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

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Daisy stood between them and Aiden. Asar and the poker players, between them and Ethne. No one had a clean shot.

  A blood-on-metal present-seer flared outward from Ethne again and the gun she’d taken off Asar came up. She aimed at the cop’s head.

  She’s taking out the most capable first, Daisy thought. Asar, semiconscious and on the floor, would be next. Get her attention. Slow her down. “Ethne!” she yelled.

  The distraction was enough. The cop, moving fast, ducked and rolled under the table. Ethne fired as she stepped back, thankfully missing.

  Chips and cards bounced, and a drink tipped. Ethne’s seer screamed and her arms rose as if to shield her face.

  The entire table flew upward and toward the Fate. She yelled, but the cop shoved what had to be a two-hundred-fifty-pound piece of furniture across the restaurant floor the way a Roman soldier would press into a shield.

  By the bar, Aiden kicked Gavin and pushed him down onto the floor, thankfully no longer slashing with his glistening glass needles.

  He forced one of the needles into his own forearm. It slid in fast and Aiden licked his lips as if he liked the taste of his own pain. He looked beyond Daisy, into the hallway and past Amir. Quickly, he forced the other needle into his other forearm.

  A new wave hit. White splashed Daisy’s vision—pure white light, pure white fire, pure otherness that made Daisy gasp and stagger as if the wave had physically pushed her forward.

  Aiden and Ethne, together, blasted out their seers.

  Behind her, Amir gagged. He doubled over, his face as deathly as his still brother’s, and vomited onto the carpet.

  The white wave had come from outside, not from Aiden or Ethne, but they acted as if they timed their own seer blasts to match the incoming energy. “What did you do?” she yelled.

  Involuntarily, she looked down the hallway, toward the back of the hotel. Did she just feel the death of a dragon? Did Fina murder one of the dragons? Because that much power could only—

  “I am new,” Aiden yelled. He held out his bleeding arms as if awaiting God’s purifying light, and imploded, like a Burner. But unlike a Burner, he did not crystalize or change. He simply pulled into a point, or sideways to a point, or toward a point Daisy could not see.

  He vanished. Literally, physically, vanished.

  “Sister-Dragon!” Daisy screamed. The imploding had to be a mirage. A dragon had to be in the bar. How else could Aiden have disappeared? Ethne staggered as if she was as surprised by her brother disappearing as Daisy, but no dragon ripped off her head.

  “On the floor, Ethne Blake! Away from the hostages. Now!” Ben yelled. A barrage of targeted ‘comply’ and ‘pacify’ rolled through the bar.

  Shooting wouldn’t get them answers, no matter how deeply Daisy wanted Ethne dead. Ben was right to enthrall the Fate.

  Ethne inhaled and held her breath. She zigzagged into the shadows, keeping herself out of a clean shot, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  A blast of blizzard air rolled into the bar—Ethne must have escaped through the loading doors in the kitchen.

  Others would deal with Ethne. Daisy needed to heal her man. Gavin groaned, his belly and forehead pressed into the carpet.

  “Where is it?” Daisy tapped along his spine. Please don’t be in his liver, she thought. Please.

  The cut on his back looked long and shallow, but blood flowed from the deep wound on his side. “Ben!” she screamed. “I need a healer!” Oh, God, she thought. “A human healer!”

  She touched Gavin’s face. “Honey?” His skin felt clammy and he looked too pale. “I think you’re going into shock.”

  “It’s under my rib,” he groaned. “Where is… where did he go…?”

  Amir set his weapon on the floor next to Gavin and bent over to check his eyes. “Asar is hurt. He told me to help you.” He checked Gavin’s pulse. “You must heal Mr. Bower. He will go into shock if you do not.” He glanced at the wound. “Blood loss.”

  If she moved the glass splinter in his side, she might sever a nerve or an artery. But if she didn’t…

  “I could enthrall you again. Make you animal, so I can heal you,” she said to Gavin.

  He shook his head. “I’ll… run…”

  He was right; terrified as he was, he’d probably try to bolt, which would cause a lot more damage.

  “I’ll hold him, Ms. Pavlovich.” Amir touched Gavin’s shoulders. “Do your best not to fight me, sir.”

