Through the miasma I examined the filing cabinets. It wasn’t hard to find the one marked Shifters, A–K. I caught one claw under the handle and pulled. Locked. No time for finesse. My paw pads were getting raw and sparks flew down from the ceiling to singe my fur.
I shoved the entire cabinet against the wall with my shoulder, as easily as I could shut a door in human form. The cabinet crashed onto its side. I hooked two claws through the handle and yanked with all my strength.
The drawer shot out of the cabinet. I coughed, eyes smarting with every blink. A large wooden beam, black and wrapped in flame, plummeted from the ceiling and landed on my tail.
I yowled, wrenching it from under the blazing timber. Agony echoed down every vertebra in my spine. I kept my breath shallow and ignored the pain, as I’d ignored the brace. I’d worn that torture device twenty-three hours a day for almost three years. I could stand this.
I scanned the exposed folders and saw a few that began with G. Garcia, Enrique. Gardner, Jill. I had to trust that mine was in there somewhere. I took the entire section from G to K in my mouth, my incisors sinking into the cardboard folders at either end.
Several smaller shafts of wood showered down around me in a spark of orange fireworks. I couldn’t see the window; the smoke was too thick. Even the front wall, though it had to be fully ablaze, was obscured. I had to find the opening I’d made and leap back out soon or I’d be dead. Above me the ceiling cracked loudly and groaned. It’d be falling all around me any second.
I shut my eyes and let my whiskers expand, turning my ears to catch any change in the almost uniform roar of the flames. They sounded now almost like the sea.
The sea. How nice it would be to go for a swim. I stumbled and shook my head to clear it. The lack of oxygen was getting to me. I had to focus. But images of cool water and the crash of waves kept intruding. My head drooped under the weight of the files I carried. Why not just put them down and plunge into the ocean?
Caleb.
He was still out there, about to take his revenge, possibly at the cost of his own life. I couldn’t let that happen.
Forget the stupid ocean.
If I didn’t get the hell out of here now I’d never see Caleb again. Caleb, who loved me.
The faintest shift in the air current struck my whiskers. At the same time I caught a tiny alteration in the sound of the flames. They weren’t as thick over there, where the air came from. I turned my nose in that direction and tried to see, but it was no use. I’d have to jump without knowing what I was jumping into. I’d have to trust myself.
No time like this instant.
I jumped, using every last ounce of my failing strength, my muscles crying for oxygen. My right shoulder brushed something boiling hot, then I was out. I stumbled and rolled as I landed, but I kept hold of the folders in my mouth. I only dropped them when I’d made it to the center of the parking lot, a safe distance from the fire. Then I took in great lungfuls of sweet, cool air.
Something poked at my throbbing tail. I yowled and whirled to see Siku, a hulking brown mountain silhouetted against the flames, nosing my tail, concern creasing his furry brow. London and November stood on either side of him, clad in their spare clothing, tiny and frail next to his bulk.
“Holy shit, Dez,” said November. “You look like that beat-up cat Pepe LePew’s always chasing because he thinks she’s a skunk.”
I snorted and coughed, my version of a laugh.
“You okay?” London walked up and looked into my eyes. “You’ve inhaled a lot of smoke. Better shift.”
I shook my head and turned to look out over the desert, toward the airstrip. A lean figure in black flung something at a huge winged bird. The bird swooped away, and a blaze of lightning cracked upward from the earth, shaking the sky with thunder. So Caleb had tired of Arnaldo interfering with his plans.
A hundred yards beyond them, the black sedan had pulled up to the airplane. An eternity had seemed to pass while I was inside the burning building, but it must have been only seconds.
Arnaldo arced away from Caleb, unhurt, and clearly unwilling to get any closer now that he’d been threatened. I got to my feet. Caleb still had to get to the airplane. Tigers were built more for stealth and strength than speed. But I was faster than a human, and I was going to get to Caleb before he did anything dumb.
