Bonds: The Silence Cycle Episode One Read online

  “Ummm…” she panted. She moved her lips and now she tasted something hot and metallic and bloody. “God damn it, I’m bleeding!”

  “Don’t move.” The big guy’s hand splayed over her upper chest, just below her neck, and over her breastbone. “You were hit by a car.”

  Fuck. “That bitch on my phone told me to run into the street.”

  The man’s face hardened. “Who told you to run into traffic?” He glanced around, checking the crowd, like he was expecting a gang with guns to burst out of one of the cars. “Did you feel compelled by her voice to do as she said?”

  “No!” Daisy groaned. “She said the guy chasing me is a… Burner?” She groaned again. “She said he’s dangerous and she sounded like she knew what was about to happen.”

  The man with the sunburst eyes stood up for a moment, looking over the car right next to them. The car that must have hit her.

  He swore in Spanish.

  Her phone buzzed again.

  Daisy’s leg hadn’t really hurt up until the damned phone started ringing again. But when it vibrated a second time, the tingle set off an earthquake of fire-hot pain through her entire lower body. “That’s her!” Daisy groaned and tried not to clench her jaw. “Bitch!”

  The man looked around again and reached into Daisy’s pocket. His fingers moved fast and he pulled out the phone. “No number.”

  Another wave of agony rolled through Daisy’s gut and up through her lungs, into her neck, where it met the sloshing pain as it trickled downward from her brain.

  The big man with the hazel eyes pressed the accept button on her phone and held it up to his ear at the same time he bent over Daisy again. He danced his finger over her forehead, then down the side of her head looking, she suspected, for blood.

  His fingers felt hot. Not warm large-man-in-the-sun hot, but hot like a toaster.

  And suddenly the slosh feeling in her brain stopped.

  “Are you a Fate?” he said into her phone.

  Just as fast as his fingers had started to heat, he pulled back from Daisy. His other hand clenched the phone. And the big guy’s face took on the slack, wide-open-eyes look of someone shocked by a surprise birthday party.

  “I understand.” He wasn’t talking to Daisy. He watched the other side of the road. And he was talking to that bitch.

  He disconnected the call and stuffed her phone into his pocket. “She says the man following you attracted the attention of other people like her.” One of his hands dropped to her hip joint on the side where she’d been hit. The heat flashed through her jeans to her skin. “A triad she cannot see clearly. They will be here shortly.”

  The pain stopped.

  His hand moved lower. Another flash hit her body like someone touched her skin with a curling iron.

  The pain in her knee stopped. “What…” He did something. He healed her.

  “Act like you continue to hurt but not so much that me carrying you would cause more damage.” Quickly, he hoisted her up in his arms, but he wasn’t looking at her. He watched the other side of the road.

  “How am I supposed to do that?” How much weirder could this get? “And who the hell are you?”

  Daisy smelled something new in the air. Something that wasn’t her own fear or her blood, or the exhaust from the cars or the sweat of the bystanders. No, she smelled the brilliance of a spring day. The soft warmth of the afternoon sun. Cleanness. Sweetness.

  Daisy smelled ‘calm.’

  The man was something different.

  “I will not be calm!” she hissed.

  The big guy blinked and stood with her in his arms, like he picked up a toy. Like she weighed nothing. “That Burner has your scent and the Fate told me that if I leave you, you will die. That means he will catch you. And eat you. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “The woman called him a ‘chaos ghoul.’”

  He still wasn’t looking at her face. “That’s what he is.” He looked around, his eyes piercing and narrow. “My name is Alessandro Torres, young lady.” Sarcasm crept into his smooth voice. “It looks as if fate has brought us together.”

  5

  When the woman who’d been driving the car that hit Daisy came near, the air filled with confusion and she started waving her arms around, causing a frenzy.

  Daisy couldn’t see the homeless guy.

