The Burning World

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Mira pulled her silly pink hat down over her ears. The pompoms made her look younger than Rysa—and deceptively naïve.

  Perhaps she wore it on purpose.

  Mira peered out the passenger window at the gas station. “I sense Eric, Dan-Addy, and…” She closed her eyes. “Marcus Drake.”

  “So Marcus has finally come out of hiding.”

  Mira pointed. “But I don’t see them, which means an enthraller of significant talent is here, as well.” She inhaled and held her breath. “I have been in the presence of your mother before, shortly before the incidents at Vesuvius.”

  Andreas nodded.

  “If we have met at any other time, she did not acknowledge me.”

  Of the two of them, Andreas had the greater chance of countering an enthralling from his mother. For him, that chance was slim. For Mira, it was nonexistent.

  He pulled the keys from the steering column.

  A guy in a suit—not Eric Nakajima—talked to one of the cops. He pointed at the station, then at the screen of his phone. Behind them, a security detail—two guys in black body armor and a technician in a Praesagio Research and Defense t-shirt—hopped off the copter.

  They all appeared to be blissfully ignorant of the presence of his mother.

  And of them.

  Mira gripped her door handle, but didn’t open her door. “Eight months ago, when this started,” she waved her hand in the general direction of the universe, “my pain from the Parcae sickness was so bad I could barely get out of bed.” She pointed at the gas station. “Sandro got it under control again, but Eric helped, Andreas. Under all his bluster, he’s a good man.”

  Andreas nodded.

  She shook as if resetting her body for battle, and then Mira Torres, a Prime Fate in a pink hat, suddenly took on the posture of a goddess.

  “I spent five days infected with burndust.” She gripped the handle so tightly her fingers turned white. “When my brother stalked Rysa. When Ladon-Human and Ladon-Dragon found her as she activated.”

  Andreas remembered. “You called me. I was in Mumbai.”

  Mira grinned. “It felt like a gift, Andreas. Your phone number. It felt as if someone whispered it into my ear.”

  At the time, with the amount of burndust in her system, and her Parcae sickness, she should not have been able to use her present-seer to find his number, yet she had. She’d also told him information only a future-seer should have known.

  But she was Mira of the Jani Prime, and she was the most powerful present-seer alive. He’d been surprised, but not so much he hadn’t accepted her plea to return to The States.

  “I swear to you, Andreas, in my pain-altered, burndust-drugged state, I sensed the eddies and the flows of the universe. I saw the chaos around those Burners and I felt the side-wind that is my present-seer.”

  She was not the first to associate weather patterns with the energy forces of the world around them. Ladon had muttered the same words just before Andreas had delivered him to his beast and they reconnected. Daniel-Adrestia had also muttered similar words, and both Dmitri and Daisy Pavlovich had used similar but more coherent descriptors.

  “You’re describing new-space, Mira.”

  “I am.” She tugged on her hat again. “Have I ever told you where I was the night I called you?”

  “No.” She’d been in a bar with a payphone. That he remembered.

  “Aurora, Colorado.” Mira pulled the door handle and a wave of cold air entered the SUV.

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  Mira’s present-seer sang-thundered toward the gas station. If his mother didn’t already know they had arrived, she knew now.

  Mira dropped her legs out. “Because I no longer believe we are bound by fate, my friend.”

  They never had been, no matter what the Fates believed.

  Andreas opened his door—and caught traces of Burner. “Mira!”

  She nodded.

  A cop stalked toward the other cop talking to the guy in the suit. They all continued to ignore Andreas and Mira, who walked up the embankment toward the road and looked down at the pumps.

  No one was visible—yet he knew at least one Shifter and two Fates were standing next to Eric’s car. He squinted. Nothing. No shadows.

  His mother had to be here.

  Another cop walked by. Mira nodded toward him, and Andreas stepped in front of the man. The cop pulled up short, blinking with his mouth agape, because he had no idea why he’d just stopped in his tracks.

