Page 1 of Rifted Hearts
1
Kaveh Salehi knew a rift storm was coming—a bad one.
Worse yet, it might hit while the mare in the stall with him was giving birth. Amanita, who everyone else at Moon Star Ranch thought was an ordinary Camarillo White Horse, had been in the first stage of labor since late afternoon, her pale coat sweat-soaked and her breathing rapid. She would deliver soon, in the predawn hours, and Kaveh could only hope the horse kept her current shape throughout the birthing process. That would leave him managing what might be a typical foal—or might not.
He turned to his veterinary assistant, Katsuo Nakamura. Kat, as he was known, gazed at the restless horse in front of him with nothing short of adoration. The young wrangler had never met an animal he didn’t like, and the more dangerous, the better. Rather like his taste in boyfriends. But if a rift storm was on the way, Kat needed to get out and leave Kaveh to handle this particular blessed event.
“I think it’ll be a while before the foal comes. You should grab an early breakfast.” Kaveh hated to lie, but Kat didn’tknow Amanita had alien blood, and frankly, he didn’t want his assistant to find out. The young man had an unhealthy fascination with hostile Riftworld animals as it was.
Amanita had subtle signs she wasn’t a normal horse, but on this side of the Saguaro Rift—a rippling portal in the Arizona desert that led into a fragment of the alien planet known as the Riftworld—she couldn’t transform into her dangerous alter form.
Except during a rift storm.
“I’m off work later today anyway, so I don’t mind staying.” Kat turned to him with such enthusiasm and guileless joy Kaveh felt even more guilty.
Not guilty enough to tell the truth though. Kaveh pretended to look through his equipment. “I’m going to need some extra vials. I don’t have enough for the lab tests I want to run on the foal.”
“No problem. Tell me which ones you need, and I’ll run over to the petting zoo to get them.” Kat came over to join Kaveh in scanning the contents of his bag.
If he could get Kat out of here before the storm hit and Amanita’s foal arrived, Kaveh was confident he could handle the situation. In addition to working as a large animal veterinarian, he was a specialist in the medical treatment of Riftworld species.
And like many of his patients, Kaveh had his own Riftworld blood. That was another secret he didn’t want Kat or anyone else on the ranch to find out about.
Before Kaveh could come up with a list of equipment for his assistant to spend time collecting, the air itself shivered around him, and every electric light in the stable went out.
The storm had arrived, even earlier than he had anticipated.
Kat let out a yelp of surprise, but everyone who workedat Moon Star Ranch knew how to react. While the deep, gong-like sound of the storm bell tolled, Kat located one of the phosphorescent lanterns that hung near every stall and shook it into activity. The living material within—composed of mushroom-like organisms that emitted phosphorescent light—began to glow. A rift storm meant Riftworld rules—and that meant no electricity or any complex human technology.
“It’s the third storm this month.” Kat moved the shroom light into position to give Kaveh a better view of Amanita.
The horse had rolled on her side now, and a stream of fluids gushed from under her tail, which Kaveh had wrapped up in preparation for the birth. At least she was still in her Earth form. That might not last, and now there was no practical way to get Kat out of the stable. Sheltering in place was mandatory during a storm. The protections around the buildings at the ranch—which Kaveh had personally overseen—were designed to keep human inhabitants safe until the danger from hostile Riftworld species had passed. That could take hours.
“Do you think they’re getting more frequent?” Kat’s face, which looked even younger than his twenty-one years, had a pale sheen in the light of the shroom lamp. The vet assistant had been born after the rifts, or “monster portals,” had opened around the world, and he had grown up next to the one here in Tucson. Still, even humans accustomed to living near a piece of an alien world were unsettled by rift storms.
“Probably only a natural variation in timing.” Kaveh hoped that was true, but the uptick in both the number and severity of the events had grown over the past six months.
Amanita climbed to her feet, and the foal’s forelegs, covered in placental membranes, started to emerge. Kaveh put on a pair of gloves and approached the horse cautiously.He could communicate with the mare telepathically, and in general she tolerated him better than she did the human inhabitants of the ranch. Still, he had only been present for her full transformation once, and it had been terrifying.
“You should stay back.” Kaveh would have preferred Kat move to the opposite side of the stables, but he couldn’t come up with a good reason to send his assistant away.
The owners of the ranch were on board with Kaveh’s work helping injured or ill Riftworld animals who were no more dangerous than a domestic horse or a feral cat. Theywouldhave an issue with a transformed Amanita wreaking havoc on the ranch during a storm or trying to eat Kat, both of which she was more than capable of.
“She’s reacted poorly to some medical procedures in the past,” Kaveh finally said. Those procedures had involved him stopping Amanita from taking a bite out of him when she transformed while caught in a rift storm.
“Amanita likes me though.” Kat put more optimism into his statement than might have been warranted.
Kaveh examined the mare, and everything looked good for the birth. The foal was in the right position and presentation. Amanita pawed at the hay beneath her feet then lay on her side again. He crouched down, ready to gently guide the baby’s forelegs and clear the nose when it appeared. Once the shoulders were through the birth canal, the rest of the foal would come out quickly.
The storm hummed through Kaveh, enhancing his own alien senses and allowing him to perceive a shimmer over the mare’s coat. Maybe if the foal came out before the full effects of the storm hit, Amanita would continue to look and act like a horse. She hadn’t shifted into her alter form during the earlier rift storms that had hit the ranch, but judging by the way his body was reacting, this time might be different.
Kaveh tugged as Amanita pushed, and the foal came out, taking in normal breaths and sprawling out with gangly legs onto the hay. Even with the remaining membranes and fluid, the young animal’s coat shone red in the glow from the shroom light.
“It’s a boy!” Kat came over, ignoring Kaveh’s earlier advice, and reached out to pet the newborn colt. The foal opened his mouth to reveal a set of fangs as long as Kaveh’s index finger and shot out a black, forked tongue in Kat’s direction.
Kaveh slammed his shoulder into Kat, sending him flying backward away from the colt. The animal tried to get up on its long legs, determined to bite Kat, before collapsing into an uncoordinated heap. The baby had certainly inherited Amanita’s Riftworld blood. His skin under the afterbirth was covered in brilliant red scales, and the two nubs on his head were a reminder of the horns that would develop as he matured.
“That’s—not a horse.” Kat recovered enough to stand up, and instead of fleeing in panic, he inched toward the colt. “Wow, it looks like a baby dragon. Cool.”
