Othersphere

Book 3: Otherkin

by Nina Berry

Genres: YA Paranormal

Synopsis

This new series is sure to be a hit! -- RT Book Reviews, 4 stars I always wanted to know where I came from. Now that knowledge could destroy me. Dez thought she knew who her mother was, who she was. Thought she had friends, a boy who loved her, and a school where she finally fit in. But across the veil linking our world and the next lurks a monster which can annihilate. . .or liberate her. Now she must confront it there with help from one boy who loves her and one who can't stand the sight of her. Dez thought she understood her tiger form, her deepest self. But in this treacherous place, she'll have to choose between the two halves of her soul--and determine which world survives. "Be prepared to lose some sleep. Otherkin is full of non-stop action and suspense, and you're not going to be able to put it down!"

Release date: December 31, 2013

Publisher: Kensington Teen

Print pages: 320

Sample

I balanced carefully on the first step of the ladder, the folded wallpaper in one hand, and used the other to steady myself as I moved up. My eyes became level with the toes of Lazar’s worn brown boots, pointing at me from the other side of the ladder.

“Hey, look,” I said. “You under-pronate more on your left foot than your right.” And I grinned up at him.

From the top of the ladder, his tousled golden head haloed by the skylight above, Lazar smiled down at me. “I love it when you talk dirty.”

My cheeks got hot, and I ducked my head down to stare at my own feet and took another slow step up the ladder. The knees of Lazar’s jeans came into view, both blotched with a Rorschach of wallpaper paste.

Even after nearly four weeks of us, well, dating, I guess you could call it, it still surprised me when Lazar said anything risqué. He was normally such a gentleman, one with even less dating experience than I had. His strict father had never allowed him to go out with anyone, so I still couldn’t quite believe it whenever he said or did something suggestive.

I moved up again on the ladder, the walls narrowing around me, and my eyes came level with Lazar’s thighs. I concentrated on making sure I didn’t drop the wallpaper as I put my foot on the next rung. Hello, Lazar’s belt buckle.

“In that case,” I said, staring at the simple brass clasp and brown leather above his fly, “you’re going to wish you knew what I’m thinking now.”

His hips shifted slightly. “But I can imagine.”

I took a hasty step up. My stomach had the jitters. It scared me sometimes, that I could feel anything for someone other than my ex-boyfriend, Caleb, gone who-knows-where for six weeks now. Scarier still was that any feeling could push through the overwhelming grief that overwhelmed us all. Siku had been killed six weeks ago today.

Time to change the subject. “It’s still hard to believe that wallpaper can block wi-fi signals from getting out and infrared scans from getting in,” I said. After we’d destroyed the particle accelerator built by Lazar’s father, Ximon, Ximon and his remaining men had fled. At Lazar’s urging, we’d plundered the abandoned facilities, taking whatever equipment we could that remained undamaged. This high-tech wallpaper had been one of our best finds, and once this skylight well was done, the whole school would be shielded.

Lazar’s shirt rode up as he lifted his arms to check the primer on the wall beside the skylight, treating me to a glimpse of taut six-pack abs with twin vertical lines gliding alongside his hipbones.

I swayed slightly.

“You think I made it all up just to get you on this ladder with me?” Lazar placed a warm steady hand on my arm to help me to the next rung.

“I wouldn’t put it past you.” My head moved past the top of the ladder, eyes now at the level of his chest. When I glimpsed it this way, up close, in a simple blue T-shirt, I couldn’t help thinking of Caleb. Although, Caleb’s T-shirt would have been black. The half-brothers were so different in many ways, one blond, the other dark. Lazar was polite, reserved, more innocent and yet more wounded than the sophisticated, reckless Caleb, who had been all over the world and hadn’t endured life with their abusive, manipulative father, Ximon.

But they did have the same shoulders and strong arms corded with lean muscle, and the same strong chin, high cheekbones, and thick, expressive eyebrows, even if their coloring was different.

And they had the same taste in girls. At least in one girl.

I rose another step, trying not to stare at the cords of muscle on either side of Lazar’s long neck, or just above that, his lips, a bit fuller than Caleb’s.

Stop comparing him to Caleb all the time. He’s his own person.

“Can you blame me?” His eyes, caramel brown where Caleb’s were black, sparkled with mischief. Then he bent down and kissed me.

He kissed more softly than Caleb, more gently. I leaned into him, the top of the ladder pressing against my chest, the wallpaper still in one hand.

He put his other hand on my ribs, next to my breast, and lifted me bodily up to stand on the next rung so that we were almost the same height. My lips opened beneath his.

