Fifth of Blood Read online

  But the Fates who’d caught her scent were still out there, sniffing at all the possibilities and probabilities of the universe, probably biding their time, and waiting for the perfect moment to show up and cause all sorts of hell.

  Rysa rubbed her fingers over one of the insignias around her wrists as she watched Ladon peer around the parking lot yet again. The threats hanging over her head made Ladon skittish. He stressed about her safety and she didn’t like what it did to him.

  Vivicus selling her talon did matter to her. As did her overactive abilities. But what bothered Rysa the most was that she couldn’t help Ladon without her talisman.

  She was pretty sure he was still having flashbacks. It needed to stop. His well-being trumped everything else, even her seers buzzing all the time. Or her cycled-up calling scents.

  So here Rysa stood, in a mall parking lot in the middle of New Mexico, running her hands over her breasts and making her man guess where she wore the fourth insignia because it made him happy.

  And held his attention.

  “Well?” she asked. He hadn’t answered. Just stared.

  She lifted the binoculars to take a good look. He hadn’t shaved since the group left the bar. All tense and taut, he stood in front of his black van in his black t-shirt and black jeans with a three-day growth of his dark, dark hair covering both his head and his chin.

  All the teasing held Rysa’s attention, too. Another breathy “Oh…” escaped. “Hottie fiancé is hot.”

  “I cannot stand this, Rysa,” he growled. “I am buying a rebreather. A mask. Something. I will have you.”

  They’d had this conversation already. Not seeing his face during sex wasn’t happening. “Too creepy,” she said.

  Ladon sniffed. “Don’t care.”

  Oh my, she thought, her body tingling. He wanted her that much? “You are volcanic.”

  “Mine.” The look he gave her was full of contradictions. His eyes pierced, his gaze steamy and bright and dominant. But one eyebrow and the corresponding side of his mouth both pulled up into a knowing smirk, as if he understood perfectly well how much being referred to as “his” annoyed her.

  He was toying with her, teasing her as much as she teased him.

  Rysa sighed and bit her lip, happy he seemed to be dealing with the situation fairly well. When this was done, when they could be together without anyone else around, all their injuries healed and their bodies whole, he could have her as much as he wanted in as many ways as it pleased him.

  Maybe the rebreather wasn’t such a bad idea.

  Ladon walked toward her, three, four, five paces, but stopped. His face betrayed what her calling scents did to his mind—he grimaced in pain and confusion.

  Frowning, she pulled the phone from her ear. She couldn’t take this anymore, either. Three days without touching Ladon or Dragon—without stroking the beast’s snout or feeling his big head on her lap, or being close enough to pick up images from him. Three days of feeling cold because she didn’t have Ladon’s heat comforting her body, or lonely because she didn’t have his fingers dancing on her skin, were three days too many.

  They had to get her talisman back. Now.

  Ladon scratched at his perfect belly, and frowned just as much as Rysa.

  An idea bloomed. She put the phone to her ear again. Not touching him drove her crazy, so maybe she could touch something that had touched him. “How long have you been wearing your t-shirt?”

  He plucked at it, looking down, and sniffed the fabric. “Why?”

  Rysa stood up straight, smoothing her free hand over her own abdomen, mimicking what Ladon had just done. “Take it off.”

  He didn’t even blink. The shirt came up and over his head before she’d finished saying “off.”

  The binoculars returned to her eyes, even though she was thirty-five feet away, she was still able to see the definition of his abdomen and his chest. And those shoulders. And his arms.

  A new tingle rolled from the lowest part of her torso up through her belly and into her breasts.

  Ladon’s eyebrows arched. “You just had an orgasm, didn’t you?”

  How the hell could he tell that from over there? “Maybe.” Not like she could tell, anyway. Her good experiences were limited to the few times she’d been with Ladon, and even though they’d been brilliant and intense, they hadn’t been, well, lustful. They’d been loving. So blatant sexual need like what they were both experiencing right now was very new to her.

