“All this time, we weren’t hiding from Kobayashi, were we?”
The doctor nodded as he turned the car onto a freeway on-ramp. “No. She’s been hiding from your father.”
Chapter Fifteen
They stopped just long enough for Daisy to hop into the front seat. Dawn paced in the back, her tongue lollygagging out one side of her mouth. She’d woof every so often and paw at the window, but the doctor wouldn’t roll it down.
“Not chancing beheading the dog.” He said it dispassionately, like he’d given up as much as her mom.
Daisy slumped in the seat, silent. The doctor said her mom wouldn’t tell him who her father was. Said that the people he associated with were “too dangerous.”
More dangerous than Kobayashi? Than the scary evil Fate with the big knife?
The doctor only shrugged.
“Where are we going?” Daisy asked. They’d been driving for half an hour but they weren’t heading out of the city. They were heading into the suburbs.
The doctor didn’t answer.
“That Fate said you’re not supposed to go to your house.” But at this point, Daisy wasn’t sure if she cared.
“Mira needs to know. Then we go.”
“You’re coming with me? But it’s not safe for you. I’m supposed to help you get away from Fates, not lure them to you.” Daisy patted the little kangaroo in her jacket pocket and she felt her face crunch up the same way her mother’s did when she was frustrated. “Besides, Mom left me with enough money to get a bus ticket.”
Daisy felt tired all the way to her bones. Tired of the running and the chasing and the too-much-thinking. Her head hurt. Worrying about the doctor’s safety wasn’t helping.
“I don’t care what that Fate said. I am not abandoning you and slinking off into the night like some rat because she told me to.” He sniffed, but not like he was sniffing for enthrallers. He sniffed like a man flattened by the world. “You’re not active.” He glanced over at her. “You need protection.”
“And here I thought I was supposed to be taking care of you.” Daisy rolled her eyes.
The doctor laughed. “You sure do know how to throw your surgical instruments. I’ll give you that.”
Daisy laughed, too. The sound pushed up from her gut to her throat and it felt like all the hard knots in her belly just unraveled in her mouth.
In the backseat, Dawn barked and paced.
“The Fate hasn’t called again.” Daisy was beginning to wonder if the woman had abandoned them.
The doctor’s hand flicked to his pocket, where he held the phone. He pulled it out. “Probably because the battery’s dead.” Frowning, he tossed it into the backseat. Dawn sniffed it before settling down and placing her head between the seats.
Daisy scratched the dog’s ear. “Do you think she’ll figure out another way to contact us?” The fatigue in Daisy’s bones slumped her shoulders and her back and everything else. She felt so tired she wasn’t even conscious of all the smells in the car—Dawn, the doctor’s fatigue, the dry, dirty air blown in by the AC.
She wasn’t even hungry. And she for sure didn’t have the will to fight with the doctor about stopping at his home.
“I don’t know. Fates are fickle,” he said.
Daisy chuckled. “The fickle fingers of Fates find the most vulnerable eyeballs to jab, huh?”
The doctor chuckled, too. “You have no idea.”
Daisy watched him for a long moment. She could tell he was having problems concentrating. “Do you want me to drive? I have my license. You look like you need a break.”
The grin that worked over his lips was more sad than anything else. “I hope my daughter grows up to be like you.”
Daisy didn’t know what to say. No one had ever said that to her before. It’d always been “Get on a better path, young lady,” and “Why can’t you live up to your potential?”
She tried not to act too shocked. “I’ve been suspended twice. Once for punching a popular kid and once for grinding a boy’s face into the gravel behind the school because he groped me.”
The doctor laughed again. “Now I really hope she grows up to be like you.”
Daisy grinned. “Maybe I should stick around, huh? Teach her how to fight.” Quickly, she jabbed her fist into the air, like she was boxing. “And throw.” She flicked her wrist like she was throwing a dagger.
