Flux of Skin

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Vivicus grabbed her by the neck and yanked her away from Derek. Her hand dropped off the insignia and her tentacles burst like a bubble.

  His face looked weird again. “You said your seers didn’t work!”

  Fake-Ivan stepped back from the table, her hands coming up in front of her, almost knocking into a huge, burly waiter who looked more like a bouncer than someone who’d be serving drinks. Neither of the two guards—Green Shirt and Mr. Texting—moved, as if they’d been stunned.

  Or enthralled.

  At that very moment, Derek lifted straight up into the air, taking the second insignia with him.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Ladon sprinted around the side of the bar and hit the big Press to Open button on the exterior wall of The Land of Milk and Honey, next to the far right set of entrance doors.

  The building’s sound system roared, the crowd laughed, and a small cloud of dust dropped onto his shoulders from the newly-installed blinking honey drop directly over his head.

  The dust mingled with the shades, giving them a fine texture, something they hadn’t had before. But they kept changing, as mercurial as the asshole Shifters inside the building, which seemed appropriate. They all sprang from the grease and grime of the same root cause.

  Dragon entered first. Ladon followed, with Andreas behind yelling something about Sister entering the back side of the bar and Dmitri moving around to the side fire escape.

  The shadows crawled and the world flickered between dark and bright. The bar smelled like it always did—fried food and booze and the sweat of loud people enthralled to leave good tips—plus new undernotes of precise and practiced enthrallers, people well-trained and very good at what they did. Seraphim.

  “I doubt Rysa’s in any shape to heal you if you get yourself shot again.” Ladon’s Second scanned The Land’s wide entrance enclave as he pushed his cell phone into his pocket. Two employees in bright t-shirts, one behind the ticket counter and the other standing behind the ropes, glanced up when Ladon walked through the door.

  He had the closest one by the neck before the man exhaled. They could be Land employees. They could be Seraphim. Ladon did not care. They stood in his way.

  “Focus!” Andreas growled. “You’ve spent your life taking the frontal assault because the world feared you and Brother-Dragon. What’s that gotten you recently?”

  No calling scents meant for him hit Ladon’s nose, so he dropped the man. Both the employees stepped back.

  Ladon ignored Andreas and walked through the main doors into auditorium of The Land of Milk and Honey.

  At the back, near the doors, two young women holding drinks and leaning against a pillar turned around to look at whoever let in the lobby’s light. They both looked him up and down, and stepped to the side. One watched the plating on his jacket while the other stared at his shaved head.

  Andreas breathed out. Both the young women turned back toward the stage, glassy-eyed.

  The door behind them swung shut and the open area fell into shadow again. To Ladon’s left, the lights behind the bar gave off a cool shimmer. To his right, one of The Land’s many aquatic tanks bubbled. Directly in front, a normal performer pranced through pulsing spotlights like a corralled donkey.

  Between the bar and the stage, in the booths against the wall, Derek lifted straight up into the air.

  Derek, not Rysa. Not Derek and Rysa.

  Sister-Dragon plucked away only Derek.

  The Shifters reeled from the distraction of Ladon entering through the front door. Sister and Sister-Dragon snuck in and had, for this moment, the element of surprise, and the other beast lifted away only one?

  Ladon roared, and he jumped the rail into the crowd. Someone screamed. Behind Ladon, Andreas swore.

  Dragon’s hide pulsed, and Ladon felt his anger at his sister for her negligence. For a flicker of a second, he appeared in the rafters above the crowd’s collective heads, a blinding ghost of a ton of fire-breathing dragon hanging from the sky.

  Ladon’s boots hit the top of a table with the three fat tourists too shocked to scream. He pushed off, dropping onto another table, and slid across the surface until he landed on the floor.

  The shades danced around his peripheral vision and closed it down into a tight tunnel. He smelled calling scents—Andreas’s and other enthrallers’. The normals breathed a stew of pheromones and it did nothing to stop the panic. More fat people ran in front of him, flailing like wounded birds and crowding his path to Rysa.

  A big man stepped between him and his goal, his face serious and a knife in his hand.

  Ladon snapped his neck.

