by Bonds (epub)
“Don’t let the dog bite them! Their blood will kill her.” The doctor dusted glass off his shoulder. “It’ll explode. In her mouth.”
Whatever their blood would do must be bad enough to make a doctor shudder like someone terrified by a horrific scene. “Dawnstar! Come!” Daisy slapped her leg.
The dog stood her ground, growling again at the Burner.
Parts of Daisy’s body tightened up. Her neck, the top of her shoulders, her ears. Parts that only cringed when fear locked up her brain.
She didn’t want to lose her dog. Dawn was all she had left of her mom and if the animal’s head exploded, everything would be gone. All of Daisy’s living, breathing connections to family would vaporize into a puff of gore.
“Dawnstar!” Daisy yelled. “Come! Now!”
The dog barked, her hackles up, but she backed toward Daisy and away from the Burner.
Daisy’s visual perception of the Burners changed. They all looked sharper, faster. Deadlier. “They want to kill us. They didn’t at first. I think they were more curious than anything else. But now they want to play with their food.”
The doctor nodded. “The Fate would not have seen the Burners’ behavior. She didn’t know.” His fingers tapped the asphalt. “Though she should have guessed this would happen.”
“What do we do?” What could they possibly do? Dawn couldn’t attack. If they cut one of the ghouls, it would explode. Couldn’t touch one either, without getting burned.
“We run.”
The Burners chanted “Run! Run! Run!”
Dawn backed against Daisy, her doggie butt pressed up against her new master’s shoulder. Fear wafted off the dog in equal doses with aggression and protectiveness. She snarled both audibly and olfactorily.
Slowly, the doctor stood. He pulled himself to his full, well-over-six-feet height, and pushed out his broad chest. “Go to as public a place as you can.”
The doctor turned his back to her.
They weren’t running together? “How is—”
“Do as I say, Daisy. They will follow me, not you.” He leaned toward her. Leaned right in the same way he did at the clinic when she thought he might kiss her.
He turned around fast and his mouth locked over hers. This time, Daisy knew what to do. She inhaled with all the strength her chest muscles could muster.
The Burner woman who’d tried to touch Dawn clapped and giggled. “He smells soooo tasty!”
The doctor pulled away as fast as he’d leaned forward. Daisy breathed in again and willed whatever he blew into her nose and mouth to take effect.
The car grew distinct in ways she hadn’t noticed before. So did the distances between her and each of the Burners, and between her and the doctor. She saw small movements she hadn’t before. And she felt as if her body understood itself and what to do.
If they ran at an angle around the Burner woman, they would get past. The road was less than two hundred feet away, on the other side of the building.
They could go together.
“Take the dog.” Dr. Torres, the man Daisy was supposed to protect, the man the Fate told her she had to protect, slugged the leader-male with a full-on jab to the face.
The Burner reeled backward, his eyes wide, and hissed like the hit had opened a hole in his balloon of a head. “Shifter boy’s got some life in him!”
The Burner lunged.
Something about Dr. Torres’s scent changed. Her perception of him dimmed the same way it had at the apartment when he pushed past Kobayashi’s men. Daisy smelled ‘don’t pay attention.’
His big hand wrapped around the Burner’s neck and he flung the ghoul at the car. The Burner smacked against the trunk with a loud crunch.
“This way!” Daisy jumped to her feet, ready to run. The boost he blew into her nose allowed her to see what they needed to do, and damn it, she’d make sure he didn’t get hurt.
But the doctor took off, running fast for the field behind the building.
Away from Daisy.
The Burners didn’t laugh or dance or look between the man running away from Daisy and the girl with the dog. They just chased like a cat after a mouse. As if they couldn’t help themselves.
Four of them chased. The woman fascinated by Dawn blinked and grinned at Daisy with her gleaming scalpel-teeth. “Puppy snack for me!”
The remaining Burner sprang at Daisy.
