Othersphere (23 page)

But when London got to our most recent conversation with Ximon, when he'd told us about Orgoli's plan to attack the National Ignition Facility in order to use their laser to open up a window to Othersphere, the crowd muttered restlessly.

Jonata shushed them, which allowed London to finish. “So we need to make a plan to stop him before he brings an army from Othersphere through the veil that could destroy us all.”

She stepped back from the podium to an uneasy quiet. Jonata moved up. “I believe a proposal has been put forward that we table the plans to attack the Tribunal and focus instead on this invasion from Othersphere.”

A bear-shifter stood up in the crowd. “Why should we bother? This NIF laser is a humdrum project, guarded by humdrums. They're the ones whose property will be destroyed; assuming it's not another trick of Ximon's. Let the humdrums deal with it.”

“Yeah,” a wolf-shifter shouted in agreement. “They've never helped us. Why should we help them?”

“They don't even know about us,” Arnaldo said.

“They don't want to know about us,” countered the wolf-shifter. “Let them deal with the consequences.”

“We can't leave it to them. They're unprepared. And Orgoli has a history of subjugating shifters,” London said. “He kidnapped and imprisoned all the remaining tiger-shifters. We'll be the first people he comes after.”

“It's probably another one of Ximon's tricks!” shouted a rat-shifter. “Maybe he's in league with this thing from Othersphere.”

“In that case, we have even more reason to go there,” said London. “You want to put a stop to the Tribunal? Well, it's locally been taken over by Orgoli. Two birds with one stone.”

“Odious expression,” said Alejandro the hawk-shifter under his breath.

“It sounds like we'll need each tribe to vote internally and then have their representatives convene tomorrow morning with their decision,” Jonata said, half turning to us, but speaking loudly enough to make it an official announcement. “This is a lot of information.”

“Yeah, never going to happen,” said the wolf-shifter council member, standing. “I can tell you that right now.”

“What a crock,” said a rat-shifter to his group. Everyone was standing up, ending their phone calls, stretching.

Laughter. “Tigers as big as mountains,” said another. “Come on!”

“Wait!” I shouted. “We can't take that long to decide. Orgoli's attacking the NIF tomorrow night. We need to make a plan now!”

There were more sarcastic mutterings and dismissive gestures. The wolf-shifter leader shook his bristly head, grinning to show sharp canine teeth. “You overplayed your hand, tiger-girl. Nobody's going to risk their life because your crazy daddy's coming to town.”

More laughter.

A distant, terrible scream tore through the hubbub. The sharp-eared crowd of shifters cocked their heads or jerked their gazes toward the parking lot, alarmed.

A dull, constant thud above us got louder. I recognized it instantly.

“Helicopter!” I said, raising my voice over the sound of its approach.

“The Tribunal?” November said.

With a terrible rattle of gunfire, the wide shuttered windows behind the podium burst inward. Burning pain shot through my thigh and shoulder as I threw myself to the ground. All one hundred people in the room did the same, shouting in alarm.

“It's Orgoli,” Caleb said. “He's found us.”

CHAPTER 14

Bullets clattered through the windows again, sending shards of glass and wood knifing through the room. I'd crawled behind the podium somehow, even though my shoulder and thigh felt as if they'd been punched and my sneakers were shredded.

My friends and most of the folks on the ground had gotten down behind chairs for cover, but I heard a few cries of pain. The wolf-shifter from the council had a deep bleeding cut down his back, and Arnaldo's arm was sliced open near the shoulder. Amaris elbowed her way over the debris-strewn floor and laid her hand on his arm, but he shook her off, pressing against the wound. “I'll be shifting any second,” he said.

Caleb's gaze traveled over the blossoming blood spreading over my shirt and my pants leg. “Dez, you've got to shift.”

I looked down and saw that I'd been shot. No wonder crawling had been so difficult. I tore my eyes away from my own blood. That could wait a moment. “Now we know why Orgoli was waiting till tomorrow to attack the NIF. He knew about this meeting, and he wanted to wipe out as many shifters as he could here, all at once.”

Caleb looked up as the helicopter thumped closer. “He's got something big planned.”

My leg was numb and slippery with red. Pain surged so acutely I had to focus so as not to vomit. Close by, London was crouched over the black dire wolf where it lay still in a spreading pool of blood. Arnaldo crawled across the floor to his brothers, yelling in his piercing tones, “The plan we talked about—now!”

Luis and Cordero, lying on their stomachs on the floor, tore their eyes from their older brother's wound and shifted in a blink into brown eagles, too young to have white feathers on their heads. Leaving their clothes in a puddle behind them, they heavily took wing and flew out through the double doors.

