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

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Aiden winked.

  The truth as Aiden saw it right there, right out in front. He spoke his truth for the first time in all his babbling about loving her: He believed that he manipulated the sparking of Gavin’s ability to read dragon language.

  Daisy followed Aiden and Gavin into the stairwell. When she looked down, Aiden grinned up at her and slowly, deliberately wiped a new streak of blood down the bridge of Gavin’s nose. His finger curled and he drew a spiral on Gavin’s cheek.

  He marked Gavin.

  Echoes of her torment at Aiden’s hands in that old camper flooded back in. No more holding it down. No more keeping it in check. It burst up from her gut, into her chest, and out her mouth as a wild, guttural scream.

  Aiden pulled open the door to the first floor.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cold pressed against the bus’s windows and seeped in through its cracks. Wind howled and the bus rocked, its entire frame swaying. The air inside tasted slightly of exhaust and now, with Rysa against Derek’s bare chest, also slightly of ‘determination.’

  She held him like family and the need to refer to her by her Sister-name pressed on his mind.

  He would not bend to the need. He would give her a small victory, the thought that her healings let him keep at least a little sense of his own mind, so he forced his thoughts and his words to speak Rysa.

  He felt her fatigue. Her hands jittered. He meandered in and out of sleep, not knowing how to help, so he rested tucked into the fold of the beast’s forearm with his head against her shoulder and his arm over her belly. Mostly, she looked away. She watched the snow whip against the bus. When the wind howled and the floor rocked, her breath sighed and her body swayed.

  But she held him against her warm flesh and her healing ability forced its way into his cells, even if his body did not want it there.

  Dragon did his best not to speak to Derek.

  Yet patterns made it through, as did the flux and wane of emotions. The beast worried, but his fear and apprehension popped like a Burner exploding and was replaced by a cold, blinding flash. Rysa shuddered. And Derek, unable to hold open his eyes, slipped into sleep once more.

  He did not know how long he dozed, or for how long Rysa forced her healing abilities into his body. But his fatigue cleared even if the beast’s pain continually refreshed Derek’s headache. Still, he functioned again.

  Slowly, he pulled himself off his sister-in-law. “Thank you,” he mumbled as much for her as a reminder to himself that she was, in fact, his sister-in-law. His family.

  Rysa blinked once, then returned to staring at the snow battering the side of the bus. Energy pulsed between her and the beast, and Derek got the distinct impression that he had slept through most of an important conversation.

  He caught a whiff of a calling scent brew drifting from Rysa: The bracing brightness of ‘awake’ mixed with the clarity of ‘clearheaded.’ It did nothing for him, but she made it anyway.

  Derek rubbed his face. “Is that for you or for me, Sister-Rysa?” He reached for his shirt.

  She frowned, obviously too drained to hold her indignation. She needed rest as much as he did.

  “I am fine, now. You no longer need to…” He trailed off but batted his hand through the air. He felt stupid for allowing the coddling as long as he had, but deep down, he understood that they had both needed a healing touch.

  But also like her, he was too tired to hold his indignation. “You seem… upset,” he said.

  A very quick, acrid burst of fear flooded from Rysa, but she caught herself and it vanished.

  “Something bad is coming. Something worse than Aiden Blake.”

  Nothing was worse than Aiden Blake. The Fate hunted. He tortured. He… raped. Derek knew it. Dmitri knew it. Hopefully, for Daisy’s sake, Gavin Bower understood as well.

  Rysa understood. Derek had seen it on her face after the Praesagio people carted off Vivicus’s dead body. She and Daisy spent almost a full hour with their heads close and their voices low. Then Rysa kicked a Texas trash can so hard she dented it.

  “What is this thing you sense coming?” Though Derek did not think Rysa knew. He did not think any of the Fates knew. If they did, they’d all either be running for the hills or digging bomb shelters.

  Dragon rolled a little and puffed out an agreeing flame.

  Rysa shook her head. “The fog in the what-was-is-will-be is real. It’s like the white noise between channels, or like interference because signals are competing.” She rubbed her forehead. “Andreas told me…”

  She hiccupped and looked up at the roof of the bus. On her lap, her hands curled into fists.