  Ladon glanced up at Dragon’s perch on top of the van. Rysa scowled. The beast was watching. He must have tattled.

  Ladon’s eyebrow arch turned into a full smile. “You did.” He flexed his chest muscles. “I am never letting you go, you know that? Never.” After a pause, he lifted his chin and his voice dropped deeper. “I have plans for you.”

  He’d trimmed his chest hair, and the line descending from his bellybutton into his jeans. Trimmed it to a shadow so it matched the length of the three day growth on his chin and head.

  Rysa’s mouth dropped open. “God damn,” she breathed into the phone.

  Touch! Touch! Touch! danced through her mind. Oh, to run her fingers over his muscles and lick the sunshine from his skin. She squirmed, and bounced a little, as a terrible thought ran through her mind: Don’t delay! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and when it’s gone, it’s gone!

  But she couldn’t get near him.

  “Plans that will take every morning and every evening to bring to fruition.” Ladon slowed the last three words, his voice deepening again. “And most afternoons.”

  “I want the shirt,” she blurted out. “Tell Dragon to rub it on his eye ridge so it smells like both of you then bring it over here and I’ll back away so you can set it on the hood of the car and I’m putting it on and not taking it off until this is done. I don’t care if it pisses off Derek.”

  Ladon stared, not saying anything, and held up the shirt. It vanished upward, swirling for a moment in what looked like the sky, before landing in Ladon’s hand again.

  The first step forward looked like any other first step, but not the second. A burst of speed pushed him toward her so fast she knew he’d catch her before she got away.

  But he could only hold his breath for so long. Or take her calling scents touching his skin and nose and eyes.

  Ladon was right there, right in front of her, his gorgeous chest angled just right to allow him to pull her to him and fold her into the safety of his arms. But he couldn’t, so he handed her the shirt instead.

  “Ladon,” she whispered.

  He nodded and quickly—too quickly—kissed her forehead. Then he jogged backward, away from her, his gaze still glued to hers as he exhaled the breath he held.

  She set the phone down on the roof of the sedan, and slowly stripped her t-shirt over her head. Yes, she was in a parking lot, but her present-seer whispered no one was looking except Ladon and Dragon. So she changed now, so they’d see.

  Rysa held his shirt to her face, rubbing the fabric against her cheek, wishing for the man and not the clothes. It smelled like him—sunshine and civilization. But also how he tasted—warm and masculine. And it carried Dragon’s warm spices along the front, where he’d rubbed it.

  She pulled it over her head and it fell across her breasts and over her hips and buttocks. She wasn’t a tiny woman, not like AnnaBelinda, but the shirt was big on her.

  Tonight, she’d snuggle into it as she stared at the stars, not sleeping, and holding the fabric against her skin, wishing it was his hands instead.

  The van rocked.

  Ladon glanced up and his face took on the intense stare both he and his sister displayed while listening to the dragons.

  The beast appeared, a sliver of shadow against the black van, and Rysa saw his claw-hands: Marry us, he signed in American Sign Language.

  An image followed, faint but still discernible—richly colored soft flower petals, the feel of Ladon’s hands, the patterns and vibrancy of Dragon’s hide. />
  Rysa laughed, signing Yes.

  She’d marry them.

  Ladon glanced at his phone. “Derek is texting.” A pause. “He spotted something.”

  Rysa gave her Fate’s abilities a command, as Grandpa Andreas had taught her to do: Lead me to my talisman.

  Fates with the money and the power to buy her talisman would not deal directly with that psychotic bastard Vivicus. It meant he’d been looking for access. Middlemen.

  Rysa, Ladon, and Derek had been chasing him for three days, following his trail as he moved from one unwilling fence to another.

  Rysa’s future-seer gripped her senses: Soon, in the mall, there’ll be a fight. People running. Screams so loud Rysa cringed as her seer blasted them into her ears. She smelled the fake-butter tang of movie theater popcorn. Felt a sticky floor under her boots.

