Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
All But Human
Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Book Five
Kris Austen Radcliffe
Copyright 2017 Kris Austen Radcliffe
All rights reserved.
Published by
Six Talon Sign Fantasy & Futuristic Romance
Edited by Annetta Ribken
Copyedited by Terry Koch and Juli Lilly
Cover designed by Lou Harper
Series dragon design and art by Christina Rausch
Plus a special thanks to my Proofing Crew.
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences are used factitiously. All representations of real locales, programs, or services are factitious accounts of the environments and services described. Any resemblances characters, places, or events have to actual people, living or dead, business, establishments, events, or locales is entirely unintended and coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
For requests, please e-mail: [email protected].
Third electronic edition, September 2017
Updated and reformatted
version 9.10.2017
ISBN: 978-1-939730-51-0
Contents
All But Human
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
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All But Human
Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon
Kris Austen Radcliffe
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Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon
The Series
Games of Fate
Flux of Skin
Fifth of Blood
Bonds Broken & Silent
All But Human
Men and Beasts
The Burning World
Chapter One
“You want to climb Teddy Roosevelt’s face?” Rysa Torres nodded toward the giant granite heads looming above their spot in the South Dakota scrub. “With tourists around?”
Dragon ran invisible but the late afternoon sun refracted through his neck and back ridges and a rainbow flickered just out of Rysa’s reach. The refraction arched—the beast moved—and a low ray of sun flared blue and red.
Where he stood framed on one side by Mount Rushmore and the other by sun and sky, the glimmering Dragon looked as if American faeries danced along his back.
Please come, Rysa, the beast signed in his version of American Sign Language.
She stared at her phone, momentarily distracted by the words scrolling across the screen, but did her best to grin. The device had finally yielded the information she wanted: The inn down the road from the main tourist area under the Monument had available rooms. She tapped in a hold request.
Even up the side of the mountain, the park smelled like sweaty tourists, hot dogs, and faint whiffs of burndust. Dmitri Pavlovich’s people may have cleared out the crazy Seraphim after the hell Vivicus put her family through, but traces of their presence still lingered not only in the air, but in the setup of the tourist-fleecing operations surrounding the Monument.
Rysa would have been happy just to drive on by, but Ladon and Dragon were not a man and a beast who passed up a good climbing challenge. The prospect of scaling a monument surrounded by unsuspecting normals had them talking fast and flexing their muscles.
“Easy climb,” Ladon had said when they first arrived and were standing in the viewing area off the amphitheater down the hill. “I’ll teach you new holds.” He’d crossed his arms while nodding slowly and looking very pleased with himself.
After three months of long, sleepless
conversations and the intense concentration Rysa needed to get her healing touch just right to fight his depression, he declared himself “fixed.” He would not be responsible for her leaving her education behind. So he bundled up their new life together and drove east toward Minneapolis, stopping at every hill worth climbing.
Ladon tested his boots on a gravel slope about ten feet away. He rolled his broad shoulders and stood at his full height, her godling in black who, she hoped, had begun to find his way again.
The beautiful refractions around Dragon should cause wonder and laughter to bubble up from her core. The slightly salty, slightly earthy, clean scent of Ladon’s skin should fire up her ever-present horniness. The beautiful blue of the sky, the lush if sparse green of the land, the realness of the tourists should ground her in the world. But she was tired.
A rumble-purr echoed between Dragon and the low, scraggly trees. The beast touched her cheek.
“You two climb faster without me,” she said. They’d be up the face and sitting on Teddy’s forehead in less than an hour if she stayed down here with the tourists.
Ladon dusted his hands and nodded over his shoulder as he walked toward her. “Come with us. It’ll be fun.”
Rysa held up her phone. Her brother-in-law Derek said the new models whined less, and hadn’t, at least so far on their trip, given Ladon a headache. Or maybe he was just happy to be outside.
“I reserved a room at that inn we passed.” Carefully, she formed a specific question for her future-seer: What room will we have?
Warm blankets and a large room with a sweet smelling fireplace popped into her head. “It’s comfy,” she said.
His lips thinned when he looked back at the mountain. He’d shaved the sides of his head but left a wide swath of hair from his forehead to the nape of his neck. He now wore his wavy black hair in a sort-of-braided, sort-of-twisted barbarian mohawk and his beard as a stubbly shadow that thickened into a goatee around his mouth.
Ladon could tattoo rainbows and unicorns all over his face and Rysa wouldn’t care. As long as he didn’t shave his head with a steak knife again. His health always took priority over his hair style.
Though she might frown at unicorn tattoos. The barbarian hair, though, was freakin’ sexy.
Dragon’s refractions caught in Ladon’s gold-flecked irises and for a second he looked as if the sun itself blazed in his eyes. “Do you want me to call when we come down?”
Her future-seer flicked out a tiny moment of what-will-be: The room dark, a low Dragon purr, Ladon’s arms wrapping around her sleepy body, a door…
She cut off the vision. Some things, like Ladon’s attentions, were best experienced in real time. She would not cheat on the future, no matter how innocuous the cheat might seem.
Rysa stroked his forearm, wrist to elbow. He had the most glorious skin—golden and thickly soft the way a healthy man’s skin was supposed to be. His touch calmed her world and soothed her aches, body and soul. “No.” She ended her smirk by rubbing the edges of her teeth along her bottom lip.