  “Don’t call me… ‘sir.’” A low groan rolled out of Gavin. “Why are you here? Why me?” He lifted his head. “Tell me… the truth before I die.”

  “You are not going to die, sir.” Amir pressed down on Gavin’s shoulders.

  “Did your brother… tell you that?” Gavin closed his eyes. “I feel cold.”

  Shock. Carefully, Daisy touched the wound, looking for the area that needed the most healing. “Hold still.”

  Gavin stiffened.

  Amir nodded once. “Do it, Ms. Pavlovich.”

  “I’m going to try the same zap I did on Derek in the van before we left Minnesota.” If she focused her entire healing ability on the spot that bled, she could heal him one tiny bit of damage at a time. She’d keep healing him until she passed out, if she had to.

  In the van, she’d done something to Brother-Dragon’s talon. Changed it somehow. If she did the same to the glass, she might also be able to fuse to Gavin’s bone where it wouldn’t move and cause more damage.

  Gavin gripped the bar stool. Amir gripped his shoulders.

  Daisy spread her palm over the wound on his side, praying that the power she had would be enough. Healing Derek took extreme effort, but Gavin was normal, and she’d healed him before.

  Let this work. Daisy focused everything—all her healer, all her enthraller, all her strength—into her palm.

  Heat seared from her skin to his. Gavin yelped and the stink of burned flesh filled the air. He thrashed, but Amir held him steady. Daisy pulled back her hand.

  Over his rib, where her hand had rested, a bright-red burn mark welled up.

  “What did I do?” The uncovered portions of the wound still oozed blood, but the area where the glass needle sat next to Gavin’s bone looked as if she’d branded her handprint onto his flesh. “I don’t know if I just sealed in the glass or changed it into gelatin or fused it to your rib.”

  He nodded. “Motherfucker that hurts…” He panted though, and he still looked ghostly white. Slowly, he flopped onto his back and closed his eyes.

  What if she just killed her boyfriend?

  Amir chuckled. “Today’s youth does enjoy cursing.”

  Daisy couldn’t hold her own chuckle. “It helps a person deal with pain.” Physical, emotional, whatever hurt a person, swearing helped alleviate it. No wonder she and Rysa swore so much.

  Gavin wrapped his arm around her waist. “Daisy…”

  Is he blacking out? She knelt next to his face. “Hold on. Asar’s hurt too. Someone needs to get Rysa because she’s our strongest—”

  “Thank you.”

  He’d be okay. “You’re welcome.” At least this time, she didn’t have to turn him into an animal.

  “My brother needs me.” Amir stood. “You two stay here where you are secure. Do not run off, Ms. Pavlovich.”

  She nodded. Ethne escaped and something big happened outside, but Gavin needed her, and they did not know where Aiden vanished to. She was his preferred target; best to stay within sight of the security detail.

  Gavin grabbed Amir’s ankle. “Come on, man. Speak the truth. That whole Customer Heuristics bullshit is a cover, isn’t it? I’m in pain, here.”

  One side of Amir’s mouth curled upward. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “My brother said nothing of you asking questions.”

  “Rysa enthralled him with ‘find your center,’” Daisy said. “He will bug you until you give him the answer he wants to hear.”

  Gavin grunted.

  Amir knelt again
and his face took on the sly tips and pulls of a person who should not share a secret, but was about to anyway. “We are Praetorian Guard, sir.” Then he was up and moving away, toward his injured brother.

  Gavin dropped his head back onto the carpet. “Aiden said the same thing, upstairs.”

  Daisy lay down next to his uninjured side. She set her head on his shoulder and her hand over the wound. She wouldn’t fire a strong bolt, but a little background healing never hurt.

  “I’m assuming they’re Roman ninjas,” she said.

  Gavin chuckled, then laughed. Then coughed.

  Daisy put her hand on his chest. “Stop that.” What if the wound reopened? He still needed a real healer. The cut on his back needed looking at, and the blood still welled up around the burn mark.

  “They protect the emperors.” Gavin let out a pained snort.

  Daisy sat up. Amir helped Asar near the tipped poker table. She looked down at her boyfriend. He grinned.

