Games of Fate (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 1)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  At her house, he’d held her against his side. He’d picked her up and carried her out. So to him, touching her face must have been the most natural thing in the world. Though he’d been a jerk earlier and should have felt she wouldn’t appreciate it, natural or not.

  “We’ll cut off those cuffs in the morning. Right, Harold?” Disappointment still knotted Ladon’s shoulders. “And make you a talisman you can wear.” He still refused to look at her.

  All she wanted to do was to apologize, though he should apologize to her.

  Harold held a glass of water in each hand. Annoyance hummed from his coiled muscles as he offered one to Marcus and the other to her.

  “That’s right. In the morning.” Harold scowled at Ladon, then he adjusted the holster under his left arm. A gun poked out. A big gun.

  “Thanks for the water.” Rysa’s throat grated like she’d swallowed sand. The water helped, despite Harold huffing like he’d shared his last drop with the Devil himself.

  He leaned close to Marcus’s ear. “Don’t tax yourself.”

  Marcus frowned. “I’m fine.” He nodded toward Rysa. “She has only the shirt on her back.”

  Harold’s back stiffened. “What do you know about your family? Tell me the truth.” He pinched his lips and poked out his chest. “I may not be Parcae but I can tell if you’re lying.”

  Ladon’s arm snaked around her shoulders again. Dragon nudged the nape of her neck and placed his snout next to her ear. They shored up her strength, but Harold’s antagonism pressed on her like a weight.

  She didn’t know anything about the Jani. And the way he glared at her, it took all her self-control not to curl up on Ladon’s lap.

  Harold grunted. “Just like a Jani.”

  “Leave her alone.” Ladon’s arm tightened. He sounded like a cop, or a teacher, or maybe a general. He’d infused the authority of war into those three words.

  Neither Ladon nor Dragon looked at her, but Ladon leaned forward. Dragon’s forelimb moved over the back of the couch and wrapped around her other side. They insulated her with a warmth completely the opposite of the ice she heard in Ladon’s voice—and in Harold’s bitterness.

  “She doesn’t know anything. If she did, I would have seen it.” Marcus set down his glass. “And I didn’t. Yet someone saw you before you activated, young lady, even though Mira’s been hiding you. The events of your entire twenty years are muddled.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Timothy could do that. Stitch up the present so that a past-seer couldn’t read it. It takes considerable skill and willpower. But to hold it for twenty years? Your mother is formidable, Ms. Torres.” He shrugged. “Though we knew that already.”

  “Then how do you know she isn’t lying?” The question hissed from Harold, low and menacing.

  Marcus’s dark gray eyes looked more resigned than angry. “Because I am the past-seer of the Draki Prime. Even only for the time I have left, I am better at what I do than any other Prime.” He pushed himself to standing. “Justinian would not have failed to hold the Empire if we had become his tribute. This—” He waved. “This all would have been Rome. All of it.”

  Marcus teetered.

  Harold grasped his arms. “Marcus, I’m sorry. I’m—”

  “I can read the edges of your past, Ms. Torres, but only your aunt Ismene can undo the stitching.” Marcus pulled away from Harold and pointed at Rysa. “Everything around you is muddled. I cannot see the Jani.” He rubbed his temple. “I will try again in the morning.”

  Ladon pulled his arm from behind Rysa and stood up. He took Marcus’s elbow. They whispered, Harold on Marcus’s other side glowering first at Ladon, then over his shoulder at Rysa.

  Dragon touched Marcus’s shoulder. Marcus nodded, then stood straight. “We do what we must, Ladon-Human,” he said.

  Ladon looked at Rysa and grinned.

  Smiles like that only crossed people’s faces right before they said things like “buck up” or “it could be worse” or “at least we have food to eat and a roof over our heads.”

  “There’s a spare room upstairs.” Ladon pointed at the stairwell along the outer wall of the house, but didn’t say anything more.

  Harold helped Marcus vanish into the gloom of the dark hallway behind the couch. He glanced over his shoulder one last time before the shadows took him.

  Rysa looked away. What else could she do? She was alone with her unsettled thoughts.

  She stood and slowly made her way to the stairs and, what she hoped, would be rest.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rysa sat on the edge of a huge bed in the center of a tiny room. Moonlight trickled in through the dormered window tucked into a corner. An uncomfortable looking chair sat next to the bed, and a dresser against the far wall.

  When she brushed her fingers along the white-painted headboard, her seers had flared, and an image had flickered on the outer edge of Rysa’s abilities—a small woman with dark, curly hair, warm skin, and honey-colored eyes. She had laid hands on Marcus and her touch held the Parcae sickness in check for decades.

  Rysa pulled back her hand. The past was more obvious than the present or the future. She could distinguish the past only because the people or the technology made it obvious. Otherwise, it looked the same as what-is and what-will-be.

  Dragon wedged himself between her feet and the wall with his head next to her side and draped over the bed’s blankets. He kept his colors muted but bright enough that she saw the furnishings clearly.

  The kaleidoscope of patterns dancing on his hide reflected off the dresser against the wall and the chair.

