The Burning World (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 7)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  As it rained down death on the most humans it could in the shortest amount of time.

  No, the Incursion would not leave until they forced it to close.

  Daisy Reynolds Pavlovich, the distant cousin of the woman she’d met in new-space, the First Alchemist, stood up. She would not falter. She would not stumble. “I have instructions,” she said. “I know what we need to do.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Rysa sat on the bus’s steps. They should close the doors to keep the heat inside but Ladon wanted her in his sightline.

  All the cops except Officer Seaver had left, as had the news crew, which surprised her, until she realized that Andreas had sent them away.

  They all needed to go home. They all needed to be with their families. The best information they had so far was that the Incursion was moving with the rotation of the Earth and that the invaders had formed a westward line across the Northern Hemisphere. They launched ballistics from space and followed with dropships that were releasing soldiers. Or animals of some kind. Reports conflicted. No one had pictures of the invading forces yet.

  Estimates were that they’d cross over into Europe in the next few hours, and would hit the East Coast of North America within ten.

  Everyone should go home to their families, yet Officer Seaver stood in the middle of the street between Ladon and Andreas doing his damnedest to be the voice of civilian authority.

  Rysa had almost asked Andreas to enthrall him and send him home to his fiancé and little boy. She might yet, unless that was the order that sent him to his death.

  Rysa rubbed her cold, aching fingers together. The world was ending, the sniffer-bots in her blood were broken, and her seers had gone back to sputtering, as had her healer. And Dunn had incapacitated her enthraller. No more scents for Ladon. No more healing for Daisy. Rysa Torres Drake was useless enough that maybe she should be the one to go home so she wouldn’t be underfoot.

  She pulled her mom’s pink hat down over her ears. Cages. Cannons. Burners. The end of the world.

  Ladon talked with Officer Seaver as if it was all in a day’s work. As if they were going to survive this. As if the destruction raining down on Asia wasn’t real.

  Dragon nuzzled her neck. Unlike Sister-Dragon who circled the bus, and the strategy meeting happening out front, he’d come in to make sure she was okay.

  “You should be out there, you know,” she said.

  Dragon snorted and flashed his version of a frown. We do not understand what is happening, he signed.

  Behind Anna, Sister-Dragon mirrored his flash.

  Ladon had said that the dragons had gone into “fight synchronization” before they arrived, something they often did before a big battle. It tightened their connection, and allowed Ladon and Anna to fight better as a team.

  Their synchronization frightened Rysa more than anything else. It readied her dragons for a battle that shouldn’t be happening.

  Why was she having such a hard time accepting reality? Why hadn’t it sunk in? Why wasn’t she screaming and running around like the crazed spaz of a woman she was?

  She felt numb.

  In the back of her brain, her dark Fate did the pacing and the prepping for her.

  “I don’t understand, either, love.” She stroked Dragon’s crest and nodded toward Ladon and Seaver. Anna and Andreas talked on their phones. Off the corner of the bus, Daisy talked in hushed tones on hers to Gavin.

  Daisy wasn’t moving a lot, nor was she talking a lot. She needed a healing. Only Andreas was able to help, but his calling scents only went so far.

  Rysa was wounded. Daisy was wounded. The dragons’ agitation was contagious, and Ladon seemed to be only barely holding in his need to punch something.

  Officer Seaver, at least, had decided that someone needed to facilitate communication between the group and the real world, and had taken up the task.

  She stood up and waited for Dragon to corkscrew out the door. He no longer bothered to hold invisibility. Officer Seaver no longer acted alarmed, though he did spend a great deal of his time staring at one or both of the dragons.

  Rysa walked toward Ladon and the cop.

  They turned toward her in unison, in a twisting mirror image of each other. Seaver and Ladon were remarkably similar in build and posture, even though Seaver was a good three inches taller than Ladon. Their heads truly were similarly shaped, as were their facial features.

