And she knew: What sounded to human ears as two simple sentences was much, much more to a monstrous architect.
Dragons did not tolerate non-believers. Dragons destroyed traitors. No one punched holes in the walls of this god’s cathedrals.
She looked up at the Incursion. The timetable wasn’t the only change. This time, the invaders were aware that two of their kind were already here, and that awareness would lead to a change in tactics.
The monster got a whiff of your Draki Prime stink. There wasn’t much nail cleaning this time. Just her dark Fate staring at the Incursion, like the real, physical people gathered in front of the bus.
She sniffed as if she were the bloodhound, and stared into the shadows infesting the field.
Close, she thought. Yet she sensed nothing. The dragons and Daisy sensed nothing.
Still…
What do I have to do? Rysa asked her dark Fate. How do I protect Dragon and Sister-Dragon?
Because something had to be done. This couldn’t be the end, no matter how close it might seem.
You need to close the Incursion, her dark Fate said. You are the Fate. Your fire comes. Daisy is the Shifter.
What about her husband? What about his dragon?
Again, loss flooded from the Ambusti version of herself. She did not answer Rysa’s question.
The Incursion flickered to its secondary colors. It made no noise—it sat well above the Earth’s Northern Hemisphere and the atmosphere—but each switch in optics seemed to buzz like that quick-change nano-moment between television programs.
Rysa looked away. She should climb back onto the bus. Stay warm. But Seaver and his cousin exited the cruiser to speak with Ladon and Anna about perimeters and weapons as if fortifying would keep out the barbarians.
It would not.
Rysa tapped Andreas’s arm. He patted hers and breathed out the ‘heal’ blend he made specifically for her. She breathed it deep into her lungs, and let it work its magic.
Andreas’s calling scents weren’t a healing, or functioning sniffer-bots, but they were keeping her body from overreacting, at least for the moment.
She nodded to Seaver. “Enthrall them so they go home.” She could, at least, help this one man help his son make it through the end of the world.
Andreas frowned.
“The first time I met those two men, my future-seer told me that I will give an order that sends them to their deaths.” Just send them home, she thought. “Give me this one moment where I can give fate the finger.”
Andreas chuckled, but sobered quickly. “Aren’t you giving an order now?”
Rysa rubbed her cold hands together. “Yes.”
Andreas nodded toward the two normals. “I used to tell Daniel and his brothers that if the universe played indecisive, let those involved make the best decisions based on the information they have.”
Isn’t that what they did all the time? “A Fate should be able to help with that.”
Andreas chuckled again. “You’d think. But sometimes the universe is as crazy as my mother.”
And often in the same driven, “one foot in free will, one in freefall,” sort of way. Sometimes Rysa wondered if the what-was-is-will-be had all the information it needed to be good at its job.
She patted Andreas’s elbow and walked to Anna and the men.
Her present-seer reminded her of the cousin’s name. Jason, it said. Jason Seaver.
Rysa quickly squeezed Ladon’s hand before nodding to Anna and the two normals.
“The dragons listen for the copter,” Anna said. Both beasts were still in their respective lookout positions—Sister-Dragon on the bus and Brother-Dragon on the shed roof.
Jason Seaver blinked and tried not to stare at Sister-Dragon. He stared at Daisy a lot too, and at Rysa and Anna, but with the reverence of a man in the presence of angels. Eye contact with Ladon and Andreas, though, he avoided.
Thankfully, he no longer tried to flirt, nor did he come off like a horny pick-up artist the way he did the first time they met. Now he seemed equally overwhelmed by and touched that he’d been called to help superhumans.
Rysa nodded to him, then to Officer Seaver. “I won’t mince words,” she said. “I’m a Fate. I see the future. The last time we met, my future-seer told me I would give an order that sent you two to your deaths. I would like to avoid that future.”
Officer Seaver placed his hands on his hips and stood like a cowboy. “As would we, ma’am.”
