Men And Beasts (Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Book 6)

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Men And Beasts (Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Book 6) Page 3

by Kris Austen Radcliffe


  The shard was sharp, as well. As sharp as his Poke.

  Whatever material the damned things were made of kept its sharpness. Billy had sliced through more than one lock and door with his beloved Poke to find himself food. Poke had gotten them the brilliant SUV behind them, up a little on the hill and behind a tree.

  The “Nate” naming bit set Billy on edge. He’d sent away his minions—they could not be trusted around a crazy man who should be with a dragon. Either they’d lose control and try to eat him, or he’d twitch just a little too much and one of them would lose a head. Then there’d be a mighty boom, and bad shite would follow.

  Billy tapped his fingers in the air, as if playing a piano, to distract himself. Since the princess upgraded him, his control had become magnificent. Now, he could, if he concentrated, hold in his Burner stench. He could also, if he concentrated, walk among the normals without getting too many looks.

  If he’d eaten. He sighed and returned his gaze to the building.

  The sword currently poking over his shoulder from its sweet, mechanical scabbard got a lot of looks, though.

  He never removed it from his person. He had something special strapped to his back. Something those bastards at Praesagio Industries wanted back.

  He glanced at the twitching “Nate.” Praesagio probably wanted back the sword as much as the princess wanted her boyfriend.

  “Hey.” Billy snapped his fingers. “Concentrate, mate.” Sometimes telling his companion to pay attention helped to clear the twitching.

  “Nate’s” skin looked pale again.

  His scent shifted when he twitched. The whole sunshine and dragon-spiced hints that he normally carried when he was who he really was vanished into a haze that reminded Billy of ozone. It didn’t smell like the sharp, piercing not good stink of ozone. Not at all. But it did carry the same warning of electrical fires.

  “Nate’s” brain wasn’t working correctly. Nor did Billy understand why he’d decided to call himself “Nathaniel.” The man was obviously deluded.

  Billy decided to call him Ladon-Nate, though not to his face, instead settling on “Boyfriend” because…

  Well, because he was Billy Bare and Ladon-Nate still deserved all the ribbing Billy could muster.

  “Map,” Ladon-Nate said. He tugged on the black t-shirt Billy had stolen for him—he might not understand that he was Ladon of the Dracos, a man Shifters and Burners alike feared, but he still had his eccentricities.

  No clothes with even a hint of color. Billy even stole him a pair of black-lensed sunglasses.

  He’d also taped the shard to Ladon-Nate’s cast with black duct tape. He’d almost used electrical tape, but it wasn’t sticky enough and Billy suspected that the shard was doing something important. What, he didn’t know. Ladon-Nate was clueless. But that shard had properties. Billy felt odd when he touched it.

  And Ladon-Nate seemed calmer knowing that he carried the shard, so black duct tape saved the day. He’d stolen it from the same store where he’d snatched the maps his crazy companion so desired.

  “Aye, mate.” Billy peered at Ladon-Nate, trying to get a good look at his eyes. They’d been twitching too, just like his body. And every so often he’d stop moving. Stop everything and stare into space, his head very slowly turning to the left.

  Billy was pretty damned sure Ladon-Nate was not reacting well to being separated from his dragon—or his woman. Sometimes a few words accompanied the twitching, though Billy would rather not hear babblings about the princess.

  “Map,” Ladon-Nate said again. He patted at his black jeans as if he’d stuck the map in his front pocket.

  “You tucked it into your back pocket when we stopped, remember?”

  Ladon-Nate frowned, but his non-broken arm moved behind his back. “Ah…” he said, and pulled out the map. “North, Burner. Along this interstate.” He pointed at the freeway labeled I-20.

  Billy knew the route. He was to take Ladon-Nate to “the base” in Wyoming, though the part of Wyoming Ladon-Nate kept tapping on his map was farther east than Rock Springs, where his crazy traveling companion should go.