  “What is happening in the gas station?” Andreas followed the question with a hefty dose of ‘comply.’

  The officer blinked again. “He’s all over the internet,” the cop said. “We think it’s a magic trick because he’s setting fire to things with his finger.”

  The Burner was broadcasting? Andreas moved out of the cop’s way. The man blinked again and continued walking toward his cruiser.

  Mira pulled out her phone. Her finger swiped a couple of times, then she held it out for him to see.

  The Burner was live on at least three separate social media platforms.

  “He had help,” she said. “The only Burner who could pull this off on his own is Billy, and he disappeared with your ex-wife’s car.”

  “All those explosions?” the Burner said from Mira’s phone. “All the gas leaks? My people!” He twirled around. “We will no longer be ignored!” Then he leaned his damp face close to his camera. “The Fates control everything, but they can’t control us!”

  “Shit,” Mira said. She took off for the gas station, running around the snowbank and up the drive, with Andreas close behind. “Eric!” she yelled. “Daniel!”

  She stopped as if she’d bounced against a wall—or as if someone had grabbed her arms. Her shoulders hunched and she wiggled as if constrained. “Let go…” she growled.

  Andreas’s brain wanted to believe only that Mira danced. That no unseen individual he’d been enthralled to ‘ignore’ was, in fact, behaving in a way he should perceive.

  But he knew better.

  He swung his arm straight down in front of Mira’s face and directly onto the ignored hands holding her elbows. His brain could no longer ignore the physical contact, or the man’s huffs.

  Harold Demshire staggered back from Mira. “You two need to turn around.” He pushed on Mira’s shoulder to get her to move back toward the other side of the road. “There’s nothing we can do about the Burner.”

  Then Harold vanished again.

  Did he just see Harold Demshire? Why did he want to go back to the other side of the road? He wasn’t a… chicken.

  He shook his head. Why the absurd thoughts?

  Because his mother was here. And pumping out calling scents.

  “Mother!” Andreas roared.

  Dunn, his mother, the Progenitor of his kind, the source of the great and terrible enthralling ability filling not only his blood, but the blood of all his descendants, appeared directly in front of him.

  Daisy had been correct; she had reverted to her original form.

  She looked up at his face and scowled. “Why are you here, son?”

  Daniel-Adrestia and Marcus Drake walked by, with Eric Nakajima close behind. Dan-Addy looked distressed.

  “Do you have something to do with that Burner?” He pointed at the station’s building. “Where are you taking Daniel?” He pointed over his shoulder. “Where the hell have you been for the last twelve years? You abandoned Daisy!” She abandoned everyone. She’d abandoned him more times than he could count.

  A shivering, wet, mousy male staggered out of the building’s sliding door.

  “The clerk,” his mother said. She turned and spoke directly to the man. “Run to the police.”

  He bounded up the drive to the road, leaving Andreas alone with his mother.

  “Where’s Mira? Where did Harold go?” His mother was still enthralling him and fracturing his perception. She had to be. He wasn’t thinking clearly.

  Dunn pu
shed him back up onto the road. “That Burner is going to take the store any moment now.”

  He picked her up by the waist. Lifted her up so her feet dangled by his knees and he could look her in the eye. “Release your calling scents on me, Mother,” he growled. Now was not the time for fractured thinking.

  She sighed—and his mind cleared. Harold held Mira’s elbow and had her most of the way to the other side of the road, with Marcus, Dan-Addy, and Eric right behind. Every cop had moved back as well, as had the clerk. The two ambivalent Praesagio security personnel waited on the other side as if debating between crossing and staying. The guy in the suit waved his arms.

  “Will you put me down, please?” his mother said.

  She asked instead of commanding him. He set her down.

  “Mira said he had help.”

  His mother snorted. “Undoubtedly.” She took his arm again and pulled him away from the gas station.

  “Mother, what is going on?” Maybe she knew. The Fates sure didn’t.

  She walked them by a police cruiser. “I terminated Vivicus’s final attempt to reintegrate. Harold found me. He and Marcus asked for help in rescuing the other two Draki Prime.”

