Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) (8 page)

“What do you mean? Why would they have regiments here?” Zen asked.

“For us. Duh.” Tora threw the empty container in back of the truck and motioned for one of the boys to load the second one, still half full.

Zen looked back at London. “How would they know?”

London squirmed under his gaze. “How do you think?” she said at last.

“Aghhh, that bitch!” Kim shouted. “How the hell is she doing it?”

Tora ripped the keys out of his pocket and handed them to him. “Drop it, Kim. You have to drive. London isn’t in the mood.”

Kim hopped in front and Zen held open the back door while London climbed inside. She really didn’t want to be stuck back there with him, but she also didn’t want to be alone. When he started to follow her, she wasn’t going to say anything, but Tora appeared in the open doorway and stopped him.

“Nice try. You’re up front with Kim. London and I need to work on some things.”

Zen gave her a puzzled look but complied.

London breathed a sigh of relief. She knew it wasn’t over. She would have to face him eventually. Tell them both what she’d seen: Rye, betraying them. Maybe then Zen would finally open up and let his own secrets about Rye out. How could she have been so wrong? Rye had been her best friend for years. He’d given his own life to save her from the dogs outside New Eden. London just couldn’t reconcile the boy she knew and loved with the one she’d seen on that screen.

Tora closed and latched the doors behind them. She gave London an assessing look and tucked her sharp bob behind both ears. “I know the timing sucks, but you and I have some things to work on.”

“You said that already,” London pointed out. It’s what she’d just told Zen to get him to move up front. London looked up and saw Kim’s dark eyes watching them in the rearview. She could tell by Zen’s posture that he was straining to listen.

Tora frowned. “You have to stop evading your destiny. Pretty soon, they’re going to have us backed in a corner, and if someone hasn’t learned how to pull the Astral through to help us in this world, we’re not going to get away.”

“Why me?” London asked with a sniffle. She rubbed at her nose with a hand. She was suddenly exhausted and Astral work was the last thing she wanted to deal with right now.

“You know why.” Tora gazed at her intently. “You’re the strongest. Or Si’dah is, anyway.”

“Avery’s stronger,” London said matter-of-factly. Avery had been able to reveal her Astral form in this world, and to manifest as a Luna Moth guiding them to New Eden. Now, she was using the Astral to track them somehow. She had to be.

“No, she’s not. The only difference between Avery and you is that she accepted what she was a long time ago. And you’re still fighting it.”

London let out a sigh. Tora wasn’t going to back down on this. Hantu told her she would need Tora’s help to learn how to draw on the Astral even when she was awake. She thought of the large guns they’d just seen hanging casually from the shoulders of the regiments and shivered. Tora and Hantu were right. It was time for her to stop resisting and start pushing back. Rye had broken her heart, but she wasn’t going to let him or Avery do any more damage.

London wiped at her face, pushed back the newly relaxed waves of her hair and straightened her shoulders. She took a deep breath and looked into Tora’s green eyes. “Teach me. I’m ready.”

“IT’S NOT WORKING,” London said, lifting one eyelid to glare at Tora.

The Seer buried her face in her hands. “London, you have got to try to stay with me. Just relax.”

London shrugged her shoulders a few times and shook her head. She worked her jaw for a moment and laid her hands in her lap, ready to start again. “Okay.”

“Close your eyes,” Tora commanded. “Both of them.”

They’d been at this for nearly an hour, as Kim guided the truck stealthily through the most abandoned roads they could find in the Ag District. By now, they all wished they’d circled wide around Ag altogether, but it was too late. Avery was a step ahead of them and the Tycoons had regiments at the ready all over the place. Their best bet for getting out of Ag unharmed was to avoid the cleanly paved roads and wind their way through the gravel paths and dirt lanes that criss-crossed the crop fields. So far, they hadn’t seen anyone, but it was still dark. If they weren’t out of the district come morning, they could run into any number of Ag workers. And there was a good chance they’d run up against a barricade or regiment truck in the road. London needed to get this if she was going to be any help.

London did as Tora told her. She closed her eyes and began the deep breathing exercises Tora was leading her into.

