They’d needed him too, but he’d failed.
Not this time. Dragon wasn’t going to cut down Rysa’s burned corpse. Ladon wasn’t going to hold her while she bled to death.
Rysa wasn’t going to slip away.
Ladon’s chest seized up and for an instant, the memories drowned everything else.
Dragon touched his shoulder. Rysa calls to me.
Reality snapped back and Ladon forced the memories down. Even after the long centuries, they still made splinters of his bones. But now, right now, he wasn’t going to allow the same horrid future to destroy Rysa’s life.
The part of her abilities she called “her nasty” called out. It pleaded for help, but neither he nor Dragon understood what it needed.
Ladon slammed his fist against the driver’s door. The plastic cover next to the handle cracked. The damned Burner chaos distorted her link and they couldn’t will to her what she required.
A quarter mile ahead of the overpass, the road slowly dipped under the concrete span before curving away on the other side. Retaining walls terraced the sides of the road. A fence blocked access, but if he jumped the curb, the terraces led to the tracks.
Metus had a solid lead and was a good ten dragon lengths closer to the overpass than the van. Ladon steered hard toward the fence, but Metus accelerated again, and the SUV turned toward the road.
The vehicle burst from the gravel next to the line, over the first low retaining wall, and onto the road. Sparks flew as it bottomed out.
Metus’s future-seer would lay bare any plan Ladon made. He’d counter. Getting the van through the fence and onto the terraces wasn’t going to happen.
So Ladon accelerated past the access point, praying speed would be enough to get them around Metus and close enough to scale the concrete in time.
The train’s engine crossed the overpass. Twenty lengths back, the passenger car lumbered forward.
In front of the van, Metus slammed the SUV into reverse. The transmission screamed as he backed the vehicle toward the overpass.
He was attempting to block the road to keep them too far away for Dragon to jump.
Ladon pulled the parking brake.
The van’s wheels froze. She spun, and the overpass and the concrete block of the retaining walls flew by. Ladon clenched the wheel. Dragon gripped the van’s wall and used his weight to counter to the spin.
The van stopped a dragon length from the overpass with its back end toward the SUV and the span.
Dragon burst out the back and rammed all four limbs into the roof of the SUV just as Metus, waving his big semiautomatic, dove out the driver’s door.
A glass shard had opened a gash across Metus’s forehead. He wiped at it with his pistol hand, and coughed out a choked grunt. “Your big lizard’s dead!” His good arm aimed the gun at Dragon.
The beast ignored his threats and vanished as he leaped for the overpass, but he was a big target. Metus could still do damage.
Ladon yanked the dagger he carried under the driver’s seat and whipped it at Metus’s knee. It hit true. The Fate screamed. Metus’s bullet flew wide and bounced off the van’s exterior.
Ladon ducked.
Metus’s expression warped. Smugness overrode his obvious pain and his future-seer clanged between the vehicles.
His seer pinpointed Dragon’s most probable location. He swung the gun back toward the overpass.
Ladon burst forward. He’d smash his heel into Metus’s face—but he wouldn’t be fast enough. Metus would squeeze the trigger before Ladon reached him.
He’d hit Dragon.
A massive six-taloned hand appeared over Metus’s head. He yelped and his body stiffened in shock.
The hand yanked Metus’s shoulder from its socket. The gun dropped to the ground.
Metus screeched like a rodent caught in a wolf’s jaws.
Ladon’s boots skidded on the asphalt, but his nose and chest smacked into an invisible neck anyway.
A new roar cascaded off the retaining walls as light danced from Sister-Dragon’s snout, down her back, and to her tail. Her head swung around and she snorted. Metus is not a good future-seer, she pushed.
The dragons had called to each other. They had hidden their intent so deeply and played an improbability so remote Metus had no idea the other dragon approached.
And neither had Ladon.
Sister-Dragon dropped her head. Ache seethed from the beast. Her connection to Sister was stretched tighter than Ladon’s to Dragon.
They’d parked on the other side of the overpass, behind a fence and up the hill. Sister dropped off the retaining wall on the other side of the span.
