Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) (22 page)

London smiled in spite of the fact that he was clearly unhappy about it. “I’m going to tell Elias. I think he should come with us.”

She started down the tunnel toward the hive, the drone of bees filling her ears, calling his name. “Elias! Wake up! We have to get going. I— I think you should come.”

But he met her outside the cleft before she could reach it, the bees falling off of him like droplets of water. Both hands curled around her arms so tight she could feel the circulation cutting off. His face was plastered with worry. “Go! Go now! I will do what I can to hold them off.”

“What?” London said, clawing at his fingers. “Elias, you’re hurting me.”

His eyes dug into hers. “I cannot follow you, but they won’t have me. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I won’t be able to hold them back for long.” Behind him, the hive was beginning to grow restless, feeding on his anxiety.

“I don’t understand,” London was saying when she heard the sound of muffled pounding, like stomping boots somewhere on the other side of Elias’s rock walls, traveling down the tunnel toward them. Then, the beat of fists against the door. Her eyes filled with terror and Elias dropped his grip on her. Time was up. They were too late.

Before she could say another word, the man before her wavered, a ripple coursing through his body like a wave of energy, and then he sucked into himself, shrinking in midair until all that hung before her was the tiny, fuzzy bisected body of a golden honey bee.

Within a moment, it was lost among the dozens of others just like it as they began to pour out of the cleft in a frenzy.

Elias had shifted.

HER FIRST INSTINCT, her
only
instinct, was to run. But where? She was sandwiched between two terrors. A swarm blocked her path to the precipice and the Tycoon regiments blocked her path out the door. For a second, she just stood in her place, stunned. Until a burning prickle of pain in her hand, the one still clutching the pack strap at her shoulder, roused her from her daze. Then, instinct took over.

London whirled away from the cloud of bodies massing before her, fragments of it shooting off in all directions, bees whizzing by like bullets in the wind. Her feet carried her back down the tunnel into the main chamber where Zen and Kim were heaving another stand alone cupboard up against the only door into Elias’s rooms.

Behind the wall of spare furnishings they’d created and the rough wood of the door itself, London could hear Ash’s voice booming. “Open up, Elias! This is no time to be fickle!”

But as soon as the words met her ears, they were swallowed by a much louder, deeper sound—that of hundreds of thousands of bees filling the room.

London’s eyes caught Zen’s just as the door began to bulge and rattle on its hinges. They had seconds, maybe—if they were lucky, before whatever,
whoever
, was on the other side of that door busted through. And a few rickety cupboards and chairs were not going to hold them back.

For a moment, everything slowed down until it seemed the world was still around her. Zen’s gray eyes were shining in the feeble light as he leaned against the cupboard they’d just crammed into place. They sparkled with a dozen questions at once, all unspoken.
Where’s Elias? Are you alright? Rye was telling the truth, wasn’t he? Why would he do that?
But the ones that burned the brightest were far more personal.
Do you still love him? Do you love me?
And her own dark eyes answered back, soundless.
Gone. I’m fine. Yes, he was.
But more than that, she knew he could read the love that echoed in her gaze.
Yes…and yes.

Behind Zen, Kim was turning, sprinting towards Tora, but to London it was as if his legs moved through a jar of Elias’s honey. Tora was reaching out for him and together they were charging toward her, their motions slow as a drip of molasses. All around, the room grew darker, thicker, with the bodies of Elias’s bees.

But in that moment, there were only Zen’s eyes and her own, locked in silent conversation.

It was the splinters of wood flying all around him as the door broke loose that caused Zen to finally turn his head and break the spell. Suddenly, the world flooded with sound and everything began to rush at her. Black clad limbs, arms, legs, booted feet, helmeted heads, were pushing through the narrow doorway into the chamber, like Tycoon spiders.

Zen was pushing off the cupboard, spinning on his heels to make for the tunnel. “Run!” he screamed at her, his face red with the effort. And then he was swallowed in a dark cloud of bees, a frenzy that had packed nearly every available space in the room, blinding them all and the regimented men who were breaking in.

