Fifth of Blood Read online

  “You must be the smart one of your pathetic triad, huh?” Rysa said.

  “What the hell are you?” Montana waved her hands in the air as if trying to swat away the calling scents. She dropped onto her ass and the carpet whiffed when she scooted backward.

  Your worst nightmare flitted through Rysa’s mind and she smirked, fighting the temptation just to play it up with the terrible cliché.

  Montana’s lip quivered. More fear crept into her face. “You’re what I was sensing. I told Dakota we shouldn’t have answered that call! I told him Shifters are bad news! But no, ‘This money’s easy!’ he said!” She air-quoted the “easy.” “‘We’re not dealing with Shifters. Not in person.’”

  The future-seer blinked rapidly, hyperventilating. Rysa stepped back.

  “Oh God oh god oh god.” Montana swatted at more invisible flies.

  Rysa’s present-seer whispered. She’s losing it, she thought.

  Her calling scents were causing the kid to go crazy. Right here, in front of Rysa. Literally crazy.

  For the first time since this started, she felt bad for the little rich future-seer. The kid had never in her life been in a situation where she’d been threatened, much less harmed. She’d never faced an enthraller before.

  Sheltered didn’t even begin to describe this kid’s perspective on life.

  “Time to meet a Dracae.” Rysa nodded toward the escalator.

  Ladon rode down behind the other Fate, Dragon in front. The steps buckled under the beast’s weight, visibly bowing, and the entire escalator groaned when he jumped off.

  The other girl, the past-seer named Virginia, blubbered like a baby and clutched at her elbows, her lip also quivering.

  Ladon looked more perplexed than angry. He didn’t like terrifying children.

  But they weren’t that much younger than Rysa—they’d turned seventeen a couple weeks ago. And they’d been active for about two years.

  Rysa backed away as Ladon came closer. He held the past-seer at the base of the escalator, watching Rysa, and his face suddenly turned so sad she hiccupped.

  I miss you, too, she signed. I miss both of you.

  A rustling present-seer, one sounding like someone crinkling hundred dollar bills, flared through the little area. Ladon looked up. “Come down here, you little shit.”

  The boy came back. The two girls looked at each other, obviously confused. Rysa’s present-seer whispered the truth—he’s selfish.

  They were as surprised by his behavior as were Rysa and Ladon.

  The present-seer—Dakota—rode down the escalator and tried hard to look like a man. He stood erect, his chest out, like a chimp. He flattened his face, but he still looked both embarrassed and terrified.

  The boy’s present-seer flared through the little area again, a rubbing of dollar against dollar, and his head swiveled between Rysa and Ladon. His body shifted, his posture very clearly saying Oh shit.

  He’d just realized why his triad had been run down by a dragon. Why their future-seer had been correct.

  And why he should not have helped Vivicus fence Rysa’s stolen talisman.

  Chapter Eight

  Calling scents flooded the little area. A scent causing ‘fear’ and another making Ladon’s heart ache with ‘love.’ Ladon breathed in sweet ‘calm,’ rapid ‘frantic,’ and burning ‘anger,’ but he pushed them aside, focusing instead on getting the information they needed from the three Fates.

  Rysa is upset. Dragon twisted around the boy as he stepped off the escalator. We distract her.

  Ladon wanted to pick her up. Take away some of her frenzy. But he couldn’t.

  Her seers buzzed over his mind, adding an odd vibration to the scents sitting on his tongue. Her calling scents took on an electrical flavor, as if he licked a fruity-minty-tart battery.

  The male Fate wagged his head, looking first to Ladon, then to Rysa, then back again. His seer fluttered. “You’re with her?” Shock tried to round his face at the same time as disgust tried to close it off. “She’s a Shifter. Why does she have a talisman?”

  “She’s a fucking Prime, Dakota!” The future-seer sat on her butt and whipped an old coffee cup from the floor at the boy. “You’re such a fucking idiot!” Tears started. She slumped forward and dropped her face in her hands. “She’s the dragon’s Prime singular. Oh God we messed with the Dracae’s Prime singular!”

