63. Scythe
Chapter 63
Scythe
I t slithers over my skin, this ominous feeling. Something is wrong and I cannot reach out to my regina to check on her. My great white no longer wants to be cold. He wants to be hot. He wants to feel water boil around him. He wants for it to burn off his skin until there’s nothing left but a skeletal being who will tear apart the world with the sharp points of his own bones.
Lyle leads us to the office of Animus Academy’s headmistress. Asking for help from the phoenix irks me. I should be able to fix this on my own, but Aurelia’s silence is making that impossible. As it is, after we’d torched their two warehouses and fifteen boxing gyms, the Clawsons have gone into hiding, making them also impossible to find. Everything is working against us right now.
Celeste answers the door in a dressing gown and slippers. “Forgive me,” she says, rubbing her forehead and stepping back to let us in. “I’m not feeling my best.”
“What is it?” Lyle says, and despite the heavy growl, his concern is clear.
“Damien’s preserved seed didn’t take,” she says, taking a seat at her desk. “But there is also something else in the bonding planes…” She gives me a pointed look. “Xander’s betrayal has left a lasting darkness. Titus left a stink, to be sure, but a bond-rejection by a dragon carries a particular kind of distasteful fracture. It’s like a wound.”
“We’ll fix that when we kill him,” Savage says, plonking himself on the floor against the door as if to guard it.
“I didn’t know you would feel that,” Lyle says, tugging at his collar out of habit. “What are the implications of this?”
“All beasts can feel it to some extent,” she replies, crossing her arms. “It leaves everyone feeling unsettled.”
“There is something more,” I press. “Something that just shook the very air. Did you feel it?”
Celeste’s face goes from pale to grey. “I’ve never felt something like that before.”
“It was her,” Savage says, his voice breaking on that last word. “My regina. I know it. We can’t even sense where she is, otherwise I’d already be there.”
“Can you find her?” Lyle asks. “We wouldn’t ask if it were not imperative, but we don’t think she’s at Drakos Estate any longer.”
Celeste nods. She doesn’t say what we all know. That they’ve had a second, silent auction. That the winning bid could not have been Xander this time. “Give me one moment,” she says faintly.
It’s with a grimace that she shuts her eyes and us three brothers hone in on her person with an acute observance. Her aura pulses a murky colour that reflects her state of mind and body, a pulse of fire still glowing at her core. Her power suddenly flares around her as she sends it out, licking flames reaching into the ether before they go out of my psychic sight.
“Anything?” Savage asks impatiently, leaping up from the floor and coming next to me to lean across the table and stare at the headmistress.
Lyle shushes him.
Celeste’s pallid cheeks turn pink, then bloom red with effort. “It’s strange…”
“What’s strange?” we all say at once.
Her jaw clenches before she opens her eyes. They glint an ethereal gold, but the expression on her face makes my insides bleed.
“She’s gone to a place I cannot follow.”
Savage roars and whirls around, wrenches the door open off its hinge, and storms out. “How many!” he screams outside. “How many do we have to kill to get her back!”
My great white demands my attention as I too turn on my heel and stalk out of Celeste’s office. “We know the candidates,” I say evenly, staring out the window. “We know who has the money. We just track them down one by one. And I know just where to start.”
Lyle has gentle words with Celeste before joining us in heading to the elevator. “If she’s shutting out even the phoenixes, she still has substantial power. She can’t be too badly hurt or injured.”
“You don’t know her power then,” Savage says, shoving at Lyle.
Lyle shoves him back into the elevator wall, making it shudder violently. “I know her power. I remember how she endured her father’s attacks and walked around like nothing was happening. Hid it from us.” He grinds his teeth at the memory.
Savage slams his fist against the elevator wall as it opens it to let us out. The emergency alarm sounds and we continue back to the Animus dorm.
Instead of going back up to our rooms however, I stop at the rec room, where I find Connor sitting pale faced with a group of lions. With only one look from me he strides over, his face drawn.
I rest a hand on his shoulder and he looks at me alarmed. “I know about the call you received three days ago and the offer that was made to you.”
He opens his mouth but I shake my head. “You’re not in trouble. Have you come to a decision?”
Connor tugs nervously at his long black mane and I note his aura of clear, sky blue. He’s not happy about it, and there’s no betrayal in his heart. “Yes. I want to do it.”
