Fifth of Blood

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  She looked up. I know, she signed back. Thank you. Her face turned to the sky. Go. Please. I need to eat.

  Ladon turned. When he placed his hand on the patio door, he looked over his shoulder. Dragon stood, slowly, and climbed the side of the house, to the peak of the roof. He moved to where he could watch both Rysa and his sister.

  Ladon would shower. And then he’d drive. Because this needed to stop.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Derek tapped the control buttons on the blade safe inside the step of his brother-in-law’s van, not knowing what to think. Or feel.

  Honestly, he felt numb. Perhaps his imperviousness to Rysa’s calling scents had flooded over onto the poking and scraping coming off his wife and her dragon. Or perhaps the sudden, massive blast of remembered agony from Brother-Dragon had burned out his senses. The real, physical agony had been intense enough that Derek had blanked out for a second.

  He tapped his fingertips across the steel of the step, hoping to feel the familiar rough texture of the tread, or the coolness of the metal.

  He felt only an unyielding box.

  The sword, he laid down with Ladon’s other blades. “You need to go,” he said without turning around. Without looking at his wife.

  Behind him on the concrete drive, she rustled as her muscles tightened. A normal would have missed the slight crinkling of her jacket. But Derek wasn’t a normal anymore.

  She did not respond.

  On the roof of the van, her dragon—the beast he knew as Dragon, the same way Rysa knew Brother-Dragon as Dragon—grumbled.

  Derek closed the safe and turned slowly, looking down at his wife. They were remarkably silent, the Dracas, neither speaking or signing. Or throwing dragon-language at each other.

  “How is it that you cannot see what you do?” He had not meant his words to be harsh. But harsh they were. “How is it that you have not lived…” He waved his hand toward the backyard. “…a situation similar to this before? She cannot be the first of your brother’s loves you have not liked.”

  Anna’s eyes closed and her lips pinched, and again, she did not respond.

  “Anna, tell me the truth. Please.”

  She extended her hand, asking him to come down. To stand with her. He pulled her close as he dropped to the ground.

  “She is a Fate.”

  Derek kissed the spikes on Anna’s head. “She is also a Shifter.” But he knew what Fates had done to their family. His wife still reacted to the trauma, as did her dragon. Even after the long passage of time.

  “I know.” Her arms tightened. “We will go ahead. Will you come?”

  He had planned to ride with her, at least for a few hours. But plans must change. “I will see you when we reach Portland, okay?” A new kiss on her forehead seemed to loosen some of her tension. “Will you be all right with your phone on? I will call when we leave.”

  Anna nodded, feeling small against his chest. Longing moved down from the roof, accompanying the great hand cupping his back.

  Tell Derek I am sorry.

  “She says she’s sorry.” Anna stepped away.

  He looked up and stroked his Dragon’s snout. “When Andreas comes, you ask him to use his scents and help you find your center. Promise me you will.”

  His lovely Dragon’s other hand dropped over the side of the van. I promise, she signed as she swung her head toward the backyard. A pulse of energy moved toward her brother. I have promised Brother, as well. I do not like how I am feeling.

  A quick sigh popped out of Anna. “Watch Brother. Please. His…” At that moment, her eyes held the same fear that he’d seen when Vivicus had knifed his leg. The same terror that she was about to lose someone important to her. “If his melancholy returns, he might…” She trailed off again.

  Where would they run this time? Dragon pushed to his wife. There is no other New World.

  He should not eavesdrop. Yet Derek stayed silent, holding his secret.

  I do not think he will run if something happens to her. Anna’s push carried its own cathedral of meaning. I think he will do something… unwise… again. The fear he had seen in her eyes caged all her thoughts.

  Derek knew his Dragon was not the only beast capable of externalizing her human’s internal torment. He knew the stories. And the normals’ myths that had arisen because of past responses.

  He pulled his wife into his arms, holding her tight. “I will call you every hour.”

  She nodded against his chest. “Every hour.”

  He kissed her, hoping to distract her from some of her brooding. “I am now as strong as he is, and probably as fast.” Gripping her waist, he lifted her into the air and held her, straight-armed, in front of his chest. Like her brother, Anna weighed more than she appeared. His small wife, who looked to be one hundred pounds sopping wet, weighed in at about one-sixty.

