Like the walls around Derek.
Nurses laughed and patients shuffled, and it echoed unreal to Rysa’s ears, around an invisible dragon. Rysa pinched the bridge of her nose again.
The elevator pinged.
Derek waved her forward. “Come.”
The door opened. The elevator might be deep enough for a gurney or a cart full of supplies, but no way would three humans and a dragon fit inside. No way at all.
“Damn it,” AnnaBelinda muttered. “Stairs?” She backed up, glancing around.
Rysa couldn’t move. Her block of irreality wanted to go outside, to meld to Ladon’s. They’d met him at the door, with guns. With violence on their minds. These Shifters wanted to prove themselves big men, powerful persons, who could take on a Dracae and win. Then there’d be no stopping them. Fates would bow and kiss their feet. Burners would run like terrified toddlers. And they’d control everything Shifter.
What if they hurt Ladon? What if they injured him beyond her healing abilities? What if she looked and saw the same death she saw surrounding Derek?
The blocks of irreality around Derek and AnnaBelinda twitched.
“Fate!” AnnaBelinda squinted. “Control your seers.”
Derek placed his hand on the elevator door to keep it open. “She does not look good.” He pressed the inside of his other wrist against Rysa’s forehead. “Her fever is coming back.”
She felt his touch. Felt skin touch hers. But it felt more like a memory, or a dream, than a real moment. Maybe he felt warm, or maybe he felt cold. Maybe the hairs on his forearm brushed her hairline as he rotated his arm to press his wrist to her head. Maybe they didn’t.
She registered her own body, not his—the visual stimuli of movement toward her, the sounds of the hospital. The slight movement outward of her jaw as pressure pushed against her head. The change of the flow of air over her tongue and into her throat.
But no mirroring of Derek occurred. No understanding that another human being had touched her.
“Damn it, you are pale.” Derek glanced between his hand holding the door and Rysa’s face. “You are using your abilities, are you not?”
Rysa didn’t answer.
“We have felt a consistent push from her seers since Brother left for the front entrance.” AnnaBelinda’s hand moved upward to stroke a large, invisible neck.
“We need to get her out of here.” Derek nodded toward the parking lot. “And away from the Seraphim.” His irreality clicked and locked.
Rysa would vomit if this kept up. The blocks whirred as if she could see the mechanisms of the universe’s funhouse ride.
“Fate!” AnnaBelinda peered up at Rysa, her black ponytail swinging behind her head and blending into the blackness of her leather jacket. “If you insist on using your seers, put them to use. Stairs?”
Rysa didn’t see stairs, not with her seers, and not with her eyes. She saw only death sliding around Derek and it didn’t matter if they spent extra time searching for a door to the stairwell or if they got into the elevator.
She shook her head no.
“Damn it.” Anna moved to the side.
Rysa felt Sister-Dragon push by and into the elevator. Warm dragon breath grazed her shoulder and the sweet scent of spices touched her nose.
But it’d stop as soon as the beast entered the elevator. She’d go into silent mode, running as close to perfectly invisible as she could.
One last blast of energy moved between the beast and the woman.
“Go down with Dragon.” AnnaBelinda pushed her husband into the elevator as the door closed. “Wait next to the door. I will come down with the Fate.”
“But—”
The elevator pinged, then groaned. The light above the door turned red, and the down arrow lit up.
“What are you seeing, Fate?” AnnaBelinda stared at the door, not looking at Rysa.
What was she seeing? Your dead husband, Rysa thought. And I’m trying to figure out how to keep it from happening.
“Do not withhold information from me.” AnnaBelinda wiggled her shoulders and continued to stare at the door.
“My name is Rysa.” She’d had enough of being called “Fate” or “your Fate” whenever Ladon was around. She wasn’t his Fate, like he owned her or something. Her Fatehood wasn’t her, and she wasn’t chattel.
But she did take her role seriously. She had a gift, or curse. Either way, her abilities were a tool, and she’d learn to use them. She’d been given the opportunity to be the Draki Prime, to use that tool for the good of both the dragons, and she would.
