The man pushed through the inner door and checked the pulse of the one in scrubs.
Derek followed. In the second room, a daffodils-and-lavender stink mixed with Billy’s vinegar. He gagged.
“Sedative mist.” The man from the airlock doctored the other, not looking at either Derek or Billy.
Derek pulled the man to his feet. Whistling for Billy’s attention, he pointed back through the airlock. The Burner nodded and squeezed through into the front white room.
“You’re the Russian, aren’t you? You’re not supposed to be here. The Fates didn’t see you so they assumed you stayed in that Missouri hellhole.”
Derek leaned close. “How do you know I am the Russian? Perhaps I am a morpher with a hungry Burner friend.”
The man blinked rapidly. “Listen, my name is Dr. Eric Nakajima. I’m Praesagio’s head of Special Medical. We brought in the hybrid the moment she became visible to the Fates and we almost had her in the clean room. Damn it, we almost had her safe but your Burners attacked and the door jammed. The Dracos went crazy when Scott tried to hurt her.” He nodded at the man on the floor.
Billy pushed through the door again. His stench mixed with the floral scent and the room took on the distinct odor of heavy-duty cleaning fluid.
Nakajima waved his hand. “Look, I don’t know what you believe, but we want to help. She’s one of a kind.” Nakajima rubbed his wrist.
“Where did the Dracos go? Where is Rysa?” The temptation to allow Billy to bite almost overcame Derek’s common sense, but having this man writhing in pain would not get them quicker answers.
“I passed out. But…” He trailed off as his gaze darted to the open door at the back of the room.
“What?” Billy snapped his teeth again, this time so close to the man’s face he winced.
“They must have taken her. The Fates.”
Chapter Fifty
She heard Dragon’s roar after the man pulled her out of the knockout mist. Her healer burned it out of her system quickly, consuming the little bit of strength she’d gained from the nutrition bar. She hit at his enviro-suit, clawed at the zippers trying to get away, but he just held her arms until she stopped.
“Take off that hood and talk to me face to face, you coward.” She’d see just how terrifying he was after getting a nose full of calling scents. She needed to get back to Ladon. He might…
She wouldn’t think about that right now. Her seer noise only buzzed louder the deeper the man in the enviro-suit dragged her into the building, and nothing that made sense got through at all. No present-seer whispers telling her how to maximize outcomes in the moment. No past-seer visions of historic melodrama. And no flashes from her future-seer telling her what she absolutely, positively had to avoid.
Just white noise that felt contained inside the building. Whatever Praesagio did to stop Fate corporate espionage seemed to be limiting the outward push of her seers. Though she didn’t need the chorus in her head to figure out the bad rolling out of the what-will-be, straight for both her and Ladon and Dragon.
And her father. Nine years of no contact, no word at all and bam! He appears, like magic, out of thin air. Walks right up to Praesagio Industries at exactly the same moment Burners attack. Because nothing in her life was simple.
The man in the suit yanked her down a narrow corridor. All this proved that she’d been right to send off Derek and Billy to be their back-up plan. She’d been right about the other Fates being up to something bad, or at least something epically selfish. And she’d been right about everyone wanting a piece of her.
This time, she didn’t panic. She didn’t fret or cower, either. Maybe the short moment of love contact she’d gotten with Ladon and Dragon had calmed her attention and anxiety issues enough for anger to take over. Because now she just wanted to punch the asshole pushing her through a wide doorway into what had to be the building’s fleet hangar.
The roof here had collapsed and the sun streamed in. Several smashed blue and yellow company cars lined the walls, all flattened by large chunks of concrete. Several walkways hung from the hangar’s high ceiling, some broken and swaying like pendulums, some still intact. Bitter dust filled the air.
Rysa sneezed. “There’s burndust in the concrete, isn’t there?”
He didn’t respond.
In the middle of the hangar sat a massive yellow and blue helicopter with Praesagio Industries: Making a difference for the world to see scrolled along its side. It towered over Rysa and the man, a giant monster of shining gears and sliders, blades and rotors.
