Orel picked at the oak’s bark. “I saw a Burner once. He was scary.”
Daisy grinned. “And stinky, I bet.” And dangerous, but Orel seemed to be calming and she didn’t want to ruin it by discussing how to avoid the fire ghouls.
Orel’s eyes rounded. “Like burning rotten eggs.” He frowned. “Burners didn’t come for Mama and Maty. Men in green uniforms and masks did.”
“And then Nax came? Did your Mama send you with him?” Did Nax take Orel from an area under Russian military control?
Orel clamped his mouth shut and shook his head.
His scent… slipped again. His eyes glazed.
“Orel?” What was happening to him? What…
Why hadn’t she realized earlier? His changing scent. The dazed looks. The running away.
Had Nax activated his son? Had she scented the beginnings of an activation when she found Orel under the sign?
But that was last night. If Orel was activating now, Nax must have made activation spit only a couple of hours ago, which explained Orel running away. If she didn’t know what was happening, and then saw a parent spit out the iridescent activation liquid, she would have run, too.
Did Nax activate Orel on top of whatever she’d been scenting these last couple of days?
She touched Orel’s forehead. No fever, which was unusual, for an activation. She touched his cheeks. “Are you hungry? Do you feel like you could eat an entire restaurant’s worth of burgers?”
Because activations prime all appetites. He was too young to be thinking about sex—at least she hoped he wouldn’t be thinking about sex right now—but he should want to eat everything within a twenty mile radius.
He should also feel hot, unless he was destined to be a strong healer. Healers sometimes got out of the fevers. Sometimes.
“Honey, did your dad spit for you this morning? Into your drink, or your mouth? Did he tell you why?”
She was going to knock that man’s head clear off his shoulders. What was he thinking, activating an eight-year-old child? One with traumas—and who was half Fate.
He shouldn’t be up here in a tree by himself. He should be with others. A person-healer, at least. Someone who would know what to do if his Fate blood caused problems. She had no clue, but the Shifters at The Land had told her stories. Children dying was one of the many reasons Shifters and Fates didn’t get together. Not a lot of couples could handle dead babies.
If Nax had activated Orel, he’d be a Shifter, for sure. Nax had effectively destroyed any possibility of his mother activating him as a Fate. It was always one or the other. Never both. Activating as both meant death for the halfling.
And that son of a bitch Nax had activated Orel out here away from any and all medical help. Did he want Orel to die? Was he looking to punish his ex in the most horrific way possible?
No. Nax might be a criminal and he might be a douchebag, but not once did she feel—or scent—from him anything other than that he loved Orel.
She touched the boy’s cheek again. “Can you hear me? Orel, it’s important that you answer. If you need help because your father activated you, I need to get you into town, okay? I can call my dad. We’ll find the closest strong healer. We need to keep an eye on you and make sure you’re okay.”
“Drako?” he whispered.
Below them, in the dark, branches cracked. Undergrowth snapped.
The ground moved.
A dragon appeared.
Chapter Fifteen
This beast was not a beast she knew. It stood taller at the shoulder than either of her friends. Its neck coiled more than the thicker, stronger, more wolf-like necks of the two Dracae. Instead of the intricate, interwoven nubs and ridges of a true dragon’s crest, this creature had scales and eyebrows and two horn-like projections.
He did have the basics—no wings, the shimmering photo- and chromodynamic skin that oscillated through a hypnotic array of reds, blues, yellows, and greens, all in circular and geometric patterns. The six-fingered claw-hands and their retractable, deadly talons. The agile shoulder joints, the ridged back, and the long, powerful tail.
Yet Drako looked more like a fairytale dragon than anything remotely real.
Fire belched from his mouth.
Daisy had nowhere to go. No place to hide other than to scramble higher into a tree she could barely make out against the night’s shadows. The dragon-that-was-not-a-dragon—which could not be real—was close enough to swipe his huge hand-claw and open her guts right here in the tree.
