Derek looked up. Ladon walked in the front door, Rysa gripped by the elbow, and stopped, his feet spread and his chest out like some ham actor’s version of a fanatic.
He wore a blinding shirt, one with a pattern of flowers and tiki gods. It was not black.
“That is not Ladon, you fuck-wits.” Shit, Derek thought. It’s Vivicus.
The morpher on his right blew out considerable air as if he, too, was thinking Shit. “I wonder if she knows he changed the plan.”
The morpher on the left stayed as tense as he had been when he first saw the two walk into the bar. “Shit,” he said again.
Derek leaned back, letting these two become preoccupied by this new development, because it was not good. Not good in the ways they thought it was not good, but also in the ways he knew it was not good.
Vivicus stole Rysa. Which left only Andreas to rein in Derek’s wife and brother-in-law. And the bar, tonight, was full.
Vivicus-Ladon asked one of Dmitri’s staff something. She pointed toward the back of the bar, at Derek’s booth.
“Shit,” the two morphers said, in unison.
Derek ignored them. Instead, he watched the staff. The woman Vivicus had spoken to stood ramrod straight, her eyes on the garish shirt. Rysa glanced over her shoulder and the woman nodded once.
The Seraphim, for all their control, sorely underestimated the staff of The Land.
Derek’s cousin was careful who he hired, and open with his expectations. No one hid their abilities from their coworkers. Everyone knew who was an enthraller, and everyone knew who was a morpher. They all knew Dmitri had healing abilities.
They also knew Derek and his wife, and her dragon.
And they knew Ladon.
The woman by the door did not look at the booth. She went about her business for a moment, waiting until Vivicus had pulled Rysa into the crowd, then she disappeared from her station by the entrance.
Opportunity might have just raised its head.
But Derek’s stomach dropped as the pair moved closer. Rysa looked pale—paler than she had at the hospital—and she breathed through her mouth faster than she should be. Her lips were parted slightly, her neck tense, and her shoulders looked as if she would snap.
Their gazes met. Her eyes, with their unusual mixture of green and gray, held more fatigue than a person so young should have.
She looked as vulnerable as she had the first time he had met her, in his hospital room only a few days prior. Rysa had been overwhelmed at the time, pacing with her arms wrapped tight around her chest, as women on the verge of panic did.
Family danced in his head. Rysa looked nothing like his sisters, though she carried her mother’s angular Teutonic features, as his sisters had carried their mother’s. And Rysa’s issues were different from what he remembered manifesting with his family’s women. Very different, and separated by time and space, culture and civilization.
Rysa was smart, like his sisters. She walked the same. All Derek saw when he looked at Rysa was a girl who looked up to him as if he was her big brother.
Vivicus pushed her forward and she stumbled, but she held herself up.
Getting away from the two morphers became much more important. The Seraphim might have enthralled him and made him do things for which he might not be forgiven, but he was not going to think about that right now.
He would get Rysa away from Vivicus if it was the last thing he did.
Derek looked terrible. Flat-out, ghost-dead terrible, and it wasn’t just the weird oscillating irreality Rysa saw sliding around him, either. He needed medical attention.
She wasn’t going to let him die. AnnaBelinda and her damned dragon might have caused all this, but Derek had not.
“Tell the one in the green t-shirt to move,” she said. She shouldn’t order Vivicus around, but her whispers said it was okay right now. That, and something about keeping him focused on her and not on the bar. “I need to sit down.”
“Sit on the outside,” he snapped.
The noisy and dark bar smelled like fried food and too-sweet mixed drinks. A fat guy pushed past her and reeked of ineffective deodorant. He felt like a tube of sand rolling sideways over her skin. She tasted smoke and old booze when he breathed in her face.
Vivicus pushed him off.
“I feel like I’m going to puke!” she whined. She might, too.
“Move!” Derek barked at the guard sitting to his left—the one whose only distinguishing feature was his green t-shirt.
The man moved out of the booth, his gaze sliding between her and Vivicus and back again.
