“He’s coming to terms with a few new discoveries about himself since we blood melded, that’s all. Though I think these two may know as much about it as I do.” He gestured between Rohan and Keagan.
“Did something happen between you guys last night?” I asked.
Keagan grinned and winked. “I never kiss and tell, princess.”
“That would imply there was kissing,” Llyr said, casting an amused glance at the ursa. Keagan only shrugged, a smug expression plastered on his face.
I shifted my vision to see their auras, and my mouth dropped open. Not just Llyr’s, but both Rohan’s and Keagan’s auras were infused with turul power. The only way for that to happen was if they’d shared Nirvana, and I suddenly wished I’d gotten a look at Ozzie’s before he left, though I had a strong feeling I’d see evidence of them on him too.
“Don’t look so surprised, princess,” Keagan said. “It was all you. Your epic soul-bonding sesh with Bodhi last night had us all pretty worked up, even from a distance. I guess the Maestro just didn’t want to be left out.”
Bodhi’s chest shook with laughter beneath my back. “And here I thought I was finished being surprised by you guys.”
I didn’t think I could be either, but they’d proven me wrong.
We relaxed into idle chatter, Llyr directing us away from the topic of sexual preferences. I was grateful for the absence of loaded topics since it afforded me the focus to check on the hounds every so often. They were still on target, my initial command apparently having been focused well enough to send them on their way. But after my meeting with Fate, I truly wanted nothing more than to find our friend.
But every so often, the ideas lurking at the back of my mind would surge forward. When I looked at Llyr, I couldn’t help but picture him bound to a bed for my pleasure, enduring whatever punishment I chose to inflict on him as retribution for his betrayal. I wasn’t sure if such an activity would make it easier to forgive him, but it would certainly be a lot of fun trying.
As soon as that image dissipated, it was replaced by another, more confusing one that involved all five of the men together without me. I couldn’t decide whether I was hurt that Ozzie would share that with them and not me, or if I was just really turned on by the idea of them being compelled to share each other. All I knew was that I wished like hell we’d all been together last night.
“Deva.”
I jumped at the sound of my name, blinking at Rohan and suddenly aware of Keagan’s stillness and Bodhi’s heavy breathing.
“What?” I asked, shaking off the thoughts.
“We’re all connected to you,” Rohan said, giving me a meaningful look before glancing at each of the three other men in turn. “I don’t know how much of that they can feel, but whatever was going through your mind just now might need to wait until later. Unless you want to broadcast your need to everyone.” He tilted his chin toward the front of the bus. “Willem won’t care, but I’m betting Bodhi would rather not dive straight into an orgy while his mom is a few feet away. We don’t want to break the guy’s brain for real.”
Bodhi’s chest shook beneath my back and soon erupted in full out laughter. “Jesus Christ, no!” he said. “You guys have tested all my limits and obliterated most of them, but that’s definitely a hard no. Let’s work on some distractions, shall we?”
He snagged the TV remote from its secure holder on the arm of the sofa and pressed the button.
For the next couple hours, I managed to keep my mind off any more salacious ideas involving the two men I hadn’t mated, but kept straying back to the fact that Ozzie had shared a night with two of my mates, despite Rohan telling me he didn’t swing that way. Had he given up on me entirely to the point that he not only liked men, but preferred them?
“Deva,” Rohan murmured into my mind. “It wasn’t what you’re thinking.”
I darted a glance at him, giving him an apologetic smile when I saw his concern. “Then what is it? He avoids me like the plague. He won’t even support my decisions when it comes to this fucked up trip we’re on. Now he’s made love to both of you and still hides from me.”
He inhaled slowly and stared down the narrow corridor of the bus where the bunks were located. “We were just having fun. Nothing about last night involved making love. It was all about dealing with the crazy power you were sending us through our bond.”
“So what, he was just helping you two out?”
“He was drunk,” he said. “People do crazy shit when they’re drunk.”
That sounded like Ozzie, but it still didn’t quite satisfy me, and I realized why. Without actually speaking, even in a whisper, I couldn’t tell whether Rohan was lying to me or not. That particular turul skill, one of the few I actually possessed, required reading the breaths between words to discern a lie. Our mental conversation didn’t allow for that.
But I could trust Rohan and Keagan both, so I relaxed back into Bodhi’s comfortable embrace and resolved to focus on distracting myself with the movie they’d chosen instead.
The movie in question seemed to be almost entirely about explosions and boobs, and after two hours of mindless entertainment, I stood and stretched, peering out the windows at the stretch of desert terrain. Blaze and the other hounds were still following the right path, though I wasn’t familiar enough with the geography to know what that meant.
Eventually Ozzie reemerged, looking sleepy and tousled, yet excited.
“I think I know where we’re headed,” he said. He pulled out his phone and tapped the screen, then swiped up and pointed at the bigger TV hanging at the end of the sofa on the wall.
A map appeared on the screen with a blue arrow steadily moving along a single line headed south.
“There’s only one city in that direction worth caring about, and it’s as likely a place as any for Fate to have a strong foothold.”
“Where is it?” I asked.
“Las Vegas,” Ozzie said. “Fool’s Paradise.”
