Men And Beasts (Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Book 6)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Billy, who walked beside him, chattered his teeth when the woman bent over to pick up a stray object from the floor.

  Ladon smacked the side of the Burner’s head. “Respect,” he said and pushed the Burner into the bar.

  “Hey!” Billy tripped into the shadow-filled room before letting out a low hiss.

  Ladon ignored him. No use getting into a fight with a Burner inside a crowded room full of normals. A small “stage” took up about a quarter of the floor space to the right, under a large monitor. Neither raised nor separated from the rest of the bar, it was simply a flat area instead of carpeted, like the rest of the seating. An alternating-color bullseye pattern in the floor tiles drew Ladon’s eye to a single bar stool sitting directly in the center of the stage. Booths of patrons lined the walls encircling the area, including a few jammed under the big screen.

  A bar sprawled out along the left wall. At the end, a low, open counter area held what looked like several three-ring binders, a fishbowl full of paper, a stand with a microphone, and a couple of cheap-looking guitars.

  “Ohhh…” said Billy. “Karaoke.”

  The ghoul wanted to sing?

  Billy made an exasperated expression at Ladon. Rock star, he mouthed, so the other patrons scattered throughout the area wouldn’t hear, but he thumped his chest. Not that anyone would hear anyway with the steady-if-tinny beat flowing out of speakers on either side of the screen.

  “Yes, Billy, you were once a rock star.” Ladon repressed his own exasperated expression. He’d done his share of strumming before coming to the base. It took a lot more than an affinity for melody and rhythm to be a “rock star.” It took talent and a lot of work.

  Though Billy had significant talents, Ladon suspected the whole famous musician story was a fake Burner memory—something the ghoul told himself to get him through the day.

  Billy threw him several inappropriate-in-public gestures, including several hand movements Ladon did not recognize, though something told him he should.

  He stopped between two tables. The hand of his broken arm gripped the back of a thankfully empty chair, but the two people seated at the next table over watched him suspiciously, especially the woman, who seemed frightened.

  Ladon closed his eyes and wished that he could close his ears, too. He needed to find his center. He’d dropped it somewhere. It was probably outside, in the snow and cold. Alone. Waiting for him to come back to it… her…

  “You okay, buddy?” A man as big as Ladon though slightly narrower at the shoulder, his hair buzzcut and stubbly, gripped Ladon’s elbow. “You look like somethin’ was coming up.”

  The man didn’t blink. When he moved, his thick pullover sweatshirt rubbed and whiffed.

  “No…” Ladon said. The problem wasn’t things coming up. The problem was things being sucked away. “I’m okay.”

  The man let go.

  Ladon tapped the cast on his arm. “Pain meds sometimes make me dizzy.”

  The guy knew he lied. Ladon saw it in the set of his eyes and mouth. But he nodded once and stepped back, into the shadows.

  Billy waved him toward a small table next to the fire exit. Ladon dropped into the chair facing the room, his back to the exit, so he could keep an eye on the people scattered in the booths and at the other tables.

  For a night with a nasty storm, the place looked full.

  Billy flipped around a chair and pulled it next to Ladon, so that he backed against the wall and not the room. He tucked his sword-carrying duffle under the table. “We did get the last room, mate.” He whisked his fingers at a tired and cold-looking couple in one of the booths near the stage. “We can’t be the only hungry travelers.”

  Why did this Burner, who should be trying to eat the patrons, make so much sense? He shouldn’t. It wasn’t right.

  Their waitress dropped two menus on the table without looking at either Ladon or Billy. Which was probably for the best. Though she did seem distracted by the bright colors of Billy’s t-shirt and shoes.

  She was, Ladon thought, an average woman, of average size and average hair color. Her hips were round but not jiggly, her hair pulled into a round but not jiggly ponytail. With the shadows, Ladon could not tell her age. Her face was neither pretty nor ugly, but she did appear tired, as if she’d been working all day. Which she might have, with the storm.

