All but Human

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  In the back of the van, Dragon flashed. Gavin turned and waved his phone at the beast. “Who else is she going to text? You don’t have a phone and Ladon is driving.”

  Ladon continued to frown. “Stay in the van. We need to check the garage space.” He turned off the engine and pulled the handle on his door.

  The mechanism clicked. The door opened. Snow hiss filled the cabin and Gavin watched the frowning Ladon drop his feet to the crinkling accumulation.

  “Why?” Rysa told him she checked every morning. Ladon needed to trust his fiancé.

  Two huge dragon hands and a huge dragon head appeared next to the seat. Let us do our job, Gavin. The beast vanished away, and the back door of the van opened.

  Gavin peered out the passenger window as the light on the back of the house blazed on. The night suddenly turned from shadow-black to snow-white and he squinted, his eyes unable to adjust fast enough.

  The dogs appeared first, with Daisy behind them. Gavin hopped out into the white noise and the white blaze of the snow, and reached for his beautiful girlfriend.

  “You now control my stuff.” He drew her close and kissed her cheek. “I am officially yours.”

  Daisy grinned and watched Rysa jog through the garage door and around the van. “We opened up the front of the storage area while you two were gone, so it shouldn’t take long to unload.”

  Gavin nodded and let go of her waist. She was avoiding again. In public, she rarely acknowledged how they felt or the possibility of a more long-term commitment, especially in front of Rysa and Ladon.

  He knew why: They were committed like an old married couple; they’d been together for six months but they interacted with each other—and the world—like two people who had already spent one hundred years together.

  Gavin figured being psychically bonded through a dragon would do that, though he would like to understand what “psychically bonded” meant. The three members of the Dracos seemed to be on the same radio frequency.

  He took Daisy’s hand to pull her toward the garage. Now was not the time to dissect the physics of superhero powers. Now was the time to bring him fully into the homestead, even if Daisy continued to avoid the subject.

  If he was honest with himself, he’d admit that he was jealous of Rysa and Ladon. But he also knew that the journey to full couple status was, in itself, an undertaking worth the effort. Shortcuts via weird bonds stole that path.

  Daisy leaned against his shoulder and squeezed his hand as they walked toward the garage. She might not want to overtly express their relationship, but her feelings came out anyway. She’d kiss his cheek or smile when he was least expecting it or leave him a homemade lunch in the refrigerator. And every time she did a small thing, it negated the big avoidances. The talking around how to maintain a long distance relationship. The holding on to him so tightly he couldn’t breathe when he told her he loved her, but refusing to say it in return.

  But nothing about their lives was simple. Not their housemates and not their schooling. So Gavin gave her the time his Fate best friend told him she needed.

  In the garage, the white noise hiss of the snow took on a hollow echoing. It bounced off the walls and the roof and the van, and built a cocoon of reverb that flooded his exquisite, high-tech aids. It made hearing words almost impossible.

  Can’t hear in here, he signed. The storm is too loud. He’d have to make sure he reported this moment to the techs in Portland. Odd acoustics like this shouldn’t be happening.

  Daisy nodded and smiled and watched his face as if he’d said something brilliant and wonderful. And when she kissed his cheek, her lips cold but her eyes bright, he knew he’d give her all the time she needed. If it took decades, then he’d give her decades.

  He shouldn’t be thinking this way. He shouldn’t be sure. But when they curled around each other in their bed, they fit together. She was the only woman he’d ever wanted to sleep with every night. To wake up to morning breath and annoyed dogs demanding food and walks. That he wanted to introduce to his family.

  She tilted her head, her gaze steady on his face, and smiled again. You seem happy, she signed.

  I’m living with you. He signed it without thinking. But it was true.

  She hugged him again, even though they were in full view of Ladon and Dragon, and Gavin breathed in all the way to the base of his lungs, wondering if tonight might be the night. If tonight, she’d talk to him about how to work this long-term.

  “Three of the schools I applied to are within four hours of Branson,” he whispered.

  Daisy stepped back, her face surprised, but she frowned. You are not sacrificing your education for me, she signed.

