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

by Gwynn White

  I groaned, flopping back on the bed.

  “Seriously?” I pressed a hand over my eyes. “How could you let me get that drunk?”

  “Me?” Jaden laughed. “I had nothing to do with it, baby. I was getting ready for the show. You want to talk to someone about your drinking speed––or, more to the point, you drinking a bottle of tequila on an empty stomach––you might want to hit up your buddy, Cass.”

  From the faint edge in his voice, I found myself thinking that conversation may have already happened between Cass and Jaden. Probably more than once.

  “…Anyway,” he added. “You already had a good head start on me by the time I got back from that photo shoot, if you recall.”

  I clutched his hand, feeling a surge of guilt. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” he said. “Why? Just because you scared me half to death, making me think you’d been raped or murdered and dumped in an alley somewhere?”

  “Not just that,” I said. “For missing your show. For ruining your big night.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t worry about the show. You didn’t miss anything. You’ve heard all those songs about a million times by now, anyway.”

  “That doesn’t matter… it was a big show. I can’t believe I missed it. It’s also why I came.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he insisted. “If you want to be sorry, be sorry for scaring me out of my mind. Not for the show. At this point, I’m just glad you’re all right.”

  Glancing down at my expression, he smiled again.

  “Once I knew you were okay, I kind of chilled out. That cop had a good long talk with all of us, mostly a scare-monger type lecture about keeping a better eye on one another in a strange city, and not letting drunk girls wander off on their own to get bitten on the neck by guys who aren’t their boyfriends.” Smiling faintly, he shrugged, fingering the mark on my neck. “I think he let you off easy because he figured you were a dumb tourist. He seemed more worried about you than anything… he didn’t even charge you.”

  Hesitating, he gave me a rueful look.

  “Jon didn’t, though,” he added. “Chill out, I mean. Cass seemed to be a pretty good sport about it, but Jon, well. He was a little––”

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “I understand. I’ll talk to him.” Blowing up my bangs, I closed my eyes. “It’s different with Jon, you know. Especially after Dad died.” Pausing when I saw Jaden wince, I added, “I really can’t believe I just wandered off… in New York, of all places. What a complete fucking idiot.” I looked up at him. “Why are you dating such a idiot?”

  Jaden grinned back. “You’re not an idiot. Just a neck slut with a vampire fetish, apparently.” When I shoved at his chest, he laughed. “We all do stupid things now and then. I just don’t tell you all of mine.”

  I grunted a laugh. “Gotcha.”

  “See, you have to learn how to hide your idiocy, Allie-girl. The trick is to make everyone else think it’s only them. So next time, no bite marks. And get drunk in your own city. When none of your friends are around. Or me. Or your creepily over-protective brother.”

  I laughed again. “I see. Words to live by, Mr. Donnelly.”

  Leaning down, he kissed my neck.

  “Did you really not do that?” I said, frowning a little. “That mark?”

  Jaden laughed, raising his head. “Don’t get paranoid. I’m pretty sure I must have. I was pretty wasted by the end of the night, too. And Jon asked you and your cop about a hundred times if anyone messed with you. You seemed really sure no one had. That cop said he found you alone and fully clothed apart from your jacket and your boots, which apparently you took off to walk on the grass.” Jaden grunted a laugh. “He said you were looking at holograms. You were trying to get closer to one in the park when he found you.”

  Leaning back into my pillow, I sighed, forcing myself to relax when he kissed me again. Once he let himself fall into what he was doing, he leaned into me more, putting more of himself into each kiss as he eased his body between my legs.

  Feeling him starting to get turned on, I laughed.

  I pushed at his shoulders when I felt his tongue in my ear.

  “I thought you wanted me to get up?” I said. “Coffee, remember? Breakfast?”

  “In a minute,” he murmured, resting more of his weight on me. “One of us up at a time is probably safer… and I never got to celebrate with my girl post-show last night.”

  “I thought you did,” I joked. “Bite mark, remember?”

  “It doesn’t count if we were both black-out drunk.”

  His fingers slid into my hair, caressing it back from my face, and I shivered, looking up at him. A pain started in my chest. Without thought, I raised my hand to where it started. As I did, I felt it again, that soft, feather-like presence, wound into a darker nausea in the lower part of my belly. For a moment, it was strong enough that I closed my eyes.

  Jaden raised his head.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, frowning.

  “Nothing.” I bit my lip, shaking my head. “It’s nothing. I’m probably just hung over.”

  But I was frowning too, feeling that presence skirt the edges of my awareness. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it, or why it felt so familiar. It hovered like the faint trace of a scent, like having a name or a flavor at the tip of my tongue.

  The harder I tried to understand, to pull it closer, the more it dissipated like smoke.

  Jaden kissed me again.

  After a pause, I let the other thing go and fell into the kiss, wrapping my arms around his neck. Jaden’s hands slid under the T-shirt of his I was wearing, pushing it gently up my body. His kisses deepened as he did it, growing more sensual as he tugged at my underwear.

  Briefly, the pain I felt worsened. The presence behind it strengthened, too.

  That time, I tried to ignore it.

