Games of Fate (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 1)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Just like that mall in Chicago.

  “Mom!” Rysa sprinted for the front step before either Ladon or Dragon could stop her.

  Chapter Seven

  A memory…

  Rysa’s mommy stood outside the patio door of their California house and stared over the dry grass at the tent her daddy set up. “I don’t know about a fire, Sandro.”

  When her mom got this way, Rysa always thought of wind chimes. She didn’t hear them. She felt them. Her mom stared at the tent and Rysa felt angry chimes smashing together as if they were trying to kill each other—as if the bells over the patio clanked when the Santa Ana winds blew.

  “Please?” Rysa hugged her stuffed dragon and made her best second-grade pleading face even though she wanted to frown. Mommy’s chimes felt loud tonight.

  Her daddy stopped in the open patio door, one foot inside and the other out, his neck cranked to the side as if he was afraid that he’d smash his forehead on the top of the door frame. He was taller than all the other dads at school. Taller even than Mr. Donovan, and Mr. D was tall.

  Mommy made a face at her little dragon. “You know, honey, your other toys might like some attention.” She’d piled her blonde hair on her head today in a twisty-braidy way that made Rysa think of all the statues at the museum her class visited on her school field trip last week.

  She hadn’t run off, mostly because her daddy had come along. He took the day off work, which was really special, and made sure she didn’t get left behind. She’d get too interested in the statues of people who stood like ‘S’s and held fruit or arrows or wore funny helmets. When Rysa pointed at one statue with no arms and an eagle necklace and said she looked like Mommy, her dad almost laughed himself silly.

  Then he carried her back to her class and the other kids stared at him and his big arms and his brown eyes striped with the same green-like-a-leaf that striped the gray in hers. Sunburst, he’d said. Sunburst was a better description than striped. Then he chuckled and spoke to her teacher in Spanish.

  “Mira, she likes that toy.”

  Her mom blinked, frowned again at the little dragon, and pointed at the backyard. “Fires attract attention.”

  Her dad had promised a camping trip but Mommy frowned like she was frowning now and said not this weekend, Sandro. Please. It’s important. So her dad had hugged Rysa tight and said they’d camp in the backyard. He had lots of Spanish to teach her anyway, and lots of stories about Argentina. And, maybe if she was good, he’d tell her about Spain, too.

  She wanted to learn about Spain. It was in Europe. And Daddy came from a place called Cordoba in Argentina and Spain had another city with the same name, which was really neat. They were like junior and senior cities. And Argentina had a huge city called Buenos Aires that was as big as Los Angeles but everyone was packed tighter together, like the crayons in her coloring box. And it was much bigger than San Diego or any other place they’d lived. Rysa had thought Los Angeles was the biggest city in the whole world, but it wasn’t. She learned in school that—

  “It’s not good to attract attention.” Her mom pointed at the tent again.

  Her dad’s concentration snapped to her mom at the same time Rysa’s did. He winked and Rysa giggled.

  “What kind of attention?” Her dad always asked her mom questions like that. What do you mean? What is happening? Please be more specific.

  “But Mom, we’re camping.” Rysa tried not to whine. Sometimes it happened anyway. She hugged her dragon.

  The chimes-in-a-storm flowed from her mom again and she knelt so they’d be eye to eye. The chimes always happened before her mom wanted to say something important.

  Mommy glanced over Rysa’s shoulder at her dad. “Camping with your father is precisely what you need to do tonight.”

  “Can we have the fire?”

  Her mom frowned again and her eyes went all distant like she was staring at the mountains. “A fire? What if the whole world burns?”

  Her father frowned too, but didn’t look at her mother. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. Rysa noticed. They didn’t think she paid attention, but she did. They didn’t touch each other much anymore, either. They used to touch all the time. Their elbows, fingers, toes. They danced in the kitchen and Rysa laughed and clapped and sang. Then her father picked her up and she danced with them, too.

