And here he sat on the concrete floor of his warehouse, the weight of the world crushing him under its centuries.
“Philip passed three weeks ago.” Hadrian did not look up. “I went to Trajan. He offered to help, as he does now. He said he tried to find the healer. But he did not. And Philip is dead.”
Hadrian looked up. A snarl moved across his mouth and an indignant wiggle across his shoulders. “Your kind knows nothing of real war. Or nation building. I was the best Emperor Rome had. I did my work and I did it well. I know threats when I see them and if you do not wish to follow me, then you might as well lie down in your own pool of blood and death.”
Hadrian stood. One last time, he glared at Derek for a long moment before straightening his shirt and walking away.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sister and Sister-Human leave. A burst moved between Dragon and his sister as the other van pulled out of the loading dock. They will return shortly.
In the middle of the rain-slicked open pavement, Rysa bounced on her toes, too frail and too gaunt. “Where is she going?” The pitch of her voice inched upward. “Why is she leaving again?”
Dragon flickered as a patch of sunshine moved across his hide. They say we need low communication but we are not to worry. Derek stays, he signed.
Rysa wrapped her arms around her chest again and Ladon couldn’t get near her to ease her fear. He needed to skirt her bubble of calling scents as he moved toward the loading dock.
Rysa watched him walk. “So we’re not leaving now?”
Ladon stopped. When she returns, he signed.
Will you be okay to drive? She still watched him carefully with her sunken eyes. She looked ghostly, his love.
Of course he was okay to drive. He wasn’t the one they needed to worry about right now. “Go in first, love. Get dry clothes from the back of the van. We’ll come in as soon as you are comfortable.”
Rysa glanced at Dragon, then nodded and walked by, skirting the beast this time. She stopped for a second, watching Ladon carefully, before opening the passenger door of the van.
And screamed.
The Burner called the Professor lunged out of the vehicle. Rysa jumped backward and to the side, vanishing from Ladon’s view.
Dragon leaped into the dock, landing hard on the hood of the van, and swiped at the Burner from over the top of the door.
Inside Ladon’s mind, hinges shattered. Shutters broke—destroyed, finally, by a Burner sneaking unseen into his van. A Burner who got by Sister. Who got by Derek and Billy, who were supposed to be watching over Rysa.
This woman, this love, was as naked and vulnerable in the modern world as all his other women had been in the past. The nakedness, the vulnerability, were not of the ages. They were caused by their proximity to him and to his life. He and the beast raged like the storm and no one who stood close to them had the capacity to shelter themselves.
So the gales picked up. And Ladon would scour this world.
He followed the beast over the top of the van. Her calling scents wrapped around his head like debris in the wind, slapping and biting at his skin, but he saw his target. The beast landed over Rysa, his limbs caging her protectively.
Ladon picked the Burner up by the neck.
His hand immediately sizzled. The smell of his own burning flesh hit him harder than Rysa’s calling scents and he bellowed, tossing the Burner deep into the open space between the warehouse’s main storage area and the loading docks.
“Dragon! Move! You can’t be this close!” Rysa yelled.
Pain turned the world the color of a Burner’s eyes and Ladon bellowed again, looking down at his hand. No skin covered his palm. Blood flowed. He still sizzled from the acid.
Inside the warehouse, the Burner laughed. “She smells sooooo gooooood.” Another laugh. “That dumbass foreigner Billy said Fates, and I had to play along. I had to see. Never tasted a Fate before. And she’s Shifter too. She’s a one of a kind meal for me.”
“Ladon! You’re bleeding!” Rysa ran toward him, her hands out.
‘Fear’ pushed his body to vomit. ‘Pain’ constricted around his own agony and notched it up tenfold. And ‘anxiety’ added sand to the hurricane-force winds inside his head.
He whipped around, grabbing her around the waist with his uninjured hand, and pushed her toward the open van door. “Get in! Lock the doors. Do not come out until this is done, woman!” He slapped his van with his bloody hand.
