Oathbound

by S W Clarke

  “Oh, I know it.” My Cupid smirked at them. “Now that the gods are gone, my place is what I make it.”

  And with that came the twang of his bowstring. My Cupid’s arrow pierced the air, zipping toward Agape, who dodged it so easily he turned to a blur. Then he released his own arrow, and soon Philia’s blue-feathered arrow flew through the car.

  After a few seconds, there were so many arrows I couldn’t keep track. They pinged off the windows and walls, the tables. One hit the seat right next to me, and I jumped away.

  From up the stairwell came the black-haired man I’d seen twice now. The one who’d given me that look. He surveyed the room, we met eyes, and then he waved me over. The stairwell was the closest exit, after all.

  I made a dash for it, ducking low as the arrows flew. When I’d gotten to within a couple feet, I felt his hand grab my arm and yank me into the safety of the stairwell.

  Except I was still drunk, and he yanked a little hard, and I tumbled right into him.

  ↔

  Together, we stumbled down the steps into the lower level of the dining car. I could barely keep my balance, and he kept me upright.

  “Well,” he said. I had forgotten about the musical tenor of his voice when I’d heard it in the cafe in Penn Station—the one he’d charmed the barista with. “The wonders of the GoneGod World never cease.”

  My head was swimming. “I swear I had only a little to do with that brawl.”

  “Brawl?” A tiny crease appeared between his dark brows. His scent came to me, unfamiliar but intoxicating. He wasn’t like Justin or Hercules, both large and physical. He was tall, lithe, pin-straight hair framing his Asian features. “I only see one wonder down here.”

  I laughed a little too hard, the ridiculousness of his flirting filtering through my drunk brain. He laughed, too, which made me like him more. I appreciated a guy who tried, and one who was self-deprecating when he didn’t quite hit the mark.

  The sounds of arrows pinging echoed down the stairwell, and he helped me toward a seat in the empty car. “I’m Daiski,” he said.

  Daiski. Even my muddled brain recognized that as Japanese.

  “Isabella,” I said at once.

  “You’re drunk, Isabella.”

  I groaned. “I almost never drink.”

  He pointed up at the ceiling, where the sounds of three toddlers yelling their war cries filtered down. “I bet you had more to do with that than you’re letting on.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  An arrow flew down the stairwell, pinged off the metal. One of the Cupids flew down, splatted against the wall and tumbled to the floor.

  “I’ll bet it is.” Daiski pulled me up, and we backed toward the next car as all three Cupids appeared. “Looks like Cupid-bowl is migrating.”

  Somehow my hand was in his, and we opened the door to the next car, which was absolutely full to the brim with sleeping passengers. Don’t let them come in here, I prayed. Don’t let them come this way.

  As the door closed behind us in the silent car, Daiski and I started down the aisle. We had only gotten five feet before the door whipped back open, and one of the Cupids let a ululation that lifted every head off their headrest.

  “Cupids, no!” I yelled.

  It was too late. A white-feathered arrow got someone right in the shoulder, and then that poor old woman was desperate for her half-awake husband. Soon those afflicted by arrows were multiplying like zombies, and I could swear the car was rocking on the rails with all the humping going on around me.

  My Cupid was definitely a lot more aggressive with his arrows than the other two.

  Daiski yanked me behind a seat for cover, but I wasn’t fast enough. With a yelp, one of the arrows bit me right in the ass.

  My hand was still in Daiski’s, and he and I stared at each other for a long, long moment. He was giving me that look again.

  I want to taste you.

  For a second, I understood what it was like to be a man full of testosterone. All I could see was his naked body, and then I was imagining mine under his. On top of his. Two sets of limbs entangled.

  I was completely and unabashedly objectifying a man I’d just met. Normally I’d at least feel bashful about it. But just then, my inhibitions had sieved right out of me. I just wanted what I wanted, and I would have it.

  I was about to leap on him when a tiny voice entered my mind: Justin.

  And then, an even smaller, more devious one: Hercules.

