All but Human

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Another gurgle-laugh rolled out of the corners of Vivicus’s mouth.

  Again, Rysa read nothing.

  “I know your fate.” Daisy sighed very much in the same manner as Anna had. They both looked tired and old. Slowly, she too squeezed Rysa’s hand.

  Her seers flared: Special people in hazmat suits and the protective aprons that butchers wear will slowly, methodically cut apart his body. They will test each chunk for life, then when they find none, they’ll drop each piece in its own, small vat of acid.

  Then those jars will go into a sarcophagus, one built especially to entomb Vivicus.

  Not the kind of burning she’d originally thought, but it would do its job.

  Rysa let go of Daisy’s hand. She moved far enough from Anna and Daisy that she no longer touched her sister-in-law or her friend.

  She’d seen enough.

  The spinning threatened to return, but she was done with the screaming, done with the need for vengeance.

  She simply felt… relieved.

  The morpher in front of her no longer mattered—only Ladon and Dragon did. Only finding them and healing them. Only piecing her life, their lives, Anna and Derek’s lives, Daisy’s life and Gavin’s life—everyone’s lives—back together.

  This, now, was an endpoint. A corner to be turned. She needed to walk away.

  Anna was right. She needed to be modern about this moment.

  Her rampaging would help no one.

  But mostly, the Dracae—the people who as their Prime she needed to protect—they needed her to lead the way. They needed this handled in the new way, not the old ways.

  Anna pulled a second syringe from her pocket. “You will not torment anyone anymore, Vivicus.” She sounded as tired and old as she looked.

  She held up the syringe. “My dragon and I have torn you limb from limb, yet you came back. Brother and Brother-Dragon have ripped off your head, yet you came back. You murder and you rupture lives and facilitate the work of Fates who are as evil as you.”

  He gurgled again and what remained of his gaze stayed on the syringe.

  “No more. You now vanish from the world, Vivicus, son of Idunn.”

  Anna uncapped the syringe. “But you did manage to do one good thing: For the first time since my brother and I, our dragons, and the other Progenitors woke in this world, the Fates and the Shifters are working together.”

  Daisy took Rysa’s hand again. “We will find Ladon.”

  Rysa glanced at her friend. “Thank you.”

  Anna held up the syringe. “We will avenge Andreas.”

  Yes, they would.

  Anna stared at the silver liquid inside the little tube, as did Daisy and Rysa.

  Vivicus tried to blink.

  He tried to move, to get away, but the sniffers in his body did their work.

  The misty drizzle accumulated as droplets on his plastic version of Ladon’s face and his plastic version of Ladon’s wonderful barbarian mohawk.

  Part of Rysa wanted Vivicus to live.

  Part of her wanted to find a way to cure him, to make him a person again, but she knew that he’d been too far gone for too many millennia. That for the past two thousand years, this monster had been just that—a non-person monstrosity, a force of chaos, a ravaging terror.

  Vivicus had not been a human being for a very, very long time and putting him out of his misery was the kindest thing they could do.

  Daisy and Rysa stood. Together, their hands clasped, they stepped away from Anna and Vivicus.

  The three unnamed Fates also stood. Sister-Dragon appeared, a haze in the drizzly air, her head low.

  A sedan stopped on the drive between the lawn and the field and Dmitri unfolded from the driver’s seat. He’d taken her Dragon far enough away.

  Vivicus’s death would not upset the delicate connection the beast had to Derek. Gavin now watched over both the Tsar and the beast.

  They would find Ladon and they’d fix the damage.

  Her man and her dragon would survive this, and would come through it whole because she was the Draki Prime. She inherited from Daniel, Timothy, and Marcus the mantle of the Fate Who Protected the Dracae and she would not let down the men who entrusted her with their title.

  She would not let down the man who trained her, Andreas. She would not let down Dmitri and the nascent synthesis of the Fate and Shifter worlds he represented.

  No, she would not.

  And by all the gods, she would not let down the man and the dragon she loved.

  “When did it happen?” Rysa asked Daisy.

