All but Human

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Their names were Asar, Cordelia, and Amir Sut. They were Ulpi Fates, which meant that at least one of them was somehow related to Trajan. No one recognized them—not Ladon, Sister, Andreas, or Mira and Sandro—not their voices or their photos, so they’d managed to live their lives without annoying the long immortal. And Rysa’s seers all whispered that they were trustworthy.

  “They do,” Dmitri said. “I am sure they will send you vacation photos.”

  “Thank you.” Ladon cut the call. Perhaps he and the beast should take a week. Drive to the Vancouver facility and take a look around for themselves.

  We will not leave Rysa, Dragon pushed.

  Ladon rubbed his face. Leaving Rysa would set free demons bigger and far more destructive than the Vivicus-shaped illusion haunting their lives. How would she fare without them?

  How would he fare without her?

  Ladon concentrated on his phone. Texts flowed in, most from Dmitri, all coded, informing the world that he took point on this not just for Ladon, but also to protect his daughter.

  Ladon turned off the device and returned it to his pocket. Rysa’s healing had calmed his mind enough that, at least for this evening, he could watch over the neighborhood instead of patrol it.

  A low grumble rolled from Dragon. I need sleep, he pushed.

  “Aye, you do, my friend.” Ladon rubbed the beast’s neck.

  They all needed rest. But tonight, Ladon would watch over the house, to make sure they made it safely to the new day.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Daisy’s strong, beautiful limbs tucked through Gavin’s, her legs woven between his, and her forehead against his neck. The candle on the dresser flickered and her room smelled of wonderfully organic beeswax and fresh lovemaking.

  She wanted him to stay and he pulled her into his arms, determined to be what she needed tonight, tomorrow night—and every night until she graduated in January. And, he hoped, after.

  The blankets and the pillows absorbed their whispers and the candlelight made lip reading difficult. She nodded and kissed his neck and stroked his arms, and when she rolled on top of him, he moved gentle and slow, using his body to tell her what he wanted to say, but dared not.

  He was almost twenty-one and he shouldn’t know that he’d found The One, but when they had sex in the kitchen he couldn’t stop how he felt. It burst free like a squirming, hyperactive squirrel and ran at a thousand miles an hour through his body—and overwhelmed his mind.

  His animal part surfaced. If it hadn’t made Daisy shake, it would have been funny. But he wasn’t the source of the quaking and he wanted to hunt that son of a bitch who hurt her and beat him into a quivering heap of bloody gore.

  Ladon’s overreactions to every perceived threat to Rysa now looked exactly like the correct, growlingly necessary response.

  Gavin twisted slightly on her soft and comfortable sheets, only enough to lean his cheek against her head, and did his best not to wake her from her sleep. He wasn’t an Old World badass like Ladon. Nor was he a superhero like the beautiful woman wrapped around him. But she hurt and he’d find a way to help.

  She stirred and a soft moan vibrated across his skin. She moved to roll away but he tightened his embrace and traced her cheekbone. Her skin felt warm under his fingertip, alive and perfect and exactly what he needed.

  “After Rysa and Ladon moved in, when they were getting hot and heavy up there,” Gavin pointed at the ceiling, “I was having a hard time not… kissing you.”

  When she smiled, he smirked, and laid a quick kiss on the bridge of her nose.

  “It got bad enough that one afternoon I scrolled through my phone wondering if any of my exes wanted a date.”

  Now Daisy smirked and shook her head. “… don’t want to know… exes.”

  He stroked her cheek again. “Looking at their numbers felt like cheating.”

  Her eyes rounded and her mouth opened, but she closed them and laid her head on his shoulder.

  “The numbers are gone. I deleted them.” No matter what happened—if they decided they couldn’t do long distance—no other woman would ever compare to Daisy.

  She pushed up on her elbow and stroked his chest. “Med school… difficult.”

  “Maybe I should look at an M.B.A. Learn how to run an entertainment complex.” He could work for her father. They could get married. He touched her cheek again, not realizing what he was doing, only knowing that he needed the contact.