“If you needed the money, I would give it to you, but you would be sworn to me.”
Connor nods, his dark eyes considering this. “I would like to remain a free agent, if you don’t mind. And if this will help my grandfather and potentially Aurelia, then I want to. To be honest, I’ve been expecting it for a while now.”
I nod gravely. “You’re braver than me, Connor.”
He looks alarmed as I wave Lyle over. “Hand him the contract.”
Connor pulls out a stapled booklet, complete with council seals from his satchel and smoothes it over, staring at it before handing it to Lyle.
I don’t have to look at it to know why Lyle’s brows shoot upward. It’s an official contract of ‘employment’ stating that in exchange for a large sum of money and freedom from the academy, Connor will participate in the scientific research of his anima. He is a rare beast after all.
I get out my phone and dial it.
“Scythe,” purrs The Collector. “Always such a pleasure to hear your sweet voice.”
Five hours later, Lyle drives us through the barbed-wire gates of the crocodile sanctuary The Collector calls home. She gets plenty of money from the state government for ‘conservation’ but it’s much in the same way Frank Ulman got funding for his park of horrors. Lyle’s fists tighten on the wheel as he lays eyes on the barbed wire cages and finds them all too familiar. Connor’s eyes stare unblinking around his new home. The saltwater in the man-made rivers calls to me, as does the wild call of the other predators, and I find I can’t tear my eyes off the glistening surface.
“She’s been here,” Savage says with his head out the window. “I can feel it, but I can’t tell if she’s still here or not.”
I agree with him and it makes my eyes dart around the air, trying to sense the timing of her arrival or departure. She’ll have scent masking on—potentially all of her shields—to hide from us and others. All reports say they’ve kept obsidian off her this whole time. It was the only way to make sure we’d not come to get her.
We pull to a stop outside the front of her white swan-like dwelling and Savage and I are out of the car before the engine is even off.
I can’t sense Xander, but a dragon has lingered here. Flores, perhaps, but not his son. Thank the Goddess, because it may have driven me mad if I’d also sensed him.
The four of us are at the wide closed door and pounding on it in three heartbeats. Two females pull it open, roo shifters, by their scents, and in gossamer dresses so sheer it leaves nothing to the imagination. They bow as they stand aside.
“Mr Kharkorous,” the first says quietly. “Mr Fengari, Mr Pardalia. Connor. Please be welcome.”
“Thanks,” Savage says loudly. He showered, for once, if only at the thought that he might get a glimpse of his regina. Lyle wears a white dress shirt and slacks, and I’m in my usual black shirt and pants, despite this heat. Connor wears his usual stilettos as well as black denim cut-offs and a flowered blouse.
It would do me well to swim in cold, cold brine, but my mind is fixed on my regina. “She’s in her throne room, I imagine,” I say to the girl.
“Please follow me,” is all she replies. “Connor, please follow my colleague.”
Connor gives us a final nod before setting his suitcase on the floor and wheeling it after the roo anima. I wonder if I will ever see him again.
The first roo turns around and, with her rear in almost full view, leads us to The Collector. Savage makes an are-you-serious? face at the girl’s back, but we all know Lady Crocodylus is very purposeful in her reception of us.
In her taunting of us.
We are led to a drawing room, which she has styled with a long emerald carpet, leading to a large, elaborate green and gold throne. She looks ridiculous sitting in it, but she tries her best with her cigarette and the bare legs draped over the armrest.
She’s also in lingerie.
As we enter, nothing but three murderous predators on a hunt, her flirtatious smile widens before she draws on her cigarette. I lead the way, and despite stopping at a fair distance away, she holds out her hand, tipped in long gold nails.
“Your Majesty,” she purrs.
She’s the only one who calls me that. I might hold the marine seat at the council, but the title was never cold enough for what I am.
“My lady,” I say formally, ignoring her hand by crossing my hands over my belt buckle. “We are pleased you accepted our request for a meeting.”
“I am also quite pleased,” she purrs, rising from her seat and revealing how sheer her crimson babydoll nightie is.
Savage lets out a sound of irritation, looking around the room with impatience. There is a fish tank by the wall, bubbling away under a UV light. Seaweed and artificial rocks along with a miniature castle line the bottom, making it look full. I wonder if one of her ‘collectables’ lies sleeping in there. Some rare aquatic creature.