I looked back at Siku, London, and November. Siku lifted his nose in acknowledgment. London was going through the files at my feet, reading their labels in the light of the blaze. She jerked one out of the pile and waved it at me. “Yours, okay? Now go.”
Presiding overhead, the moon ran its rays like a cool, soothing hand down my burned flanks and singed whiskers. Maybe it was my imagination, but I felt a renewed strength. My mother would have said it was the moon goddess. The old me would’ve said it was strictly psychological. The new me just gloried in the feel of it.
Gathering every ounce of power inside me, I sprang forward.
My strides ate up the ground. Caleb hadn’t looked back since Arnaldo winged away from him. So he didn’t know I was coming. Right now that was for the best.
I leapt over a low cactus without breaking stride, my claws helping me find purchase in the unstable desert sand. Every grain lay outlined before me in the moonlight. My paws made soft crunching noises as they hit the ground for a split second and then lifted away. A snake, asleep under a rock, slithered off with a sandpaper glide as I rocketed past. I’d catch up to Caleb in moments.
Up ahead, Lazar was removing the wooden blocks around the wheels of the small plane as Ximon shoved Amaris into its hunched doorway.
“Leave her!” Caleb’s voice cut through the stillness. “Leave her or you won’t live to regret it!” He was running flat out toward them, his right hand clutching the small stuffed elephant.
Lazar turned to look at his brother for a moment, his face creased with pain. Then he turned, climbed up into the plane, and shut the door. Caleb was only twenty yards away, and I only thirty more behind him. I heard a click from the plane, and the engine puttered to life. The propeller began to turn.
“No!” Caleb put on a burst of speed, but the plane slowly taxied away from him.
He extended his arm, desperately reaching for the door handle. Through the window in the airplane’s door I saw Ximon’s face, creased in a nasty, dazzling grin. Then it disappeared as two hands grabbed him from behind and shoved. Inside the plane, Amaris lunged toward the door and struggled to get it open. Ximon grabbed at her as the plane circled away from us, and I lost sight of them.
The door opened, and I slowed, uncertain what was happening. I could see a small feminine hand on the door, and a narrow girl’s foot in a white sneaker dangling. Inside, Ximon shouted “Faster!” But as the plane picked up speed, Amaris fell through the doorway, rolling awkwardly and crying out in pain.
Ximon grabbed for her, but too late. The plane’s speed quickly left her behind. Ximon stuck his head out of the open door, white hair flapping in the breeze from the propeller, his clear blue eyes wide in shock. Amaris, her hands and knees scraped and bleeding, struggled to her feet.
Caleb came to a pounding halt as Amaris got to her feet and ran to him. “No!” he shouted. “Get out of here, Amaris. Run!” The plane was facing down the runway now. Ximon shut the door and the aircraft picked up speed, about to leave the ground.
Amaris stopped, uncertain. Caleb gave her a shove back toward the burning buildings of the compound, holding the elephant aloft. “I have to do this,” he said. “Now go! It’s not safe.”
She backed away fast, her eyes wide with horror. “Don’t, Caleb, no!”
He still hadn’t heard me approach. I was a breath from pouncing upon him.
“I call on you, come forth from shadow!” Caleb’s voice was deeper than I’d ever heard, more commanding, elegant, and vicious. It sent vibrations shuddering down my skin, and I knew whatever he was calling forth was greater and deadlier than I. The lifeless stuffed animal in his hand seemed to stir.
I didn’t hesitate. No way was I going to let him risk his life with whatever-it-was. He might think revenge was worth it, but I knew better. And, selfishly, in the back of my head, I didn’t want him to kill Ximon, who maybe held a few secrets from my past inside his head. I sprang toward Caleb’s upraised arm and swatted. The elephant flew from his grip as he recoiled.
I landed, then bounded again, grabbing the elephant in my mouth as it rolled along the ground. It writhed in my grip, much larger than it had been moments before. Something like a horn or a tooth stabbed the inside of my mouth, a scaly wing flapped frantically, and one long, black arm reached up, clawing with too-long fingers at my eyes. The elephant was becoming whatever its shadow form was in Othersphere. I had only seconds before the transformation was complete.
