The ghost protector she couldn’t see but could feel wrap itself around her body.
Next to the hatchback, the man in the black jacket smashed an elbow into another ghoul’s chest. “Damned cockroaches!” he growled.
His voice, even filled with anger, sent a shiver up her spine and melted more of her terror.
“Fuck you!” the child shrieked. She and two others ran for the van. Billy and Lizzy snuck around and hid alongside the hatchback.
The man dropped his whip and pulled a gun as long as his forearm from a holster on his leg.
He fired a barbed spike through another ghoul’s chest. It popped through cleanly, no blood or gore, just more of the red glow. Then hooks spread from its tip.
The man yanked on the rope and the ghoul fell forward.
Whatever pressed against Rysa’s back moved away but stayed next to her. She felt its presence, but still couldn’t see it—until a shimmering ghost-line of rich yellows and oranges appeared in the air just to her side.
A snout appeared first, then a ridge-topped, elongated head. The ridge became an intricate set of bumps that ran down the creature’s long, thick neck, and continued down its otherwise smooth back. The bumps ended at the tip of its equally long, thick tail.
Golden light erupted across the creature’s flank in swirling dots, lines, and hard-edged patterns. The beast sniffed at her face, and the lights dancing on its skin flickered toward greens and blues.
The glowing creature between her and the ghouls was about the size of a large horse, or a bison, but lower to the ground, and sort of iguana-like, but with wolf mixed in. Whatever it was, it looked strong and agile, and as if it could stop every single attack the ghouls threw at it.
The man tossed the gun.
The creature reared onto its hind legs, and in one smooth, strong movement, it caught the gun and flicked the cable.
The ghoul’s body flew straight up, high above the fight.
For an instant, the ghoul floated still and lifeless in midair like a helium balloon on a tether. Then the body crystallized, and little sparkles rapidly spread outward from the wound in its chest. Without a sound, the shards vaporized and became a person-shaped cloud of red dust.
The dust rippled with menace. The ghoul was dead, but the dust wasn’t. It embodied something far worse than mindless rampaging.
Rysa backed against the creature’s side. That red dust was chaos unfettered.
The cloud imploded. The limbs pulled in first, and the dust collapsed into a red ball. Flutters rippled the surface like a puff of smoke or a drop of blood.
The entire sphere sucked into a tiny point in space.
The creature curled around Rysa just as a blinding flash ripped through the street and parking lot. She ducked, but the creature had her, and blocked most of the shockwave.
Next to the blue van, a high-pitched screech erupted from the child. “I hate you, dragon boy!” She stomped her little feet and screeched again.
The creature was a dragon?
The kid ran straight for Rysa. “Give us the Fate!”
She was a Fate? Billy had called her the same thing when he snatched her.
The panic returned. All of it—her inability to think and her hyperventilating. She pressed against the dragon’s chest once again, and grasped for the calm she’d felt before, but the chains attached to the shackles on her wrists and ankles tangled and she tripped. Her palms came down hard on the pavement, her hands wrenched in the cuffs.
Rysa she dropped to her elbows.
The dragon’s forelimbs slammed down on each side of her body. Its neck appeared over her head, and bright, glimmering reds flashed from its hide.
The beast blocked the child. The little ghoul couldn’t get close.
Next to the hatchback, the man in black tipped his head as if listening to someone whisper in his ear—and above her, so did the dragon.
Energy crackled over her skin as if it moved across a bond between the man and the beast.
A strong bond. One she could almost see.
Their connection wove itself into her senses, brightening her perception and calming both her panic and the pain in her arms.
Every cell in her body tingled.
The dragon dropped its head next to hers. It sniffed her hair and touched her face with its snout. Warmth spread across her belly as the dragon coiled its tail around her waist and legs.
The flavor of the energy between the man and the beast changed and a distinct sense of dismay flowed across their connection. Rysa leaned into the beast, doing her best to soothe—feeling that she was supposed to—and flared her fingers over the swirls and patterns moving across the creature’s hide.