Ladon laid his hand on the other dragon’s neck. They hadn’t abandoned him. “Thank you.”
Go, Brother-Human. We will deal with Metus.
Dragon clung to the overpass walkway. The underside of the span was more than a full dragon length above the road bed.
Ladon ran for the SUV. He vaulted onto the vehicle’s hood, and then onto roof. He pushed off, using all his strength to propel himself toward the span overhead at the same time as he lifted a midnight sword from his back.
Ladon tightened his core and willed all his strength into the blade.
It sliced deep into the concrete as if it sliced into butter. Ladon hung over the road from the hilt of a unbelievably sharp sword.
It slid downward. A long gash opened in the overpass supports.
Dragon! Ladon pushed.
He braced his feet against the concrete and extended an arm. The tracks creaked and the train thundered, but the beast threw him true.
Ladon’s boots found purchase on the roof of Rysa’s passenger car.
He lifted the second sword from his back as he dropped. Dragon jumped to the roof and the car quaked. He folded his talons around a side and a metallic reverberation shrieked from the roof until the beast stabilized.
Was the second sword as sharp? Ladon punched the blade into the metal. The blade cut through sheathing and insulation. Wires sparked, heat rose, electricity arced across the gash. Ladon twisted the blade, and drew it at an angle to the first cut.
Rage boiled from Dragon and fueled Ladon’s own.
From below, Rysa tapped in, but she did not siphon. Instead, she added strength and calmed fury. Ladon’s joints quieted and his muscles strengthened. His perception steadied—his mind countered the vibrations of the train instead of using them to fuel his anger.
She’d freed herself. She’d met the War Babies seer-to-seer and beaten them back. But if Adrestia regained control, Rysa might lose hers forever.
Dragon’s talons scooped under the cut in the roof and he folded back the metal. Ladon dropped through the hole but the beast, unable to fit through the ragged gash, backed away.
Adrestia held her temple against Rysa’s and her gun pointed at Ladon. Timor backed toward the car’s door.
“You hurt them and I’ll feed you to the Burners, you—” Rysa’s eyes glazed. She stopped in midsentence.
Adrestia sneered. “Je ne serai pas battue, Dracos.”
She wouldn’t be bested? Ladon mimicked her sneer. She would be dead soon. “Tu seras morte bientôt, Adrestia,” he said.
The present-seer yanked Rysa to the side. “Le dragon est entré par la porte—”
Dragon erupted through the door. The beast reared over the seats and the two Enfants de Guerre rolled under the beast.
Adrestia pushed Rysa toward her brother and swung her gun toward Dragon.
She wasn’t fast enough. The beast smashed down his foot and present-seer’s head cracked against a seat.
Timor yanked Rysa’s taped wrists over her head. He pressed a long knife to her throat.
He’d slice her. Of the three War Babies, Timor was the one most likely to cut their losses. He had always been the one who didn’t give a damn about the future.
Ladon flung himself under Dragon’s belly. Timor kicked but Ladon grabbed his boot. The train rocked, Ladon slid, and Timor roll
ed on top of Rysa.
The blade stabbed the car’s floor next to her ear.
Timor punched Rysa in the gut.
“Let her go!” Ladon would rip Timor’s arms from his torso.
Timor pulled Rysa to a crouch with their backs to the open door. “Reculez!” He yanked the blade from the floor. “Stay back!” he repeated in English.
He pressed the knife into her neck and his other fingers into her midriff.
Rysa’s head lolled. Her lip bled. But the car filled with the vibrating power of her Prime abilities.
Blood spread across her belly. She stared ahead, her eyes as blank as Adrestia’s, unaware of the darkness spreading across her shirt.
New wounds. Rysa manifested another round of attacks on her mother in the same way she had at the house.
“Qu’est-ce qui se passe?” Timor grunted, holding out a bloody palm.
Adrestia panted under Dragon’s foot. “Brûleurs,” she said. “ You are not a Fate.”
Her present-seer fired. “Sorcière.”
She called Rysa a sorceress.