In the sunlight, the man’s suit changed from the flat colorlessness it had under the red emergency lights to the brilliant blue-green of a spruce tree.
She couldn’t see his face; he hid behind the suit’s mirrored faceplate. No signature Fate or Shifter energy told her if he had abilities. As far as she knew, he could be some random normal employee.
“Take off that suit and talk to me face to face.” Rysa leaned against a bright red rolling tool cart as she pulled another nutrition bar out of her back pocket. She wasn’t going to show fear. Or feel it, for that matter. If anyone should be scared, it should be him.
Yet her seers had told her to come here, even though the whole thing felt just as dangerous as dealing with Vivicus.
The man in the suit pulled a pad of paper out of one of the tool case’s drawers. He fished around the many wrenches and screwdrivers until he found a pen. Eat, he wrote.
“What do you care?” She pulled the drink box out of her pocket anyway, pushed in the straw, and took a big gulp. Kicking this guy’s ass would take considerable energy, so she better stock up now.
He didn’t answer. When she finished, he threw the empty box toward the wall and it bounced off a bright red fire extinguisher case.
Rysa eyed the axe hanging just above it. She bit into the bar, chewing the slimy more-plastic-than-chocolate texture as quickly as possible. She would swallow each bite whole if that got it past her tongue faster.
He took her empty bar wrapper and tossed it, too, at the wall. It fluttered down, landing on another tool case, its reflection obvious in his mirrored faceplate.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere nearby, Ladon ripped down the few parts of the building that still stood, looking for her. “The help I need is back at the labs. Please let me go.”
The man pulled the pad over again and wrote Make activation spit on the paper.
“What?” How the hell was she supposed to do that?
Do it now. When you are ready, I will unzip the hood, he wrote.
His hand lifted away from the tool case and his finger pointed at the suit’s hood. Rysa grabbed a screwdriver and swung, praying to rip open his suit. She’d have him on the ground puking, just like that damned nurse.
The man caught her arm. Holding her wrist, he took the screwdriver with his other hand before writing. We must stop what is coming. You are the key. You must activate me. The Dracae need a true commander.
“Only a parent can activate someone, you idiot!” she screamed. The pressure of his grip crawled up her arm like an army of ants.
He grabbed her other wrist and forced her to sit on a stool next to the tool case. “Why do you think I brought you here? You burn so brightly any Fate or Shifter you spit for will activate!” She barely heard him through the hood.
She clamped her mouth shut. Confirming she had no sense of the future right now would not help her.
“Your seers didn’t show you the truth? You came here of your own free will! I thought you must have realized, to come out from behind the Burners and make yourself visible. Your purpose is to activate me.”
Was he a Fate? A Shifter? If he was unactivated, she wouldn’t feel him, either way.
He let go of her arms, his chest forward to intimidate. “The capacity of the Dracae to cause great destruction will be channeled in the wrong direction if they continue without control. They must fight the coming threat. Not cause it.”
; He jabbed his finger into her face. “You are a porcelain doll. You are too fragile to be trusted with the necessary work. You do not deserve your talisman! Someone needs to protect my world.” He squeezed her shoulder just above her wound and an excruciating jolt fired down her arm. “I protect what belongs to me.”
She clenched her teeth but she didn’t cringe. Ladon might rampage, but she was what kept him grounded, not the maniac hiding behind a mirrored visor. And she might be sick, but she was not fragile. “Fuck you.”
She was not a doll.
“You will activate me now.”
Grandpa Andreas told her she was dangerous. He called her a true hornets’ nest.
And the douchebag asshat in front of her didn’t know the half of it.
“I will not.” Rysa ran for the axe.
His blue-green enviro-suit creaked and crinkled as he lumbered after her, wrench in his gloved hand. Plan B must be to remove “too fragile” Rysa from the mix, which made sense in a twisted way. Megalomaniacs would rather burn down the world than not get their way.
This guy seemed more and more like a Fate every second.