29
Ozzie
It was near dusk when we passed the city limits, the hounds unsurprisingly leading us straight to the Strip. My insides were a tangle of dread and nostalgia. I’d spent the better part of the 1980s in a drunken, drugged-out haze in this city. Snippets of memories still haunted me on occasions when I was least prepared.
My cousins had been with me for part of it, the three of us all in the same straits, resenting our lack of freedom and enforced loneliness thanks to Fate. Iszak and Lukas were still wallowing in self-hatred over the loss of their sister and happy to indulge in whatever self-destructive adventures I’d suggested we pursue. I was just lost, still traumatized by one too many human wars I’d gotten tangled up in just to forget how impossible it was to find my One.
My apprehension today was probably unfounded. It had been more than three decades since I’d been here last. Any bridges I may have burned had likely been washed away by time. The human powers in the city had shifted over the years, as they tended to do, and there was still a very strong dragon presence here—something I might have worried about if the old guard were still around.
But the new brood of dragons was in power now, and this generation’s motto seemed to be forgiveness and inclusion.
Of course, I didn’t exactly have much control over where we wound up in this city. We were after Sandor, and we would go wherever Deva’s hounds led us until we found him.
Deva stood in the front of the bus, gawking out the window at the multitude of lights lining the Strip.
“Girl, sit your ass down here before you fall over,” Maddie said, unhooking her own safety belt and slipping out of the passenger seat, urging Deva to take her place. “I’ve seen this place enough times to let someone new enjoy it for a change.” She shot me a knowing smile. “It loses its allure fast once you’ve been privy to its inner workings.”
I lifted an eyebrow at her. “Sounds like you have a story to tell.”
She waved a hand at me. “Nothing too glamorous. I sang
backup for several years before Bodhi came along, hoping the right connections would launch my career. In the end, I wound up with something even better.” She settled down on the sofa next to her son and squeezed his hand.
I heard only the smallest regret in the breaths between her words, perhaps for missed opportunities, or perhaps only for the poor choice in whichever deadbeat she’d chosen to have a child with. That was one thing I didn’t envy humans—the higher races rarely regretted their choices in mates.
I would give Fate credit for that much, at least. It never chose poorly, even if it was a hyper-controlling bastard about it with my kind. Most turul would have been perfectly satisfied with the situation, even considered it a blessing, if we just didn’t have to wait several centuries before finding our One.
I often wondered if that delay wasn’t deliberate on Fate’s part, just to tempt us to betray that commitment and seek love elsewhere. Fate certainly seemed to relish the torture when we strayed, if my grandmother’s accounts of all the times it had happened were any indication.
But Sandor had remained faithful to Fate’s plan, so he was the last person to deserve this kind of torture.
Deva let out a soft gasp of wonder and I looked out the window over her shoulder. We were driving past one of the many spectacular sights, an immense fountain with synchronized jets dancing to colored lights. I gaped at it. That particular resort hadn’t been here on my last visit to the city.
As we passed by, I turned to look out the side window and saw Llyr glued to the scene with an enthralled expression on his face. His eyes were wide, his pupils dilated.
“Hey, are you all right?” I asked, resting a hand on his shoulder. Beneath my palm, his entire body vibrated at a strange frequency that I sensed was a kind of communion with the rhythms of the dancing water he watched. He tore his gaze away and stared at me, unseeing for a moment, before he blinked and emitted a soft grunt.
“There is power beneath this place,” he said, “like nothing I have encountered before. An abyss deeper than the one containing the Source, more all-encompassing than Fate’s reach. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“It isn’t Fate you sense?” I asked, lowering my voice to avoid alarming the others. Keagan, Bodhi, and Rohan were too busy staring open-mouthed out the windows too.
Llyr shook his head. He looked pale and frightened, which was completely out of his character. “No. Something even more powerful. Nothing can imbue water with that much power besides the Dionarchs and the Diviner. Or Meri herself, but she’s dead. All of them would have to be here in order to do it.”
The comparison to Meri gave me a chill, which settled into my gut like a stone when I heard Deva’s excited cry. “We’re stopping here! The hounds brought us here.”
The bus slowed and turned, creeping up the drive to the front of the huge hotel. Willem pulled to the side around arriving guests once we reached the entrance, then killed the engine. The hounds had stopped and were circling in front of the entrance, waiting. If Sandor was inside this place, we had no choice but to brave whatever power held control and go get him.
Before Deva could rush out the door, I stopped her. “Wait, we need to make a plan here.”
“Our plan is to go find Sandor,” she said. “The hounds are waiting. Come on.”
She wrenched her arm out of my hand and bounded down the steps. I shot Llyr a worried look that the other guys seemed to pick up on.
“We’re with her,” Keagan said. “You guys get the bus sorted out and catch up. I’m sure it isn’t as easy as Deva thinks.”
“It never is with Fate,” I muttered.
30
Deva
I had to jog to catch up with the four hounds, my insides a jittering mess. The doors led into a brightly lit chaos of sounds and smells. The exterior had been misleading; inside was an immense palace of stone and marble. What was a study in symmetry from the outside was constructed like a maze on the inside, disorienting and complex.