  Ladon and Derek were about to catch a break.

  Three breaks, actually.

  A Fate triad.

  Chapter Three

  Derek Nicholson, husband and brother-in-law to dragons, tipped back his ever-present hat and watched the three Fates—two girls and a boy—slap at each other as they bought their movie tickets.

  Every noise in the mall echoed inside the cavernous entrance to the theaters. A glass atrium connected the theater’s double set of sliding doors to one of the mall’s exterior entrances, an obvious addition tacked on sometime during a remodel. The interior walls under the glass, like the exteriors of all the shopping and entertainment establishments in this part of Santa Fe, had been coated with a slurry of concrete and fiberglass in an attempt to mimic adobe. Everything was painted a dusty pink-beige, that homogenized bland color people from the north always thought of as “desert rose.”

  A double coat of tint darkened the overhead glass, and the theater had hung banners touting this summer’s blockbusters to block the sun, but the concrete under Derek’s feet still radiated the day’s heat. The hordes of people waiting to purchase tickets did nothing to clear the oppressive, over-humid air.

  Derek could not hear what the three kids said to each other, even with his newly-enhanced hearing. He flexed his back, feeling the new, stronger pull of his muscles. He had tested his strength the last time they’d stopped at a rest area, lifting a boulder of at least seventy pounds with no effort. And he felt heavier, as if his bones were increasing in density.

  Rysa had fixed more than his blood disorder in Branson. She had made him part Dracae. And as he watched the three Fates, he was for damned sure going to use it.

  Derek cocked his head, turning his right ear toward them, hoping to pick up something through the crowd noise. Conditioned air inside the theaters hit his nose each time the glass doors opened to let in a patron, the popcorn, the sweaty bodies. But all he heard was a mash-up of talk about superheroes, bad boyfriends, and where to eat after the movie.

  Derek curled and stretched his toes in his boots as he waited. His bones no longer ached. His joints flexed with a smoothness he had never before experienced. The world’s edges were now clear and crisp. He heard almost everything. Saw more detail in the skin of the people around him, on the walls, and even in the air itself, than he thought possible. Felt the slight extra pull on his boots from the sticky coating on the atrium’s floor with a precision he never had previously.

  But his newly-enhanced senses gave him a headache. His brain had issues integrating the new information into a form his body could use. He might sense how the stickiness on the floor and the resistance of the air flow might influence his body’s actions, but he did not think he could, at least yet, change accordingly.

  He had asked Rysa how long it would take. She only frowned and asked, “What do you mean?”

  Ladon did not help. His brother-in-law fretted over his new love. And Anna drove south from their home and would not arrive for several hours.

  So Derek focused on the ongoing physical upgrade. His complete immunity to enthrallers. And the exquisite precision with which he sensed Fates and Shifters. He suspected it outshone both his wife’s and his brother-in-law’s abilities. One moment, Derek lay bleeding out on a restaurant table and the next, he knew exactly what everyone around him could do.

  The triad in front of him laughing at each other in the ticket line looked to be no more than seventeen years old, which meant newly licensed to drive. And newly activated.

  And inexperienced.

  They were not particularly powerful, either. His new senses told him that. But they looked like rich kids, with their shiny phones and their expensive clothes, which meant they might have the information Rysa’s seers indicated they would find here, in this mall, tonight.

  Too bad Rysa could not come in. Face them Fate to Fates. This triad would probably wet themselves if placed in the presence of a Prime singular.

  Or puke up their guts because of the calling scents she pumped out.

  When he asked about his new resistance to enthrallers, Rysa had crossed her arms over her chest and held her head high. “No one fucks with either of us anymore, Derek,” she had said. “No one.”

  Like his sisters, she looked out for him.

  Over a century on this earth and, for the first time, Derek felt free.

  He felt joyous, yes. Exhilarated, as well. He wanted to dance and hoot and make his own choices. What choices, he did not know, but new choices were out there, somewhere, waiting for him.

