Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series)

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ASTRAL TIDE has been a new and amazing journey that I could never have made alone. First, a big thank you to my second set of eyes, friend, beta-reader, proof-reader, and general advisor, Sheryl Babin. You are always there, for every call, text, or email. I don’t know what I’d do without you!

And a massive thanks to my cover artist and fellow author, Carrie Butler. I leaned on you for a lot more than just cover art, and you never complained. Also, your work is incredible!

Another shout out to both my editor, Jena O’Connor of PracticalProofing.com, and my formatter, Jessica Lewis of AuthorsLifeSaver.com! You two give new meaning to the phrase “dynamic duo”.

As always, I’m grateful for the support and encouragement of family and friends, whose contributions are too many to name here. And the exceptional support of my husband and children, who have traveled every bumpy step of this journey at my side.

Finally, I have to acknowledge my readers. Every blogger, every fan, every person who took time out of their lives to support my work and let me know how much they enjoyed it, I am eternally grateful for your presence in my life. You’ve kept me going, and more importantly, writing.

THE INFECTION,
HER
infection, was spreading. London counted ten cots and two pallets all together in the dreamers’ tent, aside from their own four. That was three more than their record-breaking nine at the last camp. And they’d only been here six weeks.

A cloud of gnats buzzed around her mess of black curls and London swatted at it, perturbed. It was more humid here than in Capital City, if that could be believed. She should have known when they referred to it as
Bayou
Camp Four. Apparently, there wasn’t enough solid ground this far east to hold the Outroaders together. They’d broken up into four separate camps that dotted the watery terrain like the strings of cork bobbers they cast across the swamp each morning in hopes of hooking breakfast.

The Otherborn hadn’t just come to the fourth of the bayou Outroad camps, but it was the fourth camp since they first left Capital City. When they fled the last camp, Twisted Oaks, in a rush to outrun the raid, they’d made such a wide arc around their old walled haunt to get here that London never even realized they passed it. Most days, Capital City was just a dark and dreary memory to her. Sometimes there was the dream of a Scrapper’s paradise. Sometimes a nightmare of armored trucks and hopeless living. The Outroads were harsh, it was true. There were no ration tickets here to pave your way. No sedative-laced cigarettes to blunt the pain. But at least they were free.

“Wow, twelve!” Kim remarked, sneaking up behind her.

London turned and smiled. “Crazy, right?”

Kim shook his head in disbelief. “Remember when that first kid pulled us aside in the camp outside of Pillar City? You were so freaked out you almost shit your pants!” Kim dissolved in a fit of laughter, slapping London roughly on the back of the shoulder.

“Watch it,” she warned with a scowl, giving him a shove.

Kim settled down, but a small smile of satisfaction played on his face. He’d pulled his long, inky hair into a tight ponytail at the nape of his neck. He looked good these days, London noted. Real good. The fresh air, and Tora, had done wonders for him. Love was the best makeover.

“And I wasn’t that freaked,” she said. “You weren’t any better. At least I thought of setting up our own tent to separate the dreamers from everyone else in the camps.”

Kim shrugged. “It was a good idea, I’ll give you that. Makes the other campers feel a little less ill at ease around them. I wish they’d stop acting like it was some kind of disease.”

“Isn’t it?” London replied, her eyes dancing darkly across the twelve empty beds lined up before them. Since it started a few years before, dreaming had only brought her heartache. Even her Other, Si’dah, the being she appeared as in her dreams, had suffered.

The Others were dream shamans from distant worlds who used the Astral as a go-between, a portal, through which they thought they could soul jump from one world to the next, the same way they traveled within the Astral from one plane to the next. They were reborn here, looking human, expecting to know themselves on the inside straight away. Instead, they lost themselves among the new incarnations. Only adolescence began to bring on the memories as strange recurring dreams, waking their true souls, the Others, from a fifteen-to-seventeen-year slumber. It had since been a bumbling trek back to the truth of who they were and what they were supposed to do: take down the Tycoons, rebirth the Astral in their world, establish a new order. Nothing short of saving the world.

“Come on, London,” Kim said. “Don’t tell me you’re still buying into that paranoia? You should know better—we should all know better—by now.”

But the despair had draped itself across London’s mind again like a final curtain. What she knew was that Si’dah had cost her everything that was dear to her in this world, however little that was. Carrying Si’dah’s soul around like some kind of parasite had led one of her dearest friends to betray her. It had forced her to leave her mom behind. It had brought Pauly, the only father she knew, to a brutal end. And worst of all, it had delivered Rye into the hands of the enemy. What’s more, she couldn’t just forget Rye and move on like a normal person, because Si’dah, her Other, was just as sick with love and longing for Roanyk as London herself was for Rye. No matter how she’d like to, Si’dah would never let London forget about Rye.

