by Lauren Esker
"I see we have a volunteer." Angel's voice was cheerful. Marius let his breath out in a huff like he'd been punched, and he moved like a puppet, turning toward the American, who was now frozen in his tracks.
"Remember he can't stop us all," Lucky said softly. And he called on all his shifter speed, called on luck to keep his feet untangled and obstacles out of his way—and sprang over the table, leaping at his cousin.
He fully expected Angel to see him coming. But Angel was concentrating, his lips parted and heightened color in his cheeks as he made Marius's hands close over the American's throat. He glimpsed Lucky at the last minute and spun aside, so Hansi's knife, which Lucky had meant to shove into his neck, opened a gash across the shoulder of his jacket instead. Angel's control snapped; Marius and the American stumbled apart.
Four of the redcaps drew their weapons and fired at Lucky simultaneously. He wasn't there, draconic reflexes carrying him out of the way and behind the bar to whatever dubious shelter it could provide. From somewhere else in the room, there was a scream as a bullet struck someone who wasn't its intended target.
"Run!" Lucky shouted. "Get out!"
"The door's locked!" Onyeka yelled back. She'd wasted no time as soon as Lucky gave them an opening. Then she gave a pained cry.
Lucky couldn't look up to see what had happened; he was staring down the barrel of Duval's gun. From the frozen expression on the man's face, Duval wasn't in control.
On the other side of the bar, crashes and screams and sporadic gunshots indicated chaos breaking out all around the room as people panicked.
Duval's hand flinched at the last minute. Lucky rolled to the side and bullets splintered the wood where his head had been. He kicked out with both feet, sweeping Duval's feet out from under him. Mind-controlled people were not effective fighters, and he could see the moment Angel's control over Duval broke—or was withdrawn, as Angel's attention refocused elsewhere in the room. Duval's clumsy fall turned into a graceful roll.
Without waiting to see if he'd come up as an ally or enemy, Lucky scrambled to his feet. Fighting had broken out all over the room, and now that he was up, he could see it was mainly between panicked players trying to escape, and Angel using mind control to stop them. Two men picked up a chair as a battering ram to break the door down, and Lucky was just in time to see—but too late to stop—a redcap dealer moving with mind-controlled stiffness take them out in rapid succession from across the room, one headshot each. She got off one more shot through the head of an unsuspecting target elsewhere in the room before Lucky's own efforts made her gun jam, and a second later she collapsed like a puppet with her strings cut. Not because of Angel this time—Marius had gotten behind her and hit her from about five feet away with the weapon he had up his sleeve. He was snapping a fresh dart into place when his hand twisted around, aiming the weapon at his own throat.
There was no time to try to distract Angel; Lucky couldn't even see his cousin at the moment. Instead he lunged, twisting probability around the weapon—break, break, break—and shifting his hands as he went. He caught Marius's arm in draconic claws, and closed his other hand over the man's shoulder, long claws biting through Marius's sleeve and sinking into his shoulder.
He'd only been guessing that pain would temporarily short-circuit Angel's control, but he felt the shift in Marius's stance, a sudden relaxation and stumble. Marius's weapon arm jerked away from his face; the dart released and plunked into the ceiling.
"Was that necessary?" Marius demanded. Spreading blood darkened the sleeve of his jacket.
"You've got your mind back, don't you?" Lucky shoved him up against the wall of the card room, getting the two of them out of the way of the fighting. Not all of it was between the mind-controlled and the rest of them. Some of it was simply brawling. "Marius, do you feel different? Irrationally angry, something like that?"
"I don't think it's irrational to be angry under the circumstances."
"I think Angel's doing it." Angel's direct control might be limited, but he could exert low-level influence over a whole crowd, heightening their limbic responses and aggressiveness. "He can't control more than a few people directly, but he can make us all kill each other."
"Better and better," Marius muttered. He released his injured shoulder, blood smearing his hand, and reloaded the dart gun up his sleeve. As he did so, he moved to get his back up against Lucky's. Any port in a storm, Lucky supposed. Well, maybe he could get the two of them out.