  She pulled a pad of paper out of her apron. “You two want something to drink?” Her grin looked more like a scripted expression than an actual greeting when she looked at Billy, but not when she looked at Ladon.

  Ladon found the fact that he smelled her arousal—or felt it, he wasn’t sure—much more interesting than the woman’s actual response to him.

  Billy, though, seemed quite fascinated by the poor woman’s attraction. “He’s an ex-SEAL,” the Burner purred. “Aren’t you, luv?”

  Calling Ladon luv was as bad as calling him Boyfriend. Billy obviously wanted to get a rise out of him. Ladon ignored him.

  “He’s got a head full of traumas, dove. Totally wackadoodle.” Billy whistled and circled his finger next to his ear.

  The waitress’s lips rounded. She looked between Billy and Ladon as she slid her foot back. “I’ll give you two a moment to look at the menu.”

  Billy winked. “You do that, right Boyfriend?”

  Ladon didn’t answer. The waitress stared at him, both confused and… caring? Afraid? Again, Ladon couldn’t tell.

  “He has a pet eagle,” Billy drawled. “Calls it Freedom. Such an American boy. My mum’s proud.” He whisked her away with a swish of his hand.

  “You’re an asshole,” Ladon said. Seemed the most astute observation.

  Billy grinned. “My job is to keep you safe, so safe I will keep you.”

  Ladon flipped open the menu. “From a waitress? Why?”

  Billy held up his menu and spun it on the tip of his finger like it was a flat basketball. “Why?” He trailed off at the same time he slapped his menu down. “Now who’s being the asshole?”

  He pointed at the counter, obviously looking for a distraction. “I want to sing.”

  Ladon rubbed his face. “Now? I thought you were hungry.” He glanced around again, taking in the crowd. Most were weary types; several looked as if they had driven their long-haul trucks from the East Coast and this was their first real stop. Not that they wanted to stop. Time was money.

  He rubbed his face again. Stopping out here could be dangerous. The storm, he thought. Because of the storm.

  The flashing happened again. The resetting that didn’t reset anything. Ladon held back a wince.

  Billy the Burner didn’t seem to notice this time, and Ladon glanced around to see if any of the other patrons had. The big guy who’d talked to him when they came in was making a point of not looking in their general direction. The waitress set food in front of a cold-looking couple. Several lone drivers ate in silence.

  Billy pushed back his chair. “Sing first, food second.”

  Ladon’s attention wandered back to the Burner. “Do you want me to order for you?” Maybe being polite would help the Burner to remain polite.

  Billy’s teeth fluoresced in the bar’s dark and dense interior, their cold-yet-hot light reflecting in a way that, Ladon suspected, looked like lens flare in real life, complete with the rings of refracted color.

  “Why yes, luv, please do.” He wiggled his shoulders. “And none of that veggie crap. I’m hungry.” His eyes flashed, too.

  Ladon frowned. “Do we need to hunt?” he said, his voice low so only the Burner heard.

  Billy giggled. “Cattle will have to do, I suppose.” He walked away, toward the counter and the three-ring binders.

  Cattle. Ladon didn’t want to think about it, so he scanned the menu and decided that he should order the Burner a rare steak, though to be honest, he didn’t know what Burners ate when they weren’t eating. For himself, he’d order a burger and a salad.

  When he looked up, Billy was in an animated conversation with the emp
loyee who stood behind the karaoke counter. The guy had a big smile on his face and looked as if he’d start bouncing on the balls of his feet at any moment.

  Billy laughed. He nodded once and cocked his head, looking at the guy, but not in a predatory way. He seemed to be basking.

  Did the skinny, worn-out employee recognize the rock star? Recognition would not help right now, especially if the one recognized was a Burner who ate people.

  Billy took his place on the stool in the center of the stage’s bullseye. He sniffed and stretched his neck, and a soft cascade of warm-up notes rolled from his throat.

  The screens came to life. Music started.

  Loud, banging, tinny back-up tracks flowed from old, abused speakers. A name of a pop song Ladon did not recognize appeared on the screen, along with a copyright date and an attribution: Billy Bare and the Astronauts.

