Sudden, blinding pain ratcheted up his spine. It spread out into all his organs. His insides felt as if someone had reached in through his bellybutton and squeezed.
A guttural hoot-call erupted from his throat. He dropped the dog. She scurried away, her little paws scraping on the lawn and her fear popping from her mouth as high-pitched yips.
The pain from the kick ballooned through Gavin’s gut and he tried not to vomit. Tried just to gag. But it didn’t work.
He puked onto the woman’s face.
Bits of his peanut butter sandwich lunch dropped onto her cheeks. All the water he drank after leaving the Auditory Clinic, now tinged slightly green, splashed into her eyes. The rancid, acidic stench of vomit hit his nose and the nose of the dog, and filled the nostrils of the woman.
And once again, she screamed some weird, nasty wave. But this time, it wasn’t the do-what-I-say it had been before.
This time, she told him to ‘die.’
Die. He heard it in her voice as clearly as he would have seen her sign it. Stop your heart and die, punk. Stop breathing and die, shithead. Stop being alive.
The corgi yipped and circled in the grass next to the woman’s head.
The woman snorted as she wiped his puke off her face.
Numb, Gavin fell to the side. Was his heart slowing? Speeding up? Did he just have an aneurism? He peered into his life from the outside. Did she rupture something when she kneed him in the kidney? His body died but it wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t tell it to die. Why was he dying?
A kick hit the side of the woman’s head. A full-on kick to her ear that came in fast and snapped her face to the side.
She gasped. The ‘die’ vanished. Gavin’s systems returned to autonomous control and his body righted itself with such force he sucked in a massive volume of air. His vision brightened and the world’s colors intensified. The red of Daisy’s bag gleamed. The grass turned the most luscious green he’d ever seen.
Scents of vomit and anger swirled around inside his nose. The little dog cowered.
His body swung from ‘die’ to fully alive.
Daisy hauled him to his feet. “… run!” She looked pale, as if the bad monster’s bad voice had affected her as much as it had him.
His body screamed No! He would not abandon another female because she commanded him to run away.
She blinked and her mouth opened and closed. “I’m sorry my enthralling is still affecting you!” She pushed him behind her and kicked the woman again. “It was supposed to make you healable! I swear that’s all!”
A new, concentrated wave of ‘die’ rolled from the monster-woman’s face.
Daisy gagged.
The little dog leaped.
Small dog jaws latched onto the side of the thief’s face and small dog teeth ripped into her cheek. The woman screamed and the wave focused at Daisy ceased. Gavin barreled into the woman, slamming her to the dirt as the little dog dropped off, ripping off a chunk of doughy flesh.
Wiggling, weird, not-bleeding flesh. The wound immediately sealed.
Gavin lunged backward, his head swiveling between the panting Daisy and the thing with the unreal flesh. He remained low, squatting out of immediate reach of the thieving female monster, but close enough that he saw her face—and the vanishing wound—clearly.
The human part of his mind had, up to now, come up with plausible explanations. He’d made up excuses that all fell squarely within the realm of possibility. But the woman’s clay-like flesh was not possible.
Not at all possible.
The monster slapped away the corgi. Her eyes narrowed to slits. Her cheeks contracted and caved in. Her lips lost their color but he still read her words. She looked as if all the bad in her world was their fault.
She pointed a hooked finger at Gavin. “Stupid fucking normal,” he read on her lips. “Pavlovich thinks he can fuck with us? I’m going to rip his little girl into ribbons and feed her to the fucking Burners.”
“Guy with the hearing aids!”
Gavin should turn around so he could understand Daisy’s words, but his instincts said not to take his eyes off the unreal thieving female.
“…run!” Daisy wanted him to leave her alone with the monster.
Alone to be dragged away by crazy. Like his other female, Rysa. Like his brother when that car snapped off his leg. Both times, he hadn’t been able to fight off the harm to someone he cared about.
A roar ground out of his throat, raw and painful, loud and vicious. Do no harm swirled around his heart and his lungs, an oath he planned to take one day.
Gavin slammed his shoulder into the monster’s breastbone. She coughed, shock registering in her eyes, and they smashed into the dirt again.
Gavin’s entire body bounced. His right hearing aid dropped out of his ear.
A half-world of silence descended. Again.
More remembered images crackled through his head: Breathing. The skin of his cheek rubbing against the upholstery of a car seat. Daisy luring him through the door of the house he shared with his roommates.
All the surprise of the past week—all the panic and the stomach-knotting, the overwhelming sense of smallness, the fear that monsters much bigger than himself lurked in the shadows—roared out through his fists.
He pummeled the thief. Again. And again.
And again.
Daisy’s hands cupped his cheeks. Words formed on her lips: “The Fate didn’t tell me this would happen.” She looked sorry. And frightened.
Gavin hooted, his lips rounding. Until her mouth latched onto his and she breathed out the same thing she’d breathed before. The thing that made his body clear of fire and violent intent.
A siren screamed in his half-world still full of reverberations and enhanced vibrations.
“Cops,” he whispered. Somehow, he managed to label what he heard. Somehow, rationality harnessed the instinct.