18
Daisy dropped to the lot’s asphalt and rolled under the Burner’s feet. She swung up one arm as the sky came into view and snagged the Burner’s knee.
The Burner gasped and her arms flailed. Daisy yanked down and out, jerking the ghoul’s leg into as unnatural a position as she could manage before she rolled out of reach. A loud squeak burst from the woman’s mouth, riding on what looked like a little cloud of smog, and she teetered toward the open passenger door of the car.
Her head slammed against the window. The door slammed shut and the woman bounced off, staggering backward, her arms once again flailing.
For a second, she looked more like a deranged cartoon character than a real monster. But Daisy scrambled to her feet, her legs already pumping, and ran for the road, Dawn at her side. Letting down her guard would only get her eaten.
The dog bolted by, then circled around Daisy in a wide arc. They both breathed in the evening air, feeling the Burner stench clear and the road smells reappear. Daisy’s boots hit the asphalt, grinding across the gravel. Her arms pumped. Her body did what it needed to do and she’d get to the road where other people drove by and these Burners would back off.
She’d get help. And she’d rescue the doctor.
Dawn settled into shadowing Daisy a few feet back, between her and the terror behind them. She ran silently, not growling or barking, and barely making a noise on the pavement. But Daisy felt her presence.
Thank you, she thought at the dog, even though she knew Dawn couldn’t hear. Or understand. But Daisy wanted to say it anyway.
Two dumpsters in a loading dock on the side of the building blocked her view of the main road, but Daisy heard cars. Smelled exhaust. Felt the slight change in the breeze that accompanied moving vehicles.
She got away from the Burner. Maybe the doctor did the same. Maybe he ran around the other side of the building. They weren’t that isolated. They’d be okay.
Daisy ran by the two dumpsters, one dark blue and smelling slightly burned and dusty, like old piles of cardboard recycling, and one dark green and rotten smelling, like all garbage left in the sun.
Daisy gripped the railing along the loading dock where the dumpsters sat, using it to fling herself toward the front of the building. She moved fast, out from behind a bush, and the road came into view.
Along with the big, black, very expensive SUV blocking the drive into the building’s lot.
She smelled the same cold perfume she’d smelled at her apartment. The high notes of ice. The medium notes of dryness and alcohol. And the faint but real touch-of-mineral salts.
Ethne the semi-dead Fate lurched away from the vehicle the moment Daisy rounded the railing.
And Ethne the Fate threw her very long, very sharp blade.
Daisy twisted right, her hip slamming into the metal along the edge of the loading dock, and the blade nicked her cheek and the edge of her ear.
Burning agony screamed from the slice across the side of her face. Blunt, heavy agony from her hip. She staggered forward, her feet skip-stepping, and teetered to the side.
But Dawn had her. The dog pushed against the throb in her hip.
Daisy buckled forward, her arm around the animal’s neck, and steadied herself. She wouldn’t fall over. She wouldn’t show her pain. And God knew she wasn’t going to let these Fates see her terror.
Another female Fate stood to the side and a little forward of Ethne. Just as tall and just as beautiful as the present-
seer, this Fate stared at Daisy with exactly the same psychopathic asshole expression as the woman who must be her sister. She, too, wore her hair in a smooth, blonde ponytail. The leather jacket over her lanky shoulders was probably the same navy blue color as her sister’s. From where Daisy groaned, they both looked like they’d swathed themselves in dark cocoons of expensive assassin’s wear.
This new female Fate had to be either a past- or a future-seer. Daisy couldn’t tell. But she wasn’t going to assume anything. Not with Fates.
Dawn growled.
“Give us the talisman and we will let you live,” Ethne said. A tiny snarling lip curl flitted over her mouth before it transferred to the other Fate’s face as if it rode on a wave moving through their triad.
She lied. Their cold-eyed stare made it obvious. They were going to kill her no matter what they said.
“I threw it out the window of the car when we were on the freeway.” If they were going to lie, so was Daisy.