  For a second, Rysa wondered if Ladon, sometime in his long life, had fathered a child he didn’t know about, and if his genetics had made it into this cop from Wyoming—and she got a definite sense from her sputtering seers that she’d just glimpsed something through the fog in the what-was-is-will-be.

  She shook it off. One issue at a time, she thought. Please. No flitting her ADHD out onto random tangents.

  But when they made it through this, she’d figure out about Officer Seaver. Ladon and Dragon would want to know and, she suspected, so would the officer.

  We will make it through, she thought. Rysa, Ladon and Dragon, Anna and Sister-Dragon, Andreas, Daisy. Officer Seaver, too.

  All of them. She latched onto that thought—the wish and belief—and she pressed it deep into the numbness suffocating her soul. She pressed it in until it hurt.

  Because otherwise, it might not happen.

  “Ms. Torres Drake.” Officer Seaver tipped his head. “Feeling better?”

  She took Ladon’s hand, but nodded to the officer. “A little. Thank you,” she said. To Ladon: “Daisy’s almost done talking to Gavin.”

  Anna walked up. She held her fists in her pockets to pull her coat around her belly, and nodded to the officer. “There are images coming in from Asia.”

  She held up her phone.

  People screamed. The blurry video showed something that looked vaguely ship-like landing in what used to be a park.

  What corkscrewed out of the opening door was not human or human-shaped. Not at all.

  “Shit,” muttered Officer Seaver. “I figured you were all some of them.” He looked at Ladon. “Fates and Shifters, that CEO guy said. What did he call the other ones? Burners? But you’re not. You’re dragons.”

  “They’re called the Dracae, Officer Seaver,” Rysa said.

  “That woman, the one who vanished, she said, ‘These are the dragons who will protect you.’ She said your two dragons are Earth’s dragons.”

  “Dragon and his sister are people,” Ladon said. He flexed his arm and the plating on his jacket chinked and chimed.

  Ladon’s veneer of charm was wearing thin.

  Anna stomped her foot to get Officer Seaver’s attention. “Brother and I hear them. They can also sign.”

  “Yes,” Ladon said.

  “Like American Sign Language?” Officer Seaver asked.

  Yes, signed Dragon.

  Officer Seaver chuckled. “I’ll be damned,” he said. His chuckle turned into a stiff, pained laugh. “We’re being invaded by space dragons and the two already here sign.” He laughed again. “Fuck.”

  He backed into his cruiser and rubbed at his face in much the same way as Ladon rubbed at his when he was perplexed. “Superhumans and dragons,” he muttered.

  Rysa stepped close enough that she could touch his elbow, but didn’t extend her hand. Best not to startle a cop. “Those rings in the sky?” She pointed over her shoulder at the night-shrouded western horizon. “It won’t be long before they appear in the east.”

  The Incursion itself was moving, as was the planet. The ships coming through were also moving. They really did not have a lot of time before the rings appeared again over North America.

  Seaver nodded.

  “We’re leaving soon,” she said.

  He nodded again. “Your husband said something about finding a special Burner.”

  Now Rysa nodded. Billy held prisoner the Burner who was going to be literal cannon fodder. Literally the shot they used to close the Incursion.

  Part of her still didn’t believe it.
>
  Oh, it happens, whispered her dark Fate.

  Rysa ignored the little voice. The Ambusti Prime was not her focus right now. The big man who reminded her way too much of her husband was.

  “We will not demand that you stay with us,” she said. “No one will begrudge you returning to your family.”

  He frowned. “You’re going to need an escort.” He pointed up the street, toward the highway. “You’re going to need help getting through on the freeways.”

  Rysa glanced over at Ladon, who nodded his agreement.

  “If my helping you closes that damned thing even ten minutes earlier than you would otherwise, then I need to help you.” Seaver rubbed his face again. “Ten minutes might cut off one of their drops. Ten minutes might save an entire city.”

  The hiccup started in her gut. It cracked right on through her numbness and erupted out between quivering lips and under misting eyes.

  Entire cities.