I was grateful when Bodhi caught up to me and slipped his hand into mine. Rohan came up on my other side and bent to murmur in my ear, “We’re with you all the way, baby.”
At least the hounds seemed to know where they were going, so I focused on them, winding around through the forest of jangling machines and ecstatic humans. Finally, we came out into a less chaotic space that truly looked like the interior of a palace with polished marble floors and gold accents.
“What is this place?” I said, staring in a stupor at the sights.
“It’s a casino, angel,” Bodhi said. “Where paychecks go to die.”
“And souls get sucked dry,” Rohan muttered. “No surprise that Fate might have taken Sandor here to torture him.”
The hounds kept walking, skirting the guests, and a surge of pride swelled in me at how well they were obeying my commands. Simply projecting that thought to them had them speeding up again, putting a swish in their tails and ab ounce in their steps.
Eventually they slowed and trotted into a softly lit restaurant decorated in rich brown leather and wood with trickling waterfalls coursing down one wall. The scents of delicious food wafted through and my stomach gurgled, reminding me that all I’d had to eat were a few microwaved meals on the bus.
A sleekly coiffed woman in a black dress gave us a tight smile. “May I help you?” she asked, diverting us from following the hounds farther into the place.
“I need to go in there,” I said, trying to push past her.
“I’m sorry, miss, but do you have a reservation? A reservation is required, and we have a strict dress code.” She eyed each of my mates critically with her nose in the air.
“We probably don’t want to cause a scene here,” Bodhi murmured into my ear.
“No. We could at least make an effort to blend in. Come on,” Rohan said, tugging me by the elbow.
We walked a few yards farther and he ducked into an alcove, pulling me behind him. Bodhi and Keagan followed us through a door to what appeared to be the men’s room, then to the end to the handicapped stall where we squeezed in.
“Ready for a costume change?” Rohan asked with a grin, golden smoke already filtering out of his nostrils to coil around his body.
I didn’t like the idea of wasting time, but he was right; we still needed to blend in if we cared about protecting the bloodline and not revealing ourselves.
I followed suit, exhaling smoky magic of my own until the stall was filled. Keagan and Bodhi were both in conjured clothes as it was, so it took little effort to alter the garments we all wore to match something more in line with what the customers in the restaurant had been wearing.
When we exited the stall, an elderly man did a double take at the four of us before scowling and scurrying out.
“You forgot to wash your hands!” Bodhi called after him with a chuckle. Glancing into the mirror, he raised both brows and straightened his shoulders. “Wow, we kind of clean up nice, don’t we?”
The three of them were now clad in dress pants and button-up shirts of different colors. Keagan’s was rust-brown, Bodhi’s a deep, steely gray, and Rohan’s burnished gold. My own comfortable leather garb had become a shimmering pearlescent dress with a wrap-around bodice that displayed my cleavage and draped over my hips to end just past my knees. I exhaled another stream of shimmering smoke, and with a twist of my finger in the air, commanded it to arrange my hair in a loose bun with tendrils curling around my temples and neck.
“Beautiful,” Keagan said, slipping up behind me and meeting my gaze in the mirror. He bent to kiss my neck and I sighed, tilting my head to give him access.
I allowed myself to enjoy it for only a moment before turning and giving them each a once-over. They did clean up well, but still kept a touch of the wildness that I loved about them: Rohan’s tousled golden curls, Keagan’s sideburns, and the musical clef on the thong around Bodhi’s neck, not to mention his dragon mark glowing at the side of his throat.
I placed my hand lightly over the shimm
ering emblem and it went dark, appearing to be no more than ink if anyone should look directly at it.
“Let’s try this again,” I said.
31
Deva
The hostess greeted us with a scowl when we arrived at her stand the second time. Rohan took the lead with me at his side. He exhaled a shimmering golden cloud of smoke invisible to any human’s perception, and it floated in a coil around her head. Her demeanor shifted instantly and she beamed at us as if overjoyed by our return.
“I’m so happy you came back. We just had a cancellation, so I can seat you right away.”
Too surprised to even reply beyond a simple thank-you, I fell into step behind her. Rohan slipped his hand around my waist and bent to my ear. “See what a little dragon magic can do? You could test yours out next time.”
I darted a surprised look at him. It hadn’t even occurred to me to try using my breath on her.
Beside him, Bodhi muttered, “Dude, why didn’t we just do that the first time? We could’ve skipped the outfits.”
Rohan scoffed. “I always appreciate a good excuse to put on a coat of polish. Besides, we’d have been too conspicuous looking like bums in a place like this. If there’s one thing the higher races don’t skimp on, it’s learning to blend in.”
“Fair point,” Bodhi said, eyeballing the well-dressed clientele at this upscale place. He stood up a little straighter and combed his fingers through his hair, the dark brown waves falling loose around his collar.
Bodhi and Keagan kept pace behind us as the hostess led us through the huge restaurant, and I nearly burst out into laughter when we reached the table. The four hounds were already lounging around it, looking at me as if to say, “What took you so long?”
We slid into the comfortable booth and opened the menus.
Fate's Fools Box Set Page 74
