Bonds Broken & Silent

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  She touched the same way Daisy had touched the doctor minutes before. To comfort. To say that she had this, and Daisy didn’t have to worry.

  And neither did Mira’s husband.

  They stopped in the center of the room among the boxes and the cleaning supplies. Daisy didn’t think they had much left to take out to the truck, and would probably leave tomorrow.

  She didn’t ask. To limit connections.

  Mira tapped her fingers along the boxes, her eyes doing the seer-tell again, but she didn’t open one. Instead, she stopped in front of the little suitcase. Kneeling, she ran her fingers over the purple nylon fabric and popped the latches.

  Sitting on top of a set of little-girl jeans, tucked next to a pair of little-girl pajamas covered with comets and stars, rested a small, wingless, stuffed dragon.

  Daisy stepped back. “Not that.” Not little Rysa’s toy. Not her soft friend and her comfort.

  Mira lifted it out of the suitcase anyway. It looked well-loved and often cuddled. Along its side, its soft fur had been pressed flat. One foot twisted slightly, as if Rysa preferred to carry him by holding him with his back paw in her fist.

  The seams where she’d cut off his wings had been sewn up more than once. The last time looked as if Rysa did it herself, carefully going over the hole with colorful embroidery thread, to add patterns to the little beast’s back.

  “I can’t take that.” Daisy stepped back again, and held up her hands. She couldn’t steal a little girl’s heart.

  This time, Daisy swore she felt Mira’s seer. Music played along the edge of her mind like chimes somewhere far away, in the wind. She didn’t hear it, or see their notes, but they were there, somehow pressing against her mind.

  A little girl’s voice floated down from upstairs. “Mommy?”

  Mira thrust the toy at Daisy. “It’s important. Take it.”

  “But—”

  Mira’s face changed. The sad woman, the mother who had let Daisy into the house, suddenly became a Fate. Her back straightened. Her eyes narrowed and hardened. Mira was not to be disobeyed.

  Because disobeying Mira was to disobey fate.

  “We are bound to this path.” She thrust the little dragon at Daisy again. “Go!” Her hand whipped at the door.

  Daisy took the toy and stuffed it into the inside pocket of her jacket. The same pocket where she’d carried her kangaroo.

  From upstairs: “Mommy! I’m done!”

  Mira pushed Daisy toward the door and across the threshold. “She’ll be okay.”

  “Mira.” Daisy held the door to keep the other woman from slamming it. “So will he.”

  The Fate look vanished from Mira’s face and the woman returned. The mother and the wife who’d been crying. She nodded once.

  And closed the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Now….

  “Whoa.” Gavin sat back in his chair and shook his head. “That’s cold, Daisy. Stealing a kid’s favorite toy.”

  “I didn’t want to take it.” She ran her finger around the rim of her bleach-tainted coffee mug. “Didn’t have a choice.”

  Daisy frowned. Fates and their manipulations. Not one of them seemed to care to look for alternative solutions.

  “And you didn’t ask about your dad?” Gavin seemed incredulous. As if he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t taken advantage of what, to him, seemed a brilliant opportunity.

  But one needed to be careful with Fates. Daisy shook her head. “No.”

  He chuckled. “So you thought—what’s his name? Derek?—was your daddy?” AnnaBelinda and her husband had yet to set foot in Minneapolis, so Gavin had no idea who he was talking about.

  None at all.

  “I did. And I would, for a couple more days.” But that was another tale.

  “So that’s when you parted company with Rysa’s dad?” The normal across from her sipped his latte.

  “Yes. When I walked back to the car, he was talking to the Fate on the phone.” She sniffed and sat back herself, mirroring Gavin’s posture. “The angel Fate. The one who’d been feeding us instructions. I handed over the toy dragon. He didn’t ask. He just held it on his lap as he talked.”

  Sandro hadn’t asked her how she felt taking Rysa’s toy. Nor did Daisy volunteer the information. Seemed they both understood they needed to begin severing their bond.

