All But Human (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 5)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Anna shook her head and walked by without responding, and disappeared around the corner of the building.

  Rysa frowned but followed Anna down the walk toward the van. “I’m not spying, Anna!”

  The look that flashed across Daisy’s face made Andreas wonder if “spying” had come up before. “Is something wrong, Ms. Pavlovich?”

  Daisy shook her head and followed Rysa and Anna around the corner. “Fates don’t have as much control of the what-was-is-will-be as they claim, do they?” she called over her shoulder.

  Andreas rubbed his hands together as he walked along the concrete ribbon skirting the building. Minnesota smelled fresher than most other states, but he’d had his fill of winters centuries ago. “They do not. I will tell you what I’ve told Rysa: A little future-seeing and a lot of bullshit will get you a long way in this world.”

  She pointed toward Anna as she rounded the corner of the van, Rysa following. “But it’s best to assume they are as dangerous as they say, correct?”

  Andreas stopped walking. “Ms. Pavlovich.”

  She stopped about ten feet from the van. Her hand rose as she turned to face him, an obvious gesture acknowledging the invisible Sister-Dragon as the beast moved by.

  Daisy’s breath rolled through her pursed lips. She appeared to wait before she spoke, and she closed her eyes as if listening for creaking of the van as the dragon made her way either to its roof or into its interior.

  “I think if Ladon—and my dad—had more information about the Fates who spurred Vivicus, things might be… better.” She frowned and glanced over her shoulder at the van. Rysa and Anna had moved out of sight, but muffled arguing floated in the air.

  Andreas stepped closer to Daisy. “I believe you are correct.”

  He knew the story. Renee had brought him up to speed. But he also understood the restrictions on a woman’s life—even a smart, strong woman such as Daisy Pavlovich—an attacker continued to hold long after his attack. Andreas had seen it happen to too many women he loved over too many lifetimes. The hold never changed, no matter the culture or the date.

  “Do you fear another attack? On yourself or on someone you love?” Because the hold always came down to a threat against the woman’s life, or against the life of someone she protected. Always.

  Daisy didn’t look at him. She watched the van. But she nodded.

  “We will hunt.” He said nothing more. She would have justice, as would Rysa. Justice, peace, and security.

  “Thank you.” She glanced up at him with her lovely amber eyes before walking, once again, toward the van.

  The back door hung open. Andreas had no sense of Anna’s beast. The woman stood beside Rysa, her hand on her elbow, wearing a clear battle expression.

  Andreas immediately unzipped his jacket and unsnapped his holster. “What’s wrong?” If they were lucky, Rysa only looked stunned because Anna had shared her news. If they weren’t lucky, then…

  Anna reached out to Andreas. “She’s glassy-eyed. I think she’s in a vision.”

  “Rysa?” Daisy touched the other woman’s cheek. “You okay?”

  “Run, Daisy.” Rysa sounded as dazed as she looked. “Gavin needs you.”

  Daisy stepped back, her eyes round. “Andreas?”

  “Listen to the Fate!” Anna snapped. “Get into the—”

  “Daisy!” Rysa screamed. “Run!”

  Ms. Pavlovich bolted toward the house without looking back.

  “Andreas!” Rysa’s hand rose. Her finger pointed toward the dumpster.

  He hadn’t felt the presence of another Fate, not until the man’s future-seer ground over his mind like saws on wood, saws through a violin. Grating. Screaming.

  Andreas knew this Fate.

  His calling scents welled up from their origin in his lower throat. They bubbled as if boiling, as if as terrified as him.

  But it made no difference.

  Bullets were faster.

  “Andreas!” Rysa screamed again.

  And Andreas Sisto, the Second of the Dragons’ Legion, felt a hole open in his chest.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “We should go around back and make sure he’s not on the roof.” Gavin took the front steps carefully, watching for ice and slick spots. He should spread more ice melt before the others arrive. “It’s too cold for that, anyway.”

  Derek stopped at the base of the steps and squinted as he tilted back his hat. “Your neighbors have not complained?”

