Bonds: The Silence Cycle Episode One

  BONDS

  Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon

  The Silence Cycle

  Episode One

  by

  Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Published by Six Talon Sign Fantasy & Futuristic Romance

  Copyright 2014 Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Edited by Annetta Ribken at http://wordwebbing.com

  Copy edited by Terry Koch at Beyond Grammar

  Cover designed by Kris Austen Radcliffe for Six Talon Sign Media

  Cover Photography by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Plus a special thanks to my Proofing Crew.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences are used factitiously. All representations of real locales, programs, or services are factitious accounts of the environments and services described. Any resemblances characters, places, or events have to actual people, living or dead, business, establishments, events, or locales is entirely unintended and coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any print or electronic form without the author’s permission. For requests, please e-mail: publisher@sixtalonsign.com.

  Copyright 2014 by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Published by: Six Talon Sign Fantasy & Futuristic Romance

  An imprint of Six Talon Sign Media LLC

  Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  First electronic edition, August 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-939730-16-9

  The Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Series

  Science Fiction Romance

  Trilogy One: Activation

  Games of Fate

  Flux of Skin

  Fifth of Blood

  Short Fiction:

  Prolusio

  Conpulsio

  The Silence Cycle

  Bonds

  Broken

  Silent Available October 2014

  Trilogy Two: Redemption

  All But Human Coming early 2015

  Note:

  The Silence Cycle runs parallel to Rysa and Ladon’s Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon storyline and occurs between the events of Trilogy One: Activation and Trilogy Two: Redemption. While it’s not necessary to read the first books to enjoy Daisy’s adventures, it does mean one thing:

  Here be spoiler dragons.

  So watch the waters, gentle reader, and remember:

  It’s not a good love story until something explodes.

  1

  Now…

  Daisy Reynolds Pavlovich leaned away from the café’s wobbly table and pressed her back against the cheap, metal coldness of her chair. The little shop in the basement of the Continuing Education Building carried the same strong, roasted-astringent aroma of every coffee shop she’d ever been in. That washed-out, generalized smell of brewed coffee, the meta-scent of places where more than one blend bubbled through more than one pot. And like every place serving food, every surface in the café also carried undernotes of bleach cleaner.

  She wiggled her nose, trying to ignore the stinks and the stenches. Sometimes being a bloodhound enthraller had its drawbacks, and eating in restaurants was one of them.

  If she was honest, she’d admit that being a bloodhound had more drawbacks than benefits. But her abilities offered a level of protection normals did not have. And they allowed her to help animals with her Shifter healing ability and pop the Burners she tracked with her curse of a nose.

  The damned ghouls stunk to high heaven and like most other bloodhound enthrallers, Daisy could smell one miles off.

  Which she had, three months ago, not far from this very café. Her nose was the reason the man sitting across from her was still alive.

  Gavin Bower grinned as he set down his latte. Tall and built like a runner, Gavin had the same entitled, easy charm of a lot of handsome white guys his age. When your head’s topped with a touch-me mop of milk chocolate-colored loose curls, your pale skin glows with health, and your bright blue eyes sparkle with intelligence, you get away with almost everything.

  Daisy’s impression of Gavin was that even with his hearing issues, he did not want for much.

  She watched him for a second, thinking perhaps her assessment wasn’t quite right. Gavin had more going for him than he showed. He was younger than her. Pre-med. She’d spent enough time with him to wonder if he didn’t know how to express himself. Or perhaps he did, and didn’t want others to see what he considered too private to share.

  Not that she’d been open to such expressions these past three months.

  Under Daisy’s hands, the mug holding her coffee—black, no sugar—warmed her fingers. It felt smooth and clean, but like everything else in the café, carried hints of bleach when she lifted it to her mouth.

  She hadn’t consumed much of her caffeine.

  Outside the café’s open door, the sun dropped toward the horizon, and now hid behind the fresh and green odors made by the many trees surrounding the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota. Warm summer light streamed into the café. Golds danced on the glass, along with a hint of late summer humidity. On the other side of the seating area, oranges moved over the counter and the coffee-scented student-workers behind it. And in front of her, brilliant reds and greens flickered over the titanium buds in Gavin’s ears.

  He wore expensive, cutting-edge tech produced by a division of Praesagio Industries. He dressed well, too. No, Gavin did not want for much.

  Except, perhaps, his friend, Rysa Torres. The woman who, on the night Daisy rescued Gavin, had been yanked away by Burners. And the woman who now planned to marry the Dracos.

  Gavin, for his part, seemed miffed.

  Daisy, for hers, wondered how much of his longing was based on possessiveness and how much was true caring. But then again, this too may be an emotion too private to share.

  Gavin tapped the tabletop and a soft, hollow thump filled the air between them. “Rysa insists she already knows which house they’re going to buy.” He rolled his eyes.

  Three months and he should know better than to roll his eyes at the declarations of a Prime Fate. He had yet to meet a Fate face-to-face, so he did not have personal experience with the abilities of a future-seer such as his friend, Rysa. She currently traveled from Wyoming with the Dracos—Ladon and his beast—and would return to Minnesota tomorrow.