  “Hey, hey,” Officer Seaver reached out to her, as did Ladon. The two men instinctively formed a barrier between her and the burning world. “Ladon explained the situation to me. There’s nothing you can do until your friend lands.”

  We will leave soon, Rysa, Dragon signed.

  She stood up straight, though a sniffle escaped. “Does Andreas have directions yet?”

  He walked over, still staring at the screen of his phone. “I got through to Hadrian. The original plan was to bring Billy into an Air Force base in South Carolina. They wanted him away from a major metropolitan area for obvious reasons.”

  “South Carolina is too far away,” Ladon said. He waved Anna over.

  “Trajan agrees. Seems he called in a few favors the moment the Incursion opened. They landed in Portugal and transferred Billy to a faster jet. Sounds like he’s holding his shit together, but just barely.”

  Andreas pocketed his phone. “He’ll land in Denver in two hours. We need to move.”

  Anna pushed out a call to both dragons and Sister-Dragon carefully nudged Daisy toward the bus door. Daisy looked up once, then buried her face back in her phone as she slowly took the back steps up into the bus.

  Seaver shook Andreas’s hand, then Ladon’s, then Rysa’s. “I’ll call it in. Let them know I’m escorting you to this base of yours on the Nebraska border.”

  This time, Rysa did touch his elbow. “Call your family, okay? Tell them you love them.”

  He frowned to cover the little bit of shock that flittered across his face. “I will, ma’am,” he said, and ducked into his cruiser.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Nebraska…

  “We should get back in the car,” Gavin’s brother said. They’d stopped for gas at a truck stop in the middle of Nebraska. Ian did the filling. Gavin, the clutching of “home.” The dogs, their duty in the snowbanks off to the truck stop’s western edge.

  A wave of some sort of power rolled over the truck stop—all the cars started. The building’s lights blinked. Phones rang.

  Then the rings appeared in the sky.

  Less chaos erupted than he expected. No one panicked, though he still got plenty of stares because of the bedsheet wrapped around his body and the oven door he couldn’t set down. Someone asked if the rings were some sort of weather phenomenon.

  Then the truth started coming in on people’s phones.

  All the shit Dunn had been babbling about had literally just appeared above their heads. The end of the world had started and he was in the middle of Nebraska with his brother and the dogs and not with Daisy. Because of Dunn. Because of Daisy’s crazy-ass mother.

  The three concentric arches on the horizon contracted and vanished behind the mountains.

  “Does this change things?” Ian asked.

  The rings in the sky reminded Gavin of that damned opal ring in his pocket. He should toss it into the snow, but somehow, he suspected that wasn’t a good idea.

  Gavin leaned the oven door against his calf so he didn’t have to hold it while standing out in the winter air, and it made him want to lean his entire body to the side.

  Here he was, the skewed man in a now skewered world.

  Gavin pulled the sheet tighter. He wore his winter jacket under it but the cold still seeped in. “No,” he said. It didn’t change anything. He was going to find Daisy.

  Ian whistled for the dogs. They’d taken a liking to him, or at least decided that he smelled enough like Gavin that he was pack, and usually followed his commands.

  They both looked up but didn’t trot over, and continued with their doggy investigations of the snow.

  “It’s gone. We should go,” Ian said. He whistled again, and again, the dogs ignored him.

  Gavin whistled. They reluctantly ran to him even though something interesting hid in the bank and they’d rather play.

  Radar and Ragnar were taking the end of the world well. Just another day in their doggy lives.

  Gavin pulled out his phone. Maybe Daisy would answer this time.

  “Gavin! Where are you?” she said before he could get a word out. “Rysa says you’re a couple of hours away.”

  “We’re past some town called Big Springs,” Gavin said. They would hit the Interstate 80/76 split once they got back on the road. “Are you in Cheyenne?” They weren’t that far away. “Are you okay? What’s happening? Did you see the rings? It’s happening, isn’t it?”

  Ian loaded Radar and Ragnar into the car.

