Flux of Skin (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 2)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Ladon lifted his sister straight up into the air so fast she couldn’t respond. The tunnel the shades made contracted again. She’d done this. Her dragon did this. They’d lose both Derek and Rysa and she swore at his woman? “Sister!”

  Ladon threw his sister into the center of the bar. She hit a table hard and it rattled, clanking hard onto its side before she rolled away.

  “Dragon… map for me. Map… for… me!” Rysa’s seers flared again and she leaned over Derek.

  Rysa couldn’t see Derek—not with her eyes or with her present- or future-seers. The irreality clicked and locked into its final configuration and Derek vanished from the universe, leaving behind nothing.

  But she felt him under her hands. Heard his voice. Smelled his terror and saw his arteries because Dragon—her Dragon—reached out and placed his giant six-taloned hand on her back.

  And her Dragon mapped.

  Her body rebelled. Vivicus had left something behind in her throat and it squirmed and she felt it moving but she would not allow Derek to die. Sister-Dragon sprayed sparks and pain through her mind but she wasn’t going to let anyone die.

  Ladon’s fury burned through Dragon and to her, a concentrated stream of searing flame hotter than anything from Dragon’s mouth. He tossed his sister into the center of the bar’s open room.

  Rysa latched onto Dragon’s mapping. Only the nick in Derek’s artery mattered. Only the blood pouring from his wound. Only the hilt sticking out of his thigh. Not the two Dracae hitting each other more out of fear than anything else. Not the two dragons, one panicked and one barely holding together his mind—not because he could, but because he had to.

  Of all of them, Dragon had the least choice. He held his sister. He mapped for Rysa. And deep inside, he built a concept, a true cathedral—My human must survive.

  Vivicus’s thing pushed in her neck and she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t heal herself. But she could save Derek.

  Derek’s hand touched her cheek. “Rysa,” he whispered. “Do not do this.”

  “Shut… up.” If she said anything else, she’d cry and all of Dragon’s work to keep them both conscious would be for nothing. “You aren’t… going… to die.”

  “Rysa…”

  She knitted the artery. Dragon gave her a map of the surrounding tissue and she learned, doing what was necessary. But she did more—Rysa infused Derek’s cells, commanding them to heal. To be whole.

  Dragon gave her knowledge of Ladon and she overlaid it onto his map of Derek. She matched, forcing Derek’s body to become more whole than it had ever been before.

  Rysa looked for the place in Ladon where he kept his fury and his strength—the place that allowed him to keep Shifter pheromones at bay. She looked into herself for another place, the one allowing her to stitch the what-was-is-will-be.

  Rysa made these places anew. She copied. She reached. She might burn away because Vivicus invaded her. The thing strangled from the inside but she would not let it become her.

  And she’d be damned if anyone ever invaded Derek again.

  “Tell… Ladon… I…” She tried to breathe, but it didn’t work. “I… love him.”

  Tell him, please. Tell him I love him.

  Chapter Fifty

  “Fix her!”

  Russian words swirled around Rysa. Russian healer hands grasped her neck and jaw.

  A new roar. Flames. More Russian words. Dmitri fell away.

  ‘Heal’ sealed around her nose and her mouth and forced its way into her throat in three quick, intense breaths. Andreas fell away.

  Derek whispered to the dragons. Flames subsided. AnnaBelinda placed her hand on Rysa’s forehead. Then they all fell away.

  The thing in her neck tore at her delicate tissues with claws and teeth.

  No more sounds entered her mind, only constructs built from memories not her own—Ladon waking their first morning together to find the most beautiful woman he’d ever met wrapped around his body, her head on his shoulder, and feeling, for the first time in centuries, that his life was okay.

  They’d found what they needed and Ladon would never let go. He’d never let her fall away.

  Rysa couldn’t breathe, but they needed her. So she forced out the thing with the teeth and claws. She retched it from her throat. Yells followed, and stomping.

  But she fell into a tunnel made of shadows.