  She and Daisy moved toward Dmitri and the sedan.

  When they exited the triangle made by the unnamed Fates, outside of their sandstorm seers, Daisy took Rysa’s other hand.

  “The Jani stitch,” she said. “Your mom and your cousin, Adrestia. They said ‘We will not give the Fates responsible the satisfaction of seeing the moment Andreas died.’”

  Rysa’s throat tightened. She’d done what she could. She’d healed to the best of her abilities.

  But murder still happened.

  Behind them, within the triangle of the three Fates, Anna plunged the second syringe into Vivicus’s neck.

  Rysa closed her eyes.

  The dark part of her soul, the part with its own midnight blade, gripped the shimmering hilt of a sword that had, briefly, manifested in her real-world hand.

  That dark part that now fully understood the old ways—the need to cull from the world that which could never be contained; the need to eliminate what the community did not have the resources to respond to in a “civilized” manner—that part knew what needed doing.

  Rysa’s seers latched onto Daisy and they looked for every single past, present, and future moment she could tag with the truth.

  Every single spot inside the what-was-is-will-be where the three scary fucks who murdered her granddaddy would see what she needed to say to them:

  “Aiden Blake,” Rysa said as she gripped Daisy’s hands, “You have not saved your future by killing Andreas Sisto.”

  Daisy tensed, but she did not let go.

  Behind them, Vivicus gurgled for the final time.

  Anna dropped the syringe on the ground, her head bowed. She stood, her hand out, and she touched the shimmering, mimicking hide of her dragon.

  “I will find you, Aiden Blake.” Rysa’s grip on Daisy moved to her wrists, and Daisy’s, in turn, moved to hers.

  Daisy closed her eyes, but she did not let go.

  Her hands moved down Rysa’s forearms, to her elbows, and Rysa’s did the same. “I want him dead, Rysa,” she whispered.

  Rysa’s past-seer filled with the truth of Daisy’s past: The moment in the hotel at The Land of Milk and Honey when Aiden charmed her into believing he wasn’t a psychopath. The poisoning of her body that kept her from realizing the truth.

  The moment he coerced her into sex and took from her something Rysa had not, up until this point, understood.

  He forced fear onto Daisy. Pain. The need to protect her heart.

  Rysa gasped, but she did not let go. “Oh, Daisy, I’m sorry.”

  Daisy’s eyes open. “Aiden, I know you’ve read this moment. I know that right now, your sister is reading it. And I know as it passes by, your other sister will see what I say.”

  Rysa moved closer, tagged harder, made this moment scream in the what-was-is-will-be.

  “The Draki Prime and I are coming for you.”

  “Yes,” said Rysa’s dark half. “The what-will-be you want is not the what-will-be you are about to meet.” Bound by fate or bound by desire, it didn’t matter.

  No one would hurt her family again.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Somewhere in the debris of the house’s basement, the forced-air furnace chugged out hot blasts. They rolled across the kitchen floor of his Shifter love’s showroom kitchen, warm and dry and sweet-smelling. The back door might hang open and the Minnesota cold might mingle with the furnace air, but the house still smel
led as clean and fresh as his Daisy.

  “Daisy… Daisy…” he sang. “Je t’aime, ma marguerite.”

  “Aiden.” His sister kicked her foot along the floor as if her past-seer brain found warm air confounding. “Look.”

  She wasn’t kicking air. She kicked fabric that mimicked whatever it sat upon.

  He lifted and waved it quickly, hoping to overtax its properties. Sure enough, fast movement created a shimmering breeze. “So this was what he hid under when you spotted him on the roof?”

  Fina nodded. Aiden loved his sister, but sometimes her keen eyes and lack of emotion disturbed him. Though, to be honest, his present-seer sister’s overabundance of seeing only what she wanted to see disturbed him more.

  “Ethne!” he yelled. Unlike Fina, his other sister hadn’t returned her hair to her natural blonde state.

  Ethne strode through the house’s open back door clad head to toe in raven black, hair included, with a bundle in her hand. She said the black helped her “connect better with our talisman.”