There was something irresistible about Lazar’s neck. I put my free palm over the vulnerable spot at the back where his hairline ended and slid my fingers up into his thick, silky hair.

He pulled me closer, his hand sliding up inside my T-shirt, fingers tracing the upper edges of my demi-bra. My nerves sparked, whole body flushed with heat. There was nothing but warm skin under my fingers, the taste of Lazar’s sweet mouth, and his hand trailing fire.

The ladder rocked.

“Whoa!” We broke apart. I dropped the folded square of off-white wallpaper. It wafted down to land against a leg of the ladder.

Lazar put one steadying hand on the wall, and reality came rushing back in. When we did that, when he scooped me up and pressed me against him, I forgot about the hole in my heart left by Siku’s death, and the achingly painful wound caused by Caleb was anaesthetized.

“My fault,” he said, descending the ladder with light quick steps and stooping to pick up the paper.

“Mine, too.” I mimicked him, flitting down the ladder and jumping down next to him, one hand on his shoulder.

He dropped the wallpaper and grabbed me, something dangerous in his eyes. I gasped, and he stopped my mouth with a kiss more urgent than any other we’d shared. His belt buckle scraped against my abdomen and he pressed my body against the length of his. I could feel every hard muscle on his frame. His hand supporting my lower back skated lower, lingered over my curves there, and then descended more to grip in and around my back inside thigh.

I writhed, held fast. A moan escaped me. He kept his hand there and lifted me up, off the ground, guiding my leg around his waist. The other leg wrapped around, too, my feet locking together behind his back as my hands pulled his T-shirt up so I could slide my hand over his smooth bare back.

My hip pocket buzzed. For a wild minute, I though Lazar was somehow making that happen. Then it buzzed again, and I realized. It was my phone.

“Ignore it,” he said and bit my shoulder lightly. I shuddered.

The phone buzzed again, and through the heated red fog in my brain, I remembered one thing, one reason not to ignore my phone. A reason I couldn’t reveal to Lazar.

“I’m sorry,” I said, unwrapping my legs from around him and pulling away reluctantly. “I have to get it if it’s my mom.”

He lowered me, but his hand loitered a long moment, caressing, before I tugged myself away. His blond hair was pushed to one side from my hands, his eyes bright and hot.

The phone stopped buzzing. I looked down. It was the alert I’d been waiting for. Why did it have to happen now?

“I have to call her back,” I said. A lie. “I’m so sorry.”

His eyebrows angled in puzzlement. “For being such a good kisser?”

I laughed, more out of unrelieved tension and desire than anything else. “Well, my ability there is kind of criminal.”

He laughed, running a hand through his hair, and nodded.

“Just sorry to, you know . . .” I looked down. “To not be moving things along faster. I want to, but . . .”

“Between us?” He put his hands on my arms, rubbing them lightly. “I know. I’m sorry for pushing.”

“No, no, no.” I leaned my forehead against his chest. He smelled like incense and amber, mixed with a little wallpaper paste. “I like it. Just please keep being patient with me.”

“The past couple of months have been full of troubles,” he said. “The psalms say at such a time to search your heart and be silent.” He smiled, the dimple showing in his cheek. “I haven’t allowed you much time for that.”

I shook my head. “You’ve been great. Sorry, but I really need to . . .”

He exhaled, shaking his head in amused resignation, and waved me away. “Go. I got this.” And he started back up the ladder with the wallpaper strip.

I backed up, checking my phone to confirm. It wasn’t a call; it was an alert I’d set up. Amaris had just received a Skype call from an unidentified number. The first time anyone had called her since Caleb had left.

I hadn’t been spying on Amaris. Well, sort of. I was keeping tabs on her calls because I knew that if Caleb got in touch with anyone, it would be his beloved half-sister.

Okay, so monitoring her phone calls is an invasive violation. I felt bad about it. But compared to all the other terrible things I’d done recently, this barely registered.

I looked up at Lazar, now back at the top of the ladder, holding up the strip of wallpaper, aligning it just so. He trusted me, and I was about to violate that. I nearly put the phone away then. I wanted to shake the legs of the ladder and bring him back down to finish what we’d started.

I just need to know Caleb’s okay. Then I’ll be able to move forward.

“See you later,” I said.

He grinned down at me. “Shirker.”

“Workaholic.” I smiled back, not quite as broadly, and left, straightening my T-shirt as I moved with practiced quiet out of the boys’ dorm into the hallway. A sliver of light reflected off the whitewashed walls from the half-closed door of the main computer room. We had monitors and wi-fi throughout the school now, thanks to Lazar, but I sensed movement in the computer room. Sliding into the darkest corner of the hall, I stilled and waited.

