Riding Rifts (Vampire's Elixir Series Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Riding Rifts

  Copyright

  Books by Pippa Amberwine

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Riding Rifts

  A SHATTERED MAGIC NOVEL

  Vampire’s Elixir Series Book Two

  PIPPA AMBERWINE

  with

  JAYNE FAITH

  Copyright

  Riding Rifts

  Copyright © 2018 by Pippa Amberwine

  All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors.

  Riding Rifts / a novel by Pippa Amberwine

  Edited and proofread by: Tia Silverthorne Bach of Indie Books Gone Wild

  Cover designed by: Deranged Doctor Designs

  Published in the United States of America

  Books by Pippa Amberwine

  Vampire’s Elixir Series

  urban fantasy

  Chasing Legends

  Riding Rifts

  Drinking Destiny

  Books by Jayne Faith

  Ella Grey Series

  urban fantasy

  Stone Cold Magic

  Dark Harvest Magic

  Demon Born Magic

  Blood Storm Magic

  Stone Blood Series

  urban fantasy

  Blood of Stone

  Stone Blood Legacy

  Rise of the Stone Court

  Reign of the Stone Queen

  War of the Fae Gods

  Sapient Salvation Series

  dystopian sci-fi romance

  The Selection

  The Awakening

  The Divining

  The Claiming

  Chapter One

  Katie

  Lynnette’s shop

  Boise, Idaho, Earth

  “GREAT. JUST ABSOLUTELY great,” I said as I looked at the space where Jevyn had been. The dust was still settling from where he had opened the rip that doubtless took him back to Dracos, leaving me alone to deal with the situation here. I missed him already, but I didn’t have the luxury of being able to feel sorry for myself. We needed supplies, and we needed blood, even just a small amount would be enough to give us all the energy boost we needed to keep us going.

  I turned to Derek, hoping that he might be amenable to being our temporary donor. It was a huge thing to ask, seeing as how it was illegal, and I got that. But it was a matter of survival.

  “No blood,” he said.

  “Derek. Listen to me,” I said.

  “No. Lynnette said I shouldn’t do anything without her say-so. No blood.” He crossed his arms.

  Under normal circumstances, the five of us vamps could easily have taken Derek down and overpowered him. Hell, Marty could probably do it on his own, but in the weakened state we were in, nah, that wasn’t going to happen. Derek had magic, and for all his quirks, he was actually quite strong.

  I had to convince him.

  “Derek—”

  “No!”

  Okay, so this wasn’t going to be easy, but I had all the time in the world to work on him. I was going nowhere until Derek gave in or Jevyn came back.

  “Derek. Just listen. Nobody is going to hurt you okay? Come sit down so we can just talk.”

  I went to sit on the sofa and patted the seat next to me. Derek reluctantly came to sit there. I took a hold of his hand.

  “Derek, this is the thing. Take a look at all of our friends. They’re sick and getting sicker. Do you want them to be sick?”

  Derek moved his head and body around, looking at the gaunt faces of the rest of the group.

  “No.”

  I remembered a trick someone had done on YouTube, some professor on his audience. I forget who, and I don’t suppose it matters.

  “You want them to be well?”

  “Yes.”

  “If we can get them well, we’ll be able to go out and help you find Lynnette. That would be good, huh?”

  “Yes, yes.” Derek’s eyes were wider at the prospect of finding Lynnette.

  “So, will you let us take just a few drops of blood?”

  Derek pulled his hand from mine and crossed his arms again. “No.”

  “Why? Don’t you want to find Lynnette?”

  “Yes, yes, I do but—” He snapped his mouth closed.

  “But what?” I kept my voice quiet and edged across the sofa slightly toward him. “You can tell me.”

  “I’m scared if you guys have my blood, you’ll turn into me. I like you as you are. You’re fun. I want you to stay the way you are.”

  Jeez, so many issues in so few words.

  “Okay, now listen. First off, there’s nothing wrong with the way you are. It is you. If you were different, you wouldn’t be you. You’d be someone else entirely.”

  “Someone fun like you guys?”

  “No. Just someone different. You can’t change who you are, Derek. Besides, we all love you the way you are and don’t want you to change.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course.” I lifted my head to shout out to everyone else. “Hey, guys, don’t we all love Derek the way he is?”

  Five people replied without energy, a variety of ways of saying yeah, but they weren’t exactly convincing.

  “See,” I said.

  “Wow,” Derek said. “Nobody has said they love me before. Lynnette thinks I’m an idiot and says it quite often. Thanks, guys.”

  “So, will you let us take some blood? Just a tiny amount.”

  “How tiny?”

  Bingo, we were getting somewhere at last.

  “Just a little bit, enough to fill a vial so we can all share it.”

  “How big a vial?”