  Lifting her took some effort, but not a lot. Derek grinned.

  “Oh!” A smile brightened her face, though the sadness did not ease. “You are stronger.” The smile turned into a smirk. “A lot stronger.”

  “My stamina has improved as well, wife.” Derek cocked an eyebrow.

  “Has it, now.” The sadness vanished for the moment, replaced by more pleasant thoughts. “This is news I approve of, husband.”

  He set her down. “As you know, I aim to please.”

  A snort popped from his wife, one echoed by her dragon. She moved to kiss him, to smooth her soft lips over his, and, he hoped, let go of her own melancholy, but the front door flew open.

  Bernard stepped out, halting on the top step of his tasteful porch, a cell phone in his hand. “I think you need to see this.” He held it out.

  Anna moved away, her attention pulled completely from her husband to the threat at hand. Above him, her dragon dropped her hands off the side of the van again, unconsciously framing Derek in a cage. They fell into synchronization, the two halves of the Dracas, and into their automatic protective response.

  Derek did not move, letting them have this moment of control.

  Anna waved him to follow, flipping a command to her dragon to pace him up the walk, as she did so very often.

  In Bernard’s hand, the device blipped, his Burner detection app pulling up information. “Last night I set up search programs to look for Hadrian’s cover name, Adrian Buccell, and while I was at it, I set the app to ping activity in Portland.” He held out the phone. “There’s been an uptick. A steep uptick.”

  Anna scrolled through the search information. “What are they up to?”

  Bernard grimaced, dancing once again from foot to foot. “His shop burned down last night.”

  Anna looked up.

  Derek knew what she was about to ask, because it was the same question in his mind. “Let me guess,” she said. “Gas leak and explosion?”

  Bernard nodded.

  Gas leak meant one thing—Burners attacked Hadrian last night.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “The Tsar sent your sister on ahead?” The phone wasn’t filtering the exhaustion from Andreas’s voice. Ladon doubted he was sleeping—like Rysa. “Good.”

  A day and a half of driving through the mountains, and they were on their last leg into Portland. They’d stopped for showers and a couple hours of sleep in Idaho, but they’d all agreed pushing through was the best idea.

  Except Dragon. The beast wanted Ladon to rest.

  Sister, for her part, had been in Portland for four hours already, looking for Hadrian and scouting the main Praesagio Industries location, a sprawling campus containing two central corporate buildings and a research lab. Where the talon was, though, they did not know.

  Rysa was still not getting a strong sense of her talisman, which told Ladon one thing: Powerful Fates were stitching the what-was-is-will-be around what she needed most. Powerful Fates like the Ulpi, and in particular, Trajan.

  Ladon followed the sedan off one freeway and onto another. Sister’s and Andreas’s attempts to find Hadrian had not yet yielde
d usable information. They needed to regroup.

  Looking out at the night above the approaching Portland skyline, Ladon’s lip curled. Trajan might, for the moment, have the upper hand, but Ladon would win this battle, the way he did all others. He’d bested Trajan’s morphers during the Emperor’s reign. He’d smacked the bastard back several times after the fall of the Empire, including “stealing” the Draki Prime from powerful Fates families. But since the attack on the First Healer centuries ago, Trajan had seen fit to behave himself. The Ulpi, it seemed, had cleaned up their act.

  Ladon frowned. They were not trustworthy.

  The phone jostled in the cup holder when Ladon drove the van over a bump. He’d set it on speaker so he wouldn’t have to hold it. Plus, it kept a small but valuable distance between his head and the damned thing’s incessant whining.

  “Work here at The Land is finished,” Andreas grumbled. “Bernard is hacking out any remaining Seraphim tentacles from Pavlovich’s financials, now that he is done digging up information on the talon’s likely location.”

  Sounds of irritation as thick as Andreas’s fatigue spread from the phone. Ladon could not tell if his friend’s annoyance sprouted from the work in Branson, from spending a great deal of time in proximity to the abrasive Dmitri, or from feeling dismissed.

