Arrival of the Rifted (The Rifted Series Book 1)

by C. C. York

  Reed didn't respond for several minutes. His jaw ticked as he looked over the charred remains of the Yurutec to the darkness beyond. He turned to Hvard, pointing between himself and the gang leader. "This is not done. But lead us there, and I will reconsider killing you slowly."

  Hvard nodded, wincing at Reed's shove forward, and the group walked towards the center of the Batiwood in silence. The further they walked, the clearer the faint chanting became in Elaine's mind. Let us in. Let us in.

  Alik

  Mara's nails gouged Alik's arm as the guards dragged Alik out of the cell. Mara stumbled but managed to punch one of the guards on his way out before two men began kicking her repeatedly. Alik’s last glimpse before she reached the oculus at the top of the stairs was Mara in the fetal position, hands over her bloodied face.

  Alik could not fill her chest with air as she crested the final step. She squeezed her fists tight at her sides, focusing on the pain of her nails sinking into her palms instead of what could happen next.

  Think, Alik. Stay Alive. Handen said the woods did the work for them if we’re underground. She lifted her hand a fraction towards the flame closest to her, sighing in relief as the flame flicked towards her.

  The Batiwood trees grew in a semicircle at a slight elevation above them, their gnarled roots forming holes and small caves surrounding the altar that reached as high as her chest. Several small fires surrounded the semicircle, elongating the shadows from the pits and Batiwood branches above. Two fires burned along either side of a massive stone altar table in the center.

  She cried out at its dark red stain. A mangled body, shrouded in yellow, heaped on top of the altar.

  “He eats them Princess. Bits and pieces at a time,” Handen said a lifetime ago.

  Alik threw up. Shaking, she wiped her mouth and forced herself to take stock of the rest of her surroundings. The trees across from the stone altar table arched toward each other, the negative space between them forming a doorway of darkness, black against the flickering light in the woods. The Dark One stood before it, pacing. Muttering. He stilled at Alik's stare, his head slowly tilting unnaturally to his right shoulder as he studied her. She thought of Shauna and Mara below. Buy them some time. Help is coming.

  Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to meet his eyes. "I am Alik Iktidar, Pillar of the Iktidar line and daughter of---"

  "I know who your mother is; I've heard her titles plenty," He said. "My question is, what are you doing here at my gate?" He twitched and began muttering as if he hadn't just asked a question.

  Alik stumbled a little over his wording. She felt Shauna's grip on her arm, Shauna’s whispered plea to see. She thought back to her dreams, the wide, gaping mouth at the end of all of them. She ignored the man speaking in riddles to her or himself. She focused her eyes instead on the dark space behind the man, her Dua slow to focus initially, and she fell backward at what cleared before her like fog lifting from glass.

  “It is a gate,” she whispered.

  Scrolls of words in a language she couldn't read spun in gold at the edges of an open doorway, and they shifted to form new words and symbols with every second. The space beyond the entrance showed writhing bodies, massive forms coalescing together in arms, legs, claws, and teeth. Only one object remained still, a small eyeball in the center, blood-red with a milk-white pupil. The Eye watched her watching it.

  Chanting, indiscernible but growing louder, echoed in her mind. The cold ground bit into Alik’s knees as she hit the ground, all effort focused on blocking the invasive voices out.

  The Dark One shuffled to Alik while she clutched her head. He crouched down low, his eyes roving over her face, and she stumbled back. Her shoulders hit the stained stone altar, causing her Dua to flare in alarm again. Through blurry tears, she watched in horror as he brought a fleshy piece of bloodied meat to his mouth. He stood taller than before within moments of swallowing it, the sores less apparent. Even his voice felt different, as if it bounced off the marrow in her bones instead of skittering across her skin.

  “Let us see what the yellow girl can do,” he said.

  He pulled a gust of air to them, a whirlwind of leaves and dirt, suspending Alik several feet into the air, and she gasped anew. The Edicisi! He is the Edicisi! She tried to take cover beneath the stone altar, her hands slipping in dark pools of blood, but he wrapped her in an Airwerk, yanking her out. She scrabbled at the tightening band at her ankle, searching the ground for anything to use as a weapon. Goddesses help me, please!

