Flux of Skin

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  I do not know. A pause. Sister goes over the wall, toward the entrance.

  “Maria.” Paige pulled surgical scissors out of her pocket and stepped toward Derek. “Check Ms. Torres’s temperature first.”

  “No,” said Rysa. Her face looked as flat as her voice.

  She didn’t look at Ladon. She pointed at the nurse. “You go to the rooms on either side of this one and move the patients across the hall.”

  Shock took hold of the nurse’s face. Her mouth opened and closed, but she didn’t say anything.

  Paige looked at Rysa, then at Ladon.

  Understanding showed on her face as clearly as surprised terror showed on the nurse’s. “Go on, Maria. I’ll take out their IVs. Do as she asks, okay? Get the help you need, but don’t say anything else. We don’t need a panic.”

  Maria didn’t move. “Are you Feds?”

  Rysa answered before Ladon opened his mouth. “Yes.”

  Maria’s face cleared. This one simple affirmative lie must have allowed her mind to make some sense of the situation—and to accept that none of them were going to harm her. She nodded and scrambled out the door, moving quickly across the corridor toward the nurse’s station.

  Paige walked around Derek’s bed and opened the top drawer of the cabinet between him and Rysa, and fished out new tape. She stood closer to Ladon than most modern Americans considered appropriate for personal space, and Ladon sensed she knew better, but did it because she was in on their secret.

  She closed the drawer and stood tall between Ladon and Derek, but she looked at Rysa. “Are you like them?”

  Rysa’s face didn’t change. This time, though, Ladon felt a seer. Before he could say anything, she raised her hand to silence him.

  “In a way, yes.”

  Paige nodded and sat on the edge of Rysa’s bed. “Let’s see that arm, Ms. Torres.”

  Rysa held up her wrist.

  Derek watched Rysa, too. He dropped his feet to the floor as he scratched the back of his head. He looked as worried as Ladon felt.

  “I’ve seen one of your squirrels.” Paige pulled tape off Rysa’s arm. “Not here. Not at the hospital. When I was a kid.”

  Ladon holstered the gun. He wasn’t surprised. Paige gave them the most leeway of all the staff. Which was why she was Derek’s main provider.

  “In ’84. My dad took me camping in the Windies for my birthday. I’d gone down to the stream to look for frogs and to listen to the birds.” She pressed the power buttons on several of Rysa’s machines and the room’s din quieted. “I heard a crash in the trees. Something big. I thought it was a grizzly.”

  Paige worked quickly, her fingers dancing over the IV site. “Then I saw your wife, Mr. Nicholson, though at that time she was your father’s wife, since you are now Derek Nicholson the Fourth.”

  Derek grinned. Paige chuckled and her shoulders relaxed. A looseness filtered into her voice and movements. She must have felt relieved to be able to speak of what she knew.

  Paige leaned closer to Rysa and inspected the needle in her flesh. “Funny how much you look like your ‘father,’ Mr. Nicholson.”

  “Yes, it is funny, isn’t it?” Derek’s grin widened.

  Paige pulled out the needle and pressed gauze on the site. “I’d never been so terrified in my life. I was a stupid kid, going off when there’s bears. So I hid behind a big tree. But it was AnnaBelinda tossing a man twice her size into the stream. God, she’s fast.”

  Ladon remembered the incident. A group of Seraphim had come into town on their Harleys and made a lot of noise, and pissed off the locals more than scaring anyone. But they’d wanted to put on a show, so he and Sister would be distracted. Then a small group snatched Derek.

  The roars had echoed throughout the cave, hides flashing and humans bellowing.

  Sister hunted. Sister-Dragon ripped several Shifters into small pieces. Chunks of morpher bone still turned up in the mountains every so often, always causing a stir with the authorities.

  It had taken Ladon a full two weeks of intense searching, no sleeping, no eating, just tracking, to find his brother-in-law.

  At the beginning of it, a young Paige had witnessed a moment of dragon violence.

  “He floundered but managed to stand up. Your wife whipped a knife at him. I’ve never figured out how I managed not to gasp.” She lifted the gauze to check if the wound still bled. “The knife hit him square between the eyes, but he just chuckled. I couldn’t believe what I saw.”