  Gavin chuckled. Not a sacrifice, he signed. One of the best medical schools in the nation was in St. Louis. Getting accepted would be an immense achievement no matter what happened with their relationship.

  “How—” she started, but Rysa stepped out onto the stairs in front of the door to the second floor.

  “Daisy!” she yelled. “… him nothing’s wrong!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “You are a bloodhound.” Ladon glowered and would not take Daisy’s assurances.

  When she and Rysa moved the boxes to make room for Gavin’s stuff, she hadn’t smelled anything unusual. Just Miss Kitty and extra-strong raccoon. There might be a nest in the garage roof. The space smelled like an entire colony had moved in, not just the pungent boy that dominated the scent-scape.

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. Again. “I unlocked the door. I sniffed. I smelled Miss Kitty and a large, male raccoon. I did not smell a Fate and I most definitely did not smell a Shifter.” Or Vivicus’s ghost, but she didn’t say it.

  “Boxes were moved.” He continued to glower as he pointed at the window. “There. Rysa says the two of you did not move those boxes. Yet they have moved.”

  Daisy glanced at the window. The boxes looked exactly the way they had the last time she was up here. “Do you want me to sniff them? I will if that’s what it takes to get you to calm down.”

  Ladon growled. A flat out, subsonic growl in her direction.

  We do not understand why you do not believe us, Brother-Dragon signed.

  Daisy would have believed them if they hadn’t spent the last three and a half months freaking out about every goddamned shadow. “How have they moved?”

  “The dust is disturbed.” Ladon thrust his finger at the boxes. “There.” Another finger thrust. “And there.”

  “All the dust is disturbed!” Daisy fought the need to throw her hands into the air. “I smell raccoons! We were up here for half an hour moving stuff on this end of the space.” She waved her hand at the door. “Animals shoved those boxes over there.” She waved at the window.

  Ladon sniffed. “The animal was here no less than three hours ago. You did not see or enthrall it?”

  She knew exactly what Ladon insinuated—neither she nor Rysa could handle themselves in a big fight. That they both needed him here to protect them.

  For the first time in her life, she wanted to slap Ladon. “Every morning I come out into the yard with my dogs and I sniff because I’m a damned bloodhound. I know you’re hardwired to see threats around every fucking corner but I make sure! Your fiancé comes down every goddamned morning and she checks with all three of her seers and she makes sure!”

  She couldn’t stop her arms from flailing around. “You are not the only person here with abilities, Ladon! I can take care of myself. I can protect Gavin and I can protect Rysa if I need to! But I cannot finish my rotation if every second of every day you and your beast are out on my roof because you think you have to hold the entire world on your shoulders! You two are driving me insane!”

  She slammed the door to the storage area against the wall and stalked into the garage. Behind her, Rysa hiccupped. Below her, next to the garage door, Gavin frowned.

  What’s wrong? he signed.

  She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to listen to Lad
on and Rysa argue, either. And she most definitely did not want to listen to Ladon climbing the side of her house yet again.

  But he would. There’d be more yelling. There might even be crying. Then there’d be scrambling up her siding and a lot of wishes that the wedding and honeymoon would happen now so she’d have a couple of weeks in her house with peace, quiet, and her gorgeous boyfriend.

  She stomped down the stairs. “I’m going in.”

  Gavin watched, his face impassive except for his narrow eyes. He looked up at the door to the second floor.

  He probably had been looking forward to some quality cuddling time tonight. She’d need to calm down first.

  The snow sleeted against her garage. Brother-Dragon flashed in the second floor storage area. Rysa yelled. Ladon yelled. Light burst through the window from inside. Crying started.

  Gavin watched her walk away. Right now, the only people she wanted to see were Radar and Ragnar, and she had Ladon’s issues to blame for it.

  Rysa didn’t smell a raccoon, but then again, she wasn’t a bloodhound enthraller. She was, though, the Draki Prime. Ladon should trust her.

