Which, when she thought about it, was probably a good idea. “It’ll be nice to see Sandro again.”
Her father laughed once more, but this time, it held an edge. There had been mild and well-hidden hurt when he’d realized how much of a father Rysa’s dad had been to her right before the first time Aiden attacked and she found her way to The Land. Anger, too, because her father held the paternalistic belief that Sandro should not have abandoned her until she had been safely handed off to her real father.
Not that he’d said anything. She smelled it on him, anyway. And, if she were honest, she would have been hurt if he hadn’t responded the way he had. At least she could keep comfort in the certainty that was Dmitri Pavlovich.
“You will play nice with Rysa’s dad, Dad.”
Her father laughed again. “That man is a thousand patents in the making, daughter. He’s the goose laying a new golden egg every time he sneezes.” He sniffed. “I swear Eric wants to marry him.”
Eric Nakajima, the Head of Special Medical, and Dr. Torres’s co-boss.
There was more. “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Any sign of Aiden?” He would have told her immediately, if there had been. She knew he would have, but she needed to ask.
“No.” A pause. “The Fates read nothing. I brought in two other bloodhound enthrallers and both say his scent trail stops at the bar, where he vanished. ‘Literally, completely stops,’ they said. I get the impression that this is not normal.”
“No, it’s not.” Scents don’t cut off the way pictures do. They linger. Scent, unlike any of the other senses, was spread out in time, like an umbrella over the what-was-is-will-be. As a bloodhound, she often had as good a sense of the past and present as any moderate-level Fate, and sometimes a sense of the future, as well.
“I did not believe so.” Her father paused again. “The Fates tell me that they believe he triggered something. That because of the energy released around him from the reattachment of the Dracos, Mr. Bower’s pain, and his sisters’ deaths, he overloaded his ‘Fateness.’ That is what they said. His ‘Fateness.’”
“That’s not what he did.” She’d listened to his ramblings. “He activated himself.”
After a long silence punctuated only by the howl of the Wyoming wind, her father said, “What do you mean?”
“He was fixated on new, like the concept was a god, or another Progenitor.” Or a demon. “I think he figured out how to activate something we all have inside of us.”
Another long silence followed. “All things new have become as such in the presence of a dragon.”
“Yes.” First Rysa, the Draki Prime, who activated her Shifter half herself. Then Derek, whom Rysa fixed with the help of the dragons. Then Gavin, whom Daisy fixed, also in the presence of a dragon.
And Daisy, as well, in some ways. She’d fused the glass to Gavin’s rib when Ladon and Brother-Dragon reconnected.
“Humph.” Her father was rarely at a loss for words.
“I don’t know what it means.” She didn’t, other than her gut was telling her it was important.
And Aiden had become something new.
Before Aiden shot Mr. Sisto, Andreas told Daisy they would hunt. Now, it looked as if the hunting was up to her. “How do we stop someone we can’t sense?”
Her father sighed. “Or, daughter, how can someone who is a ghost hurt you?”
She understood what he meant. “You and I both know this situation is not that simple.” Aiden hadn’t died. He’d changed. She knew it. Her father knew it. They all felt the truth in their bones.
He wouldn’t have done what he did if it killed him. How could he cause more mayhem if he was dead? No, he was out there still, somewhere. Waiting.
Her father’s glass clinked. “When is anything Russian simple?”
Now she chuckled. It always came back to Russian ways with her father. If it didn’t, how else was he to keep up his persona? “Yes, Dad.”
“Go report our findings to the good Dracae, and please do tell Ms. Torres that I will be bringing her parents with me.”
“Will do.” She wiggled her back off the cold stone.
“Daisy?”
Her attention returned to her phone. “Yes?”
“I know the stories. I know why Aiden killed Andreas Sisto. And I will tell you this: When I arrive, I will state my willingness to become the Dracae’s new Second, if only until this is finished. I will kill that son of a bitch with my bare hands, for Andreas, for you, and for our young emperor-in-training.”
Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov, a man who could have been a tsar, already was the Dracae’s new Second. He’d been one of their Seconds for as long as she’d known him, and probably since the end of World War Two. “Thank you.”
“Go now. You have a wedding to help set up, do you not?”
Yes, she did. “Bye, Dad.” And no matter what her father thought he offered in terms of the culling of psychos, she also had an evil Fate to kill.
She tucked away her phone and walked toward the cave.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Gavin set his duffle on the low pallet serving as the bed frame in the room he would be sharing with Daisy for the next week or so. Unlike the rest of the cave, this space had a mostly normal height ceiling—about fifteen feet or so—and semi-smooth walls. Sunlight spread out from a globe in the center of the room’s dome and highlighted every dragon-talon gouge and sweep in the bright white plaster. It also warmed the air, and a slow but steady convection current circulated in the space between the bed and the solid, utilitarian dresser, mirror, and chair on the other side of the room.
He squinted and rubbed his forehead in the blindingly bright space, but the thought of two dragons, both covered with chalk dust, maybe with bandanas around their crests, set up in here with big buckets of plaster and trowels seemed just as ludicrous as dragons riding in the back of huge delivery-style vans.
There had to be a way to turn down the glare. If the dragons managed to engineer the light and ventilation system for the cave, they should have had enough foresight to put in a dimmer switch.
In here, away from the storm, his hearing aids were no longer adding velocity to the world. He’d taken them out for the copter ride and relied on signing for the trip, but rides like that, especially when he didn’t feel one hundred percent anyway, always made him a little nauseated.
He hadn’t said anything to Rysa after they landed. She had her hands full with Ladon and Dragon, and frankly, he’d been distracted by the cave.
He’d walked through a vault into a wonderland. But right now, he needed to turn down the lights.
He looked around. Nothing obvious. No rope pulls or electrical outlets. Before Daisy went outside to call her father, AnnaBelinda told her that if they wished to charge their phones, they’d need to leave them at the station in the kitchen. Seemed only a few areas of the cave were wired for anything other than piped-in light.
Daisy would be back soon and she could help him unroll the mattress. He would do it himself, but he was not to “lift, twist, or exert himself in any way” until Dr. Torres arrived later this evening. Seemed everyone trusted the Praesagio Special Medical team only so far, and he was not to push himself.
And he was to sit still until someone gave Daisy and him a proper tour of the cave.
He kicked at the rug on the floor. Here he was sequestered inside a freakin’ unreal cave—because this place was the closest any human would ever get to setting foot in a magical realm—and he’d been forbidden to explore until he had Rysa’s father’s blessing, and an escort.
Not that he’d go running around without Ladon or AnnaBelinda’s approval. He’d get lost, for sure. The entire cave system was big enough to hold a small town and still have enough garden plots left over to grow food for everyone. The ceiling in the common area arched above them at least forty feet, maybe more, and the ceiling in the baths almost as high. The beasts had sculpted and painted all the domes with colo
rs and patterns as rich as their hides, and looking up was like looking into a sky full of dragons.
The scent of fertile ground and healthy plants filled the cave, even like now, in the dead of winter. Rysa said they’d take crates of oranges, lemons, okra, and greens with them to Branson when they left for the reception.
There had to be bats here too, somewhere. Rysa also said she saw a lynx up in the shafts before they returned to Minneapolis for school. The stream had fish. He’d seen one during Derek’s very quick talk: “These are the commons. Behind the apartments are the baths. Kitchen is there. Pools are down there. Stay off the spiral path up to the storage rooms there.” He’d pointed at the array of rooms high up over the apartments. “Do not climb without a dragon. Stay out of trouble.”
Then Derek yawned, AnnaBelinda looked worried, and they shuffled away with Sister-Dragon, presumably to sleep, leaving Daisy to go outside to call her father, and Gavin to fiddle around in their room.
Gavin had felt like a ten-year-old being scolded for wanting to run up and down the stairs. AnnaBelinda obviously did not like having visitors. From the state of this room, they rarely had any. The futon mattress, though, looked brand new, so someone had been planning.