  But one must take steps toward change. Rushing forward only allowed new corruption to ooze into the vacuum left behind.

  So now, he learned his limits. Now, he made sure no one fucked with his young sister-in-law’s life.

  His phone vibrated and an annoying shudder worked through his wrist and up his arm. Ladon texted: Girlfriend says to buy your ticket and go in. We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.

  Derek texted back as he took up a place in line, behind the three Fates: Will do. Hurry up. The place is full and I do not know how long I can save a seat.

  A lot of normals milled around. The three Fates poked at their phones, giggling and showing each other their screens. The girls were both blonde, and both too thin. Obviously twins. The boy hadn’t filled out yet, his shoulders still narrow, his brown hair cut shaggy like so many of the kids today. He stayed between the girls, alternating touching one, then the other, always with a possessive grip.

  A new disapproval filtered in and Derek’s perception of the trio shifted. They had started as kids, a set of Fates who, perhaps, might behave better than the previous generations. But what he saw—the two girls deferring to the boy, his possessive stance—only reinforced Derek’s already strong dislike of all things Parcae.

  If Derek could learn to live without entitlement, so could they. All of them. Especially the young ones, who should already know better.

  The trio walked through the doors into the theater, the boy in the middle with an arm around each of the girls.

  Rysa would have to track which theater they went into. She had gained a fair amount of control the past three days, showing often that even if her abilities were constrained by her feeble access to her talisman, she was truly the Draki Prime.

  She would sniff out these three and tell Ladon where to go.

  Derek texted: What movie does the girlfriend want to see? I am almost to the ticket window.

  Too many people blocked his view into the theater proper, and he did not yet have a ticket, so he couldn’t follow the triad. The fat woman behind him scowled when he didn’t move forward, instead watching the kids.

  Derek grinned his best charming grin and pushed up his hat, nodding to the woman. Her lips parted with an audible pop when he winked. He turned away and stepped back to his place in line.

  His phone buzzed in his hand: Parking. Then another text. I’ll ask her.

  The rush of cold air from the interior of the theater had not stopped, or pulsed, the way it usually did with the intermittent entering of moviegoers. Derek looked up. The kids were still standing in the exact center of the slidin
g glass doors, the girls against the boy’s sides. They blinked in unison, and their faces turned toward the parking lot.

  All three rounded their lips.

  A seer blossomed from the girl on the left, a low clanging that reminded Derek of money falling. New money, thick coins. Then rustling from the boy, followed by a high future-seeing jingle from the other girl.

  They weren’t looking at him. They watched the door.

  An annoyed grumble washed through Derek’s enhanced senses, one from outside the theater, but close. One emanating from the energy shared by a man and a big, invisible beast.

  The Fates, they must have felt it, too.

  Damn it, Derek thought. They sense Ladon.

  The boy mumbled something. The girls nodded and the three Fates stepped apart. All three turned. And all three ran into the theater.

  Chapter Four

  Ladon parked the van in the loading dock area next to the movie theater. Three Fates—a full triad—were inside, and Rysa had been bouncing and pointing at the mall when he left her. “They know something!” She’d twirled. “I can’t see what but they do!”

  Three goddamned Fates who had interrupted what little alone-time he had with his woman.

  By all the old gods, he couldn’t take this anymore. He had to touch her. Looking at her wasn’t enough.

  And Dragon, after having his sleep interrupted not once, but twice, had become a glowing ball of irritability.

  I am not irritable. I will sleep when Rysa says it is safe for me to sleep. For a split second, the beast’s hide flashed, then he dropped into invisibility as he reached for the rear door’s release. You are short-tempered, not me.

  Right, Ladon pushed.

  And I am not a ball. I am a dragon.

  Ladon chuckled as he slammed the driver’s side door. The familiar whoop whoop echoed off the concrete exterior wall when he pushed the remote to lock the vehicle. In front of them, the ticketing area glowed in the evening light, a bright spot under a giant glass jar.