Fifth of Blood

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Is he alone? Crickets chirped. The slight hum of road noise from the main road occasionally swirled with the mist. But Ladon did not sense other Fates, or hear other movement. Or see any glimmers that would indicate others in the vineyard.

  I must leave the van to look.

  No. Stay with Rysa. Was this a trap? An attack?

  You do not know what game he plays. Dragon had dropped into complete invisibility when Trajan appeared, but he still peered out between the seats.

  The beast was correct. Their goal was the return of the talon. One should not plan counter-moves until one knows the rules of the playing field, or run the risk of losing sight of the objective.

  And when dealing with a Fate, one should never take the offensive. Or the defensive. Reflect what they throw and never think of the past or the future. Only the present.

  Trajan bowed slightly, a stiff maneuver of courtesy given by one general to another. He looked to be a strong, healthy man in his fifth decade, the way he had before he fell to the sickness that took his normal life. He had been activated on his deathbed, and his body had held itself at his “death” age.

  “It is good to see you as well, Legate Ladon-Human,” Trajan said.

  Ladon stifled an eye roll. “America is not Rome. And you are no longer an emperor.”

  A hearty laugh bounced between Trajan and the van before rolling into the vineyard. “We all know that is not quite true.” His grin widened. “Though I see that you and your sister have lost your diplomatic sway over the Mutatae.”

  “We never held legatus pro praetore positions. You made sure of that.” Ladon and Sister commanded the Legion. They’d never officially held magistrate power.

  Neither of them had wanted to.

  Trajan tapped the side of his head. He continued to smirk while holding the vodka in his fist. “Ah, yes. There was a time when I found the Dracae irksome. More than one, to tell the truth.” He sniffed and looked at the bottle’s label. “I take it Pavlovich provides you with your drink?”

  “Provide me the answers I seek and then leave, Trajan.” Or Ladon might yet kill the man.

  You will not. I do not wish to engage in another war with the Ulpi.

  Trajan looked around. “Where is the lovely and talented Ladon-Dragon? I wish to say hello.”

  Ladon slowly dropped off the side of the van, lowering his body with one arm, all while staring at the Fate. Trajan did not move, only watched, waiting. He hid his ability, not using his seer. He must have realized that in this moment, Ladon’s fatigue would save him from an immediate and painful death, so he did not test. He must have been working off already-garnered intelligence and his own arrogant sense of superiority.

  Which was his normal way of operating. The Ulpi hid their abilities. Two millennia of circling each other and neither Ladon nor Sister had ever directly felt Trajan’s seer. Or, for that matter, directly felt the seers of his triad.

  Sister believed Trajan’s late activation, done on his deathbed after six decades of fighting and ruling as a normal, somehow influenced his behavior throughout the centuries. But Ladon suspected straight-up subterfuge.

  “Answer my questions or I will beat you into a bloody pile of bones.” Ladon walked toward the Emperor, but stopped out of hand-to-hand range.

  Trajan waved the bottle at Ladon. “Yes, yes. Do you have chairs in that monstrosity you drive? I wish to sit. We have much to discuss.”

  Ladon did not move.

  Trajan adjusted the strap on his bag. “Look around you. I am alone. No bodyguards. No vice presidents. No driver or assistant or entourage. It’s you, me, your beast, and your sleeping beauty, Ms. Torres.” He pointed over the mist-covered hill. “My helicopter waits over that ridge. My pilot occupies himself with some game on his phone.” His thumbs wiggled in the air. “I do not pretend to understand. Games should involve movement, either of the body or the mind.”

  Ladon scooped up a rock and whipped it by Trajan’s ear. “This is not a game! I have had my fill of Parcae bullshit. You are lucky I have not maimed you where you stand.” Why were Fates sarcastic?

  An irritated enemy is more likely to make mistakes. Dragon would have huffed if he’d been visible.

  Trajan frowned. “You and I have had our… dealings.” He pointed at the van. “But they have never been religious in nature. Always about… commerce.”

