Othersphere Read Online Free Page A

a nondescript spot on the pavement. Two men in gray dragged Amaris there, still bound in thick brown rope, her mouth now stuffed with cloth.
    Caleb was frowning at them over the wheels of the upside-down truck. “What is that they’ve got her tied with? It has a vibration I’ve never sensed before. Something’s wrong.”
    My growl deepened. Something was indeed horribly awry. Ximon had Amaris and was about to do something to her. I couldn’t believe he’d kill her. Her healing ability was too valuable, and in his own twisted way, he cared for her. But I gathered all my strength, ready to spring. Caleb noted this and got ready to throw the chewing gum.
    Ximon said. “Now.”
    That one word pulled me, as if someone had lassoed my gut. Ximon dragged out the word, singing it, howling it.
    I reeled, claws scrabbling at the metal side of the pickup truck. My vision blurred. I could barely see Caleb staring at me. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear him. A deep chord of what might have been music filled my head, something so harmonious, so beautiful, I could focus on nothing else.
    Beside me stood a huge picture window, cut vertically out of the air between me and Ximon. It was as if someone had laid the world’s biggest, thinnest flat screen between us, connected to us at the outer edges. It cut right through the body of the pickup truck. A breeze warmer than the winter Nevada air wafted out of it, bringing with it the scent of dew, soil, and leaf.
    The view through that window was of an expanse of uncut white stone decorated with gnarled trees grown in the shapes of winged beasts, overlooking a limitless dark forest cut by a winding river. In the distance lay sharp sheer peaks, taller than any mountains should be. I breathed deep the sweet night air, and everything else receded into the distance. I was home.
    A colossal moon rose, its light sending silver sparks down the river, glinting off waterfalls, polishing the white stone I stood on with a strange and potent glow that penetrated my every pore and filled me with its power. Fear, pain, uncertainty—all fled before the radiance of that moon.
    It was not a moon from this world, but another. Its milky surface was shot through with dark veins, which seemed to pulse, as if inside it lay a vast heart filled with the blackest blood.
    I knew that moon. The memory jolted me from my reverie. It was the moon I’d seen about a month ago, when my biological mother had briefly crossed over from Othersphere, the world that lay closest to our own, to beg me to return with her.
    Something tugged at my arm and called my name. A voice that I loved, a voice that could not be denied, reached out to me. As if through deep water I saw Caleb, his black-clad form wavy and indistinct. All my troubles poured back, filling me up, drowning out the hypnotic energy of Othersphere.
    I snapped back to the resort at the foot of the Spring Mountains in Nevada to see Ximon, his face strangely feral, shove Amaris through the window to Othersphere.
    Amaris fell through it with a strange, buzzing snap, the rope wrapped around her body tugging at her oddly, as if guiding her through. She landed on the moonlit ground in the other world, eyes wide with terror, pale under the strange light, but alive.
    â€œNo!” Caleb leapt over the upturned pickup truck, shooting like an arrow for the doorway to Othersphere.
    He slammed into it, as if into an invisible force field. He exploded backwards and skidded twenty feet, head bouncing against the parking lot with an audible thump, and he did not move. I tried to lunge toward him, but was held fast where I stood at the edge of the window. It tethered me somehow, and as long as it stood there, Ximon and I were both stuck.
    How could a connection between Ximon and me create a portal to Othersphere? It made no sense, and the buzzy nearness of the otherworld was crowding out other thoughts, muddying my thinking. Maybe I