  “We checked.” A sob wanted to explode from her chest but the weight of the moment held it down. The weight since he stopped rumbling. The weight of daily healings that were no longer working because she was pretty sure his brain liked being depressed and it fought tooth and claw to reroute around her help.

  The ultimate morpher—Ladon’s I wanna be sad! brain. A pulse of healing from a class-one healer? Well, hell, he’s fast and smart, he will overcome! Live with capable people who can—and will—take up the task of vigilance so he can rest? No resting for Ladon! Progenitors don’t rest.

  Resting gets the people he loves killed.

  Not crying took more control than she had and a little lip quiver happened even though she knew it was stupid and childish but she felt so…

  She didn’t know. Small? Impotent? Naïve? More like novice. Rysa Lucinda Torres soon-to-be Drake stood in the stuffy second floor of Daisy Pavlovich’s garage drowning in a fog of raccoon, cloudy seers, and a fiancé who couldn’t not look for the worst possible outcome to every possible moment.

  “Nothing’s up here. I looked.” She waved her hands at the door. “Daisy checked. Dmitri has an entire multibillion-dollar company at our back. We are safe, Ladon.” She reached out her hand. “Please.”

  Dragon sniffed at the offending boxes. His hide pulsed and a packet of energy moved toward Ladon. His eyes narrowed and he crossed his hands over his chest.

  “Don’t hide information from me.” Ladon said it more to Dragon than to her.

  I hide nothing, Human, the beast signed. I agree.

  “Agree with what?” Rysa dropped her hand back to her side.

  “Odds are Vivicus is alive. Dmitri called while we loaded Gavin’s furniture into the van. The technicians finished their forensics on the Canadian site’s surveillance equipment. They have no recording of Vivicus becoming the corpse they found in his cell.” He scuffed his foot across the dusty floor. “The triad who watches over Gavin went to Canada. They came back from their investigations without any reading of him.”

  A low growl rolled from Ladon’s chest. “I don’t care what the Praesagio Fates think they don’t see in the what-was-is-will-be. He is the father of all morphers and he is difficult to kill.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s here, Ladon!” She sensed nothing. “He’d leave a candy bar wrapper right over there if he was up here because he’s a crazy motherfucking freak!”

  Ladon’s lip curled up a tiny bit. “I do not believe Dunn would willingly fuck one of her sons.”

  Rysa spun in a circle. “That’s not what I’m talking about! Vivicus is as ADHD as me! Do you think I could spend months up here and not leave evidence?”

  Another burst moved between Ladon and Dragon. “You are not a psychopath.”

  “Ladon!” she yelled. “I do not see him!”

  He stood for a long moment, staring at the boxes. “You have been a Prime Fate less than a year. We do not know the true extent of the limitations the Praesagio sniffers in your blood have caused. Dmitri says you are not the only Fate having difficulty reading right now. We know—know without a doubt because you saw it—that he stole from Daisy’s mother an artifact that limits a Fate’s ability to see its bearer.”

  Rysa, Dragon signed. There have been rumors for centuries about Janus’s talisman.

  “He did not have the shard when they caught him.” She jumped upward once, then twice. “There’s no physical evidence.”

  He pointed toward the window. “The boxes moved.”

  She would have bounced again, but the weight of the argument pressed down on her head and her neck and her shoulders. She wanted to drop her chin to her chest, to let it snap her neck, but she couldn’t. But she wasn’t sure if she could carry this load anymore.

  Rysa closed her eyes. “I can’t finish school if my life is consumed by worry about a dead man attacking me, or bogeymen Parcae sneaking up on us, or if you are going to freeze to death on the roof because you think your only other option is to watch me die.”

  Ladon’s chest rose slower than she liked. He breathed deep, but it looked forced, as if he didn’t want to anymore. “We will not lose you, Rysa.”

  Dragon pressed against her side.

  They’d shatter.

  At home, in the cave, their attachment to her seemed… romantic. When they were happy and healthy, it was real and alive and wonderful and… exactly what she needed. But right now, Ladon and Dragon weren’t happy. Or healthy.

  “I can’t live like this.” Rysa bowed her head and ran for the stairs.

