RiftBorn - 2
“The other riftwolf! Look out!”
The second riftwolf streaked toward me, sending the sorrowbird into the air with a disgruntled caw and a flash of purple-black feathers.
A blur of black and green scales, a slightly smaller body, more delicate features, smaller mouth—the female mate. But she didn’t leap up and grab at me, though she gave me some serious stink eye with huge amber orbs.
No, instead of snatching at me, she grabbed the back leg of her packmate and dragged him backward, toward the open seam in the earth. The two men I’d asked to deal with covering the second riftwolf stepped forward and I held up a hand. “Not worth it. Let her take her meal.”
How did I know they eat their dead?
A groan from behind me, and as the riftwolves disappeared, the injuries on the little girl, Red and Dakota became front and center.
Helayne ran to the little girl first and I stood there in a pool of the riftwolf’s still warm blood as the flurry of bodies worked around me.
I know I can tie off a tourniquet, can hold Red’s guts in, can set a broken bone and would stay with someone as long as needed if they were dying, but…
I am no true healer. I stepped out of the way so those better suited can help.
In part because seeing Helayne cradling her child, as Avalyn drifted in and out of consciousness, as her tiny body shuddered, and then flailed as if she were still fighting off the riftwolf…it struck a chord in me. Whimpering. Crying out.
Children should be protected at all costs in our world. And I’d almost lost Avalyn.
It would have been my fault if she’d been dragged away.
“Wraps,” someone yelled as Red swayed on his knees, his blood and bits of guts spilling through his fingers.
A few of the others ran to help, but more than one turned away from the violence of the aftermath.
I just stared. My heart beating steady, calmer than I’d been since I’d crawled out of the Rift.
Who the fuck was I, that this level of carnage didn’t so much as make me blink?
Backing up, I bump into a tree and just let myself skid down, bumping across the rough bark. Eyes slid my way, heavy with questions I couldn’t answer. The weight of the questions they have for me already spinning in my mind.
Who was I?
How the hell had I known what I’d known about the female riftwolf? No one else had realized what was happening and yet I’d known exactly why the female had come for her dead mate.
I roll the ring on my left finger, blood tacky against the metal but there is more than that. Under the pad of my thumb, there is a roughness. Numbers appear where I thought there’d been only scratches. I stare harder, bringing the ring close to my face.
Not initials as I’d first thought. Numbers. I blink and stare at my birthdate—a date that I don’t even remember.
01-13-01
Month, day, year. I stare at the numbers. Another set appear as I rub the riftwolf’s blood across it.
08-15-02
And a third set.
10-31-34
Two birthdays and the day I was married then? Unless they weren’t dates? Could they all be run together for a longer number? What did they mean, if anything?
The sorrowbird lands about ten feet to my left and tucks his wings back, hopping a few feet toward me, ducking his head, clacking his beak. “Saved. Good.”
I didn’t remember the sorrowbird quite the way I’d recalled the riftwolves. Other than that, they could be trouble and would often follow larger groups, looking for scraps. And they were if nothing else, incredible mimics. Though this one’s words were more than mimicry, more like communication.
“Piss off,” I wave a hand toward him. “I don’t need them thinking…” What, that the bird was mine? Yeah, that.
He let out a low clucking that sounded a great deal like laughing, then with one big hop took to the air, but instead of leaving just set himself in the tree above me.
“Don’t you dare shit on me.”
Another round of that laughing cluck.
I look back to the camp, which was still buzzing with activity, people running to help with the injured, to get supplies, to prep the medic tent.
A boy with dark hair shorn tight to his head, and limbs that made me think he’d not eaten in weeks, walked toward me, a bundle of clothing in his arms. Seeing me take notice of him, he picked up his pace, even as his eyes lowered.
Marks cross his left cheek in a starburst pattern, scars from a sickness maybe?
Likely. He was one of the luckier ones if what Helayne had told me was true.
He'd made it through most of his childhood and was on the edge of being a grown man.
“Ms. Mallory?”
His voice was cautious, and it took me a second to realize he was talking to me. Mallory, I was Mallory. “Right. That’s me.”
He cleared his throat. “My mom sent over some clean clothes and boots and said I was to show you where the creek is so you can clean up all the…blood.” He showed me the handful of clothes as if I wouldn’t believe him.