The man in black snarled and pointed at the ghouls. “We can stop this!”
Flame burst from the dragon’s mouth.
Real flame, warm and bright and scented with frankincense and spices. Real fire, not the chemical acid death released by the ghouls. The flame flooded the area between the dragon, the man, and the kid.
The kid pulled up short. “You think so, huh?” She flipped off the man as she ran for the van. “Prick!”
The man glanced at Rysa, then the child, then back to Rysa again. A surge moved through the energy connecting him and the dragon. The beast flamed again in response.
“Why are you so stubborn?” The man pulled off his gloves as he ran to Rysa, and his head tipped again as if he listened. “She’s a Fate?”
He lifted his goggles and looked down at her with golden-brown eyes. “They shackled you? What kind of Fate are you that you couldn’t get away from Burners?”
The dragon nudged the man at the same time as one of its hands curled around Rysa’s belly.
The man’s brow furrowed as he squinted at the beast. “What?”
More energy pulsed between them.
“He says you’re activating.” The man looked around. “Why the hell are you alone?”
“I…” She didn’t know what “activate” meant, or why everyone kept calling her a Fate, even though she somehow knew both labels were correct.
She also knew she wasn’t alone. The dragon enveloped her and their energy connection cascaded over her mind. A calmness she shouldn’t have settled in. She felt right, centered, and for the first time in her life, not alone.
The man lifted the chain and peered at it in the dim light. “Burndust in the metal? Can you get your hands out?” He yanked on the cuff and the furrow between his eyes changed from exasperation to concern. “Hey! Can you hear me? Try!” He blinked.
Rysa blinked, too.
Her eyes saw more than was possible. More than she could handle. In her vision, several versions of the man pulled and twisted and ripped at the shackles, as he tried, but failed, to pull them off. All versions were not quite the same but all were possible, as if she watched multiple takes of the same scene overlaid onto each other.
Each rendering of the man understood what was happening, even if she didn’t. Each iteration worked to stop her from becoming something as terrible as the ghouls who now peeled away in their hatchback and van.
She felt a need to help pulse along the energy connecting the man and the beast, and she knew that even if she panicked again, she was safe with them.
A sense of separation washed over her. She’d taken a step to the side no one else had, or could. Her angle on the world reformed and she saw things clearly that had been obscured before—things that should be obscured. Things she wasn’t supposed to see.
Possibility took on weight. Portions of time became threads. The universe had a weave and Rysa now saw its fabric.
Saw it, even if she didn’t understand what she saw.
Ladon. The man and the beast shared the name, and it danced through her mind, whispered by a new separate voice—one that once again was her but not her. Their names were Ladon-Human and Ladon-Dragon—called simply Ladon and Dragon by most—and some of their possible futures were more probable than others.
She gra
sped her throat and the chains dragged across her chest. No air entered her lungs. Dragon lifted her into his forelimbs and held her close to his body.
When what she knew moved sideways, the world burned hot and cold, her fingers frostbitten as her core boiled. Had the fire ghouls done something to her? Except her hands looked fine, not blue and frozen.
Her perception of Dragon fanned out, again like multiple takes playing at the same time. She felt the physical edges of each possibility slide along her skin while they flared through her vision.
She held tight, feeling the big beast’s intent. Knowing, understanding, seeing it all for a fraction of a second as a multi-dimensional blossom. For the moment, he was all colors and shapes and textures at once. He gleamed with the stars themselves.
Ladon’s gold-flecked eyes, warm and full of life, anchored the spinning and the world slammed back to normal. She felt better, stronger, with both of them next to her, as if they’d get her through this. They stabilized what-is and what-will-be—the present and the future—and understanding the process of “activation” wasn’t important. It mattered only that she activated now, with them.
Still held in the forelimbs of the dragon, she touched the man’s chest. Ladon’s steady and perfect heart beat strong under her fingers.
