A dot of sauce from the tasteless ribs marred the pristine chiding of the report.
Vivicus scowled and patted at it with his napkin.
Light sliced through the dining area. Three people entered: Two females and a male, the women in cheap, youth-oriented attire and the male in a well-tailored business suit. He tugged on his tie as his gaze roamed the restaurant’s patrons.
Vivicus came here to eat and to read his report, not to be harassed. Why did Fates think bothering him during his midday break would lead to their profit? He might very well need to cut short his meal to allow himself time to dump their bodies in the desert.
The male walked toward Vivicus, his gait cocky like a lot of the bastards, and pulled out the chair on the other side of the table.
The two females, both with raven black hair, dropped onto the benches next to the door. The one with a scar on her face popped her gum. The other fiddled with her phone. They looked like two teenagers except for the concealed weapons. Vivicus grunted.
The male dropped into the chair. His short, military-cut red hair glowed in the restaurant’s low light.
The bastard crinkled his nose and made a face at Vivicus’s food. “Recognize me, Viv?” Still staring at the meal, the Fate leaned against the back of the chair.
Mentally, Vivicus ran down his very long list of Fates he wanted to drown in a bucket of piss. Or cut from throat to balls. Or slowly feed to Burners. Something about this idiot seemed familiar.
It’d been centuries since he’d caught sight of this particular Fate and his very particular triad mates. “You’re the fucker who murdered my brother, Severo.”
This Fate was the evil little shit the future-seer of the Draki Prime—Daniel had been his name—had wounded after the murder. No Shifter understood what “wounded” meant in this case, because the little fucker still walked around alive. Vivicus would have put his head on a spike.
Which he had tried to do at the time. As had his brother, Andreas. The Dracae, not so much. Then these little shits up and vanished. The entire world thought they’d drowned in the English Channel. Yet here they were, harassing him in a pisshole in Abilene, Texas.
“I am bound by my fate, Lord Vivicus.” The Fate rubbed the tip of his nose.
This, it seemed, was a day of surprises. And, most likely, a day of opportunity. “Are you here to commit Shifter-assisted suicide?” Vivicus mimicked the brat’s movement and rubbed the tip of his own nose. “I feel blessed that you chose me, you little fuck.”
Yes, there might just be some body-dumping this afternoon.
The Fate frowned. “Your building will not be Fate-proof. Not without our help.”
Again, Vivicus mimicked the Fate. He felt his skin shifting, his muscles flexing, and his face reconfiguring to take on hints of this piece of shit. It helped him to better understand his target. “I take it you believe yourself back in fighting shape?” Why else would they crawl out of their Fate cesspool after five hundred years of hiding?
The Fate sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We offer a deal. We will help you rebuild your special Seraphim compound, and you help us vanish from Shifter scrutiny.”
Why would they…
Vivicus remembered the alerts that had spread through all the Shifter communities just under a year ago. How a predatory triad had attacked the daughter of that Russian asshole Dmitri Pavlovich. He’d offered a very large bounty to anyone, other Fates included, for the heads of these three.
Vivicus chuckled. “I take it you’re calling yourself Aiden these days?”
The Fate’s eyes narrowed.
Gently and with great care, Vivicus picked up his plate and set it to the side. The report, he pushed farther away. Now between the Fate and himself stood only the open tabletop, its sticky film, and a short vase with a dying rose that smelled more like plastic than a flower.
“You poor, poor child.” Vivicus steepled his fingers. “You must be terrified all the way to your wee little bones to come to me.”
The Fate twitched. His hand rose, his fingers contracting into a fist, and he stiffened. He wanted to pound the table. The desire vibrated off his person and rode out on his breath.
But he gently unballed his hand and set it on the table. “We offer help with rebuilding. We also offer another deal. One that will ultimately lead to the downfall of the Fates who destroyed your precious property in the first place. But it will take almost another decade to manifest.” He shrugged. “If you are interested.”
Vivicus wasn’t. But he felt it only polite to allow an enemy to air his grievances before he cut the man into strips and fillets.
“Something bad is coming. Something terrible.” The Fate looked side to side as if the other patrons cared to listen. “The Dracae are the key. We offer you an opportunity to be the instrument by which they are stopped.”
Of course something bad was coming. The Fates, as a breed, had been on and on about “bad shit” for centuries. Vivicus ignored it. Fates spent a lot of time lying. Why should he pay attention? He had his own people to worry about.
But this was the first time a Fate mentioned dragon involvement. The dragons, whom one of his wives so long ago could hear. He’d tried to morph himself a copy of her abilities, but it didn’t work.
He’d cut her into little bits as punishment.
A proclamation of dragon involvement shouldn’t surprise him coming from this Fate, considering the man’s talisman. With this Fate, everything involved the dragons. Vivicus leaned forward. “Go on, future-seer of the Draki Second.”
The Fate smirked, his stupid Fate face looking very pleased with itself. “We stopped being the Second long ago.”
Yes, they did. The moment they murdered the First Healer.
“We are Les Enfants du Monde Brûlant now,” the Fate said. “We will bring about the cleansing fire God demands, my friend.” He grinned. “The fires your Seraphim use as their trials. And you offer the opportunity we need to do it.”
