Othermoon (27 page)

Ximon’s smile faded. He looked almost sad. “Welcome to my little experiment, shifters.
Welcome, my children. Welcome to the end of the otherkin.”

CHAPTER 22

Caleb didn’t hesitate. Using his slingshot, he fired a red button at his father’s
smug face, intoning a perilous note. The button flared into a sphere of burning lava
and smacked into the glass. It hung there for a second, flames licking its surface.
Then it slid like a fiery slug down the window, leaving the glass unharmed.

Lazar was only a second behind. He pointed his pistol at Ximon’s face and fired. The
gunshots echoed loudly through the narrow chamber, but the bullets bounced off the
window. Bulletproof glass.

Ximon let out a sorrowful laugh. Caleb’s lava fell heavily onto the asphalt on the
other side of the tube from us and began to burn a hole down into it. “My only sons.
And my beautiful daughter, Amaris. You look so much like your mother, my dear. I’ve
been expecting you. But still. Seeing you here breaks my heart.”

All the blood drained from my heart. I was hollow.
I’ve been so wrong.
“That’s why they only shot at us with tranquilizer darts. They wanted us alive. Ximon
wanted us here.”

Amaris made a small, sad noise in the back of her throat and reached out to put a
hand on London’s furry back, as if to steady herself.

Above, a metal hatch slid into place, cutting off our escape. Siku roared up at it,
and then turned the roar on Lazar.

“I didn’t know,” Lazar said, backing away from the bear. “I didn’t know!”

“It’s true,” Ximon said, turning his melancholy gaze to me. “I saw how he looked at
you that night you burned my compound down, Amba. I heard you offer to take him with
you. I saw the hesitation in his eyes, and I knew then that one day he would betray
me. Lazar”—Ximon’s voice caught slightly as he said his son’s name—“after your brother
left us, I prayed you would carry our quest and the family name with honor. I loved
you. I still do.”

“Love is more than words,” said Lazar. “And your actions have not been those of a
loving father.”

Ximon shook his head, his eyes bright.
Were those unshed tears?
After everything he’d done, he still loved his children. Somehow that made everything
even more appalling.

Nausea twisted my stomach. Ximon had been expecting us. So everything, from the first
contact with Lazar onward, had been a trap. He’d used Lazar to get us here. I’d helped
him get exactly what he wanted.

A man in a lab coat leaned in toward Ximon. We could hear his voice faintly over the
loudspeaker. “We’re ready on your mark, Your Grace.”

“Then await my mark!” Ximon snapped. “Can a father not speak to his children one last
time?”

Siku and London exchanged desperate glances. November’s transparent ears trembled.
Arnaldo’s throat convulsed as he swallowed down his fear. Caleb stood on the bottom
step, his eyes still aglow, staring up at his father.

“What are you dosing us with, Ximon?” he asked.

Arnaldo shot Caleb a look, as if he’d been wanting to ask that same question.

“My cleverest child.” Ximon shook his head. “There was a time you called me ‘father.’
”

“Does the virus cut us off from Othersphere,
Father
?” Caleb’s tone was biting. “Is that the real reason you built this monstrosity?”

Ximon’s dark eyes surveyed Caleb regretfully. “Your mother was equally brilliant.
It was my grievous fault when I failed to convert her. I might have reached this important
point in my research earlier with her help. Then you never would have left my care
or met the Amba. But your mother was stubborn, as you are. As Desdemona Grey has proven
to be.”

Arnaldo leaned in, lips close to my ear. “It’s got to be what Caleb said—Ximon’s going
to infect us with a quantum virus he created by combining our DNA with the strangelets
and O-particles. Once we’re infected, it will alter the DNA that connects us to Othersphere.
We’ll be cut off. Then, when we go back to our homes and communities, the infection
will spread . . . to everyone.”

All the shifters, everywhere, and any callers who came into contact with Caleb or
Lazar. All of them would have their abilities, their identities wiped away

I looked up at Ximon almost in admiration as my horror grew. He’d played it so smart,
using Lazar’s compassion by telling him he’d have to kill extraneous Tribunal members
when the experiment was over. Ximon had known that would send Lazar to me for help.