  She held out the bundle, but the sneer on her face was more to one-up him with her treat than to revel in their mutually collected treasures.

  She’d found Vivicus’s satchel.

  “How many?” he asked.

  She flipped it open. “At least six.” Carefully, so as not to needle a finger, she pulled out a splinter of glass. “They’re real. They’re from the shard.”

  The splinter vibrated under his touch. That damned morphing Shifter had no idea what he’d made for them. No idea at all.

  “And a shaving of…” Ethne held up what looked like another, different piece of glass. “… dragon talon.”

  Aiden inhaled deeply. His body wavered and he felt good. Taller. He took the talon sliver between his finger and thumb and rubbed it with purpose, to allow his euphoria to blossom.

  Nothing beat the loosening of one’s muscles that came with the satisfaction of a long-con played well.

  Nothing at all.

  Near the remains of the kitchen island, Fina spun with a dagger so black it sucked in all light.

  She stabbed at the air, then at the granite.

  When it slid into the stone as if into fat, she grinned.

  Ethne shivered when her present-seer flared through the cold space. “It is done.”

  Aiden nodded. They were three for three, now.

  They’d taken from the Shifter Progenitor her most powerful offspring: Severo, the healer; Andreas, the enthraller; and Vivicus the crazy morpher.

  His uncle Daniel might have punished him for the future his talisman allowed him to see, but the Draki Prime could not stop their offspring.

  Nor could the First Enthraller. Nor the Progenitors.

  Nor would the new Draki Prime, the half Shifter, no matter what she and his Daisy broadcast into the what-was-is-will-be.

  No one stopped the Children of the Burning World.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Please, Nathaniel, his beloved said. We can’t—

  The dream vanished as a shadow moved over Ladon’s face, then another. Somewhere nearby, water dripped and the air hung musty and oppressive, the way air settling in an unventilated root cellar smelled.

  He was underground—under warm ground, otherwise the humid stink would be cooling instead of the sauna-like shroud over his face right now.

  He’d been in places like this before. Places where they tortured captives. Places where they prepared remains for internment. Dead places.

  Ladon coughed.

  He’d been dreaming about his one true love, Rysa Torres Drake, the woman married to the dragon…

  Dreaming…

  He coughed again and forced open his eyes. A beam of sunlight screamed too bright and too loud onto his face, let in by some sort of portal above the cold, metallic table onto which he lay with his legs locked down, one arm out, and the other tied to his side.

  A tube connected to a dry saline bag ran into his stretched arm. The bright light from the portal danced along the metal table and the pole holding the IV bag and he winced, the sparkle too much for his eyes.

  He needed to get up. He had a job to do. People who relied on him. He needed to get to…

  His face hurt like he’d been licked by a Burner.

  He felt confused. Why did he feel confused? He was confused about why he felt confused. He needed to get somewhere. Home? The camp? The base?

  He needed to get home, to the camp. To the base. Rysa needed him.

  A voice yelled from the side, over in the shadows. “Hey hey hey!”

  Did he know that voice? He recognized the accent.

  Ladon squinted but the roaring spot of sun overpowered his ears and his eyes. And his nose. The voice reeked of acid.

  “What did I tell you two wankers, huh?” The voice moved closer. “What did I say?”

  Two of the shadows danced and twitched. “Don’t eat normals.”

  “That’s right. What else did I say?”

  One of the shadows poked Ladon’s shoulder and he might have moaned. He might have groaned. He only knew he needed to get out of here.

  “Only Shifters,” the shadow who poked him said. “From that school up the road. Which is why we’re down here. Because Shifters come down here.”

  “And?”

  The other shadow sighed and the acid stink increased. “We make sure the Shifter is a Sera… Sera…”

  “A Seraphim, you dullard. And why do we only eat Seraphim?”

  The first shadow moved back and forth as if rocking on its heels. “Because they’re assholes?”

  What was a Seraphim? Why did Ladon recognize that voice? “Let me up,” he croaked.

  The shadows didn’t seem to hear him.

  The voice he recognized sighed. “I wrote it on your arm! We do it for the princess.”

