Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Novels from Top Fantasy and Science Fiction Authors

by Gwynn White

  I need to keep looking.

  27

  Be sure to get a long shot of that building over there. It’s all atmospheric and shit. Lucas Ely pointed toward the grey stone, gothic building set at the far end of a lawn—The Green, I’d heard students calling it, though right now it was blanketed in white snow and criss-crossed by footprints.

  “We can edit out the prints in post,” he added.

  “Maybe in black and white? The snow could make for nice shivers.” I stared across the snowy expanse, framed it with my hands, then made a note in the journal I carried everywhere.

  By the time I turned back to my boss, though, Lucas had already moved on, snapping out ideas and suggestions, his crew scrambling to keep up with him. Julie, his personal assistant, murmured comments into the notes app on her phone.

  Lucas would never admit it, but we all knew his hit show Secret History wouldn’t even exist if not for Julie and me.

  There were rumors among the staff that Lucas and Julie were sleeping together—but Julie had more than once told me she would rather stab herself in the eye than actually have a relationship with someone like Lucas. Besides, she was happily engaged to someone else—someone entirely out of the business.

  There were rumors about me, too—but I wasn’t interested in Lucas, either. Anyway, Lucas was all but married, too. To our work. To the show. To keeping Secret History at the top of the ratings on the channel. That wasn’t an easy task when there were ancient alien theorists with weird hair vying for the top spot.

  Really, none of us had time for a relationship.

  We needed to find something really juicy for the show. Something as good, as, say, proof that Richard III had really murdered the princes he had locked away in the Tower of London.

  Decoding the Valeria Manuscript wasn’t quite that good, but it came close.

  My lips twisted wryly.

  Hell. Maybe we’d discover it actually was written by aliens. Then Lucas and the dude with the bad hair—and even worse logic—would have something in common.

  Maybe we could do a crossover show.

  Right.

  No. I sensed nothing of Brodric there.

  But somehow I knew—if only I could find him once, I’d be able to hold his location in my heart.

  If I could find the Rift-world that had stolen my brother from me, I could get him back.

  The Rift would help me.

  If it could.

  I lost myself to dreams again.

  28

  I wanted kisses.

  I wanted public kisses, stand-in-the-middle-of-town, not-caring-if-anyone-saw-us kisses. Long, slow, hot, deep kisses.

  Light, soft kisses down his chest . . . and lower.

  Gentle kisses that started on his palm and ended with me sucking his fingertips into my mouth and running my tongue across them.

  Kisses that began with the tiniest scrape of my teeth against his shoulder and ended with my lips brushing against the pulse-points in his neck.

  Kisses with my cheek brushing against his jawline, turning until he could barely feel the brush of my lips against him, my breath sliding across his skin.

  Kisses that were as much tongue as lips, licking down his side.

  29

  I knew I was not myself.

  I was not the Rift.

  I was neither.

  I was both.

  The Rift was sentient. Whatever connected the worlds was a living, thinking, knowing creature.

  Or perhaps more than one creature, bound together to create what we perceived as a tear in the very fabric of reality.

  I’d grown up thinking the Rift was evil. Could I have been wrong, all this time?

  Were we all wrong about the Rift?

  “Please,” I begged aloud, thrashing.

  “We’re here,” I heard Rafe say, his voice falling across my forehead like cool water.

  “All of us,” Zehr added in a breath as welcome as air itself.

  “Azar?” I managed to ask. “Coit?”

  “Yes,” the fire-demon said, brushing my arm with his heated fingertips.

  Coit simply reached out and took my grasping hand in his own, his touch a calm support.

  Yes.

  Coit.

  I turned to him and smiled. “Coit, you’re my earth—you ground me, keep me centered and real. I need you, need to connect with you for this to work.”

  An uncomfortable grimace crossed his face. “Are we going to have to … you know… do the deed?”

  Tilting my head, I listened for the Rift’s answer.

  Love. Love is all.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I think a kiss will be enough.”

  With the Rift’s voice echoing through me, I reached up and took Coit’s face into my hands.

  Gently, I brushed my lips against his.

  Rift power coursed through me, tilting my head back and pushing me forward, leaping from my mouth to Coit’s, pouring from me into him and back again.

  I tasted his fear, his strength, the solid realness of him.

  His love.

  His memories of us.

  The first time I’d saved his ass. The first time he’d saved mine. All the times since then when we’d worked together, fought together, slept, eaten, traveled together.

  Love.

  And Coit was mine, bound to me as surely as my other three men.

  All love is pure.

  The Rift’s whispers pushed against me, sinking into my skin and filling me up.

  The closer we got, the more I sensed its desires. Its need for us.

  Our love.

  Slowly, I sank down to one knee. One by one, so did the other four. First Coit, then Rafe, then Azar, and finally Zehr.

  Stretching my arms out to either side, I said, “Catch me.”