SILENT
PART THREE
Chapter One
The St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota, three months ago, the night Burners attacked….
Gavin Bower understood silence.
For nine years he’d lived immersed in it. Nine years of only foggy sounds stripped of clarity, and of deep, subsonic distant roaring alternating with nothing at all. None of the sweetness of a woman’s laughter. No joyfully yipped greetings from friendly dogs. No purrs or cheers or background traffic noise.
The world moved on by, outside his intimate cocoon.
He knew the physicality of sound, how it vibrated through his skin and made his eyeballs jitter. He felt its pushes and pulls more often than understood its fluxes and modulations, and Gavin knew he missed out when he couldn’t parse the meaning of the voices around him.
So when the high-tech aids—the new wonders of precision technology his audiologist had asked him to trial—popped out of his ears, his world once again fell into silence.
He no longer heard his friend Rysa Torres’s terror. No longer processed the high pitch of her scream, even as he felt its vibration roll through his sinuses. Even as he saw it crawl over her face as if a swarm of evil bugs had burrowed into her flesh.
Rysa Torres, whom he suspected might have suffered a seizure moments before. They’d been working on homework in the café under the Continuing Education building, drinking chai and arguing, until she turned ghostly white.
She might have had an aneurysm. Or it might have been a reaction to her attention meds. All he knew was that she needed help, but she ran out the café’s door into the evening air, down the hill, toward the student parking lots. Now, at the foot of the hill, her body rigid, Rysa screamed.
And slammed her palm into his jaw.
His head jerked. The momentum of her slap flashed through his neck and shoulders, a fast push against gravity and his muscles’ rigid attempt to keep his senses focused.
She’d raked her fingernails over hi
s ear and yanked out his right hearing aid. The little titanium earpiece flicked into the air, reflections glinting on its surface from the halogen streetlights dotting the campus, and bounced away into the bushes.
The left aid dropped straight down, loosened by his sudden head snap. It bounced on his shoulder and rolled down his back, but he didn’t dare turn around to catch it. Rysa might hit him again. Or run away, down the walk, into the parking lot at the bottom of the hill on the edge of their college campus.
She screamed something new, her terror still obvious in her pale skin and wild eyes. The force of her voice hit his face and rolled through his sinuses like all loud noises did. Her lips moved, but made no sense. He didn’t think she understood her own words any better than he did.
Not that the hearing aids did a perfect job. They didn’t. But they added tonality to the vibrations transferred by skin and air, and Gavin understood what others said, even when he couldn’t read lips.
But he’d never grow used to the silence.
Rysa took off again, running much faster than he’d ever seen her run. He glanced around, hoping to see at least one hearing aid. But they’d both vanished into the evening’s gloom, the way Rysa was about to vanish into the parking lot.
The early summer humidity swamped his tongue as his muscles pulled air into his lungs. He smelled the hint of car exhaust wafting up from the parking lot and saw the dim yellow light filtering through the trees between him and the cars. And if he didn’t go now, if he took a moment to find his earpieces, she’d be out of sight. She’d be alone and in trouble in the shadows, somewhere between the old cars and parent-gifted minivans.
So Gavin pumped his arms and his feet hit the dirt as he dodged a tree on the little hill. He twisted and slid, knowing that the branches creaked under his hand. A rock bounced away. Each time it hit the dirt, he knew it made a little thump even though he could not hear the sound.
He’d been Rysa’s friend since their freshman year, when he’d tutored her in American Sign Language. At the time, she’d been close to proficient, quite good actually, and had wanted to apply for a translator position with Disability Services. After lots of encouragement, she had.
They’d rejected her because of her attention deficit issues. She couldn’t pay enough attention to do the job well.
Rysa, his friend, had held in her anger and sadness, but he’d seen it anyway. Up until that moment, he hadn’t understood what her disability was about. Not really. After, he’d vowed to always be a good friend, and to help.
She needed his help now.
He hopped the fence into the student parking lot, running for Rysa where she’d stopped between a couple of sedans in a semi-open part of the lot, dead center in a pool of yellow light thrown by one of the lot’s glaring lamps.
She wasn’t alone. For a split second, relief spread through Gavin’s body and his muscles relaxed.
Then he saw the man’s eyes and his teeth. An involuntary shudder snapped through Gavin’s body and he slid on the lot’s grit, his boots sliding and his legs locking up. He stopped on the edge of the lot, about fifteen feet from Rysa, in the shadows between two cars.
The weirdness of the man’s face had to be a trick of the light. No one’s eyes glinted red. And no one’s teeth gleamed. No one smelled like a chemical spill and still danced around like a king’s jester. No one real.
Unless the person was crazy. Danger wafted off the man with his stench. Gavin’s throat tightened. He coughed, feeling the sting, feeling the constriction, and fought his body’s need to run back up the hill. A little voice in the back of his mind screamed panic and his gut responded but he would not lose control.
Little flashes of fire popped between the crazy man’s fingers as if he’d set off miniature sparklers. He had a weapon. It had to be a weapon.
He reached for Rysa.