  One of the class-one morphers who’d attacked. Sister had fought him for hours, chasing him through the forest, slicing off pieces and snapping vertebrae. Ladon didn’t know if he’d escaped.

  “Then something dropped on him. Something huge I couldn’t see. Until I could.” She looked up at Ladon. “There’s two, aren’t there? Yours and hers?”

  Ladon nodded.

  Paige patted Rysa’s hand, then moved to Derek. “And you. I know who you are. It’s not hard to believe, once you’ve seen a squirrel. But I’ve always wondered how it is you stay young—and how you managed to get tattoos—even though your blood’s not changed.”

  Derek chuckled. “It’s a long, sad story, Paige. One we do not now have time to tell.”

  Paige sat on the edge of his bed. “Her squirrel threw the man back into the trees. I didn’t see them after that. I ran to our camp to tell Dad, but when I got there, he’d pulled up everything. Said we needed to go.” She pulled the tape off Derek’s hand. “Said a huge man had told him to leave. That the mountains weren’t safe.” She pulled the needle. “Dad never said anything at all about it to anyone.”

  A shadow of confusion fell over Paige. “Come to think of it, neither have I.”

  Why would a Seraphim enthraller have cared about normals? But if he’d not spoken compelling words, her father might have talked on and on about dragons in the forest. He’d been a good man, one who took care of his family and did his best by the community. He’d owned a small grocery until the chain stores moved in, and he liked to make conversation with everyone, Ladon included.

  His wife had been a nurse. Even back then, the young Paige had taken an interest in medicine. And Derek.

  But she’d never once, until now, said anything.

  “There.” Paige pressed on the gauze onto Derek’s site the same way she’d pressed on Rysa’s. “But I won’t sign discharge orders. Neither of you is fit to leave.”

  Rysa stood up. Her hand trailed up Ladon’s back, and her fingers danced over the curve of his muscles. She stepped in front of him.

  “I’m coming with you,” she whispered.

  She couldn’t do this now. The Seraphim were after her, not him. Not Derek. Her. She was not going to walk right into Vivicus’s arms. “No, you are not! Damn it, Rysa, what if—”

  She kissed him. Her hands cupped his cheeks, and she reached up, moving onto her toes, and kissed him quiet.

  The calling scents moving from her lips filled his head with an overlapping kaleidoscope of richness and regrets. Of fears he didn’t understand and hopes that they’d all be okay.

  But mostly he tasted the same determination he felt in her fingers and saw in her eyes. No matter what the future held for their relationship, she was the Draki Prime and she would do her job.

  “You don’t just become a Prime Fate! You need training. Skill. You’re sick. You’re staying with Derek and Sister. You’re not coming with us.”

  She ignored him and stepped back. Her legs wobbled, her gait unsteady, and she dropped onto Derek’s bed.

  Ladon reached for her, but she held up her hand.

  Paige blinked. Rysa sat so close to her they could kiss.

  The physician’s assistant didn’t move or balk. “You are a Fate? A goddess?” She watched Ladon watch Rysa, her face tight with concentration.

  Derek wiggled down the bed and stood up, smiling. “She is like them, Paige, but different. She has a special gift. She sees things.”

  “Oh.” Paige didn’t ask any more q
uestions.

  Sister and Sister-Human approach the room.

  Ladon pointed at the door. “I must go.” He’d need Derek’s jacket when he left the room or the staff would have the same reaction as Maria. He snatched it off the foot of the bed. “Say nothing of this, Paige.”

  “Listen to Ladon,” Rysa said.

  She must have used her calling scents and added a burst of ‘comply.’ Paige blinked as she nodded an affirmative.

  Rysa leaned closer to Paige. “Go now. Help the nurses move the patients.”

  Paige shifted on the bed, and moved quickly around Ladon and out the door. Ladon watched her go.

  Rysa moved back to her bed and snatched her t-shirt off the blankets. She stared at the window. “They’re waiting, but they grow impatient. They don’t like it when you take your time. They get agitated. You plan things they can’t counter.” A shudder ran up her spine and she inhaled quickly, but she didn’t turn around.

