Fifth of Blood

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  “If I tell you to burn it to the ground.” He might have to pop Billy because the Burner would not listen. Except Rysa wanted him alive. And Ladon hadn’t killed him before, when he had the chance.

  The damned Burner must be important. Derek wondered what could possibly be so crucial as to allow this highly irritating fiend to continue to walk around pretending to be a person.

  “Right, mate. If you tell me.” Billy sniffed again. “You’re going to tell me, aren’t you? That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? ‘Cause I got the goods.” He snapped his fingers and another little puff of acidic smoke rose off his skin.

  “Do not do that in the car, you idiot. It is hard enough to breathe as it is.” His stench may have lessened—and honestly smelled more organic than it had before—but it still gave Derek a headache.

  Four days in this very car with Rysa pumping out mega-doses of calling scents, and the only headaches Derek had gotten were from the attitudes involved, not the calling scents. But twenty minutes in a car with a tame Burner—though “tame” seemed not quite right—and Derek’s head throbbed.

  Rysa obviously did not make him immune to fumes when she made him immune to everything else.

  “Well la dee da, pretty boy.” Billy flipped him a very British obscene gesture. “You always been pretty? Or did my dear princess fix you up?”

  Derek rolled his eyes and did not answer.

  “I think she fixed you up. Used you as practice so she could make me right.” Billy wiggled and stretched his fingers as if playing an invisible piano. Each of his fingertips glowed as he pressed the imaginary keys. “I’m going to write her a song. Haven’t written anything since I turned. I have markers and I’ll put it on my shins, I will. For the princess.”

  Billy was going to be a problem. Maybe not right now, but down the road. A big problem. But who was Derek to countermand an order from the Draki Prime? She had them all bound up in some intricate weave of bloody Fate backstabbing and games of loyalty.

  He would not ponder such questions now. They had work. He needed to drive.

  “You gotta realize she likes me.” Billy sing-songed the words and continued to play his imaginary piano. “You gotta know.”

  “Be quiet. We’re close.” Derek turned off onto the road after the Praesagio exit. They drove around the back.

  “You gotta be smart and see because I’m gonna show.” Humming, the Burner bounced against his seat.

  Derek parked the car next to a ratty dumpster in the lot behind an older-looking sprawl of semi-industrial offices. They were about a quarter mile from the Praesagio campus and they would need to walk. But even from their position, the Praesagio Industries Research and Development Laboratories dominated the landscape. The buildings sprawled into a low valley between two big hills on the northwestern edge of Portland. The campus consisted of three Russian-doll-like structures: The first looked like a blue-glazed glass pillar, rounded on all its edges and smoothed over to be as friendly as possible. The second, smaller building looked as if someone had reached inside the first and pulled out its green-hazed interior lining. The third and farthest back was a low-slung gray slab.

  Derek pointed. “My guess is the back building. The one that looks like a bunker.”

  Billy peered through the windshield. “We’re going to dance because I got the flow,” he sang.

  “Do you remember what to do?” Derek sprung the trunk and his door, ignoring Billy’s new-found return to music. Time to strap the swords to his back.

  Billy slammed his door and walked around to the trunk of the sedan, which clicked and squeaked as Derek opened it wide. Inside were the two midnight blades in their mechanical scabbards next to the brown paper bag holding Rysa’s talisman.

  The swords he threw a blanket over, before the Burner walked around the car. The talon he stuffed into the inside pocket of his jacket. Bigger than his phone, it bulged outward and felt precarious. He needed to be careful; losing it was not an option.

  “What’s in the bag, Russian man?” Billy did a little two-step dance and wiggled his fingers at the talon like a wizard trying to turn Derek into a frog.

  “Nothing you need to know about.” Derek dug around, looking for twine or something to secure the talon. “Ah!” The previous owners had left a couple of screwdrivers and a roll of duct tape.

  Derek pulled out his shirt before ripping off a long piece and taping the talon to his midsection. Uncomfortable, but he would always know where it was.

  Billy tapped his chin, watching. “That a bomb? Because that’s my job.”