  When Billy launched into the first verse, the entire bar stopped moving, stopped doing anything, several people with food halfway to their mouths. No one spoke. No one looked away. Everyone stared with their jaws open.

  He sounded almost alive. Not quite, but for this song, the crackle and pop of his Burner throat filled in for the tonal lacking in the tracks accompanying him, and the audience ate it up. They grinned, and utensils dropped to the tables. Several of the women leaned forward. One made a face as if she recognized Billy for who he used to be.

  By the second verse, they’d begun clapping. Their waitress stood next to their table, too stunned to take the order from Ladon.

  Billy belted out the third verse, burying the badly recorded tracks under vocals Ladon did not think could come from a Burner. He stood up and worked the room, dancing between the booths behind the stage.

  For the final refrain, he threw out his arms and spun, then hopped up onto the counter in front of the skinny employee running the karaoke. The man flung himself backward, but smiled and continued to clap.

  Billy Bare, rock star, took this moment and became, once again, the best of the man he used to be. More alive, more real, more full of the joys of living than Ladon. Music, Billy knew. He understood it all the way to his bones, and through all the little poppings.

  All the little deaths he’d suffered since turning hadn’t taken it away.

  Ladon watched the core of a man, not the skin of a Burner, breathe life into a song because that’s what the man did. Billy was the music, and the music, Billy.

  The song stopped. Billy dropped to the edge of the counter and dangled his legs over the side. He smiled at his audience, reveling in being the center of the world, even if this world held only about thirty people.

  “Boyfriend!” He waved at Ladon. “Come play me this bloody lovely guitar.” He pointed at the acoustic instrument sitting in a holder on the counter behind the three-ring notebooks.

  Ladon frowned.

  “Oh, don’t give me that look. I know you play. You’re too old to not know how to strum a guitar.” Billy winked at the crowd. “He’s as shy as he is handsome.”

  Laughter filled the room.

  Ladon held up his arm. “Cast,” he said.

  Billy made a dramatic show of looking exasperated. “Yes, yes.” But he smiled. “We’ll do a simple song.” He leaned over and whispered something to the employee. “No tracks so we hear him play.”

  The employee nodded and new images appeared on the screen over Billy’s head—more copyright information, the title of a song every human on Earth knew, and a band name: Foreigner.

  “You want me to play ‘I Want to Know What Love Is?’” I think I hate that Burner, Ladon thought.

  “I wrote it,” Billy sniffed and sat up straight. “Opened for them in ’82 and they stole it from me, they did.”

  The employee chuckled and shook his head. Luckily, he didn’t see Billy’s Burner-bright glare.

  Ladon didn’t believe the Burner, either. “No.” He waved Billy off and turned toward the waitress. “We’d like—”

  “Like this.” Billy whipped the guitar across his lap and strummed out a passible version of the song’s major cords. “But me and the fingers aren’t good on the strings, now.”

  He held out the guitar.

  Ladon shook his head again.

  Billy stared. “For the princess,” he drawled. His eyes flashed.

  Ladon walked across the carpet to Billy before he realized he’d stood up. He grabbed the guitar and swung around as he dropped onto the stool.

  It needed tuning. A few adjustments, and he strummed a couple of chords.

  Billy watched with more satisfaction than Ladon appreciated. The guy behind the counter stared in rapt awe. The waitress pulled out a chair and sat down. And all the other people in the room waited, their hands on their tables and their eyes fixed first on Ladon, then on Billy.

  “Come in at the right time, huh, Boyfriend?” Billy winked again—and launched into the first verse.

  The entire crowd sighed. Every man and every woman. The door to the kitchen opened and the entire staff appeared at the threshold, towels in hand and nets on their heads. In the passage to the hotel, more employees appeared.

  Ladon began to play.

  Billy leaned forward, off the counter and into the stage area as he wailed the break between the first two verses. The crowd responded on cue, all inhaling as one.

  Phones came out. Videos and photos snapped.

