by J.T. Stoll
The Prince—Prologue
George sat across a table from the towering, heavyset Joe Brown. It was a shock to see Joe sitting across the table, sipping a glass of whiskey as though the last ten years hadn’t passed. Joe carried the sour aroma of cross-country air travel.
“The first fluctuation, we don’t know much about it?” Joe asked.
“No,” George replied. He glanced out a window, past the flowery hotel wallpaper to a sunny San Luis Obispo day. “You had no surveillance. All I’ve been able to piece together is that for about seven minutes, the Diablo nuclear power plant—just over the hill from SLO—shut down. Fission simply stopped working. It broke physics.”
Most scientists, most people, would have betrayed some shock at that. Joe kept his poker face. Rumor had it that he’d worked for the CIA before taking the reins of the Agency for the Investigation of Space-Time Anomalies. Like a true bureaucrat, Joe confirmed and denied nothing about his past, though George suspected the rest of the AISTA staff had started the CIA rumor because of Dr. Brown’s dour, secretive mood. And they teased him about his name: Joe Brown, of course that’s my real name.
George had missed the humor of his colleagues.
Joe swirled iced whiskey in his hotel glass. Time had given him a few more wrinkles, but he remained mostly unchanged. He wore the same large glasses and the same white shirt and deep-blue tie. George had barely spoken with his old boss in the last decade; they just shipped Christmas presents back and forth: local SLO wine from George, pricy liquor from Joe. Sipping whiskey and discussing space-time anomalies again felt like a dream.
“We were planning to sell the field. Did you know that?” Joe asked.
“So I heard.”
“And now the S-L-O anomaly is the biggest find in our history.” After so many years, Joe still pronounced SLO not as slow but by the individual letters, awkwardly like a biologist dissecting the town. “George, glad to have you back on board.”
“Glad to be back.”
“You never should’ve left.”
George took a sip of his own drink and stared at the wallpaper. He’d aged more than Joe. After living in SLO this long, he dressed more casually and took life slower, but the last decade had hunched his shoulders and replaced the hair on his head with padding on the waist. This renewed work with AISTA was a breath of fresh life, but a whiff of old pain accompanied it. George hadn’t yet worked up the guts to visit the field of the anomaly.
“Anyway,” George said, “I contacted San Onofre, and they noticed a slight dip in output as well. Whatever this thing did, it reached three hundred miles south and touched a power plant in San Diego.”
“Maybe finally a military application. That sounds like an ICBM shield to me.”
Yes, the old talk of military applications, the reason for their funding. George hoped for the thousandth time that he wouldn’t end up the man history remembered for creating the next world-breaking weapon, the next atomic bomb. “Because of the link we’ve always seen with nuclear forces, I suspected our anomaly may have been related to the event at Diablo, but until last night, I had no proof, just a bit of suspicion from one other thing that happened that first night.”
“The murder?” Joe asked.
George nodded. A homeless man had been found killed by stab wounds. That field had devoured another life.
“Do we still have the body?”
“They buried him in a pauper’s grave a week ago.”
“I’ll look into it.”
“I think he came from the other side,” George said.
Joe sighed. “Any evidence for that?” He still managed not to be excited about running a clandestine research agency revolving around holes in physics.
“First, they couldn’t determine his identity. And don’t you think the timing is a bit much? The same night of the anomaly’s, uh…anomaly…a mysterious man appears dead in the field?”
“Or the fluctuation killed a passing homeless man,” Joe said. “Come on, George. Until now, we’ve investigated atoms vanishing through anomalies, nothing more.”
George knew he’d say that. “You still haven’t seen last night’s footage, have you?”
Joe shook his head. “I flew out as soon as you called me.”
George pulled out his phone and began searching through his photo app. After the first fluctuation, they’d built a fence and installed some security cameras and monitoring equipment. And this time they knew more. “Last night, the cameras spotted a sort of flare of visible light—yellowish. Diablo shut down, same as three weeks ago. And we saw one more thing.”
George turned the phone screen to Joe. The director’s brow creased.
“Doctor, can you describe what you see?”
Joe tapped the screen to replay the video clip. “I see three people emerging from a tunnel about where the anomaly should be. They just…they…”
His voice trailed off, but George knew the clip well enough. They vanished into thin air after coming through.