Both Fates blinked and both their faces twisted up like they were concentrating.
“No,” the new one said. Her word didn’t give Daisy enough information to tell if she saw the past or the future, but her expression did tell Daisy something as equally important: Concentrating looked like it caused her pain.
Ethne’s neck tightened. “You are nothing more than an ant. Give us what we want and we won’t step on you.”
Her sister pulled a gun from under her jacket. “I will shoot your dog. Spill her puppy brains all over the pavement. Make you talk that way.”
Dawn growled.
“I see how important she’s become to you. The dog dies unless you give up what’s ours in five… four… three…” She cocked the pistol.
The fear resonating inside all of Daisy’s muscles took on a new, distinctive pitch. It started as an inward, specific vibration meant to make her body move to protect itself. Then changed into an outward quiver meant to move her in front of her dog. This animal who, right now, had placed herself between Daisy, a girl she’d literally only thought of as part of her pack for an hour, and a threat the dog knew might kill them both.
Blood trickled down Daisy’s cheek from the cut. It trickled from the wound on her ear. She smelled its hot metallic stench, knowing it wasn’t all that different from what she’d smelled when Ethne murdered Lonestar.
The dog in front of her, with her sleek silver and black shepherd’s fur and her strong shepherd’s muzzle, stood in front of Daisy with her head low and her hackles raised, ready to take that promised bullet. Because she’s a good dog.
And her own blood didn’t matter.
“Wait!” Daisy yelled. She threw her hands into the air palms forward, so the Fates saw she wasn’t holding a weapon. “It’s right here. It’s in my jacket.” She waved a finger at her side.
The little kangaroo waited as a puffy ball wedged into the inner pocket of her lightweight jacket. Daisy patted the fabric over the toy.
Ethne nodded. “Open the jacket. Take it out.”
Daisy stepped out from behind the dog. She moved parallel to the Fates and farther into the lot. Completely out in the open now, she had no protection. But at least they wouldn’t shoot Dawn.
Slowly Daisy pulled open her jacket. A breeze cooled her over-heated body and Daisy sucked it into her lungs, hoping it would cool the fear twisting up her mind. And her gut. And her fingers as they slowly moved into the pocket, for the toy.
On the plane across the ocean, she’d gripped the little kangaroo and the little koala to her little kid chest. She’d hummed to them, singing goodnight songs, when the cabin lights dimmed. And she’d thought to herself again and again that even if she never saw home again, she’d always have her friends.
She pulled the kangaroo from her pocket, feeling its squishy and soft fake fur under her fingertips. Dawn felt warm, alive. The kangaroo, comfortable. A comfort she’d never have again.
The Fates walked toward her, Ethne’s stilettoes clicking on the lot’s pavement and the other’s face scrinched up the way someone who just sucked a lemon then bit into a Scotch Bonnet pepper would scrinch up their features. Like her entire head was on fire.
She must be using her seer. She’d said she knew how important Dawn had become to Daisy, so she must be the past-seer.
Daisy held out the kangaroo, her grip so that she felt the hard pellet in its middle between thumb and forefinger. It had always been there. She used to imagine her little friends had babies inside, a joey for each.
Now she knew the truth.
The Fates stopped about six feet away, both more interested in the toy than they were in their proximity to the snarling Dawnstar.
“Open it.” Ethne waved at the kangaroo.
“How?” The toy wasn’t a package.
“Rip it open.” The past-seer raised her gun again and pointed it at Daisy’s head. “Now.”
If she wasn’t careful, she’d cry. Not because they overwhelmed her. Not because of the threats. But because she was about to gut her last connection to home.
Daisy’s fingers dug into the seam along the side of the kangaroo’s sewn-on pouch. She wiggled in her fingertip. The seam gave way. Tearing filled the parking lot. Tearing of fabric and tearing of connections.
The tearing of Daisy’s world.
Something shiny fell to the ground.