  Jaden sat up long enough to pull his shirt over his head. As he helped me to do the same, the pain slowly began to dwindle, fading further into the background.

  By the time he started kissing me again, I questioned if it had been there at all.

  The tug of presence lingered, but only a little longer. A near-melancholy reached me in that silence; it reminded me again of floating in that golden ocean, that feeling of peace.

  Before I could find a name for it, the memory slid out of my grasp.

  Wings beat at me, soft, silent and crystal-white.

  Then the presence was gone, too.

  THE END

  WANT TO READ MORE ABOUT ALLIE AND HER MYSTERIOUS GUARDIAN?

  Try the BRIDGE & SWORD WORLD, starting with: ROOK (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #1)

  http://www.jcandrijeski.com/rook

  Yanked out of her life by the mysterious Revik, Allie discovers that her blood may not be as “human” as she always thought. When Revik tells her she’s the Bridge, a mystical being meant to usher in the evolution of humanity––or possibly its extinction––Allie must choose between the race that raised her and the one where she might truly belong. A psychic, science fiction romance set in a modern, gritty version of Earth.

  About the Author

  JC Andrijeski is a USA Today bestselling author who writes paranormal mystery, along with apocalyptic and cyberpunk-y science fiction, often with a metaphysical bent.

  JC has a background in journalism, history and politics, and currently occupies herself by traipsing around the globe, hanging out in coffee shops writing, and reading whatever she can get her hands on. She grew up in the Bay Area of California, but has lived abroad in Europe, Australia and Asia, and from coast to coast in the continental United States. She currently lives and writes full time in Bangkok, Thailand.

  Read More from JC Andrijeski

  http://jcandrijeski.com

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  Rift Cursed

  Margo Bond Collins

  At night, the Rift infects my dreams, tempting me to do terrible things. Things I’m ashamed to even remember in the light of day.

  A year ago, my brother Brodric set out on a Rift-quest to activate his latent magical genes. My family forced me to wait until my twenty-first birthday to set out after him.

  Now I’m following the plan he laid out—the one he left for me to find. So I’m headed to Brochan City, the abandoned site of the strongest Rift activity in the land.

  Along the way, I met up with a refugee from another world, tossed upon our shores like Rift-borne trash. Coit’s too naïve to survive this world easily, but he’s a good brawler. And the other pilgrims I’ve picked up in my travels? They might be useful, too. I’ll never admit out loud that I’m beginning to care for them.

  I’m hoping to send Coit back to his world and get my brother back. Sometimes the Rift allows trades like that.

  Sometimes it simply drives petitioners mad.

  If we’re lucky, that’s the worst it will do.

  Part I

  Earth and Water

  1

  Them werewolves is a buncha A-holes!”

  From his position in the middle of the bar, Coit Dugger—named, as he was so fond of telling people, after the road where he had been conceived, far on the other side of the Rift—held up a tanker of what passed for the local beer and called for a toast.

  At least, that’s what he would’ve said he was doing.

  Coit wasn’t entirely wrong, either. As far as I had ever been able to tell, werewolves were, by and large, unpleasant to deal with. And in his own, inimitable way, Coit’s announcement of the fact was a kind of homage.

  Unfortunately for him, however, he was smack dab in the middle of a werewolf bar.

  All around him, ears in various stages of pointy-ness perked up as their owners’ heads swiveled toward my partner.

  Well, hell.

  One of the men seated in a chair around a small table dropped his elbows onto his knees, and I could see his snout starting to elongate, even as his teeth sharpened. I couldn’t focus on the hands dangling between his knees—they blurred back and forth between fingers and paws. I could tell with a glance which of the wolves in the room had more control over their shapes. Experience told me that in some ways, those were the truly dangerous ones. The impulsive shifters were prone to making mistakes. The rest weren’t.

  “What?” Coit slurred, staggering up to a barrel-shaped wolf shifter still in human form and tapping him on the chest. “Hell, they’d tell you themselves. Ain’t a one of them would deny it, neither. Right?”

  I turned my stool around to face the bulk of the room, leaning back on the bar with one elbow. With that hand, I swirled my drink around lazily, using the motion to hide the way I was spooling my magic in case I needed it. Or more to the point, in case my partner did.

  It was a risk, using magic this close to the Rift, but I felt responsible. I had been too busy chatting up the bartender, hoping to find a guide who would take us closer, and I hadn’t paid attention to what Coit was doing—which, as it turned out, was drinking the place dry.

  Once I had the power prepped, I pushed up off the bar and dropped my feet to the floor. I could feel the energy I’d held onto crackling, arcing between my fingertips, so as I pushed into the center of the circle that was rapidly forming around Coit, I used that hand to pull my hat off my head. The motion would create a distraction in a couple of different ways, I knew from experience. I mostly liked to use the hat to shield my hand from view.

  But the sight of my long, dark hair cascading down from where it had been contained inside the hat didn’t hurt, either—especially not in a place this rough, this close to the Rift.

