All But Human (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 5)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  “I have to focus and concentrate to use my seers. Basically, I need to ask them questions. But I do get flashes, mostly when my seers pick up danger.” Rysa shrugged and held out the talon tip for Daisy to see.

  “It looks different.” Daisy peered at the talon. “I mean it doesn’t look like his talons when they’re connected to his fingers.” She made a claw-like gesture.

  “It did at first, for about a month. I think it’s solidifying.” Rysa’s real thoughts were that it was dying, but she didn’t tell Ladon or Dragon that. They didn’t need to worry.

  The changes, though, did not seem to be adversely affecting her Fate abilities, probably because she lived with the living beast. She tucked the talon back under her coat.

  “So to know how many kids we’ll have visiting, you’d need to ask your future-seer how long Gavin will be spending dressed as a wizard and handing out candy this evening?” Daisy nodded affectionately up the block toward the front steps of the house.

  The gesture reminded Rysa of the little looks her mom threw in her father’s direction, now that they were back together. The little aww… glances and the wistful, almost dreamy blinking. Her parents had turned into a pair of love-sick teenagers.

  Which, if she was honest with herself, made her gleeful and disgusted at the same time. They were adults and seeing them make kissy faces made part of her want to retch. But they were back together after nine years apart, and seeing them happy about it made her very happy indeed.

  Microscopic versions of the same wistfulness flickered through Daisy’s eyes when she looked at or talked about Gavin. He did exactly the same thing, though his puppy-dog eyes were obvious enough Ladon noticed.

  Rysa’s seers had bounced and screamed like tweens at a boy band concert, yelling Oh my gawd oh my GAWD they are soooo right for each other! in the van as they rolled into town. They hadn’t stopped since, either.

  So yeah, she still got random flashes.

  “When I ask general questions, I get general answers. Specific questions home in on a moment.” The more detailed her inquiry, the more vivid the vision. Rysa adjusted her pack as she walked up the concrete steps to the front of the house.

  Daisy waved her finger at the house. “Where are the dogs?”

  Rysa stopped on the middle step and quickly formed the question for her present-seer: Where are Radar and Ragnar?

  “They’re both in the living room with Gavin and Dragon.” Two noses poked through the curtain just as she said the words. “They’re hungry.”

  “They’re always hungry.” Daisy waved her forward.

  Rysa nodded toward the house. “I could tell you exactly what’s going to happen fifteen minutes from now. But I won’t.” Daisy needed to know that Rysa wouldn’t cheat. “I don’t spy. Spying is, I think, one of the snottier Parcae behaviors.”

  She wasn’t entitled to the details of someone else’s life.

  Daisy stared at the front door. “Will you answer a question for me?”

  “Anything.” Rysa touched Daisy’s elbow. Why she did it, she didn’t know, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

  “Are we safe?”

  Daisy’s body didn’t change. Her posture stayed the same, as did her shoulders and neck muscles.

  She must think about this question all the time, so much so that it was part of her daily life, like it was Ladon’s. The question itself didn’t cause apprehension.

  But the answer might.

  “I check every morning, when we wake up,” Rysa whispered. “I ask for myself, and for Ladon and Dragon. I ask for you and for Gavin. And I ask for the entire campus.” She nodded back toward the street. “If I’d seen anything, I would have told you right away.”

  Daisy still did not move. “Did you check with all your seers? Your past, as well?”

  Rysa’s mother had told her something she understood intellectually, but in practice had been difficult to grasp: You cannot understand the future if you do not understand the past.

  But the past folded into the future and, as Gavin liked to remind her, it brought with it all sorts of biases. Spying on the past could become its own self-fulfilling prophecy.

  “I haven’t looked at… your past, if that’s what you’re asking. I know it’s important to you that I don’t.”

  “Thank you.” Daisy turned her entire body toward Rysa, her eyes piercing, as if she wanted Rysa to read something she could not speak from her body language. “I think it’s all connected.” But she blinked and smiled and stood up straight.

  Confused, Rysa moved closer. “What’s—”

  “Listen, I think we should go in. Get the candy ready, you know? I’m sure Gavin’s itching to put on his itchy fake beard.”