  I stood up and found my bag and fished a vial out from inside.

  Derek’s eyes were like saucers. “No. Too big.”

  I looked at the vial. It was tiny.

  “How much do you think you could do? Could you do five drops each?” Okay, that was a negotiating position. Five drops each was more than it would have taken to fill the vial. Well maybe a little less, but it would be enough to get us all on our feet and moving. That was all I cared about. If I could get everybody up and on the go, we had a chance of getting over to Nindock’s camp to see if we could strike a deal with one of the dragons there, which would keep us supplied until Nova came up with a cure. Jevyn wouldn’t approve of that, but I didn’t see him there helping us, so he would just have to live with it. I had people to look after.

  I wasn’t certain that Nova would come up with a cure, but I preferred to stay hopeful.
<
br />   “I can do four drops each but no biting. Four drops on a saucer or a plate. That’s it.” Derek was drawing back within himself, folding his arms over his chest and raising his knees to put his feet on the sofa.

  “Derek, that’s fantastic. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “A burger. I haven’t had one in ages. I’d really like a burger, with cheese and bacon and a side order of beans and another side of fries. In a diner. I miss my diner.”

  I had no idea how I was going to make this happen, but I promised Derek a burger with all the trimmings. The area was on lockdown, so the food would have to be made at home, but getting the ingredients might prove to be more than a little troublesome.

  “I promise you, if you do this, I will find the juiciest burger in Boise, just for you. I’ll make it if I have to.”

  Derek looked at me, judging if I was telling the truth, I supposed.

  I put on my best I’m-telling-the-truth face for him and kept eye contact until he looked away.

  “The juiciest?” Derek licked his lips, clearly cherishing the thought.

  “The juiciest and biggest.”

  Derek stuck out his hand. “You got a deal.”

  I spat in my hand and clapped it together with his. “Thanks, Derek, you’re a lifesaver in the truest sense.”

  Derek pulled his hand out of mine, looked at the palm, and then wiped his hand down his trousers with a look of distaste on his face. Hell, it wasn’t like I had a disease or something. Oh. Wait. I kind of did.

  The next thing on the agenda was to get this done as quickly as possible. I rooted in my bag and brought out a pack of needles. Sewing needles. I wasn’t a junkie. They had come in very useful since we’d been on the road.

  I stood and walked over to the tiny kitchen area of Derek’s basement and turned on the stovetop. While I waited for the electric rings to heat up, I explored the cupboards for a clean plate and rinsed it off under the hot-water tap. Then I carefully sterilized the needle, switched off the hot plate, and headed back to Derek who had moved to the dining table in readiness.

  “You wanna prick yourself, or do you want me to do it for you?” I said, holding the needle carefully at the end with the eye so as not to contaminate the sterilized point.

  Derek gulped a little and had turned white in the face. Was he afraid of needles? Maybe I should have asked, but it was too late to worry about it.

  “You do it,” he said. “I don’t like the sight of blood. Makes me lightheaded.”

  I hadn’t noticed him paying much attention when Lynnette splattered a dragon all over the sidewalk when she opened up a tear. Maybe it was just his own blood. Maybe it was actually the four other pale, dark-eyed vamps hanging around him, licking their lips and eyeing his finger like they were about to eat a juicy burger.

  “You’d better look away then, Derek.” He turned his head. “Here goes.” I grabbed his finger and jabbed the needle in far enough to draw blood.

  Derek nearly scared the crap out of me with the animalistic howl of pain he let out, and I had to hold tight to stop him from pulling his finger away. Eventually he relaxed, and I squeezed the first half-dozen drops onto the plate and handed it to Penny. She licked that thing until the pattern was nearly worn off. Once she had gotten every molecule of blood, she rinsed the plate while I waited patiently until she brought it back, and I repeated the process for Sparks, then Frankie, and finally for Marty.

  I’d taken blood from Jevyn a couple days before, so I was okay for a week or more, but I took my turn with Derek anyway just to keep myself topped off.

  The blood the rest had taken would maybe keep them going for a couple of days, because human blood wasn’t as long-lasting as dragon blood, so we had to take action.

  “You want a Band-Aid on that, Derek?” I asked once we had all finished.

  When he turned his head, he did it slowly, peeking out of half-closed eyes, which I guessed was more to do with not wanting to see his blood. There was no chance of that though. Every last drop had been consumed gratefully.

  “No, it’ll be fine. It’ll stop soon. Next time, could you not jab so hard?”

  “You mean there’ll be a next time?”

  “In an emergency. If I get my burger.”

  “You’ll get it, Derek. I promise,” I said with not the first clue how I was going to fulfill that promise.

  “So, now what do we do?” Sparks asked. Penny was busy making up her face, so she would be out of action for at least a few minutes.

