This, now, the weird not-hot, not-cold, disembodied feeling, felt the exact opposite of that VR headset. Someone had pulled the bag over his body and cinched it around his neck. He saw the real world, but he was not feeling it.
Or thinking it. Daisy looked lovely up there, with her legs dangling over the side. So sweet and tasty. So mine.
Gavin wasn’t making his body smile. Gavin wasn’t leering at Daisy. Gavin did not have control, or his own thoughts, no matter what he saw.
“Derek,” he croaked. “Something’s wrong.” Someone was happening to him. “Ai…” Why couldn’t he say the motherfucker’s name?
You’re in me, aren’t you? he thought. He’d been invaded. Aiden Blake was controlling Gavin’s body like he was the Fate’s avatar in the real world.
Get out! he yelled in his head. He pushed, but he didn’t know what to push against. Where were the strings Aiden used to pull Gavin’s muscles? Why the hell did he not have some awareness of the mechanics of what was happening to his body?
All of Derek’s joviality, all his happy support of Gavin’s intent to ask Daisy to marry him, all his calm, turned into a posture and expression identical to the take-no-shit vigilance he showed the first moment he saw Vivicus faking Ladon on the floor of Daisy’s house. The same body posture. The same focus, but now it was aimed at Gavin.
Derek swiped the hammer from Gavin’s hand. “Tell me exactly what is happening to you.”
“I don’t…” He didn’t know. How could he know? He didn’t have control.
Someone snickered in his ear—or near his ear. Or inside his ear. Or—
A hand clamped around his heart. A hand. In his chest. Around his heart. Squeezing—and all his senses flittered away from his lack of control. His vision became edited as if someone else now decided what his body needed to pay attention to, as did his hearing.
All he felt was that hand around his heart.
A woman shrieked. He heard calls for Dr. Torres. Someone else said something about getting Rysa and…
The channel of the VR he’d been plunged into changed. Gavin was on top of the Dragon’s Rock again, sitting on the granite, but not in a copter. He sat between Rysa and Brother-Dragon as if he was on the bus as the beast’s seizure patterns jumped and zagged across his hide and inside the velocity of the universe.
“Hold, young one,” the beast said, his voice neither male nor female. “Stay with us.”
Brother-Dragon? he thought.
Seizures. Was he having a seizure? He must be seizing and his brain must be trying to stitch together memories and hopes and wishes the way it would a dream.
Dr. Torres had a hand on Gavin’s chest. Mr. Pavlovich leaned over him as well. When did they come into the garden? Heat flared but the squeezing did not stop. It didn’t let up. It—
Another woman screamed. Not Daisy, he thought. Daisy’s right here. The screaming woman is far away.
And the healer, the only person capable of stopping the damage done by the evil invading Gavin’s body, lifted his hands off Gavin’s chest.
“Mira?” Sandro said. And then he was gone, running back toward his wife, and the front of the cave.
Aiden…
Aiden found the boy distasteful enough to kill him now. He’d made Daisy a promise, though. One involving brutality and showmanship. The boy was to die in a blaze of public glory.
He only needed to twist the force lines swirling outward from the glass. If he coiled the energy tighter and tighter, he would literally squeeze the life out of Gavin Bower’s little boy heart.
The damned healer interfered. Pushing against the gale force power of Sandro Torres’s ability felt like leaning into a tornado. Aiden cinched; the good doctor uncinched. Aiden unraveled; the doctor knitted. But unlike the Shifter, Aiden saw the power he manipulated, which made the manipulation much, much easier.
Yet he needed to mind his to-dos. He still needed to post his how-to on the forehead of this child in the what-was-is-will-be. His past self picked up the instructions last night when he future-saw this moment.
Aiden pulled back his hand. “Like this,” he told himself, and placed his dragon-taloned hand over the glass splinter. “Connect them first. Be patient.”
He’d started last night, while the boy slept. He’d snuggled close and wrapped his hand around the glass-infused rib. Force lines now echoed back and forth between the talon and the glass.