She whispered, “You are Human. He is Dragon. Together, you are Ladon.” She knew, but she didn’t understand. Their energy curled around her like Dragon had when he protected her from the explosion. Everything forward—every moment in the future what-will-be—reverberated with them. With Dragon’s colors. With Ladon’s speed and strength. She would be fine.
She clasped Ladon’s palm. “Thank you.”
She would be fine.
Ladon glanced at Dragon and his expression loosened into a wide-eyed roundness. He stroked her forehead. “You’re burning up.”
With nothing—with everything—Rysa activated as a Fate. Her mind stepped through the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Stepped through while her body was held in the forelimbs of a beast she didn’t know, but would. All while holding the hand of a man whose strength calmed the raging whirlwinds behind her eyes.
Hot-cold power burst from her skin, leaving her new, transformed. She felt Ladon brace himself but he didn’t falter. He didn’t let go.
He took her from the beast and carried her down the street. Dragon followed and Rysa felt what was to come.
She sucked in her breath, not because she couldn’t breathe, but because the future exploded in her head.
Chapter Three
Two nights before, when Ladon and Dragon had backed their huge delivery-style van toward the rear door of his cousin-in-law’s bar in Branson, Missouri, they hadn’t planned on chasing Burners. They hadn’t planned on rescuing an activating Fate, either. They’d planned to pick up supplies: the two Israeli assault rifles Ladon’s sister wanted, the new Burner harpoon—the one he lost tonight saving the Fate—plus a couple of cases of premium vodka and a new smartphone loaded with more damned apps than Ladon could ever want.
Then the East Chicago Shifter clan called. Ladon’s cousin-in-law, Dmitri, held out his own phone with a drink in his other hand and a scowl on his Russian face. A particularly virulent Burner gang moved west from Ohio. They burned libraries and churches and ate every Shifter they found, and were taking some directly from their homes.
The Shifters, for all their mercurial abilities, had yet to develop a talent for evading Burners. Their breed morphed, healed, enthralled—plus a host of other annoying traits Ladon didn’t care to remember—but they still pleaded for help. And Ladon and Dragon still responded.
So Dmitri stood in the parking lot of The Land of Milk and Honey and watched Ladon cram rifles and vodka into the storage compartments under the floor of their big van. Both Ladon and Dragon found this vehicle more comfortable than the military transport they used to drive. And less obvious. If normals weren’t paying attention, they’d think the van was a truck used by overnight parcel delivery services.
His cousin-in-law slapped the side of the vehicle and waved them off, his perpetual Russian gloom the same as it had been when Ladon met him over a half-century ago.
So Ladon drove away, as tired as when he’d pulled into the parking lot of Dmitri’s expansive bar-slash-entertainment complex. As tired and fed up as he’d feel twelve hours later, when he dealt with the Burners in The Dells.
And just as tired as he now felt driving away from the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota, where he’d tracked the Burners for what he’d thought—he’d hoped—would be the last time.
Tracked them and let them go so he could protect the lone Fate who now lay unconscious in the back of his van.
He pulled the parking brake and turned off the ignition. He’d found a lonely retail complex with a shadow-filled parking lot seven miles north of the campus—a secluded place where they could deal with the problem moaning on Dragon’s blankets.
Ladon looked back at the young woman. Only dim light filtered in through the roof vents but he saw her twitch. The chains rattled and a hollow clink resounded through his van.
A jolt of worry pulsed from Dragon.
Ladon did his best to ignore it. Fates weren’t Shifters. They were a completely different issue, and one requiring caution.
He unbuckled and crouched on the step up to the back of the vehicle. Fates never had problems with Burners. Fates never had problems, period. Past, present, or future, one member of their triad always knew what the hell was going on.
Except maybe this Fate.
She is injured, Dragon pushed into his mind. The beast hovered over the girl, nuzzling her hair and sniffing her chest. He’d covered her with a blanket and now fussed with its edges, tucking and untucking every time the slightest whimper crossed her lips.