  A decade ago, the angel Fate did tell her he was future-important. She grinned, too, and laid her head on his arm again. “Don’t get a big head,” she said, draping her arm over her man.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Moments earlier….

  Ice whipped and cut against Rysa’s skin. The howl of the wind blanketed the crackle of the falling snow. She was out here, on the edge of the hotel’s parking lot—on the edge of the distance a dragon’s human could move from his beast—but as far as she could see and hear, she’d wandered into the wilds of the mountains.

  Anything could find her out here in the whiteout.

  The storm distributed the halogen glow as a faint, silver glare. Indistinguishable road noise whipped with the flakes in the air, as did the hums and clicks of modern life. But she walked freezing and alone, inside an extreme bubble of the world’s power—Rysa Torres, the Draki Prime, the Fate who trudged through snow inside the eye of the planet’s gnawing, murderous temperament.

  She trudged, because Derek was out here with Fina Blake.

  A wet-sounding slap echoed inside the wind’s bubble. Wet, like something—someone—chewing. She sniffed.

  There, riding on the snow, a faint hint of Burner.

  Someone else groaned. The lip smacking continued.

  She had to believe that all the little changes, the small steps and the moments when she’d followed the instructions of her seers, set up a bypass in the what-is. That somehow, as the Draki Prime, she had manufactured enough luck to keep everyone she loved alive.

  “Burner…” a female voice hissed. Incoherent French words followed.

  Adrestia. Had Adrestia gotten control of a Burner? Did Fina get control of Addy?

  The shadow of a woman appeared in front of Rysa. The woman hung her head as if looking at her feet, but stood with her arms open as if offering a blessing.

  On the ground, at her feet, another shadow moved. Meat sizzled. And a small, acid-drenched spark flickered between the snowflakes.

  Rysa should scream for Anna. She should run for the hotel. Because a Burner gnawed on the chest of another shadow sprawled on the ground.

  Not Derek, she thought, but she needed to know.

  A clanging present-seer erupted from the woman looming over the Burner. “I know you are Reine des Brûleurs.”

  The Burner sat up. Slowly, he wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “Princess?”

  “Billy?” Mine screamed through Rysa’s mind and blotted out the need to run for the hotel. Addy hurt her. Addy tried to take her from Ladon. Addy murdered the original Draki Prime and now Addy stole her Burner? “Why are you here?”

  The shadow that was Billy vanished. He reappeared just as fast, standing directly in front of her.

  He’d wrapped Fina’s strips of invisible fabric around his arms and his face.

  “I….” He pointed over his shoulder. “She meant Captain Russia harm. She pushed a glass needle into his shoulder.” He held out his arm. “Then she slammed it into me.” He pointed at his neck. “Fast, she was. But…” He closed his lips into a thin line.

  “Billy…” He ate Fina. Right out here, in the parking lot. He went full monster and ate another monster.

  “I’m hungry.” He took a step back. “I stopped. I did. For you. But…” He glanced over his shoulder. “Captain Russia’s that way.” He pointed off to their left. “With a woman.”

  A woman? “Who, Billy?” Did Anna find Derek first? But Anna couldn’t come out this far. The dragons needed her.

  He shook his head. “I saw a woman after that one…” He pointed at the unmoving half-body on the ground. “…after she stuck the glass in me.” He held out his arm like a little kid.

  Her words still decorated his skin. I will listen to Rysa flowed from his wrist to his elbow. Rysa is my princess sprawled across the back of his hand. And I am King wrapped around his wrist.

  She peered at his neck, but saw no wound. Not that she would. He would have healed immediately and sealed the glass inside his body. “You didn’t pull it out? So it wouldn’t explode?”

  He nodded yes. “If you fuse it to the bone, it can’t hurt you no more.”

  Addy moved.

  “I’m sorry, luv.” Billy backed toward the body. “I didn’t do what’s right. I…” He scooped a bag off the ground. “Did you find him?”

  Her seers sang out as a chorus: Ladon. Her past, her present, her future. Her husband and the man whose presence would fix all the ills of her world.

  “He’s coming, Billy.” She knew it. She had to know it, to believe.