Rysa’s hair wrapped around her mouth and she tasted the past three days—Burner stench, her own sweat, and ash. Her hand wrapped around the axe and she felt cold creep onto her palm. Rysa saw only the spruce-colored suit in front of her, one more for the ocean than to protect a body from her mind-shattering calling scents. She needed to rip it. Or knock off the hose attached to the back of the hood.
He swung the wrench at her wounded arm. But Rysa Torres, the Draki Prime, the healer of dragons, a woman who was not fragile, pulled in a long breath of Praesagio’s dust-choked air, and swung the axe in her hand.
The damned axe rolled, balanced for taking down walls, not battle.
The wrench hit her shoulder.
The flash of agony turned the world a blinding pink—and her seers ruptured. They flared from her body, a writhing drunken mass, but she knew he was about to swing again. Rysa ducked.
The monster in front of her grunted loud enough Rysa heard it through his suit’s hood. This time, he raised the wrench over his head.
She flew sideways and slammed into the side of a broken sedan. Her collarbone fractured, but she held her body straight. She would not allow the monster to see the blinding hurt screaming through her body.
He turned slightly, she knew, to see her clearly through the mirrored facemask of his enviro-suit. One more hit and she’d knock off the rebreather hose connected to the hood. He’d go down in a shrieking heap on the floor, rocking back and forth because he couldn’t breathe anymore.
He would not get by her. He wouldn’t get to Ladon.
Her healer ate her body from the inside out, but it did its job. She lifted her arm, righting her collarbone, and pulled the bone flush.
The wrench arced toward her again. Its reflection glinted for the briefest moment on the plastic of his hood, mixing with the gleam and glitter of the sunshine pouring in through the open roof.
The iron in her hand slashed, but the suit held.
He lifted the wrench to swing again—and flew straight up into the air.
“Dragon?” Surprised, Rysa staggered back, immediately feeling outward for the beast. It had to be him. They’d found her. She bounced against the tool case desperately trying to see—to feel—her dragon and her man. “Ladon?”
A dragon roared and a burst of pain rippled through the huge room. Flame curled around the walkway directly above Rysa’s head. The wrench dropped first, clanking along the roof of a car before bouncing to the floor.
The man in the suit followed, falling fast, as if he’d been thrown.
He landed hard and the car’s roof buckled. His feet hit first and he skip-hopped off the side, onto the floor, rolling with the force of the drop.
“They’re here!” Rysa screamed. “You cannot control them! They do not belong to you! They’re going to rip off your—”
Someone grabbed her from behind. Someone smaller but much, much stronger. Someone angry.
“Deep breath!” AnnaBelinda ordered. “Now!”
Rysa inhaled as much as air as she could.
Anna’s hand clamped over her mouth and nose. Panic wanted in, but Anna pulled her close, her lips on Rysa’s ear. “When I let go, you run. You hide.” Her hand lifted away. “Go!”
The man in the suit stood up.
Rysa ran for the copter in the center of the hangar. If she could get in, she could close the doors and Anna would deal with the man. He grabbed for her as she dashed by and she twisted, running backward for a second.
AnnaBelinda looked ashen, her eyes wide; she fought Rysa’s calling scents, but they were taking their toll.
The man yelled. Anna pointed at his head. “Two millennia ago, you did not command the Legio Draconis. You do not command us now.”
The man in the suit had to be one of the Emperors. Was he Hadrian? She hadn’t felt seers. All the time in the warehouse and her seers had not once made him out to be a threat.
The Emperor in the suit charged Anna, only to dodge to the side as he came close. He snagged a stool and rolled down the side of a car as he flung it up, like a lion tamer at the circus.
Rysa stopped thirty feet away, against the copter. She couldn’t see Anna’s face clearly, but the effects of her calling scents were still obvious in the dragon woman’s jerky movements. “Get his hood off,” she whispered, more a prayer than a command to Anna. “Get it off and I will take him down.”
The big machine pressed against her back. It gleamed, all chrome and happy painted colors.
