She looked toward Dragon’s spot on the wall, her hand still in his, the perfect line of her jaw accented by the tilt of her head. She didn’t move away.
She likes us.
Ladon glanced at the wall. Happiness flowed from the beast in warm waves of color and pattern.
But Penny’s words still echoed in his mind. He’d fixed this moment, given Rysa this small joy, but she’d ask sooner or later. Her brow would crinkle and she’d say “Wait…” and his past would register. She’d want him to explain. And all the promise he’d seen in her eyes would vanish forever, only to be replaced by disappointment and anger.
Now, next to him, she peered down the aisle. “The cell phones are behind the cameras.”
A step moved her inches away. He pulled her back, wanting this moment to last. Wanting not to think about when she’d drop her gaze and mutter that he wasn’t someone she could be with.
Rysa looked up, her beautiful face in the present, in the right now, happy for the first time since they’d met. The world brightened. She wasn’t in a vision. She wasn’t seeing a future that might not come to pass or a past he couldn’t escape. She saw him, and she smiled.
It took all his effort not to pick her up. Not to kiss her neck and her cheeks and her lips and do his best, in the present, to make sure her smile never faded.
An electronic whine hit his skull like someone threw a rock at his temple—a customer with an open cell phone walked by. The pain yanked his mind back to the glaring harshness of the damned store.
“Are you okay?” Rysa glanced around. “All the cell phones?”
He nodded and dropped his head to her shoulder as he sought the comfort of her closeness. Her fingers moved up his arms and cupped his biceps.
“Give me your credit card. I’ll get a prepaid phone and meet you outside. It won’t take long.” She tapped his elbows.
She wanted to go into the store without him? He’d have to let go. And this store stretched deeper than his connection to Dragon.
“Don’t make that face. I’ll be fine. There’s not a single Burner around.”
The aisles did look clear. Neither he nor Dragon sensed any Shifters or Fates. “Are you sure?” He’d be happier if she had a phone not linked to her current number.
“It’s bad enough you’ve been driving around with yours on. Plus, the faster we’re done here, the faster we get dinner.” As quickly as she said the words, she smoothed her fingers over his stomach.
The full force of what had been brewing since Minneapolis exploded from the skin of his belly up into his chest. He pulled her into a tight embrace. Every moment they’d been together, every ounce of joy she brought to both him and Dragon, moved from his lips to hers. The kiss, quick but intense, was meant to share it all.
Color deepened across her cheeks. She pulled back but didn’t let go. “Ladon!” Her gaze darted about and she touched her chin. “You…oh.”
“Kissed you?”
“I didn’t think…” She bit her lip.
“What?” He hadn’t thought someone could look both completely happy and utterly embarrassed at the same time, yet she was. Maybe he should kiss her again.
A grumble of irritation rolled from Dragon. The beast felt left out, hanging on the wall and invisible. Ladon glanced over.
By the entrance, the employee in charge of dispensing faint-but-holier-than-thou sneers huffed and said something into her earpiece.
“You’re going to get us kicked out,” Rysa whispered, her eyes still huge and her hand still on her chin, like she didn’t know what to do.
It is noisy. My head hurts. I want to leave.
“We’ll get the van. Pull up front and wait for you. Then we’ll get him his fruit and us some take-out.” Under his hands, her hips swayed ever so slightly.
She might ask about his past, but tonight he’d prove his intent. So she’d know, now and always, what she meant to him and to the beast.
She nodded, biting her lip again. “I need your card if I’m going to buy a phone.”
Wallet out, he offered the plastic. He’d have Derek put her on his account. Get her a card of her own. “We’ll be right out front.”
Letting go of her hips took more effort than killing a Burner. More effort than fighting a class-one morpher. Carrying her out to the van would be like a morning stretch, his face turned to the brightness of the day, even if he kissed her the entire way and relied on Dragon to navigate the potholes.
She kissed his cheek. Softly, her perfect lips pressing his skin with what he could only describe as real, true affection. “Don’t run off.”