Pain ricocheted up his arm. He let it flow through him, let it push back the frantic scents. His vision flickered, dragon-perceiving pushing in, but the pain pushed that back too. Ladon was in his own agony.
Dragon leaped to the top of the van, then off the back, his body vanishing as he crossed over the open back door.
The beast would find the Burner.
Rysa’s seers flickered over from white noise to hot noise and she lunged for Ladon. A cringe against her scents slowed him down, but not enough that she got the advantage. Ladon rolled with her along the side of the van, around the corner, and they bumped into the open back door. He held her against the vehicle, inches from her body, gripping her wrists.
Blood dripped down her arm.
“Let go,” she whispered. ‘Calm’ jerking out from her flipped with ‘frenzy’ but the pain let him concentrate.
He released her arms.
Her fingers wove into his, first his undamaged hand, then his bloody one. Her eyes closed, and undefined heat spread from her palm to his. Warmth blanketed his skin, pushing from her body to his.
The pain stopped.
Rysa gagged, bend forward, and staggered toward the open door into the warehouse.
She looked visibly thinner.
“What did you do?” He glanced at his hand. She’d healed him. Without Dragon’s help. His palm looked baby smooth and she’d done it fast. Faster than should be possible.
She hurt herself healing him. In the doorway, she gagged again.
‘Panic’ found its way into his vision. Things wavered.
Rysa’s seers flung outward as writhing tentacles again, but she stood up straight. Her face looked gaunt, hollow, but she held her chin high. Her skin had taken on the tone of ash but she held her body with dignity. “Listen to your Prime Fate, Dracos-Human.” Her words came out deep and etched with an accent he had not heard for a century and a half.
Rysa spoke to him in the inflections of Daniel, the original Draki Prime’s now-dead future-seer. Her eyelids drooped and she pointed behind her head, her arm swinging out in a long arc. “Burners,” she said.
The stack nearest the door shook. Pallets rattled. Plastic screeched against plastic. And the Professor flew off the end of the shelf, landing with a loud smack on the concrete floor.
The sound of his head cracking echoed between the stack and the van. He rolled onto his feet, his hand adjusting his deformed skull, and laughed.
Rysa blinked again as she held up her hands. Then she vanished, wrapped completely in the embrace of an invisible Dragon. Discordant patterns fired from the beast. He moved fast, holding his breath, and returned her to the van’s open back door.
Without the pain that had been grinding from his now-healed hand to distract him from her calling scents, Ladon couldn’t stay next to her. His body moved away on its own, as did Dragon’s.
The Professor pulled a knife out of his pocket. “I’ll prick my finger, you idiot. Put some blood on your dino-pooch. What do you think’s going to happen, huh? Maybe I’ll blow—”
A box hit the side of the ghoul’s head. The Professor staggered but held his ground. His stench increased, his eyes flashing. When he bared his teeth, they gleamed.
Derek ran up the aisle from the break room and pointed out the loading dock. “Rysa! Outside! Now!” He pulled another box off a shelf and whipped it at the Burner. “Hadrian is gone. He took the four Burner kids.”
Behind Ladon, Rysa wheezed.
The Professor dodged the box. “That foreign dumbass dump
ed me on the other side of the city but I’m smart. I ate a tasty little girl from a neighborhood by one of the freeways. Sweet and tender, she was.” His teeth flashed again and he tapped his temple. “Fewer pops. I remembered how to get back here. Do you two idiots know what that mea—”
Fast, the way Ladon remembered him from Rysa’s house in Minneapolis, fast the way all Burners moved, Billy sprang from the stacks behind the Professor. His boot hit the Professor’s back and the other Burner flopped forward.
The knife bounced off the floor and into the air.
Billy caught the hilt and with one quick motion slammed it into the concrete beside the other Burner’s head.
“Hey, mate. I was telling Second Boyfriend about what happens when we forget things, you know? How it’s like a bubble bursting.”
“Get off my chest, you skinny little prick. I should have eaten you when I had the chance.” The Professor struggled, but Billy had the advantage.