  “Mom-my! You’re silly! The whole world won’t burn! That can’t happen. The ocean is over there.” She pointed over her shoulder. “Besides, we watched a movie about grassfires and how to be careful and Daddy knows what to do and we’ll put a bucket right next to it.” She stood up straight. “I promise.”

  Her mother scratched at her twisty-braidy hair and mumbled something that sounded like Spanish but Rysa knew it wasn’t. “Sweetie.” She still stared and didn’t look at Rysa. “One day you’ll remember this, so the words your father and I say right now are very important.”

  She touched Rysa’s chest. “Always remember that your mommy and daddy love you, my dearest heart.”

  Rysa hugged her mom. Her dragon bounced against her mom’s shoulder because she held him by his back leg and her mommy sighed really deep when Rysa kissed her cheek. Sometimes her mom was weird.

  Mommy touched the toy’s head. “He’s a good dragon.” Her gaze focused on the seams where his wings used to be. Wings on a dragon were stupid. Real dragons didn’t have wings. She knew it. Her daddy had helped sew up the holes.

  “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  Rysa nodded. “He’s the best dragon ever.”

  Her mom nodded again. “Always remember that, okay?”

  Daddy sniffed and shook his shoulders like he did when he was surprised. The look vanished and he smiled, but he still seemed sad, like the surprise reminded him of fun times that he’d gotten in trouble for.

  “We can hope.” Daddy winked at Rysa again as he lifted her up. “Well, I have something very important to say: Do you want s’mores, mi risa?”

  She clapped so hard she lost her grip on her dragon’s leg. “Oh!”

  Her dad caught the little beast before he hit the ground. “Have you given him a name?” He carried her toward the tent and the log he’d set out for their camp.

  “Dad-dy!” she said. “You know his name is in dragon. No one can say dragon!”

  Her dad laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met one.”

  “And he’s special.”

  Her dad stopped halfway between the house and the tent. “Both dragons are special, aren’t they, honey?”

  Dragons. The concept of beasts reverberated within Rysa’s memory, overriding what had been, always, an instance of family love. A younger time when she had both parents; a time when they wove her world together.

  The texture of the memory changed—tentacles grabbed its edges and stretched. Depth flattened. Sound vanished. And what had been for Rysa a treasured moment became something wholly different.

  Memory was a jigsaw of vision and hearing and touch and emotion. Sometimes pieces were enhanced, sometimes minimized. Recall bowed to the story.

  Not now. Rysa’s memory of camping with her dad took on an intelligence a simple story could never have. It carried more in her mind’s eye than it had before she activated.

  Much more.

  Her childhood clicked over to high definition and she felt the increased pixel density, and the new information.

  But she didn’t understand.

  In her vision, Rysa was sure her father asked her mother his question about dragons, not her. And she stared over his shoulder at the fire ring next to the tent as an adult, no longer a child in his arms.

  The hot, blistering, and acidic fire will blaze all night.

  Her mother muttered something from her place in the patio door. He’s special because he’s Rysa’s dragon. Mira stared into space, her eyes wild and angry and very scary.

  Fear crept into Rysa’s throat, like when she thought the monsters would get in, before her father put th
e nightlight in her room, long, long ago.

  In the vision, she hugged her toy dragon closer.

  She looked first at her mother, standing in the patio door of their California house, then at her father, standing between her and the fire ring. Her mother’s gaze darted from the toy Rysa clutched to the fire ring, then back. Each flick of her eyes cinched her face tighter. Her cheeks tensed. The corners of her mouth pulled farther back.

  Something was wrong with her mother.

  Rysa tried to speak, to make a sound, to tell her father she needed his help, but he didn’t hear. He left, but not until she started middle school, and then her mother hurt every day. She hurt so bad that she rubbed her knuckles every morning when making Rysa’s breakfast. And she cried a little bit, but not so much Rysa noticed.

  But she did, even if she couldn’t pay attention. She saw it in high school, before she ran to catch the early bus outside their new home where it snowed.

  She knew. She’d always know.

  In the vision, her mom blinked, her twisty-braidy hair a sudden halo of chaos.

