The Burning World

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  All in less than a month.

  The scent of sawdust still hung in the air of their mostly-rebuilt house, but Mr. Pavlovich’s interior designer had kept the finishes natural and clean, to minimize annoying Daisy’s bloodhound nose. The property was mostly back in tiptop shape, except for installing a few cabinets in the kitchen and finishing the first-floor bathroom.

  Gavin set a brand-new cutting board on the brand-new granite countertop and pulled out his favorite chopping knife. At least that asshole Vivicus left their Wusthof blades alone and he could chop veggies for the salad without skinning his knuckles.

  Ian sat on a stool on the other side of the kitchen’s refurbed island and alternated looking at his phone and staring at Radar and Ragnar. The boys sat not far from the new table in the rebuilt breakfast nook, both with their German shepherd ears perked and their attention firmly on Daisy and the beef roast resting on top of the new oven.

  She wiped her hands on her apron before pushing one of her big, black curls away from her face. Then she went back to stirring the gravy.

  They now had blue appliances. Not enameled blue either, but copper patina or copper electroplated with a bright blue finish. To Gavin, the entire kitchen screamed “billionaire Moroccan villa” even though Daisy was not at all Continental and had never expressed a desire to broadcast her family’s wealth.

  She liked quality and she was willing to use her money to get it, but the ten-thousand-dollar oven was a bit much. It also did nothing to dispel Ian’s annoying belief that Daisy was just a rich girl using Gavin to piss off her daddy.

  She’d been remarkably civil about Ian’s attitude, considering. The morning sickness might have let up, but she seemed tight to Gavin—her shoulder muscles had turned into rocks after the realization that her mother was the Shifter Progenitor, and stayed that way no matter how he rubbed her back. She stopped smiling, too. He was beginning to wonder if Ladon’s issues had migrated from the Dracos-Human to the Shifter stirring gravy seven feet from him right now.

  The revelation about Cecilia Reynolds had been yet another bolt out the heavens, on top of the full lightning strike of the pregnancy. They were now both burning as brightly blue as the new appliances.

  That evil asshole Aiden Blake’s death should have cleared away the film of terror clinging to Daisy’s soul. If anything, all the shocks had melted the film into a hard shell.

  Sometimes Gavin wondered if her pulling away was more about the baby than the attacks.

  They’d both been through tougher situations than the prospect of becoming parents. Daisy survived her mother’s abandonment and Aiden Blake’s assaults. Gavin lost a good chunk of his hearing and now had a sliver of new-possessed glass in his rib. A baby couldn’t be as dangerous, terrifying, and deadly as the life they’d led so far.

  But he wasn’t in Daisy’s head. He was just the man who wanted to spend his life with her. What did he know?

  He already asked what she needed. He asked every day. She never answered. They hadn’t had sex since the evening they conceived in the hotel in Cheyenne.

  Gavin didn’t know what to do.

  Daisy stirred their dinner and fake-smiled at his brat of a brother, and did her best to be fake-sociable.

  Ian leaned against the island counter and switched from staring at the dogs to staring at the blue oven, watching Gavin slice salad vegetables, and checking his phone.

  “Do you think Praesagio Special Medical might build me a leg with that finish?” Ian used his phone to point at the oven, then tapped it against his thigh. His hardware came from the small biomedical start-up nearby.

  The accident took the lower part of his leg, under his knee, and most of his calf muscle. His surgeon had been familiar with reconstruction and what was best for prosthetic attachments, and did excellent work. Ian hadn’t needed the multiple surgeries many amputees go through.

  Daisy looked up from stirring the gravy. She wiggled her nose. Her lips curled up into a tight grin.

  Her bloodhound nose must have picked up something off Ian she did not like—or she wasn’t happy about the savory wonder of their beef, potatoes, and salad dinner.

  “Perhaps we should introduce Ian to Sandro.” Daisy wiped her fingers on her apron again but didn’t look at either of the men.

  “Who’s Sandro?” Ian slid his finger across his phone.

  Gavin tapped his knife on his cutting board in the same cadence as his brother tapped at his screen. “Rysa Torres’s father.”