And Ximon knew me too. It made me shiver to think how well. The last time he’d seen
me, Ximon had said my compassion would be my undoing. I never expected it would be
compassion he wanted me to feel—for Lazar. That, and that alone, had brought me here
and doomed my friends. And everyone they knew and loved.

“And my only daughter, my once-in-a-lifetime healer, Amaris.” Ximon had eyes only
for his children, ignoring the rest of us to lean forward and look down on Amaris.
“The praise and thanks we gave when your powers were discovered!”

“That’s all I ever was to you, a healer. Not a daughter,” said Amaris.

Ximon shook his head. “You don’t understand. You were a gift from God, until these
servants of Satan spoiled you.”

“God made shifters as they are, Father,” she said. “Who are you to unmake them?”

“I’m God’s best servant,” he said. “I understand what he requires. And in his mercy,
he has found a way for me to preserve your lives and to wash your ultimate sin away.
You will return to the fold, Amaris, and rejoin your husband.”

I looked over at Amaris in despair. We couldn’t let her fall back into the hands of
that disgusting man.

Amaris choked, fingers white on the grip of her gun. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill myself
before I let him touch me.”

London threw her head back and howled.

The sound brought me out of my hopelessness. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew
I was missing something. There was a solution somewhere nearby, if I could only see
it. I’d allowed Ximon to take the lead for precious minutes now.
Think, think, Dez!

“Once you are taken care of, we will use this accelerator to continue our work,” said
Ximon, “Which is to cut this world off entirely from the devilish influence of Othersphere.
We will thicken the veil around this world and keep it safe.”

No more lightning tree.

No more snowshoe hares grooming their ears at my feet.

No more nights prowling as a tiger, hearing a snowflake touch the earth, tasting the
breeze from the north, smelling the sap rise within the trees.

No more contact with my biological mother. I would never know her now. Never understand
the part of me that came from her.

No more worrying about setting my cell phone on fire.

The air around me seemed to contract and fracture.

I’d been so blind. The very thing I’d thought of as a curse, my tendency to destroy
technology, was the answer to our problem. I’d turned off that head-splitting alarm
with a thought. What else might I be able to do, down here where the underground nuclear
tests had torn the veil to shreds? The thing that had felt so dark, threatening, and
strange, was now the remedy.

I’d been a fool.

It lurked in the corner of my eye. I heard the deep hum of it in the earth. Its music
stirred the churning black center of power that always lurked inside me.

The metal of the accelerator tube, its wires and gears, the pipes ready to blow sickness
over us, the filaments in the lights, the triggers on the guns, the hinges on the
trapdoor above—I felt them all, saw them clearly in my mind, scratched their itch
against my skin.

Ximon was saying, head bowed, “I’m sorry I could not keep you safe, my children. I
do believe that to be my own greatest sin.”

“The lights are about to go out,” I said to my friends. “Head up the stairs.”

Ximon stood up a little straighter, dropping his hands at his sides. “What did you
say? No, they’re not.” Alarmed, he flapped a hand at the technician. “Ready the injectors!”

London turned her laser-blue eyes on me, and I swear her wolf mouth smiled.

“Mark!” Ximon shouted, pressing his hands against the bulletproof glass, staring down
at me. “Spray them with the virus, now!
Now!
”

His technicians scrambled to obey, their hands moving over the console in front of
them.

I laid my hand upon the metal tube of the accelerator. Reaching deep inside myself,
I let the darkness out.

Blackness flooded me, and I felt the
wrongness
of the metal in the tube, how it had been wrenched from the earth, melted, refined,
and shaped by hands that did not love it and could never understand it. I heard its
voice, sighing, a prisoner. But I sought out a different voice—bypassing the computers
in Ximon’s room above, the tubes in the lights, the pipes, and coming to rest on the
injectors forced into the concrete walls.

The blackness inside me flowed into the tube, flew up into the lights, and followed
the wires and pipes in the walls.

The lights went out. The hum of machinery died.