  Daisy banged pots and wouldn’t talk to him. A sniffling Rysa stumbled through the kitchen. Gavin stared out the back window at the garage, watching Ladon stuff his meager undergrad belongings into a raccoon infested garage space.

  This needed to end, and it needed to end now, before it derailed not only the wedding, but his newfound intimacy with Daisy.

  Gavin pulled his phone out of his pocket.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  They yelled and the little Fate bitch wiped away tears. Vivicus watched her run around Pavlovich’s spawn’s house, her arms tight under her bouncy breasts and the snow settling on her pretty red-tinged bouncy hair.

  He backed into the shadows of the neighbor’s roof and held as still as his shivering body allowed. His invisibility cloak worked but ice fell and now was not the time for the barbarian to take notice of his presence.

  They’d chased him from his shelter when the Fate and the enthraller came out to push boxes to the side. But the shard did its business and the cloak its magic and he snuck away to watch from a safe distance.

  Tensions ran high. Perhaps he should take advantage.

  But yet another spike of glass poked his spleen. He would not fare well in a fight with Ladon-Human if he ruptured an organ when he clocked the son of a bitch.

  The shard itself turned out to be surprisingly sharp. He’d figured Janus’s sword-talisman shattering in Vesuvius would have taken the edge off its pieces but no, the damned thing rocked back and forth on his liver like a miniature pendulum of death. It swung forward and back when he walked, slicing in just enough to cause a moment of searing pain. The needles didn’t help.

  So he did his best to hold still on the neighboring roof, in the shadows, under his magic fabric, as he cut a hole in his side with the magic dagger. The Fate blubbered as she ran by. And Vivicus slid first one, then two fingers between his sixth and seventh ribs. His flesh separated with a soft, warm snap and he sighed.

  He snagged the glass needle, letting it pierce through his fingertip to make it easier to extract. Slowly, it slid upward with his finger and when the cold hit the glass, a little wisp of steam curled into a cloud under his invisi-cloak.

  He dropped the splinter into his bag.

  The sliver of talon rested on his favorite shirt, a small slice of glimmer atop a love
ly bright red hibiscus flower. He fished it out, careful of the many glass needles, and rubbed it between his fingers.

  If he swallowed it, would he take on its abilities, as well? The First Fate’s talisman hid him, but would the sliver make him the Draki Prime’s talisman? Oh, the fun he could have sticking his tongue down her throat again. “Hold still, love,” he’d say. “Let Daddy give you what you need.”

  Vivicus snickered. One should always have a back-up plan, in case you didn’t work hard enough at your first project.

  Inside his chest, he forced his ribs to knit up a nice cocoon of tendon around the First Fate’s bloody death shard. It folded and refolded around the black metal, weaving and flowing, and would hold the damned thing in place so he could get on with his work.

  The little Fate bitch ran into the street. Pavlovich’s spawn slammed doors. The normal watched like the idiot normal he was, and Ladon-Human predictably climbed the back of the house. He now pulled his cap down over his ears and swayed on the roof, thankfully facing the alley and not Vivicus’s hiding spot.

  The beast, though, went inside. Vivicus closed his eyes and listened.

  His dragon huffed in the grand and colorful way he huffed—all full of blues and greens and a lovely shade of violet that calmed Vivicus’s nerves nicely—and went off to sleep. Ladon-Human grimaced, obviously pained, but he didn’t move. He stared and he frowned, but he sat there like a lump of black-clad, self-righteous whining.

  Vivicus shivered again. He hated cold climates. Why waste energy warming your blood when you could travel a day and be in a location where sleeping outside wouldn’t freeze you to the cobblestones? Humans were an idiotic species.

  And now, if he moved, the barbarian might see him.

  He needed to get inside. Get to his cat. At this point, the slug was probably full of all their secrets. If he was to fool the beast into thinking he was the barbarian, he’d better know the answers to the inevitable questions: “Oh, my love, in what drawer do I keep my itty bitty undies? What’s the dog’s favorite chew toy? What’s the password to that movie streaming company’s account again?”