  Fear clamped down on Rysa’s gut. Real fear caused by the sudden realization that even for the Prime Fate of the Dracae, the world was full of unknown unknowns, those questions that were so far outside her realm of experience she didn’t know she needed to ask them.

  And it seemed Daisy Reynolds Pavlovich knew some of those questions, but sharing them with Rysa would cause more pain than it would solve.

  Rysa reached for her friend again. “Daisy, if—”

  “Did your past-seer pick up anything at Rushmore, Rysa?” Daisy whispered. “Anything about my mom? Or about…” She turned away as she trailed off.

  “I stayed quiet,” Rysa said. “For Ladon.”

  What if, when she talked about seeing Vivicus, he freaked out? What if his melancholy came back? What if, when she used her seers to gauge his reaction, she read his response wrong? What if the act of telling him caused more problems than it solved?

  She might have gained a fair amount of control, but social moments were still social. She’d never been good in groups, and now the added voices of her seers turned her into her own arguing chorus.

  So she’d stayed silent. They were safe. But Daisy knew Ladon and Dragon, and she knew how to protect herself, so maybe she could help Rysa navigate how best to handle the information.

  But right now Daisy was staring at Rysa with a terrifyingly intense Oh my God expression.

  Rysa’s gut knotted up. Why didn’t she use her future-seer to test, instead of just blurting away like a damned five-year-old? There had to be a point at which looking stopped being spying and started being necessary. Why couldn’t her seers at least tell her that?

  But she knew. Being a Fate didn’t make all her issues go away. Why would she expect to be able to process information about the world any better than she did before she activated?

  Rysa couldn’t tell if fear or anger crept into Daisy’s voice, or if they both did, and were sucker-punching each other for control. But they were there, and they were real.

  “Your father cleared the park of Seraphim,” Rysa said. “Ladon and Dragon wanted to climb so we stopped.” She waved her hand toward the house. “They scaled Teddy Roosevelt’s face. It was evening but the sun was still up and they scaled it in front of all those normals and they didn’t get caught.”

  Again, she wouldn’t spy on how they did it. “Ladon took a selfie at the top. It’s on my phone.” She was talking too fast. Her foot tapped and she wanted to bounce.

  Daisy blinked. “We were there because I thought the Seraphim might lead me to my mother. I know my dad asked you to look for her,” she whispered. “You and the professional spy Fates at Praesagio Industries.”

  Daisy didn’t sound happy about it. Her shoulders tightened up as if she held in a sigh. “No one’s seen anything.”

  No signs of life. No signs of death, either, for that matter. Just a completely vanished Cecilia Reynolds. “I’m sorry I can’t see your mom. I wish I could.”

  Again, thoughts of her ill-use—or maybe misuse—of her Fate’s abilities danced around inside her head. Was her refusal to “spy” as altruistic as she pretended it to be? Or, maybe, she just didn’t want to face getting it wrong again. Why the hell would she willingly put people in danger?

  But Vivicus was a spe
cial case. Daisy had to know.

  The other woman nodded. Slowly, she reached for the door handle. It clicked and its internal mechanisms thudded. Inside, the dogs barked a welcome home.

  “Dad says the Praesagio Fates don’t understand,” Daisy said. “They talk about ‘interference’ and mumble about ‘probabilities.’” She stood up straight and smiled. “At least I know you wish to help.”

  She did know. She knew all about Shifter politics and the horrible behaviors of Fates. She knew the pain of losing a parent, but unlike Rysa, she didn’t know the joy of getting that parent back.

  “The morpher in the locker room wasn’t just some random asshole,” Rysa said. “I… I know who it was. I…” Images flooded in from Rysa’s past-seer: Gavin entering the lock code on the door. But not a lot from inside the locker room, even when Rysa asked specific questions based on information she’d gleaned from Gavin and, also, from Ivan, who had chased Vivicus into the main gift shop area.