  He was halfway across the center of the auditorium, through the crowded tables. Around him, normals panicked, yelling, screaming, floundering. The performer on the stage cried “Hey! What’s going on?” into his microphone.

  Ladon punched another probable Shifter. Bones snapped and a wet grinding pierced through the noise droning from those in his way.

  Rysa looked up at Derek’s dangling legs, then at Vivicus. Her eyelids dropped slowly—down, then up—and her head turned. She looked directly at Ladon.

  He saw terror.

  Sister screams, Dragon pushed. He’d stopped slightly back from the booth. Vivicus touched Sister.

  The shades snapped bright as flame, and as hot.

  Vivicus connects to Sister!

  Vivicus touched Sister-Dragon’s talon just as the dragon lifted Derek into the air. And Vivicus, the most powerful morpher on the planet, giggled at Rysa like an evil two-year-old.

  The other beast had meant to take both Derek and Rysa, but Vivicus locked onto her. He had Rysa’s talisman and her abilities and fake enthralling scents he’d pulled off Andreas and it all blended together. The son of a bitch poked into the dragon’s connection to AnnaBelinda—and Rysa—and gouged away at her mind.

  “Oh, this is too good!” Vivicus flexed his back and spread his arms and the obnoxious Hawaiian shirt hung on his fake-Ladon shoulders as if he were a mannequin. He didn’t need to touch anymore. Once seemed to be enough.

  His crackling insanity spread up his new—and strong—connection to Sister-Dragon. He randomized her energy, adding massive amounts of noise to it, and thus randomized her mind.

  Somewhere nearby, AnnaBelinda bellowed.

  A knife hit Vivicus square between the eyes and poked in about an inch.

  He gulped, obviously surprised, and yelled. “I knew you’d knife my brain! Skull’s hard!” He pounded his knuckles against his forehead next to the blade. Laughing, he stared up at the knife’s hilt, and crossed his eyes.

  Smacking the side of his head, he glanced up at Sister-Dragon. “You make a lot of noise.” His face scrunching up like he’d realized something. “Hey! Did your human nick something in my head with her toothpick? Make me hear you better?”

  Standing, he pushed the table away from the booth. “It’s serendipity!”

  A big snort popped out of him and he hauled Rysa to her feet. “Or fate.” The wound didn’t even bleed and he left the blade right where it was, poking out of his forehead.

  People screamed and ran. The two guards and Fake-Ivan moved away from the pushed-out table.

  Rysa smelled calling scents—precise, targeted scents very close to her. They weren’t as good or as practiced as Andreas’s, but she managed to pick them out of the stew in the air. She glanced around. Another enthraller stood nearby and pumped out ‘ignore me.’

  From seemingly out of nowhere, a woman, the mirror image of Ivan, punched Fake-Ivan in the face. The movement, the swirling colors and lights, the smells, the calling scents screaming ‘shut down thought’ melded. And overwhelmed.

  Too many people surrounded Rysa. Terror wafted off the normals and mixed into the surging randomness of the calling scents filling the bar. Shifters swung at each other. One confused dragon held Derek twelve feet off the floor. Another dragon—her Dragon—bent girders and dislodged lights from the ceiling. AnnaBelinda, somewhere, blasted he
r confusion through her connection to the beasts.

  Somewhere, Andreas tried to keep it all under control, pumping out significant amounts of ‘calm.’

  AnnaBelinda jumped onto the back of the booths. Her black boots and black clothes blended with the shadows. One foot hit the narrow divide between their booth and the next, and the other the wall. She latched onto an overhang—a display ledge—and swung for her dragon.

  Vivicus yanked up his shirt. “See this? I’ll survive! You won’t!”

  All this time, he’d had a bomb strapped to his belly and Rysa hadn’t known. Because he stole her talisman and the insignia only gave her so much control. Besides the fact she hadn’t thought to ask her seers if he planned on blowing them all up.

  Vivicus giggled. “The finest C4 money can buy.” The knife still poked out of his forehead. He whirled around and it whistled through the air, oddly balancing the extra girth around his middle.

  Panic wanted back in. It tried to flop its way through the crowd because it could cocoon Rysa and she’d not have to think at all. Panic, at least, was something familiar.