  Gavin shrugged. “Not that Daisy has said.” He was pretty sure the cranky older couple in the house on the other side of the alley was more concerned with the public displays of affection than with the big guy in black who constantly scaled the outside of the house.

  Derek shook his head and followed Gavin around the house to the backyard. It didn’t look like anyone had let the dogs out since he’d left this morning.

  Gavin walked toward the garage to get a good look at the roof. “No Ladon,” he said.

  Derek waved toward the back mudroom door. “If his beast wakes, he is inside and nearby.”

  Gavin pulled out his key. “They don’t allow me near Dragon when he sleeps.” He shouldn’t frown, because they didn’t let Daisy near the sleeping beast either. Only Rysa.

  He stuck in his key but the back door was unlocked. “Weird. He always locks the door behind him.” Gavin pushed it open. “Ladon?” he called.

  Someone shuffled in the kitchen.

  Derek followed him in, stomping his feet. “Brother! You have company.”

  Gavin dropped his coat on the bench and walked into the kitchen.

  Ladon sat on the floor near the hallway door, the sleeves of his t-shirt rolled up like a fifties greaser, next to Miss Kitty and the kittens’ box.

  When they entered, he grinned and blinked, but didn’t stand up. “Gavin Bower,” he said.

  “What are you doing?” The tile floor wasn’t comfortable, and in the winter, cold. Did Mr. Sisto’s enthralling wear off already? This is not good, Gavin thought.

  Derek rounded the corner and immediately stopped. “Ladon.” It came out more a command than a question.

  “Tsar. I knew you would show up.” He tipped his head to the side and stuck one of his arms into the box. Mewing followed. “Sisto appeared and I knew you and my sister would not be far behind.”

  His fingers moved as if petting the little balls of fluff.

  Derek’s hand wrapped around Gavin’s elbow. “Move behind me. Now,” he whispered. To Ladon: “Gavin tells me Rysa wishes to keep the cats. Is this true?”

  Derek took off his hat and handed it to Gavin. “Go hang this in the mudroom, will you? Thank you.”

  His face said something very different—run. Derek turned away and took a step into the kitchen. “Put the kitten in the box,” he said.

  “Why?” Ladon held up the gray kitten. The little cat squirmed and meowed.

  “Where are the dogs?” Gavin asked. Did he do something to Radar and Ragnar?

  “Upstairs.” Ladon wrapped his hand around the little gray kitten’s neck.

  Derek shoved Gavin toward the mudroom door. He bounced against the frame, knocking his elbow, but managed to keep his footing. Tingly pain ratcheted through his arm and down to his fingers. He dropped the hat onto the bench as he picked up his coat.

  Derek wasn’t looking at him. His entire focus—gaze, body posture, and, Gavin swore, his hearing—were aimed directly at Ladon.

  Gavin pulled out his phone as he staggered away toward the front of the house. He swiped through his numbers to Daisy’s.

  We have a problem, he texted.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Portland, Oregon, Praesagio Industries campus main building…

  Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov whipped the tablet at his office’s wall. It spun like a discus, corners whirring in a flat plane, and slammed point first into the horrid modern reinterpretation of a classic Renaissance painting of the Emperor in repose. The painting, done by some random art wo
rld asshole who, Dmitri suspected, owed his entire “career” to Trajan’s attentions, rocked back and forth on the wall.

  The tablet bounced off the canvas with a dull thud and plopped flat onto Trajan’s immaculate, bright blue and imperial purple Persian rug. The large one that undoubtedly cost more than a small nation’s gross national product.

  How he hated that man. Trajan was an insufferable bore of a human, a narcissistic “douchebag” as the kids like to say, which explained the man’s long reign and his longer rein on power.

  Trajan did not offer opportunities to learn new strategies toward the consolidation of hierarchies or the accumulation of wealth; Trajan was, in his entirety, an obstacle.

  And now, an obstacle wholly-owned and amalgamated into the mechanics of Dmitri’s many holding corporations. By the end of the year, Dmitri would be Praesagio Industries’ major stockholder.

