Othersphere (9 page)

“In every world?” Unable to resist, Lazar walked over beside Caleb and grabbed some of the rope.

“That's what I'm seeing,” Caleb said. “Shadows upon shadows.”

Lazar hummed. He was newer at this than Caleb, but his brown eyes took on the same golden sheen. He blinked, taken aback at what he saw, invisible to me. “Thousands of them. Millions . . .”

Curious, I moved nearer. The rope was a rough brown, like the dark bark of a tree stripped and wound into a cord. The closer I looked, the more variations in color I saw within it, the more alive it seemed. “What does that mean—it has many shadows?” I asked.

Caleb stopped humming. “With this you could travel to any of the many worlds out there, not just Othersphere.”

“Why does he have more than one rope, then?” I turned to Ximon. “What were your plans for this length of rope?”

Ximon didn't answer me. He had hunched over and lurched closer to the silver bars of his cage. His temples glistened with perspiration. I didn't like how close I stood to the cage myself now. The pulse from it was irritating my skin. “Ximon?” I said.

“It's a lot softer than it looks,” Lazar was saying of the rope. “Here.” He held up a length of it toward me.

I reached for it automatically. Ximon reeled back away from the silver bars, sweat trickling down his face.

The rope in my hand did feel soft, like fur, but firmer. I closed my hand around it. It stirred.

“Oh!” I dropped the rope, but somehow it had wrapped around my wrist.

“What?” Caleb said.

“You all right?” Lazar asked at the same time.

I opened my mouth to say yes, to tell them that some kind of warmth was coming from the rope, a reassuring heat, as it were a purring cat.

But Ximon sucked in a long breath, stood taller, and said, “Ahhh. That's better.”

His voice rumbled now like a V-8, so different from his earlier weary tones. His cheeks had turned pink. His shoulders looked broader. And his eyes. His eyes were molten gold, fixed on me.

In his right hand he was holding a shiny black staff, longer than he was tall, its glassy surface carved with animal figures that seemed to writhe. It was just like Morfael's staff, only our teacher's was made of wood. He tapped the staff on the cage floor and seemed to get bigger, taller, darker, like something that wasn't even remotely human.

“Get back!” Caleb shouted, yanking the rope away from me. “Everyone, out!”

“Little cub.” It came out of Ximon as a growl.

Every hair on my arms stood on end. I'd been called that once before.

He smiled. His shiny black teeth were sharp. “Perhaps it's better I didn't eat you after all.”

CHAPTER 5

Many things happened at once.

Ximon grew even taller, leaner. His skin blackened and shone. His fingernails lengthened into claws, grasping his staff. His eyes were worlds of gold shot with green and black.

Caleb shoved me back, putting himself between me and Ximon.

Lazar pointed his hand at Ximon, speaking with a tone of command, “I objure you. Back to Othersphere. Back . . .”

Ximon laughed, a deep, rumbling chortle that was not his own. He curled his black, clawed hands at the floor, as if pulling it toward him with an invisible rope.

The ground heaved. The walls swayed and shook, as if a giant hand was using the room as a rattle. The shelves and beams shuddered and cracked around us as loudly as a train hurtling past when you stand right next to the tracks.

Lazar and Caleb stumbled and fell. November hurtled off her shelf, catching the edge with her two right paws at the last moment to stop her fall. Paint cans, tools, and old rags rained down around her as the screws pinning the shelves to the walls jiggled outward. I kept my feet and staggered toward her.

The cage clanked and hopped around Ximon, or rather, the thing that Ximon had become. The silver bars rattled out of alignment. Nails popped from their holes. The cage roof swayed, coming away from one of the corner poles. The Ximon-thing had no trouble keeping its feet.

He tugged upward with his hands again, as if pulling on the reins of the earth below him. The ground shrugged upward.

I fell. Above me, the ceiling cracked.

The cage's roof came completely off most of its supporting posts. One side of it crashed down with a head-splitting clang, right on top of the creature beneath it.

The shelf November was hanging on flew off the wall and smashed into the shelves below. I lunged, trying to catch her. But she disappeared in a cloud of dust and debris.

The quaking subsided to a shudder. Lazar and Caleb stirred.

“November!” Coughing, I got to my hands and knees and pulled aside a broken shelf. “Where are you?”

No answering squeak.
Oh, no
. I didn't let myself think any further than that. Caleb, close by, stumbled over and helped me lift another shelf. Lazar got to his feet to lend a hand.

I glanced over my shoulder at the pile of debris that had fallen on the Ximon-thing. Was it dead?

Was November dead?

A high-pitched call and a swoop of wings announced Arnaldo's arrival. He landed on the cracked banister next to the stairs, half of which had crumbled into a pile of wood.

“November!”

I thought I saw a bit of her pink tail under broken shelving and brackets. “Here!” I said, motioning to the others. “Carefully . . .”