Timor’s stance changed to a menacing, fatalistic scoff. His eyes showed confusion—the future he was supposed to help bring about no longer made sense. Somehow, the wounds on Rysa’s belly were outside the fate Les Enfants were bound to when they stole her away from the hospital lot.
“Vous êtes déjà la Reine des Brûleurs.” Timor wrenched Rysa to standing. “You are already the Queen of the Burners.”
Rysa grasped for Ladon with her taped wrists.
Timor’s fingers rose from her waist. They trailed over her breasts and slowly, around her outstretched arms and over her throat until he clutched her jaw.
Timor, with Rysa in his arms, jumped backward through the door onto the bridge over the Green River.
Dragon roared and his hide exploded in violent bursts. He didn’t wait. He didn’t listen. He flew over Ladon’s head and his body contorted out the opening. He landed hard on the tracks and the entire bridge shook.
Ladon followed him off the back of the train.
Rysa didn’t fight. She didn’t pull. She stared into space, her eyes glazed and her body limp.
What this new vision was doing to her, neither Ladon nor Dragon understood. The Burners hurt Mira. Rysa bled and Timor yanked on her neck. He hauled her to her feet, and cursed in French.
He tugged her up onto the guardrail.
“Timor!” Ladon landed in a crouch on the bridge’s wooden walk. Standing slowly, he raised his hands.
Dragon’s snout appeared next to Timor’s cheek. A line of sparks crawled up the beast’s head and onto his neck. Flame curled from his mouth.
Timor had pulled his own death to the surface and it now showed on the beast’s hide, in his giant eye, and along the full extension of his talons. Les Enfants de Guerre would have their war and Dragon would slice them each into slivers.
“Recule, Ladon-Dragon!” Timor hissed. He wanted Dragon to back away.
His blade cut into Rysa’s throat and a hint of blood touched the metal.
Long ago, Daniel had pointed into the courtyard of his manor as the young Jani triad disembarked from their carriage, laughing and playing, as children do. “We need to kill them now,” he’d said. “Before he activates them.”
Ladon should have listened.
“Let. Her. Go!” Ladon bellowed.
Timor laughed. “Did you know Adrestia’s had a crush on you since we were children?” He shook his head. “My poor sister. All this time, she thought you’d never want a Parcae woman.”
Dragon snorted and inched closer.
Timor yanked on Rysa again. She moaned, still obviously in the grip of her vision.
“My father never thought us good enough to stop you. He says she’s the only way. I told him to use a rocket. Hit your van when you’re out in the open and little bits of dragon would rain from the sky.” He grimaced as if he smelled Burner. “But no, he said the world’s not as simple as our context.” The past-seer’s expression blanked. “Maybe he should have listened to me.” His eyes closed as he dropped into the water with Rysa in his arms.
Flames poured from Dragon as he dove. Ladon ran up a support and flipped over the guardrail, and dove feet first.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
All that had dripped from her place in the clouds now filled the river. Gravity finally pulled her down. Rysa drowned.
Water flooded her eyes, her nose, her mouth. It screamed into her ears. The river snapped shut and Rysa’s vision of Billy stripping flesh from her mother bubbled away.
She’d brought this on herself. Billy punished by hurting her mom and blood filled the spaces around her eyes. Her uncle punished through Les Enfants and gravity bound her to her purpose.
Her hands pulled against their bonds. The real world teased, ten feet above. Rysa’s life melted into the mud at the bottom of the river.
No air. Nothing.
A new vision unfolded.
In the dark, clarity caged Adrestia’s false world and contained her uncle’s damage, and pushed against the river’s current.
Dragons.
Burners.
A pulsing oil slick of colors—all possible colors—blistered the sky.
The river thundered like the seers of Les Enfants de Guerre and Ladon filled his lungs to dive. The current pulled and he kicked, gauging the tug and the distance and speed Rysa moved downstream.
Dragon searched the murky water. The beast felt her disorientation but couldn’t see her. She floundered somewhere on the bottom of the river.