The kid coughed. Aiden pushed harder against the doctor’s healing. He’d move on to Pavlovich when he finished here. There were a lot of other people he could kill publicly. Perhaps he would force the dragons to reveal themselves, then kill one of them in bloody, gladiatorial combat out in the open, on the main streets of one of the nearby cities. Denver, perhaps. Maybe he could lure one to New York. Oh, the possibilities. A dragon death would break the internet for sure.
Aiden chuckled.
Near the cave’s vault door, Mira Torres screamed. The doctor pulled away from the boy.
The shell of Sandro Torres’s power, his ability, lifted away from the kid’s chest. Aiden’s hand snapped down onto Gavin’s heart.
The kid coughed again.
By the door on the other side of the kitchen walls, Mira Torres screamed again. Her seer flared outward as well, a sword of present-seeing that pierced all the way to the gazebo and nicked the back of Aiden’s head.
He flinched. His hand lifted off Gavin’s chest and he swatted at his neck as if he’d just been stung by a bee.
“What is your problem, woman?” he yelled. Bitches, he thought.
At the door, AnnaBelinda swung a fist at Mira’s head. When Aiden looked back, Pavlovich had his hand over the boy’s heart. The one with the splinter.
That piece of glass, that slim splinter Aiden had placed in the man’s flesh, reneged on its duty to act as an antenna for his purposes. It sucked away the connections Aiden spent all night making.
The force lines he’d been using to crush the boy’s heart now wrapped around the glass in Pavlovich’s hand. The connections, the flow, the echoes moved between the interloper and Pavlovich instead of between Aiden and the kid.
Gavin gasped.
“Motherfucker!” He kicked at Pavlovich’s head.
He’d connect to both of them. Squeeze both their hearts while Daisy watched. She was right here, right at the boy’s side, her perfect amber eyes full of all the emotions she should be feeling for Aiden.
He slapped her ungrateful bitch face. Nothing happened.
Mira Torres’s seer again snapped him like a bee sting. He howled and spun to look but the damned kitchen area was between him and the commotion. How was he to know how many bitches needed slapping if he couldn’t see? There had to be—
The talon in his hand took him to Anna-Dragon. She yanked him away from the boy and from Pavlovich. Yanked by the damned disorienting dragon. “Bitch!” he yelled, and punched her dragon snout.
She reared up, her giant body cresting over the top of the open vault door. A flame burst from her dragon mouth.
“Did I do that?” Did the beast respond to his touch? Could he hurt a dragon? Suddenly, the need to hurt the kid subsumed under all the possible dragon damage he could cause. Denver? New York? “Where do you want to die, you ugly dinosaur?”
Aiden readied his foot to grind his heel into one of her giant hand-claws.
Someone he could not see or sense in new-space ran around the flailing beast. Whoever moved by was nothing more than a blank space lacking not only visual and physical information, but also the energy flow and velocity that poured off everyone here.
A hole in the velocity of the universe just ducked under the dragon’s talons.
AnnaBelinda’s hurricane-force Dracae power distorted as it entered the blank, as did Mira’s bee sting. But neither power changed shape or trajectory. They moved on through as if he looked at an image that had been edited to appear as if no one was there.
Edited. Disrupted. Masked.
Whoever ran int
o the cave through the open vault door carried that damned ring.
Chapter Forty-Four
AnnaBelinda…
Anna ran out of the lower library workroom, Dragon ahead and Sandro and Dmitri behind. Daisy screamed in the garden. Dragon followed Mira toward the vault door.
Tactically, the men and Daisy were most vulnerable to an unseen attack by Aiden Blake, but Mira ran for their home’s door.
Anna pointed at the gazebo. “Healers! Stay together.” If they stayed together, they could combine their healing abilities and do the most good to counteract any attack by Aiden. “Go!”
Dragon reared up in front of the vault door, Mira Torres in her grip.
Her beast set the Fate on the ledge containing the door opening mechanism.
Mira Torres was about to open their door again.
Again. And her dragon was helping.
Dragon! Anna pushed.
Distortions and blazing heat rolled through her connection to her beast. Dragon flailed not only with her limbs but with her mind. She called to her brother; she called to Derek. She flooded the entrance area not only with pulses from her hide, but also from her energy.