“Let her go!” Gavin’s yell vibrated from his throat into his jaw and the sinuses below his eyes. He felt himself speak, but he didn’t hear his own words. He hoped it would be enough. He was too far away to pull Rysa to safety.
When Gavin helped her with her classwork or they ate lunch in the Student Union, she bounced and talked too fast and often changed subjects with no warning and he knew he rolled his eyes or sighed or crossed his arms. He didn’t always have the best bedside manner. But she always squeezed his fingers and said “thank you.” She always asked him about his day. And if he didn’t go right now, Gavin knew he’d never see her again.
But the air crawled, charged somehow, as if it had become an acid battery. Gavin gagged and pitched forward, unable to yell again.
The man-shaped craziness with the red eyes and the glowing teeth yanked Rysa backward, across the hard edge of the pool of light thrown by one of the lot’s overhead halogens, his lips twittering. Gavin read “freak” and “stay normal.”
Run, Rysa signed in American Sign Language. Go!
“You better listen, little normal. Better run before my mates find you.” Each syllable forming on the man’s lips, each little movement of his mouth and cheeks, screamed his intent with full clarity.
The burning in Gavin’s throat pushed up into his vision and down into his gut. Tears and nausea welled up. Vomit sat in the back of his mouth, blurring his sense of his body as much as the water in his eyes blurred his vision, and he backed sideways, into a parked car, and slid to the ground.
He lifted his hand to sign Rysa’s name, to tell her to hold on. He’d get help. But he knew it didn’t make any sense.
He blinked back the water clinging to his eyelashes, but it was too late. In front of him, between the cars, crazy dragged away the woman he thought of as his best friend.
Chapter Two
The burning in Gavin’s throat, the sting in his nose, kept out the air that should have filled his lungs, but he needed to get up. Rysa was about to die. He was about to die. What had he inhaled? What did the crazy man dragging away Rysa exhale?
Movement flickered in his peripheral vision. Something large and silver with huge paws ran behind the vehicles and moved deeper into the lot, but in the direction opposite where the crazy man dragged Rysa.
New threat flashed through Gavin’s mind. The silver monstrosity running between an old pick-up truck and a hatchback moved fast, its wolf-shaped head low and its long, furry neck parallel to the ground. The line of its jaw promised large, vicious teeth. The width of its shoulders, the power to shred Gavin all the way to his bones.
Labels flickered through his head as his brain tried to process through the burning haze eating away at the inside of his throat. Words like dog and large. Other descriptors such as angry and stalking. Somewhere in his head, parts of his brain decided that the canine form appearing and disappearing between the cars was not friendly.
Gavin’s already blistering adrenaline responded and he flung himself to the side, fast and without thinking.
He rolled away from the darting silver fur, toward the front of the car, his breathing heavy and chaotic. He’d be out in the open, in the sight lines of the crazy man with the chemical weapon who was dragging Rysa away, but his body didn’t consider that. It only wanted away from the fur.
Gavin managed to slide on the asphalt, his arms and legs somehow moving even though the fire crawled deep into his windpipe. Because dog. Huge dog. Snarling dog.
He slid right into another something. One just as large and just as silver-colored as the other canine rounding the back of the car. Another something with four massive paws and soft, thick fur.
A cold nose sniffed his temple. Pointy ears twisted side to side.
Next to Gavin’s face, dog-jowls formed a questioning woof.
Two giant German shepherds loomed over his flailing body, one sniffing his face and neck. The other—the silver blur that had darted between the cars moments before—circled, his head pointed away and his hackles raised. The farther dog’s lips pulled back. His head dropped low again. And the vibration of a growl moved through the air to Gavin’s sk
in.
He froze. He shouldn’t freeze. He should keep his wits and concentrate on why he wheezed, on getting air into his lungs, but one huge attack dog sniffed his head while another one growled only feet away.
And out in the lot, the crazy man and Gavin’s friend vanished around the gate, moving in the direction that would take them into the wide-open Fairgrounds parking lots.
She’s gone. The crazy man with the glowing eyes kidnapped Rysa and Gavin couldn’t stop him. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t do anything. Dying took on weight as if the two animals sat on Gavin’s chest. But the dog sniffing his head licked his cheek. The animal’s tongue pressed into his flesh like fine sandpaper, warm and not nearly as sloppy as it should be. The other dog pranced into the lot, snarling not at Gavin, but toward where the crazy person had dragged Rysa.
The one that licked suddenly jerked his head up, his ears swiveling toward the back of the lot. A little contraction moved through the dog’s neck.
He must have heard something and was barking a response.
Gavin pressed his back against the car’s tire. The burning sat in his mouth like someone had put a Scotch bonnet pepper on a tongue depressor and wiped around his tonsils. It constricted and hurt like hell, but air still moved into his lungs. He could move. Gavin pushed himself up. He couldn’t run but he might get to Rysa before the crazy man dragged her away.
The dog to his left bobbed his head in what looked like a yip, and his tail wagged.
Which meant a happy dog. And nearby help.
Gavin curled his fingers around the car’s door handle and purposefully, consciously, willed his arm to pull him up.
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