Wife’s voice cinched. “Renee, though, is not fine.”
Renee Silverton, the manager at The Land of Milk and Honey and Andreas Sisto’s girlfriend. Andreas, who a Fate named Aiden Blake had shot in the chest.
Dragon did not seem to understand that Andreas would never visit him again; neither, it appeared, did Wife-Dragon. Both beasts refused to answer questions or to accept the mourning of the humans around them.
But Dragon understood that Miss Kitty and little Booster were dead.
Murdered, the beast corrected.
An entire cathedral structure flashed inside Derek’s head. Twenty-three centuries of context and interactions, of memories and understanding, all formed into the beast’s comprehension of the word “murder.” Derek saw faces, some of which he recognized, most not, though Daniel and Timothy Drake were obvious, as were Miss Kitty and Booster.
Though, again, not Andreas. Derek rubbed his face. Each new flash from the beast made his already throbbing head throb more.
I will rip the limbs from Aiden Blake, snapped into Derek’s head, a white-hot flare of precisely sharpened anger and violence.
Mad, rampaging, desperate violence.
A visual flashed and a face appeared—one Derek did not recognize but assumed was the villain named. The Dracae knew the triad in question. They had been Timothy’s children and had, for a brief time, lived with their father among the Legion.
Other information popped to Derek: Timothy had not called them Aiden, Ethne, and Fina, and they had been, at the time, Drake, not Blake.
They had come to their father’s manor home already activated. Brother and Dragon had, at the time, assumed that Timothy had done the activating because the three wore Legion insignias as their talismans. But Derek felt uncertainty within the cathedral, as if, long ago, the beast had smelled a lie.
Dragon-perceived it, more specifically. But it had been faint enough that he had not shared his suspicions with his human.
The cathedral of meaning twisted in Derek’s mind.
He bent forward and dropped his head between his knees. He knew this flash, and he knew exactly the hard weight of what the beast always followed it with: Three children running and laughing. Three male Fates watching along with the beast and Brother. One male Fate, the tight anger of his life sitting in his belly like a hot coal, narrowing his iron-colored eyes and pinching his lips into a tight line. Then he had walked away with no words spoken.
But the beast had read his posture, his body, and as Derek now knew possible, his soul. Dragon-perceiving picked out the context of a moment, of a life as a whole. And the beast had known then that Daniel Drake saw a future he did not want to come to pass.
Do not blame Daniel for Aiden’s actions, beast, Derek pushed.
I do not blame. The beast snorted and a blast of cinnamon and frankincense filled the back of the bus. Fates do not understand the power they wield.
Next to the beast, Gavin visibly shook.
Rysa seers buzzed and she continued to stare out the window. “Modern Fates understand, love,” she said. “We understand all too well.”
Up front, the future-seer named Asar looked into the mirror at his passengers. Behind them, the past-seer named Amir glanced at his present-seeing triad mate. And Cordelia Palatini-Sut’s fingers tightened around the arm of her chair.
Derek suspected that the reason the beasts trusted the unnamed triad was because Cordelia looked like Marcus and Daniel Drake, the past- and future-seers of the original Draki Prime. The beast went so far as to remark that her scent carried the same cool undernotes that the Drake Primes carried.
Neither Derek nor Dragon spoke their observations to the others, but it would take more than good behavior and a pleasant family smell to get Derek to trust them.
Slowly, Derek slid off his chair. The bus swayed and rattled, and the storm’s ice sheeted against the windows. The vehicle might be large, but too many people rode with them, and not necessarily the people they wanted.
“I miss Human is sliding across your hide, Great Sir,” Gavin said.
The beast snorted again.
From a quarter-mile up the freeway, far enough away that the passengers of their bus could not see its taillights, a faint pulse pulled at Derek’s fragile connection to Dragon.
The beast raised his head. I miss Sister.
Derek squatted next to Mr. Bower and the beast’s front limbs, his phone still in his hand. He heard Wife maneuver her vehicle. He heard, also, the chattering of the security detail from The Land who rode with his woman and her dragon.
But mostly he felt the longing sift through the snow and the ice and touch the lonely dragon in front of him.
