Page 49 of Rifted Hearts
“You can’t go looking for those murder jellies.” Remi looked longingly at the exit through the wall then back at him. “It’s too dangerous. Besides, your clan put the monstertown in danger. Shouldn’t they be the ones to clean this mess up?”
Remi had a point, but given Rhys’s dismissive attitude toward the monstertown, which the matriarch and the clan elders must have supported, Kaveh needed to handle this himself.
He put an arm on Remi’s shoulder, relieved the streamer didn’t jerk away, and moved him toward the exit. “I’ll be fine. Get to the ranch, and I’ll come as soon as I can. Amanita should be able to scare off anything that tries to attack you.”
They stepped outside, and Kaveh was relieved to see no sign of anything more dangerous than the repoequus, who walked out of the darkness to give Remi a concerned sniff. Ranger stepped up beside her, alive and well, and for once not annoyed by the vid streamer.
Amanita had come through.
Kaveh helped Remi mount the repoequus and gave his hand a squeeze. “Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll find out what I can here, and when I get back, I’ll find Kat.”
Remi opened his mouth then shut it again. He kept his fingers gripped around Kaveh’s. “We need to talk. About everything.”
A flash of green lightning lit up the swirling clouds above and a low rumble resounded like an angry creature’sgrowl through the air. The storm had worsened, and it would be hours before it passed.
“We’ll talk, I promise.” Kaveh gave Amanita’s flank a firm pat to get her moving. “Get across the rift barrier as soon as you can.”
21
Remi rode through the rift storm, at once desperate to get away and aching to turn Amanita around, tell Kaveh everything, and beg him not to go farther into the base.
He tried to stop thinking about what a total piece of shit he was and focus on not falling off Amanita. They were riding through a hellscape. The gloom around him was punctuated by flashes of green energy streaking down the sky, lighting up the saguaros one minute then plunging the landscape into darkness the next. It was raining in earnest now, soaking his hair and dripping into his eyes. The power in the storm tugged at his ratkind side, threatening to transform him into his alter form. Fortunately, his chinchilla side was quite satisfied with the plan of running toward safety, and he and Amanita pounded forward.
Another flash of ethereal light from the clouds lit up the tall palm trees that marked the ranch. It was close, maybe another ten or fifteen minutes at Amanita’s current speed. Something was odd about the view though, and it took Remi far longer than it should have for him to figure outwhy. They hadn’t passed through the rift yet. There was no sign of it stretching before him, with the ranch where it should be, on the other side of the damn thing.
That could only mean that the drakone clan had expanded their territory again, this time swallowing up the ranch.
Remi hadn’t known what he would do when he got back. The obvious option was to run away as fast as he could, find Zale, and get out of town. He was fine with leaving the Pouch Twins behind to face whatever Kaveh and the other drakones wanted to do with them, but his tentacled cousin had at least tried to save Remi’s life. If any other job had gone this badly, he would have counted himself both lucky and talented that he had conned his mark one last time and escaped with his life.
Instead, the sick pit of guilt sucking at his insides had only grown worse. Kaveh could be killed by the phantoms and all because Lyall had apparently decided to steal this fucking control object and kidnap Kaveh’s fiancé as a bonus.
That last part still didn’t make sense to him. Remi deserved Lyall’s vengeance a lot more than the charming and clueless Kat.
In any event, the game had changed. The ranch was in the riftland, vulnerable to attack by many mons and especially the phantoms. The humans there couldn’t use shotguns against them or even call for help from the city. Remi wouldn’t have any transportation to get out of the riftland. Amanita’s mental images were now focused on her young colt, and it wasn’t like he could ride into Tucson on a repoequus and try to get to the airport.
The ranch was locked down when he arrived. Shroom lights were on in the main building, and there was enough light in the stables for him to bring Amanita inside.
Her colt came barreling up, sending awful images of terrifying mons rampaging across the desert and devouring various versions of Remi.
“Great to see you too,” Remi told him and dismounted from Amanita.
The saddle and reins she could form from her flesh disappeared again, and she nuzzled her colt. Around her, the other horses in the barn seemed on edge, close to spooked, even to Remi’s untrained eye.
“Keep an eye on the others, okay?” Remi risked a quick scratch behind Amanita’s horns then headed for his room.
He walked to the cabin at a brisk pace—not panicking, only moving with prudent speed. Fortunately, he had stashed his key behind a barrel cactus, because during his transformation into chinchilla form in the base, he had lost everything but his living leathers.
Remi slipped inside and shut and locked the door. In place of the now defunct electric light fixtures, a soft glow came from the Riftworld fungi in hanging lamps. He paced around the room, noticing that the guardweed had gone from dried-out vines to a writhing silver-and-green organism, creeping along the walls and wooden supports under the ceiling. One tendril dropped down, two leaves opening up like a questioning mouth. Remi backed up, and the plant pursed its green lips in disdain before retracting up to the ceiling. The ranch’s defenses didn’t think much of him as a dangerous Riftworld interloper.
He decided to keep the living leathers on rather than convert them back to a tacky necklace. The reptilian armor had been awfully useful tonight. His watch, with Bug inside, was still on the bedside table. He tucked it inside a pocket that opened up in his skintight armor, hoping that meant he could keep Bug with him even if he had to transform again.
A low rumble resounded from the door. Remi whirled around, his chest tightening with fear. This was a terrible time for Lyall not to be here.
The door shook, and Remi scanned the room for a weapon he could use to defend himself. A closet full of semi-automatic rifles would have been useless even if he knew how to shoot. Most Riftworld people transformed into their alter forms for battle, but he didn’t think a few strong kicks from a chinchilla were going to do anything to the snarling beast about to break into his room.
He spotted a wine bottle on the sideboard, a nice Chianti he had picked up, thinking he would share it with Kaveh. Grabbing it by the neck, he crept up to the door, which was vibrating with the force of whatever was trying to burst through. His mouth felt like sandpaper, and it was all he could do to hold onto his human form. The rodent brain inside him wanted to be as far away from the entrance as possible, but Remi wasn’t going to win any sort of fair fight. The only chance he had was to use the bottle to cave in the skull of the monster outside.
The lock gave way and the door crashed open. Something huge and snarling charged into the room, and Remi swung the wine bottle at it with all his strength.