  “It is not a bomb.” Derek pulled off another strip of tape and crossed it over the first.

  “Is it bacon-flavored beast biscuits? Will they roll over and shake to get their treats?”

  “Shut up.” Derek hooked the end of the tape to the front of the package and wrapped it around his belly a couple of times. Ripping noises filled the little lot, bouncing off the dumpster, and for the moment, drowned out Billy. But only for the moment.

  Billy peered at Derek’s belly. “You’re personal-trainer pretty. And tatted like a rock star. With a hat.” He pointed at Derek’s head. “You’re a walking cliché. Did you know that? You’re a poster boy.”

  “Billy. Shut. Up.” Derek tucked in his shirt. The duct tape made twisting difficult but nothing short of midnight blades would get the talon off his person.

  He flicked the blanket off the swords.

  “Oh, oh, oh my!” Billy reached for the sword on top but Derek slapped away his hand. “Hey!”

  “Those are not for you.” Derek picked up the first scabbard. Anna had created the design over a century and a half ago. Each scabbard consisted of a long webbing of brass mechanical fingers that locked over a blade. They curled up and around, not touching the sharp edge, and gripped along the flat side of a short sword or long dagger. One had to tug out-up-out to get the fingers to release, but the scabbards made carrying longer blades on the back easier and safer.

  But they needed to be carefully situated, especially if carrying two, as Derek was about to do.

  “Why can’t I have one?” Billy pouted as he sniffed at the sword in Derek’s hands. “There’s burndust here.” He sniffed again. “It’s in the handle.” Pointing, he drew his finger along the black leather wrapping the grip of the sword.

  “What?” Burndust? But the Jani had used these swords. Derek scoffed. Could they have not known? No wonder Ladon bested them so easily.

  Billy sniffed again. “Not a lot. I doubt Boyfriend figured it out. The dino-dog should have smelled it, but only if he sniffed the hilt, there. It’s probably between the metal and the leather, taped on like what you did with the beast biscuits.” He pointed at Derek’s belly again. “Probably meant to hide them in that ol’ Burner way!” He danced around again.

  Derek strapped the scabbard to his back and lifted the second sword out of the trunk. This new information might come in handy.

  “One of my people died to enchant those swords. I think I should have one.” Billy wiggled his fingers.

  Derek strapped the second sword to his back, parallel to the first. “No. Rysa was specific. You are not to touch the weapons.”

  Billy frowned. “When did the princess tell you that? Huh? I think you’re lying.”

  “I am not lying, Billy.” Derek slammed the trunk.

  “She would have written it on my arm if it was true.” He gripped his forearm but did not pull up his sleeve.

  Derek did not ask what she had written. The Burner seemed protective of his knowledge and Derek had thought it best to let him have this one special interaction with Rysa. But now he wondered.

  “There will be fences. The blades will get us through.” Derek jogged toward Praesagio. “Keep up, Burner.”

  “Aye, Captain Russia! You’re the one with the enchanted swords, not me.” Billy followed behind. “If I can’t have one, can I name them?”

  Derek shook his head. “No. Be quiet.”

  “I shall cal
l them Poke and Stab, killers of Fates and slicers of Shifters!” Billy pulled up a bush so they could get by. “You need to find two more so we have a complete set. Poke and Stab and George and Ringo!”

  “You really do need to be quiet, Billy.”

  “I will not. You need a shield. Something round made out of the same weird metal as my swords and with the stars and stripes on the front but in Russian red. Since you’re Captain Russia.”

  Derek let him babble, knowing he would not stop anyway. “Tell you what, you steal one for me.”

  Billy snapped his fingers as they ducked behind a tree. “I’m good at stealing. Gotta be, when you’re like me.”

  “So concentrate on what you are going to steal from the Fates, okay?” The first fence looked like a standard chain link. Derek lifted one of the swords.

  Now quiet, Billy watched as Derek sliced open a hole. “I do think I will.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “Love?”

  The warm tones of Ladon’s voice smoothed over Rysa, though he sounded muffled. Far away. A hand stroked her shoulder, a strong hand as warm as his voice, but real. And close.