  “Rysa! Rysa, please. Please breathe. It’s out. You got it out. Please breathe, love.”

  Please. Human needs you.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Ladon carried Rysa through the front doors of The Land of Milk and Honey with Dragon flanking his side. He walked past the burning cars in the parking lot. The night darkened, the air smelled of electrical fires, and smoke danced with the shades in his head.

  He walked under the remains of Dmitri’s grand screen-sign, his boots dragging across the hot, pitted asphalt. He walked past the hotel and its blinking neon and florescent lights. He skirted the landscaping, and stepped over rocks and curbs and small manicured bushes.

  Ladon carried Rysa between the barn and the stable, into the part of Dmitri’s world where the animals lived and worked. Smoke mingled here, too, and Ladon walked beyond it, into the pasture where the horses grazed. He walked over the moss and the spongy Missouri ground, his boots sinking into the soil, worms slithering under his heels. Crickets mourned the day and the long-gone sun.

  When he came to the fence between Dmitri’s property and the gravel road where they’d left his van, he waited until Dragon broke the wires and pulled up the posts.

  Ladon would never again put her down.

  “Rysa,” he whispered. She felt cold in his arms. He held ice and she barely breathed.

  When the beast opened the back of their vehicle, Ladon stepped in, swinging her head to the side first, then back the other way, to pull in her feet. He stood in the back of his dragon-sized van, his dragon pulsing a truth deeper than any words, holding the barely breathing body of the woman he loved.

  If she died, if he lost her forever, it would happen in his arms, with him and with Dragon. She’d not die alone.

  Sister, Sister-Dragon, and Derek followed behind, Andreas and Dmitri farther back. They would hold vigil, out here on the edge of civilization. This one time, they’d stand between him and the modern world.

  No one—no Shifter or Fate or Burner—would get by. When this was done, they’d take him and Dragon back to the cave, each taking turns watching over them, to make sure. But the shades would do their work and it wouldn’t matter.

  Rysa’s chill would never leave his life. They might think it would last a few decades, maybe five centuries. But the cold infecting her now infected Ladon too, and he’d never again move without cracking. The beast might flood his eyes with lights to ease his suffering, and Andreas might fill his nose with scents to make him forget, but Ladon tasted the cold and no one would ever scrape its flavor from his tongue.

  “Why?” he whispered. No calling scents lifted from her. No sense of her seers danced along the edges of his mind.

  She went over the edge and he didn’t break her fall.

  She turned cold, her fever broken for the final time. Outside their van, Sister touched Derek—his arms and his cheeks—and he touched her, but they both knew. Rysa died so he could live.

  “Rysa.” Ladon couldn’t say anything else.

  Rysa.

  They thought of no one else. Just her. Only her.

  Dragon settled on the blankets and pulled both his humans to him. Ladon held her against his chest, determined to give her all his heat. Determined, if he could, to give her back her life. He’d lived long enough. But she was young.

  She barely breathed, frozen in his arms. Her warmth had seeped away in The Land. Dragon’s lights played over her shoulders. Patterns reflected, now only moonlight.

  Dragon nuzzled them both. I will not allow you to die, Human. You must accept this.

  But the shades crawled.

 
She’s cold, Ladon pushed. She’s shivering.

  Ladon pulled off his shirt, working around her arms, keeping her as close as possible. Dragon worked hers over her head, his strong dragon digits cradling her head and neck. Ladon unhooked her bra and drew her close again as Dragon covered them both with a blanket.

  Her skin felt too smooth, too tight. Her muscles vibrated as they tried to make their own heat, she leaned against his chest, stiff and cold. But life returned under his touch. Her skin warmed, and her color deepened.

  The shivers increased. Her teeth chattered, but a calling scent flowed into the air around her face—‘I don’t want to die.’

  Ladon’s chill cracked wide open, a massive crevasse breaking through the flatness. From the moment he lifted her to carry her to the van, his world mimicked the smooth stone death of her skin—no color, only reflections. Only emptiness. No sound but the near-silence of the ages sliding against each other.