  “I do not consider paying Shifters to morph into me, then having me kill them in the arena for the pleasure of your audience, to be commerce. Nor do I consider trafficking young Fates to be commerce, either.” Nor the wholesale destruction of Shifter enterprises just to deprive a population of the chance to free themselves from poverty.

  “Scoundrel” did not come close to describing Trajan.

  But he did speak the truth about his motivations. Profit motivated his dealings, not a god or a religion.

  “It is a new world.” Trajan held out his arms. “One where cooperation fosters improvement faster than domination.” He dropped his arms again. “A lesson I learned after the murder of the First Healer.” Trajan bowed his head, looking very non-repentant.

  “Timothy’s children operated under your orders.” They were to be the next Draki Prime, until the Ulpi got to them.

  “Why would I order such a murder? Do you have any clue how valuable a healer is? I had plans. Wonderful plans that would have saved the world considerable suffering. Timothy’s brats destroyed because of faith, not because of me.”

  Ladon had no interest in hearing the Emperor’s confessions. “Where is the talon?”

  Trajan ignored his question and gestured at the sky. “Wars are expensive, Ladon-Human. They take tolls that are only rarely justified. The world used to be able to heal from the wounds inflicted by the empires, but there are too many people crawling her skin now. The normals are an infection that will not stop.” Trajan paced to the left, then back to the right. “One cannot continue to profit off a corpse.” He stopped and looked up at the moon. “All of the long immortal should understand this. Yet some are still blinded by their beliefs.”

  Trajan stepped toward Ladon and the van. Ladon instinctively stepped forward, blocking his path.

  Trajan’s eyes grew cold. “What the Jani did to young Ms. Torres was unwise. All in the name of stopping an apocalypse no one understands. How many End Times has humanity lived through? This new one is no different.”

  He was speaking of the burning world. The destruction that Rysa’s Fate family foresaw Sister and him bringing about. Ladon did not respond. He would not give Trajan more information than necessary.

  Trajan continued: “You do not cripple your resources when faced with a challenge, no matter what your beliefs dictate. You harness what you need.” He crossed his arms and the bottle bounced against his elbow. “And you do not, under any circumstance, place an injured Prime Fate in the path of that psychopath Vivicus.”

  Did Trajan wish to help? “How will you profit from this? Because all you want is profit.”

  “You wound me, Ladon-Human.” Trajan rolled the vodka bottle around his hand. “The Ulpi are not your enemy, nor are we the enemy of the only double-active hybrid on Earth. When the battle comes and the next End Times befalls the world, we will need everyone, including you and your sister.”

  “Is that what you are seeing?” Because that was not what the Jani saw.

  Trajan chuckled. “I do not know what I am seeing, Ladon-Human, but I would lay good odds that the Jani were not interpreting the visions correctly.” He swung his bag around to his front. “My triad has seen other, more present possibilities we wish not to occur. We do not want the destruction of Praesagio Industries’ multi-billion dollar research and development laboratories because an angry dragon and his human believe the beast’s fingernail is inside.” He thrust his chin at the van. “We are certain we will once again gain an intimate knowledge of the destructive capacity of the Dracae if the young woman’s talisman is not returned to her po
sthaste.”

  One of Ladon’s eyebrows twitched. Trajan always did like to hear his own voice speaking big words.

  Trajan stopped fiddling with the front pocket of his expensive-looking bag and looked up. “Your mood is not good, Ladon-Human. And we all know what happens when your mood is not good. The Ulpi do not want to be on the receiving end of another of your not-good moods.”

  He returned to his pockets. “You must hold yourself. Surveillance is universal in this modern world. The beasts are much more vulnerable than they once were.”

  “Is that a threat, Trajan?”

  He opened the flap of his bag and it crinkled loudly, like most leather. “From me? No. I learned long ago that you always win our battles, I think on pure tenacity alone. But is it a threat from the world? Most definitely. I do not believe your beast will stay invisible forever.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Ladon walked closer. Trajan might have a weapon in his bag, and Ladon needed to be close enough to strip it.