“Is she the Fate?” he asked. He glanced at the other guard.
Rysa sniffed. “I’m half Shifter, and this is my trial.” She lifted her shoulders and held her chin high.
The other guard, the one to the right who had absolutely no distinguishing features at all, huffed and tapped something into his cell phone. She couldn’t see him clearly in the shadows and doubted she’d remember him again, even if she could.
Her present-seer whispered—he just texted someone important. Someone who’d get Vivicus all riled up, which isn’t going to help you get to Derek.
Vivicus pushed her toward the booth and she inched toward Derek. Vivicus sniffed before looking around, and slid his ass in next to her, sitting too close.
Rysa instinctively shimmied toward Derek.
He leaned forward, toward the table, and angled his shoulder as if to wrap an arm around her, to pull her behind him. Maybe he’d seen through her act. She hoped so.
Vivicus didn’t seem to notice and scratched at his version of Ladon’s chin with his version of Ladon’s fingers. “How long before they show, Fate?”
Rysa bit her lip and raised her hand to her throat. “I don’t know.” She fluttered her eyelids. “I can’t see.”
Vivicus fingered her talisman. “That’s right.” He didn’t hand it over.
Her future-seer whispered. He won’t. But that’s okay.
“Rysa, what the hell is going on?” Derek whispered.
Something about the irreality changed. A part of it altered and separated, and Rysa’s present-seer bounced up and down like a lotto winner, outlining, very clearly, the leather cord around Derek's neck.
And the Dragons’ Legion insignia hanging just under his t-shirt.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Andreas pulled his cell phone away from his ear and held it up, looking at it in his palm. The damned thing whined like all cordless technology. Ladon watched the screen flash again—the normal Andreas had enthralled was sending him yet another photo from inside The Land of Milk and Honey.
Andreas typed something, and forwarded the photo on to Dmitri.
I wish to smash his phone, Dragon pushed.
As did Ladon. The noise did nothing to calm the shades circling in his head.
Has Dmitri learned where Vivicus takes Rysa? I want to leave. We are not needed here. The beast gouged his talons into the dirt.
The attack on the hospital had made it clear that neither Ladon nor Sister should face this group alone again. We must stay.
And maybe, just maybe, Dmitri would come through for him. Maybe they’d learn where Rysa was. Maybe he’d get to her in time.
They’d left the van in a clearing about fifteen minutes from The Land complex and walked in from behind, through Dmitri’s private buildings. They now stood inside the shelter of the barn smelling of horses, hay, and modern chemicals Ladon did not think should be near animals. Or humans, either.
Andreas, on the other hand, paced outside the barn where his phone received better reception. Its whine still fizzed inside Ladon’s head as if someone had dumped peroxide on his brain.
It made the shades twisting in his vision look crinkled. No, pitted, as if they’d been damaged by acid. They writhed, stretching arms of smoke, touching and feeling and looking for something to bite into and suck dry.
Andreas talked into his phone. The shadows writhed in a way not unlike Rysa’s s
eers. They snuck forward, touching Andreas’s boots or the frame of the barn door, and slinked backward toward Ladon’s feet.
They never touched. Watching them move, Ladon wondered if he watched ghosts. If, now, Rysa’s abilities still reached out to him even though she was gone.
“The building’s full. Some comedian just took the stage.” Andreas read a text and sent the latest batch of photos to Dmitri. “Pavlovich says the show has been sold out for months.”
The cover of normals might make this easier. It might make it harder. Ladon wouldn’t know until he walked through the front door, which Andreas refused to let him do until after they’d done reconnaissance.
He also refused to allow Ladon to put a knife to the first Seraphim he saw, saying calling scents pulled better information faster.
Unless the Shifter in question had been trained. Then Andreas would need a more intense method of gathering intelligence.
Dragon pushed righteousness into Ladon’s mind. The beast believed they would get Rysa back, alive and in health. Rysa, their light. And the shades infecting Ladon’s mind would stop, no matter what information Andreas searched out.