  And then I opened myself to the Rift. Fully—not like I had before, not grudgingly or partially or hoping to find a way to overcome it. Instead, I simply allowed it to enter me the same way I had allowed the men I traveled with to enter me, body and soul and heart.

  As if from a distance, I saw myself convulsing, the men holding me, their hands on my back, arms, supporting my head, all to keep me from hitting the ground.

  But it didn’t matter. I was gone—outside that body, away from those concerns.

  I could travel into the heart of the Rift without fear of repercussions or reprisals.

  And this time I wouldn’t get lost in the dreams.

  30

  Brodric awoke in a dark basement. Through the tiny window, slivers of sunlight were beginning to shine, but it wasn't enough to light the room properly. A guttural growl rumbled from him as he rose to his feet, glaring at the two men who had captured him. They sat in chairs across the room, cleaning projectile weapons of some sort. The taller one walked over to the cage and knocked the end of a long knife against the bars.

  “Calm down,” he said through rotting teeth, his foul breath causing Brodric to turn his face away from him. “You ain't going anywhere.”

  Brodric roared loudly, pushing his newly discovered paws up against the door of the cage.

  But he knew that as long as they kept it locked, he wasn't going to be able to do anything. The crate was too small to shift in.

  What good is being a lion-shifter if I can’t actually shapeshift?

  Try as he might, she couldn't even turn around in this tiny cage. And as long as those men were so near their weapons, he couldn’t put his entire strength toward breaking out, either.

  “We finally got proof of the lion-shifters, man,” the smaller one said. “I can't believe it. They can't say we’re crazy anymore.”

  Is this really happening?

  Brodric thought this must be some kind of insane dream. He couldn't believe he'd allowed herself to be caught by these maniacs, these gun-toting morons.

  This was not what he’d expected when he’d gone on his own Rift-quest. He’d dreamed of magic like Larkin’s or their mother’s.

&nbs
p; Not of infection and capture.

  Who’s the real moron here?

  He shook his head in a feline huff of disgusted laughter.

  Was there seriously nothing he could do to free himself from this ridiculous cage?

  He wished with everything in him that he'd never left home, that he had been smart enough to avoid the Rift altogether. But that was pointless—there was no going back and changing the past.

  “I gotta take a piss,” the little one declared as he ascended the stairs, leaving the mouthy one alone with Brodric in this dark basement.

  Now. This would be the moment to make my escape.

  If only I could.

  31

  I sat straight up, my four men’s hands falling away from me as they leaned away, startled.

  “I found him,” I said, finally opening my eyes.

  Everything around me glowed.

  I held out my hand for Coit. “Are you ready?” I asked, scrambling to my feet.

  “Yes. I think.” He wrapped his fingers around mine and we stood together.

  The other three men lined up behind us, as if we had practiced this, and the Rift opened a window before us, into a white-walled room.

  Machines lined the walls, beeping in a way they never did in this world.

  And then someone moved into my vision.

  A woman stepped into my line of sight. She stared at me in astonishment—she could see me as well as I could see her. We stared at one another for the space of a heartbeat, and then I turned away, toward Coit. She disappeared.

  The image flickered for a moment, something moving in the background catching my attention.

  “Look,” Rafe said to Coit, pointing. “It’s a television. With news from Washington.”

  “Is that your home?” I asked.

  Coit stared through to the moving image on the screen, his gaze flickering back and forth between it and Rafe.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “What if it’s someplace else—somewhere like your world, close but not exact?”

  Rafe reached out and took the other man’s hand in his. “It’s closer than here. I can’t go through. But you can. You have to at least try to go home.”

  Coit nodded sharply once. He turned and solemnly shook the hands of the other three men, thanking them for their help.

  Then he stood to face me. “Larkin, I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything. I already know.” I cupped his face in my hands, gazing into his eyes. “I love you,” I said. “You were the brother I needed when my first one was gone. And no matter where you go, no matter where you travel through the Riftverse, my love travels with you. Don’t ever forget that.”

  He wrapped me in a tight hug. “I love you, too.”

  And when all our words were said, he inhaled deeply, glanced at me, and said, “Now?”

  I closed my eyes and held my hands out to either side, pulling magic into me from the sources my four men gave to me—earth, air, water, fire. I spooled the power-threads in my hands, and then wove them into something bigger, stronger. A tapestry of everything we had shared. With one hand, I spun a thread out of the world that held my brother, tying it to what I was creating now.

  When it was complete, I threw it into the Rift, where it landed against the window into Coit’s world and grew larger and broader, pulling pieces of everything that existed into it.

  My eyes snapped open. “Now,” I commanded.

  With a deep breath, Coit stepped into the Rift, into the tapestry of reality I had created, and through it to another world.