  No—Justin. I love Justin. I want Justin.

  I rose, and like a poor creature possessed by a parasite (never mix your alcohol with your Cupid’s arrows, kids), I pulled away from Daiski.

  He resisted, his hand reaching out for me. “Wait. Don’t go.”

  But the haze was growing heavier, and my legs carried me straight down the aisle of the car, working like pistons. I ran faster than I’d ever run, kicked the GoneGodDamn door activator and passed right into the next car, then the next one, then the next one.

  When I hit the third car from the back, I threw open the door to our roomette, my growl of a breath funneling in and out of my throat.

  I needed Justin like a beached dolphin needed water. I was going to make wild, passionate love to my boyfriend if it was the last thing I ever did.

  And, the way I felt, maybe it would be.

  There, in the darkness, someone slept on one of the narrow beds. I recognized the scent—Nossa Senhora, I was like a bloodhound—and I leapt through the doorway and on top of whoever it was. Justin—Hercules—I wasn’t sure. One of them.

  “Wake up,” I purred into his ear, sliding my fingers into his hair and gripping at the scalp.

  When he turned over and saw me on top of him, he pulled my head down toward him, and we kissed with magnetic fervor. Somehow our mouths never detached as the clothes flew off, and five hundred years of seduction had never prepared me for this.

  In the haze of lovemaking, my entire body felt like a live wire. They say women can have multiple orgasms, but what about unending orgasms? Well, that night a scientific survey of one determined encantado proved it was possible.

  On and on it went, and when I thought I sensed another man—was that Hercules?—enter the fray, I wasn’t sure if I was hoping and imagining, or if it was real.

  Nothing felt real. It all felt like a dream.

  The best dream of an encantado’s life.

  Chapter 6

  Scattered light hit my eyes. When I woke, the curtains fluttered above my face, daylight seeping in. The train rolled on, though I couldn’t have said where the Empty Hell we were. I only knew my head throbbed like an open wound, the murkiness of the night unspooling in my mind in shutter-stop.

  A fight? Yes, a fight in the dining car.

  The black-haired man—Daiski—grinning at me.

  Had I slept with Daiski?

  I groaned, rolled onto my side. No one lay beside me. When I opened my eyes, the bed lay empty. The room smelled of sex.

  And my butt hurt.

  I glanced under the covers. Naked. When I felt my left cheek (gluteal cheek, that is) my fingers slid over a lump as tender as a bee’s sting. And all at once, I remembered.

  I shot upright. “GoneGodDamn Cupids,” I whispered before my head tolled like a bell and I crumpled back onto the pillow.

  Twenty minutes later, I had managed to get myself together enough to leave the room and stagger through the length of the train toward the dining car. One word swirled in my mind, louder and louder: Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.

  Coffee first, then I’d deal with the Cupids.

  As I passed through car after car, I felt like I was descending through the Nine Circles of Cupidity. In the first car, a few folks were passed out under blankets, some even kissing. In the second car, I definitely saw genitalia. And in the third car, it looked like an orgy had taken place—which, I suppose, is probably what happened. Bodies were wrapped around each other so well they didn’t look like people anymore so much as a mass
of limbs and flesh.

  I even saw a pixie and a human laying together. GoneGods know how that works, but apparently Cupids’ arrows don’t discriminate by species.

  Or maybe it’s our desires that don’t discriminate. Cupids’ arrows are only suggestions, after all.

  What about the other types of love—agape, philia? Shouldn’t some of these people have been playing ukuleles and singing and dancing? Surely Cupid of Eros hadn’t been responsible for all this.

  As the door to the dining car slid open, three cherubic heads turned. All three Cupids were seated in one side of a booth, drinking three separate coffees.

  “Opa!” they said in unison.

  I dragged myself to the table and managed to get my hands onto my hips. “Opa?”

  “We’re Greek. That’s what modern Greeks say,” my Cupid said. “I taught them.”

  “Opa is for celebrations,” I said with all the miserliness I felt.

  “We are celebrating,” my Cupid said. “The gang’s back together.”