“The normal I enthralled is moving toward the bar seating. If we don’t see anything useful, I’ll grab another and send him into the—hello!” Andreas smiled, and held up the phone. He looked as if he’d bounce like Rysa. “I told you she was okay.” He peered at the screen. “Damn, she learns fast. She must have enthralled him—”
Ladon snatched the phone from Andreas’s hand. On the screen of the screeching mechanical scarab on his palm was a slightly blurry photo of the back of The Land of Milk and Honey. The normal had snapped a shot of the area off to the side, along the wall, raised up so customers could see the stage over the tables and the dancers. And there, in the center booth, in the shadows, sat four people, with another man in a garish t-shirt standing nearby.
Ladon sat in the booth, or a version of Ladon who looked like he did before Vivicus took Rysa. The shades in Ladon’s perception gyrated, their anger at Vivicus once again wearing his face as high as his own. In the photo, the bastard leaned forward, blocking the camera’s view of the woman and man sitting next to him, but Ladon knew. Only Rysa’s hand could call his attention the way the hand of the woman in the photo did. No morpher could duplicate her gestures. Or her touch.
Ladon dropped the phone. Another man had been behind Rysa, angling his body protectively. But his brother-in-law’s presence barely registered.
Neither did Andreas’s as he picked up the phone. He dialed Dmitri as he flooded the area with ‘calm.’ “Damn it, Ladon, don’t go in there guns blazing!”
Why would he go in with guns blazing? He had a dragon.
The lights dropped and the bar’s sound system hummed to life. Out in the center of the big room in front of Rysa, the tourists fell silent.
The comedian took the stage, strutting out into the spotlight in his ripped jeans and snarky t-shirt. He picked up the water bottle, sipped, and said something funny into his mic.
The audience erupted. Rysa dropped her hand under the table and squeezed Derek’s thigh.
He flinched.
She looked up at his face. Pain. Squeezing his leg hurt.
“No kissing the Tsar.” The extremely nondescript guard who’d sent the text slapped away her hand when she reached for Derek’s face.
Derek all but elbowed the guy in the face. “You do not touch me, you sniveling dog shit licker, nor do you touch her.”
A shadow moved in front of the booth. A small shadow, but Rysa looked up.
A tiny woman leaned forward, one hand’s delicate fingers splayed on the table’s edge as if she caged a spider, and the other on her hip. About AnnaBelinda’s size, her body looked as lithe, but not as strong. She glared at everyone at the table—Vivicus and the guards included—her gaze moving down the line one by one.
The low lights made her features difficult to see, but her spiky platinum hair glowed as if rock crystals grew on her head. When her gaze landed on Rysa, her dark eyes rounded and the whole of her smooth, lovely Asian face frowned. Fatigue, frustration, annoyance, Rysa couldn’t tell, but this woman was not happy.
“Father, we discussed this.” She stood up straight. “The bait is not to be in the net. When the bait wiggles, it makes the net visible.” She poked her fists into her waist. “The call is out. They’re on their way.” She shook her head. “This sting took considerable effort to set up and you want to ruin it now? We’re this close to taking out one of the old families. Opportunities like this rarely happen.”
She meant Fates. Other Fates were on their way, and, if Rysa’s seers were whispering correctly, not the Jani.
Was there anyone who didn’t want a piece of her?
Vivicus sniffed and sat back in the booth. He hitched his fake-Ladon shoulders as he threw a fake-Ladon arm around Rysa.
His touch made nausea well up like a blood blister.
“Daughter, I hear the dragons.” Vivicus sniffed again, obviously proud of himself. “What have I taught you about prioritizing opportunity?”
He poked Rysa in the shoulder. Behind her Derek tensed.
“The bait needs to be in the exact center of the net, or it won’t draw in the correct prey.” Vivicus wiggled in the booth. “Or two. Because I deserve two. I earned it.”
Derek breathed in as if to say something, but Rysa squeezed his thigh again. More gently, she hoped, than before. But wooziness was making the room spin and the rhythmic laughing of the audience wasn’t helping.
