped my arms around November. Somehow London and Amaris
were there too, and we all huddled for a long time silently together.

Lazar walked up, his eyes gentle on November. “They’re taking Siku back to his family.
. . .” He pointed to a different truck. I could just see Caleb shutting the door.
A woman, the black bear-shifter, was driving.

“Take me!” November broke away and ran toward them.

Caleb saw her coming and leaned in to speak to the driver.

“ ’Ember, wait!” London grabbed November’s backpack full of candy and raced after
her.

Amaris’s eyes followed London, and I said, “Go with her.” And she was gone too.

Lazar’s tip-tilted brown eyes furrowed with concern. I shook my head. Something too
horrible to speak of welled up within me. Then he took a step forward and put his
arms around me.

Three or four great sobs wracked me.
I failed them. He’s gone.

Something brushed the top of my head, and through the tumult, I wondered if it was
Lazar’s lips.

I pushed him away, wiping my nose on my sleeve. “I need a minute,” I said. And he
let me go.

Then I started walking. I didn’t look where I was going. But I had to move. A terrible
confusion jittered around inside me, and if I stayed still, it might shake me to death.
I stumbled forward, unable to see anything but Siku, falling like a redwood to crush
the man who had killed him.

I bumped my toes and stumbled over the shallow pool near the entrance to the Tribunal’s
compound. My hand brushed the surface of the black water, sending moonlight-tipped
ripples down its length.

A shadow moved behind me. Caleb was there, catching me by the elbow before I could
fall in. He was so close. I had a vision of his arms wrapping around me, holding me
to his heart, his lips close to my ear telling me it would be all right.

Instead, he made sure I regained my balance, then took his hand away. He was wearing
his long black coat again, and he stuffed his hands into his pockets. The space between
us felt suddenly like a huge canyon, and he’d just cut down the bridge.

“The rat-shifter’s going to take November back with Siku to his family,” he said.
“The others are almost ready to go.”

“What about Arnaldo?” I asked.

His eyes were mostly black, except for a single golden spiral in each. “His dad has
to go to rehab every day for the next three months, and if that goes okay and he stays
in the program, he might get custody back. In the meantime, that hawk Council member
thinks their lawyer will get Arnaldo declared guardian of his brothers. So he’ll go
back with you to the school tonight, but probably head down to Arizona tomorrow.”

“He’ll come back with us, you mean?” I cleared my throat. I didn’t want it to sound
like an appeal. “You’re coming with us too, right?”

He shook his head very slightly, eyes narrowed and veiled. “Lazar will take care of
you,” he said. “And I have things I need to do.”

My heart dropped. Caleb must have seen me in Lazar’s arms a few moments ago. “He was
just being nice! Siku’s . . .” I choked. I couldn’t say it.

He nodded, eyes cold. “He died saving November,” he said. “At least she’ll always
remember his complete loyalty to her.”

His words cut into my heart. “I was never disloyal to you!”

He lifted one eyebrow skeptically, then tossed something at me that jangled. I caught
it: the keys to the SUV we’d driven here. “I’m taking the pickup truck,” he said.
“It’s the least Ximon owes me. Amaris knows I’ll be in touch with her.”

With her. But not with me.

I wanted to plead with him to stay. I wanted to smack him across his stony face. Pride
kept me from doing either one.

“Good-bye, Caleb,” I said.

“Good-bye, Dez.”

I turned away as he walked off. I willed myself not to cry, not to turn around, not
to run after him, staring down at the reflection of the moon in the still water of
the pool.

I blinked. Something was different. The great white disk of the moon looked even bigger
in the pool, and it looked . . .
wrong
.

We’d studied the moon in Morfael’s classes, its influence on our ability to shift,
how its phases augmented the power of Othersphere. It had distinctive craters, and
the same side always faced the earth so that we never saw the dark side. The near
side had distinctive areas that were darker than others, called “seas” by early astronomers,
but now known to be basaltic plains darker than the highlands thanks to their iron-rich
content.

The moon reflected in the pool had no gray seas. Instead, it had seams of darkness,
branching out like veins full of black blood across the whiter, fleshlike surface.
As I stared down, the water rippled, and the moon pulsed, like a shining heart.

A current, like electricity, filled the air. The hair on the back of my neck stood
up.

I lifted my eyes to stare up at the real moon, not a reflection. It looked the same
as always, silver with darker silver splotches, like giant freckles, not veins.

The reflection in the pool was in the wrong place. The normal moon was directly above
us. But the reflected moon’s angle meant it mirrored something over . . . there.

A chill took me. When I turned, a second moon hovered on the horizon, a different
moon, bigger but darker, threaded with a thousand pulsing black capillaries.

It was not our moon. The light shining on me came partly from the reflected light
of our moon. The other part came from a different moon altogether.

My skin prickled. The power here was triple what I had felt before. The ground I stood
on was still familiar, but for how long?

“Sarangarel.”

The voice, low and husky, came from behind me.

I turned back toward the pool. A slender woman even taller than I stood there in the
center of the other moon’s reflection, water up to her knees.