  “Gentlemen,” I said with a slight dip, somewhere between a bow and a curtsy, “please excuse my brother. As I’m sure you can tell, he has had far too much of your fine local brew to drink tonight. Also”—I lowered my voice almost to a whisper, opened my eyes wide, and leaned forward, looking around and inviting them to lean toward me, as well—“he’s more than a little Rift Cursed.” Keeping my eyes wide, I nodded and blinked twice.

  Several of them were nodding with me.

  I had them.

  Now, if Coit will stay quiet a little bit longer, I’ll be able to get us out of here.

  It was a ruse we had played before. When he was sober, Coit understood the importance of all the pieces. Telling them he was my brother invoked a familial restraint on them—only the most asocial of males would attack a female in the presence of her brother. At the same time, letting them know about his Rift Curse freed Coit from a number of social constraints, often allowing us to do whatever we needed to in a given situation.

  Granted, more often than not that meant thievery of some kind, mostly food or drink.

  In the midst of a wolfman bar, it could have meant a smooth, easy escape.

  If only Coit had kept his mouth shut.

  “I am not Rift Cursed,” Coit said belligerently. “Not everybody who falls through the Rift ends up cursed.” His mouth tightened. “Ain’t your brother, neither.”

  “Oh, you bloody idiot,” I breathed, grabbing his hand and jerking him backwards out of the circle with me. At the same moment, I let loose with a blast of spooled magic from my hand, through my hat.

  The hat flew out several feet with the force of the blast, then hovered in the air as the bright blue-white lights shot through it in a single beam before branching out to spear through the most intimidating ones of the bunch.

  I allowed myself a tiny sigh.

  That had been my favorite hat.

  Everyone not pinned by an electrical flash stood stock-still in apparent shock, long enough for me to tie off the spell and grab our saddlebags from the floor next to my barstool. The magic would hold long enough for us to grab our horses. I just hoped the stable boy was as lazy as he had looked, and hadn’t scattered our gear too far, or we might have to leave some of it behind again.

  And I was going to need a new hat.

  Again.

  2

  Larkin?” Coit said as we galloped away from the bar.

  “Yes.” My reply was sharp and short.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I sighed. “I know you are, Coit.”

  But sorry didn’t fix our problem.

  We needed a guide to the Rift, and we needed one soon.

  When no one had followed us after several minutes, I blew my breath out in relief. After all, I knew we weren’t worth chasing down. But reason wasn’t always a werewolf’s strong suit.

  I was about to rein my horse in and slow down, when I heard the howling of the wolves behind us.

  The noise was far too similar to the sound of the baying of dogs for my comfort.

  I couldn’t even blame Coit—he was a Rifter, pulled in from some other world and dropped here, like trash from a Rift-current.

  He didn’t know the rules.

  And though we’d been travelling together for almost a month, that wasn’t enough time to teach him a lifetime’s worth of survival skills.

  He was a good brawler, though—and that was the main reason he was still alive.

  Well, that and his desire to find his way back to his own world.

  I needed to keep him that way, too. If my brother Brodric had gotten swept away by a Rift-current, Coit was the one thing I might’ve had to trade to get him back.

  So when yet another werewolf stepped out of the darkness in front of us on the one road heading out of town, it was almost instinct to cut my horse in front of Coit’s to protect him.

  Almost.

  The wolfman, still in his half-shifted form, held up both hands, palm outward, in that almost universal sign of peace.

  “Come with me,” he said. “I can get you out of here.”

  Coit and I traded suspicious glances. Apparently the cool air
and the frantic ride out through the cobblestone streets of the wolves’ hamlet had done a lot to sober him up.

  Too bad he couldn’t have been this cautious before he pissed off a bar full of the wolfmen.

  This one was still gesturing at us to get off our horses. “There’s no way you can outrun them. So—” he paused, a funny little grin ghosting across his face “—come with me if you want to live.”

  Coit’s bark of laughter startled, me, but he was already dismounting. “Favorite movie, man.”

  The werewolf grinned, flashing his canines in a way that made me anxious. “Never thought I’d say it and mean it.”

  Crap. Another Rifter. I glared at Coit. “You told me you didn’t have shapeshifters in your world.”

  “Wasn’t a shapeshifter before I got here,” the wolfman said. He touched his forehead and waved his hand in a little two-fingered salute. “Rafe Conway, ma’am. Nice to meet you.”

  I sighed and dismounted, hoping I wasn’t making a really stupid mistake. But I had to try to keep Coit alive. And Rafe the werewolf was right—no way would we be able to outrun a pack in a full-on pursuit.

  The only thing that had saved us so far was the advantage my spell had given us.

  “Why should we trust you?” I asked.

  He held one hand out toward me as if asking me to take it. “Please,” he said.

  A wave of something powerful passed through me. At first I thought it came from Rafe, but when I used my fingers to weave a small magic-detection spell and rubbed it across my eyes, it showed a halo of magic around Rafe, not emanating from him.

  Whatever this was, the werewolf wasn’t doing it. I dispelled the enchantment over my eyes and quickly wove a protection around my hand before I took his hand.

  But as soon as I touched him, that power shot through me again, leaving me breathless. It swelled like the ocean rising and pulled me under like a riptide, spinning me around and around until I was dizzy with it. I twisted and turned in my mind, finally coming up for air.