  But a ghost of Ladon moved against the current of the crowd, his eyes on her and only her. A ghost who performed his own version of panic and now rampaged through the normals not caring about the damage he inflicted.

  The metal plating of his black jacket flashed when he punched a Shifter. He kicked a chair and it flew up. He caught it with only one hand, slamming it down onto a table.

  The back broke off, wires poking out, plastic hanging.

  His wrist rotated. A metal fragment of the chair back flashed as it screamed through the air and directly into the guard wearing the green t-shirt. The piece pierced something important, but Rysa didn’t see. She didn’t look.

  Her panic froze, maybe because it touched Ladon’s. And his was ice cold.

  He’d scraped the hair off his head. He’d scraped his scalp raw and bloody, and little welts and cuts mirrored everything she felt flooding from both him and Dragon—I let her down. She was snatched and I let her down and if she dies I die because it’s happening again and I've never been good enough to save my women.

  Dragon tore and they thrashed because they couldn’t handle it again. Not with her. “Ladon!” she screamed. She’d sensed this darkness at the cabin, a thing as immortal as he was, sitting on his soul. It fed on the centuries. It ate his time and his life. Slowly, relentlessly, it grew fat on every single scrape and injury to his mind, body, and soul.

  Someone screamed for Dmitri, but he was still outside.

  Rysa’s attention flipped to the woman named Ivan slamming Fake-Ivan into a rail.

  AnnaBelinda yelled—begged Rysa to do something. To call her seers like she had in the tunnel and get them out of this.

  Vivicus squeezed Rysa’s neck. “Why’s the boyfriend hairless? You like it?” He yanked her flush against the bomb on his front. He stared at Ladon around the hilt still poking out of his forehead.

  The hair on his head wiggled like worms. They lost their wave, and their black color, and vanished into his scalp with an audible snap.

  Rysa retched but held it down. She couldn’t throw up now.

  More screams. Flames swirled the booth.

  Too much happened. Too many people doing too many things and moving too fast in too many directions.

  Vivicus sniffed her skin, and stroked down her back. “Let’s wait until we see the whites of his eyes.” He giggled again.

  Vivicus yanked her head back hard, his fist curled in her hair. His mouth expanded, rupturing open, and his lips fell over her nose and her gaping mouth.

  He stuck his tongue down her throat. Deep into her throat, it slithered. A snake dropped into her esophagus.

  She tried to scream. But he had her by the hair and the throat and pressed against a bomb and she was going to die.

  His head pulled off her—literally pulled away—and his tongue out of her throat. Dragon twisted it back and away.

  But his head stayed on his body.

  Vivicus dropped away from her like an empty sack—like his bones suddenly melted—and out of Dragon’s grip. He slithered away fast—a giant slug wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a bomb strapped around its middle and her talisman around its neck.

  Dragon reared up, roaring, but didn’t follow. Rysa felt his intent—he wouldn’t leave her. Or his sister.

  Too much. “Oh God oh God oh God,” Rysa babbled. Too much fighting. Andreas chased the slug. Dmitri’s people milled about, mopping up Seraphim.

  “Rysa.” Ladon scooped her up, crushing her to him and burying his face in her neck. “Rysa, what did he do to you?” He pulled back, his eyes wide with shock. “What did he do to you!”

  A blistering scream rolled through the bar, one full of all the anguish and anger cascading to Rysa from both dragons. All the blood reds and the open wounds and the yellows and green-purples of organs and the snapping of bones and minds.

  Vivicus hadn’t simply slithered away. He’d done something he shouldn’t have been able to do, holding her the way he was, with his tongue in her throat.

  He’d pulled the knife from his skull and thrown the blade.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Ladon held Rysa but she burned, too hot and too frail, infected by Vivicus. Her skin splotched with hives and with bruises rising. She died in his arms, like Charlotte. She burned, like Abigail.

  The shades swirled in his eyes, engulfing her. “Rysa,” he whispered.

  The building rocked. A bright concussive wave hit the bar’s front and burst through the open glass doors, slipping into the center of the auditorium. Screams followed, then a loud crack.

