Bonds Broken & Silent

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  She wasn’t going to put Gavin in the path of people like the woman in front of her. He didn’t have the knowledge or the experience to deal with this. Nor did he have the means to protect himself, no matter what magic tech he wore in his ears.

  She’d have a talk with her dad about Gavin’s hearing aids, when she could. Technology-driven Fates couldn’t be good, even if one or two seemed to have a soft spot for Mr. Bower.

  Without his help, though, Daisy didn’t dare answer any of the many calls from her father. The right words from a voice enthraller and she’d be on the ground rocking back and forth with her thumb in her mouth. Only a few people had the capacity to completely resist, and she was not one of them.

  The morpher walking in front of Daisy acted lucid, friendly, and exactly like her mother. Except for her scent. Gavin couldn’t articulate what was wrong with her voice, nor could Daisy describe what was wrong with her scent. But over the six years she’d been an active bloodhound enthraller, she’d learned to trust her nose’s instincts.

  So she walked along the boardwalk, through the scruffy western South Dakota trees and under the granite faces of dead American presidents, and wondered if the risk she took would get her killed.

  Somewhere nearby, a squirrel scratched at the dirt. The boardwalk creaked and groaned, and the fumes of a recent chemical treatment wafted up from under her feet. The entire place smelled both too human, with residual stink of hot dogs and sweaty tourists, and too wild, with the skittering animals and the unmistakable tang of powdered granite in the air.

  Daisy sniffed again. The dust carried traces of acrid smoke and chemical fires. “Mom!”

  The morpher stopped walking. Her shoulders did the slight hitching dance of an annoyed person composing themselves before dealing with a distraction, and she turned to face Daisy.

  Her real mom would do the I won’t sigh tightening, but never with Daisy. All during her childhood, she saw her mom do it to store clerks, school administrators, even clients, but never with her daughter.

  “What, honey?” Fake Cecilia blinked and tipped her head to the side, but pointed up the boardwalk. “I told you in the car that we need to hurry.” She waved her hand at the landscape.

  They’d taken turns driving and sleeping on the drive. Fake Cecilia made up a wide-range of excuses, but mostly Daisy thought she’d wanted to keep their verbal interactions to a minimum.

  At a rest stop on the South Dakota border, standing by the morpher’s car in the middle of the night, she’d almost texted her father’s cousin, Derek. Almost texted Ivan as well. But she’d spent a week being manipulated by a voice enthraller camped at The Land of Milk and Honey and didn’t want to chance a call.

  Daisy gripped the rail of the boardwalk. She’d driven nine hours in the same car with the morpher without incident. But the smell of burndust in the air, and the slight uptick in the sweet scent of anticipation coming off the morpher, made her vision clarify and her muscles tense.

  Danger flitted into her nose like a swarm of gnats. “I smell Burners.” At least the dust of exploded Burners. Biting, giggling, semi-living Burners would not help this situation.

  The morpher shrugged. “It comes with Seraphim territory.” She turned away as if to say stop asking stupid questions, and walked off along the squeaky boards.

  Daisy’s father once told her that the Seraphim ingested burndust as a rite of passage. He’d crinkled up his face in disgust before shaking his head and taking a sip of his vodka. The taking in of the dust supposedly hid them from the average Fate, but her dad said it was more about misplaced machismo than utility. The entire group, along with their leaders, were a bunch of crazy fuckers.

  Her dad didn’t seem to completely dismiss them, though. Too much power, too much wealth, too good at training their operatives. And too much of an internal drive to “unify the Shifters against the world” and in particular, the world’s Fate overlords.

  Daisy followed behind the morpher. “Where, exactly, did you say it’s hidden, in case we get separated?” Maybe the morpher had more intel than she’d already shared. Seemed worth asking.

  The morpher stopped again.

  “Ranger shack around the curve of the Monument.” Fake Cecilia pointed off to the side, below Lincoln’s ear.

  “You’re going to go to Dad with me, right? When this is done? He’ll protect you.” As long as he’s still alive, Daisy thought.