“In…one…two…three,” Tora said rhythmically. “Out…one…two…three.”

London let her eyes soften. She let the beat of her heart slow to match the swell of her lungs with every breath. Just like before. But every time she tried to let her mind go, all she saw was Rye’s face on that screen.
Don’t underestimate her.

“I can’t,” she whined, opening her eyes.

Tora threw her hands up. “You’re not trying.”

“I am!” London fumed. She was so frustrated she could spit. “Every time I close my fucking eyes, I see his face!”

“Whose face?” Zen asked, turning around.

“Nothing. No one,” Tora piped up. “London has to concentrate. We’ll talk later.”

Zen ran a fist through his hair, obviously frustrated, too. London tried not to notice. She needed to put him and Rye out of her mind if she was going to do this.

“I don’t get this,” London told Tora. “No one is standing over your shoulder telling you to breathe when you get a vision. Why are we doing all this?”

“Because at first it doesn’t come easy. You have to relax enough to find the space inside yourself where anything can be. When you dream, it happens naturally but when you’re awake, you have to practice overcoming those obstacles and learn to shift your consciousness from this world to that one. Once you’ve done that a few times, it will come easier and easier and you can drop into that relaxed state any time you need to. Sometimes it will just come over you. But right now, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. What you’re asking is like asking why you can’t go straight to being best friends with someone you’ve never even met.”

London scowled at Tora.

“Sorry,” Tora offered. “Bad analogy. Just trust me and try to relax. When—when his face comes up, don’t resist. Let it be…and then push past it.”

“If you’re so great at this, why don’t you do it?” London snapped.

Tora pinched the bridge of her nose. “Because I only know how to look into the Astral for answers, that’s where I see the visions. I can’t affect it like you can.” Tora looked at her and fatigue was etched into the fine lines framing her face. “I think being Otherborn is what makes that possible in the rest of you.”

“Okay, fine. Let’s go again,” London agreed, but she wasn’t at all convinced Tora actually knew what she was doing.

“Just…think about the song. The one you wrote with Rye.” Tora’s face brightened a little as she hit on this notion.

“Not helping…” London bristled. By now, even Tora knew the story about their song, Pauly’s warning, and then his death.

“Don’t think about
him
, think about what it felt like to do something New—to create. Something in you relaxed. And something else in you opened up, and just like that, something New came through.”

London tried to slip back to that place in her memory, a space of sheer joy like she’d never known before, of limitlessness. Really, it had been more like the song wrote itself. Like they just heard it, picked it out of the swarm of sounds and melodies that ever had and ever would exist. When it was done, it was hard to believe it was New at all. It had come so easily. How could that be wrong? Be criminal?

“This road dead ends into another one,” Kim said from the driver’s seat. He leaned forward as if he could see farther ahead that way. “It’s paved.”

“How paved?” London asked, shaken from her memory.

“You know—
paved
paved. Not totally fresh but pretty good for the fringes of Ag.” The truck slowed. “I don’t know which way to go.”

“Go left,” Zen told him. “That’s west. We’re probably screwed either way.”

“Great,” London muttered.

Tora reached for her. “Concentrate. We might not have much time. This could be your last chance. Now relax.”

“Oh, okay. Because telling me we’re out of time and it’s my last chance is sooo relaxing.” London fisted her hands in her lap. But then she took a breath and did as Tora asked. Breathing in and out. Closing off everything that was a distraction. Opening herself to that same feeling she’d known only once before.

She could feel Tora in front of her, her green eyes like chisels chipping away at her defenses. Relaxing like this meant letting the Seer in all the way. That’s why Tora said she would have to trust her. London would have to let her guard down to succeed.

She took another breath and allowed her shoulders to slump. Feeling her jaw slacken, she backed deeper into herself. Let the Seer follow her here. She wouldn’t find any more than she already knew—a broken heart.

That’s when his face appeared again, as she’d seen it on the screen. This time, she didn’t resist. She studied it, no matter how much it pained her. His hair was longer now. Where it had once stuck up in messy spikes, it fell straight around his clove colored eyes. Dark cinnamon lashes softened the fox-like contour of his gaze. He’d put on a little weight too, but not much. She could see it in his face, rounding his high cheekbones and sharp chin. Probably he was eating better with the Tycoons than he ever had in his life. Pin point freckles dusted his nose, barely visible. His shoulders were still broad and square, the lean muscle beneath his dark green shirt more prominent than before. Beyond that she could see nothing else.