  One parent blinked. The other vanished.

  And somewhere behind Rysa, in the real heat, the real Mira of the Jani Prime screamed.

  Chapter Eight

  “Mom!” Ash and acid clung to Rysa’s tongue. Her body rebelled and demanded that she run as fast as she could from the smoky inside of her house.

  Her Minnesota home crackled and groaned as if some part of it had turned Burner.

  The nasty thing in her head had awoken the moment her foot dropped out the passenger-side door of Ladon’s van. Its tentacles burst from her mind like some terrible hybrid child of Athena and Cthulhu.

  She’d blacked out again.

  But this time, she remembered the vision. She’d seen her mom. Her dad. A fire. Her toy dragon, the one she’d lost when she was little, when she and her mom moved here to Minnesota. She’d put it in her suitcase, the purple bag with the silver handle her mom bought her for the move, between her jeans and her pajamas with the stars and comets looping through the fabric.

  But when she’d opened the case in her new bedroom, her dragon had vanished. Gone, like her dad.

  Now, in her Minnesota living room, she dropped to her knees on her mom’s special rug. The burgundy one with the abstracts—the one her dad had brought from Argentina as a gift. Mira had rolled it up herself, tied it herself, and dragged it on her own out to their moving van the day before they left California.

  It had been the last thing she’d pulled from their old house.

  Where was her mom? “Oh God oh God oh God,” she mumbled, not thinking about her words. Or her body. Or the random flickering of images behind her eyes. Memories, not memories, visions, not visions—the nasty seer-thing’s tentacles pierced her life.

  And squeezed.

  Her stomach roiled as much as her head. Paying attention had never been this hard. The seer-thing dropped a whole new other reality into her brain and she had to parse both it and the real world.

  The building groaned again like a body in the throes of a death fever. She smelled Burners. Fire crept through the walls of her house.

  Where was her mom?

  The ceiling boomed. She looked up just as the house rocked.

  Rysa knew—in the attic, her mom swung a sword, one bright and smooth and older than America. A brilliant blade made for a Prime Fate by the hands of an artisan of unparalleled character.

  Rysa knew what-is plus other things she shouldn’t, like the vision-memories of what-was. Ladon said the seers were different, but she’d seen future events, and now her nasty was throwing the past and the present at her.

  She’d become… omniscient, even if she couldn’t remember anything or make sense of it. She really was a Fate. A monster.

  Ladon interrupted her scattered vision when he skidded across the carpet and dropped to his knees next to her. She hadn’t seen him come around the corner from the kitchen. Hadn’t heard him call her name, even though she knew he had.

  More information she shouldn’t know popped into her mind—her meds were in the inside pocket of his armored jacket. He’d seen them on the counter and scooped them up, just like he scooped her up now.

  Above them, in the attic, her mom swung her blade. The snapping and groaning ceiling buckled upward as if in pain.

  A Burner must have imploded.

  Rysa curled her arms around Ladon’s neck, the only movement her body would make, and all thoughts of her meds disappeared.

  “Rysa!” His voice flowed over her and his strong arms enveloped her body. Strong arms lifted her to her feet. “The fire’s spreading. We need to leave.”

  “My mom’s in the attic. With Burners.” Everything inside Rysa screamed to run for the steps to the upper floor of their split level. Ladon held her on the entry level in the one place in the house that was equidistant from the front door and the back patio door. They were right in the middle of the living room—and the most open area in the house. They were under the vaulted ceiling rising a story and a half to the attic above and in perfect view of the open sitting room at the top of the steps.

  In the one place in the house they couldn’t hide from Burners.

  Rysa clung to Ladon, even though he didn’t want to help her.

  “What did you see?” But as he spoke, his chest shifted. He pulled her flush against his side.

  A sense of safety touched her tremoring mind. She could snuggle warm and calm with this man and be safe from every Burner on the planet even if he didn’t care about her mom or any other Fate.

  Why was she thinking such things?

  “You’re crying.” Ladon spread his fingers over her lower back.