  “I don’t know what that shard he stole does,” rushed from Rysa’s mouth. “I don’t understand how it hides information. It’s not stitching. There’s no seams. No holes. It’s a… clean edit.” Instead of cutting and pasting, the artifact ran the Fate equivalent of professional-level image editing software on the world.

  “Rysa,” Daisy said, an edge returning to her voice. A familiar edge. The same one all Rysa’s teachers used to have when her ADHD got out of hand. She lifted her fingers off the door knob.

  Rysa had gotten off topic. Jumped from who the morpher was to why the morpher got away and she hadn’t stopped long enough to let Daisy in on the secret.

  But the edge made Rysa’s back bristle. It made her stand tall and scrunch up her nose and make that fuck you face she told her body it shouldn’t do because she had enough empathy to understand why other people responded to her the way they did but it still hurt.

  A small tremor moved from Daisy’s shoulders to her fingers and her mouth opened as if she planned on acknowledging what had just passed between them. But she didn’t. “Who was the morpher?”

  “Vivicus.” The tactile memory of that son of a bitch sticking his tongue down her throat flooded Rysa’s body and she hiccupped. She wouldn’t gag. She wouldn’t grab her neck, either. He was gone. Praesagio locked him away where she couldn’t see him and then the facility burned down and she saw nothing the same way she saw nothing about Cecilia Reynolds but Dmitri said he’d gone through all of Praesagio’s records and looked at the x-rays of the teeth himself and he and Andreas interviewed Trajan and they all believed Vivicus really was dead.

  Another bounce escaped and it took all Rysa’s concentration not to wrap her arms around her chest.

  “What?”

  She spun around. Ladon stood at the corner of the house’s front porch, just off the steps, and in the shadows.

  He’d snuck up on them. Snuck around as quiet as a cat, and her present-seer hadn’t warned her.

  “When?” He stalked onto the porch. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  The front door whipped open. Gavin stood in the threshold, his lean body blocking the flickering shadow of the upset dragon behind him.

  He glanced over his shoulder, reading Dragon’s fast and barely visible signing, then back at the women. “Dragon says that if you had called to him, he and Ladon would have come down off the mountain.”

  “He’s dead!” Rysa yelled. Oh my God he’s gone but he’s still terrifying me, she thought.

  Confused, Gavin looked between Rysa and Daisy. “Who’s Viva… Vivi…”

  “Vivicus.” Ladon waved away Gavin the same way he would have waved away a child. Then he pointed at Daisy. “I am surprised he didn’t gut the two of you on principle.”

  Gavin froze. Radar and Ragnar sniffed at his hand.

  “Ladon!” Rysa screamed. “Don’t say things like that! Don’t… Don’t…”

  Vivicus almost murdered Gavin. He could have murdered Daisy. Left them bleeding to death on the floor of the locker room, their heads bashed in and their limbs cut off.

  She sent Gavin into that locker room because her present-seer had told her to. What did I do?

  Rysa yanked her talisman’s cord over her head. It scraped off her stocking cap, and it rubbed against her nose, but it came off.

  She dropped the cord and the talon on the ground and ran away, the dogs pacing her down the steps of the porch.

  Chapter Eight

  “Love?” Ladon called. Rysa’s talisman bounced into the snow and she ran away. Daisy ran into the backyard after her, with Gavin following.

  Where is she? he pushed to Dragon as the beast corkscrewed out the front door. He peered at the snow, looking for her talon. Why did she strip off her talisman?

  Rysa couldn’t have gone far. He pulled Dragon’s talon out of the snow and dusted it on his jeans.

  His vigilance spun in his belly like a flywheel. Its high speed and pitch made him think his ears might bleed from his own internal screaming.

  I cannot sense her. Has she learned how to hide from me? She’d managed to perplex Dragon.

  He’d been coarser with his words than he should have been. Hearing her admit to sensing Vivicus, even with her past-seer, startled him. She should have realized he would react the way he did.

  Perhaps she did, Human. Dragon pulled himself onto the porch roof to get a better look at the neighborhood. Perhaps that is why she didn’t tell us while we were in South Dakota.