  “Why? I told you already. If you destroy my multi-billion dollar facility, my shareholders will have my head, Emperor or not. If enough normals get some stupidity into their little minds, even the most powerful Parcae cannot turn their tide. If we could, do you think the resource-stripping of this world would have happened, and would be continuing to happen as it is now?”

  Ladon did not answer. He would not discuss Parcae philosophy with the worst of the Parcae.

  Trajan pulled out a business card. “The Jani picked the leaders of the Empire. They did well, when the Emperors listened. They are why I came to power, and the reason Hadrian followed me. But the Jani did not rule. They never understood governance.”

  Ladon took the midnight-colored card. Across its front, in snow-like letters, was a name—Trajan Upton, CEO Praesagio Industries—and a phone number.

  “My private cell phone. Only a few people have that number.” He offered the vodka. “Your brother-in-law’s family always did have exquisite taste.”

  Ladon took the bottle while watching Trajan closely. During his reign, Ladon and Sister stayed away from Rome. They met Trajan only a few times, and never under friendly terms. History viewed his reign favorably, but he was never a kind man. He never cared about the people the way Hadrian had.

  When Trajan activated, there had been decades of rumors and Shifters scuffles, but the reason his mother had kept him normal until his “death” seemed obvious to Ladon: If he had been Fate and Emperor, there would have been all-out war.

  Trajan caused the Shifters no end of problems during the Middle Ages, first destroying their burgeoning banking system, and later allowing the murder of their First Healer.

  So Ladon wondered. Trajan must have an angle. “Where is the talon?” But Ladon would leave him be, if he provided what they needed.

  Trajan nodded at the van. “I ask that Ladon-Dragon come out. I wish to say hello.”

  “If you try to harm us, or the Draki Prime, we will pull your head from your body.”

  Trajan frowned again. “It’s always threats with you, isn’t it? Always the bluster and the chest-thumping. You play the frightening monster well, but we all know you would rather make peace. And love.” He nodded at the van. “We could not help, at the start. The Burners caused too much haze in the what-was-is-will-be, as they do now. But I do believe she is a positive presence, Ladon-Human. She has tipped balances.”

  For the moment, Trajan appeared to be telling the truth. Ladon frowned back at him.

  “I know you will rip off my head if I threaten your new woman.” Trajan’s eyes narrowed. “Which is exactly why I am alone with you right now, to help keep you calm. I like my head where it is.” He waved at the van again. “Please ask the beast to come out.”

  Do you feel it is safe? Ladon pushed to Dragon.

  He will give me the talon. The back door of the van opened. Rysa still dreams. He closed it carefully, so as not to wake her.

  The beast moved silently around the front of the van and circled Trajan, sniffing his head, his body, and the bag. Tell him I am here.

  “He’s here.”

  Trajan looked around. “I would like to see him.”

  No.

  “He says no.”

  Trajan shrugged. “So be it.” He pulled a cloth-wrapped package from his bag. “We took it off that Shifter scumbag before my adopted son got his hands on it.” Trajan handed Ladon the package. “Hadrian is not the man he once was. Please remember that. He would not have done well by you.”

  The cloth was a smooth silk in a color Ladon suspected Rysa would like. Inside, wrapped first in paper, then inside a plastic bag, was her talisman.

  “All this time and I think Hadrian’s heart will be what kills him again.” Trajan stared at the talon, but his eyes were distant. “I tried. We tried. For three months, we tried to help. The incident that changed him was my modern chance to prove I have a soul, and I failed. But the Ulpi talisman is not conducive to finding missing Shifters. And I am sorry.”

  Behind Trajan, Dragon peered at the talon, ignoring the Emperor’s words. Trajan turned around, pulled from his reverie, and reached out his hand. “There you are, Ladon-Dragon, Great Sir. I hope this remedies some of your distrust of the Ulpi.”

  It does not, Dragon pushed. He plays a game.

  “He says thank you.” Ladon unwrapped the talon, turning it over and over in his hands. They’d scraped off the duct tape, but a residue still clung to one side. Still razor sharp, still hard and shimmering, it was real, and not a replica.