Within a minute, Amaris darted out of the computer room, completely unaware of me, and dashed up the steps, doing her best to be quiet. She had her heavy winter coat in hand. She was sneaking out of school, and that could only be for one reason: to see Caleb.

It was wrong to secretly follow her. That fact alone should have stopped me, but it didn’t.

She’ll never know, I told myself as I padded up the stairs after her. If she did find out about it, Amaris would forgive me.

Caleb wouldn’t. But Caleb still hadn’t forgiven me for going behind his back to meet up with his hated half-brother, Lazar. Twice.

And because of me, Siku was dead. If I hadn’t fallen for Ximon’s trap . . . Stop it! Don’t think about that now, or you’ll get clumsy and she’ll hear you.

Besides, I hadn’t seen Caleb in six weeks, and no one else had heard from him since. It was making me more than a little crazy. Any chance to learn more had to be taken. Just a glimpse of him was all I needed, the knowledge that he was alive and well would sustain me through this, the worst time of my life.

I could hear Arnaldo’s voice in the dining area, giving his two younger brothers a lesson in shifter history—the jaguar-shifter kings of ancient Central America—so I avoided that area and went straight to the front door of the school, grabbing my own coat off the hooks there. I slipped out in time to see Amaris zip up her coat and head for the garage.

I lurked behind some trees next to the hill the garage was concealed under until she backed the SUV out and turned it around. Then I walked in myself, ignoring Raynard’s red pickup truck, and headed right for the ancient motorcycle.

The SUV was moving away pretty quickly now. The motorcycle’s engine sputtered and nearly died before I remembered and put one foot to the ground, focusing on sending all my anxiety down into the earth. Technology had a tendency to stop working around me, particularly when I got emotional. Wearing the Shadow Blade around my waist all the time had helped with that a lot, and I was wearing it now. But I’d also gotten better at directing my feelings into something natural like soil or wood so that my anti-tech vibrations didn’t destroy the metal I was touching. I’d also improved at using it to deliberately sabotage technology, but this was not one of those times.

Tonight I was particularly tense. Amaris was sneaking out to see Caleb because he wanted to avoid me. I wasn’t sure how it would feel to see him again, knowing he hated me. I couldn’t let him see me, or he’d despise me all the more for invading his sister’s private life.

I had a nice boyfriend now. True, he reminded me of my first boyfriend because they were half-brothers, but that shouldn’t matter. I really should let Caleb go.

The red lights of the SUV got smaller as it disappeared down a hill, leaving only tire tracks in the snow.

And what if Lazar finds out?

I pushed that thought into an imaginary Dumpster and kicked the bike into first gear, carefully coordinating the throttle and clutch. Ice-covered tree branches brushed my face as I lifted my feet from the ground and puttered forward. I couldn’t follow too closely, or else even Amaris, with her ordinary human ears, would hear the noisy old machine’s engine.

I let the SUV’s taillights disappear before I sped up, teeth clenched so I wouldn’t bite my tongue as the threadbare tires of the bike clomped and bounced over the unpaved road. I got close enough to see Amaris turn right when she got to the main road, heading south.

Once on the graded asphalt, I could go a little faster. The wind buffeted my ears and forced me to squint into the cold. It was late February up in Nevada’s Spring Mountains. Old piles of snow rimed with dirty ice lined the road. In the spare light of the stars, the frosty evergreens spread over the peaks like a chilly green-black cloak.

I’d followed Caleb like this not long ago, when he had sneaked away from the first location of the school to meet Amaris. That was before I’d known they were brother and sister. Perhaps it was fitting that I was making the same trek now behind Amaris to meet Caleb. Maybe this trip would also lead to a life-altering revelation.

Or maybe I was a crazy person with a propensity for stalking people.

Before long, Amaris turned the SUV downhill onto Kyle Canyon Road, and we swooped out of the mountains into the spare beauty of the desert at night. The landscape flattened out in a hurry, and the trees vanished in favor of low scrub and a lot of dirt and sand. It was very dark before moonrise, but my acute night vision made it easy to keep tabs on the lights from the SUV without using the motorcycle’s headlight.

A glow up ahead resolved itself into lights around a building, and Amaris stepped on the brakes to slow down, about to turn into the complex. I remembered the place from the many times we’d driven past—a modest but attractive resort catering to hikers and snowboarders spending a weekend in the Spring Mountains, away from the hustle of Las Vegas, but still equipped with slots in the lobby and the bar.