  His head jerked toward the open banister between them and the upper sitting room, and his hand moved to her hip. His fingers splayed a little up, then slightly forward—he positioned his hand so he could move her quickly if he needed to.

  She looked up at his face. His goggles hung around his neck, the muscles of which were tensed, as was his jaw. Every movement, every adjustment was meant for one purpose—to keep her safe.

  The house popped. The imploding Burner in the attic must have taken part of the roof. A grating noise followed, then the sounds of boots dropping out of the attic access and into the hallway.

  Still out of sight, her mom screamed.

  Rysa’s focus swung from Ladon and locked onto the shrillness of her mother’s voice. The fluttering of her attention issues—the shifting from her visions to the house then to Ladon’s hard muscles with no break or conscious connection—stopped. Everything but her mom grayed out.

  The Burners were going to take her mom. “Ladon! They’ll eat her! Please! Please—”

  A Burner fell out of the hallway entrance and onto the landing at the top of the stairs. An unbroken stream of expletives jabbered from her little mouth as she jumped up, and her tiny finger poked at the air in Rysa’s general direction. Her dirty clothes, her matted hair, her backward baseball cap only dressed the malicious Cheshire grin she beamed down at Rysa.

  “Skankadoodle!” the child hissed.

  Ladon held Rysa’s arms around his torso as he stepped in front of her. His palm and fingers cupped her entire hand and his skin was warm and dry and rough the way she’d expect of a man who worked with his body.

  “They won’t touch you.” His words reverberated through his chest to the cheek she pressed against his back.

  He told the truth. Nothing got by this man. Nothing at all.

  A Burner she didn’t recognize flew down the hallway and landed next to the child.

  The child laughed and jigged around on one foot.

  “Your mother must have breathed burndust. She’s frantic.” Ladon leaned back enough to block her sightlines to the Burners. “She’s taken some of their chaos into herself.”

  “What?” Her mother had breathed the same stuff that was in the shackles?

  A massive pulse of energy burst from Ladon in the strongest tran
sfer she’d felt so far between him and Dragon.

  Rysa’s breath caught. She couldn’t see around Ladon. Where was the beast?

  Still out of sight, still down the hallway, her mother screeched.

  Many times Rysa had heard her mother angry, and seen her face squish as if she plotted revenge. But she never sounded like she wanted to kill.

  Mira’s foot stomped onto the head of the Burner lying on the landing. The child danced backward into the sitting room and out of range of Mira’s sword.

  A flash reflected off Mira’s raised blade and her finger jabbed toward Ladon’s head. “Why did you bring her here?” Mira snarled. “You were supposed to—”

  Her mother vanished. Her stripped-away sword bounced down the steps.

  The invisible Dragon jumped off the upstairs landing with her mother enfolded in his forelimbs. Rysa saw her mother’s leg kick, her shoulder thrust, her fist strike the parts of Dragon she could reach.

  Dragon landed on his feet with her mother gripped tightly to his chest. His big head curled toward Ladon. Another pulse washed over Rysa as the man and the beast communicated.

  Ladon twisted under her arms and lifted her against his waist. “We leave.”

  Disoriented by the lift, Rysa held tight anyway, doing her best to track the vanishing and reappearing parts of her mother.

  Dragon bellowed and her mother rolled away.

  Mira found the hilt of her dropped sword before she came up to a crouch. “Touch me again, you damned beast, and I’ll cut you!” She waved the sword.

  “Mom! Stop! They’re helping!”

  Ladon jerked back when Rysa yelled, but he didn’t let go. She twisted against his torso and reached for her mom.

  “Put me down!” She slapped his shoulder.

  “No! We go!” With his free hand, he pointed at the child on the landing. “They’ll take the house.” His jaw set. “Why are Fates so stubborn?”

  “I told mammaskank she’s ours!” The child danced around her unconscious companion lying on the landing at the top of the stairs. She stopped suddenly, her little body holding a mid-jig pose, and kicked the Burner in the neck. “Asswipe!”