  The big man named Alessandro Torres dropped his head low like he wanted to hide his face as he carried Daisy through the strip mall parking lot. With his foot, he pushed open the front door of the clinic housed at the end of the building. Carefully, he hoisted her inside.

  The sun’s glare vanished as they crossed the threshold and a whole new brew of stink hit Daisy’s nose: Old people. That gross, foul smell that comes with sinus infections. Disinfectant. The weird industrial fabric softener smell on industrially laundered clothes and linens. The receptionist’s perfume.

  Daisy hated clinics.

  “Megan!” The big man nodded to the receptionist and carried Daisy through the lobby directly toward the door into the back of the waiting area.

  The woman behind the reception window craned her neck, watching, but she moved out of view and after a second the door flew open.

  “Dr. Torres.” Megan-the-receptionist stepped out of the way as two other women in scrubs ran up.

  “You’re a doctor?” Daisy hated clinics but for some reason, she trusted doctors. Doctors and nurses and firefighters. But not cops.

  He didn’t answer her question, addressing Megan instead. “She’s not that banged up but the guy in the denim shirt who’s out there was chasing her. She’s terrified and disoriented.” Dr. Torres walked quickly down the hall. “What room is open?”

  One of the nurses scurried ahead of them and flipped a couple of the colored flags outside a room half way down the hall.

  “Call 911. Tell them the clinic thinks the man is mentally ill. He threatened this young woman and she thinks he’s carrying a bomb. They need to stay back from him. At least fifteen feet. For their safety.” Dr. Torres set her on the narrow clinic bed in the narrow and beige clinic room.

  Megan nodded. “What’s your name?” She patted Daisy’s arm like her mom did when Daisy was a kid and got a booboo, even though this Megan woman looked to be no more than twenty-five.

  “Cindy, right?” Dr. Torres’s eyes said lie.

  So Daisy lied. “Cindy Reynolds.” Best to lie with something close to the truth. The nearer the falsehood, the harder it is to find. Or at least that’s what her mom said.

  “Go!” Dr. Torres shooed Megan out the door.

  The moment they were alone, he turned back to Daisy. “The Fate said you don’t know your heritage, correct?”

  “I’m Australian, but my mom says we’re not supposed to tell anyone.” Though here she was, telling this guy.

  He scowled and inhaled like she’d just said the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “Simple and fast: Burners are exactly what the Fate said they are: vicious, caustic ghouls.” He frowned, obviously more perplexed than angry, and glanced at the door. “You and I, we’re something else. We’re Shifters. Some of us morph. Some enthrall, which means they can make you do things.”

  Quickly, he ducked his head out the door before stepping back to Daisy. “Some Shifters, like me, heal. Got it?” He pushed her gently to the side and looked at her hip. “Do your injuries continue to hurt? Do you think you are able to run?”

  So the asshole chasing her was going to eat her. Daisy shivered. But her now non-wounds were proof this guy had a touch.

  She answered his questions. “Um, yes, no, and yes.”

  He grinned and checked her eyes. “So the concussion has eased, as well?”

  She did feel clearheaded. “I think so.”

  The doctor stepped toward the door again. “The woman who called you is a Fate.” H
e glanced over his shoulder, apparently listening for people moving in the hallway. “I’m pretty sure she’s a future-seer.”

  “What? Burners and… Shifters… are weird enough. Now gods, too?” And she was one of these creatures?

  “Fates are not gods.” Dr. Torres shook his head. “Your parents never explained your heritage to you? About activation and how to watch for creatures who might want to harm you?” He patted the pocket were he carried her phone. “Or about Fates?”

  “No.” Her mom liked her secrets. “My mom and I keep to ourselves. She doesn’t want anyone knowing anything about us.”

  “Someone should have told you.” Dr. Torres slapped the wall. “Where is your father?”

  Daisy snorted. “Good question. Probably back home, in Perth.”

  He looked her up and down. “Then there’s a chance your mother doesn’t know. That you’re Shifter on your father’s side.” He snorted like he thought it was funny.