  Daisy kissed his fingers but frowned. “You will not…doctor and you know it.”

  Why did she continue to use med school as an excuse to push him away? But the excuse wasn’t the issue, the pushing away was. If it wasn’t school or her job, it’d be something else. Like Shifter business.

  Or evil Fates.

  Daisy rolled over onto her back and her amazingly perfect breasts flattened out, like perfectly amazing breasts did.

  His body awakened in response to the incredible visual feast that was his uber-hot girlfriend, and he moved closer, intent on rubbing his hardening parts against her hip.

  Daisy grinned. “… like… hot, horny boyfriend.” But her face said she worried.

  A sense of correctness bounced through his head again—and through his chest. And his belly. He kissed her deeply, drawing first her bottom lip between his, then her top, an action she seemed to like.

  She sighed and pulled him down on top of her. “Stay tomorrow, okay?”

  He’d walk by her side for the rest of his life, even if she continued to keep distance between them.

  No matter what happened.

  Chapter Sixteen

  He used to tell his children a story:

  “You are descended from our Progenitor, a goddess more powerful than Nanabozho, than Kutkh or Loki or any of the other figments of the normals’ imaginations. You are descended from one of the true gods who walks this earth—a real woman, a real goddess—and that is what makes you exceptional.

  “When the Progenitor of Burners would ignite the world, your Progenitor tricked him into the mountain. When the Progenitor of Fates would set him free, your Progenitor tricked him of his midnight sword—and pinioned the first Burner to Vesuvius’s cinder cone. And when the mountain exploded and the dragons came, your Progenitor negotiated for your safety.”

  He poked at the raccoon carcass resting on the plastic bag spread between him and the garage’s hidey-hole window and wondered about his many children. About the ones who fucked their cousins and produced the perfect storm of the class-one dragon healer who liked to fuck the barbarian now sulking on the house’s roof. About the others who fucked the children of his half-brother, Andreas, and made annoying bloodhound enthrallers like the one who now fucked her pet normal.

  He could handle a bloodhound. He poked the dead raccoon again.

  But mostly he remembered the rest of the story: “So remember, my children, you are exceptional. But you must follow our Progenitor’s examples: Trick a Burner. Steal from a Fate.

  And always be wary of a dragon.”

  He poked the dead raccoon again with his infinitely-sharp black dagger. His cat meowed, a hungry ball of pregnancy on his lap well-hidden under his nifty, stolen Praesagio “mimic like a dragon” fabric.

  His other half-brother, Trajan—he had a lot of half-brothers and -sisters—wasn’t always an idiot.

  Trajan made the best toys. Rumor had it, Trajan was the first to hunt Vesuvius’s flanks for bits of the Fate Progenitor’s broken talisman. And it was Trajan who thought encasing the shards in glass was a good idea.

  He chuckled and watched the barbarian chatter into his cell phone. After nearly twenty-three centuries, he’d managed to fulfill the prophecy laid out in the Shifter nursery rhyme: His escape from Canada had taken significant skill and several tricked Burners. The toys—the fabric and the dagger and the sliver of dragon talon he rolled around on his tongue—he’d stolen from Fates. And he and the dragon out there less than five hundred feet away would soon no longer be wary of
each other.

  But first, his work. He listened. Learned. Did his research. And he dealt with the slicing, pointy agony in his belly.

  One day, when this was done and he’d taken his dragon from the brute moping on the roof of Pavlovich’s skinny spawn’s house, he was going to pay a visit to his asshole half-brother, Trajan. Capture him, beat him, and leave his dismembered parts in the sun as a warning to all the other assholes who made his life difficult by putting shit inside glass.

  In his belly, the fire-cracked glass did what all fire-cracked glass did when it splintered—it shed yet another needle-sharp spindle along the long axis of the flat, just-as-sharp, hid-him-from-Fates, black metal embedded inside it.

  He shifted his feet to relieve some of the pressure his crouch placed on his guts. God sent him trials and many of them, like his current situation, involving bloodletting and pain. He worked hard and he endured.