  Dragon peered at it. I believe you are correct. He took it from Ladon’s hand and it vanished into the folds of his giant claw-hand. I must look at it while not mimicking, to see it better. He moved away, toward the van.

  Trajan stared at the van. “Young Ms. Torres will sleep for another eight hours.”

  Ladon had not felt his seer, but he nodded anyway.

  “Tell her, please, that the hell the Jani put her through led to a positive outcome for all Fates and Shifters. It forced Vivicus into the light. We took care of the problem. He will not terrorize her again. It was what we could do.” Trajan closed the flap of his bag. “Between your Second’s efforts to dismantle the Seraphim and our intervention, he will never terrorize any other Fate. Ever.”

  Ladon glanced over his shoulder when Dragon climbed into the van. “What did you do?”

  Trajan exhaled slowly. “Maybe this is my chance to prove my soul.” He stepped back as he nodded toward the vineyard. “My helicopter awaits.”

  “Trajan, what did you do?” But Ladon did not follow. They had Rysa’s talisman. She would be safe now.

  “I guaranteed the safety of my business.” Trajan’s brow furrowed. “If she needs help, any help, you call.”

  Ladon glanced at the card in his hand. Could Trajan truly have changed?

  “I have walked through the valley of the shadow of death, Ladon-Human, and I no longer fear evil. Now it is my rod and staff that protect this world.” Trajan nodded one last time, and walked away into the mist, toward his helicopter.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  A text from Derek awaited Ladon when he turned on his phone: Crashing at your old Army buddy’s place. And an address.

  So they found Hadrian. Not that it mattered anymore. Found my keys, he texted back.

  Good to know. Come anyway. He says you can crash here too.

  He couldn’t drive home. Not with Rysa in the van. He needed Derek and the sedan to transport his love.

  We will rest until you are capable of driving, Dragon pushed. And we know Rysa’s calling scents are under control.

  Ladon glanced at Trajan’s business card now sitting in the cup-holder where he stored his phone. He had said that if she needed help, they were to call. And helping would be more difficult if they were stuck in Idaho on their way home, because Rysa’s calling scents drove Ladon from the van.

  Another text from Derek appeared. Wife wants to plan a dinner party. Says you need to be here to
do it right.

  Looks like we spend another day in Portland, Ladon pushed to the beast.

  Dragon did not respond. He rested his head on the floor of the van, next to Rysa.

  The address Derek had sent turned out to be a storage complex thirty miles from the vineyard. An isolated location, one with a tall chain-link fence and a chained swing gate. Ladon’s brother-in-law opened the gate, ushering him inside, before rattling it closed and roping the chain through the fence once again.

  Flatness still blanketed Ladon. Dragon pulsed Rysa’s vitals at a steady pace. The traffic had moved at steady speed along Portland’s many freeways. The moon glimmered, the night darkened, and the world laid down a flat ribbon in Ladon’s now-steady mind.

  He watched Derek, refusing to think about it. Refusing to think about any of it—the past of his memories, the present of Trajan, or the future that hunted Rysa. Even a future where she held her talisman.

  He should be out on the pavement with Derek, dancing in joy.

  But if he thought about it, the world wouldn’t be steady anymore.

  The passenger door swung open. Derek stood on the pavement of the lane snaking between several smaller buildings and toward a large warehouse at the back of the property. Only floodlights attached to the corners of the buildings lit the area. The moon shone down, throwing faint shadows, but Ladon looked out at swirling tongues of fog swallowing pools of glare.

  Night in the Pacific Northwest always reminded Ladon more of Scotland than America.

  Derek stood just outside the van, watching and not moving, one hand on the door and the other on the back of his omnipresent hat.

  Derek appears to hold a secret. Dragon snorted and returned his head to the blankets.

  Ladon held back a groan, but he was sure his face showed his annoyance because Derek grinned sheepishly.

  “Speak.”

  Derek frowned. “Moot or not, controlled or not, this is the best place for her right now. She is safest here while she sleeps.”