We cleared away the debris on top of that shelf. Then Caleb grabbed an end, Lazar another, and they gently lifted it together.

November lay there, unmoving, blood spotting her brown fur, a deep gash on her head, nearly severing one of her pale pink ears. My stomach dropped.

Then I realized she couldn't be dead. I'd seen what happened when a shifter in animal form was killed. After he died in his bear form, Siku had shifted back to human for the last time.

I laid two fingers over November's heart. The beat was rapid but strong. “I can't tell if anything's broken.”

Arnaldo touched her dusty nose with his beak.

Footsteps upstairs, and London called out from the doorway, “What the hell is going on?”

“November's unconscious,” I said through numb lips.
What have I done?

“What?!” She started to clatter down the steps.

“The quake,” Lazar said. “She fell.”

“It wasn't a normal quake,” Caleb said. “That thing that's possessing Ximon did this.”

The ground stopped moving. It was quiet.

“So,” said London. She had stopped at the bottom of the stairs, staring at me. “Dez was wrong.”

I bowed my head and gently stroked November's whiskers back from her nose. Blood dripped from her mouth.

I had been horribly wrong. About Ximon faking his possession. About coming here. About everything. I was responsible for this.

“Where's that thing now?” London was asking.

“The cage fell on it,” Lazar said. He was pulling bandages out of his backpack.

“We need to get November out of here and healed, fast,” Caleb was saying.

London craned her neck at the fallen silver cage. “Do you think it will go away if Ximon is dead? And if he is dead, how do we track down Amaris?”

“November,” I said. It came out raspy. My throat was closed up, dry. “Wake up.”

Lazar knelt down next to me. His voice was gentle. “Careful how you move her.”

“She needs to shift in order to heal.” I looked up at both Caleb and Lazar. “Can you guys make her do that?”

The two brothers shot each other a glance before looking back down at November.

“We can try,” said Caleb.

“We'll try,” said Lazar at the same time.

A metallic scraping came from the silver cage. We all swiveled to face it. The collapsed roof of thick metal, which must have weighed over a thousand pounds, shifted an inch. Then it heaved upwards in a shower of rubble.

“Shit!” London screamed.

“I don't think I can objure it,” Lazar said.

“We can fight it,” Caleb said. “Or we can run.”

Everyone was staring at me, waiting.

I had always been the team leader before, the plan-maker, the bossy one. November,
oh, God, November,
often teased me, called me General Stripes.

I stared down at her bloody little body. My mind was a horrible blank.

The cage jangled again musically as the roof was shoved another inch to one side. More of its silver posts clanked to the floor.

I looked up at all of them, unable to form a coherent thought. “I . . . I don't know. I can't . . .” My mind was ashes. Ashes and death.

“We run,” Caleb said, stepping into the pause. “It's too strong for us. We have to risk moving November. Here.” He grabbed a flat piece of shelving slightly longer than November's rat body and thrust it at me. “Put her on this, and we go.”

My hands were trembling. Tears spilled from my eyes. I was crouched over November's mangled form, and I couldn't move. Some small part of my brain made a note:
So this is what it's like when you fall apart.

“Dez?” Lazar put one hand on my shoulder. “What's going on?” He peered into my face, and his mouth straightened into a grim line. Abruptly, he took the plank of wood from Caleb, set it down, and used both hands to carefully pick November up and move her to the flat surface. “London, I'm going to hand her up to you,” he said. I stayed where I was, trying to control my shivering.

“What's wrong with Dez?” London's voice seemed to come from far away.

Caleb's black coat pooled around him as he knelt next to me. He was frowning with worry and haste, and I looked down in shame. For the first time in my life, I didn't want to look into Caleb's eyes.

“She'll be okay,” Caleb said. His voice was unexpectedly kind. “Dez. You're okay. You're strong. You have to be strong to help us all get out of here.”

His voice placed something small and warm inside me. The worst of my trembling subsided.

With swift, soldierlike proficiency, Lazar had removed his belt and secured November to the board with it. “She's set,” he said.

Metal grated on cement. The cage shifted, as if it were alive.

“Go!” Caleb said to Arnaldo.

The eagle took one last penetrating look at me, and then took off, vanishing through the door upstairs, past London's silhouette.

Lazar took the strapped-down form of November and handed it up to London, who took her with great care. “Hurry up, you guys,” she said, and trotted off with our friend.

The shiny black tip of the creature's staff poked out of the wreckage and pushed at the silver slab of the roof. An angular hand reached up through the crack to move it farther. Smoke rose from the black skin where it touched the silver, filling the air with a smell akin to burning rock and flesh.

Lazar unholstered his gun, aimed at the creature's hand, and fired. The bullet thunked into something, and the hand flinched back. Lazar was a deadeye.

