Bonds Broken & Silent

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

Acrid tang hit her nose, a hint of terrible wafting out from behind her mother. Stunned, Daisy slid backward, unconsciously moving her body away from the cabin and what made the battery-acid-and-rotten-eggs stink.

  Cecilia stood in the cabin’s doorway tugging on the strap of a leather bag she wore across her chest and over a garish and ugly Hawaiian print shirt. The stupid shirt looked eight times too big for her frame and stood out against the dusty and bland interior of the work cabin.

  Burner stink wafted out the door.

  Daisy doubted the morpher rounding the stand of trees smelled it. It was too slight, too contained for anyone but a bloodhound to notice.

  “Why does the cabin smell like Burner, Mom?” she hissed.

  Cecilia Reynolds didn’t listen. She didn’t stop or consider or do anything rational. She acted just like she always did—impulsive and… selfish. Daisy hadn’t realized it until now, but it fit. Her mother might not be able to stop her sticky fingers from stealing other people’s stuff, but she could, if she wanted to, ease some of the suffering it caused the people around her. The people she supposedly loved.

  But she’d never taken responsibility for anything. She stole from the wrong people, so she ran. Made excuses for why she couldn’t work as a vet again. Ran off instead of standing with her daughter and training her like a good mom would. Instead, she hid for nine years under a Fate artifact.

  Cecilia’s eyelids drooped. She took on the same defeated, “I’m doing this for you” fake excuse that she’d used so many times in her life. The same “I don’t give a fuck because I’m selfish” tightening of her facial muscles.

  Daisy darted perpendicular to her mother and the morpher. If she was lucky, her mom had some other artifact, something stinky but only semi-dangerous. If she wasn’t lucky, her mom was about to set off something much, much worse.

  The morpher stopped about ten feet from the cabin. Surprise danced over her still fake-Cecilia face, and she put up both her hands as if her palms could save her.

  But they couldn’t. The real Cecilia yanked an almost-person out of the cabin. A small almost-person, someone who looked about twelve years old. The kid—probably a boy—was sealed inside one of those huge plastic bags for storing bedding. The ones with the vacuum attachments to suck out all the air.

  Her mom had vacuum-sealed a Burner.

  The kid’s eyes glowed and he looked like he was trying to breathe, but he didn’t have any air. His heart still beat so he hadn’t crystalized, but…

  But her mom vacuum-sealed a Burner.

  “How the hell did—”

  “Leave us alone!” Cecilia screeched.

  She snapped the little Burner’s neck in the same motion she used to fling the body at the morpher.

  The Burner didn’t explode with a loud shockwave or a ball of bright light, but he did carry enough energy to create a massive dust cloud—and to blow an arm and both legs off the morpher.

  She screamed. Somewhere in the center of the dust, she rolled around on the dirt, blood not-quite spurting from her wounds. Daisy gasped, coughing and unable to force back the mingled stinks of acidic burndust and metallic morpher blood.

  What did her mom just do?

  What kind of person put a child in a bag, even a Burner child?

  Her mom yanked her toward the trail. “Someone will come. We need to go.”

  “Mom! How could you—”

  “I didn’t do anything!” Cecilia yelled. “I found the Burner like that! In the cabin!” She frowned. “That’s how the Seraphim make the burndust they use for their trials.”

  “But—”

  “What did you want me to do? He died with purpose to his life.” She yanked Daisy around the stand of trees and they skidded down the slope. “God granted me an opportunity. I took it.”

  “Mom!” Daisy stopped. She coughed again. Burndust coated her jeans and boots and she’d be smelling only its acidic nastiness until she could wash it off. “Where are we going?”

  Cecilia Reynolds looked over her shoulder. “To get the shard.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “It’s in a locker!” Daisy’s mom threw her hand into the air. “We need to get it now, before that morpher grows back her feet!”

  “Mom! Listen to me. Leave it here! We leave here and we go directly to Branson, okay? Let them have the damned shard. Let them deal with those psychotic…” What should Daisy say? She didn’t ever want to see that motherfucker Aiden again. “Let the Seraphim skin the fuckers! They more than deserve it.” She yanked on her mom’s arm. They wouldn’t be safe until they got down the mountain and into the open.

