RiftBorn - 1 #3
She wrapped her hands over mine, her warmth sinking into my cold fingers.
“We have some maps you can look at, see if anything is familiar. And Red has said you are welcome to stay as long as you like. It’s harvest time in another month, and before the winter we can use all the hands we can get, you know.
Then we’ll be off to the closest town.” She smiled wider, showing off two teeth missing on the left side of her mouth, and a thin pale scar on her upper lip I’d not noticed at first. Like she’d been smashed hard.
Her smile faded and the scar was less visible.
“Now as to the Rift and what it is…well the world broke a long time ago, shifting all the landmasses. I was very little when it happened, but we have books from before.” She frowned.
“Anyway, since then, the earthquakes kept coming. Seams open and close at random, like that one you were stuck in, and sometimes…creatures come out of them. Bad creatures that shouldn’t be real.
” She swallowed, her throat bobbing as if she couldn’t quite swallow the truth of her own words.
“But enough of that. We have a good group here, even if we are about as far out as one group could get. We like it that way, the bigger cities have their own kind of danger.” Her sudden laugh drew a smile from me.
“We even have a few children here, if you can believe it.”
She looked at me like that should get a bigger response than me staring blankly at her. “That’s not common?”
Her face fell. “It’s a hard world, Mallory. Children are so very fragile, as are pregnant and new mothers. Slower. Quicker to sickness. Easier to take.”
And it made sense why they were willing to let me stay—even if they thought maybe I was something unnatural. “Women die faster in this world?”
“They do. Not all the men are like Red, or Dakota. And there is no law, no one to stop…” Her eyes glittered with unshed tears.
No one to stop the bad ones, the men who would take advantage of those they should be protecting.
I closed my eyes, tears prickling at the backs of them. Her words struck chords in me that I understood, even if I had no memories and more…they struck a deep sorrow that I could not deny. Grief tried to claw its way up through me, digging into my flesh, fighting to make me pay attention.
No. There is a time to grieve, but it is not the day you are fighting for your life.
I buried the emotions deep and locked them up as best I could. “Thank you.” I was lucky. Very, very lucky I’d stumbled on kind people and not the kind that would take advantage of a woman in my situation. Even if I didn’t fully understand how I’d gotten into my situation.
“The other side of your card says that you were a baker by trade.” Helayne flipped the tin piece over and I stared at the words. I’d worked at a bakery called V&V Treats. The words were foreign to me.
“It doesn’t ring any bells.” I didn’t have a sudden urge to bake bread. Eat bread? Yes, but not bake it.
“As I said, if you hit your head, it might take time, I should know…” she lifted her hand to the scar on her lip, then paused, listening as a gong sounded.
Her face paled so fast that I thought maybe she would pass out, and her hand went to her throat.
“Helayne? What’s wrong?” The gong meant something. A warning. She put her finger to her lips, her hand shaking so hard that it looked almost like she was wagging her finger at me.
Another boom of the gong, followed by a bone chilling howl.
Her eyes fluttered closed and she caught a sob. “No, no! Riftwolves! Mallory, stay, do not come out!” Helayne stood and spun, then ran from the tent, the flap not fully closing, giving me my first glimpse at a riftwolf.
No, I’d seen them before. In my mind. The hybrids had been behind me in the Rift.
It was like a flash of a photograph barely remembered.
Its body was dark green and black, lean, scaled like a reptile, with a whip long tail, and four-inch-long fangs that were accompanied by a mouthful of teeth.
The riftwolf shot across my field of vision so fast if I’d blinked, I’d have missed it—the knowledge of what it looked like was not in what I was seeing, but in what I already knew.
They stood chest height to the average man and weighed in around five hundred pounds.
The wolfish body was built for hunting and killing, and like typical wolves they worked in packs.
They’d followed me up out of the seam in the Rift. I might not have known anything else, but I felt it in my gut that I was the reason that creature was here. They’d been hunting me, and I’d led them to these people.
I shoved myself upright, the world tilting as my feet hit the ground.
My gaze flicked around the tent, searching for anything I could use—a blade, a pole, anything.
These people had dragged me out of the Rift, wrapped my ribs, given me a safe place when they could have cast me out.
There was no universe where I stayed hidden while something crawled out of the darkness looking… for me.
A scream lit the air, high pitched, frantic. “Mama!”
And now it had a child in its sights instead of me.
“Fuck those fucking fuckers.” I was moving, running toward the sound of the child screaming. My rib going silent, ignoring the stones under my bare feet.
As I ran, the scene unfolded and was as surreal as opening my eyes under the earth and having no idea how I’d gotten there.
Red and Dakota were on either side of the riftwolf, a little girl with bright red hair lay on her back, left leg bleeding.
