And he tasted Rysa’s calling scents in the air.
He absolutely had to get to her. The normals will hurt her. He slammed the chair into the window again.
We will get you out, the beast signed.
She looked over her shoulder. I’m dizzy, Ladon. I have to sit down.
“Rysa!” Ladon kicked the door again. Can you fit through into the other room?
After a moment, she nodded. I think so.
Then go. Now. Tell them to close the door after you. “Please, love.”
She blinked. Nakajima says there are food bars on the other side for me. He says I need to eat as soon as I am through.
Yes. Next to Ladon, Dragon scored the window again.
I will. She looked over her shoulder. I love you. Her damaged arm fell away from the little window. And she vanished from his sight.
“Do you see her yet?” Ladon moved to the other window. The clean room looked to be of similar size to the front area. Storage units lined the back wall, along with two doors, one obviously a bathroom, the other likely a closet. A curtain blocked an area next to the bathroom from view. A large bed with hospital rails took up the side wall opposite the airlock door, along with a low cabinet and a telephone.
The airlock door inched wider. Rysa’s wounded arm appeared first, followed by her head and leg. She carefully turned to get one breast and hip through. Wiggling, she gripped the top of the door with the hand still on the other side, and pushed.
She popped through, stumbled, then fell on her backside in the center of the clean room.
Ladon pounded on the glass. They had to get to her.
That doctor’s face appeared in the gap. He said something, pointing at the low cabinet. Rysa nodded. The airlock door inched closed.
But not completely.
Rysa rocked back and forth on the floor, looking as if she was about to vomit.
A yell pushed through the wall from the airlock.
Panic congealed in Ladon’s gut. All his long life, he’d tamed it. Held it in check. Used it when he had nothing else to fuel the actions he needed to take. But this time, the panic stuck to his insides and kept his body from responding the way he needed it to.
The way a man of civilization should respond.
Go through the damned wall! Ladon kicked just to the side of the big window, hoping to find a gap in the framing. His foot went through the wallboard only to hit concrete below.
He staggered back, the shock playing up his leg. Swearing, he picked up the chair and slammed it into the big window.
It bounced off, vibrating his arms with the same numbing pain as vibrated from his foot.
An arm followed Rysa through the airlock. The nurse reached into the clean room.
Rysa crawled to the bed and slowly pulled herself to standing. Carefully, she opened the top drawer of the low cabinet, and fished around inside. When she stood up straight again, she held in her hand what looked like a candy bar.
“Eat it!” Ladon yelled. She had to eat. Maybe she could protect herself if she consumed enough that she no longer staggered.
The wrapper fluttered to the floor and she took a big bite. Gagging, she dropped onto the bed, but she didn’t throw up. She swallowed.
It tastes like the butt end of a moldy pork chop, she signed, her hands low so she didn’t have to raise her bad arm.
Ladon grinned. Eat the whole thing.
She rolled her eyes as she took another bite, but she watched the door. The speed of her chewing increased.
She ate. She regained her strength. He did not need his panic. She might be able to keep the normals out.
How many times have you scored the window? The scratches all but burned into Ladon’s mind. The window should have shattered by now.
It does not feel like glass.
The airlock door inched open again.
Rysa stood up. Quickly, she pulled three more bars out of the drawer and jammed them into the back pocket of her jeans. Digging in the drawer again, she found what looked like a juice box.
She pulled out two. The first she set on top of the cabinet and forced in the straw. The second she pushed into her front pocket. Slowly, she walked over to the window and held up the box. “Nutrient Water, Cherry-flavored” covered one side. She flipped it over, showing the ingredients. The little box was a megadose of vitamins.
She held up one of the bars. Its label read “Nutrient Bar, Chocolate-flavored.” The backside revealed what would normally be her full daily intake.
Stuffing it back into her pocket, she transferred the box to her usable hand. Maybe I should lock myself in the bathroom until you find my dad, she mouthed.