Maybe he should take a nap. But then again, no unrolling the mattress on his own. And the room really was bright.
At the back of the room, next to an armoire, an arch opened into a hallway-tunnel. It curved a couple of times—for privacy, he suspected, because it didn’t have a door—before opening into the baths.
No one said anything about him staying out of the “spa.”
Gavin blinked when he walked into the tunnel, to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the shadows. The only light in here came from the bright room behind him and from the soft, dappled glow of the baths around the bend; unlike the plastered walls of the guest room, the walls here were non-reflective, bare granite.
Cold radiated from the stone. Not an outside, winter-swept cold, but a mountain’s cold solidity. How many giga-tons of rock did he have over his head right now? How many boulders and bears and mountain lions? But this tunnel, with its ten-foot arch and its smooth floor, felt more like a holy place than a hole drilled into the ground. The dragons hadn’t excavated this space so much as freed it from its stone prison.
The rear cave housing the baths sparkled with crystals and beads of water. Warm moisture soothed his nose and throat. He breathed deep, welcoming the humidity after two months of winter dryness, and walked into the open section just off the guest rooms.
It really did feel like a spa. His guestroom was farther into the cave proper than the Dracae’s apartments, and along with the other three guestrooms, had its own seating and pool area. Each room also had a private bath with a toilet, a sink, and a private shower, each housed in stone-walled rooms.
A stream flowed down the center of the baths with parts diverted in different places, presumably for different reasons. The water smelled sweet and clean, as did the candles and the many plants growing in huge planters throughout the space.
A loud snort followed by a grumble and a swishing sound echoed off the back wall of the cave. Gavin walked toward the stream to get a better look around a vine-covered privacy screen.
Ladon stood waist-deep in a large pool, a long-handled sponge or brush—Gavin couldn’t tell from where he watched a good fifty feet downstream—in his hand and what looked like a jug of baby shampoo in his other. A few feet away, in the center of the pool, Brother-Dragon snorted again before dipping his head under the water.
“I can’t scrub your ridges if you keep moving away,” Ladon said.
My tail itches, flashed across Brother-Dragon’s hide.
“I could get the salt scrub.” Ladon pointed the brush at the lip of the pool.
On the helicopter, Sister-Dragon had wanted to practice hide-speaking with him, but he’d been too nauseated.
Gavin squinted at Brother-Dragon. His interpretations hadn’t been so detailed before Daisy fused the glass into his rib. Nor had he been able to read a dragon from fifty feet away.
He walked along the edge of the stream toward the Dracos, hoping they wouldn’t mind if he paid a visit.
Gavin approaches, flashed along Dragon’s back. Then he raised his hands out of the pool. Hello, Gavin, he signed. You are well? The glass does not bother you? Most of his dragon-language also wiggled from his crest toward his tail.
“I’m good. Thanks.” He pointed at the “words” now dispersing into new, non-language symbols just under Dragon’s ridges, in the middle of his back. “You don’t see that?”
Ladon set the brush on the lip of the pool. “See what?”
I believe Gavin hears me now.
“I still see what you’re saying.” He pointed again. “It’s a lot clearer than it was on the bus. A lot clearer.”
“Do you think it’s a side effect of the glass Aiden Blake put in your rib?” Ladon hopped onto the ledge and grabbed a bright white towel off a chair. Water dripped from his black swim trunks.
I am still dirty.
Ladon’s eyes did the looking-at-distant-objects thing they did when he spoke to the beast.
But my tail itches. The beast held out the ridged tip of his tail.
Gavin looked between Ladon and the beast. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your bath.”
Ladon set down the towel before squatting next to the pool. “Give me your tail.”
Dragon dutifully extended his tail and placed the tip on the edge of the pool. Ladon sat and dangled his legs into the water before picking up a small jar of what looked like homemade scrub.
“We’re almost done.” Ladon patted the beast’s ridges. “The cold makes him itch and his tail is usually the worst.”