From behind the glass I heard a muffled, “No! Damn it!”

“Nice.” Caleb’s voice came through clear in the darkness. It shouldn’t have warmed
my heart, but it did.

“Hold still, everyone,” I said. “We’re getting out of here.” I brushed past Amaris
and London, moving around Lazar and Arnaldo by remembering where I’d seen them last
and feeling for their shoulders. Even in human form, my senses were sharper than normal.
I couldn’t see in total darkness, but I could hear breathing, feel how the air changed
when people moved, smell the cotton in their clothes, or in Caleb’s case as I approached
him on the stairs, the wool of his long black coat, damp now from the sprinklers.

“Let me get up to the door and cut it open,” I said. I put a hand on Caleb’s back
to move past him up the stairs. His heart was beating fast but evenly. I said, “I
think the power’s out throughout most of the complex. Amaris, don’t turn on your flashlight
unless you absolutely have to, and keep hold of London. Her nose and ears will get
you out of here. Caleb and Lazar, do the same or hang onto Siku.”

I unsheathed the Shadow Blade, feeling above my head for the metal door. “As soon
as I cut it open, move out fast. Don’t wait for me.”

I slid the knife into the cold metal above me. It sliced through it, growing colder
and happier in my hand. Below me, my friends arranged themselves. The voices up behind
Ximon’s window were still yelling at each other, muffled through the glass.

Amaris said, “I’ve got London here. We’ll go first. If they’ve got a light source
and see us, I’ll shoot them. Lazar, where are you?”

“Back here with Siku,” Lazar said. “Dez, why shouldn’t we wait for you? You need to
come too.”

“No,” I said, cutting another right angle through the metal, making my own door. “I
have to destroy the entire particle accelerator.”

“
What
?” Lazar said. “No, you can’t stay down here alone. It’s too dangerous. I’ll stay
with you.”

“No.” I was almost done. I traced the cuts with my free hand, ready for the metal
square to fall into it. “You know the complex better than anyone. You have to make
sure everyone gets out safely.”

“On the way, we’ll destroy that laboratory across from the computer room,” Arnaldo
said.

Siku grunted a deep agreement and November chirped. The only one I hadn’t heard anything
from was Caleb. Did he hate me even more now that I had failed them all so terribly?

The large metal square I had cut fell heavily into my hand. I threw it over the railing
in the direction of the accelerator’s tubing. It clanged into the metal there.

“Go,” I said, moving aside, feeling for the nearest person to find London’s soft,
wet fur under my fingers. “Stay safe.”

London yipped and trotted up the stairs through the open space I’d created.

A taller presence moved by her side, smelling of gunpowder. “See you soon,” said Amaris.

Long fingers found my shoulder, and I heard Arnaldo’s unique breathing as he fumbled
and found my hand, holding it tightly for a second before he moved up through the
door. I squeezed back and let him go.

Siku came next, walking on all fours, smelling like a fur rug left out in the rain.
He grunted, touched his nose to my hand, then lumbered upward. November’s claws tickled
me as she ran up the length of my arm, mussed my hair, and raced down the other arm
to hop back onto Siku’s back.

Somewhere, far above, footsteps clattered clumsily on the stairs. Objurers were trying
to gather up there. One of them shouted something to another, and then cursed the
darkness. “Try one of the flashlights from deep storage. What kind of black magic
is this?”

Then Lazar was there, smelling like clean laundry airing on the line. He found my
shoulders with both hands, leaned in, and pressed his lips to my chin. He’d probably
been aiming for my cheek. “This is all my fault,” he said, pulling back.

I reached for his face and found his tousled wet hair, then slid my fingers down to
wrap them around the back of his neck. “No,” I said. “He fooled everyone. Mostly me.
Keep my friends safe.”

“I will,” he said, like an oath. Then he moved along with Siku.

I waited, my heart beating loudly in my ears. Then I felt a familiar presence and
caught the scent of the forest before a thunderstorm.
Caleb.

“I messed up everything,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

His hand brushed mine, and I couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or not. His footsteps
paused. “Better go tiger. What you’re planning won’t be easy.”