  Fake Cecilia straightened her back and sniffed. “Your father won’t help me.”

  Daisy shook her head. “He’ll listen.”

  The morpher’s face stayed flat even though she should have shown at least some emotion. “You seem to believe you hold a great deal of sway over Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov.”

  “He took me in when you ran off, Mom.” Part of Daisy wanted her mouth to shut up. Every single word she spoke about herself to this morpher could, potentially, be used as a future weapon. “He’s a good man.”

  Fake Cecilia nodded once before turning away.

  “Mom!” Going farther into the wild areas with this morpher felt more and more dangerous. “You go and get it. I’ll wait here and distract anyone who comes by.”

  The morpher’s shoulders shuddered. Her body shook as if resetting itself, but it didn’t change shape. Just posture. “Walk. Now.”

  Her scent did the same shake and shudder, same resetting, even as it continued to mimic her mom. The morpher smelled as if she’d just re-tuned into her mother’s channel.

  “Tell me if my mother is alive,” Daisy whispered.

  The morpher smoothed her hand over the t-shirt covering her belly. “I know about your mother’s ex-boss Kobayashi and her klepto habits.” Her face took on a wistful, almost envious look. “It’s good to have a reason to steal, you know?”

  The skin of her face rippled.

  So she was a fast morpher. The kind who changed quickly but often had difficulty holding their new shape. The effort she’d put in to stay Cecilia during the drive must, at this point, be causing her significant pain.

  “There’ve been rumors about people digging pieces of the Fate Progenitor’s talisman out of Vesuvius’s slopes since the volcano erupted all over the Romans.” She lifted and widened out her fingers as if to sign explosion. “Boom!”

  “I don’t care about the fragment. I’d rather it be in the hands of a stronger Shifter than me, you know?” Maybe sweet talking the morpher might help.

  The woman rolled her eyes. “Tell your mother that.”

  “She’s okay?” Slowly, Daisy slid her foot backward. She didn’t know how fast this morpher was, but a little bit of distance might be the difference between a beating and escape.

  The morpher sighed and rolled her eyes. “When did you figure it out?”

  “Figure what out?” Daisy took another step backward.

  “I didn’t get her scent quite right, did I? You bloodhounds are fucking annoying.” The morpher rolled her eyes again. “And here I thought God smiled upon my endeavors when you left those damned mutts in Minnesota and didn’t ask me to demonstrate an ability I don’t have.”

  “Take the shard,” Daisy said. “I’ll trade it for my mom and your assurance that the Seraphim will leave my father and his holdings alone.” Let the morpher and her crew deal with the Fates looking for the object. Maybe the world would get lucky and all the psychos would kill each other.

  “That’s the most reasonable response I’ve heard from anyone since all this started.” The morpher tipped her head. “Everyone’s been clutching what they think they gotta clutch. All I want is enough money to get away from my boss, you know?”

  The pent-up crazy leaked out of the morpher with an audible shudder.

  “I told the boss-bitch Vivienne I could fool you.” The morpher twitched. “She didn’t believe me when I told her I had a lead on a piece of the First Fate’s sword.” She waved both hands as if swatting away a bee. “She said that’s an old wives’ tale. That the shards ain’t real and that we should focus on the
plan.”

  “Vivienne?”

  “The real boss’s daughter.” The morpher grinned. “She’s to the Bishop what you are to the Russian.”

  The Bishop must be the person in charge of the Seraphim.

  The morpher inhaled as if she suddenly believed all was right with the world. “I’ve kept this between your mother and myself. I didn’t involve an enthraller to force out of her the shard’s location. Didn’t do anything but ask because of Fates and leaks and messes, you know? Can’t take the chance.” She pointed up the trail. “I figured slow and steady would win this battle. Until… Vivienne interfered.”

  She’d only talked about chaos during the trip, not defeat. Maybe Daisy’s father and The Land were okay. Maybe she should call him back.

  But Branson was farther from Mount Rushmore than Minneapolis.

  The morpher did the reset shudder again. “I figured I’d pull your eyeballs from your skull in front of your mother. Surefire way to get someone to talk.”