  “Ladon,” Derek said. We will take her, he signed. Don’t worry.

  Rysa’s fist tightened around the shirt. The big eared Russian cartoon character stared up at Ladon from under her fingers, as crunched by the situation as the rest of them.

  Sister would take Derek and Rysa out through the tunnel. And Ladon would distract the Seraphim.

  “No.” Rysa didn’t turn around. But her seers burst through the room, a sudden and clear brilliance vanishing as quickly as it flashed. “No path leads to safety. I need to be with you.”

  What did she see? Why did she need to be with him? They’d synchronized in the RV. Would they need to do it again?

  “Don’t be vague, Rysa. Please. Tell us what we need to do,” Ladon said. But she was untrained. What if what she saw was a possibility and not a probability? He couldn’t chance her getting hurt because she’d uttered imprecise words.

  “Don’t you think if I could see clearly, I’d say clearly?”

  Derek snorted as he pulled on his t-shirt.

  “Shut up, Derek.” Rysa turned around. She winced slightly, as if turning her back on the Shifters was the last thing she wanted to do. “I know what you signed. I’m not a child.” She pointed at Ladon. “And I’m not a doll. And… and…”

  Her eyes closed. Another smaller seer flare burst through the room. This time, it pushed into Ladon’s vision and for a moment, they synced again. Breath matched. Pulse rate, too, his increasing to mimic hers. And all the fear he’d seen in her eyes, all the fear she did her best to control, dropped into his awareness.

  She carried the same panic in her gut he did. The same roiling, unformed mass of responses. No words. No concepts to make sense of it. Just a bag full of fears in every flavor her brain could conceive.

  Her body made war with itself, slash-and-burned itself, but her panic was ice cold.

  “Love.” He had her in his arms, pulling her tight against his chest, before he finished his words. “I’m sorry. I’m—”

  She pushed him away. Not hard, but her hands moved him back far enough that she could move easily.

  She dropped her hospital gown onto the bed. Rysa stood in front of him, naked from the waist up.

  Her temperature was still too high. Heat wafted off her skin and her upper chest blushed. But she still had the most gorgeous breasts he’d ever seen.

  Her arms laced into the t-shirt and she pulled it over her head, cutting off his view. “It’s like you’re fifteen or something.” For a quick second, a grin brightened her face.

  He leaned close, his lips grazing her ear, and he locked onto this one little moment of happiness. “Volcanos could explode and Hell itself open upon the world, and I’d stop everything for my most beautiful love.”

  Air moved into her throat with an audible sigh and she hugged him tightly. Her body conformed to his shape, to his muscles, her head on his good shoulder and her forehead pressed against his neck.

  “I want you to trust me,” she whispered.

  No seer touched his mind. She wasn’t looking forward. She held tight to his chest and voiced a true concern from her soul. One she felt now, in this moment.

  But this one time, he wasn’t going to listen to the wishes of his Prime Fate. She’d said no path led to safety, so he’d choose the path that led as close to her safety as he could muster, even to the detriment of his.

  He pulled back enough he could see her face. “Go with Derek and Sister. Go out through the tunnel and leave, even if Dragon and I are down to only our fists and bones.” Sister would do her duty. She’d protect their family.

  “I will do what’s right, Ladon.”

  Right, not safe. “Love, you’re—”

  Her look silenced his plea. The woman he’d pulled from the Burners only a few short days earlier was not the woman looking up at him now. The insecurities, though still there, still visible in her body posture, were lassoed by the tentacles of her seers. The fear of solitude, the Don’t leave still echoing from her to Dragon to him, had been healed, at least somewhat, by his own touch.

  She was right. She wasn’t a doll. Though she might still break.

  Neither he nor Dragon would be able to stop her, and he doubted Sister would try. But he needed to know, before he walked across the parking lot, Dragon at his back and his hand on the grip of his gun, that she’d not burn away the second he crossed the hospital’s threshold.

  So he pushed it, knowing full well he might cross her limit of tolerance. “Promise me you won’t use your abilities.”

  Her grip around him tightened, as did his around her. But a slight hint of ‘obstinance’ filled his nose.