  Andreas stopped walking. “Timothy is alive?” Did he also hitch a ride?

  “I wouldn’t say alive.” She frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t understand any better than you. I just know Daniel’s connected—connecting—to him.” She pointed. “And…”

  She twisted her head as if listening to someone whisper in her ear. “Andreas…” The color drained from her face.

  “Mother.” He reached for her again, but she stepped away.

  “Do you remember the night we pulled Derek Nicholson from the Bolsheviks?”

  Behind them, the man in the suit yelled at the cops. Everyone ducked behind their cruisers. Harold looked over his shoulder at the building, then pulled Eric and the Fates behind the Land of Milk and Honey SUV.

  “Why?” Andreas asked.

  “Do you remember how I knew exactly where to go? How I fretted because we were running out of time?”

  “Yes, Mother, I do.” It had been one of the many times she exhibited one of her crazy behaviors.

  “When the Whispering One talks to me, I must listen.” She yanked him into the snow-covered ditch just as the gas station erupted into a huge ball of flame.

  Dunn, the Mother of Shifters, lay on her back in the dirty snow, her bronze eyes glazed and her mouth open. “She’s here.”

  Debris rained down, but everyone but the Burner seemed to have survived unwounded.

  “Who’s here?” His mother had dropped into crazy again, just like that night in Russia. Just like so many other times. He saw it in her blank stare and her frozen stance.

  “She traveled with you.” Dunn chuckled. “She was at Ladon’s home, collecting stabby things, but she couldn’t lift the blade. It’s too real and she’s too new. She had to leave it behind with the two daggers, which were a surprise.”

  “Mother, what are you talking about?” How did she know about the midnight blades?

  “She left with you hoping that you’d find me.” She chuckled again. “If only she’d come to the reception.”

  She cocked her head again. “The daggers weren’t supposed to be made yet. They were supposed to be made after but Trajan figured it out. There have been lots of surprises these past few weeks.

  “The Whispering One says that since I can hear her so well right now, I’m supposed to tell you to collect Stab, George, and Ringo. She says we have a real chance to close….” She shut her eyes. “Close what?” She twisted her head as if listening to someone.

  A chance? “Mother, I don’t understand.” Did she mean about the Burner outing them to the world?

  She jumped up to a crouch. “Daisy,” she murmured.

  “She’s a First, isn’t she? Is that why you left her activation to Dmitri? Because she carries a new ability?” He swiped to grab her arm, but she dodged. “You need to come with us.” He waved his hand at the Fates. “We need to get this sorted.”

  Dunn stood her full, if slight, height and cocked her head again as if listening, yet she looked up at the sky. “They’re coming, son.”

  “Who is coming?” Andreas bellowed. His mother had always been cryptic. Talking to her was often more frustrating than talking to a future-seer. And right now, with all the Fate game-playing, and what felt like a new threat to Daisy’s life, he’d had his fill of cryptic. “Names, Mother! Answers! If you want my help—if your precious Whispering One wants my help—then I want to know why.”

  His mother stared at the burning gas station, her eyes wide and unblinking. “She’s gone. I can’t hear her anymore.”

  “Daniel says he can’t see,” Mira yelled. “He says Timothy did something to his optimizers before he lost their connection.”

  Dunn shook as if resetting. She turned her back to the fire and took up staring at the Fates. “I came along to help them find their brother. I’ve felt him several times, but I can’t hear him the way I hear the Whispering One.” Her face took on a look of dawning comprehension. “What if Trajan is hearing someone, too? What if we are all hearing different whispers from different places?”

  An offhand remark from Rysa about her newly-found blade energy “talking” to her returned to Andreas’s mind. And Billy…

  He was pretty sure Billy had seen something unusual the evening Ladon and Brother-Dragon reconnected.

  Different whispers. Different ears. Was it all the same puzzle? Were they all supposed to reach the same conclusion?