  Ian looked up. “That spazzy girl you used to have a crush on? Does everyone’s daddy but ours work for Praesagio Industries?”

  Daisy dropped her spoon and it clinked across the lovely blue finish of the electric blue stovetop.

  “How’d the whole maid of honor thing go, by the way?” Gavin’s clueless brother continued to stare at his phone. “Mom said something about making dresses for the wedding party.”

  Gavin set down his knife. Ian lived in one of the private apartment-dorms on the Minneapolis campus. He rarely went home and spent most of his time in the engineering labs.

  “Remember what we talked about on the front steps? Outside? Before we came in?” Sometimes Gavin wondered if the accident damaged Ian’s brain as well as his leg.

  “What?” Ian looked up.

  Gavin curled his lip.

  Ian’s eyes widened. He blinked and his mouth rounded. “Oh,” he said, and tucked his phone into his pocket.

  Ian turned toward Daisy. “That smells great!” he said.

  “The key is fresh rosemary and thyme.” She dumped the potatoes into the colander situated in their new, thousand-dollar sink. The damned thing’s chrome gave off more shine than Dragon.

  “Oh,” Ian said again. His nose twitched and a lost look flickered across his face.

  He often responded to food like that—as if he had a cold and couldn’t smell the spices in the air or the sweetness of the meat. Gavin never thought about it until he started living with a bloodhound enthraller.

  “Hey,” Ian tapped his finger on the island’s countertop. “Did you two see the reports about the explosions?” He dropped his butt onto the stool again and looked between Gavin and Daisy. “Wen—my buddy, he’s in engineering, too—he told me that there’s been explosions all over his family’s part of China.” Ian shrugged. “It’s weird. The American media has only reported the fires here.”

  Gavin pushed the salad veggies into Daisy’s serving bowl. The big ceramic dish was one of the few items besides the knives to survive the attacks on the house intact.

  Like Ian and his random subject changes, it felt out of place in the new kitchen.

  “No.” Daisy returned the potatoes to their pot, and added broth, butter, and a few fresh spices before smashing the mixture together.

  If the explosions were important, or Fate-caused—or Burner-caused, more likely—or problematic, her father would have called. Or Rysa. Or Mira Torres. Someone. So they were probably just unfortunate circumstances for those involved.

  “Factories,” Ian rubbed at his head. “Warehouses.”

  Daisy sniffed. Her eyes narrowed. “I wonder why no one is reporting on this.”

  “Yeah,” Ian said. “Wen said his family just up and decided to visit Australia. Just like that. Not a lot of planning. Said they were going on vacation.” He scratched at his head. “They left yesterday. Landed in Melbourne a little while ago.”

  He smiled at Daisy. “You’re from Perth, right? Can you do the accent?”

  Daisy transferred the roast to a platter for slicing. “I’ve been in America since I was a little kid, Ian.” But she grinned and winked, and dropped into an exaggerated Minnesota lilt. “Been here in da Cities for all my schoolin’, ya know.”

  Ian laughed. “That’s good! Better than Mom’s, and she’s from Bemidji.”

  Daisy chuckled. Gavin smiled. They’d found some common ground.

  Gavin picked up the salad serving bowl and gestured toward the breakfast nook. They’d be eatin
g in here until the new dining room table arrived next week.

  Wouldn’t be easy, once Team Dragon returned in a couple of days, but they’d make do. Maybe by then his girlfriend would find her center again.

  “Let’s eat,” Daisy said.

  Gavin stopped on the other side of the island, between his brother and the love of his life. Thank you, he mouthed.

  She threw him a confused look.

  He leaned close to her ear. “For tolerating my dumbass brother,” he whispered.

  A real smile appeared on Daisy’s lips, in her eyes, and on her cheeks. Quickly, she kissed his lips. “I love you,” she whispered, and stepped away, to serve the potatoes.

  If they hadn’t been carrying their dinner, he’d have pulled her into his arms. If Ian wasn’t here, he’d have dropped onto one of the stools and set her on his lap and just snuggled for an hour or two. But that wasn’t happening right now.