He will not take Derek, Dragon pushed. He will not take Gavin.
Who? Anna pushed even though she knew. Daisy screamed Aiden’s name. Dmitri yelled it. But if Dragon said it too, Anna would know for certain.
A massive, detailed cathedral of murder and pain rolled off Dragon, one filled with memories of the original Draki Prime and the three children they took in.
Aiden Blake, Dragon pushed.
The same savage fear that had rolled off Dragon out at the Rock welled up and burst like a blood blister.
Anna squinted.
A hiss rose from the vault door’s hydraulics. Mechanisms tumbled. Their front door opened.
Adrestia squeezed through and into Anna’s home.
Adrestia, the War Baby, the woman Anna should have put down in the hotel parking lot. The Fate who murdered Timothy and Daniel. A person who should not have known the location of the cave, much less how to get in.
Dragon moved between Adrestia and the open door. The Fate looked over her shoulder, then pressed her hand against the temple of the Prsaesagio-provided, high-tech glasses.
“Mira!” Adrestia yelled. “Where is Aiden Blake?”
Mira leaned against the wall of the ledge above the door. “He’s here.” Her seer snapped outward toward the garden. “I think he’s with the men.” She pointed toward the gazebo.
“You let Adrestia into my home?” Anna yelled. Faustus hadn’t been enough. That Burner who damaged the Dragon’s Window hadn’t been enough. Mira had to let a War Baby into Anna’s home.
Mira was Rysa’s mother and she let a War Baby into her daughter’s home? “Why, Mira?”
Brother and Brother-Human come, her beast pushed. I am to tell you not to harm Adrestia or Rysa’s mother.
Why? Anna pushed. She couldn’t hold back the need to scream at her dragon, or the need to throw traitor at the beast. Dragon should have known better. Dragon should have had Anna’s back in this. Twenty-three centuries and her beast breaks now? What is wrong with you? Anna pushed-yelled.
Aiden Blake will not harm my family. Dragon slammed the door.
The entire structure tremored, the metal ringing, and the vibration spread through the cave’s floor. It climbed Anna’s legs and into her pelvis.
We need Adrestia’s help to stop him.
“We do not!” Anna slapped her beast’s hind leg. Addy would cause more harm than good. The War Babies always caused more harm than good. All the Jani caused harm, except Rysa, but Rysa was not here. Only Anna and her traitorous beast.
“I will gut you, Mira of the Jani!” Anna yelled. If Mira had been on the same level, Anna would have broken the Fate’s jaw. She might yet. Scaling the wall to the ledge took no effort.
“Dracas.” Adrestia stepped between Anna and the wall, and raised her hands to indicate that she meant no harm. “Would I have allowed you to leave at the hotel if I meant you ill will?”
All Anna’s anger, all the shunted, displayed rage and sorrow, all her centuries, flared into her vision. “I would have killed you before you attempted to harm me.” I will kill you now, she thought.
This ended. All of it ended. Anna would rip down the cave with her own bare hands so that just this once, just this one time, she and her child could find a moment of safety.
“That’s not Addy!” Mira yelled.
“AnnaBelinda!” Adrestia held out her hand. She wore a huge, gaudy gold ring on her index finger. “I found the ring after I left you. It called to me. It should allow me to—”
“I will rip your skin from your skull, Fate,” Anna growled. She’d been here before, at the crux of a rampage. Would she open her fury? Would she lay waste to these Fates?
She snatched Adrestia by the neck. “I will feed you to Burners because you lie.” She nodded toward Mira. “I should have killed you centuries ago, Jani Fate.”
Mira raised her hands. Her seer flared toward Anna, but she didn’t look at Anna. She looked behind Dragon, at the door. “She’s about to lose control,” Mira whispered.
“You wear that ring to trick Mira the way you have tried to trick me,” Anna growled.
Do you want a rampage to be your babe’s birth legacy?
