by White, Gwynn
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.
Rafe and I stared at each other for a long moment.
“What the hell was that?” Rafe finally asked.
“Why are you here?” I asked
“I saw you in the bar. Looks like you could use some help. That’s all.”
“And you weren’t held in my spell?”
“I slipped out as soon as your friend started making toasts.” The werewolf’s wry tone suggested that although he might have agreed with Coit, he knew better than to announce it in that particular setting.
“This time I wove a Truth spell and pushed it through my palm into his, adding in just a hint of a holding spell as well.
“Ouch.” He pulled his hand out of mine but the spell had taken hold.
“Why are you willing to help us?” I asked.
“I heard you asking for a guide before your buddy picked a fight with the whole bar. Thought I could help out.”
Truth, but not all of it.
“And?” The spell was wearing off but I hoped that it had at least one more answer’s worth in it.
“And I’m drawn to you.”
That was the entirety of the truth—I could tell, all the way down to my bones, with a certainty that sank into me like water into the parched ground.
And I was drawn to him, as well, though I wasn’t going to say so aloud yet.
Not until I had some idea of how that outside force played into it—and where that power came from.
For now, though, he was our best hope of escaping.
“Lead on, Rafe,” I said, gathering up my horse’s reins.
He grimaced apologetically. “Can’t take the horses. You’ll have to carry your gear.”
“Damn,” Coit said. “We just got them horses, too.”
“So we’re not that fond of them.” I tried to sound pragmatic, but I was sure it came out sounding harsh, instead.
I’d had lots of practice giving things up.
The horses couldn’t matter to me.
Nothing that didn’t lead me to saving Brodric could matter.
When we’d grabbed our packs, Rafe set the horses galloping with a slap—and with the scent of wolf he carried, I suspected.
“If they’re fast enough, they can get home,” I consoled
Coit.
I didn’t believe it.
Neither did Rafe, from the way he snorted, but he didn’t say anything, choosing instead to wave at us to follow him.
He led to us to a narrow alleyway between two stone buildings—one of the few alleys in the town, as far as I could tell. Definitely the foulest, if the smells emanating from it were anything to go on.
“In here,” Rafe said, leaning on the closest wall and pointing.
“Nasty,” Coit observed.
“It’ll hide our scent, though.” I glanced at Rafe. “Right?”
“Exactly.” Rafe went one step further, though. He followed behind us into the alley, unbuttoned his pants, and sprayed a layer of urine over the path we’d just taken.
I could hear the wolf pack getting closer.
“Just in time,” I whispered.
Rafe held a forefinger to his lips. His wolf-scenting duty done, his face melted before me, fur and pointy ears receding as I watched.
When his shift was complete, a handsome young man, maybe mid-twenties, stood before me, his dark hair and brown eyes the only remnant of the wolf-shifter who’d been there moments ago.
As the wolf pack streamed by, most in full animal shape at this point, Rafe leaned back into the shadows, one arm outstretched across me to encourage me to do the same. I didn’t encourage Coit. I kept one hand pressed against his mouth to make sure he stayed silent and to push him back into the shadows.
With my other hand, I wove a tiny distraction spell and flicked it at the entry to the alley. When I looked at it, I could see the tiniest shimmer of blue around the edges. When other people looked at it, they would simply want to look away—not desperately, but with just a nudge.
We stood like that for a good ten minutes after the pack had packed.
When I finally took my hand away from Coit’s mouth, he said petulantly, “Damn, Larkin. Why’d you do that? I wasn’t going to say nothing.”
“Just making sure.”
Pragmatically. Like with the horses.
Keeping what could help me.
Ditching what wouldn’t.
And never admitting that I cared about anything other than finding Brodric.
3
There are things everyone knows about the Rift.
It’s aware.
Sometimes it knows what you’re thinking.
Sometimes it can make you think things you weren’t.
It’s dying.
And it’s likely to take us all with it when it goes.
We’ve all known it for a long time now. Some of us know it better than others. It slides into our dreams at night whispering to us, those of us that can hear it making horrific suggestions, urging us to murder our neighbors, take their belongings, kill their children, rape their wives.
Make everything ours—then tear it all down.
Blow it up.
Destroy the entire universe.
But sometimes under that, there’s another voice.
That one whispers in the dark, too. But it says, Save me. Savemesavemesaveme.
Maybe it’s something in the Rift, maybe it is the Rift. But those of us who hear it also feel the call to save it, to rescue it from that other, louder voice urging us to destroy and kill.
That’s why Brodric went off on his own Rift quest. He wanted to save whatever was in the Rift, keep it from dying when the Rift explodes.
Or implodes.
No one is entirely certain what the Rift is going to do.
But we all know it’s going to be spectacular.
4
Rafe led us from the alley carefully, sticking to the shadows. “The horses will lead them the wrong way for a while,” he said.
“The horses are likely to head home—we picked them up two towns back,” I replied. No need to mention that we hadn’t precisely paid for them. “So that’s the farthest they’re likely to lead the wolves astray, right?”