All it did was make the doctor look even more sad. “I tell my wife that if my daughter knew her potential, she’d have something to work toward. It helped me before I activated, to know what I was destined to become. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t concentrate.” He shrugged. “Though when I activated, no one diagnosed attention problems and being physically active as a ‘disorder.’ No one diagnosed anything back then other than bad humors and devil possession.”
Daisy blinked, taken aback. He didn’t look that old. In fact, he looked fairly young. The “old” on him came more from how he carried himself and his doctor title. “Just how old are you, mister doctor sir?”
He grinned again, but this time he looked devilish, like he carried around a little of that possession he talked about. “Let’s just say the Little Ice Age wasn’t a lot of fun for anyone.”
Daisy frowned. History wasn’t one of her strengths. “Little Ice Age?”
The doctor laughed. “You have a lot of studying to do before you take those SATs.”
“There’s no history section.”
He glanced at her, his face serious. “If you’re going to become a good Shifter, a conscientious one, you’re going to need to learn the history of the world.”
“Why?” She figured learning to fight would be enough.
“You will likely meet… historically important people. Many of the long immortal come to this modern age carrying our past on our shoulders.” The doctor paused and his face took on the same sad look he had before, when he talked about his family. “Almost every Shifter and Fate you meet from now on will carry the weight of centuries.”
He paused again, his fingers tapping at the steering wheel. “Someday, you will likely meet a Progenitor.” His eyebrow lifted and he frowned. “I haven’t, for which I’m thankful, to be honest. They’re an… intense lot. The Fate Progenitor, the man belonging to that bit of talisman in your kangaroo, hasn’t been seen for a millennium.”
Again with the Latin words. “Progenitor?”
“It means first ancestor, or family head. We all descend from one of the five original Progenitors.” The doctor breathed in, and kept his eyes on the road.
“And they were Roman?” Maybe she did need to learn her history.
“Yes. The stories say that our Progenitor, the woman who birthed our kind, together with the Fate Progenitor, tricked the First Burner into Vesuvius the evening before the explosion that destroyed Pompeii. The Progenitor Parcae sacrificed his talisman—a shard of which you are carrying—to save the world from the Progenitor Ambustae.” The doctor paused again. “It was probably the last time a Fate did anything selfless.”
He said five Progenitors. She only knew of Shifters, Fates, and Burners. “Who are the other two?”
The doctor snorted and shook his head. “The Dracae.”
Dracae? “Like dragon?” There were dragons, too?
“Just the two. Both Progenitors.”
Two dragons. “Do they fly?” Daisy’s thoughts turned to all the movies and games she’d played, to the huge, scaly, flying Lizards of Death.
The doctor laughed. “I doubt even Progenitors could hide a flying dragon from the modern world, don’t you?”
“Oh.” Probably not. This world she’d been dropped into was turning out to be intense. But that made sense, really. The real, day-to-day world was an intense place all by itself, with school, and people, and finding enough money to live. No reason a world full of superheroes would suddenly become a simple place.
She wiggled in her seat as her brain brought up more questions. “How many Shifters are there?” How was it
that the world didn’t know about Shifters and Fates and dragons?
“Enough that we protect each other from the control of Fates and normals. There aren’t many Fates. At least that’s what I have been told. Their numbers were devastated long ago and they’ve been careful to control their population.” Another shrug. “They tell their children their destiny. Mostly.”
He’d been doing a lot of shrugging as he drove, like he’d given up. Like her mother, just before she ran off. And a lot of jumping from one topic to another.
“You daughter’s going to be okay.” Daisy had to believe that, and that he would be okay.
Damn it, she hoped that she would be okay. “I’ll be okay too, right? If I find my father, he will activate me, won’t he? Because I know all about Shifters and Fates now and I need to be able to protect myself?” Daisy didn’t want to spend the rest of her life as a target. “Even if he’s ‘too dangerous.’”
