Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) (2 page)

Here, they prayed the alligator-infested waters would stand between them and the Tycoons’ regiments. So far, it had worked. The worst part was, London couldn’t figure out how the Tycoons were tracking them at all. But if the bayou camps failed to harbor them, she didn’t know where they could turn next. The Outroaders were bound to get tired of sheltering the Otherborn raid-magnets.

When they hit the clearing, London came up short. It wasn’t just any scout standing outside of Elder Keziah’s door. She knew this man. They all did.

“Tora?” he said as they approached.

“Clark. When did you start running scout instead of tracking?”

“When Abigail took over the Capital City camp—your old home. Remember?” Clark glared without word at London and the rest of them.

London didn’t bother to look away. She stared him down until his eyes moved on. As far as she was concerned, Clark was dirt. When they were in his camp, he’d put a gun to Rye’s head and squeezed her injured arm so tight she thought she’d die. Instead she fainted. Then, he led Ernesto, the Tigerian’s King Scrapper, right to them in the woods. In a matter of days, he’d rendered her unconscious and nearly gotten her raped. She would have run him out of the bayou if he didn’t have information they needed.

“How is Abigail?” Tora asked.

London couldn’t believe the Seer would even ask about a woman she’d watched put a bullet in her brother’s head. Tora’s heart was too big for her own good.

“Better without them around,” Clark said, nodding at London, Zen, and Kim.

It had been pretty clear after the Tigerian raid that led to the original Elder’s death that Abigail would take over the Capital City camp. And it had been equally clear that she would not roll out the welcome mat for them again.

Keziah, the Elder of Bayou Camp Four, stepped outside. Her pink flowered dress was faded to white at the edges and her tightly curled silver hair was knotted behind her head. She wrapped a dark hand around Clark’s and shook it hard. Colored strings adorned her scrawny wrist, knotted at varying intervals. Keziah claimed they protected her. “Come on in outta this swamp air, scout. Tell ole Keziah what’s happenin’ in the rest of the world.”

“What about us?” London piped up.

“What about you?” Keziah stared blankly at her.

“We need to hear whatever it is he has to say,” London told her. She folded her arms and took her best unwavering stance.

Keziah squinted her yellowed eyes at London. “If whatever he says concerns you, I’ll let you know. Now scat!” She closed her planked wood door in their faces and London heard the beam slide into place behind it.

“Well, that’s just fabulous,” London huffed. “Like that old bat’s gonna know what concerns us. Anything
Clark
has to say concerns us.”

Kim tapped her shoulder and placed a finger over his lips. He gestured toward the corner of Keziah’s shack. They all followed him around back, where a sizeable crack in the rotting wood near the ground made it possible to hear the muffled voices inside.

London put her ear to the crack.

“…spotted cutting through the Ag District,”
she heard Clark saying.

“How many?”
the old woman asked.

“Half a dozen.”

Keziah’s whistle sounded through the crack.
“And what makes you so sure they’re headed here?”

“It’s those Waller kids. They’ve been drawing raids like flies to shit— pardon the expression—ever since they left the city. Twisted Oaks had its first raid ever only two months after they arrived. It’s no longer an Outroader safe zone because the Tycoons have it pegged on their map, thanks to them.”

“I don’t understand what the Tycoons would want with them kids so bad.”
London could hear the telltale creak of Keziah’s prized rocking chair as it worried the floor.
“They’re odd, never sat quite right with me. But they’re just kids.”

“No one knows what the Tycoons want with them, ‘cept maybe Tora, our old Seer. She’s the blond traveling with them. But if I were you I wouldn’t let them stick around to find out.”

“You think I should banish ‘em?”
Fear shook the old woman’s voice. Her knotted bracelets and alligator infested bayou were not going to be enough to keep her safe from the curse of harboring the Otherborn.

London heard Clark take a deep breath.
“No ma’am. I think you should kill them.”

LONDON BOLTED UP from the crack at the rear of the Elder’s cabin. She grabbed a fistful of Zen’s black shirt and tugged him outside of the camp as Kim and Tora followed. When she was certain they were far enough away not to be overheard, she told them what Clark said to the Camp Elder.