  “How are you both Fate and Shifter? Why would you want to be Shifter?” The boy who had no right to be named “Dakota” stood his ground and kept his chin high.

  Ladon frowned, watching Rysa frown as well. She didn’t step back.

  “What did that Shifter want to sell?” Dakota’s seer crinkled again. “Your talisman? How the fuck did he get your talisman?”

  All three of them clutched pendants they wore around their necks.

  Ladon pushed the boy forward, so he stood next to the past-seer named Virginia. She whimpered and clung to the boy’s arm. Her eyes were huge but her seer silent.

  “You don’t have any idea at all who you were doing business with, do you?” Ladon asked.

  We must hurry. Dragon climbed the playground tree and reared up, so he could see the upper level. Derek distracts a security guard. Dragon flashed an image to Rysa.

  She nodded and stepped toward the girl on the floor, pointing. “Where is it?”

  Dakota glared at Ladon, ignoring the two girls even though the future-seer looked sick. “We don’t ask what someone’s trying to sell! It’s bad for business.”

  Ladon’s dislike of these sniveling children flared high enough he forgot his vow to not scare them, though the girls were frightened enough.

  The boy, on the other hand, needed a shock.

  Ladon stepped in front of the boy, so close their chests almost touched, and snarled down at his young face.

  The past-seer’s breath hitched. “Don’t hurt him!” She yanked the boy away from Ladon.

  “He won’t hurt you.” Rysa walked back from the future-seer lying on the circle of carpet. “He’s civilized, unlike the son of a bitch you helped.” She glared at the triad, each in turn. “But the dragon is angry.”

  The future-seer chirped like she’d just seen a mouse. “I told you not to take that call!”

  “Shut up, Montana!” The past-seer clung to the boy.

  Dakota pulled away from the girl and put his hands in the air. “Look, he wanted contact info. Someone who deals with the big names. People we don’t even have access to.” He looked between Ladon and Rysa. “We only help when it’s… advantageous. He offered a lot of money.”

  Montana the future-seer coughed and wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “We didn’t use our seers to look at the package. We don’t do that. We had no idea he stole from you.”

  Ladon had run into triads like this one in the past. They operated as middlemen facilitating the clean connection between a seller and a buyer. They often charged a hefty fee to launder dirty sales.

  But most of the time Fates knew when to stay out of a deal.

  The “a lot” of money Vivicus offered must have been enough to override these three kids’ sense of self-preservation.

  Security approaches. Dragon dropped onto the floor and flashed his hide. All three Fates gasped.

  “What did you tell him? Give me a name.” Ladon would shake it out of this trio, if he had to. “Who’s the contact?”

  The clutching girl named Virginia’s past-seer clanked across Ladon’s mind and did nothing to calm his frustration.

  She winced. “He’ll never work with us again if we tell you. He might… do something.”

  The boy’s present-seer rustled. “He’s our best contact!”

  Rysa must go. Dragon flashed another image and she nodded again.

  Security yelled from upstairs.

  But she didn’t leave. She walked to the future-seer, stepping with conviction, and leaned over the girl. Ladon didn’t hear what she whispered.

  The girl named Montana
dry-heaved but rose. She dropped her bag on the carpet, and staggered toward the other two.

  Virginia smeared her makeup over her face when she wiped at her eyes. “He made us swear we won’t talk about him.”

  More yells from upstairs.

  The boy looked up.

  “Who would you rather face, child?” Ladon snarled.

  Dakota stepped back, but his seer rustled. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. It dropped from his hand, and bounced once on the carpet. “Please let us go. Please.”

  Ladon picked up the phone.

  Montana whispered to her sister, and the past-seer pulled out her phone, offering it to Ladon. “We’re sorry.”

  Then the three ran up the escalator.

  “Let them go.”

  Ladon looked at Rysa.

  They won’t talk. They’re terrified of you. They’re going to tell the guard Montana had a bad reaction to her mood med. She signed before picking up the little leather bag on the floor and twisting the strap over her head. Like all Fates, they found the most advantageous exit from this situation.

