The Burning World (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 7)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  “You’re the one who—”

  “You will never understand,” Dunn yelled. “You’re full of righteous anger and you are about to walk into a world distracted by its own ending.”

  Marcus closed his eyes. Harold’s jaw tightened. This was the first time she’d admitted what they all had suspected since the gas station—they were about to walk into a burning future.

  Which meant they all needed to do what needed doing. “Then help me by taking away the worst of my distractions.”

  I will kill us in our sleep before I give you my body, connard.

  Daniel winced.

  Dunn shook her head. “You can—and you will—do whatever you want with that body.”

  Yes, he would. This body was his now, and he needed to care for it in a way that would also protect the world.

  Allowing Addy even one ounce of control was not, in any way, helping the world.

  Dunn walked backward toward her daughter and the retinal scanner, but she pointed at Daniel. “You feel entitled to that body because she murdered yours. You feel entitled because you’re a man who rarely felt himself as alpha as you believe you should be, never mind that your standing with the Legion, and your intelligence, and your Fate abilities allowed you so much more power than you want to admit.”

  Marcus stood up. “Ma’am, it might be—”

  “Be quiet,” she said.

  Marcus closed his mouth.

  Dunn paced in front of her also-silent daughter. “You see yourself as a good man, as someone worthy of your Legion affiliation. You’ve worked hard. You are, right now, fighting the good fight. You’re part of the team saving the world!”

  She threw her hands into the air. “But you’ve had your pride wounded and you’ve suffered tragedies, and you’ve felt agony at the hands of bad people. You’re fully cognizant of how much worse you’ve had it than the average ‘leader of men’ walking around among the normals.”

  He wanted to yell So? and How dare you judge me, you crazy bitch?

  Her muscles tightened.

  He was pretty damned sure Dunn knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “That’s all you need to justify inflicting harm.” She looked as if she wanted to throw a stapler at his head.

  Was Dunn cracking? But Dunn cracked all the time. When she finished her rant, she’d probably enthrall them all into an equally-cracked military unit.

  “That body is not yours, Daniel Drake.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “Addy left me with no other choice.”

  Dunn laughed. “The Whispering One gave you no choice but to hitch that ride.”

  Dunn paced back in the other direction before pointing at his face again. “You might be driving right now, but you are a passenger. You did not build those muscles and those bones. You did not feed that stomach and you were never a part of the creation of the unique physical and mental fingerprint that is Adrestia Januson of Les Enfants de Guerre.”

  That’s right, little boy scum, Addy whispered. Get out of my body.

  “I know you’re arguing with her right now.” Dunn held her arms out in a way signifying she wished to include everyone in the shack. “We all know. I’m sure your brother can feel the fighting.”

  Marcus nodded his agreement.

  “Harold’s training and his long history with your family makes him remarkably good at reading body language. Isn’t that right?”

  Harold nodded also.

  The pitch of Dunn’s voice lowered. “And Daisy’s been living with Rysa Torres.”

  “You are distracted, Daniel,” Daisy said.

  Dunn pointed at him again. “You are walking brand-new territory and even if you never respect Addy, you had damned well understand that you do not rule her. And you better fucking not use her.”

  Daisy looked down at the floor. She sighed, then placed her hand on the retinal scanner.

  Dunn continued to focus her wrath onto Daniel. “Because no one will stop you if you do. No one, Daniel.”

  Marcus moved toward Daisy. “Perhaps I can help, Ms. Pavlovich,” he said.

  Dunn looked up at the ceiling. She twisted her head as if listening to someone whisper in her ear.

  “The world is ending,” she said. She closed her eyes and her anger drained away, but not her intensity. Not her fear. “Yes, it’s true. People have much more pressing issues on their minds than the well-being of a psychotic killer being controlled by a ghost.”

  Was she still ranting at Daniel?

  She pointed at him again. “Look, future-seer! Don’t you see the obvious truth? What remains of the world will nod and go the easy route—your control of Addy is a fitting punishment for her crimes—and then go back to trying to keep us all alive because they will have no other choice.”

