Arrival of the Rifted (The Rifted Series Book 1)

by C. C. York

  "This is what you came for? Do you think I'd ever help you? And to do what??"

  Hayalet closed the distance to him, stopping at only arm's length. His eyes scanned his son as he spat, "Do you know what irony is, boy? Irony is giving everything you have to become the Edicisi, only for those powers to be leached from you to grow within a seed in a whore's belly.

  "I traveled for years across the bridges of Dvari to the sand palaces in Bakilar, hunting for information on the Edicisi. I nearly died within the Magaran mountain range and on Perisien ships filled with murderers for the keys to unlock the greatest secret in Sakalid. And I finally found a way to be the most powerful wielder this world or any others have ever seen. But it all went to you."

  Reed turned with Hayalet as his father circled him, never wanting to lose track of him. "You can have it. I don't want any of it! I never wanted to be this."

  "Oh, I'll have it back, and I'll show this world the true powers of the Edicisi. But first, I had to learn how to take Dua. They told me the only way to get it is to consume. And you know what's funny? I've found I rather like the taste."

  Hayalet lunged then, arms wide, and face mottled red with effort as he pulled hundreds of roots from the ground surrounding them. The roots swirled, a cobra at the ready, around Reed and struck, knocking him to the ground. They spiraled around his arms, his legs, and across his chest, lacerating his skin as they tightened. Reed struggled against them, panic overriding any thought as the roots encircled his neck. He thought of Elaine, walking steadily into the Batiwood and of Monti attacking the Garfu. Monti's words came back to him, "He is trying to manufacture power. You are power."

  I don’t know how he created his own Dua, but I am not without power now. Reed imagined the strength of the tornados that had torn across Texas in years past. The breath drained from his lungs as Reed whipped winds around his face and snapped all but the thickest root gripping his ankle with an Airwerk. He steadied his hands on either side of the root at his ankle. Reed’s palms sunk into the ground as he shoved the last root off of him, back into the gnarled tree from which it came, with a wave of Groundwerk. He stood, eyes on Hayalet, shaking with rage.

  Reed's face flushed with heat as if he were standing in front of a tall fire when he yanked all the flames from the torches surrounding them to his outstretched hand. He formed them into a massive, writhing ball and threw them at his father, dousing him in flame. Hayalet screamed, but it was as if hundreds of inhumane voices shrieked with him.

  Hayalet chanted words Reed could barely decipher over the chorus of agonized voices. Before Reed could form another assault, Hayalet threw the flames off of him and at the cage of girls beyond Reed. The Batiwood branches caught, and screams filled the room as Hvard doubled over behind Hayalet. Elaine ran, not to the stairs or the hallway leading out of this hell, but to the cage in flames. She hacked the wood with a sword almost as big as she while the girls inside kicked at the opening she created.

  Something shifted behind him. Hayalet bent backward almost in two, arms stretched toward the ceiling, and fingers curved in pain. Reed stumbled back at the sight, scrambling for something to use as a weapon. He held his breath and pulled the nearest sword from a dead guard with an Airwerk, aiming it at his father’s chest. The sword flew through the air, a bronze missile glinting in the expanding flames. But before it could make its mark, four sticky pink arms shot out from Hayalet's ribcage, knocking it aside. They wound around each other, skinless chorded muscles with hundreds of fingers, just as two thick skinless legs erupted from his shoulder blades with a squelch. Hayalet's eyes were entirely black when he stood upright again, grotesque arms reaching for Reed.

  Hayalet's mouth gaped wide, jaw unhinged almost to his chest, and as he spoke, his voice was a chorus of a hundred pitches: "Your bones will feed them, the marrow giving them the nutrients they require. I will relish the fleshy bits of you and then let them have the others. They seem to prefer women, after all."

  Reed crawled backward, arm outstretched and shaking. He sucked the flames back from the Batiwood cage, his strength already dimming from exertion, and encircled the creature that had been his father in a ring of fire. He distantly registered that Elaine pushed the girls up the stairs and into the clearing, Agnian and the others not far behind. Monti, you’d better be halfway to Efendi now.