  Billy fed on it the same way he would have fed on a body. He stepped between Ladon and the growing crowd, the microphone gripped tightly and his blood-colored shoes glowing in the light.

  And Billy sang.

  Ladon knew the song even if he didn’t know why, so he played. He knew he should understand why Billy’s goading had been important, or why he picked a song with intensely emotive lyrics, but he didn’t. All the significance, all the meaning, fell under the same lack of anything that “confusion” and “understanding” had fallen under since the Burner released him from the table in that hole in Texas.

  But the song did meld somewhat with the itching needs he carried—the need to go home. The need for her to know that he’d come back.

  The itches. The ones that should be under his cast but were in the back of his head, instead.

  So Ladon played a song he shouldn’t know how to play on a guitar with a sound as hollow as his soul for a Burner with more reality, more life, than he had. A Burner who, he was beginning to believe, loved “the princess” more than he did, a man with no name. Because that name he told the Burner, it wasn’t quite right.

  Billy’s voice soared. The crowd picked up the choral vocals at the end of the song and the entire building shook.

  Ladon strummed one last chord.

  Outside, the wind howled and a blizzard blinded the world, and inside, a man a Burner called Boyfriend almost—almost—found a strand of understanding. A thread of his true soul.

  A wisp of energy. A call from somewhere nearby.

  A beast.

  Chapter Fifteen

  AnnaBelinda Drake Nicholson watched the other bus through a screen of blizzard. Wind bit at the skin of her cheeks and cold frosted the inside of her nostrils. She might not enjoy wearing gear provided by Trajan’s empire, but it did do its job. At least her fingers and her toes were warm, even if she did sour at what little view her binoculars offered.

  The other bus’s darkened windows kept her from seeing her husband and her soon-to-be sister-in-law cuddle. Didn’t stop her dragon, though.

  You are sure? she pushed to her Dragon. Why the hell was her husband cuddling with Rysa? You see this?

  The snow whipped between the buses as a wall as massive as the vehicle under her feet. Her goggles compensated somewhat but modern technology could only produce so many miracles.

  Yes, her beast answered.

  Anna pulled her parka’s hood tighter around her face. The top of their Praesagio Industries touring bus offered the best view, but now she wondered why she bothered.

  Do not be jealous.

  Anna groaned.
She heals him. Healing Derek was the only explanation. And he was now difficult to heal, hence the cuddling.

  Cuddling.

  You could call him. Her Dragon undulated behind her along the top of the bus, more to work off frustration than to clear the snow. Dragon, unlike her brother, suffered only her own attitudes and was more than capable of keeping her hide invisible in this storm.

  Anna, though, stood out as a dark hole in the fabric of the world, a puncture wound made by her midnight-colored, shadowed clothes. She might be as cold and slicing as the snow, but she was its opposite color.

  They’d watched Daisy and Gavin walk toward the hotel. They’d also watched most of the security detail follow, and Cordelia Palatini-Sut pull one of the security detail’s vehicles between the bus’s front door and the open lot. She would glance up, first looking at Anna’s husband’s bus, then out at Anna’s, then back at whatever she carried to occupy her time.

  The present-seer now sat in the driver’s seat with her face lit up by her phone’s screen. Her finger swiped at the device with a consistency that suggested she read a trashy novel.

  Wind whipped up the side of the vehicle and hit Anna hard in the face. She breathed through it, ignoring the prickle and the pain of the cold and ice, and peered, once again, through her goggles.

  Dragon stretched upward into the storm. She towered over Anna, an invisible barrier between her human and more buffeting from the shrieking air. He dreams, Anna’s beast pushed.

  He more than dreamed. Pain rolled off that damned bus in waves thicker than the drifts forming around the wheel wells.

  Thick enough Dragon felt her brother’s agony even out here, on the edge of their communication distance.

  Whatever Rysa did, it wasn’t enough.

  Is it the memory? Anna asked. Not a memory. The memory—the one that bubbled up wet and choking from the sludge deep inside her husband’s mind. The one not even Andreas could make go away.

  I suspect so.