  Daisy’s involuntary step back, her reflexive throwing up of her arms, made the morpher smile. A death’s head grin floated across her lips. Her mouth opened a little too wide and her teeth gleamed a little too white. “Come explain to your mother how to be reasonable.”

  “Then you’ll let us go?” If this morpher released her mother, then all the terror, all the risk, was worth it.

  Fake Cecilia laughed, but she didn’t answer.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gavin’s family had never made the pilgrimage west to the foot of Mount Rushmore. He’d never been to the Corn Palace, either. Or visited the statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox in Bemidji. As a kid from Minnesota, it seemed like it should have been a rite of passage. In his twenty years on Earth, he’d left his Upper Midwestern heritage frowning like a disapproving, sweet old aunt.

  Mr. Pavlovich and Ms. Ivan-the-Terrible filled him in on the workings of the Seraphim during the half-hour limo ride to the St. Paul charter airport.

  Mr. Pavlovich’s plane turned out to be a sleek white jet. No markings, no “The Land of Milk and Honey” along its side, no Cyrillic identifiers. Just a fast-looking, expensive, small aircraft idling on the tarmac as their limo pulled up.

  A flight attendant met them at the plane’s hatch. The dogs she herded into a kennel at the front of the plane. Radar and Ragnar seemed to know the drill and shepherded the corgi into the kennel with them. The little dog whimpered, but cuddled up with Ragnar when Radar pushed her with his snout.

  The attendant seated Gavin behind Ivan and across the aisle from Mr. Pavlovich, who immediately pulled out his phone. He’d been attempting to call Daisy every ten minutes since they left the house. Gavin had tried twice as well.

  She wasn’t answering. So they boarded a corporate jet bound for Rapid City, South Dakota—and, they believed, the destination of Daisy and her “mother.”

  The plane purred like a fat, happy tiger, obviously well-maintained and cared-for. Being on a rickety aircraft while wearing his super-aids would probably have caused a panic attack.

  He almost took them out anyway. After takeoff, he swore they were picking up the sounds of the clouds screeching by along the hull as the craft arced up out of St. Paul and down into Rapid City. A new limo with a new driver met them at the new airport.

  The dogs marched out the hatch alongside Mr. Pavlovich toward the new car, three canine companions who lay down at his feet when he buckled himself in.

  Ivan took the seat next to Gavin. “You are to stay near us at all times.”

  Gavin nodded.

  “You report every odd noise. Every indication of enthralling. Every single scurrying mouse. Got it?” Her spiky hair glistened in the evening sun when she crossed her arms.

  “I understand.”

  Across from Gavin, Mr. Pavlovich did not look calmed by his assurances. If anything, he looked more uneasy.

  The moment the limo pulled into the wide tourist parking lot down the mountain and well below the Monument, Ivan sauntered up the hill toward one of the smaller gift shop buildings, looking, Gavin presumed, for guards and spies.

  The dogs spilled out when Mr. Pavlovich opened his door. They sniffed along the grass, looking for places to do their duty, but stayed together. The two shepherds had been adamant—or at least as adamant as well-trained dogs could be—about not leaving their new little corgi friend on the plane. So the lass padded alongside Ragnar, her big ears erect and her short tail wagging as if she knew darned well that she’d enthralled the boys into protecting her.

  Brat, Gavin thought. But Radar and Ragnar seemed to have the situation under control. Whenever the corgi disobeyed Mr. Pavlovich, the boys corrected her. She fell in between them, a sweet little beige ball of fur, and did her part to guard and watch.

  To Gavin, it looked as if the shepherds were training her to protect not only their humans, but also herself. And that they had high expectations of her behavior. If she was to be part of their pack, she’d damned well better act worthy.

  So maybe brat wasn’t the best description of the little dog. When she bounced over and sat on his foot, he grinned and scratched her head. “You seem to be finding your place in the world, girl.”

  Maybe he could find his place, too.

  The corgi barked and nuzzled his hand.

