The Burning World (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 7) Read online

  Could she do the same now with the new opal ring in her hand? Affect the metal?

  “Ma’am?”

  Dunn pocketed the ring. “Yes, Harold?”

  Tall, wiry, with well-cut brown hair and shiny blue eyes, Harold was the kind of handsome that didn’t call attention to itself. He watched the world from a pleasant face which elicited pleasantness from everyone around him, but not a strong memory.

  Harold Demshire blended into everyone’s ideal of a “nice guy.”

  “Marcus wants to talk to you.” He blew warm breath onto his fingers.

  She nodded once before walking toward the SUV.

  Marcus Drake leaned against the back bumper in his own deep-indigo jacket, zipped tight to cover the triple-dragon talisman around his neck. Any Legion Insignia worked as a talisman for the original Draki Prime, though the three dragons reforged from their first—the three dragons lined up on the torque around Marcus’s neck—worked best. Daniel, Timothy, and Marcus were as bound to the Dracae as Dunn’s great-granddaughter, Rysa Torres Drake.

  Marcus stared out into the night, a long immortal man aged by Parcae sickness. Gray peppered his black hair. Lines surrounded his eyes and lips. He could be Harold’s father for all the normals knew. Or hers.

  “Did I tell you that Rysa Torres healed my sickness?” he said. “Just before Ladon sent us to Branson. Before she’d become fully Shifter-activated and before any of us knew she was the daughter of a class-one healer.”

  He rubbed his neck. “She laid on her hands, I saw Daniel in a vision, and the pain left.” His hand transferred to his head and he rubbed at his hair. “Though I wish she’d taken the grays.”

  Dunn could help with that. She could reverse his aging. She could also turn him into a toad, if she wanted to.

  He’d been respectful enough not to ask for cosmetic changes, which she liked. Not that she would offer anyway.

  “That was the moment I knew Daniel was alive. I just didn’t know which War Baby he’d hitched a ride in.”

  They knew now. The other two Enfants de Guerre—Metus, the future-seer, and Timor, the past-seer—were still in the wind, somehow hiding themselves without the stitching help of their triad’s present-seer. Completely hiding themselves from Marcus Drake, one of the most talented past-seers on Earth, which suggested to Dunn an equally talented intervention.

  But Metus and Timor were not their current goal. Dunn suspected that the two missing War Babies were not likely to be anything beyond a footnote to their current concerns.

  “I knew I needed to find Daniel.” Marcus nodded as Harold walked up. “Do you know that we never told Ladon or AnnaBelinda about Harold’s Guard affiliation? All three of our seers said not to.” He shrugged.

  “Bound by fate.” Harold shrugged also.

  “We spent the past eight months staying under the radar while we searched for Daniel.”

  “Gathering information,” Harold said.

  Marcus rubbed his face. “I’m going to tell you the truth, ma’am. All of it.” he said.

  “You’ve been telling me the truth since we started this trip.” No one lied to Dunn. Not unless she wanted them to lie.

  Marcus chuckled, but his voice carried hints of annoyance. “Aye, ma’am.” Seemed Marcus Drake had not completely resigned himself to traveling with the Mother of All Enthrallers.

  Now Dunn chuckled.

  “I think my nephew punched a hole in the wall of the universe.” He waved his hand at the sky. “Ripped a tear in its fabric. Opened a portal through the looking glass.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I don’t think it matters what metaphor we use.”

  Aiden Blake, the future-seer of The Children of the Burning World and the son of Marcus’s brother, Timothy. The evil little fucker hurt Dunn’s daughter, Daisy.

  But again, she took no responsibility for the actions of others. How could she? At this point in her long life, she’d have to take responsibility for the entire planet, if she admitted to having fingers in others’ cookie jars.

  Harold had sources inside Praesagio Industries. He’d told Dunn stories of Aiden’s ghost-corpse and the subsequent corporate mobilization to figure out what it meant—and also about Trajan’s centuries-long mobilization specifically for the threat Aiden represented.

  Specific and centuries-long were the exact words Harold used, and the exact words his sources said to him.