London more felt than saw Tora and Kim crash into her. Somewhere through the din of angry insects, she heard Kim shouting, “Go, London! Go!”

Spinning, she sprinted back toward the mouth of the tunnel she’d only just left, pushing through bees like a tide of tiny bodies. They were so dense as they moved around her that she lost almost all sense of direction, even in the cramped quarters of the Beekeeper. She couldn’t be sure she had found the tunnel, until she was certain that she would have hit stone already had her aim been off. She just kept running, feeling the echo of her steps pounding to either side of her and just behind, as she imagined Kim, Tora, and Zen were all in quick pursuit.

She pressed her lips tight against the pelting of bees, pulling air desperately through her nose, afraid to open her mouth for fear she’d swallow them. She felt hot, close, and crawling. She could feel the bodies tangling in her hair, catching along the cuff of her sleeve and the strap of her pack. But she’d stopped feeling the pain long ago, the sensation of needle thin stingers piercing her hands, her neck, her face. Now, beneath the pressure of them all around, she felt only a tingling numbness and a faraway burn.

There was no sun to light the way, but the desert moon was a different thing entirely than any other moon. It hung over the mesa with a startling clarity, inside a swath of stars, blanketing the desert hills and rock in a ghostly glow, laying it out like bones before them. It was this light that first pierced the fog of bees and gave London some sense of place and time. She knew she was reaching the precipice as that sheen began to bounce off the bodies flying around her, and then of patches of stone, and finally off the very air itself as the mouth of the cave opened before her and sky and stars all crashed into her field of vision with an urgency she wasn’t prepared for.

There was no time to think. No time to question,
What next?
No time to turn and be sure Kim and Tora were there also, that Zen was pressing in behind. There was only the cool, fresh air on her skin, like magic, setting all her bee stings aflame with new feeling. And the gibbous moon above her, a welcome friend in the fray. And the spread of flat-topped hills before her, gleaming like cropped mountains in the night. And the ground waiting more than forty feet below, glassy with possibility in the moonlight.

Had there been time, she might have considered her options, called stairs into being from the rock to carry her down, edged her way carefully to the cliff. As it was, she barely perceived the rim of rock beneath her feet, barely noticed as it left, falling away from her, barely cared that an empty chasm of forty-odd feet existed between herself and freedom. She simply felt that sharp stone corner bite into the tread of her boot as she was leaving it and let the momentum of her pace do the work as she flung herself over the edge of the precipice and out into the waiting night.

THERE’S SOMETHING BETWEEN falling and flying that London had no words for. It’s heavier than floating and lighter than sinking, a weighted illusion of suspension that exists when you are midair with your eyes closed. She reveled in it. And then her eyes flew open against the rush of air and she saw the ground approaching and all her illusions were shattered. There was no chance for Tora’s relaxation methods, but something inside her twisted around, just the same, and found that entrance into the Astral, that point that exists at the edge of space and time. It punched through and gripped with everything she had, ripping out anything that could save her.

She had only a second more to register what was opening beneath her, a second to contort herself, mid-air, in order to lessen the impact. She wasn’t even sure how she knew it had to be done, she simply did. It was just like Bayou Camp Four, when Clark was all over her, and without a moment’s notice she’d acted, out of some part of herself that knew better even if it shouldn’t, even if she had no reference for it. She’d pulled her blade then and found his weak point, that soft space between the neck and clavicle, a steep downward thrust into muscle and vein that, if managed just right, is sure to kill. It was something Si’dah might know. A woman whose people relied on her for the hunt, who looked to her to supply the hidden knowledge about where to stalk and how to strike, to take down the kill that would feed them.

And this, this was also something Si’dah would understand. Her world was one of valued and protected natural resources. A world of shadowy jungles, open tundra, and crystalline waters.

Maybe it wasn’t London who was controlling her body now, releasing the pack with a desperate fling, straightening her limbs into a rigid arrow, tucking her chin tight against her throat as she elongated her neck, preparing to slice the surface with her hands and take the brunt of the impact along the hard curve of her skull as the rest of her flowed behind like a ribbon of silk.