  “The future-seer showed up, didn’t he, honey?” Cecilia Reynolds tipped her head to the side. “You dealt with the male, didn’t you?”

  Daisy stiffened. “How do you know their future-seer is male?”

  Cecilia shook her head and stutter-stepped down the gravel, next to Daisy. “I’ve been living with the Seraphim for nine years. There was an uproar when your father put out a bounty on a Fate named Aiden Blake.” From behind, she looked as if she might be snickering.

  “Is that why Vivienne attacked Dad?” Daisy caught a branch to slow her descent.

  Cecilia glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes looked both confused and much more lucid than they should, considering. “She saw an opportunity.” Then Cecilia slid away, down the slope.

  At this point, Daisy only wanted to get her mom out of here. Her dad might scowl with more than his normal level of disapproval, but he’d take Cecilia in and get this whole mess under control. Hell, Ivan could enthrall her into a better, calmer state of mental health, if her mom wanted it.

  Maybe get her to stop stealing shit, too.

  “What are you carrying, Mom?” The bag over her shoulder wasn’t big enough to hold supplies, but it bulged in the center. She had something in there.

  Cecilia Reynolds glanced over her shoulder again, but this time, her face was backlit by the sun. Daisy couldn’t read her expression. “Nothing important, honey.”

  Sounds of tourists filtered up the side of the mountain. The boardwalk clunked. People chatted and laughed. The breeze carried the smell of hot dogs and greasy wrappers, but mostly Daisy smelled the burndust clinging to her jeans.

  They pushed out next to the boardwalk. Cecilia vaulted the gate, swinging her petite legs over the top and landing like a professional gymnast. She smoothed the Hawaiian print shirt and fussed with her ponytail. Then she glanced over her shoulder once again, watching Daisy hop the gate and drop her boots to the wood.

  “The main building.” Cecilia sprinted away, dodging a sleepy-looking family who stared wide-eyed at these two people who just appeared out of a restricted area.

  “Park business!” Daisy yelled, and bolted by, following her mother.

  They darted down the trails, dodging more tourists, and popped into the wide concrete expanse in front of the main gift shop building.

  They pushed through the crowd to the doors. The interior smells slapped Daisy like she’d stepped into a cresting wave but everything blended with the Burner stink clinging to her clothes. No smells stood out. The building was an ocean of bad food and sad people.

  Daisy bent forward, gagging.

  “Hold it together,” Cecilia hissed. “Is this what your no-good father taught you?” She trotted toward the back of the building, Daisy following.

  They pushed through the growing morning crowd toward the hallway behind a small, sour-smelling café, and into a secluded hallway that ended at a door with a number pad lock.

  “Locker room,” Cecilia said, and tapped in the four-number combo.

  The lights burst on the moment they entered. Filled with long banks of blue, red, and yellow-painted lockers all bolted to a bare concrete floor, the room looked more like a high school gym locker room than a place for workers to stow their stuff. It even had bolted down benches in front of all the lockers.

  Cecilia pointed down the wide aisle running from the door to the back wall.
“The locker on the end of the third row. The combo’s the same one you used in high school.”

  Daisy rolled her eyes. How appropriate, she thought.

  Cecilia slammed the room’s door. “Do you sense that? Other Shifters are outside.”

  Daisy closed her eyes. At least two Shifters approached the locker room.

  Cecilia pulled her toward the bright blue lockers but stayed at the end of the row, watching the door. “Number 307. Open it.”

  “I think we should leave it here,” Daisy said as she trotted toward the locker. “Walk out there right now and tell the Shifters following us exactly what it is and let them deal with the fallout. I’ll be done with my veterinary certification at the end of fall semester. We can both go to Branson. Dad’s people will make sure nothing happens to either of us.”

  “If they’re still alive.” Cecilia shook her head.

  Daisy clutched the lock hanging from locker 307. She needed to believe her father’s syndicate was bigger and meaner than everyone else’s. That the tentacles of The Land of Milk and Honey and the Dracae would curl around the necks of any threats stalking her or her mom. Tentacles that would tighten until the eyeballs of the monsters chasing her family popped right out of their heads.