  “Derek….” Another hiccup burst from her throat.

  “Hey, hey.” Derek pulled her against his chest, this time.

  “I didn’t see him killing Andreas.” Rysa wiped at her eyes.

  The cloak of fury she had been under since she and Daisy pushed into the what-was-is-will-be their declaration to kill Aiden slipped off. Right here, in front of Derek and Dragon. It slipped off her shoulders and puddled on the floor of the bus and added a chill much worse than the ice leaking in from outside.

  “Rysa, if—”

  She held up her hand. “Those two guys at the rest stop? One was flirting. The cop watched me the entire time as if...” She looked up at the roof of the bus.

  Derek kept quiet so she could speak.

  “I’m going to send those two men to their deaths,” Rysa whispered. “I don’t know when. I don’t know why. But they’re going to die because of an order I give.”

  She closed her eyes and her voice took on a bitter edge. “‘What are you going to do, pumpkin, the first time your seers take the measure of a man and you know you must cut his threads and send him to his death?’”

  Rysa quoted someone. Derek knew by her body posture and her slack face. She quoted another Fate.

  “‘Will you wring your hands and blubber like a housewife?’” Her words echoed through the bus on the back of her thundering past-seer.

  “Rysa?” She looked dazed.

  “‘Fate will have its due, young lady. Fate always has its due. Your purpose is to give its glorious clarity to the world.’”

  Derek gripped her shoulders. Her eyes glazed. “Rysa…”

  “Faustus was right.” Her hands flew up and gripped the beast’s coat.

  Faustus? Rysa’s dead future-seeing uncle who Ismene, her past-seeing, Burnerized aunt consumed? What was echoing around inside of Rysa’s head?

  “The world’s—” But Rysa stopped herself. She snapped her lips together so tightly they thinned out into a flat line.

  But Derek knew. He knew.

  They all knew.

  There would be no escape from the Burning World. Not for him. Not for Rysa. Not for the Fates or the Shifters.

  And now, it seemed, for the normals, neither.

  She closed her eyes again and leaned against the beast, still mostly naked. Still cold and shivering and now, Derek suspected, drained beyond what she could tolerate.

  Is she okay? he pushed to Dragon.

  The beast sniffed her face and she pushed him away with a half-chuckle, half-growl. “Sleep deprivation lets a person see what they wouldn’t see otherwise,” she said.

  Only fear pinged from the beast back to Derek.

  “Go in, Rysa.” Derek pulled on his t-shirt. “Eat. Sleep in a bed. Pushing yourself like this is not necessary.”

  She sniffed. “Not necessary? It’s necessary.” Her arms rose out in front of her as if on strings. She flipped her palms up, then down, then up again as if shaking a toy. “Hold on to me, my love.”

  Dragon rolled away from Derek and toward Rysa.

  She cupped her hands as if holding a ball. “Where is my husband?” she asked.

  Her seers blasted through the bus. “Ask again later,” she droned, but she got up onto her knees, so that she knelt between Derek and the beast.

  She didn’t open her eyes. “I’m asking now
.” Her voice grated.

  Between them, in the air, the “ball” almost appeared, almost became visible, as if the energy he had seen in Texas that had formed a blade around her hand was forming the oracle toy she now questioned.

  She shook the imaginary toy again. “They have that ring,” she intoned. “The one that supposedly belonged to your father.”

  Derek cringed—he was too tired to hold it in.

  “But it only works on the one who carries it.” She shook her imaginary toy again. “The shard is on Ladon. So only one of them should be invisible.”

  She had been adamant about the location of the shard even though the other Fates could not tell. But somehow, Rysa could.

  “Which one of you isn’t hiding behind the ring’s disruption?” She shook the imaginary toy again. “Better not tell you now.”

  Rysa growled. “I am too tired for this. Cooperate.”

  Is she talking to her seers? Derek asked the beast.