George nodded. “Visitors from another world.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions.”
George’s knee bounced up and down. “Do you really think I’m jumping to conclusions?”
“I know you too well, George. Even if those people came from another world, it doesn’t mean that she’s still alive.”
George closed his eyes and exhaled, a decade of grief bubbling out.
“Ten years is long enough. George, you didn’t kill Patricia, and we need you here now.”
George took a few deep breaths. He looked Joe in the eye and nodded.
The director tapped the phone screen again.
The Prince—Chapter 1
The stab wound in Pieter’s side sang a marvelous little song as he closed his car door behind his girlfriend. After two days, he wished it would shut up.
“Where we headed?” she asked through the open window.
“Little surprise, that.”
Mondays weren’t the best for spontaneous after-school dates, but after the last few days—a battle, wound, hospital trip, and some arson—Pieter just wanted to chill with his girl. No swords involved.
The weather was beautiful. Bad weather never really hit SLO, and late October brought a hot, clear, thirsty sort of wonderful. The sunshine promised a nice beach day.
On the way to his driver’s side, Pieter waved to a passing friend from the baseball team and made a kissy face to the guy’s girlfriend—Pieter had dated her freshman year. A few laughs rewarded his efforts.
“No urgent schoolwork, right?” he asked Vero, stepping into the White Lady.
“It can wait.”
His homework couldn’t wait, but it didn’t matter: he and Neil had got into a “car accident” this last weekend. Sure, the car accident may have actually been a fight with a couple soldiers from another world, but none of his teachers knew that, so he could slack off a bit.
“I’m surprised you showed for school,” Vero said.
“I considered a day of gaming.”
“But?”
“Well, can’t let my GPA suffer.” He gave his girl a big, toothy smile.
She laughed. “GPA?”
“That, plus…you know, pretty soon, we’re all gonna graduate and scatter. I don’t want to miss any of this year.”
She stared out the window at the passing hills. A tight shirt outlined her form and shorts covered…well, a little bit of her. “So what, all we have to do this year is hang out with friends?” she asked.
Why did this girl, the girl of his dreams, want to fight in a suicidal war? “It’s what I plan to do.”
Her gaze stayed on the hills. She crossed her arms and frowned. Had she always been so moody?
“Where we headed, anyways?” Vero asked.
“Pismo. Seemed like great weather for a little beach day.”
“You sure?” She pointed to the last ridge between them and the coast. White tendrils of fog crept down it like the drifting snow.
“Stupid Centra
l Coast weather,” Pieter muttered. “Sunny in SLO, and ten minutes down the coast, this…”
They emerged from the hills onto a beautiful slice of coastline covered by gray haze.
“Sure this isn’t a schoolwork day?” Vero asked.
Pieter glanced over; her hands were clenched. “Hey, I just got stabbed and I’ve mostly been sitting around in pain. I need to get out.”
“If you want.”
He maneuvered off the freeway and found a spot a couple blocks from the beach. A biting ocean breeze hit him as he stepped out of the car.
“It’s freezing,” Vero said. “Pieter, let’s go back to SLO. This is…”
He popped his trunk and dug around inside. Vero’s axe—leather guard over the blade—was half-buried in a pile of clothing and trash. His sword was down in there somewhere. He pulled out a sweater and tossed it to her. “For you.”
Vero bundled up and grabbed her purse from the front seat. She glanced at Pieter’s arms. “Where’s your, uh…your armor?”
“In the trunk. Both pieces.” Superpowers or not, he had no desire to wear that thing.
“What if something…”
“Here, on a beach date in Pismo?”
“You know what Jed said to me. More Ruachians are here somewhere.”
“And are you planning to take your axe?”
“No, but with my armband, I can jump back here and get it if something happens.”
A breeze hit Pieter. Goose bumps rolled up his arms. “Look, I’m not in fighting shape, either way. I just don’t want to lug the armband around. Your purse can’t fit both ours, can it?”
“No, but…”
“Can we just go to the beach?”