“Come on, Dez,” Caleb said in my ear. “Time to go.” He took me by the shoulders and helped me to my feet.

Lazar switched the gun's magazine with another.

“Silver bullets?” Caleb asked.

Lazar nodded, looking slightly ashamed. “I kept some.”

“Good,” Caleb said. “Kill it if you can.”

The cage roof tilted again, but this time, we couldn't see what was behind it. The creature had gotten smart, using the silver as a shield, lifting as it went.

“Not sure bullets will do the trick, but I'll hold it off as long as I can.” Lazar moved to the right of the cage, trying to get an angle where he could see what was going on.

“Don't wait too long.” Caleb steered me toward the broken wooden stairs. “Come on, Dez. This way.”

“The rope!” Caleb looked back. The length of the multi-shadow twine was lying coiled on the floor where he'd dropped it. “I should get it. Can you make it to the stairs and wait for me there?”

I nodded, hoping I was telling the truth. This failure of mine, this weakness, was humiliating.

“Okay, go now. Wait for me. I'll be right there.”

He was speaking gently, simply, as if to a child. I should have been offended, but instead I felt grateful. The tears had stopped, but every cell in my body was trembling. I wanted to collapse, to lie down and just let go of the awfulness of being such a failure. But the seed of strength Caleb's voice had planted in me wouldn't let that happen.

I shuffled over and put one foot on the stairway. The lower steps appeared intact. The middle of the staircase was basically gone. I'd have to climb, but I didn't think my rubbery limbs could make it.

Lazar fired twice, bullets clanging. The silver roof was raised nearly on its side, like a wall now between us and the creature.

Caleb grabbed the rope just as the ground quivered and hoisted itself unnaturally again. I tottered, but my cat-shifter balance kept me on my feet. Caleb went to his knees.

Lazar fell, sprawling, but keeping hold of his gun. The entire silver roof was lifted off the floor and flung at him.

“Look out!” I yelled. My voice was thready.

But Lazar was already rolling. Caleb lunged for him, trying to grab his arm. Not fast enough. The corner of the roof hit the floor with a thud I felt in the soles of my feet, and then the rest of the ten-foot-long slab dropped on Lazar.

“There now.” The harsh voice of the Ximon creature filled the room. “That's much better.”

It seemed to have grown taller with the silver fallen away. Most of Ximon's body was gone, replaced with shiny black angles of arm and leg, still wearing the shredded remains of Ximon's white turtleneck and pants hanging on it like a skeleton.

It reminded me of someone. It took a moment for my clouded brain to piece the resemblance together. He looked like a dark version of our teacher, Morfael, particularly with that staff in his hand. But Morfael looked more like he was made of polished bone and ivory, with opalescent eyes and thin, nearly colorless hair. This thing seemed to have no hair, just a fearsome, triangular head, but its eyes, though golden, were a similar slitted shape. The body, also skeletal, looked like onyx or obsidian instead of bone.

Caleb had crawled to the silver slab and was trying to lift it. Lazar lay half under, unmoving. I could see his head, bleeding from several spots and smeared with dust. His eyelids fluttered, and a tiny portion of my despair lifted.

“So.” The gold eyes of the creature slid to me. “Should I call you Desdemona? Or Sarangarel?”

I swallowed, gripping the remains of the stairway banister for support. “Either one.” My voice was fragile. There was probably something cool and smart-ass I should say back, but my brain was flailing around like a newborn kitten. I put my hand on the hilt of the Shadow Blade hanging at my waist, and some of the tremors inside me subsided. But still I was weak. Weak and wrong.

The only thing I had to hang on to was the tiny shard of strength Caleb had given me. He couldn't hate me completely if he'd given me that.

The creature tilted its head, as if puzzled, though the stony face was hard to read.

Lazar had lifted a dirt-streaked hand to help Caleb move the block from on top of him. The veins in Caleb's temples bulged as he pushed. Lazar bit his lower lip in pain, but made no sound. It slid a few more inches off his body.

“What's your name?” I forced myself to ask the creature. Might as well keep the thing distracted. I was useless otherwise.

“Don't you know? Did my brother not tell you?” It drew thin lips back to show pointed black teeth. A smile. “He's not one to share.”

“Morfael,” I said. That explained the similarities in their appearance, and the fact that they both carried staffs. Morfael's seemed to be connected to his abilities as a shadow walker, which meant this thing was probably a shadow walker, too. “You're his brother?”

“Half-brother,” said the thing. “We are . . . like them.” He pointed at Caleb and Lazar. “We share a mother instead of a father. I am Orgoli. I'll kill my half-brother soon. I'll tell him you said good-bye.”

Lazar twisted and was free. Other than scrapes and bruises, he looked relatively unhurt. But both his hands were empty. His gun still lay under the silver slab.