  But the beast sent back a burst of fragmented energy. Derek had thought Dragon had only pulled back, as he had requested. Given him the room he needed to rest. But now the beast was not pushing closer again.

  Derek placed his palms against Dragon’s side. “Rysa?”

  Energy pinged between her and Dragon, then pointed outward. Derek caught only one thought: You will die in pieces. Dragon perception outlined for Derek what Rysa burned onto the bus and the building and, it seemed, onto the storm itself: You will vanish from the world.

  Rysa’s Fate abilities flared throughout the flitting, hissing snow. Derek tensed. Her energy did not hurt him, nor did he fear Rysa’s power. Derek winced because he understood why she did what she did: Aiden Blake.

  “He’s here,” she whispered. “We’re going to catch him, Derek,” Rysa said. “He’ll pay.”

  Every time she spoke those words—“we’re going to catch him”—the phrase manifested with the same inflection of purpose. With the same scent of determination. The Draki Prime knew Aiden Blake would soon face those whom he had wronged.

  The faint growl of an engine started up outside, along with a faint touch by his Dragon: Something’s wrong inside. Derek stood and looked out the back of the bus as if he would be able to see Wife’s bus through the storm. “Rysa!” he yelled.

  She ignored him.

  Derek’s phone beeped and he fished it off the nearest seat, where it sat.

  Gavin missing. HELP, screamed across his screen. “Daisy needs help,” he said.

  Rysa only nodded. She continued to hold her arms in front of her. “So you don’t like me looking, do you? Don’t like my Fate wiretapping?” She flung her hands to the side as if throwing away her oracle. “That’s right. Get close to me. Let me see.”

  When her arm flipped back, Derek thought he saw a knife around her hand, a shimmery blade, one that looked more like the patterns along the beast’s hide than any real instrument. One that, if it was real, looked more like energy than metal.

  The beast roared. A massive belch of flame filled the bus’s interior.

  Derek twisted out of the way and his back slammed into one of the seats. All his breath left him, but he held onto his phone. A new text from Daisy appeared: Aiden is in the hall in front of MY ROOM.

  Rysa roared. Talons dug into carpet and upholstery as the beast mimicked her sounds. She stood up, still in her underwear, and slammed her fist into the back of the chair next to her.

  Dragon coiled and uncoiled around Rysa, a giant, roiling mass of anger and fire. His hide screamed as much as his Human’s mate’s voice, and if he did not slow, he would shred the inside of the bus.

  “I’m going to kill you, Aiden Blake,” Rysa snarled. “You think you outwitted a future you did not want by killing Andreas. You think you’re smart enough to outrun the Burning World. But I am Draki and I breathe fire.”

  Rysa waved her hand and the blade of energy around her fist dissipated. “Tell your wife to help Daisy.”

  Rapid gunfire ricocheted off the side of the bus. The windows held, but Derek ducked anyway. “Cordelia’s out there.”

  Rysa pulled on her jeans. “Fina Blake is here.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The guitar dropped out of Ladon’s hand and clanged across the floor. The wisp of energy yanked him to his feet—yanked like it lassoed his soul with spider silk.

  The crowd filling the door between the bar and the lobby parted. A blade of bright fluorescent light sliced into the shadows and a woman in dark clothes and a dark jacket shoved her way into the bar. A long ponytail hung behind her head wrapped in the same way someone would wrap the handle of a hammer, and its entire length swung heavily between her shoulders. She wore opaque-lensed glasses as well—glasses that wove around her skull in much the same way as the wrap on her ponytail wove around her hair.

  He knew this woman. He didn’t know why, or who she was, but he knew her. Knew what she was and what she’d done, and why, all the way to his bones, he hated her.

  The wisp of energy tied around his soul vibrated. Ladon’s jaw clenched and his heart knocked—this was not like the bright fire that wiped his mind. No, this moved his body.

  Billy pointed his now-silent microphone at the woman. “I remember you!” he yelled. “I remember what you did to me!” He threw the microphone at her head.