Kim punched a nearby cypress sapling. “I don’t get it. How do they keep finding us?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but that’s not what matters right now. What matters is how we deal with the visiting tracker-turned-scout-turned-assassin who’s in our camp!” London pointed out. It wasn’t enough that the Tycoons wanted to put them to sleep for good, now the Outroaders were hunting them as well.

“We leave,” Tora suggested simply. Her angled bob swung as she folded her arms.

London smacked a hand to her forehead. “And go where? This is it for us. No one else would have us even if they could protect us. Not even if we can offer them the benefit of a truck at their disposal.”

That truck had bought them clearance into every Outroader camp they’d come to. At first the Outroaders were suspicious. Then, when they realized the truck wasn’t a sign of a gang or a Tycoon, they relaxed and marveled at the four kids who had their own magically moving vehicle. They never bothered to tell anyone it ran on water. At first, they’d planned on riding into every camp and city they could find and shouting the Tycoons’ secret fuel source from the rooftops, but it didn’t take them long to figure out that it was better to let others think only they could control it. Otherwise, they might have found themselves at the mercy of a thieving mob, and they needed that vehicle more than any Outroader. Their lives depended on it. If they exposed the Tycoons, they exposed themselves in the process.

So far, every camp seemed willing to open its doors in exchange for a little motor power. Except Bayou Camp Four. Keziah and her gang would have benefited a lot more from a motorboat. Still, she gave them refuge. Bayou City didn’t offer much in the way of scraps and the Otherborn had gathered a sizeable cache of Houselands fodder in the back of their vehicle. Keziah would have done most anything to get her hands on the hubcaps, plastic dishes, bits of broken mirror, and folded tarps they could offer.

But Tora shook her head as though trying to clear a bad thought from it. “No, you don’t understand. We have to leave. The convoy Clark is talking about isn’t far behind. I can feel them approaching. Keziah won’t have time to kill us. The Tycoons will do that for her.”

“Let’s head for the truck. Now,” Zen ordered. “Just leave everything behind. It’s a damn good thing we had to park it on that far bank this side of the camp.” He started moving farther out, motioning for them to follow.

But London didn’t budge.

“London, come on!” he insisted.

“The keys! I left them back in the dreamers’ tent.” London cringed. It was her turn and she’d broken their agreement.

Everyone froze and stared at her.

“Head on and I’ll meet you at the truck. I’ll just run back and get them.” She took off before anyone could protest. She wasn’t going to let them risk themselves over her stupid mistake. After the last raid, they’d decided to keep the keys on one of them at all times. Without their hijacked Tigerian truck, they’d have been dead months ago. They took turns, just to keep everyone else guessing. This week was London’s. But the fight with Kim and the scout announcement threw her off and London had completely forgotten their agreement.

Following the edge of camp, London ran towards the dreamers’ tent. Thinking she heard a shout behind her, she looked back over one shoulder without slowing down. She hit Clark full on before she ever even realized he’d stepped out into her path.

“Where do you think you’re going, freak?” he snarled as his grubby hands clamped around her upper arms.

“We should have killed you when we had the chance,” London replied. Tora had begged for the tracker’s life in the woods outside Capital City. London was beginning to resent the Seer’s bleeding heart.

Clark leered. “Your mistake. As it turns out, I’ll be doing the honors of killing you. You’re the reason for all this trouble, whatever you are. You cost us dozens of lives outside of Capital City, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you cost one more.”

London just needed a moment’s distraction to get loose. She mustered all the energy and saliva she could and spat in the scout’s face. He let go of one of her arms to wipe his mug as she’d expected, but before she could free the other, the flat of his palm landed against her cheek with a deafening crack.

London swooned to the right, her eyes blurred with the tears that came unbidden from the force of the blow and a red wave washed over everything in sight. For a moment, she could barely see. It was only the small click of the pistol as Eric cocked it that alerted London to his presence.
Thank god for puppy crushes
.

“Let her go,” he said in his deepest, most commanding voice, which was tough for a thirteen-year-old, but Clark relented.

London darted behind Eric just in time to catch him as Clark knocked the weapon out of his hands and punched him, sending both of them sprawling to the ground.

