by Nina Berry
The helicopter’s gas tank was probably there, I decided, eyeing the back end. I aimed and fired. The bullet sparked off the runner. Damn. I was a terrible shot. I had to press harder on the trigger, and the pain in my hands wasn’t helping.
The automatic gun on the copter rattled. Bullets smacked the ground near London, November, and the objurer as they wrestled. Blood spurted from the back of the objurer, and he lay still. So the Tribunal had stopped worrying about its own men.
London scrabbled to her feet and broke free. November scurried away, leaving a trail of blood. She’d been hit.
I fired again at what I hoped was the chopper’s gas tank. The bullets penetrated something, but I couldn’t be sure it was vital.
Then a large winged form spiraled down from the gray sky. Arnaldo, far above, had something huge in his talons. He positioned himself right above the center of the helicopter.
Bullets chased London and November until I lost sight of them. Then Arnaldo dropped the thing in his claws. It tumbled down. A rock, almost a boulder, plummeted toward the chopper’s blades.
“Get cover!” I screamed, hoping London and November could hear me. I dove into the brush behind the boys’ cabin, rolling to see the rock fall directly into the blurry circle that held the copter in the air.
A great crack interrupted the whomping storm of sound. The individual blades were outlined against the sky, warping before my eyes. Shards sliced the air. The eagle shrieked. His wing beat faltered.
Slowly, like a flying ant with broken wings, the helicopter shuddered and fell. I covered my head with my arms.
A crash like a breaking wave shook the ground. A gout of flame bellowed out, licked the boys’ cabin front door, and retreated. Heat washed over me as I got to my feet and stumbled forward, coughing.
Smoking wreckage filled the space between the cabins. Our peaceful enclave looked like a scene from Black Hawk Down. I looked away from the bloody mess in the cockpit and searched the sky for Arnaldo. He’d been hit. I could only hope London and November had escaped the fireball.
Arnaldo landed heavily on a tree branch ahead of me, holding one wing awkwardly. As I ran toward him, London and November crawled out of the bushes. November was limping and squeaking.
I stuffed the gun in my belt and knelt down in front of November as she rolled over. A bloody strip of flesh on her side oozed blood. “He winged you,” I said. “It’s not bad, but you should shift and heal it.”
November raised her whiskered nose and let loose a stream of angry chirps. I thought I heard a hissing noise, then a sort of “tchu.”
“Siku?”
November nodded vigorously.
“You want to go with us after Siku first.” As she kept nodding, I said, “Okay. I’m about to shift. You can catch a ride on me if you want. One sec.”
I moved to Arnaldo. He lifted one wing, croaking with effort. Blood streamed down his feathers from a shard of dark plastic embedded like a spear in his side under the left wing. A piece of one of the shattered rotors had stabbed into him.
“Okay, this is not good,” I said. “Arnaldo, I’m going to lift you down to the ground and slide this right out, but it’ll hurt like hell and you better shift right after I do it, or you could black out from the blood loss.”
Arnaldo staggered a bit on the branch and nodded once. I wrapped my arms against his warm, feathered body, his powerful wings draping along my arms, his pointed beak brushing my neck.
Once he was standing more or less firmly on the ground, I gingerly placed my left hand on his side for leverage. A guttural sound of pain came from him, but he held very still. I used my towel to grab the shard in his side. “One . . . two . . .”
I yanked on two, trying to pull it at the same angle it had entered.
Arnaldo squawked. I ducked to avoid the furious flapping of wings and backed off. The shard in my hand looked whole. Blood gushed from the wound. “I think I got it all,” I said. “Shift now. That’s what I’m going to do.”
I didn’t bother removing my clothes. Minutes had passed since Caleb took off after Siku. We couldn’t waste any more time. Arnaldo shifted, his long skinny body lying naked facedown on the grass, the wound in his side gone. Then the space around him warped again, and he was an eagle once more. These last few weeks of practice had made him as good at shifting as November.