  She dodged, her hammer-like ponytail swinging like a weighted whip. She shouldn’t have been able to see the microphone’s trajectory. Not with the dark, opaque glasses obscuring her vision. Not from the shadows, the way she did.

  A new wave of energy screamed through the bar, one that for a brief moment drowned the pull from a… beast.

  A beast he should be with.

  Different energy swept the room like a radar ping, and an odd mix of high-pitched music and drums in a storm pulsed inside Ladon’s head.

  Pinging, he thought. Ping—

  A memory exploded upward from under his mind and into full, body-consuming detail inside his consciousness: Once, a beast followed Rysa into a vision of the Abilene facility the way it stood before someone rebuilt it as a high school. Rysa had seen her uncle and her aunt and her uncle’s malevolent spawn—this woman and her two brothers.

  Ladon looked up at the woman just as she pushed Billy to the side. He swung around, his forearm and its cast aimed directly at the invading woman’s head. Her seer thundered and she deflected his arm, though again, she should not have perceived his movements.

  Yet she did.

  “There it is.” The woman snagged his cast, her nails digging in around the edges of the tape holding the shard in place. She ripped.

  The old duct tape crackled—and the shard fell off, directly into her open and waiting hand.

  Her arm curled and the hand she’d used to pull the tape clamped onto Ladon’s throat. “Leave. Now.”

  Billy snatched the guitar off the floor and swung but she blocked.

  “Stop!” The woman threw the guitar at the wall. “I cannot hold her down for long.” She tapped the side of her head. “This is her body but I’m not her. She’s here for this.” The woman held up the shard.

  Billy swung a fist this time, but missed. “You are Adrestia, the present-seer of that triad who hired me to hurt the princess!” He poked a finger at her face. “You broke my arm and you made burndust of my Lizzy!”

  She ignored Billy and focused on Ladon. “If you leave now and Mr. Barston here keeps his story straight she won’t know. She won’t kill you.”

  “You’re the only psycho she here!” Billy swung at her again but she dodged. “You’re the only she who would ever want to kill him.”

  The woman named Adrestia growled. “If only that were true, Ladon-Human, huh?” But she pointed at the fire exit. “The only she you need to worry about right now is the one I’m holding down in here.” She tapped the side of her head.

  Ladon stared at the long scar on her cheek, thinking that he should remember how she got it. That, for some reason, he was pretty sure he was there when it
happened.

  The temples of her opaque glasses glimmered. She wore cameras. A wire hooked to the hardware on her face and vanished into her hair.

  “You wear low-grade visual optimizers.” He pointed at her glasses, but like so many other concepts in his life, “visual optimizers” seemed like something he’d read about in a manual and not something he understood.

  Surprised, the woman let go of his neck. “Focus, Ladon—”

  Billy pushed her away.

  “Lady!” The big guy who helped Ladon when they first entered the bar took a step toward the woman. “I think you need to—”

  Her hand dipped under her jacket. A large semiautomatic appeared. “Back off.” She nodded toward the door. “Out! All of you!” She waved the gun.

  Several people scrambled for the door.

  “You want to take him to Praesagio, don’t you?” Billy stepped between Ladon and the woman. “You got your brilliant specs from those wankers and they’re using you to get back what they think’s theirs.”

  She sighed and lowered her gun. “Not everything Praesagio Industries does is specifically designed to torture and control.”

  “Enough is!” Billy jabbed his finger at the woman. “They murder my people to make their walls Fate-proof.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “You are a distraction, Burner.”

  “Well la-dee-da to you, you arse-licking cow.” Billy gave her the finger.

  “I’m here to help him. She thinks getting her hands on the shard will stop her bouts of lost time… will stop me.” She slapped the side of her head.

  “Why do I know you?” Ladon asked. Maybe she’d answer questions. Maybe he’d be able to at least start to figure…

  The inside of his brain turned bright and hot again. Every neuron turned on and every small bit of cohesion he had turned off.

  When he blinked, the woman grasped of one of his arms while Billy held the other. “This place lit up in the what-was-is-will-be about an hour ago.” She nodded to Billy. “Because you decided to be a spectacle.”