The helicopter's blades slashed closer to the roof. Something above whistled through the air, falling.

Morfael's pale gaze lifted, and with a sudden gesture, he raised his staff. Caleb saw him, and as Morfael sang out, hard and fierce, Caleb's voice joined in, blasting out the same edgy note.

The roof exploded. Fire erupted like a Las Vegas fountain. Burning chunks of wooden logs and metal shrapnel burst toward us. The crowd, with no time to move, screamed.

But the flare of flame curled and recoiled as it hit something else. The splinters of wood and flashing metal slammed into an invisible wall created by the note that Caleb and Morfael were singing, and were repelled.

A bomb. The helicopter had dropped some kind of bomb on us, expecting to kill everyone in the room. Only Morfael's presence and quick thinking, with Caleb's help, had saved us all.

The room surged with fur and feathers as people broke for the double doors, shifting as they went. Near Caleb, Siku's family and those around them warped into their bear forms and began smashing at the side windows with their paws, peering through the broken glass, and then ducking down as bullets answered back.

A few shifters roared, cheered, and cawed their delight and anger up at the black body of the helicopter, now completely visible as the debris from the explosion slid down the clear shield in an arc to land harmlessly on the floor.

Lazar was focused on it, his brown eyes glinting gold. “It has a shadow!” he shouted toward Caleb. “But it's hard to see.”

Caleb frowned up at the whirling bladed thing, humming, his eyes sparking the same bright yellow. “We can call it forth,” he said to Lazar. “If we all do it together.”

“Like in Othersphere.” Lazar nodded.

“Morfael?” Caleb eyed his mentor.

Morfael narrowed his gaze up at the flying machine. “Rare for such technology to have a shadow. All the metal will make for a good challenge. Let us begin.”

He sang out a low, strangely amorphous note. Caleb, listening hard, added his own voice at an even deeper register, drifting up and down a semi-tone. Lazar concentrated, staring up at the hovering copter, and then called out a third note to complete the chord. Together, they formed a complex foghorn effect, both soft and penetrating, deep and simple. It enveloped the roof like a gauzy blanket.

One of the objurers on the helicopter had surveyed the lack of casualties below and yelled something to his compatriots, reaching for an automatic rifle.

“Get out, everyone!” I shouted.

“Hurry!” Arnaldo echoed, moving forward to shove people through the double doors.

The room was emptying fast, bodies, human and otherwise, pressing against the doors. Two of the smaller black bears had made it out of the side windows without getting shot.

The foghorn note grew in volume. The three men intoning it had moved closer together, gazes directed upward. The objurer above shouldered his rifle and took aim right at them. I could hear the story behind the song now, fainter than it had been in Othersphere, but still there. It spoke of a clumsy metal bird that couldn't fly who longed to become one with the sky. Then he sacrificed his life for his family and he was reborn. As a cloud.

The sound altered by one note, reaching a crescendo. Morfael pointed his staff at the helicopter, and a black, cloudy ray shot out of the staff, pushed by the voices of the callers, and struck the nose of the machine.

With a hiss of air, the helicopter vanished, replaced with a small, puffy white cloud such as you might see sailing through the blue sky on a summer's day. It looked out of place hovering so close to the ruined roof of the lodge.

The objurers didn't have time to register the shift. Their helicopter had been transformed into a cluster of white vapor. All four plummeted fifty feet down, screaming. They crashed through the broken, bombed roof of the conference room to hit the floor with a hideous wet smack in the center of the room and lie still.

Nearby, Amaris and the other two dire wolves barely noticed, gathered around London and the black dire wolf. Amaris buried her hands in the dark fur and closed her eyes, a peaceful look coming over her face. For a moment hope surged in me. Amaris was a healer, and if the dire wolf was still alive, she could save it.

But Amaris's mouth turned down, and her eyes when she opened them were filled with tears.

She didn't have to say anything. London bowed over the dire wolf, hands clutching his fur, and the other two dire wolves did, too. Then London threw her head back, teeth bared, and shifted into her shining, silver wolf form. She wasn't as big as back in Othersphere, but she was still a head taller than the dire wolves. Growling, she leapt through the shattered shutters, breaking away the remaining glass. The other two wolves arced after her. A second later, a man outside cried out, and was quickly silenced.

“Dez, you're hit!” Lazar had run over to me, grabbing Amaris to bring him with her as he did so. She followed him, wiping her bloody hands on her jeans, her pretty face drawn and worried as her eyes kept darting toward the windows, hoping for a glimpse of London.