A broken sob rose in her like a wave and she rode it to the surface where it burst and receded away, taking his face with it. There was nothing else now. Only the darkness. London was lost in it.

Tora’s voice cut through the void to her consciousness. “That’s right. Let it all go, London.”

London
? Was that her name? In this space she almost wasn’t sure. The blackness swallowed things like names. It erased everything that once mattered. But the voice carried on anyway.

“You’re completely relaxed. Withdrawn so deeply inside yourself that you’ve come out the other side. You’ve reached the infinite you. This is the part of yourself, the part of Si’dah, that walks with the Astral.”

Through the blackness, a small, green light became visible. It swam closer until it seemed she could reach through it and touch the flowing blades of grass just on the other side.

But another voice sounded as though it were coming down a long tunnel to reach her. “You better hurry up. I can just make out something up ahead. It looks like trucks.”

And then a second, distant voice penetrated. “Shit. It’s a barricade. We’re screwed. I don’t think they’ve noticed us yet, thank goodness for the dark, but they will any minute.”

The first voice, Tora’s, pushed her deeper. “Anything you need is available to you here. Do you understand? Warp the space around you and pull it through.”

She placed a foot through the tear in the blackness and felt the soft tickle of grass on her sole. She dragged her other foot in and perched on the edge of nothing and the Astral, feeling the aliveness around her. Anything was possible here. Even…

“Trucks! Black trucks!” Kim shouted. “I think they’ve seen us.”

Even black trucks. She almost giggled at the simplicity of it all. Everything around her went black as night. The green grass hardened into ebony plating, armoring her in a cocoon of coated steel. Holding that space around her, she stepped back through to the void. Only it wasn’t a void any longer, it was the interior of a black Tycoon regiment truck.

“They’re waving us through! I can’t believe it!” Zen was shouting.

Names. She knew their names. The voices had names. Kim and Zen and Tora. She had a name, too. London. Or was it Si’dah? Either way it was inconsequential. All that mattered was holding the space around her, holding the black armor to her until the danger was gone.

Whoops and hollers reverberated through the metal plates to her. Cheers. Finally, the first voice, Tora’s, broke through to where she was holding on so tightly. “London, you can let go. Let go now.”

London opened her eyes, and for a split second, the reality around her held fast. She could see the sleek interior walls of the Tycoon truck clearly.

“That’s amazing,” Tora said as her eyes met London’s.

With that, everything seemed to ripple and it was gone. Their own messy truck bed of ration boxes and scraps enfolded her and London was back completely. She’d lost the Astral thread she managed to pull through.

“I lost it,” she said, disappointed.

Zen patted her on the back. “You saved our asses is what you did.”

She looked at Tora. “I did?”

Tora nodded, a bright smile lighting her face. “You did. You made this Tigerian bucket of bolts look like a first-rate Tycoon convoy vehicle. They waved us right through. They never even knew it was us.”

“Thought we were one of their own,” Kim added from up front.

“But it’s gone,” London said, still a tad dazed. “I couldn’t hold it.”

Tora looked at London hard. “London, I don’t know if you realize how long you were under. It doesn’t matter that it slipped. We don’t need it anymore. Ag is behind us now.”

London knitted her brows and looked out the window. Sure enough, the blur of trees had replaced that of corn stalks and cow pastures in the night. They’d made it out. Because of her.

ZEN’S HAND HUNG so close to her own that she could feel the warmth radiating from his fingers. He hooked his index finger in her pinky and London shuddered. Why did she ever go along with this? It was Tora’s idea to tell the boys about Rye separately and it made sense at the time, but now London was second guessing being alone with Zen. She needed to get this over with. They couldn’t afford a long stop, not even on the secluded, overgrown farm road where they’d parked behind the dilapidated remains of an old school building. Not with Avery and her Tycoon hounds tracking their every move.