  “Hey! It’s not my fault I don’t know!” Daisy swung her leg, testing again for pain. “Or that I have some tool of a daddy who abandoned us before I was born.”

  The doctor’s arms and shoulders clenched. “And now you have a Burner chasing you.”

  “The woman said I’m future-important.” She jumped down from the exam table and rolled her eyes. Daisy put weight on her leg and it didn’t hurt, either. She stepped to the side and back. Running wouldn’t be a problem.

  The doctor glanced out the door again, but didn’t say anything.

  “Ghouls. Gods.” Daisy stopped for a moment and attempted to center her mind. “Okay, fine. I’ll roll with it. But will you, at least, tell me why he wants to eat me?” She took a step toward him, hoping. Dr. Torres seemed trustworthy, and it wasn’t just the doctor thing, either. He came across as protective. Daddy-protective.

  Daisy sniffed the air but didn’t pick out any weird-smelling odors, or at least weird in a way that said this healing changeling god-person was obsessed-crazy like that Burner.

  The doctor slapped the wall again. “This is why I tell my wife our daughter needs to know. A Burner might come after her. Or worse. Other Shifters, like you and me. Or Fates, like the one who called you.”

  Daisy’s original sense of fatherhood was correct. This guy was a daddy. And his daughter was in danger because she didn’t know any more about this weird world than Daisy did.

  A ping tightened in Daisy’s gut. A ping very much like the one she felt when her friend got a new car the day she got her license. Or the ping like the one she felt when her classmates talked about family vacations or traveling to visit relatives or Disneyland or the Grand Canyon.

  Daisy knew what it was: Jealousy.

  Flat-out, open-faced jealousy. Some other girl Daisy didn’t know had this man as her papa. And what did Daisy have? Nothing.

  But right now, jealousy wasn’t going to help. “How old is your daughter?”

  Dr. Torres leaned his head out the door. “Eleven.”

  Just a kid. A new pang hit Daisy’s stomach, this one brought up by memories.

  No little kid should be in danger. Not from people she didn’t know. Or people she did.

  “These… Fates… are dangerous?” Daisy asked.

  The doctor didn’t answer and closed his odd sunburst-green eyes. He breathed like he needed to keep himself calm. Like his thoughts were getting out of control and he had to do his best to pull them all together. Daisy had seen a couple of the rowdier boys at school do the same thing. The ones who went to counseling because they couldn’t pay attention in class. Most of them took meds.

  The doctor’s foot tapped, too.

  The guy’s attention seemed to have slid off her toward the threats to his family. At the moment, he wasn’t watching her. Maybe she should run for it.

  But she remembered what that… Fate… said. He needs your help.

  She glanced at the doctor again. He really was huge. And strong. He didn’t look like he needed anyone’s help. But they were up against gods.

  She walked toward him. “My knee and hip feel fine. Whatever you did, worked.”

  He looked over his shoulder at her and blinked like he was forcing himself to concentrate to understand her words. And the forcing took more energy than what he’d used to fix her body. “Fates think they’re in charge, and nothing makes a person more dangerous than a grandiose sense of entitlement.”

  “Great.” At school, every day, Daisy dealt with her share of kids with entitlement issues. They weren’t, for the most part, physically dangerous, like that Burner. They didn’t get right up in her face and steal her lunch money. No, they did other things that made her life miserable. Turning classmates and teachers against her just because they were rich and she was not. Ridiculing her clothes. Flaunting their daddy’s big, expensive cars.

  So these Fates were a supernatural group of queen bees.

  “This shit’s supposed to be stories that make little kids hide under blankets at night.” Daisy felt like hitting the wall, too. “But that Burner smelled like a battery about to explode and people are doing strange things and you said I should know.” The need to hit the wall was too strong and she slapped the vinyl wallpaper next to the door, much like the doctor. “So is there more I should know?”

  A shiver moved through his body. “My wife needs to tell our girl.” He breathed in deeply again before snorting through his nose. He slapped the wall again and the entire room vibrated.