“Forgive me for my dress. I wasn’t expecting you so late.”
“It is of no consequence to us. We have a regina,” Lyle says dismissively.
“Of course, of course.” She doesn’t miss a beat, waving her hand to the servants behind us. “We will discuss matters now, of course. You must be hungry, no? I am, of course, well versed in the needs of alpha males such as yourselves.”
Revulsion scores through me at her overt flirtation.
Savage cracks his neck as servants hurry forth, carrying an entire table laden with a roast dinner and…sushi. There is raw steak for Savage and two whole roast ducks with plum sauce for Lyle.
She’s done her research.
“I’m not hungry, Collector,” Savage announces.
Her eyes flick down the length of Savage’s body, his bare torso with the tattoo of the snarling wolf’s head. “Please call me Katerina, Savage. I am most happy you didn’t decide to dress for me. Word on the street is that you’ve been quite a busy feral boy.”
Chairs are brought out for us and The Collector sits down, bringing up her bare legs to rest on the edge of the chair as if to show them to us. “Please, eat while we talk.”
Lyle and I sit, but Savage chooses to pace the room behind us.“I want my regina,” he says.
Katerina’s eyes flare with something for a moment. As a crocodile, her aura is hard to read. She’s naturally protected by her Triassic skin, from both physical harm and being read. But I’m strong enough to see a flash of bright, venomous green.
Jealousy, then.
“We are aware,” I say, picking up my chopsticks and selecting several pieces of sushi, “that Aurelia has been sold at auction.”
Savage prowls to the fish tank in the corner, bending down and all but pressing his nose to the glass.
“Don’t break it, Sav,” Lyle warns.
“I won’t,” he says irritably.
The Collector laughs for a beat too long. “Come here, Savage. I told them to only warm up the steak so it was just to your preference. Or are fries more to your liking?”
Savage turns around and frowns at his allocated plate. “No games. Answer question.”
Katerina licks her lips and tucks her short black hair behind her ear. “Well, I’ve heard much the same. Though leased would be a more accurate word.”
“You were at the first auction,” Lyle says. “You cannot deny that you’ve seen the other bidders.”
She takes another drag from her cigarette, her gaze hovering between us. She knows something and is withholding it.
A movement at the corner of my eye makes me snap my brother’s name. Savage quickly removes his hand from where it was wrist-deep inside the water. He gives me a sheepish smile as he wipes his hand on his shorts.
“Thought I saw something.”
“Really?” the Collector says. “If you want to take a bite out of something in there, you are most welcome to, my love.”
Savage frowns at her. “Do you know who has Aurelia, or are you wasting our fucking time?”
“Manners,” she chides, blowing smoke in his direction. “If you want information, you know my price.” Her eyes slide meaningfully to me.
The desire to imbed my chopsticks into her eye sockets almost gets the better of me. Lyle seems to register this because he leans forward.
“Scythe is a mated male, Katerina. He cannot.”
“Not fully mated, from what I can sense,” she narrows her eyes at me in thought. “That is my price. If you cannot meet my demands, you do not get information, full stop.”
For Aurelia, I would do anything, including whore myself, if she would ask it. But she would not ask this of me, and she would rage if she heard of it.
“You will not compromise for another?” Lyle says. “What about another great white?”
I look at him sharply and he shrugs at me.
“Are they all…like you?” she purrs at me.
Further revulsion almost makes me stop chewing, but I doggedly swallow my bite of salmon sashimi. “Aurelia is insistent that we keep away from her…business.” I sit back in my chair and cross a leg over the other knee. She keenly follows my every movement, her pupils dilating. “However, I cannot and will not allow her to be bred. Do you understand me, Katerina?”
She visibly swallows.
“Any beast involved in hurting her will find themselves on their back with Savage’s canines four inches into their small bowel,” I continue.
“I like the taste of acid,” Savage says, licking his chops. “It fits my mood right now.”
“Do we make ourselves clear?” I ask.
She smiles and says in a sing-song voice, “You come here, you make threats. You try to seduce me…” she chuckles. “You forget that I have my own leverage.”
“And what is that?” Lyle asks, sitting back in his chair too.
“I’m the only one on her side,” she purrs. “I would never hurt that poor girl.”