“Probably.” The doctor slapped the steering wheel. “But there are several Shifters I can think of who are ‘too dangerous.’ Men and women you must stay away from. You’ll be better off a normal than to become tangled with them.”
“Worse than Kobayashi?”
“Much, much worse.”
Daisy waited a moment, but the doctor said no more. Like her, he seemed too tired to think about it. She’d ask for names later.
He also had that flighty can’t-concentrate feel about him, again. Like he twitched but wasn’t visibly twitching. As if a thought about his daughter had jumped in front of the car and he was trying very hard not to swerve.
Daisy didn’t know what to say. What could she say? He was old, centuries old, and she doubted the words “have faith”—as spoken by someone whose experience of the world was limited to spending her days bored in algebra classes—was going to help.
But damn it, she didn’t have the weight of the world on her shoulders the way he did. Only the present held her down. So maybe seeing the world through her fresh eyes might help him feel better.
Though right now, she didn’t feel fresh. “The kids in my school who have attention problems get a lot of support. Most of the teachers seem to care.” Having something officially wrong made the school pay attention. But if a student was like Daisy and had a mom who wanted them to be as unofficial as possible, you were pretty much on your own.
Like when that boy groped her breasts outside school that day. He came up behind her and grabbed her chest and her mom said don’t cause waves so Daisy ended up with the suspension, not him.
Which just illustrated how unfair her life had become the moment they ran from home. But in the modern world, help was available. If you were labeled Needs Help.
And you had parents who fought for you.
The doctor didn’t say anything else for a long moment, only rubbed his face a couple more times, like his eyes hurt or something.
“Maybe you should drive,” he said. “It’ll give me a second to center myself before talking to my wife.” He looked her up and down. “You drive as well as you throw?”
Daisy smiled. “Of course I do.”
“Well, at least there’s hope for you.” They were on a major-ish suburban road, but in a part of town with squat office buildings, not fast food places or strip malls. Other than the hotel they’d just passed, most of the lots were empty.
The doctor swung the car into an open area behind an ugly glass-fronted building, between the dumpster and an alley around back.
An industrial stink wafted into the car through the AC. Something raw and chemical. Unnatural. It sort of reminded Daisy of the fake citrus smell of the orange-based cleaner her mom used to remove price-tag gunk. She crinkled her nose.
In the backseat, Dawn barked and jumped.
“Let’s do this fast. This place smells weird.” Daisy reached for her door handle. “I don’t think the dog likes it, either.”
A low growl rolled from the animal.
The doctor’s door flew open.
Chapter Sixteen
The stench of acid-soaked rotten eggs filled the car. An average-sized man, one about Daisy’s height, moved toward the car so fast neither Daisy nor the doctor could respond. The door flew open and the man’s hand grabbed for the doctor’s neck.
The man’s fingers glowed like he’d dipped the tips into the liquid from a broken glow stick. Except the chemicals the man exuded weren’t kid-friendly and neon green. The man dripped hot acid.
“Burners!” Daisy yelled. Another Burner, a woman with matted hair, slammed her fist against the passenger-side window. Daisy smacked her hand onto the door lock, praying it would keep out the ghoul.
Next to her, the doctor bellowed and swung his legs into his wide-open door, leaning back and away from the grabbing Burner. His knee came up, his foot extending, and he kicked.
The ghoul flew across the lot.
“Where the hell did they come from?” The doctor reached for his door and slammed it shut.
A bang sounded on the car’s hood, like someone landed on it. Dawn barked.
The Burner woman pounded on Daisy’s door, screeching and yelling random words like “Hamburger!” and “Foot odor!”
Daisy stared, shocked silent. They were being attacked by absurd zombies.
Outside the doctor’s door, the man walked toward the car while holding up a cell phone. “Why’d you kick me? Douchebag!” He jumped up and did a two-step dance from side to side. “She wants to talk to you but you better not kick me again or I’ll bite.” He snapped his teeth and gave the doctor the finger.
