by Gwynn White
Rafe and I stared at each other for a long moment.
“What the hell was that?” Rafe finally asked.
“Why are you here?” I asked
“I saw you in the bar. Looks like you could use some help. That’s all.”
“And you weren’t held in my spell?”
“I slipped out as soon as your friend started making toasts.” The werewolf’s wry tone suggested that although he might have agreed with Coit, he knew better than to announce it in that particular setting.
“This time I wove a Truth spell and pushed it through my palm into his, adding in just a hint of a holding spell as well.
“Ouch.” He pulled his hand out of mine but the spell had taken hold.
“Why are you willing to help us?” I asked.
“I heard you asking for a guide before your buddy picked a fight with the whole bar. Thought I could help out.”
Truth, but not all of it.
“And?” The spell was wearing off but I hoped that it had at least one more answer’s worth in it.
“And I’m drawn to you.”
That was the entirety of the truth—I could tell, all the way down to my bones, with a certainty that sank into me like water into the parched ground.
And I was drawn to him, as well, though I wasn’t going to say so aloud yet.
Not until I had some idea of how that outside force played into it—and where that power came from.
For now, though, he was our best hope of escaping.
“Lead on, Rafe,” I said, gathering up my horse’s reins.
He grimaced apologetically. “Can’t take the horses. You’ll have to carry your gear.”
“Damn,” Coit said. “We just got them horses, too.”
“So we’re not that fond of them.” I tried to sound pragmatic, but I was sure it came out sounding harsh, instead.
I’d had lots of practice giving things up.
The horses couldn’t matter to me.
Nothing that didn’t lead me to saving Brodric could matter.
When we’d grabbed our packs, Rafe set the horses galloping with a slap—and with the scent of wolf he carried, I suspected.
“If they’re fast enough, they can get home,” I consoled Coit.
I didn’t believe it.
Neither did Rafe, from the way he snorted, but he didn’t say anything, choosing instead to wave at us to follow him.
He led to us to a narrow alleyway between two stone buildings—one of the few alleys in the town, as far as I could tell. Definitely the foulest, if the smells emanating from it were anything to go on.
“In here,” Rafe said, leaning on the closest wall and pointing.
“Nasty,” Coit observed.
“It’ll hide our scent, though.” I glanced at Rafe. “Right?”
“Exactly.” Rafe went one step further, though. He followed behind us into the alley, unbuttoned his pants, and sprayed a layer of urine over the path we’d just taken.
I could hear the wolf pack getting closer.
“Just in time,” I whispered.
Rafe held a forefinger to his lips. His wolf-scenting duty done, his face melted before me, fur and pointy ears receding as I watched.
When his shift was complete, a handsome young man, maybe mid-twenties, stood before me, his dark hair and brown eyes the only remnant of the wolf-shifter who’d been there moments ago.
As the wolf pack streamed by, most in full animal shape at this point, Rafe leaned back into the shadows, one arm outstretched across me to encourage me to do the same. I didn’t encourage Coit. I kept one hand pressed against his mouth to make sure he stayed silent and to push him back into the shadows.
With my other hand, I wove a tiny distraction spell and flicked it at the entry to the alley. When I looked at it, I could see the tiniest shimmer of blue around the edges. When other people looked at it, they would simply want to look away—not desperately, but with just a nudge.
We stood like that for a good ten minutes after the pack had packed.
When I finally took my hand away from Coit’s mouth, he said petulantly, “Damn, Larkin. Why’d you do that? I wasn’t going to say nothing.”
“Just making sure.”
Pragmatically. Like with the horses.
Keeping what could help me.
Ditching what wouldn’t.
And never admitting that I cared about anything other than finding Brodric.
3
There are things everyone knows about the Rift.
It’s aware.
Sometimes it knows what you’re thinking.
Sometimes it can make you think things you weren’t.
It’s dying.
And it’s likely to take us all with it when it goes.
We’ve all known it for a long time now. Some of us know it better than others. It slides into our dreams at night whispering to us, those of us that can hear it making horrific suggestions, urging us to murder our neighbors, take their belongings, kill their children, rape their wives.
Make everything ours—then tear it all down.
Blow it up.
Destroy the entire universe.
But sometimes under that, there’s another voice.
That one whispers in the dark, too. But it says, Save me. Savemesavemesaveme.
Maybe it’s something in the Rift, maybe it is the Rift. But those of us who hear it also feel the call to save it, to rescue it from that other, louder voice urging us to destroy and kill.
That’s why Brodric went off on his own Rift quest. He wanted to save whatever was in the Rift, keep it from dying when the Rift explodes.
Or implodes.
No one is entirely certain what the Rift is going to do.
But we all know it’s going to be spectacular.
4
Rafe led us from the alley carefully, sticking to the shadows. “The horses will lead them the wrong way for a while,” he said.
“The horses are likely to head home—we picked them up two towns back,” I replied. No need to mention that we hadn’t precisely paid for them. “So that’s the farthest they’re likely to lead the wolves astray, right?”
