Fifth of Blood

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  His mind always went to the agitated places, as if his unconscious was screaming Don’t take me back into that place! See how bad it was? Remember? Don’t let it happen again!

  But Rysa brought the best. Better than any other time. Better than any other woman. Her touch calmed the flashes and the internal burning. And he couldn’t get anywhere near her while her enthralling scents burned out of control.

  Human. Dragon had moved and now nuzzled Ladon’s shoulder. A calming pulse moved across the energy they shared and Ladon’s mind settled, if only a little.

  But it was enough. Thank you, Ladon pushed to the beast, his hand on his companion’s neck. He leaned against Dragon’s shoulder, his forehead on the beast’s shimmering hide, and let the swimming colors and patterns construct new cathedrals of meaning in his consciousness.

  A sense of context appeared, an understanding of place. They were not in Europe, nor were they in Rome. This was America, and Rysa would not die in Ladon’s arms.

  America gave them a reason, now. To remember. To pay attention. To plan.

  Ladon breathed deep and slow, willing his muscles to loosen.

  Your moods are worse. Dragon’s big hand-claw stroked Ladon’s back. Since the shades, they have been more difficult for you to control.

  Maybe. Ladon wasn’t sure. He only knew Rysa could not see him like this.

  He stood up and looked to the stars. The New Mexico night gleamed clear and bright, like their home in the mountains. Like Rysa. “I need to go in.” He waved his hand at the patio door.

  She is safe. I am here. Dragon ambled away, stopping as close to the pool house as he could manage. If she is threatened, I will go in, no matter how heavy her scents are. Steadfastness rolled off the beast. You need not worry.

  Dragon was right; he need not worry. Ladon nodded once and turned toward the house. On the roof, Sister-Dragon watched, her hide a shadow.

  Go in, Brother-Human. A low blink flickered from the other beast. You need not worry.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Derek’s wife blinked. Her face smoothed out, as it did often—but not always—after a long conversation with Sister-Dragon.

  Derek saw what they were saying to each other, and felt the twin blips of anxiety popping from the roof and the backyard.

  Ladon’s mind was not in the best shape.

  One of Anna’s hands curled around Derek’s and the other gripped the threshold between Bernard’s kitchen and his living room. She did not speak.

  Before Rysa told him to drive, when they left The Land, he’d had only moments with Anna. Over the past three days, he and his wife had spoken many hours on the phone even with the pain it caused her. But none of those conversations had been particularly intimate. He had always been in the sedan with Rysa.

  His wife was still in shock. He saw it in the flatness of her features and in the scrunching of her shoulders. The wifi in Bernard’s house did not help her mood—or Ladon’s—but Anna’s lack of thought about the events that led them here showed in the way she flicked her now too-short hair. In the way she blinked. Twenty-three centuries of every single terrible wound the world could inflict, and here his warrior wife stood in the threshold between a kitchen and a living room, shocked silent.

  Shocked by the fact that he now stood next to her. Shocked by Rysa’s sacrifice to make sure he walked and talked and breathed. Shocked by his changes.

  And shocked by the actions of her dragon.

  The harsh blue of Bernard’s computer screens flooded the wide spaces of his under-furnished house. Even with his obvious eye for quality, he had all the expected bachelor accouterments—the tasteful black leather sofa, the trendy and expensive artwork picked out for him by a designer, and the anti-smell of a thorough paid-for cleaning service. Each of the many bedrooms contained a king-sized bed, and his office—the largest room in the house—was full top-to-bottom with equipment and large ergonomic chairs; but other than a table in the kitchen and the coffee table in front of the squeaky sofa, the house was empty of furniture.

  And quiet. The opposite of what Bernard had left behind at The Land of Milk and Honey.

  “Brother is coming in.” Anna’s back straightened and she frowned. “Be polite.”

  Of course Derek would be polite. He spent his life being polite. Politeness tended to keep godlings and Shifters alike happy.

  Derek nodded.