  “But …”—I waved my hands between them—“last night you three were trying to kill each other.”

  “And we worked out our issues,” my Cupid said. “Through violence.”

  “That sounds healthy,” I muttered.

  Agape and Philia smiled at me with that same pristine naivete from yesterday. “Good late morning,” Philia said. “Sit with us for second coffees.”

  I dropped into the opposite seat, and Agape passed me his mug. It was loaded with sweetener and creamer, but I didn’t care; I needed all the uppers I could get.

  My Cupid leaned forward, took an audible sniff. “Smells like one of my arrows got you.”

  When I had downed the whole mug, I smacked it down onto the table. Little droplets sprayed in a radius around it, and I enjoyed the effect of all the Cupids’ eyebrows raising. “You three,” I began.

  My Cupid raised a hand. “Isa, my dear, say no more. We’re sorry.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m going to say a lot more.”

  All three Cupids groaned.

  “Have you seen the state of this train? I mean, I don’t even know how this happened. All three of you were shooting arrows, but the place is a bordello.”

  “We were shooting arrows at him.” Agape pointed at Cupid of Eros. “He had something of a … different strategy.”

  My eyes trailed to Cupid of Eros, who shrugged. “What can I say? I’ve become Americanized since the gods left.”

  “What does that even mean?” I asked.

  “It means, when you’re under siege, you spray and pray.”

  The Amish family, who had somehow escaped the madness, were now watching us while eating their paper-bagged sandwiches from several tables away. One of the girls was taking pictures of the Cupids with an old-fashioned camera.

  I leaned forward with a whisper. “I had mad sex last night, and I don’t even know who it was with.”

  My Cupid giggled. “Mad sex, or mad sex?”

  “I don’t know—both?” I slumped back. “I just feel strange not knowing who was on the other end of it.”

  “Don’t forget,” he said, “that my arrows take away your inhibitions and allow you to live your deepest desires—if you so choose. You know yourself better than you think. What’s your deepest, most passionate desire, Isabella?”

  All three Cupids’ heads came forward, their keen eyes on me.

  “I …” I began. A thought came into my mind, but I didn’t feel comfortable voicing it. Nearby, the old-fashioned camera clicked again. “I think I know, but I don’t want to say.”

  I hadn’t even finished my sentence when the car door opened to reveal Justin and Hercules. Both wore stupid grins. Both were looking at me.

  “Oh … merda,” I breathed.

  “Good morning!” Hercules boomed. The two of them carried just about every breakfast food offered on the train—muffins, pastries, little yogurt containers, cups of orange juice—in their arms.

  “What are you two doing together?” I said. Even now, the sight of them filled me with equal desire and fear. I could tell I was still in the thrall of Cupid’s arrow.

  And maybe they were, too. This was the friendliest I had ever seen them with one another. I mean, we’d had to stop Hercules from murdering Justin the first moment he saw him back in Vermont.

  I pointed a finger at Philia. “Did you hit them with one of your arrows?”

  Philia glanced up at the two men, who were depositing their goodies onto the table. “Only him.” He indicated Justin.

  “Orange juice, my love?” Justin extended the cup to me with a wink.

  My gaze traveled to Hercules, who also winked.

  They had both winked at me.

  I rose so fast I knocked some of the orange juice out of the extended cup. “Sorry,” I said, planting a kiss on Justin’s cheek. “I have to run to the bathroom.”

  And by that, I meant I needed to get away from all the sources of my romantic confusion. And those three Cupids.

  I bolted out of the dining car and into the quiet car, which was powerfully, gloriously quiet. They hadn’t wreaked their havoc here.

  From the window seat I could watch the midwest pass by. I could put everything that had happened—not just last night, but in the past week—into perspective. I could think.

  So I found an empty row amidst all the naked, sleeping bodies and I slid over to the seat closest to the glass. That was where I stayed for the next half an hour, thinking.

  That is, until I saw a reflection appear in the window.

  “You’re lovely in profile, deep in thought like that,” came a musical voice.