  His mother walked toward the Fates. “Come, boys,” she said. “We go to Minneapolis.”

  Harold stood and helped Marcus to his feet. Eric helped Dan-Addy, but froze when Addy’s present-seer erupted from the body she shared with Daniel. It pinged like radar through the little police encampment opposite the Burner fire until it settled onto the helicopter.

  His mother was about to steal a Praesagio Industries copter to shuttle her to Daisy, the daughter she’d abandoned over a decade ago.

  Andreas told his body to move his feet. He fully intended to follow Dunn, to get onto that copter with her, but he, like Eric, was rooted in place. “This is not a good idea, Mother!” he yelled.

  His mother looked at him one last time. “Bring me the midnight blades, son.”

  Yes, he would do as his mother ordered. He’d go to the cave and retrieve every single midnight blade and bullet in the armory. “Yes, Mother.” He’d also ask the correct questions. He’d get the correct answers. He would learn about the whispers and the ears and the different, disparate parts of this puzzle.

  He bowed his head.

  Dunn, too, bowed hers. Then Dunn, his mother, abandoned her son one more time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mount Vesuvius, Italy…

  Billy Bare stood near the bumper of a large, dark-green SUV, wearing a tech-filled indigo Praetorian Guard jacket and a nice set of “Burner resistant” threads. The new boots flexed well, and provided a strong post-jump grip. His new gloves—fingerless, of course—massaged in a way Billy could only describe as loving.

  That wanker Trajan had outfitted him, the ex-human, with a superhero’s dungarees.

  He still carried his magic sword, Poke. He wore it on his back in its magic scabbard. Trajan had seemed quite happy to let him have his blade. The entourage, not so much. But they didn’t complain because, Billy suspected, they were professionals.

  The Italian countryside smelled of the same warm, fresh earth, olive trees, and hints of ocean as it did when he’d played here years ago, before he became a Burner. Billy Bare and the Astronauts had performed a whirlwind, ten-day tour, one full of pyrotechnics not unlike what a snap of his Burner fingers could set off now.

  His band had played. He sang. The sound guy complained and the pyro guy set off smoke and sparks. They rode a parade of buses through Rome and Milan and a few other charming Italian cities. He had an entourage then like he
did now, but back then, his hangers-on were mostly roadies and coked-up, underage girls.

  Now, his entourage was the massive SUV that screamed “American” and did not, at all, belong on the side of a winter-killed, bluish-brown, Italian country road. The SUV, along with the rest of his new transport parade, was an unwanted necessary part of his “saving the world” task.

  The woman confined in the nondescript grey van at the back of the security line—she was another unwanted, necessary burden.

  Someone needed to get him up the side of Vesuvius and to his Progenitor. Only a handful of people, it seemed, knew the correct route. The woman happened to be the only available option.

  Billy whistled. The tasty-smelling enthraller boy with modern, puffy hair and hipster chin scruff—he looked twenty but the kid talked like a World War II veteran—nodded once, zipped up his own high-tech indigo jacket, and disappeared around the SUV to bring their guide to the front of the detail.

  Some of the security team were Praetorian Guard. Some were ex-military Praesagio Industries flaks. They all worked for Trajan. Billy was both the best protected and the most vulnerable Burner on Earth, with this crew.

  Praesagio Industries, the massive, vampiric, Fate-powered squid sucking at the entire surface of their green gem of a planet.

  A gem that, not long ago, Trajan told him had only seventeen days of life left to it.

  Billy had no reason to doubt Trajan’s rants. No reason to disagree. He’d noshed those dead Fates—the psycho who put the glass in his neck and the corpse of a boy Trajan kept in the fish tank deep inside his “base”—and he felt different. He saw now. Things like the waves and tornadoes of the abilities carried by the security entourage.

  He heard things, too. Things channeled to his ears by the sliver of glass in his neck, and perhaps the sliver of new-infected dragon talon in his pocket. Things like the counting of people who were not here.

  … Sentinel Six, this is Intrepid. You are point zero three four one out of tolerance….