He’d stay with her like this for the rest of the evening, if he could. This close, touching this way. Knowing that he could make her happy. “We will always be here for you.”
Her lips rounded. “Oh.”
But her smile returned.
25
Ladon kissed her. In public, in a store, in front of people. He stepped forward and kissed her on the lips in a way that said he wanted more than friendship. More, not less. More.
He kissed her like he’d kissed her when she was in the vision.
Thinking wasn’t happening. And if she used her seers, she knew exactly what she’d see. Her back would arch and she’d moan in the store, in public, in front of the whole world.
She might anyway, the way he was looking at her. And if he kissed her again, she’d melt—a response just as embarrassing as an orgasm.
A moment to calm down, maybe get her mind under control, is what she needed. A moment without his sun-god scent driving her insane.
So she gave him a little shove. “Go on. I won’t be long.”
The next kiss landed as a gentle touch to her cheek. “You need us, call to Dragon.” Bits of concrete fell as Dragon dropped off the wall.
Ladon’s swagger made her tingle again. She watched his black jeans frame his exceptional backside as he walked away.
A little bounce escaped as she watched him walk through the sliding glass doors, even with all her effort. How fast could she find a phone? Something simple with prepaid minutes and no extras. She needed to stay on task. And to breathe. If she was too hyper, he still might not want her around.
No, they’d have dinner. She’d practice her new-found control. And maybe some more kissing.
She grinned as she walked into the store. First, the phone. Usually, phones were up front, but not in this place. They were behind the music players and across from the movies. Perhaps she should pick up a DVD player for Dragon, but not movies about bad dragons, because he’d brood. Maybe turn gray. That, she didn’t want to see. The players were tucked away with the car stereos for some stupid reason and—
She pulled her attention back to finding a phone. Should she text Gavin? The Feds were likely tracing calls to his number. Guilt prodded. He worried about her. She grabbed a phone off a shelf and turned it over in her hands.
“A Fate’s seer sure is grating.”
Rysa spun but the big Shifter grabbed her arms. Taller than Ladon, wider too, he held her wrists with an iron grip.
“No screaming.” His voice modulated the way Penny’s had. “No running.”
Dragon! she yelled in her head.
The Shifter snickered, one corner of his mouth higher than the other. His flat nose bobbed under his receding hairline.
“Why are you so ugly?” she spit out. “Can’t all Shifters morph?”
He slapped. The sting trailed across her cheek. The lady at the end of the aisle gasped. The Shifter pointed at the woman, but his eyes stayed on Rysa. “Go away, normal.”
The woman blinked and backed out of the aisle.
“That witch Penny Sisto was right. You got a mouth.” He yanked Rysa toward the back of the store. “Do you have any idea how valuable you are? You’re an accessible Jani Fate.”
He sniffed her hair. “You smell nice. Got a good rack on you, too. No wonder he likes you. Is he taking you to his hidey-hole in Wyoming? You know he lives with his sis
ter, right? You want into that? Talk about dysfunctional.”
“Shut up,” she croaked. But with her new control, she found some will to fight his commands.
He stopped and she bumped into his smelly side. “Impressive, sweetcheeks. Fate’s got some immunity, huh? Don’t run into many who can resist. A couple of other enthrallers. A few of the healers.” Shrugging, he tugged her toward the store’s back room.
“Let me go.” The words clung to the roof of her mouth. Part of her wanted to spend the rest of her life with this ugly Shifter and his bad breath.
His massive shoulders danced when he laughed. “Is your boyfriend going to beat me up?” The backroom door swung when he dragged her through. “I walked right by you two when you were doing your cuddle-bunny routine by the doors. He didn’t sense me—”
Two hands wrapped around the Shifter’s head. Surprised, he reached under his arm toward a gun, but the fingers poking into his cheeks jerked.
She expected a snap. Something sounding like a movie noise, sharp and faintly metallic. But the Shifter’s neck broke with a wet grinding scratch. A gurgle followed as he tried one last time to breathe.