  “But I don’t know no princess and this normal’s baked good and I’m hungry, Billy.”

  The voice sniffed and its shadow moved over Ladon’s face. “Back off you two dimwitted Deliverance rejects. I should just pop you two and be—”

  The voice screamed like a frightened little girl and the confusion in Ladon’s head grew more… confused.

  “Let. Me. Up,” he croaked again. The arm strapped to his side had been wrapped in a cast. He had a cast on his forearm. When did he break his arm?

  Why did he feel so alone and confused? Though he didn’t think he felt alone and confused. Only that he felt the labels on the situation should be “alone” and “confused,” the way he would have understood “alone and confused” if someone else had told him that he was alone and confused.

  The shadow screamed again, which most definitely meant he wasn’t alone. But he was, for sure, confused.

  “How the hell did you two not sense that this here is not a random normal?”

  “Because we’re hungry?”

  Another sigh. “I need new minions.”

  “Hey!” Smelly hands shook Ladon’s shoulders. “Wake-y wake-y, Boyfriend!”

  Ladon groaned. He blinked again, but his eyes wouldn’t focus. Why the hell was a smelly person calling him Boyfriend? He had a name.

  “Where’s the dino-dog?” The voice quickly stood up, then bent over him again. “Are you out here by yourself?” The mechanisms locking his arms and legs in place released. “What’s this?” A metal shard sitting on Ladon’s chest lifted away.

  Burners, he thought. That’s why they smell bad. But he knew “Burner” the same way he knew “alone and confused”—hollowed out and without that internal core of context and understanding.

  As if he lacked experience. Sort of like he’d read about Burners in a text book, and had seen pictures, and had an instructor explain how to deal with one. He knew what one was, but not really.

  Slowly, Ladon sat up. He cradled his broken arm. At least he knew this pain was real. It rubbed on the inside of his muscles like the teeth of a saw.

  The Burner had asked questions.

  “Dino-dog?” Ladon
repeated.

  What was the Burner talking about? Ladon blinked as his eyes adjusted to being out of the bright sun. The room was packed top to bottom with science equipment—microscopes, wood and metal tables, shelves full of glass tubes and petri dishes, several of which shimmered in the sunlight piped in through round globes evenly spaced along the ceiling.

  Someone had taken his uniform. He sat on the metal table in his boxer-briefs and the ugliest, loudest Hawaiian shirt he’d ever seen.

  He ripped it off, bellowing when he jolted his arm, but the damned thing would touch his skin no longer.

  He wadded it up and whipped it at the shadows. “Rysa…” he croaked. He needed to get to the base.

  The voice stepped out of the shadows and into a beam of light. His bonfire-colored t-shirt glared as brightly as the damned Hawaiian shirt, as did his blood-toned but dirty shoes.

  The midnight sword in one of his hands, though, sucked in all light around it, as did the metal he’d plucked off Ladon’s chest and now held in his other hand.

  “I know you,” Ladon said. He’d seen pictures. Rysa held fond memories of this Burner.

  Billy Bare, the Burner who loved his love, eyed the metal shard. “Did you break Stab?” He frowned and thrust the tip of the sword at Ladon’s face. “Hey! Aren’t you supposed to be marrying the princess right about now?”

  “Stab?” He’d heard that name before too, or read it in a report. “Princess?” Was this Burner talking about Rysa? “Where am I?” Slowly, he stood.

  Billy looked him up and down. “You look like shit.” He tapped the metal shard on his chin, then fanned his hand over his head as if imitating a rooster comb. “I used to have a mohawk! Back in my punk days.” The Burner snickered and wiggled his rooster-comb fingers. “Will the entire wedding party have mohawks? I want a new mohawk.”

  “I need to call the base.” Not that he remembered the number. Did he have Rysa’s number? Did she give it to him? He couldn’t remember, only that she needed him to come back for her.

  Thankfully, the other two Burners stayed away. Ladon didn’t think he could handle popping one right now.

  Billy twirled around. “Can I come to the wedding? I want to come to the wedding.”