Flux of Skin

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Ladon popped the driver’s side door and kicked the Shifter onto the dirt.

  Sirens blared from the freeway. Normals approached—and the Shifters ran. No more bullets flew, no more threats to either Rysa or Derek blared from the car’s loudspeaker.

  Both dragons approached the car, both invisible, both wrapped around their humans’ mates.

  Normals will ask too many questions, Dragon pushed to Ladon.

  Normals always asked too many questions. But when modern normals did it, they caused ripples which interfered with his family’s lives for a very long time. Ripples that were difficult to clean up.

  Sister threw open the side door and punched the Shifter in the face before throwing him into the dirt.

  “Derek!” Sister slapped the top of the sedan as she moved around to the driver’s side. “Are you okay?”

  He walked slowly out of Sister-Dragon’s embrace and shook his leg as if he’d knocked it on something. “I am fine.”

  Sister smacked the top of the car again, this time hard enough Ladon heard the metal dent.

  “Move so I can get out.” He pushed over the center console and into the driver’s seat.

  Sister didn’t move out of his way. “You’re driving.” She jabbed at the air next to Ladon’s ear before leaning in. “Make sure they check him.”

  Rysa is too hot, Dragon pushed.

  “I am not leaving you here alone!” Derek yelled. He came around to Sister, but rubbed his leg again. “What if they come back? What if they enthrall you? I will not leave you alone.”

  We must go. She is too hot. Dragon cradled Rysa to his chest.

  Why were they bickering? His woman needed help. “We go now!” If they kept fighting, Ladon would leave them here to rot, normals and Shifters be damned.

  Sister opened her mouth to respond, but the sirens blared louder. She swore. “There’s not enough room for all of us. Go!” She slammed the door shut.

  Dragon adjusted the back seat before laying Rysa down. He slammed the trunk and Ladon powered down all the windows. Dragon climbed on top and the sedan rocked and lowered as the tires strained.

  Ladon reached out the driver’s window and grabbed Derek’s arm. “Get in. She’ll be fine.” He looked to Sister. “Two hours on foot to the hospital.”

  Sister stepped back and her face suddenly softened. She quickly wrapped her arms around her husband. “We’ll be there straight away.”

  Sister-Dragon nuzzled Derek’s arm and gently nudged him around the vehicle.

  “You better be,” Derek said. Dragon let go of the passenger side window so that Derek could get into the sedan.

  He turned to Ladon as he buckled himself in. “I hate my blood,” he said. He slammed himself against the seat. “I hate Shifters too, by the way.” He looked back at Rysa. “Except halfsies.”

  Ladon pulled the car around the embankment and toward the frontage road. Dragon clung to the top. They headed east toward the hospital—they were twelve miles away at the most. He’d drive slowly enough for Dragon to hang on, but they’d be there within twenty minutes.

  Derek glanced at Ladon, then back at Rysa, and back to Ladon again. “You need to calm down,” he said. “That through-the-trunk move? Stupid.”

  Of course it was stupid, but what else was he supposed to do? “It worked.”

  Derek touched the brim of his hat. “Stupid gets you killed.”

  Ladon pulled onto the frontage road running parallel to the freeway. “Twenty-three centuries of stupid and I’m still here. So is Sister.”

  A rasping gasp came from Rysa. “Something bad is coming.”

  Her seers felt odd and weirder than the tentacled waves Ladon had felt earlier, as if they were stuck on—as if they leaked out even though she wanted them to stop.

  She feels fractured, Dragon pushed.

  She did—fractured and random like her attention issues were flooding back in. Or the Burner fire was reasserting itself, even though she no longer wore their talisman.

  He checked the rearview mirror. Her talon still hung around her neck, a crescent of dull tape and twine against her throat.

  “Hey.” Derek twisted in his seat and peered at Rysa’s face. “We will be fine. We all can handle bad. Right, Ladon-Human?” He placed his hand on her chest and throat, palm up.

  Her arm spasmed.

  I do not like this, Human.

  Derek laid the inside of his wrist against her forehead. “How fast can you go before it becomes a problem for Brother-Dragon?”

  My grip is firm.