  A very specific portent of a burning world had manifested the moment Andreas Sisto put a new-killing bullet through the brain of a boy who had vanished into that new hole-rip-looking glass.

  A world full of suicidal Burners… and now with its precious, soft underbelly exposed to that hole in the fabric of the universe.

  Nothing good could come of such a rip. Holes tended to allow access from both sides.

  The weight, the sense of foreboding déjà vu, wiggled. It rolled and it sank in its claws.

  Or talons. Six, maybe, on each of its giant hand-claws.

  Dunn rubbed her forehead. The Dracae were not the issue here. How could they be? Marcus spoke of rips in the fabric of the universe, not practical-minded beasts.

  But what did it all mean?

  “No, the metaphor doesn’t matter,” she said. No matter how deep the meaning they attached to the words they used to describe the new, only the reality mattered. Only the physics.

  Marcus nodded his agreement. “I knew a conduit had opened moments after Ladon reconnected to his beast.” He sighed. “I saw Daniel’s return.” Marcus closed his eyes. “I saw Aiden’s death—both of his deaths.”

  This was new information. “What are you talking about, Fate?”

  “There’s a… place… in the what-was-is-will-be. A location. It manifests as a flat plateau of rock.” He glanced at Harold. “For some, it looks like the Dragon’s Rock, which is outside the Dracae’s cave in Wyoming.” Marcus pointed northeast.

  “We’ve seen photos. The Praesagio pilots like to know where they’re landing,” Harold said.

  “I’ve never thought of the location as Wyoming, I suspect because I’ve never been to the cave.” Marcus inhaled. “To me, the new plateau looks like Mount Vesuvius.”

  Harold nodded as if he’d been partial to the vision.

  The cave image meant nothing to her, but Vesuvius, she knew. She’d pinioned the Burner Progenitor into the mountain with Janus’s talisman. She left both the man and the sword to be swallowed by the erupting volcano’s new tephra.

  The whispers told her to take Terry—he’d called himself Terry, the Burner Progenitor. Of all of them, he was the only one who remembered a name after they awoke under the olive tree. He’d babbled a lot, none of which she remembered or understood. Babbled and threatened and blew kisses much too dangerous to allow him to walk free. So she and Janus took care of it.

  The sword became the shards gleaned from the sharp pebbles on the side of Vesuvius. Terry, she suspected, had somehow managed to stay intact. She had no proof beyond an inkling and a few of the Whispering One’s whispers.

  “But I don’t think the location is either, ma’am. I think it’s something completely different.” For the first time on this trip, visible terror crept across Marcus Drake’s face. “Do you see it?” he whispered. “Do the Progenitors understand?”

  “No,” she said. Her abilities did not extend into the what-was-is-will-be. Dunn was firmly rooted in the physical of the world.

  Marcus rubbed his hands together again. “Timothy is there. He’s alive. Or semi-alive, like Daniel. He called to me the moment Aiden opened the hole in the universe, but I can’t talk to him.” He looked up at the sky. “I can’t get through the fog infesting the what-was-is-will-be. I don’t know what it means.”

  The Fates could not see though this fog, and every one of them considered their seers whole and unbroken. They seemed more frustrated than afraid.

  Which, if she was to believe her inklings, might not be the correct response.

  Harold squeezed Marcus’s shoulder.
“We’ll get Daniel. He’s closer to Timothy. He’ll know what to do.”

  Marcus responded with a squeeze to Harold’s fingers. “I know.”

  Dunn’s son, Andreas, and a handful of her grandchildren could have shepherded these two through Praesagio’s Fate and Shifter defenses, yet they’d asked her.

  Marcus turned toward the SUV door. “Daniel will tell us how much time we have left.”

  Harold’s sources had mentioned activated protocols, but Praesagio Industries was a squid with tentacles wrapped through every country on Earth. If there was a timetable, it wasn’t obvious.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  The mountains in front of them cut off most of the light pollution that modern normals pumped into the atmosphere. Not all of it—the undersides of clouds hanging behind the hills circling the western horizon glowed in ways that only clouds over a city could glow. Heat rose from the writhing anthill of humans that was Salt Lake City and that heat set fire to everything above it.