  But he’d had his fill of the glass in his gut.

  This splinter floated under his ribcage, near his diaphragm. He closed his eyes, taking his concentration away from watching Pavlovich’s spawn ride the pathetic normal, and focused on wiggling his abdominal wall.

  Flowing his guts would force the splinter to the surface and he’d cut it out with the death-black dagger. More pain would follow, but he would persevere. The pain would serve to remind him why he crouched out here in the garage, alone with a dead raccoon and not-so-dead pregnant cat, behind a flat, empty box that once held a television and stacks of files marked “taxes.” The space wasn’t top-shelf, but it was livable. He made do.

  He frowned and flipped the sliver of dragon talon across his tongue again. It didn’t taste like fingernail. It should taste like fingernail. So he flipped it around and around, trying to figure out what it did taste like. Raccoon stink, fluffy purrs, and unicorns shitting rainbows, he thought, proud of his nuanced snark. He was the best.

  They didn’t know he watched through the garage’s tiny second floor window. Or that he’d been stealing food for himself and his new kitty friend and chewing it with his special new extra-hard and cavity-free teeth he’d grown himself as a reward for his efforts.

  The cat snuggled under his vanishing fabric, a purring pregnant ball on his lap, and kneaded his flesh over the new splinter with her all-too-sharp claws.

  Maybe the cat would dig it out for him. He groaned and scratched at her ears, feeling triumphant in his care of the animal.

  She was, after all, good practice for his upcoming new role as the keeper of beasts.

  The Progenitor barbarian sat on the roof and played with his phone like a good, modern boy. His dragon sprawled on the peak, mostly invisible and obviously bored. He needed a new master. One who would play fetch and throw a frisbee. No beast should be confined to a house like that.

  One should not bore one’s dragon.

  He scratched at the cat’s head again. “Maybe we take care of it now, hmmm?”

  The cat purred.

  Yet the splinter shifted around in his gut, cutting and poking and causing a bright kind of discomfort. Better to rid himself of the final long needles of glass first.

  When he arrived in St. Paul, he’d considered fucking with Pavlovich’s kid. Thought it might be a fun way to pass the time. Make a few moves, pretend to be her new pet, maybe stick his tongue down her throat the way he stuck his tongue down the throat of that little Fate bitch in her attic. Then watch her beat the kid to a bloody stump the next time he came sniffing around all soft and doe-eyed.

  But after copying the so-called Cecilia Reynolds, it seemed… incestuous. So he cleared his mind each morning. Let God grant him opportunities to spy.

  He still had a touch of the dragon hearing he’d copied off the Fate bitch before he knifed the Tsar. When the beast came close enough, the kaleidoscope of his dragon’s thoughts and feelings swirled around in his head and he’d stop moving under his stolen Praesagio blanket of invisibility with his stolen Praesagio dagger of blackness and the sliced-off sliver of talon from his beast and his pilfered shard of Fate hiding and let the beast’s noises rumble through his body. Let the dragon tug and sway at his mind and make him feel good.

  And they didn’t know. None of them knew. His toys did their jobs and he became a grand, grand wizard.

  He watched the shimmering outline of his beast. He’d always had a way with animals. They liked him. Animals had a better understanding of the world than humans.

  The cat purred again and nuzzled his hand.

  “What do you say to moving in?” He could use a spy on the inside. “Have your babies under the watchful eye of the spawn of Pavlovich? Make sure all’s well?” He couldn’t expedite a quality birth for her kittens. Healing wasn’t his forte.

  He wiggled his abdominal wall again, forcing the splinter higher. Absently, he tucked his hand under his black t-shirt and ran his finger over the hard ridge of glass. A squeeze and a push, and the sharp tip broke through his skin.

  He grimaced as he locked his fingertips around the point. The splinter managed to grip his guts and muscle and skin with it as it slithered out even though it should be slick. But it wasn’t, and his body made a slight popping sound when he pulled the splinter free.