She shut up, and they walked to the water. Empty surf shops and knickknack stores lined the streets. A gust of deep fryer aroma swept over Pieter as they passed a fish and chips restaurant. On a sunny summer day, tourists flooded these streets. On a foggy off-season day, they nearly had the town to themselves.
Pieter hadn’t spent a month single since eighth grade, and he’d never celebrated a six-month anniversary. Despite all those exes, he’d never dated someone like Vero. She seemed like a fling at first, but in the weeks since James had burst into their world, Pieter had seen more in her.
She had a kind of crazy strength. It took a certain kind of balls to choose to fight like she had—barely even knowing what she was fighting for. She had a cushy life in about the nicest town in California, and she was willing to toss that and fight because it was…what, the right thing to do? Two months ago he’d started dating a friendly, bubbly girl who laughed at his jokes. This new Vero was almost grim.
Pieter shivered as they walked onto the pier.
“You all right?” Vero asked.
“The cold air feels great. Look, waves! Romantic, yeah?”
He took a risk and reached for her hand. She intertwined her fingers in his, and they walked against the wind as the waves crashed beneath their feet.
Pieter’s head swam a little as they neared the end of the pier. “Mind if we sit down?” he asked.
They shared a bench and he leaned against her warm body.
“You should be resting,” Vero said.
“Maybe, maybe not. But how can I sit around the house when I could be out here with you?”
“You’re sweet.”
“Good to freeze out here with you on Pismo Pier.”
“You, too.” She lowered her voice and said, an edge of tension in her voice, “I was worried you were…were getting over me or something.”
Pieter winced. She had to be pretty hurt, pretty confused to come right out and say that. He squeezed her. “What? Where’d you get that idea?”
“It just feels tense with you.”
“Tense? Nah, that’s not me and you. That’s James’s ghost.” Pieter pointed up. “He’s floating about twenty feet in the air. Can you hear him?”
She didn’t reply.
In a high-pitched voice, Pieter moaned, “Fight my war. Get yourselves killed. Terian’s army of evil bad jerks is going to invade your world. Doom, doom!”
Vero smiled. She actually smiled.
“That’s Ruach and the soul armors, not you and me,” he said. “I don’t think I could ever get over you.” He loved that line. It always worked.
They sat and watched the swells rush under the pier.
“We’ll get through all this Ruach stuff,” Pieter said.
Vero’s shoulders relaxed.
Pieter’s phone beeped with a text message. It began with his two least favorite words: Your brother…
To get the first three books of The Rift series in a single volume, just head to: jtstoll.com/rift13book.
About the Author
J.T. Stoll wrote his first fantasy story when he was five. The prose was… brilliant. The accompanying stick figure illustrations… breathtaking. The lack of complex vocabulary underlies the deeper human condition. It was terrible. His mother refuses to destroy the only copy because it has “sentimental value.”
He has always loved fantastical stories of all kinds: fantasy novels, 16-bit RPGs, superhero movies, whatever. If reading helps to escape the real world, why not go somewhere fun?
J.T. lives in San Luis Obispo County in a classy bachelor pad. He enjoys rock climbing, software development, and cooking amazing food.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to everyone who made this book possible. Most, and more than anyone, my Heavenly Father, who makes everything possible.
Next, my parents. Mom, all those decades of proofreading my school papers paid off.
Pieter Neethling of smartrockclimbing.com, you’re a great roommate and an incredible encouragement. Thanks for lending me the awesome spelling of your first name.
Meredith Efken of fictionfixitshop.com, you made me weep bitterly with your substantive edit. The book is better for it.
Susan Helene Gottfried (westofmars.com), you did a spectacular line edit.
Jason Whited, thanks for the meticulous copyedit.
Randy Ingermanson of advancedfictionwriting.com, thanks for your encouraging words at the Mount Hermon Conference.
My alpha readers who provided feedback: Keegan, Karin, Donna, and J.K. Tizzie.
Kelsey, the cover photo turned out amazing.
Lokmenshi, thanks for designing it into an amazing cover.
To my critique group: Liz, Chai, and Katie. Write more stuff. Get published.
To Jesús for the Spanish translations. If they actually make sense, it’s definitely not because I speak Spanish.
Thanks to the girls at Starbucks in Grover Beach for the many tall iced teas needed to complete this work.