Timor surfaced. Ladon ignored him but the past-seer latched onto his shoulders. Ladon braced against Timor’s trunk and punched a right jab directly into the past-seer’s nose.
Timor bounced, but didn’t let go.
Ladon wrapped an arm around Timor’s leg. Everything but his fury submerged the way the river submerged Rysa.
She’d die if he and Dragon didn’t find her.
Rysa would die and Timor would cause it.
Ladon’s body worked on its own, acted on its own, and every moment of anger, every minute of rage he had felt for the siblings erupted.
He snapped Timor’s femur.
The past-seer thrashed as Ladon dove.
Water rushed around Rysa as she sat in the mud. Water wrapped her senses in thickness and muffled her life to nothing.
Is this what the other Fates saw? The sky burning and the Dracae roiling in the flames? Ladon, bloody at her hands. Burners taking cities.
Ambusti Prime. She couldn’t let it happen. She’d die first.
She’d let the acid take what it felt it was due.
If she cut the threads of her life it might be enough. She wouldn’t be bound by her fate if she passed away to nothing.
But someone spoke to her in colors and begged her to please go up. To please, please breathe air.
The beast whispered and showed Rysa the sky and the stars and told her to reach.
The muddy water filled Ladon’s eyes but he saw her first, on the edge of Dragon’s lights, with her face turned down. She didn’t fight. She didn’t try. The river had her.
Dragon lifted her into the air. She tried to gulp but her body buckled over and her eyes rolled back into her head as the beast set her on the dry ground.
Ladon scrambled up the bank. Dragon laid her flat and Ladon wiped her hair away from her mouth. He forced three quick breaths into her lungs. She coughed. Water gurgled from her throat, but she breathed for herself. He rolled her onto her side, and she vomited river water.
“Love.” He pulled her into his arms as he tore off the tape binding her wrists.
She heaved again, and more water poured from her mouth.
“Ladon.” She twisted in anguish and clutched at his arms and chest, but she lived. “You should have let me die.”
What had they done to her? She couldn’t think such things.
“I saw it! I saw what’s coming. What the other Fates see. I can’t hide
.”
“You can’t think that.” He kissed her forehead and her nose as he tried to stop his fingers from shaking. Her cheeks tasted of the river and her breath was dirty and sour, but he didn’t care. “Don’t say that.”
She hiccupped and her arms pulled him closer even as her words pushed him away. He responded by kissing her again and again.
She shivered. The threat of a horrid future tore at her mind and that damned Burner harmed Mira. Despite her strength, it might be too much. She would give up if he didn’t find a way to help her.
He’d seen other women fade away. Lose everything they were and everything they could be.
“My love.” He kissed her again as he wiped away the river. “We will not let what you see come to pass.”
Ladon lifted her and climbed the bank. He should let Dragon carry her, but he couldn’t let go.
He wouldn’t put her down. Not now.
Not ever again.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sirens approached but Ladon held her and kissed her cheeks and checked her wounds no matter how many times she tried to wiggle free.
Dragon-images poured into her chaos—AnnaBelinda’s huge RV pulling away pulsed from Sister-Dragon. Jagged bursts of color and pattern cracked like ice from an exhausted Dragon.
Their cacophony rained down and Rysa curled into a tight ball.
She pushed Ladon away. Pushed Dragon away. She backed into a corner and sat with her arms around her legs on top of the bin in which her shackles clanked every time the van rocked. Sat and pulled a blanket over her head and blocked all their attempts to calm her chaos. They couldn’t. Drawing them in only made it worse.
Rysa Lucinda Torres, the Parcae monarch of the Ambustae breed. A time-bomb.
“Rysa…”
Dragon pushed Ladon toward the driver’s seat. The van started, and they drove away into the night, leaving AnnaBelinda and Sister-Dragon to deal with the aftermath.
Dragon laid down his head at her feet and the dragon-noise stopped.
He didn’t sign. Puffs rolled out of his mouth, but he couldn’t seem to muster the energy needed to translate his thoughts into something a human could understand.
Games of Fate (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 1) Page 26