Below him, the monster groaned, unbruised but rattled. Next to his thigh, the corgi sniffed at his dropped aid. And next to his shoulders, the woman he was supposed to help curled her hand around his arm, obviously intent on helping him.
He scooped up his hearing aid.
Daisy whistled to the little dog. “We need to go. I can’t enthrall people.” The apology in her eyes deepened. “Usually. I don’t know what I did to you.”
Gavin shouldered his pack and she shouldered her red bag. “What about her?” He pointed at the groaning monster.
“Leave her.”
What would she do to the cops? “But—”
“This will escalate if we stay.” Daisy gripped his elbow. “She’ll be gone before anybody finds her.”
When the cop car drove by, Daisy put on a happy show, laughing and kissing his cheek.
“Act normal,” she said.
Shock settled in, making him feel as enthralled as he had when the monster blasted him. He nodded and walked down the street next to her, doing his best to remember what “normal” meant.
Chapter Nine
Next to Gavin, Daisy continued to smile and act “normal.”
“… text say?” Though he could tell by the pressure of her fingers around his palm as she fake-held his hand that she was as unsettled by the fight as he was.
His human brain worked again, and he could talk. The extra-saturated colors of the world had shifted back to tolerable after Daisy breathed into his mouth. Noises once again came with comprehension, sights and smells with understanding. His lizard-brain receded back into the recesses of his head, where it should be.
“Tell me what you did to me.” He didn’t mean to sound accusatory, but it came out that way anyway.
Daisy let go of his hand. “I have abilities like that woman. Different abilities.” She frowned and looked away. “…work on animals only…”
“I need to see your face to read your lips.” This time, he checked the irritation in his voice.
Daisy’s face flattened out and the only word that popped into his head to describe
her expression was professional. “The Fate told me to find you. She said that you’re ‘future important.’ Like me.”
The professionalism on her face and in her posture wavered, but didn’t falter. She kept walking. “She said to enthrall you with ‘be an animal.’ That I’d be able to heal your reaction to the Burner.”
“Burner?”
“The crazy guy who dragged off your friend.”
Gavin tried not to yell, but it didn’t work. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Hey!” Daisy stepped back from him.
The woman he was supposed to help had just held up her hands and stepped away like he frightened her. Like he was some kind of stalker.
“I’m sorry!” She was the last person on Earth he wanted to frighten. Not because she had information he needed, or because only douchebags scared people they just met, or because she was hands-down the most beautiful woman he’d ever talked to.
Because it raked his guts.
She stepped close again, her eyes narrow. “Are you still feeling effects? Enthrallings wear off. Unless…” Her eyes widened.
“What?” How could this possibly get weirder?
Daisy looked down at her feet moving rapidly over the sidewalk before looking back at him, her eyes huge. “Maybe I made it permanent when I healed you?”
Yelling wanted to happen again. A lot of yelling. But it came out a whisper. “What the hell is happening to me?”
Daisy squeezed his elbow. “I will explain everything. About enthrallers. About Burners. About your friend, too. But we need to get out of the open.”
Gavin stopped walking. “Why?”
Daisy pinched the bridge of her nose. “Because there might be more of them around. Because I don’t know who they are. Because I’m not sure what’s up with you.” She pointed first at his left ear, then his right. “Fates have something to do with the tech in your ears.”
She kept saying Fates. “Like gods?” She probably meant some super-secret spy code. Spies liked ominous-sounding names.
Daisy yanked him up the hill toward Cleveland Avenue, the main street bordering campus that separated the college buildings from the residential area on the other side. “Tell me exactly what the text said.”
“I’m not to attempt to contact Rysa or the texter will kill me,” Gavin said. “She’s safe. And I’m supposed to help someone named Daisy.” His own fingers involuntarily tightened and relaxed in and out of a fist.
The corgi padded along the sidewalk in front of them as happy as any pup could be, her little head high and her stubby tail wagging. She behaved herself quite well, considering how terrified she’d been moments earlier. No running off. No barking. The corgi seemed to think the worst had passed and they had a lovely summer evening ahead of them.
Daisy, though, pulled out her phone and held it up. “… text this morning… father… while in labs.” Her hand tightened around the device and her knuckles turned white. “Didn’t… time to respond.”
When they stopped at the street corner to wait for the light, she tucked it away again, but looked directly at him. “It said I was to call Dad.” She nodded back toward the clinic. “Something’s wrong at home.”
“Why don’t you call now?”
Daisy pinched her eyes closed for a beat. “I’ve been talking to my dad all week and it’s never dawned on me to check up on you.” She looked up at the sky. “Some voice enthrallers are powerful enough to enthrall over the phone.”
Did she think her family had been invaded by people like that monster?
Suddenly, a sense of drowning washed over Gavin. An overwhelming inability to breathe. Everything that had happened up until he saw the thief morph had been abstract, mostly because he hadn’t seen. Or heard. Or touched. It could all be coincidence or drugs or God knows what. But the look on Daisy’s face clearly said that reality had just dropped on her and the people she trusted.
“I can’t go home until I know what’s happening and I won’t know what’s happening until I talk to someone who is the person they say they are.” She blinked and pinched her mouth shut. “But we need to make sure you’re safe. I can, at least, do that.”
