Othersphere (22 page)

 

The council meeting was taking place in a lodge off of Pine Creek Road in the Eastern Sierra Mountains, not far from the town of Bishop, where Morfael had briefly been hospitalized a couple of months ago after the Tribunal attacked his first school.

We were piled into the SUV, jammed in tight together along with our gear as we turned down Pine Creek Road, passing brown desert scrub and the tiny mining community of Rovana. Ahead, the Eastern Sierra escarpment rose abruptly, brownish red near the bottom, transitioning quickly to thick white on the peaks, still thoroughly coated in February snow.

We wound higher; the road got narrower, and trees green with pine needles sprang up around us. At the narrow turnoff we spotted a large man with his long black hair tied into a ponytail keeping watch from the shadows. He was barrel-chested and wearing only a flannel shirt and jeans in the below freezing weather. Probably a bear-shifter.

Arnaldo spoke to him, dropping the name of the hawk-shifter Alejandro, member of the local council, and the man waved us past. The dirt road led to a snowy meadow turning pink in the last rays of the setting sun. It bordered a thick pine forest and a large building made out of rough-hewn logs. A battered sign in front read: BEAR CREEK SPIRE LODGE. CLOSED FOR WINTER.

The parking lot was already full of trucks and SUVs, and the shuttered windows on the lower floor leaked a lot of light. Two people at the entrance, a man and a woman, eyed us suspiciously as we piled out. Arnaldo ran up to speak to them. As I stepped out into the crisp air, my crazy hearing caught the sound of applause coming from the lodge and then a familiar voice speaking.

London's wolf-shifter ears were almost as sharp as mine. “Is that November talking?” she asked. “This I've got to see.”

We clattered up the wooden steps to the lodge, and the guards waved us through, giving Morfael wary glances, but saying nothing to stop us.

The reception area just inside was deserted, including the check-in desk and the long tables set with plastic cups, water pitchers, and large plates of half-eaten meat and cheese.

Brighter light filtered through the closed double doors to the left, along with November's voice.

“If a rat-shifter like me can hang out with Siku's family of bears, if Siku and I could fight alongside a wolf, an eagle, and a fricking tiger-shifter . . .” she was saying as we headed for the doors.

Arnaldo pushed the doors open as we entered a large room filled with people on folding chairs, all circled around a worn podium, where November was standing without a microphone, still speaking. “. . . then why can't all shifters of all tribes come together just once to destroy the enemy that wants to destroy us?”

Applause broke out, but not everyone was clapping.

At our entrance, heads turned. Next to Arnaldo, London was striding with her three dire wolves trotting around her, then me and Caleb, Amaris, Morfael, and Lazar shepherding Luis and Cordero. We'd agreed in the car to let Arnaldo get the council's attention, and then for London to tell everyone about our trip to Othersphere and the threat Orgoli presented. As the “purest” shifter who had actually been to Othersphere, London would be considered the most trustworthy and legitimate among those of us who had been there. She'd protested a little at first at taking on such an important role, but with encouragement from us all, particularly Amaris and the unspoken pack support of her dire wolves, she'd finally said yes.

As callers and Tribunal-connected people, Morfael, Caleb, Lazar, and Amaris would be considered less trustworthy by a crowd of shifters, and so agreed to remain more in the background unless they were needed. I, as a pseudo-shifter, would hover somewhere in between.

There had to be over a hundred people in the rough-hewn ballroom, some standing along the walls or sitting in the aisles, and most of them seemed to be holding out phones, tablets, or laptops so that friends and family back home could watch and listen in as well.

“It's the tiger-shifter!” a woman exclaimed nearby.

“Those aren't wolf-shifters,” someone else whispered as the dire wolves passed.

People on the far side of the room started to stand up to see what the fuss was about, and November frowned, looking around for the disturbance, until her shining brown eyes landed on us.

“Holy shit!” she said, which caused a ripple of laughter and more heads to turn.

“Sorry to interrupt,” London said, projecting her voice almost too loudly in her nervousness. “But we've got news all of you should hear.”