"There's something I haven't told you about me, Marius. About what I can do."
"Oh good." Marius's voice was dry. "I love surprises."
"The thing Angel can do, with people's minds ..."
Marius went stiff against his back. "So help me, Lucado, if you've been messing with my head—"
"No! I can't do that. I have my own skill, though. I can tilt probability my way. Make people trip, make a gun jam, make a card deal come out how I want it."
A soft laugh. "You have been cheating."
"Yep," Lucky said, unrepentant. "And not just at cards. Follow me and duck if I tell you."
With that, he dove into the fray.
He made it about halfway to the door before it was obvious he wasn't going to be able to make this work. There were too many people in the room, and too many bullets flying around. He could tip the odds as much as he wanted, but they were still going to catch up with him before he could get the door open the conventional way. Lucky narrowly avoided a knife in the face and skidded to a halt, Marius colliding with his back. "New plan," he gasped. "Hold onto me."
"What do you mean, hold onto—"
Lucky shifted.
Doing it in front of this many people went against every fiber of his being. He did it anyway, erupting out of his clothes—damn, there goes another shirt—and, as he poured his concentration into the shift, he focused on beefing up his scale armor. He'd optimized himself in the past for sneaking-around size, for water, or for flight, but this time all he wanted to do was become a tank. Preferably a bulletproof one.
As soon as he had four legs under him, he scuttled forward. His current form was low, squat, and wide. Instead of the usual horns, he had a bony protuberance sprouting from his forehead, like an organic battering ram. It probably looked ridiculous, but if it got him through the door without a concussion, it was worth it. He'd also hulked up his neck as much as possible, to the point where he didn't really have one; his head tapered straight back into his body. He probably looked like some kind of dinosaur. He was vaguely aware of Marius holding onto the side-spikes he'd conveniently provided for that purpose.
He hit the door going full tilt. As splinters and debris exploded around them, Marius flattened himself into Lucky's side. Lucky raised his foremost ruff of spikes to provide some protection. And then he was stumbling out into the hallway. Marius threw himself over Lucky's back, not precisely riding him so much as draping over him. Lucky didn't slow down until he cornered into the elevator foyer, where he shifted back and they fell apart.
"Are you all right?" Lucky asked, catching himself on the wall. Marius was a mess, scraped and bloody and pale, his left arm dangling.
"I'll live. Now what?"
"Now I try to figure out a way to stop my cousin before we all die. You should get out of here." Other people were staggering into the foyer now, fleeing the card room, wild-eyed and half mad with panic.
"If you'd rather not do it naked ..." Marius peeled out of his jacket, wincing as it pulled away from his injured shoulder. "Hope you don't mind some blood."
"Most of it's my fault anyway." Marius's shirt sleeve and shoulder were soaked with blood; the jacket was damp with it, scored where Lucky's claws had pierce the fabric. Lucky felt guilty. He hadn't meant to hurt him quite that much.
Marius yanked down one of the elaborate Egypt-styled wall hangings and pressed the wadded-up mass of embroidered fabric against his shoulder. "This isn't, uh ..." He drew a shaky breath. "Going to change me in any way, is it?"
Lucky had to laugh. "You think being a dragon is contagious?"
Marius's face stiffened. "How should I know? I've never been this close to one."
"No. It won't." Thinking was hard; Lucky's thoughts seemed to be going a million directions at once, without producing anything useful. Mostly, he couldn't stop thinking about stabbing Angel. He'd really meant to kill him. And all those people, all those dead people ...
When Angel gets upset, people die, he'd told Jen.
And Angel was out of control now. That unhinged temper, the frenzied loss of control Lucky had seen so infrequently (but memorably) in the past, was unleashed, and Lucky had no idea where this would stop. In the last few minutes he'd watched at least half a dozen people die messily and violently, and he had a bad feeling there might be a lot more to come.
"You should leave," he told Marius again, through teeth clenched to stop them from chattering.
Instead, Marius sat on the edge of one of the planters. "And go where? This entire ship is a deathtrap. Figure I have a better chance of surviving if I stay near you. And maybe I can help."