Sucking out the last of the drink, she dropped the box on the floor and pulled out another bar.
Ladon pointed at the bathroom door. Go, he signed.
I love you, bossy man, he read her lips saying. She spread her fingers on the glass, the half-eaten disgusting bar between her palm and the glass. I will be okay, she said. You breathe and be okay, too. And find my dad.
Ladon spread his fingers on the glass, mirroring hers. “We love you.” The panic, though still there, seemed to be receding into the deep recesses of his mind. They had a plan. Rysa would hide. She would be okay.
Another yell echoed from the airlock. The door flew open. The nurse, on his stomach, pulled himself into the clean room. Behind him, Nakajima leaned against the wall of the airlock, his front covered in vomit. He didn’t move.
Even in the throbbing emergency light, Ladon’s dragon-enhanced senses immediately picked out why. Blood dripped from his hair. The nurse had hurt him.
Rysa stepped into the center of the room and slowly moved toward the bathroom door. The nurse’s eyes bulged and his neck pulsed. He jumped to his feet.
Ladon hit the window with the chair again, trying to get his attention, but he focused on Rysa. Only on Rysa. She dashed for the bathroom.
But she hadn’t eaten enough yet. She staggered. The nurse swiped for her bad arm and her shoulder pulled back. Rysa screamed, and dropped to her knees.
The panic congealed in Ladon’s gut crystalized.
Behind him, Dragon reared as he flamed. His head hit the ceiling. Plaster fell. And once again, neither the man nor the beast could reach the woman they loved.
The nurse swung his foot to kick. His leg drew back for what, for Ladon, seemed hours. The man’s hips tightened. His shoulders rotated. He kicked.
Rysa rolled away, gasping. Ladon bellowed, his fists bouncing off the unbreakable glass. The nurse pulled back his foot to swing again.
The curtain next to the bathroom door fluttered. The nurse stopped, confusion working into the frenzy already vibrating through his muscles.
Rysa crawled toward the bathroom door.
Vents in the clean room ceiling opened. Big vents, drawing the nurse’s attention. Mist puffed out, mist like the hot steam forced from the side of a volcano, and the nurse dropped to the floor, unconscious.
“Rysa!” It couldn’t be hot. It only looked hot, because of the lights.
Dragon roared and gouged at the window again, all his talons fully extended. Screeching ground through the front room, drowning all other sounds—the background siren. The pumping of the mist through the pipes. Ladon’s heartbeat.
He couldn’t see her. He couldn’t see anything.
Where is she?
Dragon did not respond. The beast slammed his big hand against the window. Like Ladon’s hits, it did no good. The window held.
Her face appeared and her entire body pressed up against the window, her wound against the glass. Blood smeared and she grit her teeth, the pain making her face appear ghostly.
When she vanished into the mist, a gloved hand replaced her face. It first slapped the glass, then balled into a fist. The man, whoever he was, pounded once, then also vanished.
Somewhere, outside, another boom rocked the building. Ladon staggered backward. Another Burner must have exploded.
“Rysa!”
Ladon roared. Everything remaining, every single pin and staple of humanity that held together his mind, snapped.
He wouldn’t just burn this place to the ground. He’d burn the world.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Whoa, mate, I did not do that.” Billy flattened his back against the green-tinted, glass outer wall of the middle building. Sniffing, he pointed at a stand of trees behind what was left of the smoke-churning low-slung gray slab. “Those brats. And here I believed they’d behave themselves.”
Derek squinted. In the smoke, off to the side, three bodies moved. Light glinted off teeth, and yellow-orange off the sparks between snapping fingers.
“Hadrian,” he said, and shook his head.
“You should’ve seen this coming, mate. Sorry to say.” Billy clicked his teeth. “Though those little shits must have eaten a Shifter to set off a building like that. Probably more than one.” He shook his head, too. “That’s what we did when we blew the mall in Chicago when we were looking for the princess. Found a couple of Shifter birds, gave what’s-his-name a proper nosh, and sent him in. Good times.”