“Not all of these people were invited here,” November said. “And not all of them are shifters.”

“We're all otherkin,” Arnaldo said. “One way or another.”

A woman with short gray tufted hair in a big blue flannel shirt and jeans stood up from her chair next to the podium, and I recognized her as Jonata, the lynx-shifter who represented the big cat tribe in the local council meetings. “Desdemona? It's good to see you. We were just about to hold a vote.”

“Before that, we need to tell you about an impending attack,” I said.

“Attack?” a man asked from the crowd.

“From the Tribunal?” someone else said.

Arnaldo and London had reached the podium. “Kind of from the Tribunal,” Arnaldo said.

“But kind of not,” said London.

“Let us explain,” I said, moving up near the dire wolves, who stood around London like a furry phalanx.

“You don't have any right to speak here,” November said. “You're not even really a shifter.”

“That's funny,” I said. “You were just talking about working alongside a tiger-shifter. Did you meet another one somewhere I haven't heard about?”

“Let them talk,” said a man with a piercing voice, seated next to Jonata. I recognized his hooded eyes and long face. It was Alejandro, the hawk-shifter from the local council who'd helped Arnaldo gain custody of his brothers while their father was in rehab.

“Agreed,” said the small woman next to him, pinning up her slippery black hair. She smiled at me, and I smiled back in recognition. It was the rat-shifter from the local council, who along with Jonata and Alejandro and a few other bear and raptor-shifters, had fought beside us in the desert outside Ximon's particle accelerator, where Siku had died. “These are the young people who engineered the Tribunal's great defeat near Mercury, Nevada,” the rat-shifter continued. “And who burned down their compound in the Mojave desert before that. I think they've earned the right to speak.”

Next to the rat-shifter I saw the wolf and bear council members look at each other, frowning, but they didn't object. They were probably curious to hear what we had to say before they shot it down. The rest of the audience, roughly equally male and female, murmured and moved restlessly in their chairs.

“The majority of the council agrees to let these people speak,” said Jonata, moving a few feet away from the podium. “Ms. Anderson?” She leaned in toward November, who hadn't budged from where she stood. “Please allow your friends the podium.”

“Friends!” muttered November, but she shuffled to the side.

“Yep,” London said in a low voice only those of us near the podium could hear. “We're your friends whether you like it or not.”

Arnaldo moved up to the podium, pointing to a spot on the floor to indicate where his younger brothers should take a seat. Lazar ushered them over there and sat down next to them. Amaris followed suit. Caleb stood off to the side, leaning against a wall along with a bunch of very tall, broad-shouldered people who were probably bear-shifters.

“Fellow shifters and guests,” Arnaldo said. “We've uncovered a new kind of threat, one that comes not just from the Tribunal, but from Othersphere itself.”

The murmuring in the room ascended to a rumble. London moved to take Arnaldo's place. Her knuckles gripping the sides of the podium were white, but her voice was strong and more assured with every word. “We were just there, in Othersphere. We've seen the threat. We know it's real.”

“What are those?” asked a man seated nearest the head wolf-shifter. “They're not like any wolves any of us have seen, and we know wolves!”

Sharp laughter and shouts of “Yeah!” came from the group around him. They must be the wolf-shifters, one of the most distrustful tribes because they'd always been specially targeted and visible, often mistakenly labeled werewolves. They were another good reason to make London our main advocate. If we could win over the wolf tribe, we'd win everyone.

“These are dire wolves,” London said, placing her hand on top of the head of the black dire wolf seated on his haunches next to her. “A species that lived here in America about ten thousand years ago. They followed me back from Othersphere.”

Growls of disbelief reverberated off the walls.

“Bullshit!” shouted the wolf-shifter leader. His thick reddish hair stood nearly on end, his sideburns bristling. “They're some new kind of dog the humdrums have bred so they can pretend to be ordering wolves around.”

“They look a lot like the drawings of dire wolves in the Tar Pits Museum,” a woman's voice said from the wolf crowd.