  Gavin shook his head. To Daisy’s surprise, he didn’t ask about what the angel Fate told Sandro. Rysa, it seemed, had already talked to him about Fates. And the whole “don’t invite notice” way of dealing with them.

  “Let’s go.” Daisy pushed back her chair. “The dogs are bored and hungry.” Outside, Radar and Ragnar watched the students walk by, but they had their limits. So did Daisy.

  The light played over Gavin’s hearing aids as tiny rainbows when he stood. Outside, she untied the dogs. Her boys woofed, Radar sitting on Gavin’s foot as the dog seemed to enjoy doing. Her huge guard dog was a big puppy, really. A big, loving puppy who’d taken a shine to Rysa’s best friend.

  And, Daisy was beginning to wonder, her best friend as well.

  They walked along the sidewalk toward the west side of campus, and the neighborhood on the other side of Cleveland Avenue. Daisy’s father had bought her a house about three blocks off campus. At the time, she hadn’t realized the value of the property. She did now, and she made sure the dogs respected it.

  “How long did it take you to realize Mr. Pavlovich is your father?” Gavin scratched the back of his head and flashed his disarming smile again. He seemed determined to keep her talking. “Why didn’t that other Fate tell you?”

  Sometimes Daisy wondered the same question.

  She smiled and tugged on the boys’ leashes. “Come.”

  Time to return to her house. To feed the dogs. And to continue her stories, even if she never told Gavin the small details. The final connections….

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Eight years and eleven months ago....

  The doctor looked over his shoulder. He hitched up the camping backpack and nodded to Daisy, waving once from where he stood in front of the small bus station.

  She’d given him enough of her cash to get him out of California. He’d given her the car, though she’d have to abandon it soon, because of the damage.

  The Fate had finally been specific. The doctor was to vanish completely then reappear at a precise place at a precise date and time.

  He hadn’t shared when and where. She hadn’t asked.

  Daisy, it seemed, was free to go on her way and do what she felt she needed to do, as long as she never spoke of the doctor. At least, the Fate said, until his task had been completed.

  So the doctor walked away into the wilderness, her camping gear on his back and his daughter’s stuffed toy in the bottom of the pack. Daisy watched him go.

  He’d left the cell phone. Said something about cell phones being too visible.

  It sat in the passenger seat, screen down, under Dawn’s German shepherd butt. The dog cocked her head as she too watched the doctor walk away.

  “Yeah,” Daisy said. “I’ll miss him, too.” At least Rysa had a good daddy.

  Maybe, if Daisy was lucky, so did she.

  The phone rang. Dawn stood up, sniffing at it, and yipped quietly.

  Daisy picked it up. No number. “Fate,” she said into the device.

  “When we are done speaking, destroy the phone.”

  “You are predictable, you know that?” Daisy watched the doctor disappear through the bus station entrance.

  “The artifact you carry also has… properties. It should not.”

  Daisy already guessed something was up with it, otherwise Ethne and her sister would have figured out she didn’t have what they were looking for. Maybe she should have asked Mira about it. She would have given her an explanation, at least.

  “Do not contact his family.”

  Daisy shook her head. “I gathered that already.”

  “Good. Do
not speak of any of this.”

  “You already told me that.”

  The Fate paused. “Yes. Promise me you will keep these secrets. The life of the doctor’s family depends on how well you hold your mind.”

  Daisy glanced at the phone in her hand. The Fate sounded genuinely concerned. “I promise.”

  Another pause. “Good.”

  “Fate?”

  “Yes?”

  If Daisy was to stay quiet, she should at least have a few answers. “Why?”

  “Why what, Daisy?” Now the woman sounded amused.

  “Why me?”

  The Fate sighed. “Because your probabilities burned the brightest.”

  Daisy’s brow crunched up and she, too, sighed. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that when the time comes, you are not to discount your part in building this path.”

  Daisy pinched her eyes closed. “Sure thing, mate. Whateveh you say, aye?”