  If he’d been close enough to hit a wall, or a door, or a tree, he would have thrown a punch. How the hell was he supposed to be a good husband if she was afraid to talk to him?

  How was he supposed to protect her?

  Gavin appeared alongside the house. “Ladon,” he said. When he nodded toward the front, the aid in his ear caught light of the streetlamp and for a split second, Ladon squinted.

  The kid had acclimated to Ladon’s presence faster than most normals, but he stayed farther away than he had in the house before Rysa ran off. He kept his hands visible as well, both his fists cupped but open enough he could protect himself if he needed to.

  “Rysa ran into the garage.” Gavin pointed over his shoulder. “Ragnar followed her in. He’s with her right now.” The unspoken twitch on the kid’s face said Ragnar but not also Daisy, and that Gavin wished to return to Daisy’s side.

  Ladon turned away to jog up the walk toward the flagstone path that circled to the rear of the house.

  Gavin caught his arm. “Listen, if—”

  The kid tensed and stepped back. His hands flew up and his eyes rounded. “Growling at me will not help this situation.”

  Ladon had growled?

  Gavin looked around. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay before you go back there.”

  Why do you care? Ladon thought. What did it matter to Gavin?

  “I’m asking because Rysa is my friend. She’s going to marry you, dude.”

  “Leave me alone.” Rysa took priority over the kid’s impressions.

  Gavin pinched his lips. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I know you went through worse shit than what Daisy and I did.”

  The desire to punch something returned. Gavin must have sensed it because he backed away again.

  Calm pulsed from Dragon but Ladon’s shoulders didn’t loosen. Nor did his fists unball.

  Gavin’s voice dropped. “Does the anger always surface like this? So fast?”

  Ladon waved him off and jogged for the backyard.

  Gavin felt the invisible Dragon lean against his side. Out in the open like this, the beast couldn’t show himself, especially with the first trick-or-treaters walking up and down the sidewalks. But right now, Gavin would have appreciated Dragon’s opinion of the situation.

  “This is the ‘issues’ Daisy talked about, isn’t it?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

  But the shimmering outline of a hand appeared off to his side, low enough that anyone looking up from the street would see only the grass and not the beast signing. Y
es.

  Gavin nodded. His younger brother used to have problems similar to what he’d just witnessed from Ladon: Hypervigilance to the slightest stimuli. Fast, terrifying anger. Nightmares. “Does he sleep well?”

  No, the hand signed.

  How many traumas had Ladon and Dragon endured over their long lives?

  Dragon’s big body moved away and Gavin suspected he was following Ladon around to the back of the house. How far away he’d moved, Gavin didn’t know.

  Gavin rubbed his face and looked up at the sky. What had moved into Daisy’s house?

  Another question burned. One that, after having known the man for only two months, Gavin did not feel he had a right to ask. But it flashed in the front of his mind anyway: “Has he ever hurt himself or someone else because of the anger?”

  But no hand appeared to give Gavin an answer.

  Daisy Pavlovich stood in her back door and stared at the large stable her father had retrofitted into a secure garage and storage area before she moved into the house. He’d had stairs put in to the second floor and had upgraded the electrical system, the insulation, and sheetrock to meet Minnesota fire codes.

  Technically, someone could live out there.

  She pressed her eyes closed hard enough that little bursts of yellow and orange played over her corneas. Exiling Ladon, Dragon, and Rysa to the second floor of her raccoon-attracting garage was not the best solution, no matter how her own unwanted responses ripped through her body and made her want to scream.

  It’d been a long time since she’d had feelings like this, but Rysa’s sudden surge in fear fueled her own. It seemed to be as contagious as a yawn.

  The morpher who’d faked being her mother and stolen the shard of the Fate Progenitor’s talisman told Daisy and Gavin why he’d let them live: They were a “gift to those three scary fucks.”

  The Seraphim who attacked her father and The Land of Milk and Honey had attempted to use Rysa and the Dracae as bait to double-cross a particularly horrid Fate family. Those Seraphim had been headed by Vivicus and his daughter, Vivienne. What if the Fates in question were “those three scary fucks”?