  The creature stepped through the flames, Hayalet's skin peeling back. The disgusting arms grew thicker and longer as they reached for the blackened, empty cage. Reed dodged as the creature launched broken branches of the Batiwood cage at him, and he fell back as one skimmed his scalp. He ignored the blood spilling over his ear and frantically searched the fire-engulfed room for a weapon. He pulled a stone boulder from across the room with an Airwerk, panting at its weight, and threw it at the creature.

  The effort cost Reed. He staggered back and tried to blink away the black dots that threatened to block out his vision. Reed tried to draw flames to him with a shaking arm but could barely get a flicker. Distantly, he recalled how Agnian said Dua was less powerful underground in the Batiwood. Flames licked the base of the staircase just beyond the creature.

  Just get above ground, he thought. The thing that was once his father pushed the boulder off of its torso with glistening pink arms.

  Reed was dizzy with exhaustion, blackness threatening to overwhelm him. He tried to push an Airwerk to shove the creature back down, but it barely shifted the whisps of pale hair that still clung to his father's scalp. The creature cackled a gleeful hacking sound. It wiped its bloody lip with the back of a skinless hand studded with mismatched fingers. His father's mouth opened to say something more, but froze mid gape. His neck tilted unnaturally to the right as it listened to something Reed could not hear.

  Reed didn't linger. He ran for the steps, jumping as high as he could over the bottom steps that were sinking in the flames.

  The creature gave chase with a howl, and the staircase shook against its weight. Skinless arms reached. Reed scrambled to the top and had just gotten his arm through the opening as a dozen fingers wrapped tightly around his ankle.

  Alik

  ----need the three of you, the Reader, the Rifter, and the Edicisi if we are to close the gate to the Others."

  As Tenida spoke, Mara, Shauna, and the other girls emerged from the oculus, coughing at the smoke billowing through. To Alik's dismay, the Rifter followed them, with Agnian and Ty steps behind. Alik cried out in relief, though, gripping a haggard-looking Ty in a hug and then embracing her friends. Agnian tugged her away as she gripped Elaine, telling her to get out of here.

  "No time, Alik! We have to leave now. They're fighting downstairs!"

  Mara, hoarse but no longer stumbling, shouted to the girls, "Let's move! Follow me."

  The Magarans blocked them, bows at the ready. "Our lost Rifter is not among you.” The leader nodded in Alik’s direction, “If she is the Reader, then a Rifter must be here, and no one is leaving until you bring us the Rifter.”

  "Get out of our--"

  Elaine shrugged off Agnian and Alik's outreached grip, cutting off Alik's protestations. "I am a Rifter. Let them go!"

  Alik stepped in front of Elaine, "She is not going with you unless you guarantee her protection."

  "Protection from whom? The last time I checked, your family was leading a Rifter hunt," Tenida said with derision.

  "No time!" Mara said, pulling at Tenida and the kidnapped girls to the edge of the woods.

  A man a few years older than Alik scrambled through the oculus, the right side of his close-cropped hair covered in blood. She didn't recognize him, but he screamed at them to run, panic across his bloodied face as a creature crawled through. Alik's heart faltered, horror-stricken at what emerged among screams from the girls around her.

  Hayalet was still part of the creature, but his body looked like a doll's in comparison. It crawled on skinless, wet limbs that protruded from his body. Its feet squelched against the ground as it stalked t
owards the scrambling man, and its thick, muscular legs grew longer, raising Hayalet high in the air.

  The Magarans and Tenida shouted orders to fight, but several girls were still too weak to do anything but fall to their knees as the creature reared back. The bloodstained stranger stood before the monster, his arms out to his sides, and pulled a tornado of wind to him. Alik's hair whipped forward at his pull, and she had to grip a stone to stand against the battering winds. Through the swirling leaves and dirt, she watched the monstrosity of Hayalet hover in the stranger's Airwerk. The Edicisi!

  Alik scrambled back to the edge of the clearing, shocked. This is the real Edicisi that Tenida said got away. Her mind reeled as it tried to reconcile the monster of her people's stories with the young man before her. Steps away, the monster that she'd feared as a child battled a monster worse than any she could have imagined.