  “Learn Russian.”

  Now Daisy laughed. “Is that your final instruction?”

  The Fate chuckled. “No.”

  “What else?”

  “Learn American Sign Language.”

  Daisy laughed again. “Will do, Missus…” She glanced at the phone again. “What is your name? After all this, at least tell me who you are.”

  The Fate paused too long. For a moment, Daisy thought she’d hung up.

  “I will tell you.” Another too-long pause.

  “Fate?”

  “Destroy this phone.”

  “I will.” She’d already promised.

  “One day, you will know to whom and when it will be necessary to say my name. It will not be an easy moment. Do you understand?”

  How could it be any worse than what she’d just gone through? “I understand.”

  “Until that day, you are never to speak of this. I give you a boon, Daisy. Because I trust you.”

  The Fate trusted her. Daisy’s mouth opened and closed, but she did not answer.

  The Fate breathed in and out several times. “Who am I?” She spoke it as if she asked herself, and not Daisy. “My name?”

  “Who are you?” Daisy repeated.

  Another round of breaths. “I will tell you my name. My true name.”

  Daisy’s fingers gripped the little cell phone. She’d drive over it when she left, maybe back up a couple of times, just to be sure. But she’d have this bit of truth. This little moment where a Fate trusted her more than the Fate trusted herself.

  “I am…” the Fate said. “My name is…”

  Daisy did not interrupt. It felt as if the Fate needed to hear her name more than Daisy. Needed to move on as much as Daisy and the doctor. Put this all behind, as well.

  Another breath. Daisy set her hand on Dawn’s head, waiting.

  “Daniel,” the Fate said.

  “Daniel?” How could Daisy have been talking to a man all this time and not known? “But—”

  The Fate hung up. Daisy stared at the phone in her hand, not thinking too much about what the Fate said. Thinking about it seemed… dangerous. For her. And for the Fate.

  Thinking, instead, that the safest possible future awaited her to the east.

  Before she drove away, she took out the phone’s battery and placed the device under her front tire, as she promised. The phone crackled and broke, smashed to bits.

  When Daisy pointed the car toward Branson, Missouri, and the bar favored by the dragons, she left the broken bits there in the bus station lot, with all her other bonds.

  BROKEN

  PART TWO

  Chapter One

  Branson, Missouri, eight years, ten months, and three weeks ago….

  San Diego had sirens: cops, ambulances, tsunami warning tests. The dry, square states between California and Missouri had an overabundance of big sky: whirlwinds, dust devils, and long, unending highways.

  But no tornadoes.

  Hail slammed into Daisy Reynolds’s sedan. White boulders fell from the black sky and how the hell the car’s windows hadn’t shattered yet, she didn’t know. Clinks from the ice smacking into the glass reverberated through the interior, mixing with the deafening drumming as it hit the roof.

  Visibility on the road leading to the “bar favored by the dragons” was, at the moment, zero. She and her dog were less than five miles from The Land of Milk and Honey but too much white ice death rained from the sky and too much wind whipped the black clouds into even darker blackness.

  Daisy’s fingers probably wouldn’t let go of the steering wheel even if she willed them to. They pressed into the hard plastic like they believed their force alone would keep the car on the road.

  Every breath she sucked in over her tongue tasted sodden and ionized. Every nasty smell the interior of the car usually carried—old burrito, her own unwashed seventeen-year-old proto-Shifter stink, bored dog—were all subsumed into the raging violence of lightning-charged air and the terror that she might die because a hail stone would puncture the windshield and embed itself in her heart.

  The car groaned. The wind knocked it to the side and Daisy compensated, steering left as the backend fishtailed right. She slammed on the brakes.

  Somewhere out there in the black, blistering storm, a tornado siren screamed.

  The car skidded across the pebbles and the hail under its tires, fishtailing the other way this time, and Daisy cranked the steering wheel a little too hard in the other direction.