  Again with the choices, or lack thereof.

  “You have no right to lecture me about choices!” This from the woman who stole choices again and again and again?

  Dunn sighed. “Perspective, dear boy. Your anger issues versus the fate of the world? You’re one circuit in the machine of the universe. Your little intra-personal problem can flip back and forth between one and zero and it won’t matter to the grand process.”

  She flitted her hand through the air as if chasing a butterfly. “I steal the choices on a scale where I have no choice but to steal.”

  But he needed his body as much as Addy did. How was he to help if he needed to find a way to be unhampered by the killer in his head?

  Dunn held his gaze. “I know you don’t like being a woman.”

  “That has nothing to do with—”

  Ms. Pavlovich let out a loud, short laugh. “I’m still a bloodhound, Daniel.”

  Dunn laughed, too. “There will be a few who wonder about how you and Addy interact, but that won’t hold for long, and your life will return to you and Adrestia alone inside your very small room.”

  She continued to stare right at him. “I will not harm Addy because you feel inconvenienced. So you, Daniel Drake, and you alone, need to figure out how to live with yourself. It’s up to you to act like a man and not a scared, pride-filled, punitive little boy. Do you understand? You can be the worst of men, or you can be the best.”

  Pride-filled little boy, echoed Addy.

  “I suggest you be the best.”

  He survived for one hundred fifty years as a ghost in the back of his killer’s head. Didn’t that count for anything? Addy would never be “the best.” He was tied to the rock that was the murderer in whose body he lived. Why would Dunn allow him to continue to drown?

  Dunn turned away. She pinched the bridge of her nose and inhaled deeply. “Do not ask again,” she said.

  No enthralling. No yelling, either. Just a mother sick of the stupid questions posed by children.

  Daniel opened his mouth to argue, but once again, kept quiet. An enthralling could erase his free will in an instant. Silence might be the best option.

  Ms. Pavlovich placed her hands around the scanner. “The machine has pathways,” she murmured. “Behaviors.”

  Daniel’s belly cinched up again, but not as tightly as it had before. The cramps, at least, were easing, even if his plight was not.

  Addy’s self-righteousness was not. Boy, she sneered.

  Dunn, her attention now completely on Ms. Pavlovich, took to ignoring Daniel.

  Marcus wouldn’t look at him. Harold stared at his phone.

  He would need to have a talk with his brother.

  “It’s like enthralling out a behavior in the dogs,” Daisy murmured. “I just need to tell the machine to ‘repeat’ what we need.”

  “Hmmmm….” Dunn said. “Yes.”

  Marcus’s past-seer chimed. “That pathway,” he said.

  A wave of power flooded off Ms. Pavlovich.

  Not correct, his future-seer whispered. “Hold on,” Daniel said. He walked over, passing the fuming Dunn, and stood next to his brother. “Find the moment you want her to enthrall out of the machine,” he said.
<
br />   Marcus nodded. His past-seer chimed again, and the moment, the cathedral of the machine’s electrical pulsings flickered within Daniel’s present-seer.

  “Imagine different ways to enthrall it to cooperate,” he said. Maybe his future-seer could figure out which one would match.

  Ms. Pavlovich nodded—and Daniel’s future-seer listened.

  This new power she possessed, the ability to treat things as if they had the machinery of life, felt as prickly as the ozone left in the air after a lightning strike.

  This was how he would be the best of men. Helping a good woman do her job. Addy could rot in Hell.

  Ms. Pavlovich’s power oscillated rhythmically and—

  “There,” Daniel said. “That pathway.”

  Ms. Pavlovich gripped the scanner. A pulse moved from her hand to the machine and it beeped. The little light changed from red to green.

  The elevator door slid open.

  The chrome interior of the car gleamed so brightly Daniel squinted. They wouldn’t have a lot of room, and Marcus, who had always been the most practical, entered first. Harold followed, carefully helping Ms. Pavlovich in with him.

  Daniel looked at Dunn.