“Good.” I closed my eyes and dove down into the black heart of Othersphere inside me. That is, I tried. But the dark dangerous place wasn’t there.
The shadow is gone, Ximon had said. So this is how he hid you from me.
Had Morfael done something to me in the library when I’d found him pointing his staff with the dark sun rune at me?
I opened my eyes and told myself not to panic. There wasn’t time. “Something’s wrong,” I said. “You guys go ahead. Find Caleb. Get Siku.”
November leapt onto London’s back. Arnaldo cawed, his head cocked with what might have been concern. Then he spread his wings and took off.
I watched them go, then hunkered down into a fetal position and searched again for the connection to Othersphere. It had been so easy for days now. The dread still hit me before I plunged into the shift, every single time. But I’d learned to take note of it and keep going.
Now there was nowhere to go, nothing to dive into, nothing to fear. I concentrated on all the anger I felt, and there was more than enough. I was seething with fury and a desire to retaliate. Normally these emotions made shifting all the easier. Now I had nowhere to pour them. It wasn’t just that a door had closed on Othersphere. A steel vault had been built around it. If I focused everything I had, I could feel it flickering there behind some barrier. But I couldn’t reach it.
I stood up, as lost as I’d felt since I’d awoken in the silver cage all those weeks ago. Smoke from the helicopter rose in a thick column toward the peach sky. Bodies, some bloody, some struggling and ensnared with goo, lay everywhere. Inside me, something had changed, just when I needed to shift more than anything. Had Morfael betrayed me somehow? Whatever lay behind the change, I’d have to keep going, as a human.
Movement in the corner of my eye. I whirled, pulling the gun from my belt. Four more figures in gray stood over Ximon. The web of goo pinning him to the ground was gone. Three of them hoisted him onto a sling between them. The fourth lowered a rifle at me.
I pulled the trigger, aiming not at the gunman but at Ximon. But nothing happened. I squeezed again, shuffling toward the trees for cover. Bullets danced at my feet, but the gun in my hand would not fire.
Another lightning bolt speared the sky and thunder rolled over me. The vibration spoke of Caleb. He was alive and throwing electricity at our foes.
With my gun misfiring, I had no weapon, not even my claws, against the four Tribunal members now rescuing Ximon. I had to let them take him.
I didn’t allow myself to feel disappointment. Too much still to do. Bullets bit into the leaves around me as I dove into the undergrowth of the forest and ran toward the lightning.
CHAPTER 22
I ran through the woods toward the noises, feeling the ache from the useless pistol now at my belt.
“Follow them!” It was Caleb’s voice.
Through the trees I saw him as he cried out to the circling form of Arnaldo above. He was breathing hard, hair a wild tangle, coat splashed with mud, blood, and yellow gunk. But he was unharmed. I allowed myself to breathe. He had a pistol in one hand, pointed at an objurer with his hands up. London, with November still riding on her back, flanked the man, growling. Nearby lay the forms of three other objurers, one still smoking from a lightning strike, the others glued into submission.
The eagle shrieked, tilted his wings, and flew off. He remained in sight long enough that I could see he was following a set of large tire tracks rutted into the soil.
I walked into the small clearing. “What happened?”
Caleb took a step toward me, a huge, relieved smile breaking over his face. Then he refocused to keep hi
s gun on the man before him, and said, “You okay?”
“Not hurt,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him I couldn’t shift, not in front of an objurer. “Where’s Siku?”
“They came in a truck and took Siku away before we could stop them,” said Caleb.
My knees felt like jelly as I walked up to the objurer with his hands up, but I willed myself to stay upright. “Where are they taking Siku?” I didn’t recognize the hard voice that came out of me.
The man was shivering, but he stared off over my head and said nothing.
“Never mind,” I said. “I don’t need you to tell me. But you look tired and I think you should take a nap now.”
“Agreed.” Caleb walked up and smacked him across the temple with the butt of his gun. The man dropped.
I pulled my own gun out of my belt. “Please take this. There’s something wrong with it, and I think my hands might catch on fire.”