  The chanting quieted as he spoke, "Why would my Pillar send you here?"

  "My Pillar" is a title like any other, one that Alik heard servants call her hundreds of times and to her mother hundreds of times more. It sounded reverent coming from his mouth, a caress, and it churned Alik's stomach as much her realization did. He is real.

  You need time, she thought. Buy some time. Anything to keep him talking.

  She said, "She sent me here for the girls you've taken. For the Efendians you've stolen. Edicisi or not, my mother will turn you to ribbons."

  He laughed, bloodied gristle slipping from his teeth, and he swiped the back of his hand across his lips. He released the band of Airwerk on Alik’s ankle but used another to suspend her in the air across from him, arms pinned at her sides. "Will she now? How well do you know your mother, Alik? Did she tell you what we discovered together as children?"

  Alik's brief bravado deflated as she fumbled the pieces together in her mind at the implication. She bluffed. "I would know anything important, and I can't imagine she would deign to discuss a shared interest with a child grown mad in the woods."

  "My name is Hayalet Birinci. I was the baker's boy in the Palace, first your mother's best friend, later her confidant and always her soulmate. I am still her greatest supporter. When she comes, she will tell you herself." He grunted as he pulled the bloodied mass under a torn yellow dress towards the dark gate with another gust of Airwerk.

  The "F.I & H.B" in her mother's hidden shrine of the Edicisi flashed behind her eyes. When she comes? She is helping him! Is this who she visits each time she disappears? Did she know this entire time that he took Shauna? Alik flipped through the racing questions in her mind, growing angrier with each one. She struggled in his band of Airwerk, her fingers straining towards the fires.

  His steps faltered, and Alik dropped a few inches in the air before he held her up again with a shaking hand and a meager push of Airwerk. He’s weakening, she realized. How is that possible if he’s the Edicisi? Is it the Batiwood?

  She heard a faint whistle in the woods behind her that filled her with hope and renewed her resolve. Hayalet talked to the darkness between trees, and when Alik focused on the darkness he addressed, the Eye still watched her.

  Alik said the first thing that came to mind to keep him distracted from the sounds in the woods. "My father was the only man my mother ever loved."

  He took the bait. He slung the dead teen's body into the dark gate, and Alik quickly cleared her Dua to look away from the gnashing of teeth and frenzied eating in the air beyond.

  Hayalet's arms shook as he struggled to keep her aloft with his Airwerk. He snarled, "Your Father was only the stepping stone your mother needed to appease your bitch of a grandmother. I am the foundation she walks on, the altar she will use to rule this world and the worlds beyond." He was panting, sweat beading at sores growing more prominent as she watched him in horror.

  Alik said, "Then I pity you. You are as much a fool as anyone that loved her. She will use you and discard you as she has done everyone else in her life."

  "Firtina and I have a love beyond worlds. We set off on this quest together decades ago. And---" He doubled over, clutching his stomach.

  Alik fell to the ground and scrambled back to the edge of the clearing. "I expected more from the Edicisi. Tell me, does it pain you that our blood builds Dua for generations but can only give you a few moments of power?” She nodded to the gate,
“Even that Eye must see that you are pathetic." Alik said, proud that her words did not shake out of her mouth even with the Eye on her in the distance. She couldn't see the outline of the Eye unless she focused, but she still felt its keen interest as it tracked her now.

  "You----you see the eye??" Hayalet spun, gaunt, and hunched over once more. He ran to her, pulling her upright by the shoulders, his repugnant face inches from her own. "You are the Reader? You are the one he's been hunting.” He looked past Alik but did not release her. “Did she know and not tell me?"

  "As I said before, you have been forgotten." Alik felt pity for a millisecond on the man. She knew what it was like to be a moth to her mother's flame, ignored and entranced simultaneously.