Cars rumbled by on Cleveland Avenue, all sounding different and all in need of some sort of tune-up. A low din rose from the Student Center, up the hill and a good distance back from the intersection. And somewhere not too far away, a different, larger dog barked.
Daisy turned toward the street. “So the… threatened you.” She shook her head and looked up at the sky again. “then… about how… help me?”
“Lips. Reading.” He pointed at his eyes.
The light changed and Daisy nodded, but didn’t turn her face toward him. They crossed the street together, side by side, the corgi in front of them. The little dog seemed satisfied with her new masters. Gavin shook his head.
Guess the dog sticks around, he thought.
Daisy whistled when they stopped on the opposite corner. The little dog sauntered up and sat her butt directly on Daisy’s foot.
This time when she spoke, she did square her shoulders to Gavin. “Let’s answer your questions,” she said in a matter of fact, defeated way. Nothing about how she held her body changed, but the underlying tone of her voice carried her emotions.
“You’re like that monster?” Gavin immediately regretted his words. How could she be like the thief? He was supposed to help her.
And at this point, the only part of this entire situation Gavin had any control over was whether he helped or not. Or whether he ran off like a scared toddler.
The defeat in Daisy’s stance vanished. A new posture locked her shoulders and hardened the beautiful contours of her face. She looked as if she wanted to either sigh or face-palm.
Gavin immediately recognized her annoyance.
His brother described it as “irksomeness”—being irked by having to answer, yet again, the same question posed by every single naïve person to someone, like Gavin’s brother, who wore a prosthetic leg. The constant blinking in shock and terror followed by the inevitable “How do you walk?” Or, more recently for his brother, “Do you have PTSD too?” because people assumed he was a veteran and that all veterans had PTSD.
Gavin, with his hearing loss, rarely got questions. Most people stared wide-eyed and yelled while exaggerating their facial expressions.
Which, for him, caused the same amount of irksomeness. And Daisy’s posture suggested his “Are you like that monster?” was a stupid question she’d been asked too many times in her life.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m clueless about spies and shit. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
She blinked and her lips thinned. “You didn’t know.” She shrugged but she also smirked. “Spies, huh?” A laugh bubbled up and she shook her head. “You think I’m a spy?”
She shook her head again and pointed up the street. “My house is this way.”
When she turned away, the corgi fell in alongside, as did Gavin. Daisy seemed to understand that walking a few steps ahead meant he wouldn’t be able to understand her if she spoke, so they hurried up the street in silence.
She lived in the swankier area of the neighborhood. The part with the giant rehabbed Craftsman bungalows and their upgraded interiors. A couple of the better-paid professors lived back here. The ones with patents and outside contracts with large corporations.
Daisy’s house sat on a well-groomed but naturalized lot, with native plants and a lot of butterflies. The back of the house was probably the same, though the alley seemed to take up a lot of room. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had a large outbuilding of some type back there, such as an old stable that had been refurbished into a garage. The echoes flowing between her house and the neighbor’s suggested several other walls for noise to bounce between.
She pointed toward the door, but didn’t speak. As she started up the steps, though, noise flickered from the house itself—dogs. Two. Both large and moving fast toward the front door. Gavin picked out
paws on wood floors and happy canine mini-woofs.
Another memory burst behind his eyes: A German shepherd sitting on a car seat next to him, his big head cocked to the side, while graceful, feminine hands signed Don’t pee on my seats.
The German shepherds he’d been dreaming about—remembering—belonged to Daisy.
Overwhelmed did not begin to describe how Gavin felt. Irked was nothing compared to this. He’d been forcing down his sense of overwhelmed every time it reared up, telling himself some story about spies. Or that no one was going to kill him. That threats were just that: threats. That the software in his ears was a happy mistake.
That the thief was a metaphorical monster and not a literal one.
“What happened when Rysa disappeared?” He should follow Daisy up the steps and through her door. Face the two giant dogs again. Get some answers.
But the adrenaline of the fight finished ebbing away into the sweet summer air and overwhelmed dropped over Gavin’s mind and body like someone peed on him from above.
Daisy stopped halfway to the front door. She slowly turned around and, as if understanding that she was too far away for him to read her lips well, lifted her hands.
I not meet Rysa, she signed. I know she has issues.
Gavin nodded. “She does.”
I was told lies. The defeat returned to her shoulders. I think fight was with the people lying.
“Did they text me?” How many factions were there?
No, Daisy signed. She looked up at the sky. “I would… into my house… known.”
Still confused, Gavin walked up the stairs.
“She is safe.” Daisy continued to look up. “But I feel complicit. If you are this… frantic, how is she handling this?” She closed her eyes and motioned for him to follow her into the house.
Gavin had brushed aside how Rysa was dealing with all this, mostly because she wasn’t here and he couldn’t directly see her panic and confusion. He just went about his business hoping that the texted She is safe wasn’t a lie.
But Daisy just said that lying had been—and probably still was—happening. And all of a sudden, Gavin’s overwhelmed feeling spun up into a whole new crashing wave.
Bonds Broken & Silent (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 4) Page 25