  Burning skies. Burning worlds. Holes ripped into the fabric of the universe by Fates as evil as her morpher son, Vivicus.

  “I won’t lie,” Marcus said. “I need my brothers. We need to be a triad if we are to see what’s coming.” He pointed between himself and Harold, then at Dunn. “We need to do this.”

  Dunn fingered the delicate opal ring in her pocket. It rolled around, a hard lost bauble in a world full of shiny things, and gave her a moment’s peace.

  She nodded. “Then I think we get the band back together.”

  Marcus and Harold looked at each other, then at her. Harold smiled.

  Dunn patted Marcus’s arm and climbed into the back of the SUV. They all had a part to play, including her.

  Chapter Two

  Rysa Torres Drake sank her bottom into the cave’s fresh, organic loam between the rows of strawberries and kale. The dirt tumbled more than squished as she displaced it with her hips, but didn’t roll in clods or chunks. The soil, like all living things inside the cave home she shared with the Dracae, had found an exquisite balance.

  Her seers tossed out images of the extra cleaning she’d need to do soon—each new wiggle ground soil deeper into the fabric of her jeans. Digging in her fingers only embedded dirt under her nails. She’d made a mess and she’d have to clean it up.

  She didn’t care. Every breath carried the scents of soil, orange trees, and the small patch of lavender not too far away. The light piped in via the dragons’ mirror system shimmered. Birds sang. Water flowed.

  The magic of the cave worked itself into her body through her skin and her lungs, and if she needed to scrub a little harder to make herself “presentable” for the wider world, then so be it.

  School beckoned. Ladon and Dragon had packed most of their bags already. She would be returning to the University of Minnesota for her final semester in a few days, but right now, she rolled around in the natural wonder within the cave’s bubble of perpetual early summer, and damn it, she was going to enjoy it.

  Rysa slowly arched her foot and gently dug her toes into a cool, shadowed mound of black earth under the leaves of two sweet-smelling strawberry plants. Soft, moist dirt that, somehow, the dragons had either manufactured or moved into this magical realm over one hundred years ago, and kept at the perfect, warm temperature all year round.

  A bluebird landed in the apple tree not far away. All three American species lived in the cave—Western, Eastern, and Mountain—and this one looked to be a male Eastern. He flipped his wings and preened his chest, and twilled his pretty love song.

  All she needed was a bunny and a fawn, and she could go full Disney princess out here in the commons, though honestly, she could do without the whole “princess” thing.

  Billy Bare, the Burner who’d saved Ladon, was out there somewhere. He’d fallen off their radar after he sent Ladon the video of his song—“Vanish into the Fire,” he’d called it. She caught herself humming it every so often. It would have been a hit, if he were technically still alive.

  He’d fallen off their radar so completely not even Dmitri knew where he was, and seers didn’t work with Burners. So no matter how badly she and Ladon wanted to offer him help and a safe haven, they couldn’t.

  Not that Dmitri was answering calls about Burners—or anything else, for that matter— which was why her mom, Mira Torres, and the Dragons’ Legion Second, Andreas Sisto, had decided to do a little in-person digging at Praesagio Industries’ headquarters in Portland. “I want to check on Daniel,” her mom had said. Andreas wanted to investigate the whole strangeness around Daisy’s—and his—mother.

  That’s what they’d said, though Rysa suspected the recent rash of possible Burner-caused explosions had something to do with Andreas’s desire to go “checking.” He’d pointedly asserted that the Dracae needed to sit this one out. Said Anna needed rest and Ladon his honeymoon.

  Rysa had given him a big hug while whispering “Thank you” into his ear.

  Andreas and her mom left five days ago. Her father stayed to finish the dragons’ clinic setup in the library off the cave’s kitchen area—though, again, she’d sensed more of a need to keep her dad somewhere safe than any need to finish the setup. There’d been a lot of clanking as a result, and a fair amount of rapid-fire Spanish swearing. AnnaBelinda seemed to be handling it well, considering the new facility displaced her work area. But both dragons burst with color and questions, and continued to grill Sandro Torres about all things medical for as long as he, and their humans, could tolerate it.