And, he knew, he understood the beast’s fear about the health of the kittens. “Wife says the boys care for your kittens.” He glanced at Daisy. “They are good dogs.”
Dragon nodded his big head, but new, jagged patterns that looked to Derek like knives and swords shot from his crest, down his back along his ridges, and to his curled tail.
“Ten minutes to the hotel,” Wife said. “Have Cordelia coordinate.”
“Aye, Wife,” Derek answered. He felt the Fate’s present-seer flow through the bus. When he glanced up, she nodded and walked toward the front, to her triad-mate.
“Call me again when you are settled.” Wife ended the connection. Derek tucked his phone into his pocket.
We are Legion, the beast pushed.
More disconnect from the beast. More separation and chaos from his dragon-mind. More cathedrals of understanding that he, as Not-Human, did not understand.
Legion meant more to the beast than it did to the people. Or, perhaps, it meant something different. Family did not explain the constructs the beast blasted to him, nor did clan or unit.
No, this was purely dragon.
Derek leaned his head against the beast’s neck.
Gavin patted the beast’s snout. “Yes we are, my friend.”
Derek felt Daisy’s glance via his access to the beast’s perceiving. She was concerned about Mr. Bower.
As was Derek. Concerned about the beast. Concerned about his brother-in-law who Rysa declared would “come home.” They needed to be away from Vivicus’s lands and onto their own, if she was to heal them correctly. This Derek understood, but it did not lessen his concern.
Rysa stared out the window, her body tight and controlled. Cut off and, more often than not, buzzing.
Her anger had not settled, nor had Daisy’s. When Wife administered Vivicus’s final moments, Rysa changed into something dark. Derek feared Daisy dove down that rabbit hole right behind her.
He would not stand in their way when they ripped Aiden Blake’s head from his neck. He just hoped all of the Dragons’ Legion would be there, at their backs, to help with the burden.
Chapter Five
“Go in,” Mr. Nicholson said, waving Gavin toward the bus’s door, “before the snow thickens to full blindness.”
Asar had pulled the bus into the hotel’s lot fifteen minutes ago. The wind had picked up, and now a thick veil of snow blew between the bus and the three-story, beige-painted, concrete building sprawled inside the sea of its asphalt parking lot.
They were in one of Cheyenne’s hotel districts near I-80—another chain hotel’s parking lot butted up against theirs, divided by an embankment and a row of squat bushes and trees. Several chain restaurants also surrounded the area, as well as a few commercial buildings.
The Dracas parked their bus on the far side of the other hotel’s lot. They were far enough away that they did not jostle Mr. Nicholson’s connection to Brother-Dragon, but close enough they had clear sightlines to the bus, the line of Praesagio’s security SUVs, and the hotel.
Cordelia said something about Praesagio not being able to book out their entire hotel because of the storm, and how she and her men would need an hour or so to walk the halls, to “make sure.”
Daisy had stood at the top of the steps, her face the flat mask of concern
and anger Gavin had become all too familiar with over the past twenty-four hours, and had gone in with Cordelia to get room keys.
Wind hit the side of the bus and Gavin rubbed at his head again. The new hearing aids generated odd acoustics. He heard Asar breathing near the door, but not Amir, who crouched in the back of the bus, behind Dragon but at least ten feet closer.
His aids messed with his vestibular sense, and when the wind changed direction he felt as if he physically rotated right along with it. It felt as if the innate cardinal directions of the universe had shifted and only he noticed. When the bus was moving, it wasn’t as bad. The forward motion overrode all the other little drifts, but now that they’d stopped, the world swayed.
At least he wasn’t dizzy. Though if he didn’t get a handle on it soon, he might end up walking into the hotel like a fall-over drunk.
The aids gave him a level of protection he wasn’t going to give up. Not with Aiden Blake out there. Fates weren’t voice enthrallers like the Shifters, and the aids were created to help him hear, but he didn’t care. For the first time in his life, he could hear monsters sneaking up on him, and a little dizziness seemed like a small price to pay.