  But she shivered and he smelled ‘determination’ and she needed his heat.

  He slipped out of his boots and jeans, still holding her, as Dragon slipped her out of hers. Their legs entangled, their arms held, and Rysa pressed her cheek into Ladon’s chest.

  ‘Determination’ blended with her natural mist-and-jasmine scent, shaking his mind as violently as a dragon gutting an enemy.

  But she’d made a choice when she saved Derek. Her life wasn’t important. She’d chosen to give it away.

  “Ladon?” she whispered.

  Her name shook on his lips, still as cold as her body. The shaking and shivering held something beyond his will to save her—anger.

  “Don’t ever do that again.” Did his words come out as a plea? A growl? Ladon couldn’t hear his own voice. He heard only her strengthening breath. “Don’t ever sacrifice yourself.”

  Her brilliant fingers spread into the beast’s coat and in one shining moment, one immediate clicking from off to on, her seers manifested around them so bright and clear they burst into Ladon’s true vision. He saw a shimmer, sensed how they touched the weave and warp of the universe. Around him, blending into the beast’s lights, her love cocooned him in a brightness warmer and more true than anything he’d ever experienced.

  She gives us this new connection, Dragon pushed. You see the world as I do.

  Rysa enhanced his dragon-perceiving.

  The surface tension of her skin loosened as blood carried warmth to its surface. Tiny hairs stood on end as he ran his fingers over the nape of her neck. The subtle moisture of the Missouri air kissed his eyes, his nose, his lips. And against his chest, her heart beat.

  Either she didn’t hear his angry words or she ignored him. “Dragon, tell Derek to drive.” Orders spilled from her mouth. “He is not to tell anyone where he takes us. Not Andreas. Not AnnaBelinda, and she is not to follow.”

  Ladon touched her cheek, her hair. The emotions swirling around them filled his head. She wasn’t in a vision. Her seers didn’t writhe. Skin still icy, she huddled against him and his body responded, even as his mind drowned in it all.

  Her future-seer wiggled. “Anna is to decide on her destination and she is to concentrate on reaching her goal,” she said, her voice once again finding its footing. “Andreas needs to help Dmitri. Tell him Derek will call. Until then, he’s not to leave.”

  I will do as Rysa asks. Dragon’s connection to his sister pulsed. We will do as our Prime’s seers demand.

  She nodded against Ladon’s chest. “Thank you.”

  Her seers touched his mind and Ladon knew the cost of her internal war was too high. She’d only given him more time. The future would cost as much as the past.

  “Rysa!” he growled. “What did you do?” Every twinge of guilt and fury and overwhelming joy because she moved crashed over his soul the way a wave crashed over an unsuspecting swimmer. Was the outcome of her actions worth the coming price?

  The ice melted but now he drowned in the deluge.

  She believed it was, but his gut clenched. Derek lived, but Ladon would die if Rysa didn’t survive what her efforts did to her body.

  Slowly, haltingly, she leaned back enough to see his face. Cold blew between them like a wind from the north. He wanted to snatch her back, but he needed to know if she’d be okay.

  She needed to tell him.

  But she asked a question he didn’t want to answer, instead.

  “Oh, Ladon, what did you do?” She kissed his forehead, her lips moving slowly upward and across the skin of his scalp. She kissed all the nicks and cuts and tamed their sting.

  Energy poured from Dragon, washing over Rysa, away from Ladon. The beast confided secrets, thoughts, worries—things Ladon thought only he and the beast shared, answering her question—because, he realized, Dragon needed her help as much as Ladon did. Dragon, though, understood well enough to ask.

  “Ladon, my love. Ladon, I’m here. Dragon’s awake. You’re awake. That trauma’s done. It’s all done,” she whispered.

  What if it happened again? His body screamed that it would. It always screamed that it would, and the shades were proof. How was he supposed to live without her? Would the ice come again? His mind refused to consider the future, even with her seer stroking its edges. No, she lived. Now. She lived.

  But he needed to stay vigilant.