  Neither Anna nor Ladon enjoyed the lessons, and not being able to move more than two hundred feet from the dragons meant that both sister and brother had been spending a lot of time in the kitchen. The cave now stored enough preserved fruits and vegetables, and smoked meats, to bring a small city through a nuclear winter.

  Rysa’s brother-in-law, Derek, continued building a nursery in the apartment he shared with AnnaBelinda and Sister-Dragon. Lumber went in. Sawing noises and the scent of shaved wood came out. Little Alexei was about to have a room befitting his princeling heritage.

  The cave wasn’t exactly quiet these days—except now. The dragons were about to wake from their day-long sleep and both Anna and Ladon had gone off to the nesting shaft to be with their beasts. Her dad fiddled and Derek carved. The cave had settled once again into chirping birds and gurgling waters.

  So Rysa dug her toes into the soil, leaned back, and looked up at the dome overhead.

  Cool blues and greens, warm oranges and reds, all blended and swirled across the cave’s dragon-painted ceiling. Their roof shimmered and glistened, like the beasts themselves. Best sky ever, she thought.

  Plants rustled.

  Rysa closed her eyes. She knew all too well the approaching male footfalls.

  She loved her father. She understood his adult ADHD better than anyone else in the cave, since she inherited her own from him. But sometimes she wished he’d just stay in the library and let her be.

  Rysa pulled her toes out of the dirt and sat up.

  “Hey, ma risa,” her dad said. He squatted and picked at a weed next to his boot. “How are you feeling today?”

  If he were standing, his foot would have been tapping. Instead, he fidgeted with the poor little weed’s leaves.

  He also hadn’t combed his black hair since her mom left with Andreas, but his handsome Spanish features and hazel, sunburst eyes looked well-rested.

  Class-one healers could fake a good night’s sleep better than anyone.

  Rysa patted his hand. “I’m fine, Dad.”

  “Have you heard from your mother?” He wouldn’t look at her.

  She moved closer. The cave was wifi and cell signal-free, and her father went out to the Dragon’s Rock regularly to check his messages and would likely see something from her mom before she did.

  What was this about? There’d been hugs and promises and kisses when her mom left. Now her dad frowned and fidgeted.

  Then it dawned on Rysa: Her mom left with
Andreas. Huge, handsome, charming, First Enthraller Andreas.

  Rysa chuckled. Her poor father. “Dad, they’re just going to Portland. Mom’s checking on Daniel. That’s all.”

  His frown deepened.

  “There’s no need to be jealous.” She patted his hand again. He’d been so wrapped up in setting up the clinic he hadn’t truly realized Mom was gone until yesterday when the dragons went into the nesting shaft to sleep. All of a sudden the world grew quiet and left her poor father alone with his own thoughts.

  She’d been in places like that before, focusing on one problem and not really registering changes in her world. Thank goodness she now had Ladon and Dragon’s energy connection to help smooth over her attention issues.

  “I am not jealous.” But her dad pouted like a little boy. “Why would I be jealous?” He glanced over his shoulder. “I have work here.”

  Rysa rubbed her hands together. Dirt clung to her fingers and her nails and she should at least get some of it off, though she’d rather leave it where it was for a little longer. But no, her dad needed help.

  “Let’s relax tonight,” she said, “Come spend a few hours between Ladon and Dragon with me. It’ll do you good.” He benefited from time inside a human-dragon energy flow as much as anyone else.

  His frown deepened yet again, but then he seemed to catch himself. “Yeah,” he said.

  Rysa brushed some of the dirt off her toes. “Mom married you.”

  The frown turned into pursed lips. “I abandoned you two for a decade because Daniel told me to.”

  This was coming up now? But then again, they hadn’t really talked since he had returned to her life. He’d been busy. She’d been busy. He’d needed time with her mom, and she’d needed time with her new husband.

  They were both full of excuses.

  Her dad continued squatting and fidgeting with his leaf. How were his knees not hurting? But again, class-one healers could do all sorts of bad things to their bodies and suffer no ill effects.

  At least physically.

  Rysa had thought her parents were doing well. She had a little sister on the way, after all. But now she wondered.