And part of using her abilities for the dragons was withholding what she saw if her seers screamed for her to do so—if what she saw walled off the life of someone she refused to let die. And if that information would cause a worse response than what she was experiencing right now.
Rampage popped around inside her head as if someone had hit a ping pong ball off the walls of her mind. If AnnaBelinda and Sister-Dragon rampaged, no one would benefit.
No one would survive.
“I know what your name is.”
The elevator’s grinding stopped. It must have opened into the tunnel.
“Then use it.” Rysa wouldn’t cower. Cowering would help no one. And cowering often led to panicking.
No more panicking. Rysa needed to trust the dragons. And trust herself.
AnnaBelinda did not respond.
The grinding started up again and the arrow above the door turned green. The elevator moved upward.
“In the tunnel, I want to practice with Sister-Dragon. I pick up images from both beasts and I want to test whether she can feel my seers as well as Dragon.” Her seers weren’t her. They were a part of her. AnnaBelinda had better get a grip on that now.
Practicing with the other dragon felt right, as if maybe the light at the other end of the tunnel they were about to enter, the sunshine from the bright and happy Wyoming sky, would clear away the weirdness around Derek. If she worked at it, if she truly became the Draki Prime, then he’d be okay.
And that’s all that mattered—the men would be okay.
The door slid open and the elevator talked. “First floor,” it said.
Anna twisted her head. “She’s gone silent.” She shoved Rysa forward. “Get in.”
The door hissed shut and the familiar gravity change of an elevator starting its descent kicked Rysa’s already rolling stomach. She leaned against the elevator’s stainless steel interior.
She reached out with her present-seer, looking for Sister-Dragon, but felt nothing. AnnaBelinda was right; she’d gone silent.
Rysa’s future-seer buzzed. Indistinct harm ponged around inside her head, bouncing against the rampage that continued to smack against her mind.
Why wasn’t she seeing? Her talisman filtered, but the future looked indistinct—she smelled dust. Heard yelling, but couldn’t understand the words. Was there something about the tunnel she didn’t see? How would she even ask such a question?
She got this way sometimes when her attention problems got really bad. She’d not make a good memory of the moment, not make sense of the environment, so she’d lose her thoughts about it. What-was became a blob.
Every once in a while a teacher or a friend or another student would ask why she didn’t use memories to role-play better alternative responses. To think things through in “a safe environment” and make new memories to rely on in the future, instead of hyperventilating or bouncing or acting like a freak.
She would, if she had memories of all those embarrassing moments. But she didn’t.
And right now, that’s exactly what her future-seer produced—an indistinct sensory mash-up.
“Something’s wrong. My future-seer isn’t cooperating. Does Sister-Dragon understand how I’m different from the other Draki Prime? I wish we’d had a chance to practice.”
AnnaBelinda pulled her gun out from under her arm. “Do not call her that.”
Rysa blinked. “What?” What was she s
upposed to call the other dragon? AnnaBelinda-Dragon? Great Lady? “Derek calls Ladon’s dragon ‘Brother-Dragon.’”
“You do not have permission.” The elevator slowed and AnnaBelinda pushed her to the side, away from in front of the door. “My husband does.”
“I don’t have permission?” She needed permission? “We can’t be fighting. We can’t—”
AnnaBelinda refused to look at her. “I am not compelled by rumbling to love my husband.”
The elevator talked. “Tunnel level.”
Shock whipped through Rysa’s head like a bullet. It split open the rampage ping pong ball and showered her mind with an abrasive dust that rubbed her raw.
But it swelled into harm. It broke off whatever control she’d had before and now harm became something new. Something distinctly worse.
AnnaBelinda twisted her head and listened to Sister-Dragon. She glanced at Rysa. But her eyes didn’t hold the anger Rysa expected. She looked tired.
And sad. “Sooner or later, Fate, you will be the death of my brother.”
Chapter Seventeen
On the walk leading to the front entrance of the Rock Springs hospital, in the bright afternoon sunshine, Ladon readied himself for a fight.