  So Gavin walked toward the table with the salad in his hand and his random subject-changing brother starting in on some new Praesagio Industries DARPA project and just how cool the new, creepy robots and high-velocity war machines were. Because war machines were always cool.

  Ian made an actually funny joke about ice sculptures and winter hats. Daisy laughed. There might be hope yet.

  Gavin set the salad on the table and hoped this new happiness lasted.

  Chapter Eight

  Outside of Portland, Oregon…

  Dunn had stood in the shadow of many mountains in her lifetime. She’d seen the long slices into sunrises made by looming volcanos. She’d survived winter storms at deadly altitudes. She’d witnessed plumes of ash and the loose shaking of unsteady ground.

  Mount Hood, though now a good distance behind them, still frightened her.

  The American Rockies gnawed at the rising sun, but that volcano rose up like a monster and ripped a long gash into the golden light of the new day. Its dark shadow spread upward onto the clouds as much as it spread downward onto the land. A long strip of the world huddled in that darkness. Day broke for everyone else, but not for them.

  Dunn rubbed her finger across the opal ring in the pocket of her jacket. She huddled inside the indigo-violet warmth of the Praetorian Guard garb wrapped around her body—her own version of a shadow. Perhaps she was a mountain. Perhaps the ring was buried treasure.

  Perhaps there were mythical dragons under that hill, atop mounds of riches. The flying kind, with breath so fierce it burned the world.

  She pulled her hand from her pocket. Her finger hooked the opal and her newly-pilfered ring came out with her hand. It glinted on the edge of her vision as her body raised her palm to her temple. She knew it was there, knew it would do damage to her skin and hair once it made contact, but her mind could not send the message to her arm fast enough to stop the inevitable.

  Dunn smacked herself in the eye with her shiny piece of buried treasure.

  Her eye stung and she blinked as she pulled her palm away from her face. She looked out at that looming American behemoth again, then back at the ring.

  Inevitability, she thought. The universe repeated patterns. Was Dunn embedded inside a curlicue of cycles, both small and large, as they repeated across time and space?

  Through the what-was-is-will-be. Through the might-have-been and the should-not-happen. Through the morphing cyclones of her Shifter abilities and the energy of the Prime past-seer standing at her side.

  It would explain the déjà vu.

  Maybe she was as crazy as Vivicus. Why else would she obsess about patterns? Why would she smack herself in the face?

  “Hurt yourself?” Marcus Drake asked. One of his eyebrows arched and he pursed his lips as if trying not to snicker.

  Dunn tucked the ring back into her pocket before zipping her jacket up around her neck. The mountain might bite into the winter morning sky, but the winter still bit into her.

  Again, repeating patterns within the curling smoke of the universe.

  Marcus turned his back to the sunrise and toward the sprawl of Portland to the west. “That,” he said as he waved a finger at her face, “was normal, ma’am.”

  Should she be offended that he felt the need to point out her fundamental humanity? Or offended that he was surprised that she was fundamentally human? Or perhaps she was offended at her humanity itself.

  Something about this moment offended her. Of that, she knew for sure.

  “Do what you need to do, Fate,” she said.

  Marcus inhaled sharply. He nodded once, and his lovely, musical past-seer sang into the retreating night. It pulsed first with what she guessed was the fine, steady beat of his heart. A harmony took up Marcus’s also-undeniable humanity, another beat-note, one that resonated with the past-seer.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the man standing next to their SUV. Harold looked oblivious to the song of his husband’s power. Instead, he watched over her and Marcus, his Praetorian Guard-trained senses primed and his Guard-honed skills ready.

  The second heartbeat was not Harold, at least not for this seeing.

  The harmony changed. A third beat-note combined with the first two, this one filling a gap in between.

  The chord of the original Draki Prime played across the orchestra of the what-was-is-will-be.

  How many times had she stood in the presence of a Fate unfurling his or her power? How many times had she witnessed the strength of a Prime? This was different. This time, she listened to the harmonization of instruments played together, but separated by a gulf, or walls, or something… new. They were not in the same room with each other, yet all three played this song, and they played because they had faith in each other.