  She grinned and made a kissy-face because, Daniel suspected, she wanted to rub in his pain. Because she didn’t think him man enough.

  Yet here he was in Addy’s body fighting minute-to-minute, moment-to-moment, to keep a psycho out of the way.

  How was his fight not important?

  I will rid my body of you, little boy.

  Daniel walked into the tight space of the elevator, and Dunn followed.

  The door slid shut. An indicator dinged. And a Muzaked version of a nineties pop song—a familiar one—blasted through the speaker in the ceiling. His present-seer gave him the name of the band: Billy Bare and the Astronauts.

  Harold pointed at the speaker. “How ironic.”

  Dunn chuckled.

  The elevator dinged one last time, and the door slid open.

  A tall man with striking Mediterranean features and an unruly mop of pewter hair stood in the center of the room. He wore what millennia ago would have been a breastplate as gleamingly bright as the elevator’s chrome interior, but which now carried the matte-black finish of modern tactical armor. The jacket over his shoulders looked much like Harold’s Praetorian Guard uniform, but this man’s was a true, deep violet.

  Daniel was surprised he’d skipped the fully-plumed Roman helmet.

  “Hadrian,” Dunn said.

  “Hello, friends,” the Emperor Hadrian said. “I see you’ve made your way home.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  St. Paul, Minnesota…

  Gavin couldn’t leave. Daisy’s mother told him to ‘stay here’ and he knew he needed to listen even if staying made no sense. She enthralled Daisy. She made Daisy leave with her. They were gone and Gavin had no choice but to stay.

  Daisy left with the Shifter Progenitor because she was a First. His pregnant girlfriend was a Shifter First.

  Radar and Ragnar took turns running up to the front window, then running back to him, then running into the kitchen as if they, too, didn’t believe that Daisy was gone.

  She left with her mother who activated her for a second time.

  That couldn’t be good. When Rysa double-activated, she ended up in the hospital with a 105 degree fever and a closed-up throat.

  Gavin ran his fingers through his hair again. “What if she loses the baby?” Would she lose the baby? Their baby.

  She might lose the baby.

  “Hey!” His little brother grabbed his shoulders. “Look at me. Hold on, man. I think Daisy wants you to hold it together, okay?”

  Ian watched the dogs run across the new hardwood floors. They slid, then their claws shink shinked like the dragons’.

  “Where’s my phone?” Daniel told him to call for help. But he couldn’t leave. Maybe Ladon could go after Daisy. God knew he couldn’t. He was just a normal guy.

  Maybe with the Tsar’s ring gone, Rysa had already figured out they needed help. Maybe Mr. Pavlovich would send the cavalry. He’d done it before. He might do it again.

  Ian looked around. “I don’t know. Did you leave it in your bedroom?” He held out his. “Use mine.”

  Could he remember the phone numbers? Daisy made him memorize everyone’s numbers because who knew when a Fate would steal his phone—or when a Shifter would steal his girlfriend.

  He swiped Ian’s phone from his hand.

  Ian pointed at the door. “Who were those people?”

  “Two Fates, the Shifter Progenitor, and an immortal guy who’s probably a spy.” Gavin opened his brother’s phone dialer. “Go upstairs and find my phone. And get your stuff together. Even if I can’t leave…” Gavin looked up at the ceiling. He wasn’t afraid to leave, nor did the thought of leaving cause him any sense of dread. No physical twinges, either. He just couldn’t leave.

  He couldn’t.

  Ian didn’t ask more questions even though he obviously wanted to. Instead, he deliberately began climbing the stairs.

  Gavin dialed Ladon’s number. It beeped. “Leave a message,” followed.

  “Shit,” he said. He dialed Rysa. Same thing. Derek. Again, “Leave a message.” He couldn’t remember Anna’s number.

  He called Mr. Pavlovich.

  “I know it is you, Mr. Bower,” Dmitri Pavlovich’s terse, authoritative voice said from the phone. “My security detail tells me to speak with you even though this is not a good time.”