  “Beloved?” A pause. “Her calling scents are still strong. She’s not unconscious.”

  She knew they did not hear his anxiety, but she did. She felt it as well, as a wave of energy moving not over her, but away, toward Dragon. It shifted lower as it pushed away, like the sound of a train leaving.

  Trains echoed. So did her thoughts. Why was she thinking of echoes?

  “Ms. Torres? Please open your eyes. We need to get you into the clean room. We have nutrition and liquids waiting. You need to eat. Now.” This new voice sounded familiar, too.

  “Are you going to put an IV in her?” Ladon’s anxiety flared and she wanted to squint the way she did when she looked at the sun.

  The other familiar voice spoke again. “We might need to. But we have found that with Shifters, delivery of nutrition and drugs works better via food than through the veins, Dracos-Human. Sir.”

  That doctor. The handsome one who looked like a Japanese movie star. The one named Nakajima.

  She had another man in her life who looked like a movie star. A Russian movie star.

  Rysa’s eyes flew open and she sat up, gasping. She had a mask on her face. Just like in the hospital. A medical mask but this one did not smell like cleaning chemicals and sterile air. This one smelled like nothing at all.

  Nothing whizzed. Nothing hummed. But a box hung on her waistband and it felt warm against her skin, even through her shirt.

  Three people pushed her on a gurney down a wide white hallway. Nakajima walked next to her on one side, Ladon on the other. A large man in nurse scrubs pushed her forward.

  Behind them, Dragon loped along, first dancing to one side to see around the nurse, then to the other. He climbed up the concrete of the wall, grinding his talons into the blocks, and scurried forward. Little bits of dust puffed into the air each time he gouged the wall.

  They all wore masks, even Dragon. Masks like hers.

  “What—” Then she remembered; the masks filtered her calling scents. “What happened?”

  Ladon touched her cheek and her shoulder again. “You became unresponsive while we drove. Dragon almost ripped the top off the van when we arrived.” He grinned, obviously trying to make her feel better.

  Ladon almost ripped the top off the van, not Dragon, she thought. “I’m awake now. I’m awake.” She tried to sit forward, but her head swam.

  “Here.” Nakajima raised the head of the gurney as the nurse pushed her down the long hallway. “My guess is you fainted from hunger.” He motioned to the nurse. “Take her directly into the clean room. I don’t care about protocols.”

  The big nurse nodded.

  Rysa’s stomach growled.

  “As soon as the door closes, take off your mask and eat.” Nakajima pointed at Ladon’s pack. “How much charge is left?”

  Ladon glanced at his belt.

  Nakajima pulled his smartphone out of his pocket. When he tapped on it, Ladon squinted.

  “Show me how these work.” Rysa grabbed for the phone as they rounded a corner, hoping the doctor would not notice the pain tightening Ladon’s cheeks and stiffening his walk.

  She groaned and flopped against the gurney. She moved too fast and the world spun.

  Behind Ladon, Dragon flashed.

  But her distraction worked. Nakajima glared at her, gripping his phone possessively, and ignored Ladon. “I am checking battery levels on your packs.” He waved at her dismissively, like he would a child.

  “How do they work?” she asked again. They shouldn’t work. Ladon told her that over the course of two millennia, no one had figured out a way to filter calling scents. The only thing that worked was to knock the enthraller unconscious, the way AnnaBelinda had knocked her out.

  Yet Praesagio had figured it out.

  Nakajima did not look up from his little screen. “The technical specs are difficult to explain, but basically we believe enthraller calling scents are some sort of self-building molecular structure. We have never been able to isolate any, so we do not know for sure. But we know they are in the air. This tells us they actively dismantle themselves when threatened with exposure. So our engineers built sniffers.”

  He pointed at the pack on her waist, his face smug. “That little machine is trying to isolate your calling scents. It’s trying very hard to take pictures, make spectrograms, all sorts of data gathering operations. It seems the calling scent’s need to stay hidden is much stronger than the emotional commands carried by their mechanisms.”