  The Hayalet creature pulled a Batiwood from its roots, screaming as if a hundred voices bellowed alongside it. It heaved the massive tree at the Edicisi, who batted it away with a gust of Airwerk. The Edicsi shook with the effort to pull two large rocks above his outstretched hands with an Airwerk, but the Hayalet creature smacked the boulders away as if they were pebbles. Alik dove behind one of the boulders to watch the monsters battle each other, silently praying to every Goddess that help would come soon. We need Firtina Iktidar. Agnian tried to crawl to her from where he took cover beneath the altar, but Alik shook her head for him to stay while the battle raged between them. She searched for Shauna, Ty, or Elaine, but she couldn't see them from where she hid.

  To Alik's right, a blonde woman emerged from the woods, hacking at the smoke billowing up from the oculus and swirling around the fight scene. Her bloodshot eyes widened at the creature fighting the Edicsi.

  The Edicisi turned away from the fight at the woman’s entrance. He looked panic-stricken at her arrival, shaking his head, but the Hayalet creature boomed a laugh of malicious glee. A sticky, pink arm shot across the clearing and snatched the woman around the waist. The creature held her suspended between it and the Edicisi, and the Edicisi dropped the boulder he held aloft.

  What are you doing? Alik thought. Fight!

  The Hayalet creature put a bloody limb to the dark space between trees behind it, and by the gasps around her, Alik knew the gate was now visible to everyone. The woman in the creature's glistening meaty hand cried out, lashing out uselessly at the claws of fingers gripping her as it pushed her within inches of the gate. Alik's stomach roiled at the grasping limbs and gnashing teeth beyond.

  The woman's pleading cry mangled with fear as she shouted, "Reed!"

  The Edicisi dropped to his knees, and Alik helplessly watched as he said. "Stop! You can have me. Just let her go!"

  No, no, no, no. Alik shook her head, frantically praying to the Goddesses for a quick death to one, or both, of the demons in front of her. Someone will have to kill the Edicisi or the Hayalet creature before the creature tries to take his Dua too. No one can have that much power, let alone a demon.

  Hayalet hesitated, its limbs jerking as if they fought against his will. He finally dropped the woman to the ground but held onto her arm so she could not flee. He opened his jaw wide to speak as a petite figure darted between his legs. Elaine!

  Alik moved, rushing forward just as little Elaine sliced the thick corded muscle holding the woman. It wasn't enough to sever the creature's limb, but the hundreds of fingers gripping her arm straightened in pain, giving the woman just enough time to drop and roll out of reach.

  Alik took stock of the cowering Efendian girls around her and the tense Magarans at the edge of the woods. I have been waiting for the Horde or my mother to save us. And yet this little girl, with a sword as big as her, took matters into her own hands. Alik stepped out from behind the boulder and tugged at her meager Dua.

  She shot a small flame at the creature's face as she screamed to her countrywomen, "Push it through the gate!"

  The Hayalet creature turned to Alik as arrows flew from the Magarans. He swatted them away, but Mara, Shauna, Tenida, and the others let loose a volley of varying power alongside Alik. Agnian and Ty ran forward, hacking at its limbs and dodging its outraged swings. Water loosened the ground below it, and wind pushed the monster back, back, back as fire blanketed its eyes. The creature released a gargled, wretched scream, raging at the wave of soil threatening to tip it backward as the Edicisi joined their fight with renewed strength. Roots from the ground shot up to bind its skinless limbs, boulders smashed its face, and the creature teetered within a hair's width of the gate.

  Yet, still, the creature leaned into them.

  The monstrosity broke free from the bounds with a vicious roar and stretched all of its limbs wide, calling the wind to him. Airwerk of incredible magnitude threw some of the girls into the trees beyond the clearing, their bones cracking against the trunks, and the Edicisi tumbled head over foot, slamming into the stone altar. Alik held onto a thick Batiwood root with bloodied fingers, her legs dangling behind before the wind finally died down.

  The creature dropped his Airwerk, and in that moment of reprieve, Elaine blinked back from the edges of the opening, Rifting. She jabbed her sword deep into the creature's glistening foot, the pain shocking the Hayalet monstrosity backward, and he shrank down to the size of a man again. At that exact moment, the blonde woman swung a long, thick Batiwood branch into him.