“So I’m asking you to please drive back to Cheyenne. Both of you. Now, before Billy gets here.” Before the end of the world drops on them here in the wide-open fields along the western edge of Nebraska.
The two Seavers looked at each other.
“I am fully aware that I just gave you an order, and that you two are fully aware of an order being given. If you stay, there will be more orders.” She nodded toward Ladon and Anna. “So you have your choice of which orders you are going to follow.” She inhaled. “If I am able to pull more specific information from my seers, I will tell you immediately.”
She couldn’t. Not with the broken sniffer-bots in her blood. Dunn had canceled out her enthraller abilities, so at least she wasn’t cycling up. Andreas’s calling scents kept any wooziness at bay, but any use of her abilities would disrupt the perilous equilibrium she currently held.
And right now, that equilibrium was more important than future-seeing. She wouldn’t add to the worry.
“Damned if we do, damned if we don’t, huh?” Jason Seaver smirked and scratched at the back of his head.
Rysa looked up at the eastern sky, and the Incursion. “We are all damned, Mr. Seaver.”
The smirk vanished.
Rysa looked down at the snow. “I’m sorry I can’t help more than to inform you of the risk you face by helping us.”
Officer Seaver pointed at his cruiser. “No one knows what to do, ma’am. They’re attacking the cities. The best we can do is help evacuees.” He nodded at his cousin. “Or watch your back while you and Ms. Pavlovich put an end to this.”
He genuinely believed they’d close the Incursion. That, maybe, Rysa and Daisy were as close to the angels his cousin seemed to think they were.
Ladon touched her back. “Dragon hears—” He whipped around, to face the east, and the Incursion.
Sister-Dragon roared. Dragon bellowed. Fire ripped from the beasts.
Both Ladon and AnnaBelinda buckled over. Both groaned and gripped their heads.
And for Rysa, the Incursion, the hole in the universe, felt present. It felt as if one of God’s many hands dipped down from the festive balloon colors of death and poked at the frozen soil directly between her and Officer Seaver’s cruiser.
Nothing walked in front of her.
Nothing she could see.
“Incoming!” she yelled, and pointed at the cruiser.
Chapter Forty-Six
Officer Seaver placed his hand on his service weapon and stepped between Rysa and his cruiser. His posture said that he did so instinctively and without thinking about what it was he was about to face. He stepped because with his training and his physical size, he was the one who always took the brunt of attacks. Always.
Fate be damned, she wouldn’t let him get killed.
Perhaps the strength came from her healer. Perhaps without her sniffer-bots, her body made itself stronger and meaner than it would be otherwise. Or perhaps she was simply terrified.
Rysa pushed Officer Seaver toward his cousin at the same time she faced whatever had snuck into their temporary camp.
The cruiser rocked.
Rysa raised her hands. “Can the dragons see it?” She pointed at Officer Seaver. “Get on the bus! You, Jason, and Daisy! Go!”
He glanced at Ladon and Anna, but nodded and pushed his cousin toward the bus, then gently helped Daisy back up the steps.
Ladon pulled himself to standing. Anna groaned and leaned on her brother, but also bit back the pain.
Anna squinted. “T
hat hurt,” she said. “It felt targeted.”
Ladon pressed on his temple. “Like Addy’s sweeping present-seer but cranked up to a thousand.”
The amalgamation of the invaders, their Nest-god, sent out sentinels to look for the Dracae. “They think Dragon and Sister-Dragon are traitors to their kind.”
Ladon and Anna pulled their weapons.
“Now that they’re over North America, they’re looking for us,” Anna said. “I suppose we should be happy it didn’t happen while we were on the interstate this time, huh, Brother?”
Ladon’s eyebrow arched. “Can’t ruin the bus. We just had it detailed.”
Anna grinned. Her back straightened. She addressed the open space over and around the cruiser. “Dragon is Sister,” she said.
“Dragon is Brother,” Ladon said.
“We are Legio Draconis,” Anna said. “We are the Legion of the Dragons.”
“We are Nest,” they said in unison.