“Aye, probably.” Billy punched. “Wanker.” He punched again. “See, sometimes a bursting bubble reveals something else. A proper memory you thought you forgot but you really didn’t.” Another punch.
“That’s right. Make me bleed, dumbass.” The Professor laughed.
Billy stopped, his fist in the air. Slowly, he lowered it, but he didn’t get off the Professor’s chest. “The Russian was right. I grew up in Manchester. I learned to fight.”
“I’m going to break—”
Billy slapped this time. “Shut up. I remember you. I remember what you did to me.”
The Professor twitched as if shocked. “Oh, you remember me making you, do you? Do you remember me feeding you your band mate, too? You’re not spec—”
Billy bit into his neck. He ripped, tearing off a large chunk of flesh from the Professor’s shoulder. The other Burner screamed, but didn’t bleed. Billy took another bite.
Get Derek around them, Ladon pushed to Dragon. Slowly, he backed toward Rysa, hoping she would understand and keep the necessary distance between them. He heard her shuffle backward, but the intensity of her calling scents increased.
She does not move, the beast pushed. He released Derek next to the van and nudged him toward Rysa.
Ladon’s brother-in-law glanced at the gruesome scene in front of them before wrapping an arm around Rysa’s waist to pull her outside.
“No.” She pushed away. “Billy needs me.”
“Rysa!” Ladon slapped the van with enough force to leave a dent. He wasn’t processing well. He wasn’t feeling what he should be or understanding—truly understanding—what Billy did to the other Burner or what it meant. But he knew it wasn’t good and he knew Rysa needed to be out of harm’s way.
“The Draki Prime wants you out of here, Dracos.” She still sounded like Daniel. Her seers no longer whipped but pounded hot against his mind.
Derek let go. “I think we need to listen.”
“No!” How many times had she been out of his sight and been harmed? The store, the hospital, his home. How many times had he lost a woman because he wasn’t there?
The gales in his mind wouldn’t let him think but this thought came through loud and clear.
Behind him, Billy slurped. “Is there a Greek tragedy about eating your maker?” He jumped up and twirled his arms, grinning like a fool. “Who knew cannibalism made you feel so alive!”
A high-pitched giggle burst from the Burner with a poof of acid. “Oh! Excuuuuuse meeee!” He giggled again before running for a pallet.
Billy jumped, one foot hitting the boxes and the other the front edge of a stack’s first shelf, six feet off the ground. He rotated in the air, his body completing a full back-flip before landing only inches from where he took off.
“Ta da!” he yelled, and bowed.
“He’s as good as you.” Derek said.
An unfightable Burner? What would his blood do?
“Billy?” Rysa’s voice had changed into softer tones, sweeter pitches. She sounded similar to her calmest state, when she snuggled against Dragon.
Jealousy burned through Ladon, as acidic as the Burner.
Derek had his elbow. “We need to go.”
“I will not leave.” If that Burner touched her, Ladon would take down the building, no explosion needed.
I will stay. Dragon vanished. He pulled in his connection to Ladon, clamping down his communications, to run silent.
The extra dragon-perceiving disappeared. The warehouse lost its extra delineations, and its extra precision. Ladon still knew where everything was, all the distances, all the weights, but certainty of Dragon’s reinforcement dissipated.
And Ladon felt alone.
Rysa waved for them to leave.
Derek tugged on his arm. “She wants us out.”
Billy giggled again, but this time Ladon heard the whine. Somewhere inside the Burner, an implosion started.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ladon wouldn’t leave. No matter how many times Rysa demanded, he wasn’t going to go this time.
She knew why. Underneath, he believed that if she was out of his sight, he’d lose her again. But he couldn’t see what she needed to do right now, with Billy. He’d break.
So she tried to push to Dragon what she needed, praying her overactive abilities would be enough of a boost this one time. Don’t let him see me. Don’t let him watch.
“Billy?”
He smelled different. More alive, if a Burner could smell alive. More like vinegar than battery acid. Less like ash and only faintly of sulfur.
His eyes flashed differently, as well. They’d taken on the maroon color of scabs on fire.