“Stand down!” Anna yelled, her voice full of the authority of the ages. She sounded every inch the general Rysa knew her to be, but the same weight that burdened Ladon also burdened her. She’d seen too much. Lived through too many terrors. And she faced this new one the way she’d been facing threats for centuries.
AnnaBelinda, the human half of the Dracas, circled an Emperor, her face and her body tired of fighting. Tired of the pokes and the pricks and the constant, unending stream of bullshit she and her brother had to face again and again and again.
Rysa had never noticed it before, though she assumed it was there. Anna hid it better than Ladon.
The Emperor banged the stool against a tool cart. Anna whipped an object at his head, something small, but at a deadly speed. It hit the faceplate and a loud crack reverberated through the room.
The man in the suit looked directly at Rysa. His faceplate didn’t shatter, but it did break, and now she could get to him.
“Anna!” Rysa yelled. “Back up!” She set her feet, ready to sprint toward the Emperor as soon as Anna began to move. But to her surprise, the man sprinted toward her.
Until he ran headlong into a large, invisible body.
He staggered back, his fists coming up to swing. Not one, but two lines of visibility moved from two snouts, down two necks, across two sets of very dangerous front legs. It flowed over two sets of ridges and over two sets of haunches. And it flickered to the tips of two tails.
Sister-Dragon and Brother-Dragon mirrored each other as they growled in unison. A wave of spiky, violent patterns in blood reds and flame oranges moved from one beast to the other, then back.
Sister-Dragon fully flicked out the talons of one giant hand-claw and slowly, deeply clawed the concrete floor. A stuttering shriek, punctuated by loud cracks as the concrete shattered, filled the area.
But the man stood his ground.
He pointed first at Sister-Dragon, then at Brother-Dragon, his posture tall and erect. And even though Rysa could not hear his words so far away, she knew what he said: Kneel before your Emperor.
A white-hot flame burst from Rysa’s Dragon. It curled around the man and his suit, but again, he stood his ground.
The flame also curled back along the beast’s side. His hide picked up the biting swirls and the vicious licking. Rysa’s Dragon became the walking, growling fire god who would burn the world.
Dragon had to stop or Ladon would break.
Hands yanked her backward, into the copter, and her butt landed on a bench in the rear. Cable and boxes littered the floor, obviously dislodged by one of the explosions. Rysa twisted around, hoping Ladon had found another mask. Hoping she could talk some sense into him.
His mouth covered hers immediately. He inhaled as he laid a powerful kiss over her lips, sucking into his lungs this moment’s full brew of calling scents. Every ‘strength’ she wished she could use on herself, every bit of flickering ‘quick’ and lumbering ‘dull.’ All the ‘calm’ she knew he needed, but also all the ‘panic’ she knew he did not. He absorbed her ‘love’ and licked away her ‘hate.’ Ladon, at this moment, wanted everything she could possibly give him.
He pulled off as suddenly as he’d latched on. Wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, he stared at her face with wild eyes. He looked like he might bite her, the way Billy had. Take himself a good right nip and make her truly his.
Ladon slammed the door on the copter’s other side and ripped off the handle. “I already disabled the front doors.”
“Anna broke his faceplate! I can take him down!”
“No one touches you!” Ladon roared. “You are wasting away in front of my eyes and you will stay in the copter. You cannot take another hit! This stops now and you will not be in harm’s way again, woman.”
“Ladon! Listen to me!”
“It’s happening again,” he muttered as he pushed past her, and slammed the other door. The copter shook—he ripped off the last handle.
Ladon picked up a rod from the floor and twirled it in his hands, moving it back and forth and around his elbows like a movie ninja, testing the new weapon. Finding its weight distribution and its sharpest points of impact.
Because the man walking away from her right now had given up his hope. It suffocated, buried under his centuries. He’d found it again when he and the beast discovered her in the campus parking lot two and a half weeks ago. She’d lain unconscious in the back of his van, a naïve young woman who needed all the help she could get.
Fifth of Blood Page 30