  And now Ladon-Nate wanted to drive into what looked to be one of the worst winter storms ever to blow in over the mountains since… when, Billy didn’t know, even if he was beginning to remember things. His life. His moments. The scent of arousal wafting off the women in his audiences, when he sang. The smiles of his bandmates. The beautiful greens and browns of his home—his real home in Manchester, not this new continent.

  The princess was a good American girl. And if he was to be King, he’d need to be a good American monarch.

  “Mate,” Billy said as he waved his hand in front of Ladon-Nate’s face. “What is your name?” He asked after every bad twitching spell. Why, he didn’t know. Seemed like a good idea.

  “My name?” Ladon-Nate pinched his lips together. Then he turned around and stomped toward their SUV. “We need to go. She needs me.”

  He’d been talking a lot about how “she’d asked him to come back.”

  Billy followed Ladon-Nate up the hill. “What’s her name then, huh?” Repetition helped Billy solidify memories. Maybe it helped Ladon-Nate as well.

  The other man stopped walking. He hung his head as he stared at the map. “Rysa Torres Drake,” he whispered. “The Prime. The Healer.” He sighed. “The wife of…” He blinked. “Sister of…” He blinked again. “Mother of…”

  “She’s not married yet, my friend.” Sometimes not goading the crazy man turned out to be more difficult than even Billy’s new magnificence could control.

  “We have spoken of this, Burner.” Ladon-Nate stared down the hill, at the school. “I do not understand how you survived, nor do I understand why. The reports were clear. You should not be here. Yet you are, and you have a history with Rysa.” He glared over the top of his black-lensed sunglasses at Billy. “You will refrain from asking questions with answers you are not cleared to know. You will provide me the cover I need to return safely to the base, and then you will get your official invitation to this wedding you so wish to attend.”

  He pushed his glasses back up his nose. “A wedding which, like your presence in this world, I also do not understand,” he muttered. Ladon-Nate shook his head.

  A new twitch moved through his body. Billy heard his teeth grinding and he, too, twitched at the sound.

  It stopped as fast as it started.

  Ladon-Nate pointed down the hill at the Victor D. Victor Magnet School for the Life Sciences. “What’s that building down there?”

  A memory lapse. Best to get Ladon-Nate on the road before he became upset.

  “It’s a high school, mate.” Billy tapped the shard he’d taped to Ladon-Nate’s cast. “Don’t lose that, now. The princess will be mad.”

  Ladon-Nate didn’t move. “Why are there trucks around a high school?” He snorted. “They look like classic vehicles.”

  “I don’t know,” Billy sort-of lied. He suspected Praesagio had something to do with Ladon-Nate’s predicament. What, he didn’t know.

  He did know, though, that they were not trustworthy.

  He had enough sense to keep his companion away from a building of Seraphim torture currently surrounded by asshole Fates.

  The Seraphim who built the school had done the same thing here that the Fates in Portland had—mixed burndust into the foundations. Used his people. To Fates and Shifters, the Burners were nothing but the raw material of their special, Fate-proof concrete.

  How many of his people had exploded to make that building a fortress? How many died?

  He fingered the strap of the scabbard riding between his shoulder blades. He was their king. The princess said. He had a magic sword and yet he was powerless to protect his own people?

  A boom rolled up the hill. Something at the high school exploded.

  His companion pointed again. “Did you do that, Burner?”

  Billy sniffed. “Perhaps I did, Boyfriend,” Billy said, using the old nickname
he’d given Ladon-Nate, knowing full well that it annoyed the man.

  He had not set fire to the high school. The only Praesagio building he would go near was in Portland, where they had labs.

  No one would hurt his people again.

  Ladon-Nate frowned. The disdain in his companion’s voice when he said “Burner” seemed instructed more than learned from experience. As did his maneuvering of maps.

  How was it that Ladon-Nate managed to act so… young? He stomped around like a teenager who’d just gotten his license to drive—as if he believed he knew everything and understood the workings of the world. Except that Ladon-Nate should understand the workings of the world.

  He smelled oh so tasty, too. Savory and tender like the immortal steak he was.