A new flash burned through the noise of Rysa’s seers, this one from the past, but it wasn’t distinct enough for her to catch an image.
Just an echo, as if something she was supposed to see reverberated from the future through the present and into the past. What she felt was its return trip as it bounced off the back wall of her brain. It echoed from the past into the present.
Like the little whispers. Sometimes the echo lifted out of the noise and she caught a snippet of meaning.
Ladon cannot watch.
The Burner’s whine increased in volume when he opened his mouth, then decreased when he closed it. He danced around, opening and closing his mouth, listening to himself. “That’s brilliant!” He cocked his head and did it again.
“Billy, you’re going to explode.” She extended her hand. Her stomach growled and she felt like her body ate itself, but her seers were specific about what she needed to do.
Not Billy—she couldn’t see him, even with her blaring abilities—but her. The white noise in her head blinked with the pain to come and she knew.
“Ha! Seems so, princess.” He skipped around again. “Why are you still here? You need to take the boyfriend and cart your lovely ass out that door right there.” He thrust his chin at the loading dock door.
“I’m here because I don’t want you to die.” The white noise screamed death! and the only time it stopped was when it flickered to pain!
Throwing up became a real possibility. Her gut wanted to dry heave out all Billy’s vinegar and all the echoes in her head. But she needed to do this.
Don’t panic.
“I’m the Ambusti Prime, remember? I’m the Burner Fate.” Let him believe what he needed to believe for her to get him through this. Let him think she still had a connection to the Burners, even though finding her true talisman made it clear she was Draki.
Billy scowled and tapped his foot. “Boyfriend doesn’t think so. Boyfriend thinks you’re the dino-dog’s.”
“What do you think, Billy?” She inched closer.
The Burner leaned forward. “I think, princess, you need to stand up for yourself or he’s just going to get more possessive.” He sniffed and waved a finger in her face. “Just like every bad boyfriend ever.”
Bad boyfriend? Ladon wasn’t possessive. She knew possessive. Her first boyfriend had been possessive.
Bi
lly snorted. “You know what I remember about being a rock star? Not the music. Not the business. I remember the girls. The users and the used. And darling, you and Boyfriend both need help.”
She expected something to fly over her shoulder and hit Billy in the head, but nothing did. No yells. No threats of violence.
“The dragon just flashed, luv. He’s between you and Boyfriend. Guess he’s a better friend than most, huh?” Billy’s face crunched up. “It’s starting to hurt. Did you know it would gnaw?”
He gripped his belly. “Guess the son of a bitch is eating me from the inside. How poetic.”
Rysa curled her hand around his elbow. This close, he smelled like burned salt and vinegar potato chips. “We need to stop it.”
He pulled away. “You need to leave. Now.”
Her wet clothes hugged her tight and she couldn’t pull the sleeve up high enough to expose the flesh of her bicep.
Rysa took off her top. “If you take from my arm, I’ll still be able to run. But it needs to be this arm, so I can throw.”
Billy inhaled as his gaze dropped to her breasts. “Oh Lordy above I must have been a good boy.” His hand moved to get a good grope but he buckled forward. His arms latched around her waist. His forehead descended to her shoulder and he groaned.
Billy held her very much the same way Ladon had two and a half weeks ago in the electronics store, when the pain of an open cell phone made him groan. When he had turned to her for comfort. And for acceptance.
Billy didn’t bite. He didn’t move. This Burner, this monster who used to be a man, curled his marker-covered arms around the woman he thought of as his savior.
Rysa stroked his dirty hair. The whine filled the little space now and she was sure Ladon would push by Dragon any second.
“The fleshy part right here, Billy. Not too deep, okay? My future-seer is picking up hints of a wound and I see myself not exploding, so it must work.” It had to work.
Billy’s tongue felt worse than a rug burn. It felt as bad as all her childhood knee-scrapes across concrete and asphalt and gravel combined. But she didn’t yell. She didn’t moan. She let him take a bite.
Fifth of Blood Page 23