“You are no longer killing, remember, Billy?” Derek did not want to pop him now.
“I listen to my princess, even if the little shits don’t.” The Burner crossed his arms. “May I have a sword now? Need to protect myself, you know.”
Derek ignored his comment and watched the Burners run off, around the building. So Hadrian fed Shifters to the Burners and decided to attack.
Derek pointed at the collapsed slab of a building. “We need to go now, before their emergency vehicles show—”
Go in through the back. One of the dragons spoke to him. He could not tell which—he or she was too faint. Too far away.
The dragon-voice vanished from his perception.
“Where are you?” Was his wife nearby?
“I’m right here, mate.” Billy scoffed. “Don’t you lose it, Captain Russia.”
“Be quiet.” Derek closed his eyes, listening, but he heard no other dragon language. Had he imagined it? Had it been Sister-Dragon? “Come.”
Derek zigzagged across the open area between the two buildings, staying in the acrid smoke billowing off the rubble.
He smelled the ozone of free electrical wiring and the faint rotten eggs of a ruptured gas line. “Don’t spark while we are inside.”
“Only if I get a sword.” Billy pushed aside a hanging light fixture and jumped into the building.
“Hey! At least no need for the beasts to worry about cameras, huh?” He winked when Derek landed next to him. “I wish to wear Poke. You, my good squire, may keep Stab.”
“Find your own.” Red emergency lights glowed in the interior. Paper and office supplies covered the floor. Three office doors hung off their hinges and an overturned office chair blocked their way down the hallway. “Where is everyone?”
Billy peered into an empty office. “Well, mate, if you’re an egomaniacal super-Fate and you know you are about to bring the scent-spewing princess and her whackadoodle boyfriend into your house, and even though you’re way too arrogant to pay attention to the slight possibility that your shit’s going to blow up, or you can’t even fathom how my kind could possibly get close enough to do so and you assume it’s Boyfriend’s puppy-dino and you’re so into loving yourself because you’re the greatest and you are positive you will be able to talk Boyfriend down never mind that he’s lost it, wouldn’t you clear out the building, too? I mean, honestly, you need room to work, right?”
Derek made his jaw muscles close his mouth, so as not to look too flabbergasted in front of the Burner. “Are you sure you didn’t pick up some of Rysa’s Fate abilities?”
The Burner shrugged. “I’m just sayin’ I don’t think Boyfriend’s going to take all this with calm and clearheadedness. He’s not the smooth operator one would expect, you know, with all the black dungarees and the big scary pet.”
Billy chuckled and pointed down the aisle, past the debris blocking their way. “I smell the princess, by the way.”
Derek sniffed. He smelled her, too.
A roar echoed up the hallway. Somewhere not too far away, Brother-Dragon flamed.
Both Derek and Billy ran for the far end of the building.
A new boom rocked the already-damaged walls. Derek fell against a door. A loud snap and the ceiling cracked, entire chunks dropping with a deafening boom. Billy kicked at the hanging door and the panel flew into the other room. The Burner grabbed Derek by the back of his scabbard harnesses and pulled him through.
“My mates want to bring the whole place down.” The walls and the floor of the conference room in which they found themselves swayed.
Billy ran his finger over the top of the table and popped it into his mouth.
“Son of a bitch!” The Burner threw a chair and it skidded across the top of the large fake-wood table. “I thought I smelled dust. I thought it was whoever popped and set off the first explosion. But it is in the walls.” He threw another chair. “This place has the death of many, many of my people in its walls!”
The concrete contained burndust. Praesagio protected itself from the seers of other Fates by building with Fate-proof materials.
“How many?” They must be taking Burners from multiple cities. Probably from multiple continents.
Billy threw another chair. “I don’t know! How would I know that?”
Derek also ran his finger through the dust on the table, but did not taste. It smelled bitter. In some ways, harvesting Burners did the world a service.