  He thrust Alik back, shaking as he paced. "I did all of this for her! I opened the gate! I sacrificed my flesh. It was my plan! Mine to grant her immortality. Mine forever. Worlds together. I--"

  He stilled, turning back to the gate. Alik couldn’t hear what stopped his tirade, but he smiled and dropped to his knees before the gate. She focused her Dua on the dark space to see what was happening.

  Hundreds of wrists beyond the gate slit open to fill a metal, spiked chalice. She watched in horror as the cup passed through the gate, hot liquid steaming in the cool air. Blood ran down Hayalet's chin and neck as he drained it. When the cup fell empty, Hayalet stood tall, with no sores of lesions, and walked down the stairs to below. Dua still flaring, she watched shadows of inhumane limbs twitch from his retreating shadow.

  Shauna! She pushed herself up and ran on shaking legs to the stairs when a voice from within the gate spoke. "Reader. Come here. Let us show you what you can become."

  Her feet led her to the gate, the horror she distantly remembered a wisp of a memory. She knew she needed to be somewhere else, but she couldn't remember where. She leaned in, searching, inches from the gate to see herself. Powerful, strong, and just. The true Queen, an heir worthy. She gazed in, mesmerized.

  "Step in, let us help you. We have powers a thousand times greater than any witnessed to grant."

  Alik heard the whoosh before she felt the slice of an arrow as it skimmed past her cheek. Her fingers came away with a trickle of blood, and she watched a drop of her blood fly through the gate. The pain shook her out of the illusion, and she scrambled backward, away from the laughter within the gate.

  "Get away from that!" A woman shouted. Alik turned back as Tenida, the pale courtier stupid enough to interrupt her mother, stepped through the trees side-by-side with a pack of Magaran scouts. A Magaran female with a shaved head and a beaded headdress lowered her bow.

  Tenida ran past Alik and pointed to the space between the trees."You-- you see something? Who were you talking to?" Her frantic eyes searched Alik's face.

  Alik blinked out of her shock, nodding. "It looks like a gate, a gate with hundreds of bodies inside and an Eye."

  Tenida fell steps back, hand to her chest, and said something in a language Alik didn't understand. The Magarans approached, bows at the ready aimed at the gate. How long have I been standing here? Shauna!

  The small female with the bow looked to Tenida, "She claims she is the Reader?"

  Alik snapped. "I don't even know what that means. I just know there is an eye watching you in that space and that we have to save my friends below from the Edicisi. Let's deal with titles later."

  She turned for the oculus, but the Magaran grabbed Alik's arm. Cries rang out from below, the smell of roasting wood filtering up. Alik drew a small flame to her to burn the Magaran's viselike grip off her, but Tenida stifled it with a raised palm and a gust of air. Alik had no time to analyze how Tenida was involved with the Magarans or find out what else she missed about this courtier. I have to get Shauna out!

  They ignored her pleas as the female Magaran demanded, "Did you see the Edicisi?"

  Alik yanked her arm from the Magaran's grip. "He is below! He’s eaten kidnapped Efendian girls for months, hidden in the Batiwood, but his powers are weak." Her finger shook as she pointed at the gate, "They gave him something. Blood. From a cup, a moment ago. We have to go now--"

  The Magarans spoke rapidly to each other, Tenida shaking her head in confusion. Tenida said, "That was not the Edicisi. We captured the true Edicisi last night, but he escaped. We need the three of you, the Reader, the Rifter, and the Edicisi if we are to close the gate to the Others."

  Reed

  Hvard stopped at the base of a massive Batiwood tree. Its thick roots tangled above ground to form a hole wide enough for even Hvard to walk through standing upright. Reed shook off the feeling of thousands of invisible centipedes marching across his skin as he and the others followed Hvard through. The voices in his head chanted a litany of He's here. Here. Here.

  Hvard led them through a pitch-black tunnel, wider than it naturally should have been and winding inward in a spiral. A flick of sulfur and Hvard's face glowed as he put the torch to something on the wall. A thin line of fire raced ahead, lighting the tips of doorways holding back creatures from nightmares. Wolves with the body of serpents snapped at them as they passed. Elk antlers protruded from the eyes of a massive bat that clung to wooden bars. Cages lined either side, each more disturbing than the last.