  Mr. Pavlovich squared himself to Gavin. “Radar and Ragnar are the smartest dogs I have ever worked with in my lifetime.” He scratched Ragnar’s neck. “Daisy boosted their intelligence when they were puppies. Right boys?”

  Both shepherds barked.

  “My daughter is a brilliant woman, Mr. Bower. Her instincts are quite good, but like you, she is young. Youth does not have the experience necessary to understand the risks of a situation.” Mr. Pavlovich’s perpetual scowl hardened a shade more than usual. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Dmitri Pavlovich watched Gavin’s face with the intensity he would have expected if the man thought him to be a morpher. Mr. Pavlovich looked as if he expected Gavin’s skin to literally crawl.

  “No,” he said. He wouldn’t lie. He was about to do something extremely stupid. “But I owe Daisy. I want to help.”

  “Good.” Mr. Pavlovich looked up, toward the mountain and the wide main tourist building up the hill, and waved to the dogs to precede them. “Because my daughter is here, Mr. Bower. Now is your opportunity to prove yourself.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The morpher dragged Daisy off the boardwalk and onto a service trail smelling just as sterile and chemically-treated as the creaking wood they’d just left. They ascended the switchbacking path around the side of four looming presidents, heading—Daisy hoped—toward her mother.

  Daisy watched the morpher carefully, looking for changes in both her appearance and her scent, hoping to pin down whatever made the woman not-Mom.

  Her father once told her to run from any morpher who mimicked quickly and with great accuracy. He said only the insane switched bodies without thought or preparation.

  Daisy always wondered if insanity allowed the quick mimicking or if the quick mimicking caused the insanity.

  Either way, the morpher seemed… unstable, like the gravel under their feet. They rounded a boulder and a large, fresh-smelling tree and Daisy slid before catching hold of a branch.

  A ground squirrel chittered and scurried under the rock when the morpher whipped a pebble at it. “I like you, Daisy,” the morpher said. “How about you join me? We could become a new breed of Seraphim. One more in tune with the modern world.”

  Daisy didn’t answer. At least the morpher had stopped threatening to pull out her eyeballs.

  She inhaled, sniffing for more animals and, she hoped, for signs of her mother. And there, on the breeze coming down the mountain, Daisy smelled hints of the same dry-yet-clean scent that the morpher had been mimicking since she showed up at Daisy’s house.

  They skidded around a tree-covered outcropping. The sun warmed the back of Daisy’s neck and forced up beads of
sweat. She felt hot and sticky from the climbing and was sure another bloodhound enthraller would be able to smell her a mile off.

  “How far?” Daisy asked.

  The morpher tossed her head toward the incline. “There.”

  A small cabin waited, tucked into a stand of scruffy trees. Daisy ran up the slope and past the morpher, her feet sliding on the gravel, but her mom was in there. Nine years, and her mother finally came out of hiding.

  Nine fucking years. No calls. No messages. No posted letters or even a single rumor garnered by Ivan’s network of informants. Nothing.

  Because her mom had been hiding from the three evil Fates who wanted the fragment.

  And who had hurt Daisy.

  She stopped inches from the cabin’s door. Why did she care anymore? Why, really, did she come out here? Why did she put herself in danger for a woman who abandoned her?

  Once, long ago, just before she learned she was a Shifter, she’d helped a young mother and her two kids. A family she didn’t know. Because no one should suffer.

  Not her mother. Not her father, either, who might be in just as much danger as Cecilia Reynolds.

  Daisy reached for the doorknob.

  The door swung open. Cecilia Reynolds looked almost exactly the same as she did the day she ran off with the fragment. Same slight frame. Same mass of curly snarls on her head. Same dark, unyielding eyes. Same scowl.

  The same slightly wild scent. Cecilia Reynolds still carried hints of the Outback, and Australia’s dry and deadly nature.

  She also showed the same loud, grating fear. “Oh my God!” she yelled. “I told you taking it is too dangerous! Now you’ve copied my daughter? You think I’d fall for that? I won’t tell you shit!”

  “Mom!” She thought Daisy was the morpher? “It’s me! It’s—”