  “You trust your father?” Cecilia shook her head.

  Daisy dropped the lock and it smacked against the locker. A loud clank rang through the room and bounced off the concrete floor. “Why did you run away, Mom? Why didn’t you talk to Dad?”

  Cecilia sniffed. “Open the locker, Daisy. You remember the combination, don’t you? We need to leave.”

  Daisy glanced down at the lock. “Of course I remember it.” All she had to do was twirl it to the right, then the left, then to the right again. The shard would give them cover until they reached Branson. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be walking into a Seraphim ambush when they did.

  She spun the tumbler right, then left, then right again.

  The lock popped open.

  Her mom nodded once, her gaze on the lock as Daisy pulled it off the locker, and Daisy swore her eyes flashed as if, just for a second, they lost their dark brown cohesion.

  “Hold on,” Cecilia glanced around the bank again. “I’ll get it out.”

  “I know what it looks like, Mom.” She clicked open the door.

  Three stuffed toys tumbled out along with a long-closed-off, musty smell. A rolled and taped t-shirt followed, along with a plastic snow globe with a little paper version of Mount Rushmore inside. Necklaces hung from hooks. Rings filled a magnetic box stuck to the side. Paperbacks stacked in the bottom along with a bottle of nail polish and a belt buckle. Several unopened boxes of toothpaste, a couple of mugs, and a wallet sat on the shelf at eye level.

  And at the back, her little koala.

  The little toy she’d cuddled as a child. That one thing that had kept her calm on the plane ride from Perth to San Diego. It looked forlorn. Lonely, really. Abused and discarded.

  Cecilia snatched it before Daisy’s hand could grab hold. “Let’s go.”

  Her mom wanted to run again. Disappear into another backwater and pull Daisy away from her life. But if the contents of the locker said anything, Cecilia Reynolds needed someone to look after her.

  The door to the locker room opened. It swung wide, snapping against the wall, and all the sounds and smells of the main building blasted inward. Piped-in music blared. And the smell of corgi rode in on the back of the din.

  Chapter Twenty

  Gavin moved through the crowd and the tour groups. On the other side of the building, in the shop, people clinked mugs together. The doors whooshed open and closed. And outside, Dmitri Pavlovich and Ivan Ivarsson circled the building and the tourists, two giant German shepherds at their heels, looking for Daisy and checking every single person they came across for signs of Shifterness.

  Mr. Pavlovich knew Gavin entered the shop. The building was big, but not that big, and currently full of tourists and park personnel. Gavin wasn’t supposed to leave their sight but the corgi had run off and he knew neither Radar nor Ragnar would work at their best if they worried about their little friend.

  Distractions were distractions. Why let the dogs suffer if all he had to do was step through the door, scoop her up, and return outside? So Gavin, the one among them least likely to spot Daisy in the crowd, ducked into the main building gift shop.

  The corgi sniffed at the door to the employee locker room. She whimpered, then pawed at the base before looking up at Gavin with her big puppy eyes.

  “Why do you want to go in there, girl?” The door’s number-code lock looked old and was made of thick steel, like the ones in hospitals. The door had no window, either, so he couldn’t see inside. But the dog wanted in. “Do you smell something?”

  At his feet, the little corgi bounced. Gavin pressed his ear to the door.

  Inside, two people chatted.

  They could be employees. But something nagged at the back of his mind. “Maybe we should—”

  His phone trilled. Gavin started, surprised out of his focus on the door. Mr. Pavlovich probably wanted to know where he was. He yanked the phone out of his pocket.

  Gavin stared at his screen, his mouth opening and closing. Rysa waited until now to text him? His hand jittered.

  I’m sorry I didn’t text you earlier, the message said. I ran into some complications.

  From what Mr. Pavlovich said on the plane, “complications” was the understatement of the year.

  The text continued: Are you okay?

  Depends on your definition of okay, he texted back.

  Her response took so long it felt as if he stared at his phone for a decade.

  I’ll call you later, okay?