I nodded and he led me away from the cluster of tents…I looked over my shoulder to where the sun is in the sky, lowering in the west. East, we go east until there was a babble of the water over rocks.
“Um. Do you want me to stay, to keep guard?”
My eyebrows shoot up as I take in his scrawny frame, the near frailty of his body, the lack of experience I know is there by his age. All things I just…know. “Guard me from what?”
“Well,” he stammers, face going red, “more riftwolves. Or—”
“I’ll be fine, go back to your mom, and thank her for me.” I turn my back on him and step into the water—no point in taking the clothing I’m wearing off. It needs the blood rinsed away, as much as I do. The icy sluice over my feet pulls the blood downstream in light pink streaks.
From the corner of my eye, I watch the kid back away, face still red, before he finally turns and leaves me.
I didn’t mean to be harsh, and I almost call him back to soften my tone. Almost.
Because right then I need a moment by myself, grounded in the cold water to gather my thoughts. What little good they might do seeing as I couldn’t remember a fucking thing. My legs begin to prickle, heating up with the intensity of the cold.
“What do you know?” I ask myself the question as if that will help spur my memories.
Even with my name now intact, a place of birth, a birthdate, I have nothing to go on but my ring and a slim ID tag.
Spinning it around my finger, I wonder again if it was a gift from a partner.
Husband. Mate. I shake my head and frown.
How could I forget someone who’d wanted to spend their life with me?
A crack of twigs sends me into a crouch, and I spin and face the bank.
“You know how to fight.” Dakota leans against a tree, the side of his face a mixture of purple bruises and open abrasions from hitting the tree.
His arms are folded tight, and there is a tightness around the edge of his eyes.
“Pretty good at it too, from what I understand. The others said, well they said you fought like lightning. Faster than they could believe.”
He hadn’t actually seen me fight—he’d hit the tree before I’d stepped up to the riftwolf. “I was lucky.”
“Nobody gets lucky with riftwolves.” His voice is sharp, pointed. “Nobody human.”
I shrugged and looked away, not sure what to say to his barely veiled concern—was I something like the riftwolves? Was I another monster in disguise? “We got lucky today. Hopefully lucky enough that Red makes it.”
I waded out into the stream, and forced myself to step off a shelf that dropped me into chest deep water, not caring that Dakota watched.
The cold water stole my breath, and it took all the control I had not to hyperventilate, to control the steady in and out of air, my lungs doing their best to freeze instead of working properly.
But the water, the cold, the control all felt strangely familiar. Like something I’d done many times before and so I kept going as if it would spur something inside of me.
Exposure training.
I lowered myself inch by inch until I’m buried in the water, the rippling current pulling at my hair. Maybe the shock of the cold water will snap me out of this fog in my brain. That was my hope.
I stayed under until my skin begged to be released from the grips of the icy claws and my lungs begged for air—because none of it cleared my mind, it just froze my body.
Fuck.
Even with the demands of my body on my mind to take a breath, to drink in air and not water, I cannot shoot out of the stream, gasping and screaming—something in me says I must stay quiet because panic, noise, flailing, they lead to death.
There is survival in the silence, and I know it in my bones as if it has been etched there, over and over.
And if I know nothing else, I know that I will survive.
The longer I am awake in this place the more certain some things are. Maybe not who I am…but the rest…it is a start.
I rose slowly and started toward the bank, my skin not covered by my tank top and pants bright red and prickling, furious with my cold dunk.
Reaching the shore, hands shaking, I struggled to peel out of the wet clothes, wringing them out even while I inspected my body—as if for the first time.
Bruises across my knees, thighs and ribs, easily from a tumble into the Rift. I didn’t bother to look at Dakota. He’d either look away or he wouldn’t and I didn’t care.
“Can I help you?” I asked as I fought to pull my jeans off my calves, lifting my eyes finally to him. He was staring past me. As if I weren’t stripping in front of him.
“Maybe. You’ve been trained more than most. It’s obvious to me at least. You move like a hunter even when you walk across an open space.
And while there is some rumbling after that fight, I don’t think you’re Riftborn.
” Dakota tossed me a thick towel that has seen better days.
It might have been blue once, or maybe green, but now the color is faded and stained and the best I could say was it was clean as I pulled it to my face.