Drako reared onto his back legs. He used his hide to flash angry, intense reds and oranges at the tree, then snaked his too-long neck through the branches. And the dragon that could not be real sniffed at Daisy’s face.
“What the hell are you?” she breathed.
The colors moving over his skin flickered toward midnight blues and purples that mimicked the night. Small bright points moved down his neck, along his back, and toward his swishing tail.
He ground his hind claw-feet into the dirt and a ripple moved up his back and along his too-long neck.
Drako chuckled.
He chuckled with the bravado and all the condescension of a jerk. The goddamned fake dragon chuckled right in Daisy’s face as if he was some sort of frat boy douchebag fairytale dumbass version of Brad.
Daisy swung a right hook right into the beast’s head.
Nothing happened. Nothing changed. Drako neither reacted nor appeared to have even noticed. She pulled in her arm.
“Nax!” she yelled. “I don’t understand how you’re using your calling scents to warp reality! That’s what you are doing, isn’t it? Enthralling us to see what you want us to see?”
She poked her finger at Drako. “Because that is not a dragon!”
Drako swiped his big hand-claw at her middle.
His talons caught her hoodie. Fabric ripped. Something excruciatingly sharp grazed her belly.
She screamed and pulled back.
Daisy patted at the wounds. Patted at her own blood, yet she didn’t. Her mind said rip and wound and blood, but her nose said no.
She wasn’t bleeding. Orel’s scent slipped and Drako smelled of male but also fake cinnamon and citrus, as if someone sprayed an artificial air freshener in her face—or calling scents that person thought were supposed to trigger the scent of a dragon.
“I’m a bloodhound!” Daisy yelled.
Drako growled.
“That’s more like it,” she spat back. “Growl at me. Attack me. I’ve taken on worse than you, Nax.” And she survived. Lesser men might think her a prize but Daisy always survived.
She kicked at the phantom beast’s head. “I came back because my nose told me something was wrong. A part of me knew you activated him. What were you thinking? How could you? You are a coward.” She kicked again. “You’re all cowards.”
“Stop!” Orel yelled. “Please stop! Please don’t! Drako. You’re supposed to protect me! You’re not supposed to hurt anyone! You’re not! You’re not.”
Orel threw his sketchbook at the beast.
Drako pulled out of the tree. He shook and the colors of his hide brightened for a split second before he vanished completely.
Orel twitched. He gagged, and the dazed look returned, as did the electrical smell.
They weren’t anywhere near lights, or motors, or wiring. The smell was coming off Orel as if his body was making a small fire every time he dazed out.
“Nax!” she yelled. “You son of a bitch! Your son is having a seizure!”
Orel shook. He blinked, and reset. “I am fine,” he said, as if seizing wasn’t new to him. “I am okay.”
“No, you are not.” Daisy picked up her flashlight and quickly checked Orel’s eyes. His skin had flushed. She checked his forehead again.
He was hot. It could be from watching his “friend” attack Daisy, but she doubted it. “We need to get you down.” She reached around Orel to untwist his bag’s strap from the branch.
“Father spit in my w
ater. He told me that if I drank it the spells would stop. Mama told me she would spit for me when I am as tall as Papa. Nax said I would heal and that no one would ever come after me again if I drank the water.” He went limp again. Dazed, like he was before. “I am not supposed to have the spells anymore.”
“I don’t think it’s working, honey.” Daisy stopped fiddling with the bag. Did Nax pre-emptively activate Orel to ruin him so Russian Fates would leave him alone? Did he honestly think that activating him early would stop his seizures?
Because it wouldn’t. If anything, an activation would make them worse, at least temporarily.
“Kid, I’m sorry.” She hugged him quickly. “You could have asked for help!” she yelled out into the night.
But from who? The many Shifter syndicates would have been just as likely to use Orel as the Fates. The Dells clans were likely too small to be willing to take on any Fates, and in particular ones capable of utilizing a Russian militia to get what they want.
And there was no way Nax would trust the one Shifter in the United States with enough power to help—her father.
So Nax was hiding in Wisconsin and pretending, for his son, to be the one creature on Earth who could protect them both.