  Some employees responded with recalcitrant attitudes and bluster-filled postures. Most did not seem to care who siphoned profits into the corporation’s upper echelons, as long as their boss left their pet projects alone. Which he did. Praesagio’s tentacles into the United States government were, for now, best left in-place and undisturbed.

  Yet the stonewalling he had found surrounding Vivicus’s demise and the true identity of the triad who attacked his daughter made his blood boil and his damaged hand throb. He’d had his fill of the “fog” his Fates claimed hung over the what-was-is-will-be.

  Dmitri closed his eyes and tried not to snarl at the oversized, ugly painting above the tacky Persian rug, or at the oversized, ugly wood and metal monstrosity of a desk he’d inherited from Trajan, or the oversized, decidedly not ugly view of the Oregon mountains his new office space provided.

  Though looking at volcanos every morning did not sit well with his constitution.

  He breathed deep and pushed away the thoughts. He wondered, in some moments, if Ms. Torres’s attention issues were contagious, and if he’d somehow been infected. But he understood the truth of his life—he may be a healer with enough morphing ability to keep himself young and “vibrant” but he was still a man, and men needed sleep. Praesagio did not. His current state of mind blossomed from the unholy union of his needs and the needs of his multi-billion dollar corporations.

  Yet his duties were not to be shirked. He did not take his ironic title of “Caesar” with an ironic level of post-modern ennui. He had an empire to run. People who demanded his leadership. Family whose lives depended on his skill and his intellect.

  So there would be no more ignoring his requests for information. No more cowering and whining. No more employee finger-pointing and accompanying screams of Not my fault!

  Time for some good, old-fashioned, well-understood if stereotypical, threats delivered through clenched Russian teeth.

  Dmitri brought a few of his own people when he took over—a vice president from the large, California-based holding company he owned, a couple of lawyers from his European endeavors, and a handful of enthrallers from The Land. He did not displace any of Trajan’s employees, nor did he send Trajan to pasture either, preferring a mutually agreed upon merger. But if he did not receive information beyond “we don’t know” by sundown, heads might yet roll.

  Dmitri leaned forward, his gloved hand out to press the intercom button.

  The office door opened. “Mr. Pavlovich?” Trajan’s disarming and lovely enthraller executive assistant’s head poked through the crack. She was, like many women in her position, the true boss of day-to-day operations.

  “Yes?” He pulled his finger back from the intercom.

  She glanced over her shoulder. “The triad from Customer Heuristics you sent to Canada came up, sir. They’re… upset. I can smell it on them. They won’t talk to me. They’re—”

  “Send them in.”

  She nodded and backed away. Seconds later, a young-looking, Arabic male walked through the door, his future-seer pushing ahead of him like the leading edge of a sandstorm blowing into the hollows of a cliff. It whistled, ghostly and haunting, a melodic touch promising death if you ventured too close.

  Behind him, a female entered, her Finnish features and her iron-gray eyes clearly signaling that she was not his sister. Her present-seer rolled out in front of the future-seer, a gale so fast it shredded more than whistled. The past-seer entered last. Obviously the future-seer’s twin, he stepped in but did not roll out his seer. He did, though, stand closer to the female, unconsciously providing Dmitri with more information than the Fates meant to share.

  “Mr. Pavlovich?” The future-seer walked toward the desk and extended his hand. “My name is Asar Sut, sir. I’m the future-seer of the Customer Heuristics team assigned to watch over Gavin Bower.”

  Mr. Bower had adequately impressed Dmitri when they’d met this past summer.

  Dmitri stood and walked around the desk. “Yes?” He’d read their report. “You were clear with your findings when you returned from Vancouver.” They hadn’t seen anything beyond what the other Fates reported.

  “We think…” The future-seer glanced over his shoulder at the other two.

  The present-seeing female stepped forward. “We think something is happening in Minneapolis, sir. Something big.”

  The past-seer nodded. “No one else in Heuristics is picking up signs.”