  Andreas had been enthralling the Seraphim who hadn’t escaped, giving some phobias of weapons, blanking the memories of others. Ladon suspected Rysa would not approve of their tactics, so he did not speak of it, but enthralling sent random waves through tightly-organized groups like Vivicus’s little cult. Often, such disruptions from the inside did more to defeat an enemy than assaults and violence. So Andreas disturbed and the Seraphim disintegrated.

  “Sorry.” Andreas’s voice returned to the speaker. “We’ve been letting the Seraphim trickle out as their enthralling sets, but the last one wanted to stay.” He chuckled. “I told Renee not to tell her arrogant prick of a boss.”

  Ladon sniffed.

  “But you didn’t call about the Seraphim, did you?” Fatigue curled around Andreas’s voice again.

  “No.” Ladon wasn’t calling about the “buyers,” either. They had a lead on Rysa’s talisman; the other Fates, the ones who had been looking to kidnap her, could wait.

  “Is it because she’s not sleeping?”

  Andreas knew? “Why didn’t you say something?” Ladon glanced in the rearview mirror. Were they all conspiring?

  “Because Rysa said, for your health, my legatus, that you were not to be taxed with extra worries. Which is exactly what she said. ‘Do not tax Ladon with extra worries.’ So no extra taxing. And I have not taxed you. Because you worry.”

  Rysa was correct to ask Andreas not to tell. Dragon pressed his big head between the front seats, but kept himself below the sightlines through the windshield. You are having trouble controlling your moods.

  “What is this?” They were treating him like…

  Like he treated Rysa. Ladon groaned, and his back tightened up. Damn it, he was driving. Now was not the time to deal with this.

  “Ladon, look, it’s not that—”

  “Never mind.”

  “Ladon…”

  “I said never mind. We have other issues to deal with. Such as the not sleeping. And the always eating and still losing weight.” He fought his shoulders’ need to cinch as if someone yanked on his spine and drew up his muscles the way a cord pulled closed a sack. “And the angry outbursts.” Like calling Sister-Dragon a name, though Ladon fully understood why.

  Andreas did not answer. Not right away. “She’s losing weight? Noticeably? In five days?”

  The little screaming voices inside Ladon’s head started again. The shrill whispers. It will never stop. But he wouldn’t let it show. Not in his posture or his voice. “Yes.”

  In front of him, the sedan turned off into the tree-lined parking lot of a suburban corporate building. A low-slung glass-and-metal monstrosity, it looked like every other glass-and-metal building in the nation housing real estate brokers, dentists, and two-bit lawyers.

  “We’re here.” He’d take the phone out with him when he spoke to Derek and Rysa. Andreas might have some insight. Because this had to stop. And stop now.

  You will stop the call now, Human. Dragon’s big hand reached for the phone. Tell Andreas you will call him back.

  Ladon slapped at Dragon’s talon-fingers. “Why?”

  “Why? Because activating takes a lot of energy, that’s why. And I think she’s still activating.” Andreas could not see them, so he did not understand the question was meant for Dragon and not him.

  Dragon’s claw-hand stopped inches from the phone.

  Shifters and Fates take four to twelve hours to activate, not three weeks, the beast pushed. Tell Andreas he cannot be correct. Confusion trickled across their river of energy, from behind a wall the beast had set up to hold his emotions to himself.

  But it got through. Which meant the beast was as frightened by all this as Ladon.

  His entire body cinched as the shades yanked. Ladon felt as if his spine was about to spear through his brain.

  Human! Tell Andreas you will call him back. The beast snatched the phone. Now!

  “Dragon wants me to hang up,” he said.

  “Shit! Ladon, what’s going on—”

  Dragon cut the call, but he did not turn off the phone. He moved into the back as quickly as he’d snatched the device. In the rearview mirror, Ladon saw the beast hold the little screen in front of one of his great eyes as he tapped at the keyboard with a talon from his other claw-hand.

  Dragon texted someone.

  Ladon pulled the van around, parking next to a small tree, and cut the engine. “What are you doing?” Ladon said. How the hell was the beast texting? “You can’t write!”