“Listen to me, Nax! He needs a healer.” Daisy pulled the bag off the branch. “I give you my word that my father will not—”
A hand scooped between her and Orel. A big hand attached to a large, strong, male body. She felt it touch; felt it grab and curl around her waist, but she saw nothing. She smelled nothing. Yet Nax had ahold of her.
He pulled her out of the tree.
Chapter Sixteen
Daisy managed to land on her feet. She stumble-tripped and skidded into the trunk of another tree, but somehow stayed upright.
She couldn’t see. Nax had also knocked out—turned off, broken, she didn’t know—her flashlight. The woods dropped into the inky, eerie darkness of a shadowed, living place—things here moved. Things under leaves and behind bushes bit. They saw you, but you couldn’t see them.
Her nose told her that all the animals had left the area. The scent-scape gave her a map of the vegetation—the oak tree ten feet in front of her, the birch she’d just tripped into, the bushes and the open meadow area to the south where she’d seen the raccoons.
Nax might be able to knock out her vision, but he could not make her blind.
“Orel,” he said. “Come. We must leave.”
“I can’t see,” Orel whispered.
Drako appeared between Daisy and the tree. A full, fairy-glimmering, friendly dragon, with softer features and a cuddlier hide than what had appeared before.
Mega-Nax stood silhouetted in front of Daisy and between Drako and the tree. He loomed over her like a huge angry bear ready to knock off her head for coming near his cub. “If I could enthrall you to forget this, I would, Ms. Pavlovich,” he said.
Behind him, Orel pulled the strap of his bag over his head and slowly climbed down the tree. He moved tentatively, as if his body didn’t really believe it could see what it was doing.
“My father will not harm Orel,” she said. “He won’t. And if anyone can deal with the Fates who came after him and his mother’s triad, it’s him.”
Nax glanced over his shoulder at Orel. “The Grand Duke would have made a fine Tsar,” he said offhand. Then he looked at her. “Grand Duchess Daisy Pavlovich Romanov, the half-Russian, half-Australian lover of animals who thinks she can save a child from Fates.”
He chuckled like a pompous ass once again.
Daisy held her tongue. Arguing with Nax would not help Orel.
Nax squatted next to her. Behind him fake Drako scratched at his side like a puppy. “I do not think you understand the situation.”
She knew to stay out of the way of Fates. That didn’t mean she couldn’t offer help. “I stand by what I said.”
“Of course you do.” Nax stood and hugged Orel to his hip. “If it means anything, I believe you.” He looked off into the woods, then down at her. “My children don’t activate.”
Daisy stood up. “What?”
Nax shook his head. “And here I thought you understood that I am not what I appear to be.” He snatched her around the neck. “Do not follow. Do not interfere.”
He could kill her. Probably snap her neck like it was a twig. “Let go of me,” she croaked out.
His hand fell away.
She rubbed her throat. “What about Orel?” No matter how scary his father might be, someone had to help him. “He’s activating.”
Nax chuckled again. “Is that what you think is going on here? I told you. My children do not activate. Orel is not activating. Not really.”
They’d moved far enough away that she lost sight of them in the shadows. “That’s not what my nose is telling me.”
Footfalls stopped. The sounds of bodies rubbing against bushes ceased. Her nose told her that they were standing still about fifteen feet away.
“What are you scenting, bloodhound?” Nax called.
Daisy inhaled. “Your fear,” she said. “Orel’s uncertainty. The deer that walked through here at dusk. The oak’s sap and the unending and ever-present ground ivy.”
He was right there, right in front of her again. “Is he activating or not, Ms. Pavlovich?”
Orel stood behind his father with his bag and his sketchbook clutched to his chest. She couldn’t see his face, but the jittery, sweet-and-sour fear wafting from him said it all. “Even if he isn’t, whatever you did has made his seizures worse. We need to get him to a healer.”
Nax grabbed her arm. “You are a healer.”