Arguments broke out all over the room, loud enough to pull Jonata back to her feet and slam down the wooden gavel sitting on the podium. “Quiet!” she shouted.

The noise lowered to a buzz. “We have voted to let them speak.” She turned to London. “Tell your story, Laurentia.”

I'd almost forgotten that London's given name was a long Latin mouthful that translated into “wolf.” London nodded to Jonata gratefully, caught Amaris's encouraging eye, and then said, “It began when a girl from our school was kidnapped. This is Amaris, and she's the daughter of Ximon, the notorious Tribunal Bishop you all know and hate.”

“You brought a Tribunal member here?” The wolf-shifter council leader stood up, incredulous. “Traitor!”

Someone else called out “traitor!” too and others started to argue with them. The group of wolf-shifters was a roiling sea of confusion and anger. I wondered if any of them were London's estranged family.

London watched them, breathing hard, and then her ice-blue eyes narrowed in a look I'd seen in her wolf form just before she attacked.

“Let me speak!” she barked.

As if on cue, all three of her dire wolves threw their heads back and howled.

The wolf-shifter crowd went silent as a windless night, every eye wide and staring as the three great wolves sang a keening, haunting cry of wild nights hunting under the moon, of pack and cub, of loss and birth. My skin pricked with gooseflesh at the melancholy, sacred sound.

London placed her hand on the head of the black dire wolf, and all three let their yowls trail off. Every person in the room sat still and quiet.

“As I was saying,” London continued. Her voice was still strong, but there was a tiny smile at the corners of her mouth. “Amaris left the Tribunal, along with her brother Lazar, because they wished to escape their father's abuse, and to learn the ways of the otherkin. Then Amaris was kidnapped by Ximon, or so we thought . . .”

And so London told the story of how we'd figured out that Ximon really was possessed by a creature from Othersphere, how Morfael had opened up a window to that world, how I'd commanded the storm, and how the calling abilities of Lazar and Caleb had allowed us to track Amaris to her prison, and to defeat the deadly creatures who tried to kill us.

“You would've loved it there,” I muttered to November, who was listening with an expression that managed to combine severe irritation and wonder. “London's wolf form was as big as pony, which means your rat form would be . . .”

“. . . huge.” November's irritation increased, but her eyes were full of longing. “Oh, man, that would've been cool.”

“We missed you,” I whispered. “And we could've used your unique brand of encouragement, let me tell you.”

“Oh, shut up,” she snapped, but quietly, as London continued to talk. “You can't win me back with your feeble attempts at flattery.”

“And I can't believe you weren't there to witness London and Amaris holding hands,” I said.

She gaped up at me, the irritation wiped off her face. “You telling me Wolfie's finally getting laid?”

I waggled my eyebrows at her, and she snorted. “That explains why she's all alpha and in charge tonight.”

“Maybe,” I said, still keeping my voice down. “I think her friendship with you taught her a lot, too.”

She snorted again, but with less conviction. I nodded toward a tall, handsome bear-shifter couple along the wall behind Caleb. The man had familiar deep-set eyes, sharp cheekbones, and long straight black hair.

“Are those Siku's parents?” I asked November quietly.

“Yeah,” she answered. “His brother and sister are seated in the row beside them. Great people.”

“We'd love to meet them,” I said. “If that's okay.”

“Actually,” November hesitated, and for a moment I worried she was going to refuse. But her cheeks colored pink, and she said, “Actually, they asked to meet all of you, too. I think it might be nice for them, to talk with you guys. About him.”

“It'd be nice for us, too,” I said.

She didn't respond, listening to London talk about finding the tiger-shifters in their cells. But warmth was spreading through my chest, and I felt happier than I had in a very long time.

London was doing a great job. November even stepped up when London asked her to confirm that she'd seen Orgoli in the house on Cherry Drive. That seemed to convince a lot of people that Orgoli actually existed, and that he was indeed using the Tribunal and Ximon.