The cold danced across her eyeballs and her fingers and her cheeks, but she fished out her phone.
Gavin said something she didn’t catch.
Planes, all three of her seers yelled. “We need to get to the airfield here in St. Paul! Dmitri already has people in the air and the plane coming from The Land will touch down in fifteen minutes and—”
“Rysa!” he yelled. “Ladon’s gone! Vivicus took him. We couldn’t stop it.”
Vivicus snatched Ladon away while she pressed her bare chest over a gaping wound in Andreas’s heart.
Rysa pitched forward. The full weight of piling it on pushed up from her stomach into her throat. It clawed like the thing Vivicus left in her throat three months ago, when he first tried to steal Dragon and to kill her.
Her body hitched and she was suddenly, fully in the psychopath’s grip, smelling the fabric softener on his blinding Hawaiian shirt and tasting the inside of his mouth as he pressed his lips over hers. She needed to force it out. If she didn’t force it out, it would steal her soul.
The flashback vanished as fast as it started but her body responded anyway.
Rysa puked all over the sidewalk.
A sense of damage dropped over her like silk dropping from the sky. It twisted and fluttered in the cold wind and snagged around her head and she couldn’t breathe. Her seers couldn’t see. It clouded her vision and made her suffocate and she knew the damage she felt came from her talisman.
Her present-seer flitted a truth from her healer into her consciousness: The energy of the Dracos has a bandage over it, but if she didn’t heal the wound both the man and the beast would bleed out. Her heart would die.
Like her granddaddy, Andreas.
Part of her wanted to drop to the ice on the sidewalk and rock back and forth with her face buried in her knees. How could the anxious girl with ADHD deal with this situation?
How was she supposed to survive this?
Wrong questions. The words squatted in her mind as a figure clad in shimmering black, a Dragons’ Legion insignia around its neck and a midnight sword in its hand. Wrong answers.
This part, this figure, had had enough.
“Pick me up, Gavin,” she said. “We need a plane.”
“Where are we going?” he asked.
Rysa straightened and zipped her jacket over the blood on her chest. She fished her gloves from her pockets and carefully, slowly, pulled them on. “Texas.”
Chapter Forty
Moments before…
Gavin touched Daisy’s cheek. “Honey, wake up.”
She’d been out for at least fifteen minutes. Derek wasn’t functional. Gavin had found Ragnar at the base of the attic stairs hurt and whimpering, then Brother-Dragon burst through and tossed him against the wall. Gavin was pretty sure he’d lost consciousness as well. His head throbbed and he needed to lean against the wall, but he managed to climb down the rails and was the only one not bleeding, so he needed to keep his wits about him.
Mr. Nicholson groaned. He leaned against what remained of the kitchen island, conscious but no more responsive than Gavin’s passed-out girlfriend.
Her dog was still upstairs, still hurt and whimpering.
“Did she hit her head when she fell?” Gavin asked.
Derek blinked. “I set her down.” Blood oozed from his arm.
Gavin turned away from Daisy and pressed the wound on Mr. Nicholson’s arm. It needed pressure but now he faced the windows and the light pistoned agonizing spikes into his retinas.
In the kitchen hallway, the beast flashed random colors and patterns. Gavin squinted.
“Will you stop that?” Gavin yelled. “Get Ragnar! Do something useful.” Brother-Dragon was the only person who could get the dog over the hole in the stairs. “Don’t give me a seizure.”
Mr. Nicholson pushed himself off the island but he stumbled and flopped against the hallway wall. “Stop screeching!” He waved his hand at Dragon, not Gavin.
The beast rocked back and forth, obviously as disoriented as Derek. Sparks popped and fizzled along his back, and all his patterns took on random spikes and splits.
“You almost stepped on Ragnar when you threw me against the wall.” Gavin waved his free hand at the beast. The pain in his head made it difficult to think. “You roared and spit fire and when I came around you were in the foyer and I thought you were having a dragon seizure and what the fuck is going on?”
Radar whimpered and sniffed at Daisy.