  Since the fight three months ago, Daisy had been careful to make sure no Fates came near Gavin, mostly because her father had asked. She was to make sure Ladon’s “new love’s friend stayed out of harm’s way. So as not to tax the dragons.” There were… issues.

  Her father had not been specific. Daisy did not ask.

  But mostly Daisy watched over Gavin because she knew his friendship meant a lot to Rysa.

  And Daisy and Rysa had a history, even if Rysa didn’t know about it. Even after all this time, Daisy still felt she needed to look out for the kid.

  Daisy sipped at her black bleach-coffee before setting down the mug. They could sign, but Gavin found her American Sign Language difficult to read. He teased about her “dragon accent,” but more likely her muddled signing came from her lack of practice. So she squared her body and faced Gavin head-on to allow him to easily read her lips.

  “She’s a Fate, Gavin. She knows everything.” Though Fates didn’t know everything. Daisy had learned that lesson more times than she cared to count.

  Gavin leaned forward. “You still haven’t told me how you’re connected to all this.”

  He meant the small corner of the Shifter, Fate, and
Burner world he now knew existed. The bit of reality Daisy walked within every moment of her life. The part with dragons.

  She watched Gavin again, peering over the rim of her mug at the handsome normal human seated on the other side of the table. He wasn’t all that much younger than her. Nine years ago, he and Rysa had both been eleven. Daisy, seventeen. Three months ago, their paths converged.

  The Fates bound everyone to fate, Gavin included.

  Daisy curled her fingers around her mug of bleach-tainted coffee.

  Gavin threw her his most open and disarming smile. The one she’d seen him use on just about everyone he wanted to make feel comfortable. It always worked, even on Daisy.

  Mostly, she guessed, because he never gave off an air—or scent—of manipulation. Even with his entitlement, Gavin had a fabulous bedside manner. He would, one day, make a fabulous physician.

  Daisy nodded and set down her coffee mug. “Where should I start, Dr. Bower?”

  He closed one eye and scrunched up his mouth. “At the beginning, of course.”

  Daisy laughed. “My beginning, or theirs?” The complications that led them to this table, in the same café where the hell of Rysa’s heritage first lit the poor woman’s brain on fire, under a similar evening sky, started long, long ago. Some parts of the story, during the Roman Empire. Other parts, later in the wilds of Gaul. And others still, during the cold death of a particularly brutal Russian winter.

  But not for Daisy. For her, history was much closer. And much more personal.

  Gavin grinned again. “Yours, of course.”

  Oh, he truly was disarming. And handsome. And a good friend.

  Maybe this was the moment the Fate had meant so long ago, warning Daisy to never tell the stories. Until the right moment.

  Daisy glanced out the café door. Outside, her boys—Radar and Ragnar—waited, tied to the bike rack. Her two guard dogs, who were as much a part of this world as her. And now, it seemed, as was Gavin.

  “San Diego, nine years ago,” Daisy said, still looking out the café door. “Before I knew what the hell was going on—and a few years before I activated.”

  Gavin twitched, surprised. “Rysa lived in San Diego nine years ago.”

  Now Daisy threw him a disarming smile. “I told you, Fates know everything….”

  2

  San Diego, California, nine years ago…

  People stink.

  Big people, little people. People with dirty hair and people with skin scrubbed free of dust and dead cells. People who hold their kids close, like the woman sitting on the wire mesh of the San Diego Metro Transit bench five feet behind Daisy Reynolds.

  People made more smells than every loud car and bus on the loud road in front of Daisy. And more stinks than all the rotting food wrappers in the bus stop’s waste bin.

  Daisy tried to ignore the telltale signs of bad emotions drifting on the air—the skinny woman huddling with the two whining kids behind Daisy smelled desperate. Hunger wafted off the children as a high, piercing veneer of fragrance overlaying their rumbled and frayed appearance.

  Their worn, old clothes didn’t fit. The older kid’s shirt was too small and the stripes of the fabric bunched up around his belly when he wiggled his fingers into the mesh of the bus stop’s bench. The woman fussed over the littlest, stroking her hair and humming, while the boy fidgeted first with the bench, then the cover on his sister’s ratty old stroller.

  The twenty dollars in Daisy’s pocket would get the family a meal. The same twenty dollars would get Daisy a couple of meals, but hunger rising off the three made Daisy’s gut clench. The food court in the mall behind the bus stop had a few cheap places.

  She fished around in the front pocket of her jeans, her fingers inching in around her chubby new cell phone. A lot of the other kids at school carried thinner models, and even though they couldn’t afford the damned thing, her mom insisted on getting her one. So she fit in. Because not calling attention took up a lot more time, money, and energy than just being themselves.

  Daisy maneuvered the twenty around her new cell phone and pulled it out of her pocket. Giving the woman the money would call attention. There’d be a connection, even a small, flitting one. And as Daisy’s mom said, it opened a chance, no matter how small, that they’d be revealed.

