Muffled sniffles echoed from inside the building.
“What did you see? Don’t pull away from us!” What if she ran away for good? “Tell me what’s wrong!” If she’d seen the War Babies, she’d have said something, not hid in a picnic shelter restroom.
Which meant he caused whatever triggered her reaction—or would cause it.
Rysa hiccupped. “You’re the second man I’ve been with.”
Second? He stepped back from the door. Was this about that boy? The one who hurt her?
Ladon slammed his fist against the door’s frame. He said “two days together” and her past-seer must have fired a terrible memory into her present. Part of him breathed again—she hadn’t seen the future. What tore at her wasn’t some stupid behavior he might do.
The past idiocy of others he could deal with. I’m going to find that boy, he pushed to Dragon.
Why?
The beast would not approve of his answer so Ladon ignored the question. Will you move, please?
She won’t allow me to touch her, but she won’t allow me to leave, either.
Ladon kicked at the dirt. What did that little punk do to her? “Rysa! Come out!”
A sob echoed through the wall. “I’m… I’m…” She trailed off without finishing.
She signed ‘I’m bad for you.’
Ladon slapped the wall. “Bullshit!” he yelled.
Twenty-three centuries of companions and wives who watched him from the corners of their eyes, always with a twinge of tension. They didn’t think he noticed, but he did. Not one of them had trusted him. Not one had touched his connection to the beast.
And now memories of some damned normal made Rysa think she was bad for him?
He didn’t care about her attention problems. He didn’t care if others found her anxiety issues irritating, either. He only cared about the woman and the joy they’d found together. “Finding you was the best thing that has ever happened to us!”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does!” He’d find that boy and smack the life out of his pathetic head.
You will not.
“Why?” Ladon shouted.
Another sob. “Because… because….”
Because you promised Rysa you would earn the joy she gives us.
Ladon hollered. No one caused trauma to his woman and got away with it. “What did he do to you?”
“What are you talking about?” The sobs subsided.
She has moved closer but she still refuses to allow me to touch her.
“That boy. The normal who hurt you.”
She paused. “What? Why?”
“Why? You’ve locked yourself in a restroom!”
“He has nothing to do with this!”
“That’s it!” Ladon smacked the building again. This time, he knocked loose a brick. “I’m going to find him. He’s going to apologize. Down on his knees, his forehead pressed to your feet. He’s going to beg for your forgiveness.” The punk would offer a sincere apology. He’d mean every word of it or he’d lose fingers. Maybe a whole hand. Dragon could cauterize the wound.
“Ladon! No, you are not!”
“Yes, I am.” He paced next to Dragon’s tail. “Do you think I will tolerate this? You crying in a park restroom? Hurting this way?”
“Ladon! You can’t!” Her voice spread out thin and high-pitched.
He stopped pacing. His hearing pinpointed to her breathing. His vision to the edges of the door. No more thoughts of revenge clouded his mind. “After what just happened, I can’t let this be.” He’d promised she’d be safe. That past, present, or future, nothing more would stalk her.
“He’s dead,” Rysa sobbed. “He wrapped himself up in my life and he went home and his car got hit by a semi on 94 outside of Janesville. He died and his cousin died, too. They died in the snow on a freeway in Wisconsin because I had a bad feeling and he wouldn’t listen when I asked him to please wait half an hour before he left.”
The little bastard hurt her, ignored her pleas, and ended up dead. “Beautiful, I’m sorry.” Served him right. But his stupidity killed part of her, too. “It wasn’t your fault. Even if your seers had been active, you couldn’t have stopped him.” Even dead, his ghost tore open wounds.
“Gavin decided my freshman year that he wanted to be part of my life, and what happened to him? The Burners almost ate him. I almost brought ruin down on him, too.”
Damn it, why wouldn’t she let him in? He smacked the doorframe again. “Rysa, you cannot think any of it was your fault.”
“I’m a goddamned Fate!” Her sobbing increased. “I’m a Fate who can’t control her impulses and… and…” Her sobs became more harsh and raspy.