Derek pointed at the top floor. “Get the dog!” he yelled.
A new, louder roar blasted from Dragon. The house shook. But he stumbled around the corner, hopefully to retrieve the injured Ragnar.
Derek cringed. “Before, when I heard the beasts, their words felt as if I skated on top of a deep concept. I know that makes little sense, but I think they bypass actual hearing and directly activate communication.”
Gavin pressed on the cut again. Derek winced. It bled more than Gavin liked.
“Now he blares the entire concept. The complete structure, top to bottom, of what he wants to communicate. The word, the thought, the conceptual structure behind it, sensory input….” He cringed again. “Limb and torso movements.” He swore in Russian. “I see, hear, feel all of it. Every push from Dragon feels as if he is overwriting my body and my soul. I have no choice. I am Human.”
Shadows from the foyer indicated that Dragon flowed down the steps. Light pulsed off his big head and he staggered as much as Mr. Nicholson, but twisted through the hall and placed Ragnar next to the moaning Daisy.
Derek gaped. “I do not know if that will work, beast.”
“If what will work?” Gavin’s head felt three times too big.
Derek ignored him. “Do it.”
“Do what?” Gavin needed to sit down.
Dragon placed one huge, six-taloned hand on Daisy’s chest. He lowered his head. A massive, bright but modulated burst of red, blue, and green light flooded the kitchen.
Gavin keeled over. His lunch came up, followed by every last milliliter of liquid in his stomach. It burned on the way out, slicing at his throat and scouring his mouth. This was worse than when that Burner got too close and he thought he was going to die. This time, he was pretty sure his brain swelled.
“Gavin!” Daisy screeched. Her arms curled around his waist. “Oh my God what happened?”
When did she wake up? When did she move across the kitchen to him? His mind swam.
The beast’s hands moved but he made no sense.
“He says he is sorry.”
“I don’t care if you are sorry! What did you do?” she yelled.
Derek mumbled something. “I cannot help you make clear signs.”
“You have a concussion,” Daisy whispered to Gavin. “I think we both do.”
“I’m sorry I’m so fragile,” he mumbled.
“Stay awake, okay? Please.” She kissed his temple.
“Awake?” How was he supposed to stay—
Daisy’s mouth cupped over his nose and his vomit covered lips. “Please be okay.”
The world saturated. Colors grew vivid. Noises sharp. Scents loud and boisterous and intense. Fear made the dogs smell as if they’d just come out of a stagnant, stale pool. Daisy jittered. Derek looked ghostly and shimmering at the same time. And the beast’s hide pulsed with I am sorry.
I’m dying, Gavin thought, though he didn’t think it. He wasn’t thinking. He felt the concept of dying in real time, without the annotations of human or dragon language. All added meaning that allowed him to communicate to another person what the word dying meant seized up and stopped operating because someone told it to shut the fuck up.
But the terror was still there, still real and still spinning up his blood pressure and his fight or flight reflex. His body knew exactly what dying meant to it and his body knew it did not want to die.
He screeched, the primate underpinnings of his brain taking over, but it only made his head feel bigger. He lost his orientation t
o the horizon and the world tipped sideways. He felt too much pain, too much fear. He smelled it from himself and from the two canine beasts who also wanted to screech but were better trained than him and had the self-control he did not.
His mate grasped his head. Was she dying, too? She couldn’t die. What would he do without her? His mate. His—
A searing blast of heat pressed from her palms, through his cheeks to his skull and sinuses, and then into his brain. He yipped and squirmed, as frightened by the blast as he was by the disorienting pain making the world tip over into saturated colors.
The tipping righted. The ballooning pain sitting on his head lifted away. But he still wanted to hoot.
He latched onto his female, his arms pulling her down and close, to better use his shoulders to shield her body from the beast blasting I am sorry and I do not understand and please forgive me through the food-making area.
Fruit waited in a bowl on the counter and within arm’s reach. He hooted and threw an apple at the mean and scary beast.
His female yelled sounds he recognized as his name.
He hooted again and threw an avocado.