  Billy rubbed the tip of his nose the way Captain Russia—Derek Nicholson, the husband of the other one with a dragon—had, back when they wouldn’t let him burn down Trajan’s buildings in Portland. The entire complex had gone boom anyway.

  Billy fanned his fingers, remembering.

  The princess had done well by him, when she gave him a taste from her arm. She’d made him King. And she made it so that he remembered again.

  But if he was going to be as good a king as Captain Russia—Billy knew who Derek really was—then he’d have to keep his wits about him.

  Ladon-Nate fiddled with a map as if he had everything under control. “This map looks old.” He sniffed and shook his head as he tapped in the vicinity of Dallas. “This city is intact.”

  Billy had stolen the map off the counter of a convenience store three miles from here. It was so new it had never been unfolded.

  Again, Ladon-Nate acted odd.

  Billy shrugged it off.

  “We need to go north here.” Ladon-Nate tapped at I-25 in Colorado, obviously less concerned about the high school than Billy would have expected him to be.

  The freeway ran along the eastern side of the Rockies. “It’s winter. The mountains are unwise.” They’d been over this. Billy pointed at the sky. “Storm. Bad one. Look.” He usually wintered in the southern parts of the great nation of ‘Merica and avoided snow as much as he could.

  “Home is not in the south, Burner.” Ladon-Nate looked miffed.

  Billy wagged his finger at his companion’s nose. “My willingness to stand near you hides your presence from those who may not wish you to return home, Boyfriend.” He clicked his teeth. “My willingness to provide this service is tied to my status as best man.” And musical director—he’d almost finished the new song he planned to dedicate to the princess.

  Helping the princess would help his people, and it might get him back inside Praesagio Industries. He stared at the billowing storm clouds. He’d also promised Captain Russia that he’d burn Praesagio to the ground.

  And he was hungry.

  He glanced at the walking smorgasbord of immortally-aged beef not far from him. Ladon-Nate rubbed at his mohawk as if it bothered him.

  “I could use Poke and shave that off for you.” Maybe slice a little off a bicep, while he was at it. The man had more than enough muscle. Losing a nip for the cause wouldn’t bother him one bit.

  But it would bother the princess.

  Ladon-Nate rubbed at his head again. “I don’t think… shaving it… with a knife… is a good idea.”

  No, it probably wasn’t. Billy shrugged.

  “Can we go?” Ladon-Nate pointed up the hill at the service road and their comfy ride.

  At least driving into a bad storm would keep his flexing, broken-armed insurance happy.

  Even if it killed him, Billy could do that for his princess.

  Chapter Four

  Not-Human, the beast pushed into Derek’s head, ask if my kittens are safe.

  Derek pressed the edge of his cell phone into the ridge of his ear in hopes of distracting his body from his headache with a new, sharper pain.

  Every time the beast pushed to him, he felt as if Athena herself was about to burst from his temple. Rysa’s healings helped up to a point. For the first time since she made him Dracae, he regretted his imperviousness to Shifter enthrallings and healings. A dose of ‘no pain’ would do him good right now.

  Mr. Bower’s ability to read the beast’s skin helped. The beast “talked” to Gavin instead of Derek, but Dragon’s worry about his three feline charges made him forget to flash to his new friend and he pushed his questions into Derek’s head instead.

  Dragon had reluctantly handed over the little fluff balls to the staff of The Land of Milk and Honey when their plane had landed in Missouri to refuel, before they made their way to Texas.

  At the time, Derek and the beast had been silent about vertigo caused by the take-off, cruising speed, and landing of the Praesagio plane, and about how being in the air made Derek’s gut curl up into a tight knot and the beast’s throat rise into his mouth.

  Time had been of the essence, so they dealt with it; but if they had flown the return trip from Texas to Wyoming, there would have been trouble. Set-on-fire-by-dragon-breath trouble.

  So Derek had herded the beast onto the massive Praesagio bus. The back half of the vehicle had been hastily stripped to make room for the thirteen-foot-long dragon. Derek’s cousin’s people had been kind enough to provide a just-as-massive loose stack of cushions and rugs to compensate. The beast nudged and piled, and had found some comfort.