Rysa wanted to lay her head on Derek’s chest. Right on his chest, with her cheek pressed against the insignia around his neck.
Derek spoke anyway. “Ivan, she needs a healer.”
The woman tapped the table, looking between Rysa and Derek, then to her father. Whoever she was, she wasn’t this “Ivan” Derek spoke of.
Fake-Ivan held a sigh inside her tiny frame. She seemed to be the kind of person who held in a lot of sighs. She pointed at the texting guard and flicked her hand, before pinching the bridge of her nose. “Take her in the back. I need to figure this out.”
Rysa’s future-seer whispered—no! Then her present-seer—get closer to Derek.
“Derek needs a healer. He comes with me.” Rysa really didn’t want to get closer. Hugging Derek seemed too intimate. But she ran her fingers over his neck and hooked the leather cord. The insignia popped out from under the collar of his t-shirt.
“I don’t think so.” Fake-Ivan shook her head. “Pretty boy stays where the staff can see him.” She glanced around. Behind her, the audience clapped at another joke. “He’s a comfort. Keeps them calm.”
Derek was a comfort to pretty much everyone. Rysa wrapped her hand around the insignia hanging around his neck, perhaps looking for that comfort. Or perhaps because her seers told her to.
It felt warm against her palm, from Derek’s body heat, but also warm from its dragon content.
Rysa’s mind channel-changed. For the briefest moment, her head filled with the white noise that happened just before she dropped into a full-on vision, and the early evening of her second day with Ladon and Dragon blossomed into her perception:
Ladon parked the van in the lot of a strip mall outside of Council Bluffs and cut the engine. “I have something for you,” he’d said.
And he’d pulled her insignia from his pocket.
She’d been panicked. The world swirled with the acidic randomness of the Burners and everything was new and she didn’t understand and she’d fallen in love with a man she was sure would do the same thing every man had ever done and back away because she couldn’t pay attention and bounced and babbled and acted terrified.
Because she was terrified. She watched herself in the vision, seeing a pale young woman, someone who, at that moment, did not look like a college junior. The girl in the vision glanced around, fidgeting and on the verge of running away, because she’d convinced herself the wonderful man who’d just pulled the insignia fr
om his pocket was going to kick her out of his van.
From the vision, Rysa smelled her own unease, and Ladon’s sunshine, and the mall’s varied scents—asphalt, stale fast food, exhaust fumes. Crowd noise and the indistinct grumble of the freeway reverberated within the van, mixing with their breathing and the soft, almost indistinguishable purr of Dragon’s flame.
She tasted the flavor of their first kiss on her lips. She’d been crying because of the overpowering visions, but he tasted right—warm and perfect.
In the vision, Dragon glimmered behind them, shapes and patterns and colors Rysa didn’t understand at the time, but she understood now, floating across his hide—I will not sleep. We are here.
My human loves you.
It had been written all over Ladon’s face when they stopped, even if she’d been too frantic to see it, but she saw it now—eyes bright and his head and shoulders always angled toward her. He danced his heart-wrenchingly perfect fingers over her skin, his gaze on her and only her, and tied the Dragons’ Legion around her wrist.
“The dragons always touch the metal,” he’d said. “To bless it.”
Ladon made the insignias. He smithed them himself. And every time he did, the dragons—both dragons—touched the cooling metal with their talons.
She’d been wearing a tiny fraction of her talisman from the moment he tied the insignia around her wrist.
And now she curled her hand around a second insignia, the one Derek wore around his neck, and she had physical contact with two tiny fractions.
Rysa’s seers burst outward from her mind, full tentacles once again, and writhed over the audience, and the comedian, and the Shifters sitting around her. But they wiggled too much—contact with two insignias let them function, but they felt drunk.
The irreality around Derek cleared, and for a split second he vanished from her perception. Vanished from all her senses. She couldn’t even feel him, even though she leaned against his body. She almost gasped, but her seers pulled one thing and one thing only back to her—Sister-Dragon!
Flux of Skin Page 31