Billy growled. “I know what you are thinking, normal. How many of your kind did they save? How many Shifters weren’t eaten because the Ulpi found an industrial application for my kind?”
“Calm down.” The Burner would be useless if he lost control. Derek lifted one of the swords off his back.
Billy’s eyes flashed. His stench increased, and for a moment, Derek thought he saw an orange glow in the back of the ghoul’s throat.
“No more.” Billy slapped the table. Lifting his fingers, he stared at the dust. “No killing.”
“How? You need living flesh or you crystalize.”
Billy hit the table hard enough the top cracked. The plastic split up the center with more of a squeak than a boom. “Then I will ask for help. The princess will help.”
“Billy, she is engaged to—”
The ghoul pulled up his sleeve. Across his flesh, in fresh letters, were four new words. Four words in Rysa’s handwriting. Four little words that were going to cause many, many more problems in the long run than they were going to solve in the short-term:
You are my king.
The only reason she would write those words on Billy’s arm was to manipulate him into actions he would not otherwise take. Actions such as helping Derek without the threat of bodily harm. “Can you not see? She wrote that so you would behave!”
Billy’s back stiffened. “I don’t care. She made you Captain Russia but she made me the King.”
How was Derek going to deal with this? He held the sword in front of his body.
“I am going to burn this place to the ground, normal. To the fucking ground.”
“Not while Rysa is inside! You help me get her out and you can take this place down to its foundations, okay?” Derek pointed toward the other end of the building. “But we seem to be trapped in here.”
Billy rolled his eyes. “Princess gave you those swords for a reason. Cut through that wall.” He pointed to an interior wall covered by a whiteboard. “Or give me a sword and I will do it.” He wiggled his fingers.
Derek shook his head and walked to the wall. The blade slid in as if through butter, and he quickly, easily cut an opening.
Billy stepped through first. He held up his hand, casting a low but steady glow. “I will help you, Captain Russia. But then I take Praesagio down.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Billy found the lab first. The red emergency lighting reflected off every surface and Dere
k squinted. The room looked as if they had walked into a drop of blood.
It smelled of the warm spices of dragon breath, along with bitterness, and antiseptic. Hints of cinnamon mixed with bleach. The constant, subtle undernote of frankincense both beasts carried mingled with the harsh tanginess of antibiotics. And now Billy added his boiling-vinegar stench.
“One of the dragons was here.” Derek ran his finger over the score mark in the wide window used to view an adjacent room. Inside a man in scrubs lay unconscious on the floor, and another was in what must be the airlock between the two rooms. “Someone must have tried to separate Rysa from Ladon and Brother-Dragon.”
Billy peered into the room, his fingers burning the edge of the window’s frame. “Mate.” He pointed at the curtain. “There’s an open door back there.”
Derek could see the bottom of a door just below the curtain’s hem. “Can you blow the main door? Get us inside?”
“Looks like Boyfriend didn’t get through.” Billy shrugged. “I can.” Billy ran his fingers over the outer edge of the airlock. “A lot of freezers have doors like this.” Billy tapped it, his fingers glowing in the on-off piano way they had in the sedan.
“You know about freezers?” Derek peered into the other room. The man on the floor moved. “One is waking up.”
“Please use my sword to slice off the handle. That’ll make this easier.” Billy bit his finger and very quickly dotted Burner blood onto the now-exposed mechanism. “Fire in the hole!”
Derek ducked. A boom rolled through the room, followed by clanking as a hole opened in the door. Billy stuck his hand through up to his elbow. Leaning into the door, he wiggled the entire structure in its frame. “Ah. Broke the internal seal and we now have give.”
Derek returned his sword to the scabbard. “Lean it inward while I pull it up. We will take it off its track.” They tossed the door against the side of the tiny air lock, away from the bloody man who stirred inside.
“Get your comrade and go.” Billy pointed through the gap into the other room. “Or else I’ll eat you.” He snapped his teeth and visible sparks flashed in the gloom. “Now!”
Fifth of Blood Page 29