  Anna’s clothes blended into the shadows and when she dropped onto the sofa, she became a tiny face and set of hands floating in a sea of black. One of her disembodied fingers beckoned to him. He sat on the uncomfortable cushions next to her.

  His wife fitted her body against his side. He looped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her closer. This dance was what they did. What they always did. The snuggling, the calming, the unspoken “It is okay.” And it brought more comfort to both of them than any other action in the world.

  “I have missed you, husband.”

  “And I, you, wife.” Derek kissed the top of her head, breathing in her warm scent of sunshine. He knew, at least for now, she would say no more.

  The shorn-off ponytail bothered him. His wife’s lustrous, wavy hair now stood on end, a spiky mess not all that different from her brother’s before he shaved his head.

  Before they both scraped off their hair in fits of agony.

  The act had upset Derek more than it stunned Rysa, perhaps because she carried a past-seer. Or perhaps because Andreas had explained to her what it meant.

  She’d shared the explanation with Derek. “Grief,” the enthraller had told her. “Terrible grief.” But the only thought Derek’s mind made was dependent.

  Rysa had only shaken her head, saying “dependent” was not the correct term. This was different. This was dragon. “Her hair will grow back,” she said. Then she paused, staring at her hands for a moment as her seers washed through the car. “She won’t do it again.”

  Bernard’s bulky frame paced in front of the computer screens in the other room, dimming the blue light at regular intervals. Anna’s face brightened, then dimmed; brightened, then dimmed.

  From the kitchen, the sounds of the patio door scratching open echoed through the house. Bernard stopped pacing. Anna looked over the back of the sofa. Derek also looked toward his brother-in-law.

  Ladon stopped in the arch between the kitchen and the living room, his hands in his pockets.

  He had been sullen since they left the overlook in the Rockies, calling Rysa every hour even though an open cell phone gave him as much of a headache as it did Anna. Derek had watched him swallow four over-the-counter pain relievers earlier, in the kitchen. And now, to have his time alone with Rysa cut short by Anna’s arrival? He must be ready to explode.

  Brother wishes you to watch Brother-Human carefully. The information pinged from Sister-Dragon to Anna as a construct image Derek could not describe but somehow understood.

  On the sofa, his wife nodded, almost imperceptibly, as she answered her dragon. Yes.

  Derek had been quiet about hearing the dragons, feeling that something as strategically important should be hidden where prying Fates could not read it. And if he spoke of it, the knowledge would spread, making it easier to see.

  But now he wondered if his actions had somehow crossed over the line into the voyeuristic.

  Bernard walked into the room, stopping for a moment in the door to his office, and mirrored Ladon’s stance. “I tracked the numbers called from those Fates’ cellphones for the past four days. Most were local. Several to a pizza place in downtown Santa Fe.” He held out a piece of paper. “One wasn’t. It’s an Oregon number, in Portland. An antiquities dealer.”

  Ladon walked over as slowly as he’d walked in from the kitchen, and took the paper. He glanced at his sister, then at Derek, before pinching the bridge of his nose.

  Anna pushed off Derek’s side but placed her hand on his arm. She did not speak, though her body tensed with an almost audible snap.

  Portland? Why was Portla
nd important?

  Then a memory flickered to the surface. Dmitri kept tabs on the major Fate families. Offense, defense, both played, he always said. And one of the major Fate corporations was headquartered in Portland. “Praesagio Industries?” He looked between Ladon and Anna.

  Two sets of shoulders tightened. Two almost inaudible growls reverberated through the space. Both Anna and Ladon scowled.

  “The gallery isn’t owned by the Ulpi Fates.” Bernard stepped into the living room. “It’s owned by one Adrian Buccell, and specializes in Roman antiquities. It could be a coincidence.”

  Derek did not recognize the name. “A Shifter?”

  Ladon handed him the paper.

  He might not recognize the name, but he recognized the face. Another man like himself, a normal made immortal by that psychopathic witch Dunn, looked up at him from the paper. But the man in the photo was older than Derek. Much older. And carried considerably more history with the Dracae.