  The creature tipped, limbs flailing and hundreds of voices screaming, into the gate. Even the Eye turned away as every monster inside the gate converged at once, swallowing the creature that was once Hayalet whole.

  Alik could no longer see the writhing bodies or the Eye without her Dua. Her heart thudded in her chest. Cheers erupted around her. She took several steadying breaths before scanning the space between the trees again with her Dua to confirm if the gate was still there. The cheering faded to the background as heavy dread cloaked her.

  “The gate remains,” she said, though no one seemed to hear her. The gnashing teeth drowned out any hope Alik had that this gateway to demons closed with Hayalet's death.

  The joyous crowd around her seemed oblivious to the Eye watching her now. Someone hugged her, Shauna beaming and laughing, jostling Alik back to the happiness of the auras around her. She shook her head to clear her Dua but could still feel the menacing pupil tracking her from the space between the trees. Through the celebrating crowd, she caught Tenida's eyes.

  The haunting feeling must have read plainly on her face because Tenida shouted, "We must close the gate!"

  The cheers ceased as the bedraggled girls looked questioningly at the empty space between the trees. The Magarans pushed through the crowd, grabbing Elaine's frail arm and pulling her to Alik. Tenida shoved Alik forward with a gust of Airwerk so that she was mere inches from the gap in trees where the gate loomed. Shauna cried out behind them, but Tenida held Alik in place even as she struggled to back away. One of the Magarans shoved Elaine down to her knees to Alik’s right. Another Magaran scout stood behind them, bow at the ready, and wings flared out. The Edicsi, barely able to sit up, was dragged to the other side of Elaine so that the three of them now kneeled shoulder to shoulder before the gate.

  The Magaran leader ignored Agnian and Ty's protests and took Tenida's place at Alik's back. Alik hissed at the sharp kiss of the Magaran's blade at her neck as the leader said, "There is no time to explain. Do exactly as we say. Hold hands."

  Hundreds of questions ran through Alik's mind, but she could still feel the Eye watching her. She focused her Dua to see limbs reaching for her from within the gate, inches from her face. Alik reared back despite the grip on her hair and the knife drawing blood at her throat. “Let us go!”

  The Magaran growled, "Hold still, or I will push you through myself. Now, hold. Hands."

  Shaking, Alik linked hands with the Edicisi and Elaine. Alik pulled Elaine a few inches away from the gate, whispering for them to lean away. The Edicsi slumped against Elaine, eyelid
s drooping. Tenida screamed a curse as she kicked him, and he came to enough to sit up. Tenida frantically scanned the space between the trees before turning to Alik.

  Alik focused her Dua on the gate and explained, "They're pushing. The film separating them from us is being pushed outward at their hands. The Eye is on you," Alik gestured towards Tenida without breaking her focus.

  Blonde hair appeared in the corner of her eye, and Alik tore her focus away to watch the woman from the woods shove Tenida aside and dodge the Magarans. She dropped to her knees, tears streaking her soot-dusted face. She shrugged out of a Magaran’s grasp as she cried, "Reed! Where are you hurt?"

  The woman ran trembling hands over the Edicisi’s bloody face. She tried to rip her shirt, but he released Alik and grabbed the woman's hand to stop her. He kissed her palm and whispered something too low for Alik to hear before pulling her fully to him for a kiss. It was brief, passionate, and Alik felt a pang of jealousy and embarrassment at the intimacy of the moment.

  Reed still held Elaine's hand in his left, though he now turned entirely to the crying woman. He cupped the side of her face, and Alik saw confusion and denial in her brows as the air rippled behind her.

  Tenida and the Magarans screamed as the Edicisi shoved his lover through the line.

  Alik searched all around them to see where the woman disappeared, confusion and astonishment trampling each other in her mind. Elaine wilted, her frail bones falling against Alik in exhaustion, and Alik understood.

  He Rifted his lover somewhere.

  Incredulity and rage replaced understanding.

  He just Rifted his lover somewhere! That's what he did with his power? That's what he did with hers?

  Alik knew before even the Magaran hissed, "You fool! You used her strength, and now we cannot close the gate!"