  I can tap. I cannot draw. There is a difference. Dragon pointed through the windshield at the sedan. Rysa says you are to let Derek handle organizing our next move.

  “What did you tell Rysa?” Ladon slapped the window. “I’m fine!” Why are you acting this way, this time?

  Dragon ignored his question. I will not argue. I will do as our Prime commands.

  The beast fell silent. He continued to tap at the phone, holding it out to see the screen, then twisting his head before tapping again.

  Ladon watched Derek step out of the car. He ducked his head back inside, speaking to Rysa, who hunched down in the front seat, her face illuminated by her phone’s screen.

  They were talking about him.

  Maybe the beast was right. Maybe this time was different. They had lived through threats to his women before. Each time, he thought it would end him, but each time he managed to wake up the next morning. And the morning after that. And the next one after that.

  But everyone had a line in their lives. Even a Progenitor.

  Some loves could not be lost.

  I will not tolerate your moods. We have work. Dragon paused again, holding out the phone so he could see the screen. I am done. Dragon dropped the phone back into the cup holder.

  Ladon grabbed the cell phone and opened his door.

  Fresh Oregon air hit Ladon’s face like a slap. Portland’s perpetual mist rolled along the sidewalk next to the building, adding an old-world heaviness other cities in the States lacked. Portland, like most of the West Coast, felt both new and old.

  Rysa walked quickly toward the van, stopping where she had to—thirty-five feet away, and in the center of a sea of asphalt.

  ‘Concern’ dominated her calling scents. Ladon also tasted extra notes of ‘anxiety.’

  All he wanted was to feel her ‘love’ touch his skin. To breathe it in and to roll it on his tongue. To savor the one thing that would calm his mind.

  His beloved, alone before him, held up her phone.

  He dialed. “I’m okay. Dragon overreacted.” The dragons were doing a lot of overreacting.

  Her seers unfurled toward both him and Dragon. “I will heal you, when this is done.”<
br />
  Part of his mind latched onto the confidence in her voice. Part, to the certainty she saw. But mostly, he wanted to know when this would be finished.

  “There’s lots coming I can’t see, Ladon.” She paced first to the left, then the right. “I’m not a Prime right now, no matter what I told that triad of rich kids.” Lifting her arm, she rubbed her check against the insignia around her wrist. “But we will get through this.” She grinned. “I picked out a house. I’ve been looking at real estate listings in Minneapolis while Derek drives. It’s on a nice lot and I think Dragon will like it.”

  I will live in a shed as long as we are near Rysa. Dragon rubbed against Ladon’s side before dropping to the pavement, his big invisible head on his forelimbs.

  “I saw that!” Rysa waved and her smile, though still sad, increased. “It wasn’t clear but it was clear enough. You are not living in a shed. You are my dragon and you are special.”

  “I need you to tell me you’re going to be okay.” Ladon couldn’t take the worry anymore. “Use your seers. Right now, before Sister arrives. I know they aren’t complete. I know they feel random. But please, Rysa, use them and look into the what-will-be for you. Not me. Not Dragon. Not Derek or Sister or your talisman. You. Because I know you don’t. I know you think it’s cheating.”

  “Oh, Ladon.” Her hand rose, her fingers out, beckoning, but they dropped back to her side. The movement had been nothing more than a ghost.

  “Cheat. Now. Tell me what we have for breakfast a month from now. Tell me if you’re going to get annoyed when I pester you while you study because I’m bored and I want your touch. Tell me what’s going to happen when you introduce me to your friends. Please, love.”

  Rysa closed her eyes. She swayed slightly, like she had the time they’d synchronized when the Seraphim first attacked.

  Her seers snapped tight to the energy he shared with Dragon. The world twisted. Everything brightened, refined. Edges delineated. The dust in the air glistened.

  A dream of what-will-be dropped into Ladon’s mind as an overlay on his vision of the parking lot. Only Dragon’s soft shimmer lit a room—their room, in a house he should recognize. Ladon smelled vinegar and sunshine—they’d cleaned that day. From several floors below and in another place in the house, the hum of a refrigerator filled an otherwise silent evening.