  "What are these?" Monti whispered at Reed's back.

  Reed shook his head. He ran through stories his mother told him as a boy and of the creatures he overheard the Canavar Company Troupe discuss. He'd never heard of anything like them.

  Before he could answer her, human hands gripped the bars in a cell ahead of them. Monti pushed past him and cried out, "Dean!"

  Dean, a good-looking man even in a ripped suit and sporting a bloody face, cried out. He hugged her tightly to him when Hvard opened the door.

  "Monti! Thank God! How are you here?" He asked just as Monti demanded, "Where's my dad?"

  Dean's face fell, and he shifted to block Monti's view from a rumpled lump behind him. Reed knew what was coming, and though he wanted to hold her, he knew he had no place to offer her comfort.

  I did this, he thought, as Monti's anguished cry ripped through the cell and tunnel beyond. She fell onto the body of an older man dead by several days. Dean, at her side, offered comfort out of earshot as Reed looked away.

  A blond man wearing the Horde's blue colors grabbed Agnian. He held a limp arm, and had a nasty gash across his bruised face. "Agnian! He has Alik. I heard her screaming her own damn name maybe twenty minutes ago."

  Agnian withdrew his sword and sprinted for the exit. Reed turned to grab Elaine, but both she and Hvard disappeared. He shouted after Agnian, "He has Elaine!"

  Reed ran for the dimly lit entrance at the end of the hallway with the few men from the cells that could fight at his heels. They halted abruptly when the corridor ended in a circular room with a large cage in the center. Efendian girls gripped the bars. Beyond the cage, a staircase spiraled up to a round opening in the dirt ceiling.

  He dimly registered Agnian and the others fighting the handful of guards that were waiting for them. Elaine kicked her skinny legs furiously in the air, struggling against Hvard's hand over her mouth to his right.

  However, Reed was rooted to the ground; a boy again taught to fear a faceless man. He focused on the cloaked stranger walking down the steps. He never met his father, but there was no mistaking who this was when the man turned to him fully.

  They shared the same nose and jawline, the same eye shape, and the same determined brow. Wisps of white hair clung to skin leached of all color, a watered-down version of the skin wrapped around Reed’s shaking fists.

  Reed's stomach roiled as his father said with an expanding grin, "I've been looking for you for quite some time. Tell me, how is lovely Alisha?"

  Reed flashed to the first day they felt him in their new world.

  His mother found a job waiting tables; Reed binged American TV. Their new life began to soften like a pair of broken-in shoes. His mother came home to the motel room they paid for
by the week, keys not yet tossed to the table, and the neighbor boy walked by the open doorway. He sang the same lullaby that would haunt Reed for the rest of his life. His mother stilled, panic brushing over her face, erasing that fleeting contentment.

  Whatever Dua his mother held, she never used in the twelve years they ran from his father, fearing it would somehow bring him back to them. They'd starved, lived in fear, and finally escaped. Reed didn't understand why the song frightened his mother so, but when they ate dinner that night, she explained that his father sang the same song the night they met.

  When she and Reed heard it again six months and two moves later, she told him that his father must have found her, and she said that if anything happened to her, he was to call the number she pinned to the motel room door. Reed assumed she was just cautious, but she was gone when he came home from school the next day. He waited an entire week alone before he called the number, and three days after the social worker moved him to a foster care home, the cops found his mother's body on a hiking trail.

  The guards tossed black cloaks over themselves, making it appear that Agnian and the others fought air. Reed might as well have been alone in a room with his father though as he stalked towards him from around the cage. The anger coursing through him overrode his fear.

  Reed said, "You killed her. She Rifted to another goddamned world to get us away from you, and it still wasn't enough." He opened and closed his fists, feeling the power his curse granted him fizz through every cell of his body. "She killed herself, thinking that would be the only way to sever your tie and It. Did. Nothing.”

  "And for what?" Reed cried out. The question he had asked himself and his mother for years. "What do you want from me? This??" He raised his arms and pulsed the flames from the surrounding torches high, the room suddenly brighter and the shadows longer.