She tried to push him off, but he held firmly to her elbow. “I heal and enthrall animals.” She blew out ‘go to sleep’ to demonstrate.
Nax sniffed. “Fascinating. In all my centuries, you are the first true animal enthraller I have ever met.” He sniffed again. “Yes. I understand your scents, but I feel zero compulsion to follow them.”
He hauled her through the woods, with Orel trotting behind.
“Have you tried to enthrall or heal an animal more advanced than a dog or cat?” Nax stopped for a moment. “Say, a dolphin, or a chimpanzee?”
“Or a dragon?” she said.
Nax pushed her forward. “We both know the dragons may be beasts, but they are not animals.”
“What are you going to do with us, Nax?” His demeanor had changed. He wasn’t as standoffish anymore. He touched her, now. He’d crossed some line in his head.
“My boy needs protecting, Ms. Pavlovich. We’re too visible here.” He stopped and poked her shoulder. “You know too much.”
The air, the ground, Daisy’s body and soul all froze under the touch of Nax’s voice. You know too much were the words of a psychopath. They were the words of a criminal and a killer. And Daisy hadn’t had the sense to run away while she could.
Orel stood behind his father. He clutched to his chest his art, his book of stories, his imaginations about Drako. He held all that was good in his world.
His scent had stopped jittering, but he still carried the same dazed expression he’d had before, and here they both were, with his psycho father, about to vanish from the earth like a dragon mimicking the worst of the world.
Daisy ducked under Nax’s arm. She twisted the way Ladon had taught her, and slipped past his grip. He was fast, but so was she. Daisy landed a kick to his kidney before he could snag her again.
Nax howled. He dropped to his knees. Daisy grasped Orel’s hand and pulled him in the direction that smelled like the road.
They were a good two miles into the woods. Not far, but far enough that Nax could easily catch up. If they zigged when he smelled of zagging, they might be able to get out to the road first. If she could get Orel into town, if she could find one of the local healers, they might be able to help him through his semi-activation.
“Hold on,” she whispered, and guided him in front of her.
The jittering happened again. The odd dazing. Orel
raised his hand. “Duck!” he yelled.
The stick hit her across the back of the neck.
Chapter Seventeen
A rough tongue licked Daisy’s face.
She blinked but it was night and the shadows were too thick and Nax had hit her on the back of the head with a big fucking stick.
Was she bleeding? Her cheek was in the mud. And the tongue licked her face again.
Small hands touched her shoulder and held on to her arm. “She’s hurt,” Orel said.
Big feet shuffled around her head. “She’ll be okay. She fell off her motorcycle, remember? Sometimes you need to knock a Shifter harder than you want to in order to get them to back off.”
Nax and Orel were still here, so what was licking her face?
“Let go, son,” Nax said. “We need to go.”
Daisy rolled over.
The wolf looked down at her, his big, fluffy ruff all shimmery and shiny like Orel’s Drako. The wolf that had sent Brad screaming toward the park rangers because it was so big and bad.
She’d sent him on his way. He wasn’t any safer in The Dells than Daisy or Orel. Yet here he was, a shimmering, light glimmering, sweet tingling fairytale of an animal.
Daisy lifted her hand to touch what could not be. “Are you my imaginary friend, Mister Wolf?”
Nax snorted.
Orel sniffed as if he was about to cry.
The imaginary wolf licked her face again. “Your father asked around,” the wolf said.
“So you talk?” she said.
The wolf raised his head. He flattened his ears and snarled at Nax. “Drako asked around too, so I came.”
“Who are you?” Wolves and dogs didn’t talk. Not real wolves.
The wolf paced at her side. “The simplest explanation is that Nax’s calling scents are interacting with your head injury.”
The simplest was often the correct explanation. “You are one logical beast.”
Orel wiped his face. “Are you talking to your friend, Ms. Daisy?” he whispered.
She rolled toward the boy fully expecting to push herself to sitting, but it didn’t work. She dropped onto her back again. “I think I might be, Orel,” she said.
Dragon’s Fate and Other Stories Page 30