“I'll shift in a second,” I said. “Have you got any silver ammunition in the car?”

He looked confused. “Yes, but against objurers . . . oh!”

Amaris grinned, getting it the same moment her brother did. “Orgoli. He may look like Ximon, but he still hates silver.” She got to her feet, and Lazar did the same, both crouching to keep their heads low.

“Good idea,” Lazar said, and then he leaned in and kissed me, hard and fast. Something almost sad flickered behind his eyes, which then was banished in favor of his game face. “Now, do us a favor and shift, okay?”

“You got it,” I said. As they turned to head out the doors, I shouted, “Lazar! Amaris!” They paused, looking over their shoulders at me. “Stay safe.”

Amaris nodded, smiling. But Lazar's face was deadly serious, the look of a man who might have to kill the thing that consumed his father, and thus kill his father as well. He set his jaw. “See you outside.”

Electric agony lanced up my leg, and I reeled, dizzy. It was time. I sought the black heart inside me, the window to Othersphere that always chafed and churned there. Now that I'd been to the other world, I could practically smell that stormy air, hear the faint strains of the concert of creation there.

It was done. I was as I should be, sleek, strong, and striped. I stretched, arching my long back, digging my nails deep into the wooden floor, feeling the pain-free power in my legs, the grinding might of my jaws, the sharp tips of my fangs ready to bite. I shook out my whiskers and turned my ears to catch Morfael's voice speaking urgently to the council leaders with Caleb standing by.

I paced up to hear him tell the council leaders they needed to gather their people to counter the remaining attackers. Even the wolf-shifter had his red-gray head bent, listening.

“Cats into the wood to the west of the parking lot!” Jonata shouted at the retreating backs of people, mountain lions, bobcats, and lynx. I caught sight of a jaguar, too, up from South America. The cat faces with their triangular noses, their gold and green eyes, turned to her, listening, and then like liquid, they wound their way through the legs and bodies around them.

“Rats to their vehicles!” announced the young lady rat-shifter. “Through the windows, my friends!” She grinned, and then she was gone, replaced by a huge black rat with a pink nose. Like a furry tide, the rats in the crowd poured out of the cracked windows.

Bullets clattered against the walls, but were stopped by something invisible before they reached the rats, vanishing as if into an invisible shield. Morfael was holding his staff out in that direction, humming lightly. I'd seen him do it before, only now I understood—the bullets were shooting through the veil, into Othersphere. So the rats, staying low to the sill, moving too fast to tell one from the other, swarmed outside. A woman's voice called out in bewilderment. A high, horrible screaming cut across the night, and the guns went silent.

The hawk-shifter council member had no bird-shifters to command nearby. His people had been the quickest out the doors. He nodded to Morfael, shifted, and flashed out the window after the rats.

The bear-shifter leader morphed into her grizzly form, nearly as big as Siku, and tore off the last bit of her blouse with her teeth. Most of her people were heading out already. I spotted a large brown rat on the back of a grizzly, probably November catching a ride on one of Siku's family, as it loped out the double doors.

The wolf-shifter was frowning, watching his fellow council leaders go. The wolves were by far the largest group still in the room, howling and whining to each other, waiting for their leader's decision.

A loud bark sounded from the window. London's head appeared above the sill, her blue eyes gleaming. Every wolf in the room turned to stare, tails high as question marks. London gave them a low, commanding howl, and then bared her fangs at the council leader.

He lowered his head, eyes slitted, and growled back, still in human form, and transformed into a ruddy wolf as big as a Great Dane. In one bound, London sprang over the sill and was on him. Her teeth fell upon the ruff of fur at his neck. He was stocky and muscular, but London used her long legs for leverage, as Morfael had taught her in class. She forced him onto his side, growling, and held him there.

The other wolves circled them, yapping, and a second later the council leader whimpered, his tail curling between his legs. London shook him hard one more time and released him. As he got slowly to his feet, the wolves around her wagged their tails, coming up to lick her legs and yip their approval. It all happened so fast. One second she was fighting the council leader, the next she was leading him and the others back out the window, where her dire wolves were waiting.

If I could have smiled as a tiger, I would have. I purred instead.

“She has done well,” Morfael said to me, Caleb, and the empty room. “I believe the shifters will be more than a match for the few remaining Tribunal members. Their organization is no longer the force it once was. With Ximon not quite himself, it's in disarray.”

“They haven't recovered since Dez tore them apart back at the particle accelerator,” Caleb said, his eyes coming to rest on me.

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.