Ladon stepped back, his face solidified cold. The Shifter’s body flopped at his feet and rolled onto its side. The man’s eyes bulged, his legs convulsing.
Ladon shook off the hardness, a wave moving from his core to his neck and face. He stepped over the Shifter and took her arms, checking for wounds. “Did he hurt you?” His palm glided over her shoulder as he checked her eyes. “Did he give you specific instructions? Tell you to hurt yourself if you got away?” His gaze darted around the storeroom. “Were there others? Were you able to fight his control? He’s likely a high class-two. Even low class-two enthrallers are dangerous.”
Ladon killed a Shifter. Snapped his neck. Right in front of her.
A crack appeared in the back of her mind. A big crack, glowing with the fire behind it, and a hot glare poured over her seers.
“Rys, are you okay?” Ladon pointed at a loading bay. “Dragon says we need to leave.”
“You killed him.” Were the Shifters monsters, like the Burners? Cruel and terrible. Penny was a total bitch, but—
“Rysa?”
Was this okay in his immortal mind? She stared at the Shifter on the floor.
His boot knocked the Shifter’s shoulder. “He’s okay.” He swung her into his arms and carried her off the end of the loading dock.
Nausea constricted her throat like a tilt-a-whirl whipping her head too fast. “Is that what you did to those Fates?” The words scattered across the pavement, broken shards dropping as the calm she’d felt minutes before shattered.
His stone face flitted so fast she almost missed it.
“No one touches you.” He gripped her fingers so tight they hurt. “No Fate. No Burner. No Shifter. They don’t come near you!”
A stereo growl reverberated through the loading dock. It issued from them both, Ladon in front of her and Dragon, invisible, somewhere to the side.
“Rysa, get in the van. He’ll call his friends when he wakes up.” He caught her arm to help her into the back.
She pushed him away. “I’ll get in on my own.”
Dragon rolled in behind her and slammed the door, leaving Ladon alone on the asphalt.
26
That Shifter could have killed you. If he had told you to die, you would have died. Dragon signed faster than normal. Discordant patterns jerked across his hide in uneven intervals. The incident in the electronics store disturbed him as much as it disturbed her.
Ladon drove and, once again, yelled Russian into his phone.
Dragon’s colors darkened. Human is angry. The Shifters must show respect.
She’d scream if she didn’t calm down. Her abilities fizzled again—fire danced on the periphery. A hint of acid hit her nose. Flames licked at her eyes. Heat touched her skin. The Ambusti part of her Fateness used her confusion to reassert itself.
Clearheaded and in control, her ass. A swarm of burning cockroaches scurried around in her head and clicked just outside her field of vision.
She held a shudder. The bug image wasn’t helping.
Dragon touched her shoulder. Your mind is sizzling.
So? she signed back. Her seers always dropped random crap into her awareness. Rysa Torres, the Chaos Fate. A monster.
Human worries. I worry, as well. Dragon’s hide mimicked the wall of the van. He vanished for a split second, then reappeared, his head swinging toward the driver’s seat. We do not understand why you reject us. You called to us. We felt your terror. Human cannot tolerate when you are in danger.
The van stopped. Black poured in through the roof vents. Ladon must have taken them out of town for it to be this dark.
Up front, he grunted and tossed his phone to the side. The door banged open at the same time as he reached under the seat. Then he stalked away, the door slamming hard behind him.
“Where’s he going?” She peered out the windshield. In front of the van and surrounded by trees, a large picnic shelter and a playground sprawled over sand and asphalt.
Human must calm down. He is upset. Dragon’s patterns cycled so fast they blurred.
She pushed open the back door and hopped out. Ladon stomped around the playground clutching a bottle of vodka so tightly she thought it might shatter in his hand. Grunting like he had in the van, he whipped a rock at the jungle gym. It skipped across the slide, dust billowing off the plastic. A loud crack resonated through the park when the rock struck the slide’s wood post.
He took a swig when he saw her walking toward him across the playground sand. “Are you going to yell at me again?”