19
What fell out of her kangaroo looked round and metallic and smooth. It pinged like polished metal when it hit the ground and rolled toward Daisy’s feet.
A ring.
“What the hell?” The past-seer moved to swipe it off the pavement.
Daisy didn’t think. Didn’t consider that maybe this psycho might shoot her. She snatched up her kangaroo’s joey and stumbled backward, into the railing along the loading dock.
She held the ring in her hand. A big, masculine, gold ring with some sort of crest or insignia on it. Jewels studded the outer edge of what looked like two eagles and a crown.
This wasn’t the “scrap metal” her mother said the talisman was. Nor was it “inside glass.” What Daisy held on her palm wasn’t what they were after.
Her mother must have taken the real talisman. All this time and it had been in the koala, not the kangaroo. And these two idiots didn’t know.
Daisy held up her middle finger as she slid on the ring. “I take it every Fate’s a faking asshole, huh?”
The past-seer growled and cocked her gun.
Ethne held out her hand to stay her sister. “Where is the talisman?”
Daisy straightened her back and put on the best fuck you face she could. “I thought Fates knew everything.”
“I’m going to kill her.” The past-seer aimed her gun.
Acid and the stink of cooking flesh filled the air. Strong acid, like a Burner threw up, and the breeze was carrying its foul stink toward where Daisy pressed her back against the railing between them and the loading dock. Acid and the stink of cooking flesh.
From behind the dumpsters.
Dr. Torres carried a drooping Burner around the corner of the building. The woman’s body hung, and her head lulled to the side at an unnatural, broken angle.
The doctor’s eyes said everything Daisy needed to know: He thought this their last option. He’d suffered Burner attacks and Burner bites and if these Fates were going to do them in, he was going to take them right along.
The side of his face looked raw. The skin of his shoulder blistered. He’d wrapped his shirt around his hand and arm, and was using it to protect his grip, but the fabric smoldered. The doctor limped and a wound that looked like a massive gouge laid bare the muscles of his thigh to the world.
And he’d snapped this Burner’s neck before he made himself known to the Fates.
“Dawnstar!” Daisy screamed. She hunched and crawled along the railing, toward the doctor and the dead Bu
rner.
Toward what she knew was a weapon more powerful than the Fate’s gun. But also toward the class-one healer.
Dawn leaped over the rail and into the recycling dumpster. The two Fates stepped back in unison, both turning to run.
A vicious whine rose from the dead Burner, like a machine cycling up too fast. The doctor flipped up the Burner’s body. He tossed what at one time had been a person, but now vaporized into a wiggling, writhing cloud of red dust. The cloud spread out as what had been the body moved toward the two Fates. One edge of the red dust stayed near the doctor and the other arced up and through the air, outlining the trajectory the body would have traveled if it was still intact.
The Burner turned into a glimmering rainbow of red death. The arc contracted and the air around it seemed to stretch and distort, as if space itself sucked down along the shimmering line.
The two Fates staggered. They ran, but the line in the air seemed to follow. To Daisy’s eyes, it looked like it continued to move forward, but it may have only been an illusion caused by the distortions.
Or maybe the dust was alive and hungry.
It contracted to something so thin, Daisy only saw mirages.
The energy inside that dust would kill her, the doctor, her dog. The two Fates who were, at this point, almost to their SUV. Even dead, the Burner would eat them.
A big, male body dropped over Daisy and blocked her view of the imploding arc of Burner dust. “Close your eyes,” he said.
The light flared around his back. The pressure wave flattened him against Daisy and sucked at her eyes, her ears. The air screamed. The Fates screeched. Metal ripped nearby and the doctor would have bellowed, as would have Daisy, if either of them had the air to yell.
Something in her arm snapped. She bled from her ears, and not just from the cut.
And all Daisy remembered from the hours—days—that followed, was her skin falling in blistered chunks from burns covering her body. The popping, wet sounds bones make when a class-one healer forces their living, internal structures to mend. And just how blinding the agony of acid truly was.