  A little too much to the right. A little too far, even though she knew damned well the limits of both her driving skills and the mechanics of the vehicle. Dr. Torres gifted the car to her before vanishing into the wilds of the world. She’d used some of the money her mom stuffed into her pockets to fix the Burner-destroyed window and buy gas for her trip out of California. She’d practiced with the car, and driven all the hours through the mountains and the fields.

  So the car shouldn’t be tipping the way it was right now.

  In the back, Dawnstar barked. The big German shepherd slid along the seat’s upholstery, and her doggie claws made stuttered pulling and ripping sounds.

  A tire caught something and the car’s tipping suddenly shifted from to-the-side to forward. The front end whipped around, the back end following, and Daisy slammed against her seatbelt. Her head snapped forward, but the belt held, otherwise she probably would have smacked her face on the steering wheel.

  The car tipped again as one set of wheels spun into the mud.

  Daisy sat back, gasping and wide-eyed. She’d spun out and now they were stuck in a ditch with hail bombarding the metal roof over their heads and tornado sirens blaring somewhere nearby.

  Dawn poked her head between the seats and nuzzled Daisy’s shoulder and to lick her face. You are unhurt. I am unhurt. We are currently safe, her dog seemed to say.

  Daisy wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck. “Thank you.”

  Except the storm grew darker. And louder, like a freight train approaching.

  “Shit!” Daisy said.

  Lightning exploded directly over the car, a brilliantly bright flash followed immediately by an ear-splitting crash of thunder. Daisy ducked. Dawn barked. And outside, parallel to the road, another bolt slammed into the world.

  One that illuminated the source of the roaring.

  She’d watched her share of videos and looked at the pictures in her textbooks, but she’d never seen a real tornado descend from the clouds. Never witnessed, even in the brief flash of a lightning bolt, the energy and the power and the violence of the sky as it cinched itself into a scouring funnel.

  It had to be several miles away, but she heard it. Felt the air change. “Oh my God,” she breathed.

  Was she supposed to get out of the car? Lay in the ditch or something? What was she supposed to do with Dawn? The dog wasn’t going to lie down in the mud with her front paws over her head while pelted with inch-wide ice meteorites.

  What if it changed course and came this way? Was Daisy about to d
ie out here on a road five miles from finally getting answers about her long-missing probably-royal Russian father?

  The hail suddenly stopped. The pounding on the roof ceased. But the wind picked up.

  A new crack thundered through the sedan. A loud, terrible, snapping sound, and Daisy instinctively pressed herself into the seat.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw the tree tip toward the car. The black shadow of the huge trunk grew larger and larger as it fell. Death came for her and her dog.

  The car moved again, skidding back toward the road as the massive log slammed down on the sedan’s trunk. Dawn’s big, furry body bolted forward between the seats just as the back window burst.

  Safety glass peppered the back of Daisy’s seat, missing her. But Dawn yipped as she dropped into the passenger seat.

  Blood ran down her haunch.

  “Dawn!” Daisy immediately pressed on the wound but her dog snapped. She pulled back her hand.

  Dawn must have glass in the wound. Daisy couldn’t see. The wind and rain whistled through the hole in their car and she couldn’t see to help her dog. And what could she do? Daisy didn’t have access to her Shifter abilities. Her mom hadn’t activated her before running off.

  And now her dog might die because of it.

  What could she do?

  A new roar approached. Headlights illuminated the car’s cabin. Daisy shielded her eyes, sniffing and praying that she’d get a sense of who—or what—approached. They didn’t need Burners. Fates would probably kill her and steal the ring hanging on the cord around her neck. And only God knew what Shifters might do.

  So she sniffed and tried to concentrate beyond Dawn’s blood and fear. Beyond her own. Beyond the spongy wood reek of the branches poking in through what used to be the back window of her car. Beyond the roar of the real, terrible tornado barreling through the Missouri countryside only a few miles away. Beyond the fact that she was so close to her goal, and yet so far.