The air around his face filled with a scent he should not realize was floating in the air. His human parts told him that he wasn’t supposed to smell it. Those human parts had started up again.
Fully-on, fully-cognizant, fully-linguistically functioning clicked on. “—hurt my female!” He yelled, his mind clicking back on halfway through an ape man thought.
“Gavin!” Daisy opened her mouth and blew another breath at him.
This time, if he hadn’t known what she was doing, he wouldn’t have realized that she’d just ‘human’ enthralled him again.
He dropped his grip on her shoulders and waist. His head didn’t throb anymore. He seemed to be thinking clearly. “I’m okay.” But he staggered into Daisy. “I’m okay. Thank you.”
She held him up, her face pale. “What followed Rysa and Ladon into our lives?” She blinked and her wide-eyed stare vanished. “Clean up. We need to find Ladon.”
Gavin nodded and let go. Slowly, he swiped a towel off the counter and walked toward the sink.
Daisy dropped to her knees next to Ragnar and wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck. “It’s okay boy. You’re okay. Get up. Please get up.”
He yipped once and twitched. Still bloody, still smelling of fear and gore, he at least moved under Daisy’s touch. Another yip rose from his dog throat.
Ragnar rolled toward Daisy. Slowly, he scrambled to his feet.
“Call Rysa. Call the Praesagio Fates! We need to know where to go.” Daisy wiped at her face as if wiping away a tear.
Gavin turned off the water and wiped his face. Next to the hallway door, Dragon stuffed other towels into a new box and carefully transferred in the remaining kittens. Little mews rose from the new box as he lifted one cat after the other.
“Leave them here,” Derek waved his hand at the box.
I will not, pulsed off the beast’s hide.
He didn’t sign. Gavin read his intent from his flashes. “Umm…” Gavin shook his head. He must have some residual concussion if he thought he understood Dragon’s dragon language.
Daisy ignored their arguing and wrapped her arms around Radar. The dog woofed and wagged his tail, now obviously as fixed as his brother.
“How long has it been?” Gavin asked. He had more important things to think about than the colors and patterns on the beast’s hide. Vivicus could be out of Minnesota by now, for all they knew. “Can your father get someone to put out an APB on your car?”
Derek said something in Russian when Gavin replaced the blood-soaked towel he’d pressed into his wound.
Daisy gasped. “What if Ladon dies? Oh my God what if he dies because I couldn’t stop that maniac from taking him?”
She blamed herself? Gavin placed Derek’s hand over the towel. “What the hell did you say to her?” he growled. “Pressure here.”
Derek only blinked.
“Hey!” Gavin shook the other man. “Talk to the humans in the room!”
Derek stared over Gavin’s shoulder. “What?”
The desire to slap the now-Human half of the Dracos almost overcame Gavin’s composure, but more violence would not help the situation. Gavin pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Rysa probably knows. Praesagio probably knows. The cavalry will probably burst in at any second.” He pointed at the front of the house. “Probably.”
Derek winced. “I told you to stop yelling at me!” He waved the hand that should be applying pressure to his wound. “You are not making sense! You are—”
Another hot, acrid-smelling belch of fire seared through the air and into the hallway. Dragon danced first to the side, then backward until his tail smacked into the remaining fruit on the counter.
It must have hurt. The beast roared again and whipped his tail around at Gavin and Derek at the same time Derek bellowed a string of what Gavin guessed to be Russian profanity.
A small, immature part of Gavin grinned with glee. The beast suffered too. But Gavin knew damned well that Dragon had not meant to hurt him and that he was being a shit for thinking such things.
“Brother-Dragon!” Daisy yelled. She lunged for the beast’s head, her hands cupping his crest just behind his big cat eyes. “Steady.”
Did her healing abilities work on the dragons? Rysa’s did. But they weren’t animals. Gavin knew firsthand that they didn’t process information the way humans did and he was pretty sure they didn’t think like animals either. Mr. Nicholson’s comments confirmed his suspicions.
A calmer growl-purr rolled from the big beast. Where are my humans? he flashed.