Rafe’s slanted glance suggested he hadn’t missed the way I’d glossed over getting the horses. “Yeah. But I doubt they’ll make it that far.”
Coit mumbled something from behind us.
“What’s that?” I asked sweetly.
“Nothing,” he grumbled.
“Right, then,” Rafe said. “We’re ready to head into the tunnels. We can talk more there.”
“Tunnels?” Coit said, horrified. “Like, underground and enclosed and dark? Ah, hell, man.”
My huge brawler was claustrophobic.
Figures.
We set out cross-country, leaving the roads behind.
Among the varied problems of going on a Rift-quest is that the Rift lies, whispers to people, convinces them they’re doing the right thing even when they’re not.
That, of course, was also a problem with finding a guide this close to the Rift. For all we knew, Rafe the Wolfman was a bleeding nut bag. His comment about the tunnels concerned me, because in all our searches, we had not yet come across anyone who said anything about tunnels leading into Brochan City, and I wasn’t sure I believed they existed.
But we’d already sent our horses on to be devoured by wolves and I didn’t see much option at the moment but to follow him.
I gave him a long, level look, then finally said, “We came with you. I expect you to make sure we live.”
Rafe and Coit grinned at each other at that.
“It’s a bit of a hike, but we’ll get there before dawn,” Rafe said.
“Assuming the werewolves—the other werewolves—don’t catch us before we get there.” I raise my eyebrows at Rafe.
“I don’t think they will. But we better get moving, just in case.” Rafe
I heaved my pack up onto my back and settled it.
Well, at least a few days on horseback had been a nice change.
“Another effin’ hike,” Coit grumbled. I glanced down at his shoes. They were too soft for the kind of traveling we been doing—made of some kind of fabric and rubber, the same kind I saw all the time in the city marketplaces back home. The kind of shoes that came through the Rift, not the kind that we made here. Not the kind that everyone born in this world knew they might someday need.
Here, we made boots that could take a pilgrim all the way to the Rift.
Because, as the saying went, eventually everyone comes to the Rift.
Now it was my turn.
The farther we got away from the werewolves’ village, the more we left behind any signs of inhabitants. True, there were old, abandoned villages. No one wanted to live this close to the Rift, though.
As a general rule, we were taught to avoid Rift-cursed villages—the ones haunted by more than just the memory of the people used to live there.
Sometimes, in a village that close to it, the Rift brought a person’s nightmares to life.
And sometimes, those nightmares stuck around a lot longer than anyone expected.
A long time after you died, the monsters from your mind survived.
I was so busy thinking about how the Rift created monsters that I almost missed the sounds of the actual monsters pursuing us.
Luckily, Rafe had a wolf’s hearing and was paying attention, watching for any signs of pursuit.
We’d been walking along the remains of a once well maintained road, taking advantage of the mostly clear path, when Rafe paused and waved us closer.
“Wolves,” he whispered almost silently, and pointed both in front of and behind us.
“How did they find us so quickly?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not the whole pack. They probably send a few scouts out in every direction.”
“Fight?” Coit asked.
I glanced around. For the most part, we were in the flatlands leading to the city—if there had still been lights there, we would have been able to see their glow from our position. We were in a slight depression—the closest thing this landscape had to low ground.
The wolves had chosen to close in around us here because it gave them a slight tactical advantage.
“No other choice,” Rafe answered Coit. Then he kicked off his shoes and shucked his shirt. With a glance at me, he simply unbuttoned his pants, then pulled them off, as well.
I might have been more interested in this process if not for the fact that I was concentrating on spooling magic into my hands. I haven’t had a chance to rest since the bar, and that magical expenditure had left me magically exhausted, if not physically. I would be able to use magic still, but the longer I went without sleep, the more that magic would pull its vitality out of me. Eventually it would burn out. And if I were careful, it might burn me out, too.
“The usual?” I asked Coit. We had fought together often enough at this point that our styles blended almost seamlessly.
We would have to see how Rafe fit in.
With a nod, Coit pulled out the two knives he carried in sheaths at his hip. Though I could see a tightness around his eyes that suggested he was either anxious or slightly hung over or both, I didn’t say anything.
I was too busy watching Rafe in fascination as his features seemed to melt and reform into that half-shifted Wolfman figure similar to the one he’d presented to us on the road earlier. Though a full wolf shape was smaller than a human, in this form he actually grew larger.
His hips and thighs seem to rotate, turning into hunches as his feet and hands grew longer and broader, sprouting claws at the tips.
No, this form was definitely more menacing than the one he’d been wearing when he stepped out in front of us on the road. If I had seen this thing coming at us, I would have attacked first and ask questions later.
Coit and I drew together, back to back, each of us facing a different direction in the road. As if we had practiced it, Rafe stepped in as well, angling himself to be able to see both sides of the road with a simple turn of his head.
They came at us in their full wolf forms, flowing over the slight rise in the land.
“Two on this side,” I said.
“Four here,” Coit replied.
“Probably one sent back to report to the main pack,” Rafe added tersely.
Six now, a whole pack later. Damn. This seems like an awful lot of work simply to get back at a Rifter who called them a name.