  Now, he blasted questions about his kittens into Derek’s exhausted and throbbing head.

  Dragon’s question came more as a packet of energy than as a sentence. The entire inquiry manifested as a structure of image, emotion, and connectivity: Visual and tactile images of the three surviving kittens formed behind Derek’s eyes and along the tips of his fingers, accompanied by the innate hierarchical ordering of the kitten’s access to their now-dead mother. The dominant kitten—the snow-colored puffball named Retro—took up more space in the structure, followed by the medium-toned one, Soyuz, then the dark one, Astro. Instead of a sense of the dead Booster, a hole gaped inside Dragon’s construct of the cats, as did a larger, darker hole where the kittens’ mother was supposed to be.

  Derek rubbed his cell phone against his ear again and pinched his eyes closed. He exhaled his breath, hoping to clear the phantom memory-smells of kitten meows, litter boxes, and fish-flavored cat food. But he could not rid from his perception the feel of the tiny kittens brushing against the beast’s giant hand.

  The bus inched along I-25 into Cheyenne. Derek sat in one of the well-cushioned swivel seats near the beast, who lay as a large heap of dragon on his mound of Praesagio sky- and banana-colored pillows, over the rear double-axle. Jagged, clashing colors and patterns jerked across his hide. He would flash when their connection flickered because of the bumps in the road. Mostly, though, the beast rested with his head on his front limbs as both Not-Human and Dragon did their best to hold onto each other.

  Gavin Bower sat on the floor of the bus next to the beast’s head. The young man had spent the entire drive more concerned about the beast than his own safety or comfort, and looked it. His skin paled and shadows had formed under his Romanov-worthy bright eyes. He had tended to both Dragon and Derek during the trip, checking wounds and running interference with the Fates between lessons with the voice enthraller and whispers with his love, Daisy.

  Rysa stared out the window and Daisy stared at Rysa. The “unnamed triad” rode in the bus as well, the past-seer at the back, the present-seer in the middle near Derek, and the future-seer driving through the sleet and wind; Derek felt the continuous blast of his sand-in-wind seer.

  Gavin rubbed the beast’s crest. “You are concerned about…” He ran his finger down Dragon’s neck. “…the kittens?”

  The beast had been adamant about Gavin not leaving his side. They had a strange connection now, Dragon and the young Mr. Bower.

  Rysa waved off Mr. Bower’s new-found dragon comprehension as another emergent property of an unusually combined use of their abilities. Gavin, she said, was manifes
ting a side effect not all that different from the many unexpected changes that had occurred with Derek when she healed him and made him Dracae.

  Gavin, it seemed, was manifesting a visual version of hearing the beasts, though he had not, as of yet, manifested any physical changes.

  The young man had rolled his eyes and signed It’s visual and tactile, his hands moving quickly through his American Sign Language, then he tapped the Praesagio-built high-tech hearing aids in his ears.

  The irony of the situation had not been lost on any of them.

  “Have you spoken to anyone at The Land?” Derek said into his phone. He and Wife—he would not call her Sister—discussed hotel plans, not the welfare of lesser beasts. But he could ask, even if it was a distraction.

  Outside the bus, the storm worsened. They would not make it to Rock Springs, much less get the buses up the county road to the garage, nor could they take the trucks up to the cave.

  “Daisy calls in every few hours,” Wife said. She had her phone on speaker so she would not need to take her hands off her bus’s steering wheel.

  Five guards from The Land rode with Wife and her beast, but she had driven the entire route from Texas.

  If Brother had been here, he would have done the same. Wife’s and Brother’s access to dragon-perceiving and their superhuman reflexes made them the best drivers in all situations.

  Derek rubbed his face. He felt as fractured as Dragon—and as random as Rysa. Exhaustion did that to a man. “The beast asks about his kittens,” he said.

  “Ah…” Wife paused and even though Derek could not see her, he knew she spoke to her dragon. “Last check indicated all animals are fine. Radar and Ragnar care for the kittens.”

 

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