  Ladon looked at the phones in his hand. The three young Fates might not have told them anything, but they left in his possession a record almost as clear as a written note.

  You know someone nearby who will help, Rysa’s seers flicked into her mind.

  She closed her eyes. “Another kid.” Her seers erupted through the empty area and she looked up, an eyebrow lifted. “A Shifter.”

  A Shifter? Who is she talking about? Ladon pushed to Dragon.

  Tell Derek I will meet him at the car, she signed. “Go!” Rysa ran off toward the far entrance, leaving Ladon and Dragon alone, with only the mall’s screeching buzz to keep them company.

  Chapter Nine

  Dmitri’s voice flowed out of Derek’s cell phone and into his ear. The damned thing had started to buzz about the time they’d left Santa Fe and now gave him a headache. But they needed information, so Derek spoke with his perpetually irritated cousin.

  “Bernard moved home six months ago. Ladon did not notice?” Dmitri snorted. Derek heard his ever-present glass of vodka clink against the side of his phone. “I do believe your brother-in-law has not noticed many things for many years.”

  The glass clinked again. A Thank you meant for someone other than Derek popped across the line. Dmitri must have asked for a refill.

  “True.” Derek gave only a vague answer. Speaking of Ladon’s moods while Rysa drove was not wise. Her calling scents had taken on a distinct edge of agitation as it was.

  She drove the sedan north along a lonely highway, toward Taos. The stars and the taillights of Ladon’s van several car lengths in front of them were the only glow in the night.

  “The boy could not handle the wild life here in Branson.” Dmitri snorted again, his voice taking on his usual undertones of irony. Whether Dmitri did it purposefully to annoy, or if his own century on this earth left him with a true sense of the contradictions of the world, Derek did not care. Though he hoped his own voice had not taken on a similar sharpness.

  What Derek remembered of Bernard gelled with Dmitri’s words. Bernard’s family had activated him early, to shape his abilities for Burner hunting. Like a few other Shifters Derek knew—Andreas’s ex-wife, Penny, for one—Bernard possessed an extremely sensitive nose. The Land of Milk and Honey must have caused him unending migraines.

  The boy had come to Dmitri as a runaway. Derek’s cousin, though, saw the boy’s true gift and put him to work immediately.

  Without Bernard, the Seraphim would have taken many more of Dmitri’s financial holdings than they had. And also without Bernard, Derek and Ladon and Anna would not carry the police and cell call-scanning app on their phones. The app that had allowed Ladon to track the Burners who’d started this whole mess, back in Minneapolis.

  “He continues to work for me.” Dmitri sniffed, satisfied. “But, as he says, he ‘telecommutes.’” More glass-clinking. “I texted the address to Ladon.”

  And to Derek. They would arrive on Bernard’s step in less than twenty minutes. “We got it.”

  The sounds of The Land filtered through to Derek—the music, the bustle. “You have reopened?”

  “Andreas enthralled the remaining Seraphim into fixing the destruction of my property.” Dmitri growled the last four words with enough venom to kill another Shifter at fifty paces. “They are jumpy, as if they expect an army of Fates to descend upon us at any moment.” Tapping accompanied Dmitri’s words. He must be drumming his fingers on a tabletop.

  “So no… uninvited guests?” The Fates the Seraphim had set their trap for could still appear, still walk right into the bar and tear it apart. Or they could just as easily appear in the center of the road he and Rysa now traveled, having seen where to establish a roadblock. What Fates did depended on how strongly they perceived the grip of the hand of fate. After all, they were bound by it. But Fates tended toward subterfuge and secrecy, keeping their dealings as private as possible. Odds were strong that when the group in question did appear, the least number of Shifters would know about it.

  Rysa’s mystery Fates were maneuvering, looking for the best time and location from which to pounce.

  “Someone will show up. I know it in my bones, cousin. So tell your new sister-in-law she is to procure her talisman and put an end to what the Seraphim started. Trouble is bad for business.”

  “We are working on it.” What were any of them supposed to do?

  Dmitri paused. “She may need to show her capabilities.”