“Dez, no!” Caleb’s eyes were still flecked with gold, but he looked pale, tired, slightly stunned as he often did after exercising his power for too long. He held his hand out to me. “Put it down; let me stop them.”
As an answer, I sank my claws into the squirming thing growing in my jaws, and tore it to pieces. For a moment, I felt flesh and bone give way. Then it was nothing but white bits of stuffing, puffing into the wind and covering my tongue.
“What have you done?” The command flooded Caleb’s voice, shuddering around me like a great wind. Then he shook his head, as if fighting something off. “No,” he said with a kind of desperation, though I wasn’t sure what he meant. “No, not like this.”
“Yes.” His voice echoed again, only this time it wasn’t his voice, but something harsh and grating. He drew himself to his full height, but he looked even taller and leaner now. I blinked at him. Were those reptilian
scales
covering his skin?
He shook his head and closed his eyes, and when he opened them they were strangely tilted and pure gold, the pupil gone. He smiled, lips thinning, teeth sharpened to dangerous points. His hands were black, the nails like yellow dagger points. He was no longer Caleb, but rather some avenging demon in human form, a dark specter ready to exact any price to get what he wanted.
Fear made my tail lash. I’d seen Caleb struggle internally before, when he got tired and overreached himself with calling. Morfael had as much as admitted that it opened Caleb up to being overtaken by things in Othersphere. But it had never changed how he looked, never altered his voice so drastically. Now it seemed he was being possessed by the very thing he was calling. I’d shredded the elephant, so it was coming into the world through Caleb instead.
Amaris looked at the altered face of her brother, screamed, and tried to run. But she stepped on the hem of her long gown and went down in a heap. She whirled so as not to have her back to the creature.
“What . . .
who
are you?” she asked.
The demon looked down at its fingers and scales, and the mouth that used to be Caleb’s smiled at her. “I’m the one who watches, who conquers. For years I observed him. I knew that one day the temptation to call upon me would become too great.”
I spat out the remains of the stuffed toy and gathered all my remaining strength. I wanted to leap upon the demon, to fight. But how could I do that and not hurt Caleb?
The Caleb creature regarded me with scorn and reached out one hand. “Return.” His voice pulsed through me. “Return to shadow from whence you came. . . .”
The words poured into me, trying to propel my tiger form back to Othersphere. I roared back with all my might, ears back. The vibrations from my throat interrupted his. I felt my own voice, like a shield around me, holding his back.
The thing that was no longer Caleb smiled a horrible, warped grin like a death’s head. “Now he regrets defying you and calling me,” it said. “Now that he is weary and it is too late. He wishes he could return to you, but he cannot. Go back to where you belong, little beast.” He pointed a blackened hand at me again. Waves of power rippled over my fur. “I will swallow this moon and all its blood. Go, and leave this world to me.”
I jumped at him to push at his chest with one paw, claws sheathed, trying to jolt Caleb back to this world. He stumbled back two steps, but did not fall. This creature was stronger than Caleb, stronger than I was.
Caleb had to be somewhere in there, between this world and shadow. I had to bring him back somehow, find a way to make him fight. But tigers couldn’t talk. The answer was obvious. I hesitated only a moment, weighing my old fears against my love for Caleb; then I closed my eyes and stopped my growling.
“Go back,” said the Caleb thing. “Return to your feeble human form, I command you!”
And I did as he commanded. I allowed him to sweep my tiger form back into shadow. Then I stood there, nothing but a naked teenage girl with windblown hair and a full-body blush. Still wrapped around my waist was the belt and scabbard holding the Shadow Blade, as if I had never shifted. The bruises that had been at my waist for years thanks to the brace were gone.
The Caleb creature was staring at me, spiked eyebrows frowning over golden eyes.
“I love you, Caleb,” I said.
It drew back, puzzlement twisting its almost familiar features.