  The words tumbled out of Gavin’s mouth. “Daisy’s mother showed up and activated her and said she’s a First like Mr. Sisto then she enthralled all of us! They left and I don’t know where they went! Ms. Reynolds enthralled me so I can’t leave the house!”

  He sounded like Rysa when she was in the worst of her hyperactivity. “I know I’m enthralled but I can’t fight it.”

  Gunfire echoed through his connection to Mr. Pavlovich.

  “Mr. Pavlovich?”

  Yelling followed, then what had to be the most vicious sounding Russian Gavin had ever heard. “Dunn took my daughter?” Mr. Pavlovich yelled.

  “Yes. I can’t leave. I don’t know what’s happening to her or the baby.”

  More gunfire. More yelling. “Have you called the Dracae?”

  “Of course I called the Dracae!” He wasn’t an idiot. “God damn it, you pretentious motherfucker! What is that woman doing to Daisy!”

  Silent hissing.

  What did he just do? He just called the man who might become his father-in-law a motherfucker.

  “Mr. Pavlovich. I’m sorry. I’m—”

  “Listen carefully, Mr. Bower,” Mr. Pavlovich said. “I am in Moscow. I cannot help you at this time. There is a very good chance that I will not survive what is coming. Do you understand?”

  Not survive? “No, Mr. Pavlovich, I don’t—”

  “The real purpose of Praesagio Industries—the real purpose of Trajan’s many empires these past two millennia—has been to prepare for what is about to happen.”

  More gunfire echoed across the connection. Gavin looked at the phone in his hand. “What’s happening in Moscow?”

  “Fate has abandoned us, young man.” More Russian yelling. “There is a very real chance that the world is about to burn.”

  “Mr. Pavlovich—”

  “What exactly did Dunn say to you, Mr. Bower?”

  “You stay here. That’s it. And now I can’t leave.”

  “You feel no fear?”

  “I know I can’t leave.” He couldn’t. He knew exactly what he would do if he left. He’d go west, to Ladon and Anna.

  “Mr. Bower, you are locked to your sense of what here means.” For a second, Mr. Pavlovich spoke Russian to someone close to him. “My security detail is telling me that you must take your here with you.”

  “What?” Take the house with him? How the hell was he supposed to do that?

  “I…” Mr. Pavlovich inhaled. “I may neve
r see you or my daughter again. I may never meet my newest grandchild. None of us may survive what is coming, but we must all do what we can, do you understand?”

  “No, Mr. Pavlovich, I don’t.” He didn’t. How was he supposed to fix this?

  Ian stopped at the top of the steps. “Gavin!”

  He looked up. His little brother had his phone and his face was deathly pale.

  “Coup in Russia,” Ian called. “All hell broke loose in Moscow two hours ago.”

  Gavin’s stomach flip-flopped. What was happening? “Mr. Pavlovich? What’s going on?”

  “I am now Tsar, Mr. Bower.”

  “What?” His might-be father-in-law just took over the Russian government?

  “Find my daughter,” Mr. Pavlovich said. “Be the man I know you are capable of being. Do this for all of us. Do this for the planet.”

  “Mr. Pavlovich?”

  “The world is about to burn, son. Save your family.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The base…

  Hadrian entered the elevator. He swiped a card in front of a sensor and the door slid shut.

  Ms. Pavlovich leaned against the chrome wall, but she reached for Daniel. Her hand cupped the side of his visual optimizers.

  The flickering stopped. The odd sense of an overlay of data did not, though. But they clicked back on.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Did your brother tell you what the numbers mean?”

  The elevator jerked and the door slid open.

  “No. Only that they were all that he could do.” Timothy’s ghost had not seemed capable of instruction, only data transfer.

  Ms. Pavlovich nodded. “Whatever it is, it feels nimble.”

  The elevator opened into a concrete-lined, gray-painted tunnel. Hadrian nodded once to Dunn, then stepped aside, and allowed the group to exit.

  “Why are you here, Hadrian?” Dunn swirled her finger in front of the Emperor’s nose. “Rumor has it that you were not in Trajan’s good graces after the Portland fiasco.”