  Rysa, act aggressive? Derek glanced at her. Not likely. Though over the past few days, she had argued more. And acted demanding. Derek chalked it up to not sleeping.

  Her seers pinged against his mind. “As long as Andreas is there, no Fate will mess with Dmitri.”

  Derek nodded. “She says you are safe, as long as the First Enthraller stays.”

  Dmitri snorted again. “The enemy of my enemy, or some such bullshit.”

  “Aye.” The longer Andreas stayed in Branson, the less contact he had with Derek’s wife. The “special bond” Anna and Andreas shared had not settled well with Derek when he and Anna married. Or in the seventies after the Penny fiasco. Or now that the big man had taken on the task of training Rysa.

  Derek watched the van turn left onto another street. Let the big enthraller be near Ladon’s woman and not his. “I will call you back.” He cut the call as Rysa followed around the corner.

  She had been suspiciously quiet since leaving Santa Fe, insisting on driving so Derek could focus on “taking care of business and organizing the troops.” He plugged his now-hungry phone into the car charger.

  Rysa’s calling scents fluttered. The car was flooded—the car was always flooded, even with the windows down—but he could not talk on the phone with the extra road noise. So right now, they relied on the AC. Her scents had taken on a sort of steady flow, not unlike a spring feeding a pond, and the pond was the interior of the car. What bubbled up from her seemingly endless well continued to bubble up, and nothing changed its pace or intensity.

  Except words about Anna. Derek’s wife produced a definite shift toward ‘anger’ and ‘fear’ from Rysa.

  Which only pulled up conflict in Derek. Major, gut-knotting conflict. “Fighting with my wife will lead nowhere, Rysa.”

  Rysa’s nose crinkled and her eyes narrowed when she glanced at him. Her present-seer glided over his mind, a flute playing out a too-loud string of notes. “Suck it up and be a man, Derek. She—they—did wrong, and you know it.”

  Fuck you fought its way into his throat, but he did not say it. Right or wrong, Anna and Sister-Dragon had wanted nothing more than to save his life.

  Just like Rysa, in the end.

  She groaned and her calling scents took a hard shift toward ‘annoyed.’

  Derek’s neck and back tightened. “You need to sleep.” Sitting on the seats of a stolen car for three days had not helped. He had not realized how uncomfortable cheap,
late-model sedans could be.

  She did not look at him. Her seers blared over his mind instead.

  The seers were getting pushy, too. Like she could not control them any more than she controlled her calling scents.

  “Are you having issues with your seers? They’re loud.” Derek scratched at his cheek. His stubble itched and he needed to shave.

  “Don’t tell Ladon I’m not sleeping.” Rysa turned the car onto a dark suburban street.

  Derek had awakened too many times to see her staring at the stars. She had not slept an hour since they left Branson. Three days now. Her healer seemed to be controlling her exhaustion, even if it could not control her calling scents.

  Derek lowered his voice. “How long do we have?” How long before her lack-of-talisman changed from a blistered welt to a festering wound?

  How long before his brother-in-law stopped holding his mind together and lost all sense of civilization because of his mate’s traumas?

  Another blast of her seers washed over him and she grimaced. “I don’t need my seers to know what you are thinking.”

  But her seers just danced over him yet again. Derek scratched at his chin, but did not comment. He doubted she knew what he was thinking. He did not know what he was thinking. The moment she fell into Ladon’s life, the world flipped on its ear. His wife and her dragon turned hard and raging and… and stupid, and he could only step back so as not to get cut. Ladon and his dragon were no better.

  Derek did not respond to Rysa’s baiting. She suffered fatigue and did not understand how she poked. Instead, he watched the dark New Mexico landscape pass them by.

  Chapter Ten

  Rysa drove the entire hour and a half from Santa Fe through the hills and the scrub. New Mexico didn’t seem to look all that different from Wyoming. But it did, and Rysa couldn’t quite put her finger on how. The hills reflected light differently. The colors were deeper. Even in the dark, she could tell.

  New Mexico felt just as wide open, just as real and wild, but older. More ghosts walked here.