The closest Shifter, one of the two in the jackets with the obvious weapons, reached under his arm. Ladon had him by the neck with one hand, and twisting his arm with the other, before the man’s fingers cleared the edge of his jacket’s zipper. Ladon yanked on his neck, pulling the Shifter backward and off balance while his other hand rotated and pulled one of the bastard’s weapons.
The other Shifter with guns swung his arm to pull his own weapon. The two in the vests charged.
Flat-nose yelled. “What did I say? Don’t tell him the plan! What is with all you hard-core—”
Vivicus yanked Flat-nose in front of his body as a big, smelly shield between him and Ladon. “Shut up, idiot.”
Ladon didn’t think. Didn’t consider. They knew about the tunnel, and the quickest, surest method of reaching Rysa was through these five Shifters.
He shot Flat-nose.
The bullet hit the man’s shoulder, passing though the soft tissue and into Vivicus’s breastbone. Flat-nose gasped, but to Ladon’s surprise, didn’t scream. His calling scents vanished, ‘comply’ and ‘fear’ all disappearing as if a strong wind had pushed them away.
Vivicus fell onto his side and his body hit the concrete hard. The bones of his arm should have shattered along with his sternum. But no blood oozed from the wound. No cracks echoed from his hit.
He landed silently. Not even the plopping, sucking sound that morphers sometimes made when they collided with a hard surface. Vivicus bounced like rubber back up to his feet, once again sneering his death’s head grin.
Ladon lifted the Shifter he held off the sidewalk. Agony fired through his side from both his rib and the bite on his shoulder and he latched onto it. The agony became something living and concrete. A separate entity from Ladon, and something his thinking mind knew he had to—he must—control at all costs.
Becoming what Rysa dreaded would not save her life.
So he didn’t twist the man’s spine when he tossed him into the other two Shifters. He let them all land on their asses in the short grass growing alongside the sidewalk.
Did you get one? Ladon pushed. Three large trucks, all big enough to haul a dragon—and one invisible beast capable of picking off Shifters with as much stealth as his silent hide.
A far truck, behind the front three, on the tunnel side.
While Vivicus thought he distracted Ladon, Ladon distracted him. Dragon had rendered all Shifters around the three trucks unconscious.
The keys are in the ignition.
Fire erupted into the sky from behind the line of trucks that sat between Ladon and the vehicle Dragon had confiscated. The beast vented in the back of the stolen truck.
Ladon sprinted for the front line of vehicles. The Shifters had lined them up nose to tail, and he’d have to go between the two directly at the end of the walk and parked across the handicapped access parking spaces.
Both trucks still had conscious Shifters. Ladon fired, shattering the windshield of the closest truck. The Shifter inside ducked.
He ran for the tailgate of the next truck. One of his boots hit the metal, and he twisted in the air. His other boot came down on the first truck’s sloped hood.
The Shifter in the cab recovered and yelled as he rounded his weapon toward the broken-out windshield. Ladon swung his gun again. The pop echoed off the metal, loud and sharp, and snapped into the Shifter. The man screamed and dropped his gun.
Ladon dropped onto the vehicle’s slick painted surface, and slid toward the open parking lot on the other side. The stench of engine oil hit his nose, along with the stink of terrified Shifters. Ladon landed on the asphalt, the hospital and the vehicles behind him, Dragon and their escape in front. To his left, another fake construction truck. To his right, the path to his van, and to Rysa. He’d dropped into a horseshoe of Seraphim vehicles, with the open end pointed toward the wide-open lot leading to the back of the hospital and the ambulance garage.
He ran for the escape vehicle.
“Ladon-Human!”
Vivicus’s hollow voice rang between the vehicles, as sharp a pop as the gunshot. Metal snapped.
Behind Ladon, Vivicus landed on the hood of the truck. He stared down at Ladon like an ape from a tree. “Your dragon better run.” A sneer twisted up his face as he held up a trigger mechanism, pointing it at the escape vehicle.
He’d wired the trucks with explosives.
Get out now! Ladon pushed.
Vivicus’s finger descended.
Chapter Eighteen
AnnaBelinda pushed Rysa out of the enclosed shiny metal space of the elevator. The tunnel flowed out before them, a gloomy cave stretching into darkness.