  She churned out self-building molecules? “What is in me?”

  Nakajima shrugged again. “Over three hundred years of attempts to isolate any abilities—Fate, Shifter, or Burner—and we’re still clueless. Guesses we have, but actual clues are still beyond our technology.”

  He waved at Ladon without looking up. “Your three packs have about fifteen minutes of battery charge remaining. We get her in and get them on their stations.” He glanced over Ladon’s shoulder. “Is the Great Sir’s mask fitting well? We will make adjustments. Our head technician had a major fangirl moment when the boss told her you were coming in.”

  Jealousy roared through Rysa when Nakajima said ‘girl.’ Some other woman thought she’d get near her man and her dragon? Some other woman who—

  Who wants a close look at Dragon’s hide.

  It wasn’t jealousy. It was protectiveness, and her present-seer just made it through her fog to tell her. “His mask is fine, right Ladon?”

  His face blanked for a second. “Yes, it’s fine.”

  No mimicking changes in the open. Only as he crosses thresholds, out of sight of cameras, Rysa signed.

  Ladon nodded.

  She tried to sit forward again but flopped back against the raised head of the gurney.

  Nakajima did not speak as they wheeled Rysa into a large white room. White lights hung from the much taller ceiling. White tables lined the walls. The lockers were white. Even the frame around the giant window in the wall directly ahead vanished into the whiteness.

  The room was as bright and harshly white as the seer noise filling Rysa’s head. She squinted at the glare the way she would if she looked directly at the sun.

  “Creepy.” Rysa felt as if she’d stepped onto a movie set.

  “We are about to take you into the clean room, Ms. Torres. It uses the same filters as the packs.” They maneuvered her into a smaller room between the white outer area and her destination. A smaller room too small for the gurney, the nurse, Nakajima, and Ladon and Dragon.

  Ladon visibly tensed as he backed out of the little room. He couldn’t chance being separated from Dragon. “We do not like this.”

  Behind him, the beast clicked his talons on the floor.

  Nakajima stood up straight. “It’s an airlock. We can’t open the inner door unless I close the outer one.”

  “We will stay in this new room
with her.” Ladon gripped the frame of the airlock door, effectively keeping it from closing.

  “Look, I understand that you don’t trust us. I understand why. But I am a doctor. I took an oath, and it applies to everyone—Ms. Torres, you, and the Great Sir. The labs are here to help the people who cannot be helped by normal medicine. We’re good at it. Let us do our job.”

  Ladon did not let go of the frame.

  His pack beeped.

  “Back out of the door. Please. The technicians will show you where to dock the packs.”

  Rysa couldn’t shake the feeling that separating from Ladon and Dragon would cause the exact same problems it had caused before. The thought buzzed within the white noise of her seers, echoing off the inside of her skull and whispering You might fall off the side of a building again. And You might be invaded again.

  But mostly the echo said You have to do this, just like you had to go with Vivicus.

  Her stomach lurched, now beyond hungry. She felt as if her body ate itself and suddenly, the echoes no longer mattered. “I need to eat.”

  Ladon exhaled hard enough his mask clouded. But he stepped back.

  Nakajima pressed a button next to her head, on the wall, and as the door slid shut, Ladon became visible again through a small window.

  A burst of energy in the other room, strong enough that Rysa felt it, fired between him and Dragon. Ladon turned, pulling off the mask, and banged on the door.

  “Open it!” She sat up too fast and the wooziness hit her hard.

  “I can’t,” Nakajima said. “It’s cycling. I will bring them through as soon as we have you in the room.”

  The door at the back of the little airlock swished, opening about two inches, and stopped.

  A boom pulsed through the building. The walls shook and a cart next to the gurney bounced off the wall. Somewhere a siren went off.

  A second boom followed, this time closer. The entire floor moved and the gurney twisted. The lights spat and for a second the rooms all fell into complete darkness.

  For a moment, Rysa didn’t feel frightened. For that instant, she thought backup, but then she realized cutting the power would make moving around inside the building more difficult, not easier.