Did Gavin really see Where are my humans?
“I am your Human now.” Derek wrapped his hand around the wound and pushed off the wall again. Another string of Russian blew from his mouth.
Daisy fired a just-as-acid-coated verbal barrage of Russian back at him. He scowled but stood up straight.
“I am bleeding,” Derek said in a matter-of-fact, this-is-normal way, and staggered toward the now wide-open back kitchen door. “Call Wife.”
He held his injured arm at his side but waved the hand anyway. His mouth opened again and his lips made the shape he’d need to say Anna, but the sound didn’t come out. He blinked and staggered again, then shook his head. “Sister.”
Daisy lurched toward Gavin. “Healing you and the boys and calming Brother-Dragon took a lot out of me. I—” She slumped against his shoulder.
All the adrenaline keeping his terror in check couldn’t stop it this time. He didn’t know how having to do four immediate, heavy-duty healings affected her body. “Honey, talk to me.”
He cared about Dragon. He cared about Mr. Nicholson. But if Daisy was hurt, he wouldn’t be able to hold it together.
“You’re in danger,” she whispered.
In the hallway toward the kitchen, Derek grimaced as he used his wounded arm to fish in the pocket of his jeans. “Get my phone! Call Wife… Sister! God damn it beast, quit messing with my head!”
They were all in danger, not just him. “Are you bleeding?” He checked Daisy’s arms and hands. “Do you feel nauseous? Do you think you’re going to pass out?” If she passed out, he wouldn’t be able to help anyone.
“We need to go.” Daisy seemed to shake off some of her wooziness as she pulled her phone from her pocket. “Vivicus has Ladon.”
She teetered toward the door and forced Derek to move in front of her. At the counter, she stopped, and Gavin heard her yank the van’s keys out of the little bowl.
Gavin shepherded the dogs out first, then Dragon with his box of kittens. The beast swayed and almost fell over until he twisted up on his side to squeeze through the door. By the time Gavin made it to the back door, Daisy and Derek were already halfway to the garage.
She couldn’t drive the van in the condition she was in. Neither could Derek. And he’d never driven a vehicle that big in his life.
I
n his hand, his phone buzzed. “Hey!” he yelled as he held up the device. “It’s Rysa.”
They stopped, Derek with his hand on his arm and Daisy leaning against a Dragon who only mimicked the snow and hadn’t turned completely invisible.
Gavin tapped accept. “I was just about to—”
“Pick me up,” Rysa said.
The authority in his friend’s voice made him wince.
“We need to go to Texas.”
Chapter Forty-One
The dream slammed down on reality and AnnaBelinda stiffened in her driver’s seat, paralyzed by phantoms both real and unreal. Wispy, snake-like shadows coiled around her ankles but she pulled against them with the strength of her weight.
They grabbed; she yanked. They bit; she ground them into a paste on the surface of the Dragon’s Rock.
“Dracas!” a new voice yelled toward the front of the van. Then away, out the back: “Damn it, don’t run away!” A pause. “Grab her!”
Human! Her beast slammed her six-taloned front limb down on the slithering, stealing shades. Behind her, the cold sun roared too bright and too loud and too—
Medical terms bounced around inside her van. Words like “cc” and “drip” and drug names too long and too corporate moved from one normal to another.
Rysa runs away. Dragon twisted her long neck and looked toward the arcs and twists covering the too close din. They take Andreas into the Emergency facilities. She whipped her head around.
“I cannot follow, young one. You must take on this fight.” A beast’s voice, neither male nor female, reverberated in Anna’s skull.
Her brain locked down on what her senses fed it: The stinks of fear and hot blood. The sting of cold air. The buzz of traffic, medical machines, and hissing doors. Yelling personnel. And the hole in the world made by Rysa’s dark coat as the Fate turned the corner two blocks away.
They brought in Andreas but Anna just had a full-on, dream-like, Fate-like vision. She’d seen her brother’s hell.
Anna touched her forehead, her fingers dancing over her skin. Why was her head cloudy? Rysa ran away.
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