Rysa spread her hands wide. “Tell your masters that we protect our own.”
The cruiser rocked again.
“Andreas! Between us and the bus,” Ladon said. “Rysa.”
She glanced at her husband.
She knew his battle stance. She understood what it meant when the dragons and their humans synchronized. But the depth of the need in Ladon’s eyes surprised her.
“Go,” he said, and nodded toward the bus.
Andreas took up his position as the second line of defense between the cruiser and Daisy; the Seaver cousins were the third. Ladon wanted Rysa behind those defenses as well.
How was he supposed to concentrate on the threat when his wife refused to back away? How could he possibly be the warrior they needed him to be if he worried about her safety? Because he worried. Eight months together was not nearly enough time for him to develop the certainty of her skills and timing and responses. Not the way he knew his sister’s.
“The dragons have gone silent,” Anna said. “They may not be where they were a moment ago.”
But she couldn’t help them from inside the bus. “I’m staying here,” Rysa said. “I think I confound it.” It hadn’t attacked, and she swore it sniffed her. Not too close, but it seemed to have an interest in their Draki Prime.
Ladon wanted to argue. She saw it on his face and felt his anger jitter through their minimized connection. But he didn’t. Arguing would eat up too much time and attention.
Snow crunched. New tracks appeared in, around, and over Seaver’s footprints.
Dragon-like tracks, but distinctly different.
Ladon and Anna flanked Rysa, each taking up a protective space at her sides.
“Where did it come from?” Anna asked.
There’d been no machine noise. No aircraft, none of the invader’s reflective dropships. The Incursion was visible, but still over the East Coast. No hairs standing on the back of anyone’s necks, and no dragon-perceiving of an invisible foe.
Yet something stood between them and the cruiser.
The prints indicated the creature was smaller than Dragon and Sister-Dragon, but still large by Earth animal standards. The prints looked similar to the grizzly bear’s in size and spread, except for the sixth claw marking.
“I don’t think it’s a dragon,” Rysa said.
“It’s not,” said Ladon. He and Dragon had contracted their energy connection to a tight trickle. Rysa couldn’t sense it even though they were obviously still communicating.
“Dragon says they don’t know what it is, though they agree it’s dangerous,” Anna said.
How long had it been watching them? How much information had it collected? She shouldn’t use her seers. She shouldn’t look. But they needed to know.
A sense of stalking came back from her past-seer. Of living life to chase and to grab onto a neck and to shake and shake and shake until the prey stopped flashing. Oh, how it had wanted to chase Officer Seaver. To bounce and to play. But her present-seer showed the activation of an overlay of training, both learned and via… hardware. Wetware. Artificial targeted intrusions into a happy life of stalking and bouncing and shaking. Stalk first, it said. Stalk only. Artificial intrusions that enhanced its ability to mirror its surroundings and to stalk and shake without being noticed.
Her future-seer screamed agony.
Rysa gasped as her seer tentacles popped like bubbles.
“Rysa!” Equal parts anger and concern filled her husband’s voice.
“I had to,” she snapped. “We need to know.”
“Will it chase you?” Ladon nodded toward the bus.
“Yes.” The controls on the beast only went so far.
“What is it?” Anna said.
A dog, she thought. A cat. Maybe a bear. But her seers showed her one thing for sure: “It’s a war-beast,” she said. Hellhound, her future-seer whispered. “The world’s going to call them hellhounds. It’s been augmented.”
Behind them, Andreas held up his weapon. “Will calling scents work on it, Rysa?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe they’ll just piss it off.” She glanced over her shoulder. “It’s between us and the cruiser.”
Andreas nodded.
“Show yourself, doggie,” Anna said.
The cruiser rocked again.
Ladon stepped in front of Rysa. “No more seers,” he said.
How many times had he stepped between her and a threat? He’d stepped between her and Faustus. He’d stepped between her and Vivicus. He would have stepped between her and Trajan and Aiden Blake if he could have. But she’d stepped between them and him, instead.