  “I’m okay,” she said, though she wasn’t. He heard it in her voice. She was most definitely not okay. “The baby is okay.”

  All he heard was the unspoken for now.

  His neck tightened but he wouldn’t gulp. He wouldn’t break down wrapped in a bedsheet out here in the middle of fucking Nebraska, because his family did not need that right now. They needed him to make it safely to them.

  “Listen, that state trooper from the hotel is here,” she said. “I asked him to put an alert out on your car so that no one stops you for speeding.” She paused. “Not that they would anyway.”

  No, the world had more important issues now than speeding college students.

  “How bad is it?” Gavin asked, though Ian would let him know the moment he got back into the car. His brother leaned against their sedan with his face in his phone.

  His shocked and visibly paling face.

  “We should be in China,” Daisy said. “We should be at Vesuvius! Damn it.” Daisy sniffed. “But we can’t stop them until they get here. We’re in the middle of North America and we can’t stop them until they’ve scoured most of the planet.”

  “Honey, it’s not your fault.” It couldn’t be her fault.

  “The Whispering One said it had to do with the physics of new-space. That we need to aim correctly, and the Incursion won’t be in a position where we can hit it until it moves over us.”

  The Incursion. It already had a name? “What is it?”

  Ian had his hand on the top of his stupid bun. His mouth hung open.

  “It’s a full-scale invasion, isn’t it?” They were being invaded by dragons through a rip in the fabric of the universe.

  “We think so,” Daisy said.

  “Don’t look at the news,” he blurted out. “Don’t let Rysa look at any reports, okay? Tell Brother-Dragon. I know she’s a Fate but if she realizes the scale of what’s happening she’s going to break down. I don’t think she can handle the sheer quantity of death. I don’t.” He couldn’t handle it.

  No one could handle it, and if they were going to stop it, they needed to not think about it.

  “I think she’s in shock. I don’t think it’s registered yet.” Daisy sniffled again. “I don’t think any of them think dragons could do this.”

  Not the dragons he knew.

  “We’re heading to the base,” she said. “Praesagio is bringing in Billy and the Burner Progenitor. I can’t start what I need to do until I have them.”

  “Do you trust them?” How was anyone supposed to trust Burners?

  “We
don’t have any other choice.”

  No, they didn’t.

  “Send me directions to this base place.” They’d meet there.

  “I…” Daisy sniffled again. “I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do.”

  “What? Why?” He pulled the sheet tighter. The oven door pressed against his calf and had started to hurt.

  Everything hurt. Or maybe it didn’t. It was hard to tell the difference between pain and shock.

  “Because I don’t know how long we’ll be there. I don’t know how big the blast radius is going to—”

  “Blast radius?” Was she going to be in the center of a fucking blast radius? “Daisy, please tell me that—”

  “Gavin!” Her voice hitched. She was trying not to cry. “It’s me. It has to be me. I don’t have any choice. I don’t. So I don’t think you should—”

  “I’m coming.”

  All he heard was the crackling absence of words—the pumped full of electricity, or anger, or fear absence of language.

  “Daisy?” he said.

  “Mom’s gone,” she said. “We’re supposed to build the firing parts of a cannon, half from here and half from new-space. Mom was supposed to send me into new-space. I was the one who was supposed to be on the other side where the Whispering One could guide me but she went instead and now I’m out here and Rysa can’t heal me anymore.” She gulped. “Rysa burned out her sniffers and now her abilities are starting to malfunction. And she’s… I think… I don’t know what to think.”

  “You’re not going to die.” She wasn’t. Rysa wasn’t. He wouldn’t let either of them die.

  Daisy responded with a tight, short groan. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the baby.”

  She had nothing to be sorry about. She didn’t choose this path.

  “We’ll go to Cheyenne, if that’s what you want. Just tell me what you need me to do,” he said.

  “We will probably lose cell signals soon,” she said absently. “I don’t see how the satellites could survive this.”