She backs away from me.
“You can’t… Love, you can’t think this way.” She’d lose herself in it.
“Ladon, leave me alone.” Her words edged bitter and broken through the wall.
She is hyperventilating.
He heard the terror in her voice. The difficulty breathing. “Rysa?”
She paused. “I should have waited. I should have made sure that…” She hiccupped. “That you and Dragon would be okay.”
“Move.” Ladon leaned against the beast. This wasn’t about that boy. Her future-seer showed her something that frightened her so deeply she pushed them away. “Please.”
Dragon backed out of the doorway.
“No! No! I’ve tangled you up with me and—” She bolted around Dragon.
“Rysa!”
She skidded on the gravel. She wrapped her arms around her chest as if trying to hold in the sobs. Dragon leaped over her head and landed between her and the trees. He circled and kept his head low.
Rysa bent over and dropped her arms to her belly. “I see what’s inevitable now. We… we can’t…”
“Rysa…” He stepped closer, but she backed away.
“I know now what kind of…” She looked away. “I’m sorry I snared you. It can’t be anything more than just sex.”
“Snared me? Just sex?” Those four words sliced him open from chest to groin.
She didn’t believe that. She couldn’t believe it. Her head hung and a rasping hiccup pulled from her chest.
Her terror crushed down on his ribcage. She’d lose herself to this. And he’d lose her. “Damn it, Rysa, look at me!”
“No.”
Dragon reeled behind her, just as confused as Ladon.
“That was not just sex!” He pointed at the van. “You didn’t think it was just sex before your seers flared.” Underneath, was this what she thought of herself? “With you, it will never be just sex! Never.”
Dragon crept forward but she pushed him away. If she dropped too far, these thoughts would kill her. She’d cut herself off.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. Or what I want. I’m a Fate and I’m your death.”
He wrapped his arms around her though she pushed against him, too. “No you are not. You’re not my death. You won’t be. Ever. You touched Dragon and color returned to his world. You touched me and I came back to life. You’re—”
She twisted away. “I don’t have control. I thought I did, but I don’t. Penny gave me something fake.”
“No, love, she could only coax out what’s in you. So it has to be there. You have what you need.”
She shook her head and pulled her arms tighter. She pointed at her temple. “There’s been a hole since …” She slapped the side of her head. “…since Dragon smacked my cousins. The future flooded through.” She pointed at the van. “Just now. When Dragon went to scratch his back on the trees. The future ripped open the hole and now I see fire and I see you dead, Ladon! I’m your death!” Her throat constricted like she wanted to scream, but nothing came out.
She hit the side of her head again.
This isn’t right, he pushed to Dragon. Hitting herself, the sudden, overwhelming fear—Rysa did not have control of what was happening to her. This wasn’t a panic attack, either. Something—someone—was do
ing this to her.
She’s been attacked. Ladon peered out into the trees.
Yes, Dragon pushed. He, too, watched the trees.
The War Babies must have gouged her mind during the Texas vision. Do you feel it? What they did? Their damage was manifesting now.
They would bleed out at his feet for this.
Dragon sniffed Rysa’s head. Her seers feel wrong.
The Draki Prime’s seers had been a perfectly tuned trio of instruments. The War Babies’ seers thundered like a discordant and violent storm. But the Jani Prime, the triad of Rysa’s mother, they’d been in the middle—cymbals in the wind, chimes, and hammers on a metal drum.
Sometimes Rysa’s seers siphoned. Sometimes they added. But they always sang when they touched Ladon’s mind, and they always embraced.
But not now. Her music clanged. Her touch hammered. Her seers felt not as if she’d lost control, but as if her control had been stolen from her.
“Rysa.” Ladon extended his hand.
Daniel could override other future-seers, Dragon pushed. The beast surrounded them both, and blocked all views from the trees and the lot entrance.
Centuries ago, Ladon had watched Daniel shape the future into a weapon and thrust it into the minds of a triad who didn’t have the experience to fight it.