  Okay, he tapped in. What else could he say? How about you work some Fate “open sesame” magic for me and—

  The number six appeared on his screen. After a pause, three more numbers appeared.

  Later, Rysa texted.

  “Did she just give me the door code?” Had his friend who’d abandoned him over a week ago just told him how to get through a door behind which he had no idea what he’d find?

  The corgi yipped and pawed the door again.

  It all seemed… surreal. In his head, little voices argued: Go through the door. Don’t go through the door. A Fate chose you. A Fate’s using you. Be a man. Be a wuss. Maybe you’re enthralled.

  Maybe you’re a normal guy who’s in over your head.

  Gavin groaned.

  Another little voice piped up: Oh, yeah, motherfuckers? Challenge accepted.

  Gavin keyed in the code.

  The door popped open. The corgi nosed through and sprinted into the room so fast Gavin missed catching her.

  He pulled up Ivan’s number and tapped out a quick message: Locker room at back of building. Then he did the stupidest thing he’d ever done in his entire life: He walked into an enclosed space most likely filled with monsters.

  A locker clanked. Stuff fell. Two feminine voices wafted toward the front of the room, one anxious and one… slippery.

  The only adjectives that danced into his head involved smooth, slick surfaces. Icy. Friction-free even though he heard absolutely nothing wrong with the intentions or the intonations.

  Nothing at all, as if every possible snag or flicker had been smoothed out because the woman speaking had extensive practice sounding perfect.

  Gavin’s stomach flipped over and tightened up. He should turn around. He should run, for God’s sake, but Daisy was here and the corgi wanted in, which had to mean something.

  And Rysa just gave him the code.

  A shadow flickered between two banks. More voices followed.

  A Hawaiian shirt-clad Cecilia Reynolds stepped out into the center aisle between the rows and rows of lockers and into the bright overhead lights. The petite woman with the curly black hair and the dark eyes stood exactly the same way she had before—obstinate and frenzied. She glared at Gavin from her position exactly in the middle of the ai
sle.

  Slowly, she tucked a stuffed toy into the leather satchel hung over her shoulder.

  “Who the hell are you?” she yelled, her words clearly visible on her well-lit face.

  This was not the same Cecilia who showed up at Daisy’s house last night. She looked identical, except she wore different clothes. She sounded identical as well, except for the slipperiness in her voice.

  It didn’t matter who this morpher was, as long as Daisy was okay.

  “Where’s—”

  Daisy stepped out from behind the bank of lockers. Exhaustion darkened the skin under her eyes. Hair flew out of her ponytail. Dust clung to her jeans and her boots. She looked as if she’d just finished climbing the mountain outside.

  “Gavin? Why…”

  The corgi skipped up with her little tail high. She circled Daisy’s legs, but didn’t stay. She jumped up on the woman pretending to be Cecilia Reynolds.

  “Why do you have my dog?” The woman scooped up the corgi. “They were supposed to be looking after you, girl.” She nuzzled the corgi’s neck before setting her down again.

  Her face turned severe. “Worthless shits. They’re all fired!”

  “Who… looking after her, Mom?” Daisy stepped around the woman pretending to be her mom.

  Unlike the woman, Daisy sounded correct. The tonality of her voice resonated the way it was supposed to—full of life and concern for the world around her. But also with the correct pitches.

  Pitches Gavin just realized he’d heard in Mr. Pavlovich’s voice. The same cadence to the undertones. The same subtle resonance.

  Which is why he’d been so sure the real Dmitri Pavlovich had shown up on the front step of Daisy’s house. Because the man sounded the way Daisy’s father should.

  “That’s not your mother.” Gavin pointed at the fake Cecilia. No Daisy resonated in the morpher’s voice. Just smoothed-out tones faking Daisy.

  He should keep his mouth shut, not say anything because morphers were dangerous, but he needed to get Daisy away from this woman.

  Even though she’d enthralled him to act like an animal, and had abandoned him with her dogs, Daisy still treated him with more respect than any of the other weird people he’d met so far. More than her father. More than Ivan-the-Terrible. Definitely more than all the weird-ass morphers.