  Vivicus set off the bomb outside. Something fell in the parking lot.

  Sister screamed.

  Shock snapped from Sister-Dragon as whatever hold Vivicus had on her shattered. Dragon burst forward, his own back legs gripping the rafters, and caught Derek as he fell, gently laying him on the booth’s table.

  “Get Dmitri!” Sister yelled. “Where are the healers?”

  Blood spilled onto the table’s linen cloth and the area filled with the metallic stench of an open artery.

  Derek held his thigh and rolled around on the table. “Chert voz'mi! God damn it!’

  “Let go… of me,” Rysa panted. “Derek needs… me.”

  “No!” She was dying, barely breathing herself, and she wanted to heal Derek?

  Heat rose off her skin, much worse heat than any other time. “Vivi… Vivicus… nicked…the artery…in his leg…”

  Derek’s blood disorder wouldn’t kill him—the wound would. He’d bleed out in less than three minutes if they didn’t get it stopped. Ladon lunged for his brother-in-law, pulling his belt off at the same time. A tourniquet would slow it enough for Dmitri to do something.

  Rysa pushed past him, laying her hands over his leg. “Stop… bleeding…”

  She’d meant to yell, but the words barely croaked out of her throat.

  “I can’t!” Derek yelled back, groaning as the pain became too much.

  AnnaBelinda yelled for healers again. “Find Dmitri!” She yanked on Ladon’s arm. “Find him now!”

  “He’s outside. Fighting Seraphim. And Vivicus. With the damned bomb that just went off in the parking lot.” Ladon pulled away from his sister. Dmitri would have to fight his way in. Couldn’t she see Rysa was dying too? But she was right; they needed a healer. Now. “Love, Dmitri can—”

  Rysa held him away with a bloody hand. “No… he can’t. Not this time. He’s not… strong enough. He doesn’t have… seers. I…” She trailed off, her head bowing. “I need… the dragons.”

  Ladon wrapped his belt around Derek’s thigh, watching as Rysa’s color changed. She took on the misty coldness of the shades. His woman was becoming a ghost in front of his eyes.

  He couldn’t let this happen. He had to make it stop. His body vibrated the way it did when his responses and his perception overmatched the van and the vehicle didn’t respond fas
t enough. Right now, the universe swerved no matter how he tried to steer through it.

  A hoarse cough pushed up from Derek’s throat and he gripped Ladon’s shoulder. He didn’t speak but Ladon saw the truth in his face—this, right now, was the core of their agony. This moment. The terror on Derek’s face made Ladon understand his own—Derek didn’t want to die. He’d lived a century past his first “death” and this was not how he wanted it to end. He had a wife who loved him and work he enjoyed—he managed Ladon’s and Sister’s world.

  He knew they needed him. Without Derek, they’d fall apart.

  And he hadn’t taught Rysa yet what she needed to do to take up his role.

  Derek, like Ladon, would not let his family down.

  Sister crawled over the table and wrapped her arms around his chest, panting as much as Rysa. She didn’t care about their lives. She cared only about her husband’s.

  Ladon had seen her lose other loves to wounds similar to this one, her men bleeding out on a battlefield. He’d seen her soul break, her own life drain away.

  The same draining away that was happening to him right now.

  “I need… both dragons.” Rysa panted as she grabbed for something around Derek’s neck.

  “Now!” she wheezed.

  Her fingers encircled the Dragons’ Legion insignia Derek wore.

  Ladon gasped, as did Sister, pushed back by the raw power cracking around them like whips. Her seers flared through the bar, bright and wiggling but unsure. She didn’t have her talisman yet her seers blasted out, semi-controlled.

  Sister cringed, feeling Rysa’s seers.

  Flames poured around the booth. Sister-Dragon gouged the wall, sliding down into the next booth, her hide flashing in wild, discordant patterns. Dragon held her, his neck curled around hers.

  She convulses. Sister convulses!

  Sister twitched, mirroring her beast. But only rage poured from her—not compassion. Not a plea for help. Only unbridled fury reaching outward with her fist. Toward Rysa. “Fix him now, you damned Fate witch!”