Page 51 of Rifted Hearts
There wasn’t anything to say to that. Remi was such a horrible person even Kat couldn’t find anything good to say about him.
Lyall cracked his neck and sighed. “I can’t translocate for a while, but I could take a run back to the base and check.”
“No, we need to stay in the cabins.” Kat sounded downright bossy about it. “That’s the rule during any rift storm,and this one will go on for a while. Kaveh knows more about dangerous mons than anyone else here. The defenses in both the main building and all of the guest housing should stop anything.”
A scream rang out, high-pitched and sounding as if it had come from someone young, like a child.
Remi jumped. “What the hell was that?”
“The phantoms.” Lyall sounded grim. “They’re here.”
22
Kaveh raced across the desert, leaving the abandoned military base behind. He was asking even more of Ranger, who was exhausted by all of the riding Kaveh had done tonight. The horse had waited in the outer perimeter for his return. That was good news.
The loss of the control object, on the other hand, was an awful development. He had caught only glimpses of a few phantoms still trapped behind remnants of the disrupted cordon, and there had been no sign of the egg-like device that should be secured in the core of the military complex. Phantoms were now loose within the riftland, and even though the monstertown had strong defenders, there were too many potential meals there for the ravenous invertebrates not to attack. Kaveh had to go there first, even though Remi should now be at the ranch and Kat was still missing.
Kat, who had ridden away with a hellhound after Kaveh revealed he was a drakone, something he should have told his assistant years ago. Maybe Remi was right and the hellhound would keep Kat safe, perhaps to use him as a bargaining chip against Kaveh and his clan.
Kaveh would leave Ranger in the town to rest, update the guardians, and ask them to notify his clan of the developments. There were other horses in the monstertown, and once he checked that Remi was safely in his cabin, he could resume the search for Kat.
He paused at the top of a rise, his eyes straining through the gloom. The monstertown was lit up with a host of Riftworld light-producing tech. There was no sign of any phantoms or evidence the walls were breached. Beyond it should be the new boundary of the rift, which would appear as a glowing wall stretching up into the night sky, even in darkness.
Only it didn’t.
The riftland had expanded again, and Kaveh had a sinking certainty the next interzone it had gobbled up included Moon Star Ranch. The phantoms fed on anything and anyone they could catch and, worse yet, had enough intelligence to identify the two major sources of food in the immediate area—the monstertown and the ranch. They were more than smart enough to choose the softer target.
The monstertown had the guardians, who could communicate remotely with the matriarch. Moon Star Ranch wouldn’t be able to hold off an entire swarm of phantoms, and his clan had no obligation to defend the humans there.
And Remi was at the ranch, where Kaveh had told him to stay put in his cabin, thinking he’d be safe.
Kaveh made his decision and turned Ranger around.
Fear gripping his chest, he tried not to picture the worst. The ranch would be in lockdown from the storm, and with any luck, Remi would be inside his room or the main building, all of which had Riftworld protections Kaveh had set up himself.
His return to the ranch, pushing Ranger to the very limits of his endurance, felt like an eternity. He rode up to the outer buildings, seeing no one. The horses tied in the temporary stable were spooked, nostrils flaring and whinnying in fear as they stomped their hooves. No wranglers were in sight, which was how it should be, but the horses were far too vulnerable if the phantoms attacked.
He dismounted, taking a few precious moments to lift the tack off Ranger. An angry hiss sounded behind him, and he whirled around, his hands raised to repel an attack. Amanita stood before him with her monstrous colt by her side. The young repoequus’s blood-red scales gleamed in the dim glow of hanging shroom lights, now providing the only illumination as alien clouds swirled overhead and dusk faded into night.
Amanita launched a psychic assault of information at him, and Kaveh lowered his mental shields to let the images in. She showed him a nightmare of phantoms floating through the ranch grounds, ghostly white tentacles twitching as the invertebrates swam through the air like water.
Kaveh focused on the repoequus, projecting every image of protection he could think of as he flung his hands out to indicate the stable. Amanita tilted her head in a questioning manner. He gestured to Ranger, who was panting, eyes wide with terror and exhaustion, then at the other horses. Despite Amanita’s alien blood, she had formed a bond with the big gelding. After another moment of consideration, Amanita came forward and rubbed against Ranger’s neck, then pushed him toward the minimal shelter the open-air stable provided. Her colt followed, giving a soft whinny.
Kaveh sent a silent prayer up to several gods sacred to his adopted clan that Amanita and her colt would be able tohold off a phantom attack on the full-blood horses and jogged toward the cabins.
It didn’t take long for him to spot a phantom.
One floated in front of a cabin door, questing tentacles pulling at the wooden frame. All of the guest houses had guardweed inside them, but they wouldn’t hold back a determined phantom indefinitely. He raised his hands to hurl summ at the monster, but the floating invertebrate sensed his presence and floated away from the door.
Electric currents jumped from one part of its skin to another, and the monster sent a lightning-like bolt directly at him. His reflexes were quick enough to dodge the blow, and when he raised both hands, his summ sizzled out to strike the invertebrate, a surge of poison and fire fused together.
The phantom made a horrible noise, high-pitched and inhuman, and fluttered its now smoking and damaged tentacles. It lurched forward, the eerie and graceful drifting now a crippled stagger, and dropped to the ground in a viscous heap.
The creature would have attacked the guests in the cabin if Kaveh hadn’t intervened, and he knew it. That didn’t make him feel any better about using his hated talent to kill an intelligent being.
Kaveh went to the door of the cabin and shouted for the people inside to stay put and keep the door shut. Without waiting for an answer, he hastened down the corridor between the cabins, searching for more floating invaders.
The ranch buildings were all locked down, and Amanita was protecting the horses. So far, he had seen only one phantom and no evidence of anyone injured or killed. Perhaps Amanita’s visions had been more warning than reality and the majority of the jellyfish-like monsters wereelsewhere in the riftland, hopefully facing down the rage of his entire clan. They were deadly creatures, but he had driven one away and could probably handle a small number of them with his summ.