  Derek unhooked his seatbelt. He half-crawled into the backseat and his back pressed against Ladon’s shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “you hold on. We are almost to the hospital.”

  A sharp inhale rose out of the backseat. “I love you, Ladon, Human and Dragon,” she whispered.

  Rysa inhaled again as if breathing through a straw.

  The divots hit. Ladon’s stomach swayed with the same swirling gravity that had seized their bodies when the RV flipped. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  “I love both of you.” She sucked in her breath once more.

  Ladon pulled into the hospital parking lot and Dragon, invisible, ran for the building. Derek rolled out of the passenger side as Ladon stopped the car, looking out across the parking lot, his rifle up, watching for Sister.

  Ladon scooped Rysa off the back seat. Her grip on his neck was too feeble, and her chest barely expanded with each harsh intake of breath.

  His mind slammed into a tight tunnel centered on the woman in his arms. His touch felt only the heat rising from her skin. His eyes saw only the pallor of her cheeks. He heard only the rasping gasps rising from her throat.

  She tried to breathe, but it was as if the world had wrapped plastic around her head.

  Ladon ran for the Emergency Department doors.

  Chapter Six

  Blood smeared Rysa’s cheek every time her face knocked against Ladon’s chest.

  “You’re… you’re bleeding…” Her lips made the correct movements, but no air pushed from her lungs to give voice to the words. She tried to gulp, tried to force something in so she could force it out and draw his attention to the bite on his shoulder and make him put her down so he wouldn’t bleed anymore.

  He’ll kill himself protecting me, she thought. Her chest burned and she should push out the bad air but she couldn’t breathe and Ladon bled.

  Blackness crept along the edges of her eyesight—the world glowed as if she watched it through a keyhole.

  “Ah—” She tried to say Ladon’s name, but the sound sat on her chest, like a deadly predator.

  Someone is coming, a vision-voice whisped.

  Dragon! she screamed in her head. He’d pulled her out of a vision before. He’d caught her when she fell.

  But she wasn’t falling. Ladon gripped her tight.

  Ladon’s eyelids dropped in quick beats. She couldn’t breathe and he did the only thing he could—he carried her through the glass doors into the hospital.

  He swung her to the side so as not to hit her head or feet on the sliding doors as he followed Derek into the Emergency Department. “Love, hold on.”

  He paused only to wait for the second set of doors to slide open.

  The glare of the overhead lights washed through the keyhole of her vision. Maybe she squinted. She didn’t know. She couldn’t feel anything. Ladon’s blood should feel warm. It should be more than red streaks smearing her cheek.

  “Rysa…” He swung her first to the left, then back to the right. “Where is everyone?” he shouted.

  No air. She breathed no air.

  Where were the nurses? A false wall split the lobby in two—the hospital’s refurbishing must have moved from the back of the building to the front.

  “There.” Derek pointed at a large arrow painted on a wall over a sign reading “Intake around the corner.”

  Ladon ducked between two close-set rows of chairs.

  Derek stepped to the side as he pas
sed, rifle up and peering back through the doors. “No vehicles. No threats.”

  Ladon would will Rysa all the strength of his own lungs if he could. Dragon would give her all his lights. She needed to be okay.

  She had to be okay.

  A security guard rounded the corner just as Ladon passed the sign. The man’s hand snapped the strap off his gun and his fingers curled around the grip. “Drop the weapon! Now!”

  Weapon? A rifle hung over his shoulder and the butt bounced against Rysa’s feet. He hadn’t thought about it. Derek had picked up one of the Shifter’s weapons and dropped it in the back seat when they’d left the RV. Ladon must have picked it up when he picked up Rysa.

  “She’s choking!” The gun didn’t matter. “Where are the doctors?”

  Derek set his rifle on the floor and put his hands in the air. “We need to help her, okay?” He pointed at Rysa.

  “Now!” The guard inched his pistol from its holster.

  The guard rocked on his heels. His muscles did the stutter of a man who had practiced but still needed to consider before acting. Ladon stepped right, shifting Rysa’s weight against his injured side, and flicked his hand out from under her head. The side of his palm struck the guard’s elbow with enough force to wrench him backward. The gun clattered across the floor and under the chairs.