Door popped back into her head, along with a sense of annoyed urgency. It probably meant that she needed to make sure the staff at the front desk didn’t hassle Ladon when he came in.
Ladon chuckled. “You see no issues?”
He wanted to run and play. Knowing that he would return to a loving woman only made him happier.
Rysa stroked his arm again. “Go on. Both of you. I’ll take a shuttle to the inn.”
Dragon rubbed against her back. Ladon smiled, and for the first time in three months she knew he’d come to bed content enough he wouldn’t ask for a healing.
Slowly, tenderly, he drew her into his solid arms. His lips danced across hers, moving first from her bottom lip to her top, then to the tip of her nose and her forehead. “Make sure you eat, okay?”
She’d sleep, too. She was about to start her final year of college. She needed her strength.
After a quick hug, Rysa stepped away. “I will.”
Door manifested uncalled in her head again, followed closely by bright, saturated blue that looked glossy and smelled slightly metallic.
She must be more tired than she thought. After three months of training, she’d gained enough control over her seers to keep them from randomly interrupting her thoughts.
She cut off the vision again.
Stop it, she thought. Let me be in this moment. She’d let it play out after she returned to the tourist trails. Right now, no doors or shades of blue menaced them, so whatever it was, it could wait.
When Ladon and Dragon returned to her after their climb, his promised hugging and kissing would tamp down her attention deficit issues and random shit like door and blue would stop. But a little extra relaxation never hurt. Maybe she’d take a long, warm bath.
“It’s hard leaving you,” she whispered.
Ladon drew her close for one more kiss. He stepped back and his hand rose into the air and flattened out as if he mimed pressing against a wall. He’d look ridiculous if she didn’t know he leaned into the invisible Dragon.
She hadn’t seen him stand this tall or look this confident since…
Rysa tipped her head to the side. He hadn’t looked this happy since ever. No threats followed them. His melancholy backed off. She had her ADHD and her anxiety under control. And now Ladon’s eyes glimmered.
Except door twirled around inside her head like a goddamned spinning clown.
“Off you go.” She shooed them away.
Ladon, smiling, ran with his Dragon to climb Mount Rushmore.
Chapter Two
The burger from the joint inside the main gift shop sat like a rock in Rysa’s belly.
Just on principle, she’d ignored her seers’ annoying jabs while she walked down the trails to the concrete pads of the tourist areas. Nothing about the vision intrusions screamed present. They felt more past, and strangely, future.
Since she activated, she’d been working with a host of other Fates on her training—her Prime present-seeing mom and the trainers working in the “Customer Heuristics and Relational Logistics Environmental Services” department at Praesagio Industries—along with grandpa Andreas, the man who trained the original Draki Prime. Everyone seemed impressed by the speed with which she learned to control her seers, and at how well they’d integrated over the past three months. Her doctor father speculated that the healing ability she inherited from him caused her brain to adapt faster; her mom, though, rolled her eyes and said, “She’s smart.”
Rysa had to admit that the positive feedback from everyone helped, though.
She got on the list for the shuttle and ate her meal at a metal table in the center of the food court. Children yelled and parents berated teenagers to put away their phones, a scene that reminded Rysa too much of how her mind used to organize itself—lots of voices and most of them not responding to the present the way they should.
They kept at it, still. Her seers murmured.
When she followed the arrows to the restrooms and walked into the echo-filled hallway behind the food court, door could no longer be ignored.
She found the blue door farther down the hall and around a bend. Glare from the fluorescent overhead light flickered. The air buzzed with the din of the tourists milling about the gift shop and food court. The stink of hot dogs gave way to an astringent pine tree smell that wafted through the cracks surrounding the blue door. The hall smelled as if, somewhere on the other side of the painted metal slab in front of her, a cleaning crew had opened a window. The breeze carried the proof of the work to her nose.
Her present-seer outlined the bright blue door in her perception and to her eyes its edges shimmered as if dusted with electricity. The door had no window, so she couldn’t see inside. An old keypad lock bulged out over the handle, its buttons worn but still functional.
Her future-seer flung itself against the door and each hit reverberated as if she’d smacked her head on the blue paint. It saw nothing. It had her dragon’s
talon talisman to filter out the blinding torrent created by the world and yet it saw nothing.
Her present-seer whipped and screamed and whipped again. It, too, saw nothing.
But her past-seer shrieked. Three months ago, she’d been sitting in the passenger seat of a stolen sedan doing her damnedest to focus on finding her talisman. Her seers had been knots of stuck-on, blaring white noise. But she’d done what they had told her to do. She’d texted her friend, Gavin Bower.
At that time, he’d been right here, standing in exactly the same spot she stood now and looking at exactly the same chipped, cobalt blue door.
On the other side of the number-code-controlled lock waited row after row of the employee lockers where her friend—her normal friend with no Fate or Shifter abilities—faced off with a particularly crazy Seraphim morpher.
Because she’d unwittingly texted him the lock code. Because, at that moment, she’d been asking her present-seer to find my talisman.
That evil morphing son of a bitch Vivicus had stolen her talisman and she’d texted Gavin the lock code while using her hobbled seers to look for a monster.
All But Human (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 5) Page 1