He took the gun, eyebrows furrowed, and turned it over in his hands. Black streaks crept over the warped grip frame and now covered the safeties, hammer, and almost all of the barrel. “What happened? It’s like you threw it in a furnace.”
“I think my hands went in there with it,” I said, holding them up. The right was bright red and covered in large blisters, as if I’d poured boiling water over it. It ached that way too. The left was sprouting hives. “I can’t shift,” I said. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but I just can’t.”
He squinted at me and hummed faintly, moving closer. I could see the stubble on his chin and flecks of gold in his eyes. I wanted to collapse into his arms, to sleep there for a million years. “I’m so glad you’re back,” I said, so that only he could hear.
“We’ll talk,” he said. “But the shadow is gone. At least . . .” He hummed again, a little louder. London inched up to us, sniffing. November sat on her back, clutching tufts of silver fur in her small pink paws. At any other time they would’ve looked like the most popular video on YouTube: “Rat rides Wolf.”
“The shadow’s in there somewhere,” Caleb said. “But it’s like someone threw it down a well or something.”
“I guess we can worry about that later.” I used my left hand to push the hair out of my eyes. “November, you okay?”
She chirped once and nodded.
“Bullet grazed her,” I said to Caleb’s questioning look. “She needs to shift and we need to get back to Morfael. A bunch of objurers chased me off so they could rescue Ximon. Come on.”
“You think Morfael’s okay?” Caleb turned, and we ran side by side through the woods. London bolted past us with her light-footed gallop, carrying November.
“He better be,” I said. “If we call an ambulance, will it be able to find us here?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Raynard should be here soon. If the authorities come, we’ll end up in jail.”
“Yeah, the pieces of helicopter would be especially hard to explain,” I said, panting. “Arnaldo dropped a rock on it from above.”
“Wow.” He shot me a look.
We came to a halt in the clearing. Ximon was gone. The remains of the chopper smoldered between the cabins, the crumpled cockpit still leaking blood. A large black patch marked where the lightning had struck, and the yellow goo was gone, back to shadow.
So they’d left their dead behind but had taken those still alive. They’d left Morfael too, lying like a jumble of bones and shredded black cloth.
Caleb surveyed the blackened spot where Ximon had lain, then walked over and kicked the side of the house. “Damn, damn, damn!”
“Help me with Morfael,” I said. “His skin is like ice.”
We got Morfael inside and laid him on the couch. I ran to the first aid locker in the cave and came back armed with disinfectant, scissors, cotton, and bandages. Morfael had taught us the basics of first aid. London had been the star in those classes.
Caleb peeled back Morfael’s blood-soaked black shirt while I attempted to open the disinfectant. My burned right hand screamed every time I tried, so I had to let Caleb do it.
“You better use some on that burn,” he said. “Morfael’s been gut-shot.”
The front door opened. I nearly jumped out of my skin until I saw it was London and November, now in human form and clad in hastily donned jeans and sweatshirts. November looked fit enough, if rather pale. The shift had healed her bullet wound.
“Is he okay?” London said, striding up to Morfael and eyeing the wound. She’d missed a smear of blood on her jaw.
“He’s alive, but unconscious,” I said.
“He’s pretty stable considering the circumstances.” London lifted Morfael’s eyelids to look at his pupils, feeling for his pulse. “But the pain from abdominal wounds is horrific. Maybe that’s what made him pass out. He’s lost some blood, but not as much as I would’ve thought. Here, give me that.” She snatched the bandages out of Caleb’s hands.
“We should drive him to the nearest hospital now,” I said.
November shook her head. “Let Raynard do that.”
“Morfael’s critically injured!” I looked around, but only Caleb seemed to be listening to me.
“And just how are a bunch of teenagers going to explain to a doctor that their teacher at an unregistered school got shot?” London asked.