Compelled screamed through Rysa’s mind. She’d thought the rumbling was special. A gift, something Ladon made for her. Something purely Dracae. Did it mean something other than “I love you?” What did AnnaBelinda mean by “compelled?”
Hyperventilating seemed a real possibility.
Derek looked between the two women, his irreality clicking and locking around him. He’d grayed out more since he came down in the elevator. He’d gone from walking dead to ghost.
Rysa’s brain jerked between her thoughts of Ladon to the weirdness around Derek to the annoyance hissing off Sister-Dragon. Why was this happening now? Why the hell did AnnaBelinda drop her little bombshell now?
Rysa had to get control. If she didn’t Derek would die.
Her seers dropped a thought into her head—Ladon will die. She almost screamed. Almost lost it right then and there. Her future-seer threw blood into her mind’s eye. Ladon’s blood.
Derek’s blood.
Her hand wrapped around AnnaBelinda’s arm without thinking about it and she knew she shivered. She needed the stability. She needed help, and the only dragon who could give it to her was connected to a woman who hated her.
“Fate?” AnnaBelinda’s tone accused more than questioned, but Rysa held on.
Derek’s ghost wrist touched her forehead again. “You are more than hot. Can you breathe?” He threw his wife a look as accusing as the voice AnnaBelinda had just used.
“I see blood.”
Derek stepped back. “Shit.”
Behind them, the elevator pinged, traveling upward once again.
Both Derek and AnnaBelinda raised their weapons, both stepping into the tunnel.
A long string of fluorescents popped and fizzed to life along the walls. They edged the ceiling from an upper world of steam pipes and electrical conduits, separating the walls of tacky eighties posters chastising them to Wash your hands! and Immunize, it’s Wyoming’s law!
Ugly dusty-rose-and-mint artwork leaned against tables and towers of file boxes. A couple of office chairs were stacked next to a desk. On the other side of the tunnel, blue industrial laund
ry bins lined up end-to-end like a kiddie train.
“They must be using the tunnel as storage during the renovation.” Derek knocked an IV pole against the cinderblock wall as he walked backward away from the women and the elevator. A loud clink reverberated through the tunnel when the pole hit the ground.
Every single sound they made would be amplified in this space. “Move fast, but watch your step,” Rysa said. “Derek, go now. Get to the door.”
Sister-Dragon sparked and volumes of information pulsed between her and AnnaBelinda. She backed down the tunnel, her huge body undulating over all the unused hospital clutter.
AnnaBelinda stepped between Rysa and her husband, and the elevator. “Lights!” she hissed.
Sister-Dragon ripped through a stack of office supplies, feeling along the wall next to the elevator. Reams of paper thumped onto the floor, stuck in the nonskid paint that ran like a ribbon down the middle of the tunnel.
The lights flickered and went out one by one, moving away like an airport landing strip. The tunnel dropped into shadow section by section and they lost sight of the carts, beds, and metal stacks of hospital shelves. The last of the glow vanished around a gentle curve hiding the door at the other end.
The only light now came from the small square window in the door ahead, and the soft shimmer of one dragon.
Derek peered into the gloom, but he listened and backed away, if slowly.
“Go,” Rysa whispered. She stood with her back to the elevator, her eyes on Derek. AnnaBelinda stood oriented the other way, back to Derek, front to elevator, gun up. Rysa let go of AnnaBelinda’s arm, her fingers sweeping down her skin to her palm.
Between the closing-in walls of the dark tunnel, Rysa grabbed hold of the dragon woman’s hand.
AnnaBelinda didn’t push away.
“I synced with Ladon in the RV.” Rysa pulled AnnaBelinda down the tunnel.
AnnaBelinda nodded.
“I don’t care if you hate me. I won’t let Derek or Ladon get hurt.” Rysa gripped AnnaBelinda’s hand as tightly as she could, feeling for the other woman’s Dracae strength. Feeling for her connection to Sister-Dragon. Looking for the one thing she knew stabilized her mind—the brilliant focus of a dragon. “I am the Draki Prime.”
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