  He held a pained groan as he sealed up the wound. Best not to make too much noise. The splinter clanked against the other splinters he’d already pulled and collected in his leather bag. It fell in, landing on his favorite Hawaiian print shirt, and dropped to the bottom.

  The cat mewed. When the brute on the roof turned his back to the alley, obviously thinking he needed to check the less-than-secure street, he lifted the cat.

  She purred still, until he stuck his tongue down her throat. This time, though, the thing he left behind didn’t have teeth and claws.

  The thing he left had ears and eyes.

  Glass first, then action. His time would come. He cleared his mind and he listened and ate the dead raccoon to add strength, agility, and mass to his frame. He petted his new little kitty friend and forced his body to become what it needed to be to bring his beast to heel.

  Because all his trials and his efforts were about to pay off. All the pain and all the focus.

  Vivicus was about to earn his dragon.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The curtains covering Daisy’s bedroom window fluttered when the house’s forced-air furnace kicked on. Outside, the rising sun warmed the world and morning scents drifted in on the breeze: Awakening insects. Auto exhaust. Coffee brewing in the café up the road. Cows and horses from the campus barns. And from upstairs, the stirrings of a godling, his Fate love, and spice-scented breath of a dragon.

  Daisy sat on her bed with her naked knees next to her naked chest. The new day dawned, with all the newness in her life.

  But some things hadn’t changed. Radar and Ragnar waited patiently in their beds under the window, both hoping she’d pull on her clothes and let them out.

  “If you hear Ladon or Rysa, you go on down, okay?” At least she’d get some use out of her houseguests other than condom delivery.

  Gavin lay sprawled on his back with the blankets barely wrapping his naked body, leaving her with a wonderful view of the nicely trimmed treasure trail descending to his groin.

  Last night, he’d calmed her fears and kissed away her worries with the two and half hours of slow, exquisite lovemaking that had followed their time in the kitchen.

  The boy had skills on a level she would have expected from the immortal godling upstairs, if she’d ever slept with him. But when she’d returned to The Land after that evil motherfucker Aiden almost killed her, she’d needed a friend more than a lover.

  Next to her hip, Gavin sighed and stretched, the muscles of his lean frame contracting in the morning light. She drew her fingertip over his belly, lightly tracing the grooves of his abs, and did her best to remind herself that her unease was stupid and problematic and this moment, with him, was a good thing.

  For her. For him. Hell, for Rysa and Ladon and most defin
itely Brother-Dragon. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that this new level of intimacy came with an unknown level of risk.

  Gavin opened his eyes and he blinked as a sunbeam caught in his irises. Pale blue flashed, and for a second he looked as much the godling as Ladon.

  But he wasn’t. He was a normal man starting his journey into a normal life.

  “Hmmm…” He touched first her thigh, then her elbow. His fingers smoothed over her skin, as gentle and serene as the look on his face.

  When he touched her cheek, she cupped his palm and kissed the knuckle of his thumb.

  “Should we make coffee?” she asked.

  Gavin tapped his ear. He faked reaching for his aids and twisted an arm around her waist instead. The next thing she knew, she was flat on the bed with her wonderful boyfriend rubbing his hard body against her side as he inched kisses across her collarbone.

  She gave him a half-hearted push. “I need to let the dogs out.”

  “Can’t hear you.” He grinned as he laid another kiss at the base of her throat. “So I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.”

  The laughter bubbled up but felt more like the release of an inert gas than a real chuckle. Right now, on her bed, Gavin kissed her shoulder and pressed his gloriously naked body against hers with such wonder and joy that all the barriers she’d built to keep her soul fresh began to snap and leak and blow gaskets.

  She immediately felt exposed and weirdly frantic, and a strange, nasty thought crackled through her head: If he doesn’t use me up in the next two weeks, he’ll have to throw me away.

  She didn’t mean to tense, but she did.

  Gavin lifted off her. “What’s…?” He trailed off, not finishing his question.

  The same faint metallic hint of fear he’d had last night hit her nose and she crunched up her face before she realized what she was doing. Gavin frowned and pulled back farther. His chest and his belly visibly tightened, but he didn’t ask again.