Gavin carefully lowered himself down cross-legged next to Ladon, to watch. Neither the man nor the beast was acting correctly. His revelation that he could read the beast better didn’t seem to faze Ladon. Dragon didn’t seem to care. They both just seemed tired.
“How are the two of you doing?” Not that he expected Ladon to answer. The entire three months Ladon, Dragon, and Rysa lived in Daisy’s house, Gavin had been the extra kid hanging around. The other person Ladon needed to look after. Gavin knew how Ladon felt. Daisy and Rysa knew it, too. But the beast counted him as friend, so at least he had that.
A slight, tired smile appeared on Ladon’s face. “This is what we need.” He held up the scrub jar before rubbing a glob between two ridges. “The actions that are ours.”
Dragon nodded his agreement.
“What happened to you two?” No one had told Gavin anything beyond that Cordelia had brought Ladon to the hotel and there had been an energy flare when the man and the beast reconnected—and when Aiden Blake vanished.
Ladon stopped rubbing, but he didn’t look up. “I had someone else in my head.”
He’d carried around a ghost? Every time Gavin turned around, he got an upgrade of some type or another. Then to have Amir insinuate that he might be imperial in some way…. He understood being confused.
And yanked out of his life.
Ladon had a lot more life to be yanked out of. Centuries and centuries of life that belonged not only to him, but also to the beast. And then to have someone hijack it by camping in his head?
“Is he still there?” How could Gavin possibly help? His only option was to ask questions and consult with Dr. Torres when he arrived.
Ladon looked up. His eyes were his correct golden-brown, and they glimmered with the correct, almost-uncanny shimmer he’d always carried. His hair needed a trim, but it was still Ladon’s waves. His skin looked correct also, as did his body posture.
“You saw Aiden Blake vanish, did you not?” Ladon’s body looked correct, but his tone told Gavin that he didn’t feel the correctness of his body.
“Yes.” Aiden had looked confused just before he vanished, as one would expect from someone who was about to implode.
“Do you see any ghosts now?”
&nb
sp; He feels haunted, Gavin thought. I would, too. “No, I do not,” he said. “I see you. I see Dragon and see his language.” He glanced around. “I don’t see anyone who does not belong here.”
Ladon nodded again. His shoulders slumped and his eyes did his flat stare. Dragon flashed Yes, Human.
Did Gavin say something stupid? The last thing he wanted was to make the situation worse, especially three days before the man’s wedding. “You need anything?” He glanced around again, suddenly acutely aware that they were alone in the baths. No Rysa. No AnnaBelinda and Sister-Dragon, no Derek. “Do you want me to get someone?”
Ladon chuckled. “We are fine, Dr. Bower.”
They looked fine, but Gavin’s gut told him otherwise. “It’s not like we have textbooks on how to treat possession. Actual possession, not the dissociative kind.”
Ladon chuckled again. Dragon flashed, but too quickly, and Gavin missed his meaning.
“He says you should return to your room and rest. Sister and Sister-Dragon plan to take you and Daisy on a tour this evening.” Ladon rinsed his hands in the water. “Daisy’s father and Rysa’s parents will be here soon.”
The wedding party will be complete, except for Mr. Sisto.
Gavin’s gut lurched. He’d only met the man once, but it still stung. Wherever Aiden Blake disappeared to, he needed to die.
Ladon patted him on the shoulder, then stood. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck before picking up his towel again. “Go rest.”
He hid his face in the fabric for longer than Gavin liked. “We will return to Rysa.”
Lie! screamed through Gavin’s head. “When?”
Dragon crawled out of the pool. I am clean, he flashed, then he signed, We must rest.
Ladon stared at the water cascading over the rocks along the far wall. “Rest. Yes.”
“Daisy should be back soon. Do you want us to make you something to eat?” Gavin wasn’t supposed to exert himself, but cooking usually didn’t include hauling boxes or mattresses.
Men And Beasts (Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Book 6) Page 21