Ladon swung her into his arms. “We need to get you back to the van. Now.” The shadows of the park took on a menace that they had not had a moment ago. “You’re not safe out here.”
She sobbed against his chest but she didn’t hit him again. “I won’t hurt you. I should have waited. I’m impulsive and I should have remembered and made sure you would be okay.”
He stopped halfway to the van. “That’s not you talking.”
“I was eleven when my dad left.” Another sob. “I hurt the men I love.”
Everything in his soul slammed against his chest. Everything he felt, everything reverberating to him from Dragon, every kiss, every touch that had spoken more volumes than any word.
Every single moment he’d spent with her welled up.
He dropped to his knees on the damp pavement, and cinched his arms tight around the woman who had become his core the first moment he saw her. The woman whose touch righted his world.
The men she loved hurt her. But it stopped now, here, in this park.
We must leave, Dragon pushed.
Trees rustled. The illumination from the road blinked and dipped slightly with each passing car. Dragon dropped into complete invisibility as he backed toward the playground. After centuries of practice with the Draki Prime, the dragons had learned to hide themselves from both Shifters and Fates, including Primes.
Because only one explanation accounted for what was happening. Only one, and it wasn’t Les Enfants de Guerre.
No matter how powerful they were, their future-seer, Metus, wasn’t Prime enough to inflict this kind of damage. In all Ladon’s twenty-three centuries, he knew of only two Fates other than Daniel who could create an injection—Janus, his fellow Progenitor and the man from whom all Fates descended.
And Janus’s son.
A dark sedan with tinted windows spun into the parking lot.
Ladon didn’t need Fate abilities to know who it was.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rysa pressed her palm against her temple. Her seers felt permanently on.
Cold, horrid bugs flooded out of the crack in the back of her mind. They scurried and they clicked and they formed images—Ladon covered in so much blood it dripped from his arm. Pain wafted off him like the stink of a Burner. Dragon’s mind shredded as his human bled out.
She couldn’t stop the fire and blood and dissolution.
“I should have made sure.” She should have stopped herself. Thought things through. But no, she acted impulsive and stupid because a wonderful man wanted to be with her.
She curled into a ball against Ladon’s chest even though she should run. She should leave and take her burning ADHD as far away from him and Dragon as possible.
“Fight it. Hold on.” Ladon tensed. Every one of his ligaments stretched and his body reflected her torment back to her.
Dragon stepped over his humans and placed his body as shield between them and the sedan. He flashed in microsecond bursts of angry reds and oranges. After-images filled Rysa’s eyes and she squinted. For a blinding split-second, the pavement turned dust beige and the sky flame blue.
“Don’t trust your seers.” Ladon nodded toward the sedan.
They were trying to calm her spasming seers and Dragon’s memories rushed through her consciousness—her touch on his snout. The wonder in her eyes when he held her above the asphalt. Hello. And he blazed more beautiful than any other creature on Earth.
The memories burst to vapors.
Ladon lifted her into his arms. A new symphony played out in the tactile sense of his skin and the tender voice of his words, “Beautiful,” he would say. It echoed in her head. “Beloved.” Under the pain in her skull, her seers grasped one thin filament of possibility—Ladon, content and entwined with her. His lips on her forehead. Her head on his shoulder.
“Put me down!” It was a wish. It could only be a wish.
“No. This isn’t you. You’re being twisted up.” His chest tightened under her cheek as air whistled through his clenched teeth. “By the gods, we feel it. We feel what’s happening to you.”
The beast mimicked the gray world and the speed of information transfer flowing around her increased.
“We will not leave you.” Ladon’s arms stayed like steel as he dropped her feet to the pavement. “We will get you through this.”
The sedan’s door swung open and a tall man unfolded from the interior. The expensive suit he wore draped beautifully, but it looked unkempt. Singed.