  “Do not interfere.” Ladon scooped his arm under Rysa’s head again.

  The guard’s face heated. “That’s it! You’re—”

  On the roof, Dragon roared. The entire building shook—the beast reared up and then dropped hard onto the surface.

  When Dragon couldn’t come into a building—when he watched a very different world than Ladon but was still well within their distance limit—he did his best to hold his dragon-perceptions from Ladon’s mind. The less vertigo Ladon suffered from seeing the inside of the hospital at the same time Dragon saw only empty loneliness, the better for them both.

  But this time, talons dug deep into the roof’s asphalt. This time, Ladon’s muscles mimicked, his fingers and toes curling to gouge the walls, the floor, the guard’s eyes. The beast would rip a hole through the ceiling just so he could stand over Rysa’s twitching body.

  Ladon would pull down the walls. Dust rained onto the guard.

  Rysa groaned.

  “Love.” Ladon’s mind swept away from the world and locked onto her responses. “You’re going to be okay.”

  A nurse rounding the corner skidded on the vinyl floor as she looked wide-eyed at the ceiling. Another with a stretcher followed, ignoring the roar.

  Ladon recognized the second nurse—she’d worked on Derek the last time Sister brought him in.

  “What the hell?” The guard glanced up. His fingers fiddled at his belt as if his gun was still in its holster.

  Ladon set Rysa down on the stretcher. A jolt of pain ratcheted through his shoulder and a low growl filtered from his throat. The fractures running through his ribs strained. If he wasn’t careful, one might break.

  Rysa’s fingers trailed over his shoulder. “You’re… you’re… bleeding.”

  He glanced at the wound. The bite must have reopened. “It’s okay. Don’t worry.” Why was she focusing on him? She’d barely choked out the whispers. “Please. I’m okay.”

  “No… no… you’re… not.”

  Ladon took her hand and leaned over the stretcher. “Love, breathe.” He stroked a finger over the mark of his own blood on her cheek. “Please.”

  “Drop the rifle!” the guard yelled.

  “It is okay.” Derek raised his hands again, his voice calmer than anything Ladon mustered. “He is not going to hurt anyone.” He stepped back from the entrance, his gaze jumping from Ladon to the guard to the door again.

  Ladon ignored them and bent over Rysa. “Love, look at me.”

  “G…gun—” She pointed at the rifle.

  “I said drop it!”

  One swift roll of his shoulder and the weapon slid into his hand. Ladon glanced at the rifle. The Shifters might come back.

  “Get her into the back! Now!”

  Ladon looked up. Paige Nystrom, the hospital’s tall, thin physician’s assistant, rounded the corner and latched her hand onto the stretcher. She took in the room—the weapons, the frantic guard, and the two nurses attempting to push Ladon away from Rysa.

  “Are you three coming from the wreck out on I-80?” She leaned over Rysa and checked her eyes. “Did she breathe smoke?”

  One nurse ran a thermometer over Rysa’s forehead while the other pushed the end of the stretcher. Ladon grabbed for Rysa’s hand, contorting himself around an upended chair.

  Paige’s gaze darted between Ladon and Derek. “Tell me what happened.”

  “It is complicated.” Derek took the rifle from Ladon’s hand. “Go on.” He limped back, no longer following. He wouldn’t come any farther. Not until Sister arrived.

  And he’d watch. “Paige, Derek needs the rifles. He’ll stay by the door but if that guard interferes, he’ll have to answer to Sister.”

  Paige kept her focus on Rysa but nodded to the nurse Ladon recognized. “Go check Mr. Nicholson. Make sure he’s not bruising.”

  The nurse glanced at Ladon. She was older than the other nurse, calmer too, but fear still registered in her features. She ran down the corridor toward Derek.

  Ladon stroked Rysa’s face. She watched his mouth.

  She was concentrating on syncing her breathing with his. He pressed her palm into his chest with his fingers over hers and inhaled deeply. “Like that. Breathe, Rysa.”