  The Burner nodded. “I let you down.”

  “No, Billy.” He didn’t let her down; he relapsed. But with Burners, a relapse caused deaths.

  But he was gone, vanished into the snow with his bag.

  Addy shook the way someone jolts awake from a bad dream. “You are why Metus and Timor abandoned me.”

  Her brothers.

  Rysa knew to dodge her strike. She knew about the bright blade in Addy’s hand and the hate pouring from her soul. She knew how to read the pings of the other woman’s present-seer. She also knew that one strike of her energy blade to Addy’s temple would put an end to a War Baby’s misery.

  She also knew it didn’t matter, because Addy’s misery was out of her hands.

  The War Baby shook. She stepped back at the same time her pinging present-seer vanished. “He’s here.” She pointed over Rysa’s shoulder. “Go fix Ladon.”

  Rysa whipped around to look, but all she saw was snow. When she looked back, Addy had disappeared into the blizzard.

  He’d let the princess down. He’d seen the shock and the horror in her eyes. She would always hate him now, the Burner boy who tried to be a man.

  He’d never been a man, not when he walked the world as a normal and certainly not after, when he fell into the hole with the white-hot teeth and the acid touch. He never stood up to what ate him from the inside out, the other hole, the spinning black hunger that sucked in his mind and his soul and made him search out whatever fill of gluttony was his choice at the time.

  Cocaine, mostly. Alcohol, as well. After, meat. The hunger took over and drew him in. It would kill him if he didn’t feed it, if he didn’t slow it down by throwing boulders and asteroids into its maw. Chunks of his life. His music. The women he’d loved. His friends and his family. Because if he didn’t feed it, if he didn’t let it have what it wanted, he would become it.

  Nothing scared Billy more than the moments he’d become his hunger.

  He remembered the moments. The princess fixed him and he knew what he did, even if the details never returned: The girl, the one he loved, who came with him on his first tour. She hadn’t been a model, or a taker. She’d loved him as much as he’d loved her.

  He hadn’t been strong enough then to stop the hunger, and she left him for good.

  The booze he never left on the tables, or the pills he never left in their bottles. The ones that drove away his music.

  The princess gave him a part of h
erself, a literal mouthful of body and blood, and it had not been enough. He’d let down his savior.

  He’d go, now, into the storm. Sit on the frozen ground and will his body to hunger. He’d fizzle away.

  The snow hissed and spit and he walked away from the hotel, his magic sword, now in its bag, clutched to his chest. He should have given it to the princess. Set in the hands of the worthy, yet he could not.

  Another sign of his weakness.

  How was he to enter Praesagio Industries and avenge his people if he could not do what was right?

  He shuffled through the snow and almost tripped over Captain Russia.

  “Mate.” Billy leaned down. “I don’t understand why she hurt you.” He looked around. “Why she stuck glass into either of us.”

  Captain Russia moaned.

  Maybe, this one time, Billy could do what was right. “Princess!” he yelled. “He’s this wa—”

  A woman manifested out of the snow. Her image whipped, then it didn’t, and a lovely bird, one taller than Scary Girlfriend but not by a lot, looked up at his face with odd, silver-streaked eyes. Her irises gleamed as if they should be blue, but the storm had gotten in, the cold and the ice, and she was now just a bit more than human.

  She wore an odd outfit, a formfitting uniform with a dark blue jacket. It looked as if it once carried insignias, but they’d been removed. Parts of what had to be armor covered her forearms and her shins. She looked as if she’d stripped off items to make moving less difficult, but left on what she needed the most.

  Two sheathed daggers were strapped to her thigh and the bands of two scabbards crisscrossed her front.

  Big, black curls cascaded from her long ponytail. When she pointed at his sword-carrying bag, they fell over her shoulder.

  He saw her before. She’d talked to Captain Russia. But that version of her had been taller, with brown hair, and wearing what looked like turn-of-the-century military clothes.

  This bird wore military garb that also looked turn-of-the-century, but a century that hadn’t happened yet.

  “You were here before,” he said. But that version had had true blue eyes the same color as the Tsar’s, and her hair hadn’t been the raven, Ladon-like black on this one’s head.