She knew who he was. She’d seen him in the Texas vision. Auburn hair, similar to but lighter than hers. Wiry and strong, like her mother. Eyes so blue they flashed in the park’s one light.
Her uncle Faustus.
His skin looked red, as if he’d spent too much time under a heat lamp. His fingers twitched as he adjusted his cuffs.
“How can he be here? He’s dead.”
Ladon enfolded her with his arms tight around her belly and his chest against her back. He pressed his chin against her cheek. “He lied. He’s good at it.”
The War Babies faked the vision. They stitched into the present a fake view of the past and made it look as if the Burners killed her uncle in Texas.
Twitching again, Faustus stepped forward, then back toward the sedan. “So you recognize your family? Good. Good.” A quick growl popped out of his throat and he slammed his fist against the top of the car. “You’re a good Jani child. A good one.”
“Burndust,” Ladon said. “He’s snorting burndust to stay invisible.”
The dust did the same things to his body that Rysa had seen in her mother when she ingested the implosion. The shuddering. The anger. The damage. He wouldn’t feel the effects of the sickness in his joints either, no matter how much they hurt.
“Why did Ladon-Dragon vanish?” Faustus scratched his chin.
“He’s deciding if he should kill you.”
Faustus frowned and walked forward. He stopped about five feet away and studied Rysa. Then he clapped once before pointing at Ladon.
“You want to stay with him, pumpkin? He kills me and your mother drops dead from the sickness.” He sniffed and tapped his cheek. “She’s not that strong. No. She’ll drop where she stands. Stood.” Another sniff. “That pathetic British Burner will gorge himself on her flesh before she cools.” He shook his head, his disapproval registering as a dramatic frown. “Damned Burners show no respect.”
“Get out of her head.”
Her uncle was in her head? Fire was in her head. The entire world burned.
She’d seen this, at the house—the burning world—and she’d forgotten because she let her feelings for Ladon and her out-of-control abilities and the War Babies t
hreatening her mom take over. She forgot because she couldn’t pay attention. But the world would burn. People would die. And she’d cause it.
Faustus laughed and leaned forward. “Why? She needs to see what’s coming.” He whistled and pointed at Rysa. “She’s the catalyst. She’s the one who will harness their chaos. She’s the Ambusti Prime.”
“Get out of her head. Right. Now,” Ladon growled.
Faustus sighed a grand exhalation of air to accompany the wide sweep of his arms. “Pumpkin.” He extended his hand. “Let’s go. He’s not what you think he is.”
An ignited world gurgled in the back of her throat and she couldn’t keep anything straight. “You’re a liar. You beat my aunt and your children murder and I won’t go to the Burners! I know what will happen and I won’t be their tribute.”
She buckled forward but Ladon laced his fingers with hers, his grip so tight it hurt, and held her up.
Faustus paced to the left and grimaced before pacing back to the right. He bounced on his heels, and jolted again.
He laughed like a manic clown. “Tribute? Please. Parcae are not tribute. We are the measure of civilization. The shapers of purpose. All our sacrifices move forward what must be.” He pointed at Ladon’s head. “Did he tell you that ridiculous story?”
Neither Rysa nor Ladon answered.
Faustus guffawed. “Of course he did! Still a simpleton, I see. You share two brains. You should be a genius. But there’s not much in either head, is there?”
Ladon stepped in front of Rysa and used his body as a wall between her and Faustus. She watched her uncle over his shoulder.
Faustus jabbed a finger into the air several times before he waved his arms. “You’re the damned ghouls’ savior.”
The Burners were going to eat her—tear her body into little pieces and pass around a bowl full of Rysa so they all got a mouthful.
Faustus paced again. “What the hell are you going to do with your life? Use your seers to cheat on exams? Become a park ranger? Have visions of lions and tigers and bears? Or are you going to lay a finger to the winds of time every evening—” He licked his finger and held it out. “—as you drive home to your suburban hovel?” He poked the finger at Ladon. “One must know exactly what dinner to cook for him each night.”
Games of Fate (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 1) Page 21