They were two-and-two, the human parts of the Dracos.
This threat they needed to face together. “Here, kitty kitty kitty,” she said.
A deep, dragon-like growl filled the space between them and the cruiser.
Rysa stepped out from behind Ladon. Slowly, she extended her hands, palm out, the way she’d approach a frightened dog. “Daisy’s animal enthralling might work better than your scents, Andreas,” she said. “Keep her on the bus. She shouldn’t be using her abilities any more than me.”
And honestly, Daisy was more important to saving the world than Rysa. Without her, their hopes of stopping the Incursion dropped to zero.
The creature pawed at the snow and a small cloud of ice crystals puffed up around the negative space of its leg—the outline of its form become momentarily visible—which meant one of two things: Either the creature wasn’t smart enough to mimic the cloud and hold full invisibility, or it didn’t have the physical capacity to do so.
Either way, the dragons had the advantage.
“We see you, puppy,” Ladon said as soothingly as he could. “It’s okay. We won’t hurt you.”
The creature growled again.
It hadn’t expected to be noticed. It stalked and stalking only worked when you weren’t seen.
Most predators run away when they’re noticed. This one stood its ground.
It slammed its front limbs into the snow.
Ladon and Anna hauled Rysa backward at the same time Andreas moved toward them. Anna curled her arm around Rysa’s shoulder and pulled her down just as Ladon and Andreas fired.
Bullets hit the cruiser. At least one grazed the creature.
It howled like a wolf—loud and throaty, as if telling all its mates that it needed help. Purplish blood welled up from a floating, sparking, visible wound.
Andreas flooded the area with ‘quiet.’
The creature responded with an angry, deep, half-bark-half-cat-growl, and a bright, equally-angry-looking, reddish-orange spikey flash of light.
A flash that turned it fully visible long enough for Rysa to get a good look.
The creature was shaped more like a bear with a wolf’s neck than a dragon. It stood about three feet at the shoulder and was obviously a quadruped that walked on six-taloned bear-like legs. A bobbed tail whipped behind it. A dragon-like crest topped its smaller, flatter head set with binocular eyes and a jaw full
of sharp, predatory teeth.
Hellhound fit.
It vanished back into an outline just as its head curled toward the wound and a tongue licked across the blood.
A visible whimper moved across its hide as a wave of flat, gray patterns.
“No different than fighting a grizzly,” Andreas said.
“When was the last time you fought a bear?” Anna asked. She pointed at the creature. “That is not a bear.”
No, it was something much, much deadlier, and all three of Rysa’s seers had exactly the same response to it that her amygdala did: It should not be here. It should not be alive. It was a monster. A bad thing. A nightmare.
She never advocated killing anything. Not a bear, or a wolf, or spider. Not a mouse or a mountain lion. And most definitely not a dog or cat.
But the hellhound was none of those things. It was an invading species with one specific purpose her seers and her soul understood: Destroy the ecosystem. End the Anthropocene and begin the Dracocene.
Murder all humans and bring on the Age of Dragons.
Her past-seer locked down on a specific mission: This particular hellhound had been sent to scout for the traitors who, if allowed to survive, might work against the taking of what the hellhound’s masters considered owed to them.
“Kill it!” Rysa yelled. Though it was probably too late.
Ladon fired three shots at the hellhound’s head, but it rolled and vanished.
The cruiser rocked. The metal creaked. And the hound ripped the light bar right off the top of the vehicle.
The bar lifted as if the hound intended to throw it.
Ladon fired again, as did Anna and Andreas.
The bar dropped and clanged off the side of the cruiser.
Ladon held up his hand. “Quiet.”
Rysa tried to be quiet. She tried not to rasp while she breathed. She really should not have used her seers. But how else were they to know where the hellhound was?
Her present-seer erupted upward with enough power that the three long immortals flanking her all jerked in response. It whipped in the air, an uncontrollable tentacle of energy, and locked onto the lunging hellhound.
The Burning World Page 34