“Avalyn, darling you stay still!” Red shouted, his voice cracking with emotion. “Don’t move!”
She didn’t listen, terror driving her every move.
The riftwolf stood over her as she screamed and tried to crawl away, using its back foot to pin her down with ease.
Its muzzle was overly elongated, teeth filling it from back to front.
It snapped at Red, the hybrid’s oversized eyes glittering oddly in the sunlight.
Meant for darkness. I was the bait it was willing to take on during the day.
“Get back you!” Red shoved a pitchfork at the hybrid which it easily dodged, grabbed the girl by the ankle and bit down hard, those big fangs sinking straight through the flesh of her tiny calf. She screeched and an answering cry came from Helayne.
“No, not my girl!”
Another’s stomach might have rolled, but the sight of the girl’s blood, the piercing cries of her pain, and the pain of her mother did nothing but enrage me.
Dakota blocked the riftwolf with a long scythe, but again it avoided the blow and dragged the girl again in the direction it wanted—back to the seam in the earth leaving a trail of blood in the dirt, her hands clawing for purchase as if she could stop the inevitable.
There, at the edge of the seam…another riftwolf had crept out and lay in wait. No one else had noticed.
And how many more after that? The whole pack if we let them.
“You two.” I pointed at a pair of men cowering against another larger tent. “Go block that second riftwolf!” They hesitated and I put some tone in my voice. “Now!”
I didn’t wait to see if they listened, just scooped up two items closest to me—not exactly weapons but they would do. A pair of handheld seed planters, six inches long, circular, with wooden handles.
The hybrid lashed out, slashing Red across the belly. The big man gasped, dropped his weapon and tried to hold himself together, grabbing at the edges of his wound.
Helayne screamed.
No one else was stepping up and I knew that if I did nothing, the girl would be lost. Her father might be already, but I could save her.
Running on adrenaline and something that told me I could do this, I leapt into the fight.
The riftwolf saw me coming and snarled, teeth bared. It blinked and the oddly striated eyes meant for darkness were gone, and I was staring into eyes that were all too wolf like.
“Work with me!” Dakota said from its other side.
But it was not to be. Quicker than it had any right to be, the riftwolf spun, using its long-scaled, thick muscled tail to send Dakota flying, a large tree stopping his trajectory with a sickening, thick thud.
I didn’t think about what I was doing.
Just stepped into the riftwolf’s guard. It spun and I was already leaning into the momentum, leaping straight up so I missed the deadly tail slam.
Dropping lightly to my bare feet I held my hand out to either side, locking eyes with the riftwolf, the little girl now behind me.
“Come on you big bastard,” I snarled, my muscles tensed, waiting for the moment to strike.
The riftwolf tipped its head and lifted one ear from where it lay flat on its skull—questioning me.
A sensation of almost understanding bloomed between me and it.
Pack.
I narrowed my eyes. What the fuck was that?
Shaking itself, it grinned, peeling its lips back and lifting its head to the sky.
“Cover your ears, Mallory!” Red gasped. “It’ll freeze you in place!”
The howl ripped out of the riftwolf, indeed reverberating deep in the bones of my chest, but otherwise I was unbothered. Everyone around me froze.
Good for me, not so good for the riftwolf.
With its throat exposed I took the opportunity, and tackled it, thrusting the seed planters into either side of its neck, driving them straight through.
Blood poured from the creature as the rounded seed planters took out most of its arteries.
I twisted them hard in opposite directions, forcing them deeper, through the trachea until the metal tips touched.
I yanked the seed planters free and the riftwolf’s neck collapsed.
Movements smooth as if I’d been doing this my whole life—whatever weapon was at hand, whatever creature or monster I faced…there was no revulsion to my own actions.
No shock.
No fear of the ease of how I’d killed the riftwolf.
Just certainty that I’d done the right thing—and that I’d been trained for it, even if I didn’t remember.
I stood, blood coating my hands, splattered down my shirt and pants, my rib reminding me that it was broken.
“Saved!” A throaty voice bellowed from the tree that Dakota had smashed into.
“Saved. Saved.” A flap of wings and what could only be the sorrowbird fluttered down, walking toward me.
Its black feathers were slicked back with a hint of purple across the tips, and its tail was longer than that of a normal raven.
On its head was a very tiny protrusion, like its skull had tried to deform at some point and gave up partway through.
A horn maybe that never did more than bud?
It hopped it’s way closer until it could peck at the riftwolf’s tail.
“Bad dog.”
I looked back to the creature at my feet.
The riftwolf stared at nothing, the light in its eyes disappearing, the last shudders of its death rocking its massive frame, a final flash of shock filtering through its eyes.
As if it couldn’t believe what I’d done—with seed planters no less.
You and me both, motherfucker, you and me both.