  “The Emperor Hadrian?” One of the multitude of Romans still walking the earth. “Hadrian is using ‘Adrian Buccell’ as an alias?” But of course he’d use a modernized version of his name. “Why would Hadrian want a Fate’s talisman?”

  But Derek knew before the question finished passing his lips. Hadrian was the next middleman between the talon’s seller and its ultimate buyer. Who else would Vivicus want to get to? Hadrian enjoyed taunting the Fate families.

  Particularly the Ulpi. Hadrian might have a long history with the Dracae, but he had a longer history with the figurehead of Praesagio Industries.

  Ladon’s face changed. What little control Derek’s brother-in-law seemed to have found floundered. The man he had known for seventy years, who in all that time had not once looked panicked, twitched.

  From the moment Ladon appeared with Rysa almost two weeks ago, Derek had wondered if her issues infected Ladon and Brother-Dragon—if somehow her attention and anxiety problems crossed through her connection to their energy. Or if Ladon took on his new love’s ways as his body unconsciously performed some sort of primal mimicking. To learn. To understand.

  But now, the evidence before Derek—and from the last three days—suggested something purely Ladon. Derek glanced at his wife’s chopped-off hair. Or purely Dracae.

  This vulnerability rising off his brother-in-law was not new. It had always been there, an undertone to Ladon’s ever-present low mood. A ping that always appeared in his drive to help the Shifters whenever Burners attacked their kind, even though he did not have to. Nor, honestly, had he ever voiced a desire to do so. But Ladon helped. Because no one should suffer.

  Anna reached for Derek’s hand in the unconscious way she did, looking to reestablish connection. Her fingers glided down his, to his palm, her skin warm and wonderful, as usual. Rightness returned to his vision, his sense of fear overridden by this touch, as if his body fully understood what it meant to be Dracae, even if his mind had not yet figured it out.

  Ladon breathed audibly. He seemed to be attempting to regulate. But no matter how much stability his Dracae blood gave him, his war wounds knocked him off balance. And now, he had just taken another hit.

  “Hadrian holds no grudge against us.” Anna watched her brother as she held tight to Derek’s hand. “Nor a great love of the Ulpi.”

  Praesagio Industries, and the Ulpi Fates who ran it, were builders—not destroyers like Rysa’s family, the Jani. They built what they wanted, when and where they wanted, no matter who it trampled, as was the case with all the high-powered families. The ones who called themselves Parcae.

  The Ulpi prided themselves on being a step above the other Fates. They were the best of the Roman Empire, the true builders of civilization, or so they said. They descended from an emperor of reason—the other Emperor still walking this earth—even if he had been a vicious one.

  Trajan, the master of the Ulpi Fates.

  Ladon stared at the floor. “Hadrian is a smart man. He understands that selling a living Fate’s talisman will only bring him millennia worth of Parcae revenge. And he knows better than to become entangled with the Ulpi Fates and their corporate monstrosity.”

  Bernard looked between Ladon, Anna, and Derek as he gripped the doorframe he stood in. “The Praesagio Industries? They get nearly two billion dollars from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency every year.”

  Anna’s brow knitted for the briefest second and she moved closer to Derek’s side. She frowned as if attempting to remember something important.

  Derek wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her small frame close. His wife never yielded, never lost strength. But she formed herself against his body, flowing much like a dragon into the shape that best suited the moment.

  The old comforts resurfaced, pushing back his little twinge of anxiety. Their old, well-traveled behaviors, their best paths to the best comfort, clicked on. Derek’s breath deepened. He kissed Anna’s spikey hair, feeling it poke into his nose, but it did not matter. She had returned to his side.

  Derek shook his head. “Of course Rysa’s talisman would find its way into the palms of the Emperors.” Because Hadrian and Trajan would have the arrogance—and the funds—to acquire the talon of a dragon.

  Derek’s wife and her brother had butted heads with Trajan on and off over the centuries. “Trajan was responsible for the destruction of the Knights Templar, wasn’t he?”

  Anna frowned. “The Ulpi Fates destroyed the Shifter’s bourgeoning banking system and laid waste to much of their lands in the early thirteen hundreds. We took in many of the survivors.”