Provide convenient cannon fodder for Angel, more likely. Before Lucky could say anything, something small, spotted, and vaguely otter-shaped darted into the foyer, shifting on the run to Onyeka, naked. Marius flinched at her transformation. She didn't seem to be badly hurt, but her arms and thighs were marked with long fingernail scratches.
"He's coming," she gasped. "And he's angry. We have to clear the area."
"Clear the—?"
"Victims!" she snapped, pointing at the double doors leading into the shopping arcade. "We have to get people out of the way, back to their rooms with the doors locked."
"Locked doors won't stop Angel from getting into their heads," Lucky said. He tossed her Marius's jacket, which he'd never bothered putting on. "Here."
"Maybe not," she said, catching it without looking at it, "but we can prevent a bloodbath like the one back there. Or at least slow it down."
"Why do you care what happens to the people in there?" Marius asked. "Nobody else around here is trying to do anything except save their skins."
"Does it matter?" she snapped. "Come on, help m—"
A blue and white dragon exploded out of the open hallway, ripping out part of the wall as he came.
When Angel had shifted, he'd gone for offense. His forequarters were huge and hulking like a gorilla's, with massive armored paws and claws the size of swords. He swatted aside a potted palm without slowing down. Only Onyeka's fast shifter reflexes saved her from being decapitated.
Lucky had known that Angel would be bigger, but he hadn't anticipated how much bigger. Angel's shifted form was twice the size Lucky could manage at his largest.
He shifted without much thought for the specifics, knowing only that Angel would tear through his human form like so much tissue paper. He ended up long-legged and lean, optimized for running. Even his subconscious wanted to get out of there.
Instead, he met Angel's charge with snapping jaws. He went under the bigger dragon's belly, biting as he went, and tasted blood. Angel whipped around, his shoulder crunching into the elevator doors. He was too big to maneuver in the small space, but Lucky, smaller and leaner, had less trouble.
There was no way he could beat Angel in a fair fight. An unfair fight, though—those were the kind he was best at.
Unfortunately, so was Angel. Marius gave a strangled gasp, and Onyeka screamed. Lucky couldn't see them through Angel's bulk, but the other dragon's mind control abilities were clearly in effect again.
Concentrating on them slowed him down, though. Lucky clawed him across the face. Angel bellowed in pain.
"Get out of here!" Lucky ordered. "Get everyone to safety! I'll keep him busy."
"Oh, is that right," Angel growled. Blood was running into his eyes.
Lucky snapped at him, though his fangs glanced off the reinforced scales on the other dragon's shoulders. "You can get them or me. Wouldn't you rather have me?"
"I'll slaughter everyone on this tub."
"Then you'd better start with me, because I won't let you."
"Good enough!" Angel roared, and sprang. Lucky retreated toward the atrium, and the two of them crashed through the high glass doors, tumbling into the trees and shrubbery of the indoor garden.
Chapter Fifteen
"Well, this doesn't look good," Lucia said. "Explain yourself, Mils."
They were on the ship's bridge, which Jen now knew was located on the vessel's bow, just below the "chin" of the sphinx head. If she'd gone down instead of up, at the point when she started her climb, she would have dropped right onto the wide array of windows looking out to sea.
Personally Jen would have put it on top, but she wasn't crazy enough to design a cruise ship shaped like a floating sphinx, so what did she know?
Right now there was no view whatsoever. Rain smeared the windows to a gray blur, and though it was still afternoon, it was almost as dark as night. Jen had thought her growing disorientation was because of the drug, but she now realized at least some of it was due to the ship pitching underfoot. She couldn't get her balance and ended up clinging to one of the instrument panels, trying to stay out of the way of the crew of quietly efficient, worried-looking redcaps hustling about. No one paid any attention to her; with Lucia's urging, she was back in a full redcap uniform, and they clearly assumed she worked there.
The soft golden glow was finally starting to fade, but things were still too sharp, too bright. Jen had to keep her teeth clenched on her urge to blurt out every thought that went through her head, which were mainly variations on the theme of I'm a federal agent. The more she tried not to think about it, the harder it was to keep the thought out of her brain.