  Anger hummed off the guy. Daisy didn’t need to sniff the air to know.

  He needed as much help as she did.

  “The Fate told me I’m supposed to help someone. A man with a family.” From the way this guy was acting, Daisy was pretty sure the woman on the phone meant him.

  “What else did she—” His nose twitched and his arm came up fast.

  He pressed them against the wall and Daisy suddenly had a very big bicep holding her away from the door. “Quiet.”

  She smelled his command, too. Thoughts of mice and tiny sounds floated into her head. She’d squeak if she opened her mouth.

  The homeless guy’s voice rolled down the hall from the lobby. He yelled something that sounded like “scrumptious” and demanded to know where “the tasty girl” was.

  Daisy flattened herself against the ugly wallpaper.

  “He got in.” The doctor looked her over. “We need to get out of here. There’s a door to the lot in the back. My car’s out there.” His fingers curled around her elbow and he yanked her into the hallway. “The staff knows they need to evacuate the patients. They know not to fight a Burner. He’ll be through any second.”

  The big doctor gave Daisy a shove toward the back of the clinic. She staggered but turned toward him, to ask for specifics about what to do. Which door? What did his car look like? How much time do we have?

  But the same door he’d carried her through burst open and slammed against the clinic’s wall. The Burner walked through.

  The entire hallway filled with what smelled to Daisy like burning, rotting eggs. Like what she imagined the sulfur coming out of a volcanic vent would smell like.

  She gagged, her eyes watering. The Burner would kill her with his stink alone.

  “Damn it!” The doctor pulled her close and his mouth descended toward hers like he was about to kiss her right on the lips. Kiss her even though she was seventeen and he was some kid’s papa and even though it wasn’t right it would be freakin’ sweet to be kissed by a real, trustworthy man.

  He didn’t kiss her. His mouth covered her lips and her nose like he was giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and all of a sudden she wasn’t gagging anymore.

  The strange attraction thing vanished. The part of her mind that saw him as a doctor-teacher-protector got the word that its assessment was the correct one, and boom! he became mentor.

  Just like that.


  Deep inside, a little voice screamed not my choice! But it didn’t matter. It felt as if he’d breathed into her something that skipped over a whole bunch of steps they would have gone through anyway. ‘Trust me’ wafted from his throat because they didn’t have time to do all the necessary “learning to trust” stuff.

  ‘Trust me’ and a boost to help her see why he did what he did.

  Daisy felt more clearheaded than she ever had before in her life. Supremely clearheaded like she’d taken some head-clearing miracle drug. Her fear vanished. She still smelled the Burner but her brain assessed instead of screamed in terror. She took in the environment on a level she hadn’t when the doctor brought her in. And her mind sorted the importance of her questions and focused on what needed to be done right now: Get them out safely. The ‘trust me’ thing could wait.

  Like most clinics, the hallway in which they stood contained several vinyl-covered chairs. In this place, they were low and cushy, all three olive green, and not good for throwing at the Burner. A ledge with a computer monitor and keyboard hung on one wall, also not good for throwing.

  Damn it, she needed something sharp. They were in a clinic. Where the hell were all the sharp things?

  A cart with a blood pressure cuff and a thermometer waited outside another room. The thermometer might do some damage, but Daisy didn’t think her arm was that good. And the Burner could probably take a good smack to the head, anyway.

  “Go!” Dr. Torres waved his hand behind his back as he stepped directly between Daisy and the Burner.

  “I smell Shifter.” The Burner sneered. “Lots and lots of tasty Shifter.” He smacked his lips.

  A wave of stench rolled down the hall. The doctor gritted his teeth. Daisy took off for the back hall, her gaze searching for something—anything—to use as a weapon.

  She turned the corner but spun too far, into the open door of another exam room. One with an instruments cart. Full of long things meant to poke and prod. Scissors. Something that looked like a razor blade, too.