  He’d made her feel controlled. But ground rules needed to be set. She didn’t understand who they were up against. She needed to trust him.

  “Whatever you do, don’t try to help.”

  The hint of ‘obstinance’ became fully ‘obstinate.’ She wasn’t going to listen.

  “Ladon—”

  “Please, Rysa.” He held her away, his hands gripping her upper arms. Under his fingers, her muscles tensed and released as if she didn’t quite know what to do. She wanted to prove her worth, but somewhere inside she must know that right now they faced villains beyond anything she’d dealt with before.

  That Shifter, the one who had attempted to kidnap her, he alone brought more terror to the surface than he’d ever seen her show, even when her uncle had attacked.

  “You don’t have training. It took the first Draki Prime a full decade to learn to fight with us, and they weren’t sick. So please, don’t put yourself in harm’s way.”

  She paused too long. His back tensed, first under her palms, then lower, above the base of his spine. “Rysa?” he asked.

  Her seers blipped. “I know.” She stayed against his chest. “I’ll be good.”

  She’d be good? He pulled back so he could see her eyes. “Good or bad, be careful. That’s all I ask.”

  The emotions washing across her face eluded him. Too many, moving too fast. He couldn’t follow. But he couldn’t stay to figure it out. He had to go out, or Seraphim would come in.

  She whispered her next words slowly, softly, as if they called death. “Please come back to me. Both of you.” As if she was a hook that gouged his flesh and ripped him apart. As if she knew he spoke the truth, that she shouldn’t put herself in harm’s way, but it didn’t matter. She was a Fate.

  Again, she curled against his chest. “I love you.”

  What could he do to counter the fear vibrating off her body onto his? He wasn’t as good a mate for this modern woman as he wanted to be.

  He’d be what she needed, but he didn’t know what she wanted. “We will talk. I promise. I will come back to you. Dragon will come back to you. I keep my promises, beloved. Always. Forever.”

  She looked up at him and more unfathomable emotions flowed like spilled wine across her face. Then she nodded quickly and let go, stepping back toward the bed.

  He felt as if ice had fallen on his world. Sleet and cold and freezing death blanketed his lif
e because his hearth, the center of his home, had just taken a step back. He was too far away from everything he needed.

  “Go,” she whispered. “Your sister’s returned.”

  And now, watching her face, he didn’t know if he could get back to where he belonged.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The hospital had remodeled the lobby late last year. They opened it up, adding an atrium, a children’s play area, and a little café with flavorless apples and wrought-iron chairs. The reception desk sprawled in the middle of the newly-vinyled floor, as big as a boulder off the mountains, and just as solid.

  Ladon walked out of the florescent-lit corridor and into the bright late afternoon sun washing through the reception area. Under his feet, the patterning on the floor changed from the utilitarian squares of the hallway to branching swirls laid out in nature-themed colors. To his sides, the bland walls gave way to glass and chrome. And above his head, the new skylights danced with the pendants of local teams and citizens’ groups.

  Ladon breathed in, sniffing carefully, for any signs of enthrallers. They would come in once he left the building, if they hadn’t already, and the only two entrances that would not set off alarms were the front lobby and the Emergency Department.

  The lobby reception desk, no matter how imposing, was easier to circumvent than the maze in Emergency.

  Nothing new hit his perception. Out here, this close to the doors, he expected fresher scents, but the lobby smelled just like the rest of the hospital—chemically sterile. The polarizing filters on the windows hazed the air, too, giving the entire area a bright-but-partly-cloudy feel.

  No one other than Julie moved in the lobby. She tapped away at her computer, her neck craned forward and her shoulders in an awkward position.

  She holds several files on her lap, Dragon pushed from above. He sat on the atrium windows directly above Julie’s desk, so he, too, could see the lobby. I see no other people.

  Looking in from outside would protect Dragon from any strong enthrallers, so if someone used ‘ignore,’ Dragon would see them anyway.

  As would Ladon. Maybe not as quickly, but he’d know. The ache in his side from his ribs throbbed in time with his heart and revved his body’s alertness. He would be nearly impossible to enthrall right now because of the pain. Only a handful of enthrallers could control him anyway, and most knew better than to try.