Anna let go of Adrestia and staggered back as if hit by a baseball bat. She had not thought those words, nor did her Dragon push them to her. The rampage rage suddenly ramped down. It did not vanish, but it lessened as if someone overrode Anna’s emotions.
Or enthralled her.
She looked around. “Who…?”
The thought dropped away from her mind.
Human! Dragon screamed. The same fear the beast manifested at the Rock when Dmitri landed now manifested as she looked out over the kitchen at the gazebo. The same sense of loss. The same pitching of her dragon cathedrals toward a what-if she could not control.
Except her fear no longer centered on the people at the gazebo. It had moved to herself.
“Aiden Blake is here.” Anna peered around them, but it did no good. “Dragon senses him.”
Was he next to Anna? What if he did the same to her that he did to Gavin? What would happen to Derek and her beast? To her? To the child?
Anna wiggled her fingers at Adrestia. “Give me the ring.” The damned thing disrupted. If she had the ring, he wouldn’t see her coming.
“As soon as I remove it from my finger he will know I’m here. He’s figured out how to affect real-space. He will kill everyone if he’s not stopped.”
“We know this already, Fate.” They always spoke many words without speaking any meaning. Damned Fates, she thought.
“Anna, please. It’s why I’m here. I’m the bait.” Adrestia banged her head against Anna’s shoulder.
“Do not touch—”
“Anna! She wants out and I cannot hold her much longer. We must do this now. I helped Daisy! I help—”
“Give me the damned ring, Fate!”
A resonant male voice boomed from behind Anna. “Mira?” But Sandro Torres stopped as if he’d hit a wall. Stopped speaking, stopped moving, his mouth open and his eyes wide. “How…”
Daisy rounded the kitchen wall right behind Sandro. She, too, stopped speaking, stopped moving, her eyes just as wide and her mouth just as open.
Dragon? Did her beast push something to Sandro? He saw images from the beasts almost as well as Rysa. Her dragon did not answer.
Daisy shook as if resetting, but then she sniffed the air and tipped her head as if the resetting did not take.
The bloodhound enthraller smelled something Anna did not. “Do you smell him, Daisy? Aiden Blake?” She stepped away from Adrestia. “Dragon senses him.”
Dragon? she pushed again.
Overlapping, rapid-fire dragon language flooded Anna’s mind. It flowed by, aimed outward and toward her approaching brother. Anna sensed her dragon’s concept of Human’s Ma
te, of Derek, and to a lesser extent, Rysa. Loss reverberated through the concept, as did the beast’s rich and intricate concept of family. Surprise echoed through all of it, as did Legion.
“I…” Adrestia slapped the side of her head. “Stay down!”
“Who?” Anna said. The Fate was making less sense than her beast. “Is Blake here? You have the ring. Use it!”
Daisy took a step closer. “You found the ring?”
Adrestia slapped her head again. “I didn’t see that he would take it from you. I felt her surfacing and I thought it would be safe with you but by the next time I regained control you were living in Branson and it was gone.”
Anna pushed Mira toward Sandro. “Go to Gavin! Stay together. If Aiden returns, you’ll both be there to help fight him off.”
Daisy inhaled deeply and her nose did the slight twitch all Shifters did when they recognize calling scents.
Enthraller, Anna thought. Did a class one enthraller come through the door with Adrestia? Was that why her need to rampage suddenly dropped?
Did the enthraller speak to her?
But only a few class one enthrallers could trick Anna, and those who could knew better than to try. She could count on one hand the people capable of manipulating her. Andreas, yes, for sure, but Andreas was dead. “Who—”
Daisy shot her a very clear Quiet look, which was followed by an echoing wave from Dragon.
A clear, tightly targeted burst of ‘friend’ followed.
This enthraller wanted to stay hidden. Anna threw Daisy a look that said I understand.
Adrestia held out her fist and pointed with the ring as if divining for water. “He’ll go where I am.”
Mira’s seer pinged. She nodded once and pulled Sandro toward the garden at the same time as Dragon shot a massive, high-powered burst toward the upper reservoir. Sandro cringed.
Next to Anna, Adrestia’s body stiffened.
Men And Beasts (Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Book 6) Page 28