  From somewhere below the line of the magical window into her world, the woman I had seen earlier appeared again—but this time, she did more than simply stare. This time, she turned, shifting as she moved, changing from a human to something other—something large and serpentine.

  Wherever I’d sent Coit, it was to a world with shapeshifters.

  Someplace Rafe could have gone, after all.

  Not Coit’s world at all.

  And then it was too late to bring him back. I started to try to pull him back to me, but the Rift snapped shut, clipping the cord that bound us with a sudden pain that brought me screaming to my knees.

  Only the fact that the other three men were there saved me at all. Their hands caught me as I fell, and the pull of that fifth thread dragged me to my feet again.

  I flashed a panicked look at the men whose magic sustained me, and all three of them moved closer to hold me.

  “If we can send him through, we can follow him,” Rafe said.

  “I go where you lead,” Azar added.

  Zehr nodded. “Our paths do not diverge yet.”

  Within the Rift, Coit’s image grew smaller and smaller as he moved away—but another figure moved toward me.

  By the time Brodric stumbled through the Rift and into my arms, I was sobbing—with pain, with relief, with hope.

  The Rift had traded me one brother for another.

  But I intended to get him back, too.

  Epilogue

  I dreamed of Coit that night.

  At first I knew it for a dream, even within the dream itself.

  Then I wasn’t so sure.

  I stood behind a group of people in a room full of beeping machinery—the kind that only rarely works on Tehar any longer. These people took its continued functioning as a given.

  That was my first hint that I was no longer in my own world.

  When they first spoke, it was in some strange, garbled language.

  And then the Rift rapped against my mind, tapping to be allowed in.

  “…what you saw?” one of the men said. Like several others in the room, he wore a white jacket over his other clothing. A marker of rank, I suspected. Others wore blue pants and tunics. And some wore no distinctive clothing at all.

  “I’m sure of it. I know I can get back to it if I simply concentrate.” The group shifted and I saw the woman who spoke.

  The snake-woman I’d seen through the Rift. Not in her serpent form now, but definitely the same person.

  Had she crossed over to Tehar?

  No. I was on the other side.

  I glanced around with renewed interest at the artificial lights above me, the machines, the people with their shoes, like Coit’s, not meant for questing.

  I reached out with one hand to touch one of the beeping machines, then watched it slide through my hand as if I were made of mist.

  This room was real—but I wasn’t.

  And as surely as I’d known the Rift and I were bonded, I knew in that instant that these moments had already passed.

  This was merely a memory.

  Why had the Rift brought me here in my dream?

  A promise, the Rift whispered. No matter where you go, no matter where you travel, my love travels with you.

  Murmuring among themselves, the people around the snake-woman shifted again, and this time, I caught a glimpse of a Rift in her world.

  Not a huge one—nothing like the one on Tehar.

  But a Rift, nonetheless.

  The snake-woman stood in front of it, eyes closed and hands extended, power surrounding her not in threads, as it did me, but in sparkles.

  As the sparkles grew brighter, she shifted into her serpent shape. No one around her seemed surprised. But no one took notice of the shadowy form within the Rift, even as it grew larger and larger.

  When Coit stumbled through into that room, everyone there gasped.

  The snake-woman, startled, flashed from her serpent form back into her human one.

  Coit froze in place, staring at her.

  “Ah, hell,” he said. “I don’t think I’m where I’m supposed to be.” He crossed his arms and settled back on his heels. “I’ve got just one question for y’all.”

  When no one responded to him, his eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened as he glanced around at the other inhabitants of the room.

  “Are any of y’all werewolves?”

  THE END


  Want to read more books in the Riftverse? Check out Margo’s Shifter Shield and Blaize Silver series!

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  About the Author

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Margo Bond Collins is a former college English professor who, tired of explaining the difference between "hanged" and "hung," turned to writing romance novels instead. (Sometimes her heroines kill monsters, too.)

  http://www.margobondcollins.net

  The Zoo at the End of the World

  Samuel Peralta

  A young girl, one of the caretakers at a private zoo, looks after her charges in the weeks before a comet destroys humanity.

  They call it Gabriel’s Comet, an asteroid fifty times the size of Mount Everest, on a collision course with Earth. Time is running out—and it may already be too late to escape the apocalypse. But is there still time for humanity to find redemption?

  I don't have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I feel it particularly when I'm out in nature. It's just something that's bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it's enough for me.

  – Jane Goodall

  If nothing saves us from death, may love at least save us from life.

  – Pablo Neruda

  Prologue

  This is the way the world ends.

  If the Comet hits ocean, it ends in thunder. The enormous mass of the comet will rupture the water’s surface and send shock waves through the ocean as it hurtles toward the floor. When it hits, it will trigger a seizure of the Earth’s tectonic plates, flinging wave after wave of towering tsunamis to sweep against the continental shorelines, crashing against the walls of our cities and bringing them down like dominoes.