  The new beat-note, the one filling the gap between Marcus’s past-seer and what had to be Daniel’s future-seer, swelled, then rotated. A sense of deceleration hit her hard, as if Harold had slammed down the SUV’s brakes, then the pulse moved in orientation to Marcus, and to her, and to the world.

  Moved as if searching for a parking space before opening its door.

  She gripped Marcus’s elbow. “It’s Timothy,” she said. “Correct?”

  But why the sense of motion and speed? Of searching and… probing?

  Marcus’s seer snapped back into him, and the sense of harmony vanished. His brow furrowed and he swayed, but Dunn gripped his elbow.

  “What?” he said.

  Was he asking her, or his brother? She peered at his eyes. “Marcus, are you okay?”

  Harold appeared on his other side and had his arm around Marcus’s waist before Dunn finished her question. “You told me you were past this.” He glanced at Dunn. “A healing would help.”

  Dunn let go. She stepped back.

  Healings from her were not the same as healings from the descendants of her son, Severo. Her healings, like her enthrallings and her morphings, were more… fundamental. She made normal men and women long immortal with her touch. She could force a permanent enthralling, if she wished to. She could time their duration as well, which she had often done with Derek Nicholson when he lived with her. Enthrall, but not so much he lost his will.

  And Harold asked her to lay hands on Marcus?

  “It’s the Parcae sickness,” Harold said. “Rysa healed him, but sometimes…”

  “No.” Marcus shook them both off. “No, that’s not what happened.” He pulled himself to full standing before pointing toward the city. “I know where Daniel is.”

  Did the change in velocity Dunn felt come from the future-seer instead of the present-seer? But no future-seer felt like speed. Rushing toward her, or sometimes away from her, but always as if the seer oriented within the what-was-is-will-be. Never re-orienting. Never decelerating. Never fundamentally changing in its basic nature.

  Never looking for a way in.

  “You saw through the fog?” Harold asked.

  Marcus rubbed his forehead. “For a moment, it cleared.” He shook his head. “I can’t describe it. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

&nb
sp; But you have, her déjà vu said. You know exactly what is happening.

  Except she didn’t. She didn’t know any more than the two men she accompanied, or any of the other Fates, or the other Progenitors. She didn’t know if her sensing of velocity and her gut-association with the present-seeing brother was what caused Marcus’s fog clearing, or if it was something purely Fate she didn’t understand.

  “Here.” She gently placed her hand on Marcus’s cheek and fired into his body a small bolt of undifferentiated healing. This, she could do for him. Such bolts supported general health and decreased pain. She’d been using them for centuries, and knew it wouldn’t produce any permanent changes.

  “Thank you,” Marcus said.

  “You’re welcome.” She watched him for a long moment, wondering if she should press him for more details. “I felt something, Marcus,” she said. “I think I felt Timothy.”

  He nodded. “Did you see it? The place?” His eyes widened as if he were a child asking for assurance that he wasn’t imagining things.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “But I’m sure I felt your brothers.”

  Marcus frowned. He looked down at the snow and dirt, then nodded once.

  “We’ll get them both back,” Harold said.

  She patted Marcus’s arm again before slipping her hand into the warmth of her jacket pocket. “Did you see an address for Daniel by chance?”

  Perhaps the “fog clearing” gave him specific information, something the Fates have been short on for the past month or so. Timothy could at least give that to his brother.

  Marcus pulled out his phone and with quick precision, pulled up a map. “Yes,” he said.

  A house in one of the more well-heeled sections of Portland, and a considerable drive from their present location.

  Harold fiddled with his phone. “That’s not a safe house.” He looked genuinely surprised. “That’s Nakajima’s private residence.”

  “He’s been at Nakajima’s house all this time?” Marcus pointed at the city glow before them. “Out in the open?”

  Why were they both so surprised? “Not everything is a spy game,” she said. But then again, one of the medical facilities they’d been investigating would have been a better choice for hiding a ghost-laden Fate.