Clark scrabbled for the gun as Eric turned over quickly to try and do the same, kicking up a whorl of dirt. But London reached into the space between her calf and her boot instead, an eerie calm collecting inside her. By the time Clark was on her again, she was prepared. She let him grab her by an arm and pull her close as he put the black barrel of Eric’s pistol to her head.

She knew, unlike the scout, that Bayou Camp Four hadn’t had an ammo delivery in more than a year. Eric had been carrying that empty pistol since they came to his camp.

“It’s time to send you back to wherever you came from,” Clark growled into her face.

London made her move. With a swift flourish she dug eight inches of sharp, scrapped stainless steel into the Scout’s neck. Blood showered from the wound across her light gray sleeve as Clark screamed and clutched at the knife. Even if he found the strength to pull it out, he was far too late to save himself. The damage was done.

There was no time for her to consider the impact of her actions—that she’d taken a life. There wasn’t even time for her to register how swiftly and perfectly she’d made the kill, too well for a girl who’d never hunted a day in her life. There was only time to move.

Eric backed away as London dashed from Clark’s side, moving swiftly toward their shared tent, which was really more a rig of poles and tarps. The boy followed her, his green eyes round as headlights.

London stopped at the khaki flaps and turned to him. “That bastard hit me,” she said. “Given the chance, he would have done a lot worse. Thanks.”

Eric nodded, but kept his eyes trained on her in shock.

Ducking into the tent, she made for her own cot in the center and sorted through her belongings. A few tattered clothes, some blankets—not much. The keys were nowhere to be found.

“L—l—looking for these?” a stutter came from behind her.

London turned her dark brown eyes on Eric. “Give me those,” she said, making her blood spattered face and sleeve as imposing as possible.

Eric swallowed and shook his head. “Not unless you take me with you,” he added.

“Are you crazy?” She glared at him. “It’s too dangerous. We don’t even have anywhere to go, Eric. You’ll be safer here.”

“I kn—know somewhere you can go,” he told her. “But you have to take me, too.”

“I’m not falling for that, Eric,” London argued. “You’re thirteen. You’ve never even been out of Bayou Camp Four. How would you know where we should go?”

“No, it’s true,” he said fisting the keys. “There’s someone else who’s like you…like the blond. He’s called The Beekeeper. Keziah used to talk about him all the time. He lived out here years ago, when she was young. He taught her about knotting the bracelets and a bunch of other stuff.”

“Really? And where is he now? I don’t have time for this, Eric!” London boomed.

“He’s at the Mesa Camp. But—”

“I know, I know. I have to take you with me.” London rolled her eyes, conceding.

“Thanks, kid,” a familiar voice cut in from behind Eric. The thirteen-year-old dreamer turned just in time to see Zen’s plate-sized fist as it impacted his face. This time, Eric fell and didn’t get up.

“God, Zen! Are you trying to kill him?” London went to her knees at Eric’s side. She was relieved to see he was still breathing.

“Just needed to put him under for a while. Come on, London. We have to go. Now.”

“Help me,” she insisted, tugging at Eric’s arm. “I promised we’d take him.”

“No way,” Zen refused. “He’s dead weight. Leave him, London.”

“But he knows somewhere we can go—the Mesa Camp. Only, you cold-cocked him before I could find out where that is exactly. So now we have to drag him along if we’re going to find this Beekeeper nut he was going on about.”

“London, I said leave him. I can get us to the Mesa Camp. We’ll figure out the rest along the way.”

London shot Zen a suspicious look. “How?”

To her surprise, his large gray eyes broke away and a blush crept over his chiseled face. “Uh, remember that girl I spent the night with last week?”

“Maggs. How could I forget?” London was getting tired of running off the girls Zen used to chase away memories of Avery. It complicated their ability to get on with the Outroaders. And if there was one thing the Otherborn didn’t need, it was more complications in their lives.

“Yeah. Well, her family’s from there. Said she got tired of the same old scene and hitched a ride with her cousin on a supply truck stopped outside of Mesa City. The driver had to piss and they climbed on board. Hid under a weatherproof blanket. Got as far as the Ag District and jumped off. Walked the rest of the way.”