The SUV pulled into the far end of a half-empty parking lot, away from the cluster of trucks and family vans closer to the main entrance to the resort. Warm light spilled from wide glass windows there, and music with a driving beat announced a party. Figures were bouncing around, dancing, and a woman in a long white dress twirled into view, held by a man in a black suit. A wedding reception. It must be Saturday night. Weeknights and weekends blended into one when you studied at Morfael’s school for otherkin.

I drove onto the groomed dirt alongside the parking lot and came to a stop. The SUV’s lights went dark, but Amaris did not emerge. She had to be waiting for Caleb, which meant I would wait, too. I killed the bike’s engine and climbed off to walk it farther away from the arc of the resort’s light so I could sit in deeper darkness.

My eyes went to the bright windows and the celebration ongoing behind them. The bride was petite, with a curly cap of dark hair, and the groom towered over her. They were laughing and stepping on each other’s feet, until he leaned down and swept her up in his arms, to dance with her that way.

I heard calls of “Good-bye!” and an older woman emerged from the double doors at the front of the resort, buttoning up her coat. An early departer heading home.

A long black car rumbled into the parking lot, and Amaris’s SUV flashed its lights twice. Alertness pulled me up straighter. The vehicle looked vintage, an old-time muscle car from the 70s, and exactly like something Caleb would steal for himself if he had to. Before we’d met, Caleb had made his way by taking whatever he needed whenever he needed it. He’d probably gone back to those old habits in order to stay alive now.

I crouched and inched closer to Amaris’s SUV as the muscle car approached it. The car’s windows were darkened, but I zeroed in on the driver and peered closer. Thank you, cat-shifter night vision. I discerned a familiar brooding silhouette, the strong nose, the square jaw, the unruly black hair, and my heart rumbled with a guilty ache along with the car’s engine. It was Caleb.

He stopped a space away from Amaris’s SUV. Her door opened, and she stepped out, arms hugging herself against the bite of the wind.

I should go. I’d seen Caleb. That’s why I was here. That and nothing else. I didn’t need to overhear their conversation, to eavesdrop and possibly catch up on what Caleb had been doing. It wasn’t my business anymore. The longer I stayed, the more likely it was that they’d spot me.

But with your hearing, you won’t need to get much closer. It was so easy to justify not leaving. I crawled closer, down nearly on all fours now, moving right up to the edge of the parking lot asphalt. Caleb was a mere fifty feet away.

Just one real look at him. Then I’ll go. Caleb was too much of a gentleman to let Amaris open her own car door. As I knew he would, he turned off his car engine and got out, his long black coat fluttering behind him like a cape as he swept around the back of his car and wrapped his arms around his sister.

For a crazy moment it was like his arms were around me. I remembered how he smelled, like the woods after a rain; how warm he was, how the beat of his heart sounded beneath my ear, how our bodies melted into each other and became one....

Is it him or Lazar you’re thinking of?

Something was beating very loudly, but it wasn’t Caleb’s heart. I shook myself from reverie and turned up toward the sound, at the star-pocked sky. Part of it was blacker than the other, and the black patch was moving, the thumping quickly getting louder.

Helicopter.

My blood raced, every muscle tensed for attack. I stood up to my full height to see it better, but it was painted black with no identifying marks.

It can’t be the Tribunal. They’d attacked us with a helicopter before, one larger than this, and Arnaldo had single-handedly, well, single-talonedly, brought it down. In our most recent attack on their facility, we’d seen no signs that they had another. Copters were expensive, and Ximon had poured all his money into the particle accelerator, the huge underground device engineered to turn the otherkin into ordinary human beings.

But I had destroyed the accelerator, and Ximon was on the run with only a few followers left to shelter him. This machine had to belong to some humdrum rich person, arriving at the resort in style.

Caleb turned toward the sound, too. In the indirect light from the resort I saw Amaris’s eyes widen in fear. Caleb said something to her, pushing her toward her SUV. She looked startled, and then turned to obey.

The air around me stirred crazily, whipped by the machine’s rotors. The black insect form of the copter was lowering itself to the center of the parking lot, exactly where a wealthy person would get dropped off. Dust and snow lifted and swirled, obscuring my sight. I focused instead on my hearing, trying to discern any other noises that might be—

Wheels screeched. Metal hit metal with a horrible crunch. Amaris screamed. Caleb shouted. I lurched forward, pulled by their cries. Closer now, I picked shapes out of the whirling snow—a large pickup truck had slammed into Amaris’s SUV, shoving it like a toy thirty feet away. Amaris had been knocked flat on her back, but was rolling over to get to her feet. Three or four figures in gray emerged from the truck.