  The home she and her mom left in Perth had smelled better than America. The people here talked funny, though her mom had been firm about losing her accent as fast as possible. Said they both needed to “fit in.” Fitting in helps you hide.

  Daisy tried. She did. But she still ended up in weird situations where people she didn’t want paying attention to her singled her out.

  Her mom’s genes made her look different. In America, a wavy-haired, amber-eyed, part Japanese, part Aborigine, part random white Australian got stares. Her height didn’t help, either. She towered over everyone in her school and suspected her long legs and her five-eleven frame came from the man who fathered her, whoever he was, and not her tiny, petite mother.

  The little boy whined. When his mom lifted him onto the bench next to her, the smell of hunger peaked. The kid’s stomach growled.

  “Umm…” Daisy held out the twenty. “I found this in the parking lot of the mall,” she lied. She nodded over the woman’s shoulder toward the retaining wall between the stop and the mall lot.

  Daisy had just spent two hours filling out job applications at a variety of restaurants and stores, doing her best to make her handwriting neat and presentable and her person tidy and hire-worthy. Most of the managers looked her up and down, more bored than anything else, and tucked her application into some folder or another they kept under their counters.

  Her hand hurt from all the cramped writing. Her nose hurt from all the stinky people. And in all honesty, she felt more like catching the next bus home than crossing the big road to the strip mall on the other side where she’d spend another hour, at least, filling out another set of applications to be filed under several more counters.

  The twenty would have gotten her a snack, at least. But it’ll get the family a full meal.

  Daisy smiled, doing her best to look nonchalant. “For toys. Or a snack.” She nodded to the little boy first, then the baby.

  The woman blinked, her eyes wide. “You found it. It’s yours.” But her hand lifted off her lap like she was about to pluck the bill from Daisy’s fingers.

  A breeze rippled the money and it snapped against Daisy’s fingers. Trucks rolled by on the road behind her, filling the air with a hissing roar and the stink of diesel.

  It did little to mask the hunger and gratitude rolling off the woman.

  “It was in the lot.” Daisy accented her lie with a shrug. “You could have found it just as easily as me.”

  Tentatively, the woman reached out. Her fingers gripped the edge of the bill, pinching like she was picking up a scorpion. Daisy let go.

  The bill flopped over, driven by the breeze, and covered the woman’s fist. Quickly, she pulled her hand back. “Thank you,” she said.

  Daisy smiled again. “No problem.” She’d be hungry when she got home, but at least she knew she’d find food in her refrigerator.

  “If all teenagers were like you, the world would be a better place.” The woman folded the bill and tucked it into her pocket.

  Daisy shrugged again. A lot of adults said stuff like that. She was pretty sure that in twenty years, she’d be saying the same bullshit.

  The woman spoke to her toddler and she strapped the baby into the stroller. The little boy waited, his thumb in his mouth, until she picked him up and placed him on her hip. Slowly, and with several smiling glances toward Daisy, the woman pushed the stroller out of the bus stop and toward the walkway through the retaining wall. She walked toward the mall, hopefully to get her and her kids something to eat.

  Daisy plopped her butt back onto the bench
. She could take the next bus home or she could walk down to the corner and cross the road at the light. Then walk back up to the strip mall on the other side of the road. And fill out more applications. Maybe the clinic at the end of the building needed custodial help.

  But clinics smelled worse than any restaurant or shop. Daisy crinkled her nose, thinking about it.

  She’d have to get up. Walk down to the corner, cross the street, then go into each and every one of the strip mall’s doors. When done, she’d have to walk back here to the bus stop, where she was, right now. To this exact bench. And wait another half an hour for another bus.

  But if she didn’t fill out the next round of apps now, she’d have to come down here again on a different day, on a different bus, and cross over to the other side. Unless her mom let her drive. Which wasn’t likely.

  A new stink filled the bus stop and Daisy squinted. The traffic made all sorts of icky odors and this one was seriously nasty. It smelled like a combination of rotten eggs, a hot car battery, and…

  Daisy sniffed the air again, trying to figure it out. It wasn’t an emotion, like the hunger the woman and her kids made, but it did smell faintly human. Like a person made it, and not a machine.

  Or maybe a machine-like person.

  Images of killer cyborgs and robotic zombies punched at each other inside Daisy’s brain. But that was bullshit. Stories made up by Hollywood to entertain. The odor smelled real.

  Daisy sniffed again. Real and unwashed.

  On the other end of the bus stop shelter, a man stared into the mall parking lot. His head turned slowly, like he watched someone walk away.

  Or a mom with two kids pushing a stroller.

  Daisy hadn’t heard or seen him walk up, yet there he stood, a creepy-looking, most likely homeless guy in dirty clothes that he’d probably pulled from a fire. The cuffs of his denim work shirt looked crispy and dark, as did its hem and collar. His hair might have been some light brown color, but she didn’t know for sure because of the dirt.