Dawn barked and growled. Daisy sat perfectly still. What was happening here? “Did that Fate send Burners after us?”
“I…” The doctor blinked too, obviously as stunned as Daisy. “I think so.” Slowly, he rolled down his window just enough to allow the Burner to pass through a phone wrapped in a singed, torn-up blanket.
Daisy peered through the car’s windows, counting three, four, five Burners, all haggard-looking and ugly. All wearing singed clothes. All smelling foul.
She sniffed, wondering if she could pick out individual stinks on them, the way she did on normals. She did—the fake-orange-cleaner stink smelled different from the rotting-eggs odor. But the undernotes of acid seemed steady, like they were a family or something.
The male Burner pushed the phone through the window. “She said you’d get us dinner.” He stepped back and danced around again, like a clown. “Dinner or we eat the two of you! We don’t care what no stinkin’ Fate says!”
The others danced and shouted, mimicking their leader.
The doctor frowned and rolled up the window as he unwrapped the phone and put it to his ear. “What the fuck is going on, you goddamned—”
This was the first time she’d heard him really swear. At least in English. The Fate managed to break what little calm he had left.
He pulled the phone away from his ear, swearing again, but in Spanish. “Burners? Why the hell did you send Burners to—” He pulled the phone away from his ear again.
“Give me the phone!” Daisy swiped for it. She’d had enough of the damned Fates pulling all the strings. “We need straight answers, you witch!”
The doctor yanked away from her and smacked his shoulder on the door. “She wants you to go out there with those Burners.”
“Excuse me?” Daisy gave the phone the finger.
The doctor chuckled. “She says you can fuck off, Fate.”
This time, Daisy moved fast enough and swiped the phone from his hand.
At this point, a double-cross seemed the most likely outcome of this situation. That at any second, Ethne and her triad mates would pull into the lot with them and whip out their gleaming death-blades, and the next day San Diego would wake up to a blazing news story about a five-alarm gas leak explosion in a sleepy part of the suburbs.
An explosion that killed not only the Burners, but also Daisy and the doctor.
But maybe Daisy could use the phone-Fate’s arrogance to get so
me information. It was probably an irrational hope. One based on her too-young-to-know-better lack of experience, but she had to try. “Tell me, clearly and concisely, exactly what game you are playing. Now.”
“How many Burners showed?” The Fate sounded frantic.
“Why?” Daisy wasn’t falling for it.
“I sent the entire nest. Five. I saw in the what-will-be where you’d stop but nothing after that. Which can only mean the Burners did what they were told.”
Was this an attempt by the Fate to hide them from other Fates? “Are they here to cloak us? So that other triad can’t follow?”
The Fate paused too long. “Yes.” She lied.
Daisy swore under her breath. Quickly, she shook her head no, to indicate to the doctor what she believed.
His face hardened.
Dawn whined. Outside, the five Burners danced around the car like it was some sort of ancient altar of ghoul witchcraft.
“Daisy, get out of the car. Take the talisman and tell the doctor to drive away. Do it now.” She really did sound frantic.
“No.” If the doctor left, the Burners would eat her.
“Yes! You have to. Or else…” She trailed off. Daisy heard voices behind her.
The call disconnected.
Daisy stared at the phone in her hand. “She hung up on me.” Just like that. Hung up on the two people she sent Burners after.
The doctor started the car. He sat in the driver’s seat, the car rumbling, but he didn’t put it into drive. He just gripped the steering wheel.
Part of Daisy wanted to sob. Part of her wanted to get out of the car and dance around like the ghoulish monsters outside, uncaring and random. And another part of her wanted to give the doctor a hug.
All this time, he’d kept his emotions under control. Kept his doctor-face on and his scientist-mind up front, even if he did have problems focusing. But right now, right here in this office building lot in this bizarre, disconnected moment, he looked defeated and, frankly, small.
Bonds Broken & Silent Page 9