Brother-Dragon re-arranged his pillows. Slowly, he lowered his head again, and a wide swath of small waves in a complex color pattern glided from the base of the beast’s crest, down his side nearest Gavin, then faded before it hit his tail.
Sleep, Gavin, Dragon was saying. He wanted Gavin to get a few hours in a warm bed.
“I’m fine.” He’d napped between Denver and the Wyoming border, and didn’t need to leave the beast.
Derek needed sleep more than Gavin. Rysa fired bolts of healing into Mr. Nicholson every half an hour to help with the fatigue and the headaches, but it didn’t seem to do a lot of good. Every time the beast fizzed—the energy pops that made his hide spark like a screen without a signal—Derek cringed.
So did Rysa. Daisy, as well. And the three Fates would all narrow their eyes.
They needed to find Ladon now. Or, Gavin believed, a dragon seizure event would start and Rysa wouldn’t be able to stop it with a healing.
If Ladon was having episodes similar to Dragon’s, Gavin doubted he’d find his way home. Not without help. The fact that he hadn’t called told Gavin that Ladon probably wasn’t in good shape. And the Fates all said he must be carrying the shard of the Fate Progenitor’s talisman that Vivicus stole, because none of them could see him in the what-was-is-will-be.
Or maybe he wasn’t in the what-was-is-will-be anymore.
Gavin kept that thought to himself.
Derek sat against Brother-Dragon’s side. “I agree, beast,” he said as he closed his eyes. His ever-present cowboy hat tipped forward as he leaned backward. “Mr. Bower does seem reluctant.”
Daisy must rest, sailed along the beast’s side.
Gavin grinned and glanced at the bus’s door, wondering if his beautiful girlfriend had returned, but no. Only Asar sat at the front of the bus with Brandon, the square kid with the square glasses. Brandon was the voice enthraller technician sent by Praesagio to calibrate Gavin’s hearing aids.
Brandon also seemed quite intimidated by the women on the bus, and Rysa in particular. During the one moment Gavin had to snuggle with his girlfriend, Daisy told him that poor Brandon smelled of an unrequited crush, one aimed at the bride-to-be. So far, Rysa hadn’t noticed.
“Go on,” Derek said from under his hat. “We will be fine, correct, beast?”
Affirmative patterns flickered.
He wouldn’t be able to sleep out here, no matter what he said. Not with the bus turned off and buffeted by wind all night.
Gavin pointed at the building. “Can we get you inside?” He patted Dragon’s neck. “Before the weather gets too bad?”
“No.” Rysa still stared out the window. “The hotel has cameras in the lot. The only way we could get him inside would be to disable them.”
Doable, Gavin thought, considering the spy tech accessible to Praesagio. But from the look on Rysa’s face, he figured it probably wasn’t a good idea.
She shook her head as if she’d read his mind. “That cop Ben sent away at the rest stop is here.” She said it more to the outside than to anyone on the bus and her words collected on the window as a film of frost. “He and his cousin just walked into one of the rooms facing the lot.” She pointed at the building.
Derek frowned. “Ben cannot enthrall away memories.”
No, Gavin thought. Nor could Brandon. Though he’d only met Andreas Sisto once, he suspected only an enthraller as powerful as the First could edit an entire person’s existence from someone’s mind.
And now the big man was gone forever.
“Maybe Rysa should go in,” Gavin offered. “You’ve been awake as long as Mr. Nicholson and Dragon.”
His friend had changed. Gone was the free-flowing, unfiltered Rysa he knew. Her attention issues were still there—he’d seen her throw a book across the bus because she couldn’t concentrate—but her anger had… crystalized. Gavin didn’t know any other way of describing it, and after twelve hours of looking at the beast’s hide, the description seemed to fit.
Rysa, Daisy, Dragon, Derek too—Cordelia and her men in their own way, as well—seemed to be making a cloud of sharp, whipping, little knives. Somehow, even though Gavin was just a normal, he was picking up the Fate, Shifter, and Dracae energy permeating the bus.
And that energy was not only frantic and full of seizure-like spikes, it also held a gale-force power waiting to rip apart Aiden Blake and his sisters.
