Page 59 of Rifted Hearts
He used that last talent to put his armored foot into Rhys’s groin. As the drakone doubled over, Remi landed another kick to his head.
Then he ran.
The only shelter in sight was the rusted remains of an abandoned gas station too close to the rift to be worth the expense of converting it to an electric charging station.
Maybe if he had hit Rhys’s balls hard enough, he would have enough time to reach the crumbling structure, transform back, and disappear into an opening too small for Rhys to get at him.
He never made it.
The massive serpentine body of Rhys’s aerial drakone form descended down, a blast of wind sending Remi flying through the air toward a pile of brush and rocks.
Remi hit hard, his face protected by a chitinous shield that appeared as the living armor reared up like a cobra hood over his head. The armor prevented the impact from smashing his bones, but he was left winded and dazed, sprawled out on the ground as Rhys towered over him. The drakone held a leather-and-metal band in one hand.
Remi recognized Lyall’s collar a second before Rhys snapped it around his neck.
His body twisted and writhed, the living leather armor transforming into a thin string around his neck as he returned to rodent form. He was suspended in the air as Rhys held him up for inspection.
The drakone’s eyes glittered with malice. “This way, you’ll be nothing more than a heap of rat bones in the desert.”
25
Kaveh wasn’t in the mood for a visit from a mothcat. But Flutterberry could pop in any time she felt like it, so her arrival to the monstertown via one of her mini-portals was hardly a surprise.
Snow perched on the fur on her back wasn’t as expected but perhaps even less welcome. Not that Kaveh didn’t have a soft spot for the mischievous half parrot, but he did tend to cause chaos wherever he flew.
Kaveh didn’t need any more chaos after last night.
Snow cocked his head, his usual swaggering air no longer in evidence.
“Little rat,” the bird said.
He sounded sad, or perhaps that was Kaveh projecting. Maybe Snow only liked to say the phrase, or perhaps he did associate the words with Remi and knew he was gone. Either way, Kaveh didn’t want a reminder of the terrible mess he had made of everything. The Matchmaker truly was a curse and not the near-divine intelligence the drakones thought it was.
“I’m sorry, Flutterberry,” Kaveh said. “I’ve got a lot on myhands right now, and it might be best if you stayed near your human companions.”
Having a lot on his hands was an understatement. After his awful parting with Remi, he and Tarasque had scoured the ranch grounds for lurking phantoms, while Rhys flew off to consult with the elders on how to draw back the boundaries of the rift. The matriarch, for her part, had gone to the main building to make a rare apology to Garreth and the other humans at the ranch.
There hadn’t been any time to confront her about Remi’s accusations that the clan had knowingly tortured and imprisoned the phantoms using the control object.
At least, that was what Kaveh had told himself.
Kaveh had allowed Tarasque to wind-walk him back to the monstertown, where he had treated injuries from several town residents caused by fighting off the phantoms. Fortunately, none were serious, although José had suffered a significant electrical burn to his hind leg. The cadejo was resting at home now, with Jessie hovering over him.
At least the frantic work and lack of sleep had distracted him from thinking about Remi. Kaveh felt hollowed out and emotionally empty. Remi’s betrayal had been awful, but watching the panic and fear in the man’s eyes when he realized he had been the Matchmaker’s choice all along was crushing.
Remi was terrified of him and for good reason.
Kaveh wasn’t the conscientious veterinarian and teacher he pretended to be. Remi saw him as he truly was—an Azdaha killing machine who could force the person selected for him by the Matchmaker to come to the keep and never let him go. Kaveh was a killer now. He had used his summ to take the lives of multiple sapient creatures. The fact he haddone so to protect the lives of others didn’t make the memory of it less sickening.
“My servants are in no danger.” Orange-and-russet colors shimmered over Flutterberry’s wings, colors Kaveh knew indicated indignation and annoyance, although he couldn’t parse the more complex nuances of the mothcat’s chromatophoric language. “I translocated them farther away, and it was wise I did, since most of the city is now riftland.”
Kaveh stared at her. The monstertown was still without any functioning advanced human technology, but he thought that was because it had taken longer for Rhys and the others to pull the rift boundary back to its original position. But the matriarch had promised that the ranch would be outside the riftland by morning.
Tucson itself shouldn’t have been affected at all.
“Is that why you’re here, to tell me that there’s a problem with drakone control of the rift?” Flutterberry was intelligent and found humans amusing, but sallying forth to defend the citizenry of Tucson wasn’t a mothcat thing to do.
“The problem isn’t with the drakone control of the rift but rather what some of you are doing with that power.” After that pointed remark, Flutterberry turned her graceful neck back to give Snow a long-suffering glare. “I’m quite exhausted making all these portals, but the bird insisted. Something about the pretty ratkind male you were so friendly with.”