Ladon squeezed the side of the passenger seat and the leather deformed under his fingers. They wouldn’t have chased those damned Burners across Wisconsin if they had known Fates were involved.
That is not true. Dragon snorted out a small curl of flame.
“Yes, it is.” They stayed away from Fates, even beautiful ones who’d just activated.
How many Shifters did those Burners eat? They murdered over a dozen normals when they attacked that mall. You would have helped, even if you knew a Fate was involved. The beast sniffed at the girl’s hair again. She needs our help as much as the Shifters.
Her chest rose and fell in shallow inhales. She moaned again. Ladon stared, unwilling to move closer. Best to be careful and keep his distance.
The beast lifted one of her wrists. Her burns are not bad. The chains bounced against the floor and filled the van with a discordant rasp. She will not blister.
Ladon crossed his arms, and the plating on his jacket rattled when he rolled his shoulders.
She might be hurt and unconscious, but she was still a Fate. “Quit clucking over her like a damned hen.”
Dragon waved his head side-to-side. Do not yell.
“I am not yelling! We need to get rid of her.” Fast, before her family showed up.
Dragon draped his talons over her hip. His irritation poked at the edges of Ladon’s mind like nettle spines rubbing his skin.
The patterns on the beast’s hide sped up and he dropped his head low. One big cat eye glared at Ladon. She needs our help.
Ladon moved into the back and knelt next to the girl. Terror still contorted her face but it did nothing to hide her beauty. The lush roundness of her body and the warm glow of her skin indicated Spanish somewhere in her ancestry. The enticing tones of her thick hair suggested something else mixed in as well—maybe Irish. Yet the planes of her face seemed Germanic.
And her eyes…
Did he see what he thought he’d seen in the street next to the campus parking lot? The way she’d looked at him right before she passed out had held more openness than he’d seen from a woman in a very long time, if ever.
He sat back. Gaining control of the situation had to be his priority.
He’d long ago had his fill of women and their demands. And their disappointed looks and their leaving. He didn’t need aggravation from one with the ability to see either the past, the present, or the future.
Ladon stared out into the parking lot as he unzipped his jacket. Dragon’s nascent attachment was influencing his responses. It had to be. Fates caused more problems than they solved.
Most of the time. Except when they wanted to help.
“She can’t stay with us,” he said. Whichever Fate ability she had—seeing the past, the present, or the future—wasn’t enough to justify keeping her around.
Ladon threw his jacket at the van wall. Giving in was not an option. Not with a Fate.
The jacket’s plating caught the back of the passenger seat and a loud rip screeched through the van as the armor opened a hole in the seat’s leather.
Ladon slapped the floor. First the Burners escape. Then a Fate in his van. Now damage to his seats?
The top of an empty vodka bottle poked out from under a stray t-shirt. He threw the bottle at the rip and it lodged in the frame, neck first, with its body angled toward the van’s roof.
A low grumble rolled from Dragon.
Ladon maneuvered around the beast and kicked a pile of magazines and clothes into the corner. “So what do we do with her?”
She must come with us. Dragon began cleaning her wounds. He fully retracted his talons and flattened his digits, and his plate-sized claw-hands took on an almost human-like shape. Even after all the centuries they’d shared, Ladon still didn’t understand how Dragon manipulated his bones to create such changes—or how he managed to do such delicate work.
The beast gently wrapped the girl’s burns in bandages and tucked the material between her skin and the cuffs. Stubborn as he was, he’d continue to care for the girl until he felt she was safe. He’d ignore all of Ladon’s words and every pulse of annoyance he pushed to the beast. Dragon saw an injured young woman and not a Fate, and he was going to treat her as such, no matter how vigorously Ladon objected.
Ladon knelt next to her again and peered at the perfect contours of her face. She’d been unconscious for longer than she should be.
Games of Fate (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 1) Page 3