The people around him were flywheels of psychic energy, and when the stored fury and power found release, it might shatter not only three evil Fates, but time and space itself.
It honestly felt physical, though his new physical changes—seeing Dragon’s words and feeling the pull of the wind—might be the reason, not the power itself.
But Rysa did look like a woman about to kill.
Daisy as well, though Gavin’s girlfriend held it differently. Daisy’s fury felt colder.
He still didn’t know the specifics of what Aiden Blake did to her a decade ago, but he’d guessed. After Rysa used her seers in Abilene, she’d kicked over a trash bin. Kicked it and kicked it again, Daisy watching.
Daisy only told Gavin that Rysa had past-seen “manipulations of her time with Ladon” in what Aiden did. Otherwise, Daisy had stayed tight-lipped. Gavin hadn’t asked for specifics, though he had a hypothesis: Ten years ago, in the past, Aiden Blake knew Daisy would open up to Rysa after Vivicus’s death. So Aiden Blake had woven a layer of Rysa-terrorization into his tapestry of Daisy-terrorization.
He’d used Daisy to post a note to Rysa’s future self: I can do to you what I did to this woman.
So Gavin was pretty sure he knew what had happened ten years ago, and what Aiden Blake insinuated he would do now.
If Daisy and Rysa didn’t kill Aiden Blake, he would.
And maybe leaving Rysa out here by herself wasn’t a good idea. “Rysa, it’s—”
She dropped to the floor next to him, her green-gray eyes as violently flat as the storm outside—violent as the power fueling the blizzard and as flat as the gray-clouded result.
Rysa leaned close the way she did when she laid one of her manipulative kisses on him.
“Rysa!” She’d been kissing him and messing with his head and using his “Bat signal to the Fates” visibility within the what-was-is-will-be to send herself notes. He’d become her stick-it memo of special Fate appointment reminders.
Her mouth opened.
He pushed her away, though he did suddenly think going into the hotel was a good idea. In fact, he’d like some time to take care of himself. He’d been working hard on doing his best to play health professional to a bunch of superheroes even though he was still an undergrad and not even a med student yet. He needed food and rest, and to find his center.
He rubbed his face. “I could use a shower.”
It’d b
e nice if Daisy would stop shutting him out, too. Her shutting him out did nothing to help him find his center. Because right now, finding his center and getting back to the top of his game seemed the best use of this down time.
Rysa backed away, and when he looked up, Daisy stood at the top of the steps at the head of the bus. Her gloved hand clutched a stack of plastic room keys.
He hadn’t heard—or felt—the bus’s door open.
Daisy did not look happy.
“What?” he asked as he stood up. It felt good to stretch his back. “Time to snag a shower and get something to eat.”
Gavin swung his arms to loosen his shoulders as he walked toward the front of the bus and his girlfriend—who he needed to talk to about her whole holding him at arm’s length thing.
“Rysa…” Daisy’s face reddened.
Gavin glanced back at Dragon, Derek, and Rysa.
The beast huffed at Daisy—he still hadn’t forgiven her for the change she’d caused in his talon when she healed Derek’s knife wound. No one, the beast included, could explain why the tip of the talon had turned glassy. She’d apologized several times, but he still flashed her with cool colors and tight, restricted patterns.
Right now, though, he flashed to Gavin. She meant you no harm.
Harm?
Derek kept his hat over his face.
Rysa whisked her hand through the air. “Go inside. All of you.”
Amir pushed by and toward his brother at the front of the bus. Along with the wide-eyed, still silent Brandon, they gathered supplies to take into the hotel.
Gavin looked back at Rysa, anger suddenly welling up. “Did you just hit me with calling scents?” She enthralled him.
He threw his arms into the air. “We talked about you—”
“Get off the bus!” Rysa screamed. “All of you! Go away!”
A new flash moved across Dragon’s side. Derek groaned.
Rysa turned her back to everyone, but she glanced over her shoulder at Gavin.
He’d known her since they were freshmen. He’d hung fliers in St. Paul Student Union offering American Sign Language tutoring. He hadn’t expected to get a lot of responses, but she’d texted.
Men And Beasts (Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Book 6) Page 4