  “Their Prime triad contains an Emperor.” Ladon ran his hand over his scalp and Derek heard the whiffing of skin against stubble. “Trajan knows how to command. He might be a bastard, but he did better by the Empire than most of the other Emperors, except perhaps Hadrian.”

  Men who hold supreme power dislike losing it. Trajan had used the Ulpi to stay ahead of the normals. Derek suspected the true purpose of Praesagio was to do exactly the same thing but through the modern power of corporations.

  Ladon nodded but spoke no more words, and returned his stare to the paper in his hands.

  “Mr. Pavlovich had me keep tabs on the public Praesagio dealings. I follow most of their media accounts.” Bernard shifted his weight from foot to foot, a subtle movement most normals would have sensed, not seen. “Do you think they have Ms. Torres’s talisman? That they’re going to experiment with Ladon-Dragon’s talon?” Confusion and fear played across the kid’s face. “Will they come after Mr. Pavlovich?”

  Bernard wasn’t asking about Derek’s cousin. He was asking about Derek himself. Derek let go of Anna and nodded to the kid. “If you were in danger, Rysa would not have allowed us to come to you.”

  Ladon looked up and for a split second his face looked as confused as Bernard’s. “She has a special sense of when to…” He paused as he glanced at the patio door. “…of what to do to protect people.”

  Even if it put her own life in jeopardy. Derek closed his eyes, willing away his own small moment of confusion and fear.

  Ladon slapped the kitchen wall and the whole interior of the house rattled. “They are the Ulpi. They cannot have the talon. They will… use it. I am sure.” Closing his eyes, he breathed in a long breath. “They know we know where the talon is. We go now. Our only course of action is to walk in through their front door.”

  Ladon was correct—Fates as powerful as the Ulpi could not be surprised. The only path available was acknowledgement and, perhaps, diplomacy. But no one was in any shape to start the days-long drive to Portland right now.

  “Brother.”

  Derek glanced at his wife when a ping and quick image moved between her and Sister-Dragon.

  She’d remembered something—two swords, both with blades so black they reflected no light.

  And information that would certainly complicate any attempts at diplomacy.

  When Derek returned his gaze to his brother-in-law, Ladon stared into the kitchen, hi
s hand and the paper by his side. The ping had moved from Sister-Dragon to Brother-Dragon, and Derek was sure Ladon knew what Anna wanted. But for the moment, his concern focused on the pool house.

  “Rysa needs to eat.” Ladon glanced at Derek.

  Anna stepped away and pulled her keys from the pocket of her jacket. “She does.”

  More pings moved between the dragons. They were to move toward the front of the house, so their humans could go out to the vans. Brief, controlled anger pulsed from Brother-Dragon as a result.

  Do not take long. I wish to stay in the backyard.

  Derek flinched. He tried not to, but he did.

  “We will plan.” Ladon’s face changed for a moment, his confusion focusing down to Derek. “Take Rysa food.” He made no other comment, only walked toward the front door, Anna following behind.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dragon pinged information back and forth with his sister. You need to rest, Human.

  We need to drive. They were a full day from Portland. The Ulpi Fates could cause no end of trouble in twenty-four hours.

  Ladon stood on the front walk and stared at the roof. Both beasts stared down at him, their hides blending perfectly into the night air.

  I will not ride in the van when you are incapable of focus. The beast flicked his tail and a glimmer popped off the roof. Even you and Sister-Human have limits. You have been driving for three days straight.

  I’ve done it before. He had. Many times. He’d driven almost a full thirty-six hours when he and the beast chased the gang of Burners who ultimately tried to kidnap Rysa. And later, he’d driven the eight hours to Rock Springs without stopping. Then he drove from the Flaming Gorge to Branson without stopping. That was sixteen hours.

  He was fine.

  You are not fine. You have barely rested in three weeks. A moment of silence dropped from the beast—Dragon reserved his next push for Ladon alone, blocking it from his sister. You were seeing shades that were not real. You may not see them now, but you have not rested.