  “Zero, sir.” The present-seer said. “Which is why they haven’t notified you.”

  The present-seer stood in an assessing but unassuming posture that, to Dmitri, suggested extensive espionage training. “It’s as if there’s a screen over the future and someone is broadcasting a fake signal.” She scrunched her face. “It’s different than the generalized fog everyone’s been complaining about.”

  The two males nodded in agreement.

  “It feels edited.”

  “You know this how?” Ladon had mentioned Rysa commenting on how the shard of the Fate Progenitor’s talisman made her visions feel edited.

  The present-seer twitched. He’d seen similar movements from Trajan. Fates who thought themselves more skilled than any Shifter—even the Shifter now in control of their company—twitched like that.

  Except this woman did not carry the same narrow eyes and disgusted sneer. Her annoyance stemmed from a different source.

  He’d read their files. He wasn’t about to let Fates he did not understand near his daughter or the Dracae. They were model employees. Not Prime, but not low-level breeder Fates, either. The males were Ulpi—direct descendants of Trajan. The female, though, had a veiled past.

  They specialized in “investigative seeing” and had requested their position in Customer Heuristics and Relational Logistics Environmental Services over thirty years ago.

  And now they’d taken to watching over his daughter’s normal boyfriend and, tangentially, the Dracae, working around the edges, doing seeing chores and not, for the most part, making much of their involvement.

  Dmitri walked toward the three Fates. They were average human beings—all about five feet nine inches tall, the female included. The males had standard dark brown, straight hair and sharp, handsome, Egyptian features. They would not stand out in any crowd for any reason whatsoever.

  Except for the obvious, well-practiced military postures and observation skills.

  The female extended her hand. “Cordelia Palatini-Sut, sir.”

  He shook once. “Tell me more.”

  “We think,” she said, “the Draki Prime will use Mr. Bower to circumvent the editing in the near future. And…” She glanced at her triad mates.

  “Say what you need to say, Fates,” Dmitri growled. No more Fate prevarications.

  “I’ve been picking up future… obsessive moments from Mr. Bower,” the future-seer said. “Times when he will be emotionally upset by a woman. What I’m seeing is carrying disguised information.”

  Dmitri did not understand their Fate ramblings. What he did understand, though, was that his daughter’s boyfriend—and thus his daughter—might be in as much trou
ble as Rysa and Ladon.

  “We need planes in the air, sir.” The present-seer named Cordelia placed her hand on the door. “Full medical and security teams, sir. Now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  An hour earlier….

  Opportunity presented itself in the morning, after the barbarian came in. The Fate bitch, the spawn, and their normal pet left for their campus chores. His half-brother had followed when the barbarian slept.

  The beast flicked out his pre-waking touches.

  Now was the time to get between the man and the beast. The scary fuck past-seer’s appearance only clinched the obvious.

  Miss Kitty merped when he walked by, his step light and imitating the Fate. The cat’s four kittens squirmed and pounced around the kitchen, as young cats tended to do.

  He stopped in the front hall and closed his eyes, listening. The two wolf-beasts were, as he suspected, in the attic, with his dragon-beast. He shifted steps and his scent, mimicking the Fate, the human the dogs seemed least likely to investigate—but the one Ladon would come down for.

  The spawn’s house was a lovely place with lovely woodwork and a lovelier smell. She did her work, keeping it clean. Bloodhounds were like that.

  He’d fooled her, in the garage. Laid the raccoon stink on thick and she fell for it because they all thought he died in the Canadian hellhole. But, he suspected, the real reason she didn’t smell him was because she didn’t want to. Life was hard—her modern life the hardest of all—and a ghost would mean missed exams and interference with her accumulation of invisible, modern power.

  Vivicus tapped his finger on the sturdy wood of the spawn’s staircase. Built from good trees, ones of character and strength, he felt what should have been a moment of regret, yet glee filled his chest. He held a small, high-pitched laugh because the Fate wouldn’t make such sounds. He was about to fuck with the barbarian in a way best described as “epic” and the staircase’s precious feelings were not of consequence.