  He opened his mouth when he breathed in, his hand pushing hers into his chest, and rounded his lips when he breathed out, lifting her fingers ever so slightly.

  Fear pulled the skin of her cheeks and eyes tight, but she concentrated.

  Condensation fogged her mask. Air made its way to her lungs. She wouldn’t die, here, now, on this stretcher. He wouldn’t lose her.

  A slight doctor, a man much smaller than Ladon with dark Indian features and close-cropped hair, felt her face and chest as he listened to her heart.

  “Miss? Can you hear me? We’re going to give you something to open your throat so you can breathe, okay?”

  The doctor glanced quickly at Ladon before wrapping his fingers around Rysa’s wrist. He pried her hand away from Ladon’s chest. “Has she been sick? Headaches? Vomiting? You need to step back.”

  His hand waved in the air, toward the nurse. “Epinephrine, now!” He glanced at Ladon. “Was she exposed to something in the wreck? You’re coming in from I-80, aren’t you? No one’s there. It’s just a giant rolled RV.”

  This little man pulled Rysa’s hand off his chest. Yanked her away from him.

  The doctor grabbed the syringe of epinephrine from the emergency nurse. “Hold her down!”

  Paige grabbed Rysa’s thigh and she jerked. Ladon reached over, his hands on either side of Paige’s, and held Rysa still.

  The doctor jabbed in the needle. Rysa tried to scream, her eyes widening and her upper body lifting off the stretcher. She dropped back down, her arms rigid, gasping, but with each inhale her breathing became clearer, easier. Air moved deeper into her lungs.

  Ladon cupped her head as she lay back down. “Can you hear me?”

  “I’m too hot,” she whispered. Her eyelids fluttered.

  The doctor checked Rysa’s heart and breathing again. “Were any of you exposed to someone carrying a disease? Around anyone coughing?” He paused, glancing down the hallway toward Derek and the rifles. “Did she inhale something?”

  “No.” Ladon leaned farther over Rysa.

  The doctor’s back stiffened. “Because with the type of guns you two carried in here I’d say the three of you were into something that could put this hospital in jeopardy.”

  Ladon’s good arm snapped out so fast the staff didn’t see it. He grabbed the doctor by the collar and hauled him straight up. This man’s focus should be fixing Rysa. His concern should not be Ladon or Derek or imagined be
haviors.

  The doctor’s chin rested on Ladon’s fist and his feet dangled over the edge of the stretcher.

  “Do not insinuate, little man.” Ladon growled.

  Dragon-sense knocked into what Ladon perceived again. Talons could so easily gouge the world and dig through the ceiling. This doctor might very soon find himself within a line of dragon-flame.

  “Ladon!” Paige yelled.

  His perception changed, but it wasn’t the jarring movement of sight or sound or touch. Nor was it the re-solidification of the world when his brain refocused on what he sensed instead of Dragon’s vision.

  This was different. This time, somehow, he knew harming the doctor would harm Rysa.

  He tossed the doctor backward. The man stutter-stepped and caught his balance against the wall.

  He glared at Ladon.

  Ladon stared back at the doctor. The man was about to do something stupid, even though Ladon had released him. Something stupid and distracting, and Ladon knew what-is and what-will-be as if Rysa had spray-painted them like graffiti onto the scene.

  The doctor fiddled in a pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “I’m calling security.” His face contracted into a grimace.

  Ladon’s forearms tightened. He could take the damned phone and smash it against the wall next to the doctor’s ear so it showered the fool with shards of plastic and circuitry. But harm still painted the air and wafted through his noise.

  Paige leaned over Rysa and cupped his elbow. “Ladon, look at me.”

  Her face had changed. The confidence he heard in her voice was not mirrored in her features. She looked genuinely frightened.

  Paige sensed harm as well, but she now saw it play through Ladon’s body.

  Normals knew when they were in danger.

  Ladon needed to not react like this. He needed to hold himself together, but a new growl—one of the deep, dragon sounds that normals were not allowed to hear—rolled from his chest. “You will help her.”

  The extra sensing—it must be coming from Rysa—reverberated through his connection to Dragon. It pumped into their flow and turned their energy into something with force and weight.