Maybe it was Si’dah who knew about lakes and pools and bodies of water. Maybe it was Si’dah who knew how to dive. Maybe it was Si’dah who was saving her life.

With her chin tucked, she couldn’t see the rippling surface of the waters anymore, but the unmistakable sense of wet crested over her fingers and relief flooded her as she poured herself easily into the waiting desert lagoon. But this was no shallow reach of tropical sea. It sunk deep into the rock hard sands, dark as ink in its depths, and glowing like silver along the surface.

London curled inward within the water, righting herself, and then soared back up toward the surface, reaching out to pluck at her boot strings. She pulled desperately at the heavy boots, tugging them off and kicking hard to make her ascent. When she broke the water she simultaneously took the biggest, most coveted inhale of breath of her life. Between the bees and then the pool, her lungs were desperate for oxygen.

Beside her, London saw the white reflection of moon skitter apart as a disturbance under the water troubled the surface. Suddenly, the relief of her situation changed to dread.
She
had known how to dive and how to swim because she had Si’dah. But what of her friends? Certainly Zen and Kim had never experienced a lake or pond before, or even a pool, and she had no idea if Tora had.

Splashing in circles she bobbed up, swallowing air, and then dove back under the water to her right, fighting the bubbles on her way down to where someone was flailing wildly. Hair soft as feathers waved around her fingers, dark and deadly looking under the water. Kim. She clutched at it and pulled until her other groping hand caught hold of his arm. Sliding both hands under his arms, she heaved his weight toward the surface, praying his frantic thrashing would help and not hinder her rescue effort.

Within moments they emerged in the night air and Kim gasped and heaved, retching water as she drug him along to the edge where Tora was already crawling up onto land, drenched head to foot and shivering. London pulled at Kim’s arms until he could rest, head above water, along the shallows. She half shoved him toward Tora and said, “Take him! I’ve got to go back in and look for Zen.”

Before Tora could respond, she was already slinking into the water, diving under and popping back up like the otters she’d seen on TV, searching frantically for some sign of where he hit. Kim was long and lithe and not so hard for her to pull up, but Zen’s bulk would be another story and she was terrified that she wouldn’t be able to make the surface with him on her own, if she found him at all.

She was under water, searching, when the first bullet streamed by on her left. Then a second one submerged to her right, trailing rapidly down just in her peripheral. London turned back for the shore where she’d left Kim and Tora and skated along just under the surface, until it was too shallow to hide her any longer.

What had felt so graceful and swift in the water was instantly turned to a clumsy drag out of it. With her sopping clothes hanging off of her and no shoes, she scrambled up the smooth bank, her feet pounding the packed, cracked sand beneath them as she followed Tora and Kim up ahead, running for the cover of a nearby rock formation that jutted out from a neighboring mesa. Above them, regiments at the precipice fired with abandon, until a shout stopped them.

But London didn’t have time to look back and see who had given the order to cease fire or even wonder why. She was too grateful for the opportunity to escape to wonder how or why it came. Beneath the precipice, she, Tora, and Kim were easy targets, their wet bodies and clothes glinting in the moonlight. Their cover was nearing, but was still far enough to give the regiments an advantage. If they’d kept shooting, it was unlikely they’d keep missing.

She rounded the rough stone border, thick patches of scruff scratching at her ankles. A low overhang of stone up ahead allowed them to duck into the shadows, scurrying along its length like rats until it ran out. They crouched beneath it for a moment to catch their breath and London turned to Kim and Tora.

“I…I have to go back,” she managed between gulps of air. “Z—Zen. He’s back there s—somewhere. In the water still.” Her teeth had begun chattering hard, slapping rapidly against each other as she sucked in breath. From cold or shock, she couldn’t say.

Kim squeezed his eyes tight, unable to speak yet. He’d almost drowned in the body of water London had warped and his face was pale and ragged.

Tora tucked the pack against him for support, which had miraculously missed the water when London released it in her dive, and which she must have grabbed before she and Kim started running. She kept shaking her head at London. “N—no,” she said, her own teeth hammering against one another in the dark under the rock. “C—can’t.”