She tried to focus on Lucia's frustrated conversation with the ship's pilot, or whatever his exact job title was. The only thing Jen was sure of at the moment was that it didn't seem to be "captain". Lucia had addressed him as Mils; Jen wasn't sure if that was a first name, last name, or nickname. He was a long-limbed, tanned, bony guy with white-blond hair and a slight Scandinavian-sounding accent. He was the only redcap she'd seen so far who didn't wear an immaculate and freshly ironed uniform. His uniform pants were rumpled and stained, and all he had on top was a sleeveless T-shirt, displaying jail tattoos on his bare arms.
He was also a shifter. Jen didn't know what he turned into, but she'd recognized it as soon as she got close to him.
She could only assume that he must be damned good at sailing a ship. Either that or he was a friend of Lucia's and a pity hire, in which case they were all in trouble.
"It came up fast," he was saying. "I thought we were steering safely around the edge, and then ..."
"And then what, Mils?"
He backed down under her glare, his belligerent attitude dropping away. "I don't know. We shouldn't be this far into it. We're off course and I don't know why. It's like the whole day is ... I don't know why I've made half the decisions I've made. You can relieve me of duty. You probably should."
Lucia reached out and touched his face lightly. "I'm not going to. I need you to get us through this."
She turned away and made for the back of the bridge. Jen followed her, grabbing at anything handy to keep from being knocked off her already wobbly legs. She caught up to Lucia in a small staff galley behind the bridge, just in time to see Lucia with her clutch purse open, opening one vial after another and dumping the contents into a large coffee decanter.
"You're going to have them sail us through a hurricane drugged? Look, from the way I feel, that's a terrible idea."
"It's the only way to make sure Angel doesn't get to them. I no longer trust him not to send us all to the bottom of the ocean."
"Is he suicidal or what?" Jen demanded, gripping the edge of a counter to stay on her feet. Not all items in the galley were secured; there was a crash from one of the cabinets. "If we capsize, he'll drown along with the rest of us."
"No he won't." Lucia held out a
hand. "Give me those cups, in the tray there."
The cups were plastic with securable lids. Lucia began to fill them. And Jen's drugged brain, at once moving too fast and too slow, had finally snagged on the memory of Lucky's sinuous dragon shape in the water.
"Angel would be able to breathe underwater, wouldn't he? So can you."
"I don't think he cares at all what happens to the ship," Lucia said grimly. She was working fast, filling the tray with cups of doctored coffee. "Or to anyone on it. I've been a fool. I knew how he can be. I just didn't realize he'd go this far."
Jen seized her shoulder. Coffee splashed onto Lucia's wrist; she hissed in pain, but kept working. "Where is Lucky now? Where's Angel?"
"I don't know." Lucia shoved a tray into her hands. "Take these to the crew."
"But—"
"Be quiet! If Angel gets into their heads he can easily kill everyone on the ship, don't you understand that? He still could. There are a million ways to sabotage a ship this size. After we do this, we're going to do what we can to secure the engines. Then we'll find him and my brother. Go!"
Lucia was right; Jen had to admit it. She turned away, trying not to fall over with the tray taking up both her hands.
In the doorway, she nearly collided with a wild-eyed redcap. The other woman clutched at Jen. "I—I need to talk to—"
"I'm here," Lucia said calmly. "What is it?"
"I don't know." The woman's hands were ice cold; she was still clutching Jen's arm, and Jen could feel her trembling. "There's a—a situation on Deck A. People are dead. No one knows what to do."
"What kind of situation?" Lucia asked.
"I don't know. I really don't. There's a—a monster? I don't know what I saw. It's impossible."
"Come here," Lucia ordered, and the woman came numbly to her. Lucia pressed a doctored cup of coffee into her hands. "Drink. Now tell me what you saw."
"Something huge. Something ... awful. The card room is a mess. Several people are dead. Lenny and Carmen—I saw—" Her next words were lost in a wave of panicked trembling.