Rafe’s slanted glance suggested he hadn’t missed the way I’d glossed over getting the horses. “Yeah. But I doubt they’ll make it that far.”
Coit mumbled something from behind us.
“What’s that?” I asked sweetly.
“Nothing,” he grumbled.
“Right, then,” Rafe said. “We’re ready to head into the tunnels. We can talk more there.”
“Tunnels?” Coit said, horrified. “Like, underground and enclosed and dark? Ah, hell, man.”
My huge brawler was claustrophobic.
Figures.
We set out cross-country, leaving the roads behind.
Among the varied problems of going on a Rift-quest is that the Rift lies, whispers to people, convinces them they’re doing the right thing even when they’re not.
That, of course, was also a problem with finding a guide this close to the Rift. For all we knew, Rafe the Wolfman was a bleeding nut bag. His comment about the tunnels concerned me, because in all our searches, we had not yet come across anyone who said anything about tunnels leading into Brochan City, and I wasn’t sure I believed they existed.
But we’d already sent our horses on to be devoured by wolves and I didn’t see much option at the moment but to follow him.
I gave him a long, level look, then finally said, “We came with you. I expect you to make sure we live.”
Rafe and Coit grinned at each other at that.
“It’s a bit of a hike, but we’ll get there before dawn,” Rafe said.
“Assuming the werewolves—the other werewolves—don’t catch us before we get there.” I raise my eyebrows at Rafe.
“I don’t think they will. But we better get moving, just in case.” Rafe
I heaved my pack up onto my back and settled it.
Well, at least a few days
on horseback had been a nice change.
“Another effin’ hike,” Coit grumbled. I glanced down at his shoes. They were too soft for the kind of traveling we been doing—made of some kind of fabric and rubber, the same kind I saw all the time in the city marketplaces back home. The kind of shoes that came through the Rift, not the kind that we made here. Not the kind that everyone born in this world knew they might someday need.
Here, we made boots that could take a pilgrim all the way to the Rift.
Because, as the saying went, eventually everyone comes to the Rift.
Now it was my turn.
The farther we got away from the werewolves’ village, the more we left behind any signs of inhabitants. True, there were old, abandoned villages. No one wanted to live this close to the Rift, though.
As a general rule, we were taught to avoid Rift-cursed villages—the ones haunted by more than just the memory of the people used to live there.
Sometimes, in a village that close to it, the Rift brought a person’s nightmares to life.
And sometimes, those nightmares stuck around a lot longer than anyone expected.
A long time after you died, the monsters from your mind survived.
I was so busy thinking about how the Rift created monsters that I almost missed the sounds of the actual monsters pursuing us.
Luckily, Rafe had a wolf’s hearing and was paying attention, watching for any signs of pursuit.
We’d been walking along the remains of a once well maintained road, taking advantage of the mostly clear path, when Rafe paused and waved us closer.
“Wolves,” he whispered almost silently, and pointed both in front of and behind us.
“How did they find us so quickly?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not the whole pack. They probably send a few scouts out in every direction.”
“Fight?” Coit asked.
I glanced around. For the most part, we were in the flatlands leading to the city—if there had still been lights there, we would have been able to see their glow from our position. We were in a slight depression—the closest thing this landscape had to low ground.
The wolves had chosen to close in around us here because it gave them a slight tactical advantage.
“No other choice,” Rafe answered Coit. Then he kicked off his shoes and shucked his shirt. With a glance at me, he simply unbuttoned his pants, then pulled them off, as well.
I might have been more interested in this process if not for the fact that I was concentrating on spooling magic into my hands. I haven’t had a chance to rest since the bar, and that magical expenditure had left me magically exhausted, if not physically. I would be able to use magic still, but the longer I went without sleep, the more that magic would pull its vitality out of me. Eventually it would burn out. And if I were careful, it might burn me out, too.
“The usual?” I asked Coit. We had fought together often enough at this point that our styles blended almost seamlessly.
We would have to see how Rafe fit in.
With a nod, Coit pulled out the two knives he carried in sheaths at his hip. Though I could see a tightness around his eyes that suggested he was either anxious or slightly hung over or both, I didn’t say anything.
I was too busy watching Rafe in fascination as his features seemed to melt and reform into that half-shifted Wolfman figure similar to the one he’d presented to us on the road earlier. Though a full wolf shape was smaller than a human, in this form he actually grew larger.
His hips and thighs seem to rotate, turning into hunches as his feet and hands grew longer and broader, sprouting claws at the tips.
No, this form was definitely more menacing than the one he’d been wearing when he stepped out in front of us on the road. If I had seen this thing coming at us, I would have attacked first and ask questions later.
Coit and I drew together, back to back, each of us facing a different direction in the road. As if we had practiced it, Rafe stepped in as well, angling himself to be able to see both sides of the road with a simple turn of his head.