  “All we can do is wait for Jevyn to come back, isn’t it?” Marty said. The color in his face had returned, and the muscles he normally carried so well, but which had turned somewhat slack, were taking on their former ripped appearance.

  “We have a day, maybe two, before you guys are back in the shape you were today. We need dragon blood, and as far as Jevyn is concerned, I’ve promised not to create any rips so no more dragons come through. As far as I know, the only place on the planet where there are living breathing dragons is Nindock’s camp, which is half-full of them. He warned Jevyn off but didn’t say I couldn’t go back. I say we go there, look for a friendly kind of dragon, and see if he will cut a deal for some blood. If we get as much as Derek gave, we’ll have done more than okay.”

  “Huh?” Derek said, hearing his name.

  “Don’t worry, Derek. It was only a few drops.”

  Derek went back to messing around on his computer while holding his jabbed finger off the keyboard.

  “Sounds like a plan.” Frankie was chilling on the sofa, looking much more relaxed.

  “Let’s go do it,” Marty said, re-energized and chomping at the bit.

  “Hold up, you guys,” I said. “You need time to let that blood get around your systems. Tomorrow will be soon enough. It’ll be dark in an hour, and you wouldn’t want to be traipsing around Nindock’s camp in the dark. Rest. Get some sleep, and we can go in the morning.”

  “Will you get my burger then?” Derek asked without turning his head. Sparks had moved over to see what he was doing and put her hand on his shoulder, making him jump.

  “Tomorrow, Derek, I promise,” she whispered into his ear, and then she turned to look at me and winked.

  I rolled my eyes, pulled Frankie’s legs off the sofa so I could sit, leaned back, and closed my eyes.

  ***

  BY THE TIME everyone had woken up, eaten, and we had hit the road, it was past ten in the morning. Sparks had been left behind to keep Derek occupied, and I hoped that was all she was doing with him. I squirmed a little at the thought.

  It was clear as the daylight they were driving in that they shared something, some kind of nerdy attraction to each other, but I also knew Sparks. When she got the hots for someone, it was normally full-on, rip-your-clothes-off, and leap-into-the-sack time. I wasn’t sure Derek was ready for that. Hell, I didn’t even know if Derek was capable of that.

  It was too late to worry about it though. I just hoped Lynnette didn’t walk in on them. I could just imagine Derek’s face turning beet red if that happened.

  As I drove, keeping to the backroads, I tried to work out how best to play things with Nindock.

  “What’s up?” Marty asked, sitting in the front of the car with his feet up on the dash. He looked like a frog about to leap after its prey.

  “Just trying to work out how to approach things at Nindock’s camp. He and Jevyn didn’t part on the best of terms, so when we get there, and he sees Jevyn isn’t with me, I’m hoping he will soften up a bit and let us do what we need to do.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Find a dragon who’ll give us blood.”

  “Sounds simple.”

  “You haven’t met Nindock yet or seen his town. It’s like something out of a western movie, only minus the cowboys. I half-expected to see a sheriff marching down the main street with his gun on his hip.”

  “Sounds like my kind of town. They got a saloon?”

  I cringed, remembering what it
was like in there with that loathsome flowering plant polluting the air, the one that had made me feel so strange.

  “They do, but I’d steer clear if I were you. That’s where Nindock hangs out, and the longer we can keep clear of him, the better.”

  “Fair enough. I feel a little queasy anyway.”

  I knew what that meant. Derek’s blood was wearing off already. Marty being a bigger guy than the rest meant that he needed more blood, but the chances of Derek providing it were close to zero until he got his burger.

  In the end, I drove straight into Nindock’s camp. The gates the guys from SCAR had broken through were gone but not replaced. I guessed it was because Nindock no longer felt the need to guard against them or anybody else as I pulled up the car close to one of the large buildings facing the road.

  “Go around the back. It’s where the town itself starts, but try to keep out the way of Nindock and his goons. I need to—” I stopped and turned quickly at the familiar sound of rushing air as a tear in the dimensions opened. Then with a single step, Jevyn appeared as if from thin air, and the whoosh dispersed, leaving small pieces of trash to float back down to the ground.

  I couldn’t help the huge grin I had on my face as I saw him, and the shy smile he gave me played rock-and-roll tunes on my heartstrings.

  I quickly turned around to check if the others had gone—they had—so I ran over to him, threw my arms around his neck, and hugged him like he’d been gone for weeks instead of half a day or less.

  “You’re back,” I said breathily into his neck. He smelled wonderful, spicy with a touch of zest.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I looked up at him, stepping away slightly. Could I tell him why I was really here? Could I think of another reason why we were all there?

  I tried deflection instead.

  “I was just about to ask you the same thing. I didn’t know when you’d be coming back.”

  “I had a good night’s sleep, but I couldn’t stop thinking . . .”