“You’re drinking?” He worked off snapping a Shifter’s neck with vodka? So Penny wasn’t just some bitch with an attitude. What she’d said held truth.
And she’d pointed a claw at Ladon, sneering. “He used to hunt your kind.”
Rysa shuddered.
The crack in the back of her mind brightened for a split second. She forced herself to ignore it. She didn’t go through hell with Penny just to lose the benefits of that witch’s enthralling in less than a day.
Ladon’s glance toward the picnic shelter caused an upwelling in the energy pulsing between him and Dragon. The beast must have moved out of the van after she’d stepped out.
Ladon flexed his biceps the way he did when Dragon chastised him and took another pull from the bottle. “I did what needed to be done.”
“Killed a monster?” Shifter, Fate, or Burner, they were all monsters.
The vodka sloshed when he thrust it forward. “He’s not dead! They wouldn’t put someone in my path who couldn’t handle a neck twist.”
Twenty-three centuries and he must have all sorts of rationalizations for his behavior floating around in his head.
His eyes narrowed. “This is about what Penny said. About me hunting Fates. It’s why you asked if ‘that’s what I did to those Fates’ at the store, isn’t it?”
The air behind him shimmered. Dragon had moved under the jungle gym and now leaned against the slide.
Ladon glanced over. “We knew you’d ask, sooner or later.” The bottle clinked when it bounced against his belt buckle. “I’m not a legate anymore. I don’t have men under my command. Or people to protect. The concept of justice has changed. The rule of law of the Roman Empire is not the rule of law you were born into.”
Her seers flickered: She saw his face, hard and cold and far more frightening than any time she’d seen in the short time they’d been together. Ladon, a god of war who terrified everyone, including war’s children. Dragon, his head low, his hide showing nothing but fury as he pranced behind his human.
Ladon rested a palm on the invisible Dragon’s shoulder. “I have no progeny, Rysa. No woman I’ve loved has birthed a living child.” His biceps flexed again, but he leaned into the beast. “Most pregnancies ended before my companions realized they were with child. Very few quickened. Even fewer came to term.
They were all born dead. Sometimes they killed their mothers.”
The woman who’d died the same night as the Draki Prime—the flash kicked Rysa in the gut. “Ladon—”
He shook his head and held out the bottle. “It’s how things are. It’s been the same for Sister. She’s lost all her babies.
“Except one. Her daughter was born in a Legio Draconis tent under a snow drift on the edge of the Empire’s northern frontier. My sister held in her arms the only breathing child born to either of us, then or now.
“She returned her family to Rome, me following. I had a niece. I wanted to see her grow.” He smiled, the memories momentarily brightening his features. “One morning, her father lifted her to his shoulders. They left the villa for the market, both happy and laughing. She was five years old, vibrant and so fast she could climb the flank of a dragon before you drew a breath.”
A ghost of another smile flitted across his face. Even after the long millennia, thoughts of his family must still affect him deeply. But death and more death filled his life—and it settled in Rysa’s chest like a demon determined to steal her air.
“Fates cut down both father and daughter outside the gates of our villa.” He looked down at the sand. “And Fates suffered a swift and severe retaliation.”
He threw another pebble at the slide. The plastic cracked with a loud snap.
“All your grandfather’s descendants who did not hide found death at the end of our swords. Invisible dragons rendered more than one triad to pulp in the public squares. Ripped tendon from bone for all to see. The normals thought gods had descended from the heavens.
“We emptied Rome of Fates, except for the Jani Prime. They knew not to cross our paths.”
He leaned his forehead against the beast’s neck. “Your uncle Faustus eluded me. He was complicit and I vowed vengeance. So I dragged his daughter from their villa and cut her throat. The girl didn’t fight.”
Vodka sloshed down his throat. “It had all been some damned Parcae game. Both girls were sacrifices.” He held the bottle to the sky. “I was the knife the Fates wielded to call the gods down upon Sister and me.”
Games of Fate (Fate ~ Fire ~ Shifter ~ Dragon #1) Page 18