by White, Gwynn
I was fine with that.
Better an honest distance than an insincere closeness.
That’s what I told myself, anyway.
But now I had to go to a party with her there.
As usual when faced with an uncertainty like that, I felt a twinge at the thought of navigating yet another social situation. Numbers made sense to me. My friend Leo was the one who understood the equations of people. I never would fully comprehend why Leo had chosen me to befriend, but people were unpredictable. That was the point of all this.
Much more unpredictable, even, than the gas and oil wells I worked with as a petroleum engineer.
Anyway, speaking to Jane in a social setting without Leo there was dangerous. Look what had happened the last time I’d tried it.
No, I decided as the driver slammed the door and the shuttle pulled away from the hotel. Better to sit here and check out the colorful buildings flashing by outside the window than to risk saying anything that Leo might not approve of.
I struggled to the surface of myself, then dropped back down into the Rift-dreams.
25
Every bullrider knows the ride is magic; they all know it, though they can't always say it. They know the numbers, too, most of them, the good ones. They know that a bull weighs just about 10 times more than a man—assuming they're both average. But they're never average. Every cowboy who comes in here's got something special, even if it's the same special the last cowboy came in scraping off his boots.
They know that sometimes their gloves mean more than their boots, though in the natural order of things, they generally have twice as many boots. They know that eight seconds is the magic number. They know that ninety points will bring in a purse but seventy-five or eighty will keep them in.
Cowboys know that number magic; they run those numbers every day, count them in their hats and on their hands, follow that purse magic from city to city wherever it goes. Cowboys' magic numbers are clean and precise, even when the bulls aren't.
It's a magic incomplete, though. That number magic plays a shell-game with money; it's there, but almost never where it should be.
I can tell this one's a counter, leaning on the rails and staring between the bars into the arena. He watches the numbers, follows the bulls. He has counting fingers, tapping on the edge of his chaps—not anxious, just watching. Counting. Adding up who knows what—a debt to pay off? A girl to marry? In any case, he's the one to watch.
He's flowing magic through those fingers.
By the time they're fifteen, most cowboys know bone magic, too. They count it in snapped wrists, taped ribs, blown knees, backs that don't stand straight anymore before they’re thirty. They count it when it rains when they're young, even more when they are old.
Cowboy magic is in the blood: soaking into the dirt and disappearing under thousands of pounds of hooves. It's all in your head, all in your mind, but sometimes I forget to tell you it's all in your brains and your brains are all in the mud and the dirt and the blood.
Cowboy magic is in the flight. Cowboy magic is on-the-fly.
But rodeo magic is not cowboy magic.
Sometimes the cowboys forget that
But rodeo magic is in the dirt, soaked in blood and shit and matted with hay until it's swept out, away from the grieving families.
And back to those of us who need it.
“Help me,” I managed to mutter aloud, pulling out of the dreams enough to beg.
26
My hands were still wrapped around the two guns when I woke the next morning. Of course, I knew that guns weren't necessarily all that useful when killing werewolves. Or vampires, or ghouls, or demons. Fairies tended to hate them, but I really didn't run up against that many of the Fae in New Mexico or Texas. As far as I knew, they preferred the forests of the Pacific Northwest.
But every one of those creatures can feel pain, and that's what guns are good for: making monsters think twice about coming at me.
Last time we hunted together, Nadine had preferred a hella-sharp blade, slightly curved and completely wicked looking. Cassidy was the strongest magic user among us, though we all three had trained to be proficient in all the standard methods of creature-killing.
I took the opportunity for a long shower where the hot water never ran out, though I took the weapons bag into the bathroom with me and locked the door behind me.
Once I had dressed in clean clothes from the go-bag, I brewed a cup of crappy hotel coffee, and try to decide what I was going to do next.
Closing my eyes, I drew on what little magic I had. My sense of the ripples of power surrounding me was weaker up on the third floor — I always did better with magic when I was in direct contact with the ground. Still, I was able to tell that there were no supernaturals in the hotel, or immediately outside. It was at least safe enough for me to go get breakfast in the tiny dining room, and then check out.
Before I left the safety of my room, though, I needed to try to figure out what my next step would be.
I knew what I needed to do.
I just didn't want to.
But no matter how long I paced back and forth in that room, no other answer came to me.
I was going to have to go talk to Daddy.
* * *
That one, I thought. That one was almost right.
My head spun with the realization.
The Rift-dreams—they were the Rift’s way of helping me find Brodric.
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 kisse
s.
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.
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. “Yo
u 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.