London turned to Kim. “What the hell do we know?” It wasn’t really a question.

Fortunately, Tora sauntered in before he could launch into another one of his stop-being-so-negative lectures. She wrapped her arms around him from behind, kissing the side of his neck. “Hey, London,” she said.

“Hey.” London busied herself with a wadded blanket on one of the cots.

She didn’t begrudge her friends their romance, but it was still hard after seven months to see Kim with Tora. Every time they laughed or kissed, her heart wound itself into tight, little, hungry knots. Watching them, she couldn’t help thinking of Rye. It was enough that she’d lost the love of her life, and apparently of Si’dah’s, but she’d lost her best friend, too. Zen tried to comfort her. They’d bonded over their mutual loss. He still believed Avery was dead, which was better than letting him in on the truth: that she’d sold them out as Otherborn to the Tycoons for a better life in New Eden. And for all any of them knew, Rye was dead, too. But deep down, London couldn’t let herself believe that Rye was truly gone. And no matter what, Zen would never be Rye. No one would.

“London’s going to her dark place again,” Kim informed Tora.

“Screw you, Kim,” London snapped. “Not all of us are living happily ever after with our true loves, okay? Some of us left our hearts back there in New Eden. Some of us lost the only thing that matters in this pathetic excuse of a world!”

Kim crossed his arms, breaking away from Tora’s hold. “Oh, so we don’t matter to you anymore?”

“That’s not what she meant and you know it,” another voice broke in. It was Zen, looming in the doorway of the dreamers’ tent.

“Go ahead,” Kim said. “Defend her. You two aren’t helping each other.”

“Like you are?” Zen moved to London’s side, squaring off with Kim. It wouldn’t come to blows, it never did. But if he ever decided to use the brawn that came so naturally to him, Zen would flatten Kim, no matter how fast the latter was.

“Would all of you just stop it?” Tora boomed, pushing herself between the three of them. She turned her jade eyes on each of them until they broke her gaze and the tension shifted. “We have bigger problems coming.”

London threw her hands up. “Great. The psychic wonder is at it again.” Her tone was annoyed but she knew deep down that they never would have made it this long or this far without Tora’s visions.

“I’m serious,” Tora told her, but before she could explain, an Outroader dashed into the tent. It was Eric, the younger boy who’d drug his own cot to the dreamers’ tent only two weeks ago.

He was doubled over as though he’d sprinted the entire length of the bayou to get there. His muddy hair fell over his face in shaggy layers and he was breathing hard.

“What is it?” London asked him. “Eric, what’s going on?”

He was a good kid who’d taken to following her around like a lost puppy ever since they arrived. He was too young for her, three years her junior. She didn’t date thirteen-year-olds ever—not even when she was thirteen. But he was nice and helpful. When he started dreaming himself, he acted elated to know he’d be sleeping in the same tent as her.

“S—” he tried and failed.

“What?” Kim asked, leaning in to hear him.

“Sss—” Eric stammered.

“Eric, deep breaths. Now tell us slowly. What’s up?” London put a hand on his shoulder until he was looking her in the eye.

“Scout!” he managed at last.

Tora shot London an
I told you so
look and London rolled her eyes. But there was no time to rib the Seer. Scouts rarely made it to the bayou camps. Only in the case of a dire emergency. They needed to get to that scout fast and find out what was going on. The four of them sprinted from the tent toward the little south-facing clearing where the Camp Elder kept her ramshackle hut. The bayou camps didn’t bother moving around like the Capital City camp did.

London had only one thing on her mind as she ran.
Not another raid.

They’d moved from one camp to another since they left Capital City and its Outroaders behind. The Pillar City camp, then Twisted Oaks, now here. So far, the Tycoons had managed to catch up with them every time. Outside of Pillar City, Tigerian trucks rambled right into the middle of the campgrounds, shooting indiscriminately into the crowd of running Outroaders. Keeping a dreamers’ tent on the fringes of the camp borders had saved them. They were in their own truck and beating pavement before the Tigerians ever figured out they were really there. They’d been settled and living outside Pillar City’s walls for three months with the Outroaders. Long enough to think they were safe.

They went to Twisted Oaks because someone in the Pillar City camp said the Tycoons didn’t know about it. It wasn’t stationed directly outside a walled city, but instead had sprung up in the gnarled groves east of Pillar City and north of Capital City. Kim wanted to keep heading west, but London and the others convinced him they needed a camp like Twisted Oaks—off the Tycoon’s radar.

For a while, she thought they had actually found a place that couldn’t be tracked. It was slow going, picking through the patches of concrete and wilderness to get there. They had two and half months of relative peace before they brought the first raid in Twisted Oaks’ history to the camp. By then, the Tycoons had switched tack and sent black plated vehicles with outfitted guards to take them in. It was another narrow miss.