November nodded. “The second thing shifters teach their kids, after ‘The Tribunal is your enemy,’ is to avoid all interaction with government and authority, like cops and hospitals. Raynard’s a humdrum and an adult. He can tell the hospital that he and Morfael are roommates, that it was an accident, like the gun went off while he was cleaning it.”
“But . . .”
“Morfael should be okay if we wait for Raynard.” London finished tying up the neat bandage around Morfael’s waist. Tiny splotches of blood, like Rorschach tests, blossomed through the snowy whiteness. “The bullet went right through his side and didn’t hit anything vital. I’ve stopped the worst bleeding. And Raynard’s due any second.” She looked up at me reassuringly. “Trust me.”
“Okay, but if Raynard isn’t here in five minutes, we take him,” I said.
November jerked her thumb back to point over her shoulder at the library. “I’ve got to call my parents.”
“Yeah, I’ll be right behind you,” said London.
“What?” I stood up. November was fading back toward the library, where the phones were. “You think they’ll help us with him?”
“No, stupid,” said November. “They’ll come get us.”
London nodded. “We have to get out of here before the Tribunal comes back.”
“The school is kind of out of commission for now, I guess,” I said. “Do you know how to reach Siku’s family?”
“No,” said November.
London shook her head. “That’s not our problem,” she said. “My mom’s going to have a stroke. We’ll probably have to go into hiding.”
“Hiding? Wait.” I stepped toward November. “Someone has to help Siku.”
“That’s up to the bear-shifters,” she said. “Not us.”
“Why not?”
Arnaldo jerked the door open and walked in, human once more, wearing his usual jeans and dark sweater. “They’re taking Siku south and west,” he said as we all turned. “I followed them till they started shooting at me.”
“South and west.” I caught Caleb’s eye. He nodded. We knew where they were going.
Arnaldo looked down at Morfael. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s stable,” said London.
“We need to get him to the hospital,” I said.
“It’s almost seven. Raynard should be here any minute.” Arnaldo, too, was drifting toward the library door. “Better get Morfael out of here before my dad comes to get me. He’ll blame Morfael for all this.”
London wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and walked toward the library door. They were all prepared to leave. How could that be?
“But what about Siku?” I said.
&nb
sp; November bit her lip while Arnaldo shook his head. “He’s lost,” said November, her voice very small. “We have to get back to our tribes. . . .”
“But we know where they’re taking him,” I said. “They’ve got a facility in the Mojave Desert. Caleb and I have been there.”
“So what?” A tear escaped down November’s cheek. She brushed it away with an angry flick of her hand. “So you know where he is. What good does that do?”
They were each poised to run or fly. That’s what shifters did in a crisis. They retreated, rejoined their tribe, and left the wounded and captured to fend for themselves. They would go into hiding, hoping what had happened to Siku wouldn’t happen to them. And Siku would remain drugged and bound in the hands of people who thought he was an agent of evil.
A sudden fierce certainty took hold of me. The isolation of tribes had to stop, or the Tribunal’s plan to wipe every shifter off the earth would come to pass.
“We can rescue him,” I said.
November let out a single, sarcastic “Ha!” London looked confused. Arnaldo was staring at me, his gaze as piercing as when he was an eagle.
Caleb came to stand beside me. “She’s right,” he said. “If we don’t get him out of there in the next twelve hours, he’ll be dead. Or worse.”
“They’ll kill us if we try to help him!” said November.
“He’s probably dead already,” London said in a small voice.
“No, think about it. They took the time to drug and capture him,” Caleb said. “They prefer to take otherkin alive if they can, so they can do things, experiments.”
Arnaldo uncrossed his arms. “And how do you know that?”
Caleb opened his mouth, but I interrupted. “Caleb and I were both captured by the Tribunal,” I said. “That’s how we met, in adjoining cages.”
“And Dez got us out of there,” Caleb said. “If you help us, we can get Siku out too.”
“What kind of experiments?” said November, challenging.
“Did they do something to you?” London was looking at me. With a jolt I remembered that I was still abnormal to them, a shifter with more than one shape.