  She scooted to the side, huddling against Dragon, her back against the beast’s belly as she wrapped her arms around Ladon’s shoulders. She pulled him on top of her, and made him press against her body.

  He dropped his head to her shoulder and entwined with her again, realizing he shivered. Fingers, hands, belly, toes, he quaked but his love refused to let him go.

  Dragon laid another blanket over Ladon’s back, and trapped Rysa between his heat and the beast’s own swirling lights. Rest, Human, he pushed.

  The driver’s side opened, then closed. Dragon’s head moved away for a moment, followed by his hands. The beast signed with Derek.

  The engine started.

  We leave. Derek understands Rysa’s orders.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  She meant it for the beast, and for Derek. But she also meant it for Ladon.

  “Thank you,” she whispered again, her healing lips soothing the remaining prickling across his scalp. “Thank you, love. I’m here. We’re safe.”

  Ladon sat up. She wasn’t safe, no matter what she said. She’d never be safe. “Whatever you need, Rysa, we will get for you. Tell me and we’ll go.” He couldn’t do this again. Couldn’t watch her die again.

  The shades curled along the edges of his vision like dusty ghosts released by the deluge still washing over him and mists stripping his living muscles from his bones.

  “Stop, Ladon. Please.” Rysa stroked his cheek with a gentle pressure, her fingers moving down his neck to his chest, over the cuts from the knife. Ache wrenched his skin when she touched one directly over his heart.

  “When we first met,” she said, “I looked up at you and saw a warrior. It didn’t take long for me to understand why you’re so good at fighting.”

  She spread her fingers wide over his chest and all his physical aches stopped. Every mar on his skin closed. Bruises vanished. Strains knitted. Ladon’s body healed.

  “Love, don’t. If it makes you sick again…”

  “It’s okay.” She kissed his forehead as her hand moved to Dragon’s hide. “It’s okay.”

  The energy Ladon shared with the beast calmed and straightened. Clarity spread through it, fatigue falling away. She healed the beast, as well.

  “I understand now why you fight. I understand how deeply you care about what needs caring for,” she whispered. “But you can’t hold so tight.”

  She gripped his face, and made him look at her. “You need to move past the worst, Ladon. You have to. I’m here and Dragon’s here. We can’t lose you.”

  Only three words came to his mind. Three words he needed her to hear and to understand, because they were the core of the help he needed from her.

&
nbsp; “Do not die.”

  Her kiss took his mouth with more promise, more surrender to his will than he’d ever experienced with anyone. Her lips held his, both gentle and rough, and her tongue traced the inside edges of his teeth.

  Ladon tasted her response—‘I swear.’

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for loving me.”

  A gasp pulled from her throat, and her tears welled in her eyes. She sucked in her breath, and the final ice of her near-death broke under their connection. Ladon pressed his body into hers, feeling the chill melt away. Her skin’s tension subsided, moving from marble to velvet. He stroked her arms, her waist, kissing her neck, her shoulders, her chin.

  Dragon rolled slightly, conforming to the needs of his humans, and slipped a hand under Rysa’s bottom.

  The van slowed and turned left. It picked up speed, and the bumps of a freeway took up a strong rhythm, one matching the pulsing in Ladon’s head. Human language fell away and he took up the constructs of the beast. In his mind, Rysa’s shape curved against him, her soul around him, and he saw all of her—what he and the beast meant to her, the skipping and gaps of her attention issues, the depth of her caring and the intelligence of her mind.

  He saw her seers reach forward, back, and straight out into what-is and into him. Her healer danced on it all, changing and shifting and conforming to the patterns needed of it. He felt the silkiness of her hair. The scents of her body settled sweet and alive in his throat. He heard the beating of her heart and saw the subtle but true matching beats moving along Dragon’s coat.

  He shouldn’t be angry. He should exalt this woman and the wonders she brought to him, but she teased. She offered gifts beyond any they’d experienced in their long lives and she had the audacity to snatch herself away, choosing to tempt the jaws of near-death? All because she wasn’t important enough to survive.