The Tribunal. Their followers favored gray when they ventured out on a night mission. It had to be them. But how?

Another truck skidded to a halt behind Caleb’s car. Two figures standing up in the bed threw a large net, enveloping Caleb. They yanked hard, bringing him down hard on his side, thrashing like a black shark pulled from the sea.

Fury surged through me, expanding my connection to Othersphere. I welcomed the darkness inside me as power surged outward from my heart, and I shifted. My jacket ripped like sheer cotton as my chest deepened, my shoulders rippled with muscle and striped fur. I shook my tufted ears and sent my hat flying, hind claws cutting the paving beneath them like cloth, haunches gathering.

I roared. The men hauling on the net around Caleb whirled. Their heads were covered with gray ski masks, but I saw the whites of their eyes and smelled their sudden nervous sweat. Beneath that I could hear the very blood pumping through their veins. I couldn’t wait to taste it.

One of them, with good presence of mind, reached for a gun at his feet. I sprang, faster than his eye could follow, and landed on top of him, swiping at the other man beside him at the same time.

The man with the gun was slammed into the bed of the truck beneath my weight, his scream cut off as the skin of his neck gave way to my fangs. At the same time, my right paw caught the second man in the shoulder, claws slicing through tendon and bone as he twisted away, yelling.

I pulled my mouth from the limp first man, tongue hot with his blood, and bit the first place I could reach on the second man, which turned out to be his waist. His scream hit a new fevered pitch as I lifted him bodily that way, put my front paws up on the side of the truck’s cab, and shook him like a terrier shakes a rat. He stopped squirming and when the truck’s driver poked his head and the barrel of a rifle out his window at me, I tossed the body at him. The driver ducked, giving me time to leap from the truck, turn, and place my front paws on its side.

“Dez . . .” Behind me, Caleb’s voice said my name in a tone that conveyed surprise and anger. I had never thought to hear him speak my name again. I wanted to turn to him, but I had to deal with the closest threat first.

I gave the truck a shove. It rocked, and I heard the man inside yell, saw his hands scrabbling for a hold. Getting a better angle, I pushed up and over again. The weight was almost too much. I called upon the power of the earth beneath my feet, upon the black hole to Othersphere inside me, and strength flooded through me like a river. With a sudden, startling ease, I pushed the huge pickup truck over onto its side, then continued to roll it until it was upside down.

Amaris screamed, “Help me!”

The sound shredded all my sense of power. Even though figures were emerging from the helicopter, I turned away from them to see Amaris being tossed into the back of the other truck like a sack of laundry by two men in gray. They’d bound her up like a mummy with some kind of thick brown twine.

“Amaris!” Caleb yelled.

Caleb was still ensnared by the net, a typical Tribunal weapon infused with silver, which weakened his ability to call upon shadow. He was painstakingly trying to pick his way out of it, even as the truck bearing his sister peeled out, taking her away.

Ximon wants his daughter back. The head of the Tribunal in this area, Ximon was the father of Amaris, Caleb, and their brother, Lazar. Lazar and Caleb were both callers of shadow, powerful conjurers able to change the shapes and abilities of objects and of otherkin. But Amaris was even more valuable. Amaris was a Healer.

“Dez, stop them!” Caleb shouted at me.

I wanted to spring after the truck. I was bigger and stronger than an ordinary Siberian tiger, so I could probably catch the truck while it was this close.

But . . . I glanced over my shoulder, past the upside-down pickup. A silver-haired figure in white strode toward us through the spiraling snow. Ximon looked taller than I remembered, his handsome face so like his sons’, but craggier, harsher.

Four men, two on either side, flanked him, and another truck was pulling up beside them. They would be here in seconds.

“Amaris! You must save Amaris!” Caleb was half out of the net, but he wouldn’t be free by the time Ximon and his men got here.

I growled, shook my head, and jumped over to him. His black eyes were shot with gold, hot points of rage, focused on me. “Goddammit, Dez! Save Amaris! Please!”

The “please” cut into my heart. But I unsheathed my claws and sliced through the remaining metal strands on the net around him. The silver burned my paws. I ignored the pain, taking care not to cut Caleb instead of the net.

Weirdly, the truck with Amaris wasn’t racing away. With one cupped ear I followed the sound as it circled away from us and up to where Ximon and the other truck stood, in front of the helicopter.

Caleb pushed free of the net. “I can take care of myself. Amaris can’t—”

He broke off as I swiveled my ears forward and ran a few steps, using the up-turned truck for cover to see what Ximon was doing. I could hear the man inside the truck thrashing, trying to get free of his seatbelt and open his door to escape. . .