  I didn’t need to turn to know who stood in the aisle. But I did anyway.

  “Hello, Daiski.” I knew if I offered to let him sit, it would be because my inhibitions were still suppressed. But I gestured for him to sit down.

  Chapter 7

  Daiski dropped into the seat beside me, that scent wafting over me again. It was an indescribable musk, and in my inhibitionless state, I felt it in my core. Every time—with every man I’d wanted—it had always been in the scent.

  I tried to keep my eyes on the window, but I could see him watching me in the reflection. Those brown eyes gleamed, his hair swept sidelong across his forehead like he’d just stepped out of the wind.

  But the wind had favored him; it had styled his hair. On windy days, I ended up looking like that girl from The Ring, especially now that I had long, black, pin-straight hair. Hinata’s hair. Of every woman I’ve met, I’ve never admired anyone’s hair so well. Maybe that was because I loved her as my best friend—philia, I thought briefly—and so I loved her hair, too.

  I found myself touching it often, unconsciously.

  “All three times I’ve seen you, you’ve been doing that,” Daiski said.

  I turned back to him. “Doing what?”

  His elegant fingers—a pianist’s hands—reached out and twined a small section of my hair. He wasn’t touching me, but he was. “That.”

  I lowered my hand, didn’t know whether to lean closer or away. “All three times?”

  “The first time was in the coffee shop yesterday morning. You were watching the news.”

  “Right.” The facts of my situation floated back in through the haze: the house fire. My face on the television. The World Army.

  “It’s all right,” he said, lowering his hand to the armrest. “I know you aren’t an arsonist.”

  Merda. “What are you talking about?” I said. Maybe if I played dumb …

  Daiski smiled, and those well-formed lips parted to reveal a set of perfectly even teeth. “Lucky for you to have left before the house caught fire.”

  I said nothing. We just stared at each other, our faces less than a foot apart. “You have American teeth,” I said. Still drunk on Cupid’s arrow, it seemed.

  Now he looked confused. “What?”

  “Americans always have perfect, white teeth.”

  “Pegged.”
He leaned mischievously closer. “Can you tell the accent?”

  “Somewhere in the south, I would guess.”

  “You’ve gotten around for such a young woman. I’m from Texas, actually.” A pause. “And you?”

  “It’s your turn to guess.”

  His eyes traveled the course of my features. “You’re an enigma. Your face suggests one place, your accent another. And then there’s the party you’re traveling with.”

  This was getting personal—too personal. Even arrow-drunk, I knew not to go farther. “You keep showing up,” I said. “Dai-ski.”

  “We’re on a train together, I-sa-bell-a.”

  “Doesn’t quite work with so many syllables, does it?”

  “Not quite.”

  This was fun. Normally I’d feel guilty, but that was suppressed right now. So I decided to poke a little. “Texas, huh? Shame you folks are so keen on fossil fuels, seeing as how climate change will put your state underwater within twenty years.”

  He set a hand over his heart. “I solemnly swear, Ms. Scientist, that I’m not one of those Texans. I even recycle.”

  A charming American with a great sense of humor? Be still my heart.

  Then: Wait, I didn’t tell him I’m a scientist.

  I waggled a finger at him. “I never told you what I do for a living.”

  A shadow passed over his features, which he blinked away. I had just glimpsed a snapshot of another Daiski—not the man I was talking to right now. I had seen the man hidden away beneath the man I was talking to right now.

  He had been there, and then he was gone. But I had definitely seen that micro-expression.

  “On the news, it said you were a biology student at McGill,” he said. “If I’m not mistaken.”

  Had that been on the TV? I couldn’t recall, but I didn’t doubt it. The World Army wanted me badly, and they would publish whatever information about me they deemed necessary to find me. Which Daiski had seen on the news. For a second, I had been ready to claw his eyes out, to scream through the train. For a second, I had thought he might be with them. And that was the thing about Cupid’s arrow: all my reactions were keyed up to ten. My reactiveness was off the charts.