They came at us in their full wolf forms, flowing over the slight rise in the land.
“Two on this side,” I said.
“Four here,” Coit replied.
“Probably one sent back to report to the main pack,” Rafe added tersely.
Six now, a whole pack later. Damn. This seems like an awful lot of work simply to get back at a Rifter who called them a name.
With any luck, there would be time to ponder that later. Right now, we had wolves and coming. I spun my magic up high pushing it out for me in a lightning flash of color that flickered and forked, slicing through the air until it hit both of the wolves.
One of them froze in his tracks, but my magic was weak, and the other yell and left a way from the singeing pain.
Seeing that I was down to one attacker, Rafe spun around to help Coit with his four. I tied off the holding spell, hoping it would last until we dealt with the rest of the threat, and turn my attention to the other wolf, who now approached me with more warily, hunkered down and stomping back and forth rather than jumping for me.
He was looking for an opening. I hoped he didn’t know enough about magic to realize what that misfired spell in his direction meant. I steeled myself to pull the magic from my own body, ready to ignore the pain that was about to Lance through me.
When I sent my senses questing for that magic, though, I found another source.
It seemed to float behind me, deep and blue and calm. Time slowed down around me as it always did when I tapped into the supernatural elements that allowed me to use my genetic abilities.
My own magic—the only magic I’ve ever drawn from—was lighter than what I felt now. In the magical equivalent of dipping a toe into a pool of water, I reached out for just the tiniest taste. And before I knew what was happening, I was swept into that magic, as if into a raging river that 1 me around and around in circles, leaving me dizzy and soaked.
In between one heartbeat and the next, this liquid magic submerged my paranormal senses. Everything about it was completely sensual, almost sexual. My nipples hardened and even in the midst of battle I grew wet and slippery inside and out. It was all I could do to keep from moaning in ecstasy. My eyes rolled back in my head and I closed my eyes for only the length of that heartbeat.
When I opened them again and focused on our attackers, it was with complete concentration and precision.
My lupine opponent sensed the sudden change in the air around me and leapt toward my throat.
I barely had to spool anything. Blue crackling magic shot out of me as if propelled by one of the firearms that periodically fell through the Rift, slamming so hard through the Wolf that he didn’t even have time to make a sound. And instead of hanging in the air, as he would have if held by one of my usual spells, he fell to the ground into pieces, sliced in half by the power that beam.
I didn’t have time to consider what it meant. Checking to make sure the other wolf was still contained in my first spell, I turn to help Coit and Rafe, only to find that they had already dispatched to of the four attacking wolves on their side and were each engaged with the other.
Rafe had taken his full wolf form while I wasn’t looking and for an instant I feared that I wouldn’t be able to tell him apart from the other wolves. Then I realized I knew exactly which wolf he was—the one with the bright blue aura glowing around him.
Somehow, Rafe was the source of that deep well of magic I had tapped into.
Seemed only fair that I should use it to help them.
I took a step toward the side of the road, trying to get a clear shot at the other wolf as the two of them circled and snapped at one another.
A sound halfway between a grunt and a cry from Coit pulled my attention away from the circling animals. He was on his back on the road, a large gray wolf standing on his chest, seeming almost to laugh at him.
My reaction was instantaneous. Without even thinking about it,
I flashed more of that blue lightning through the air.
Will shapes magic. All my life, I’d been taught that. I knew how to spool up spells and control them. I knew that it took effort to create and direct a spell. I knew that magic had to be coaxed out, defined and directed.
In that instant, everything I knew fell away from me.
I did not consciously direct the energy I slammed into the Wolf.
I didn’t have to.
When the magic bolt hit it, the wolf froze without making a sound.
And then it exploded—not like something hit with fire, but as if every molecule of its being had liquefied and blown apart in the same instant. A fine mist of blood droplets coated everything in a ten-foot radius.
The Wolf fighting against Rafe stopped its headlong dash toward him, straightening its forelegs and skidding to a halt. The other wolf, still trapped in its magical equivalent of the cage, rolled its eyes around to look from one of us to the other.
With the flick of a single finger, I blew apart the wolf attacking Rafe.
Now Rafe and Coit both watched me warily, but when I turned around to the final Wolf I said, “Go back to your pack. Tell them what’s happened here and that if any of them follow us again, I will destroy all of you. Do you understand?”
The wolf couldn’t answer, but I held his gaze as I dispelled the holding energy to set him free. He nodded once and then backed away from me without breaking eye contact.
As soon as possible, he turned tail and fled. I hope that would be the last we would see of him or his pack.
I turned around to find both men watching me with wide eyes, Rafe back in his naked, human form.
“So,” I said, rubbing my palms together both to reabsorb any leftover magic and to eliminate blood spatter from them, “I think that went fairly well. Are we ready to go again?”
They both nodded, and Rafe began putting on his clothes again. I couldn’t help but notice, however, that despite having pulled in my magic, I still saw that blue aura around him.