  “So it’s called Parcae sickness?” Rysa asked Dragon. Not rheumatoid arthritis. Something distinctly Fate attacked both Marcus and her mother.

  Ladon had followed her up the stairs and she’d asked about it while he stood in the small room’s threshold. She faked calm and he’d gone off, presumably to sleep. But she heard rattling and electronic noises coming from the porch swing below the window.

  He’d let it slip that the sickness struck Fates who’d lost a member—or members—of their triad, like Marcus had lost his brothers. Her mom’s knuckles were as swollen as Marcus’s, too. And her pain had been bad for many years.

  Was her mother’s triad dead?

  They had to be. Her mom must be the only Jani Prime left. Maybe Rysa’s seers could show her the truth, but she didn’t know how to use them correctly for simple questions like “What am I going to eat for breakfast?” much less complicated stuff about people she didn’t even know. And if she did see some aunt or uncle she didn’t know die, how would she know if it was in the past, present, or future? It all looked the same.

  Dragon rolled his head toward Rysa. He flowed his patterns in calming blues and greens, and puffed out a small flame.

  “Thank you,” she said, and hugged his neck.

  A noise from the hallway caught her attention.

  Harold stood in the door holding a stack of clothes. “I brought you a t-shirt and sweats.” He pointed at her wrists. “We’ll get those off tomorrow.”

  He was being nice?

  Harold smiled awkwardly as he set the clothes on the foot of the bed. “Marcus scolded me for a full ten minutes.” He shrugged. “Sometimes I don’t think. But if anyone can judge character, it’s a past-seer. He says you’re okay.”

  She nodded and tried to smile back. “It’s all right.” He had only been trying to protect Marcus.

  He’d changed into street clothes but the gun still poked out from under his arm. “The sweats will be too big.” He shrugged again and patted the stack of clothes. “They’ll do until you get clothes that fit.”

  “Thanks.” She patted the t-shirt.

  A micro-vision bounced through her mind’s eye as a sudden little squirm of one of her seer tentacles and she saw the half-built house silhouetted against a sunset. Chainmail in a wooden crate. Army fatigues.

  It dissipated as fast as it appeared. At least this time nothing burned. And she didn’t
feel disoriented. She inhaled deeply, thankful the vision hadn’t taken over.

  Harold watched her from the foot of the bed. “You just had a vision, didn’t you?” He frowned and tapped the mattress.

  “Can you feel it?” She sat up straight. “Ladon and Dragon can feel it. Will everyone know when it happens?” If she had an uncontrolled vision somewhere public, would all the passersby stop and stare? “What if someone calls the cops?”

  Harold chuckled. “You’re full of questions, aren’t you?” He wiggled between the bed and Dragon to sit next to her. “Normals can’t feel seers, so don’t worry too much about it.”

  “What are you? You’re not a Fate, but you were here when Marcus built the house.” She’d seen something she was pretty sure had happened before the invention of automobiles. The clothes had all looked uncomfortable.

  “I’m a normal.” He shrugged. “Mostly normal. A Mutatae made me like this.”

  “Mutatae? Mutants? Like eye blasts and telekinesis?” Shifters were bad enough.

  “No, no. Nothing like that. That’s silly, anyway.”

  “No sillier than dragons.” She leaned against the beast when he snorted.

  Harold scooted back on the bed. “True. The Mutatae call themselves Shifters now. Most can morph their bodies.”

  “Oh, Ladon told me about them.” Parcae. Mutatae. “The Burners are called Ambustae, aren’t they?”

  Harold nodded. “Yep.”

  Which was why her mom called her the Ambusti Prime. She suspected the naming rules had little to do with Latin grammar and everything to do with Fate arrogance. Anything to make themselves sound grand and imposing.

  Harold scratched Dragon’s eye ridge. “There’s only two Dracae, though. Right, Great Sir?”

  Dragon snorted again and rubbed against Rysa. She’d sensed something about a sister. Something dark and hidden so deep in the past her seer couldn’t find it.

  “The Shifters breed like rabbits.” Harold snorted out an impressive mimicking of Dragon’s sound. “Or rabbits breed like Shifters.”

  “What about you?” He didn’t look any older than her.

  “I was born in 1544.” His voice dropped into a British accent similar to Billy’s. “In the hills outside Manchester. Lived under Tudor rule, I did.” His nose crinkled and his voice changed back to the southern Minnesota accent he’d used earlier. “An insane Shifter cursed me.”

  “Cursed you? Seriously?”

  He waved his arms like a magician. “‘Upon thy head I leave a scourge so foul, so torturous, that thou shalt walk this Earth always!’ She kissed me right on the lips—” He pointed to his mouth. “—before yelling, ‘You will now and forever annoy the dragons!’ Then she ran off, cackling like a fairytale witch.”

  Rysa grunted, trying not to laugh. “Annoy?”

  “I said she was insane.” Harold grinned, but his eyes filled with surrender. He hadn’t asked to be made immortal.

  “Shifters can do that?”

  “They have enthrallers who can make you do anything and morphers who can do crazy shit with their bodies and a couple of healers who can kill just as easily as they can make you like me.” He shook his head. “She must have been class-one or I would have been maggot chow long, long ago.”

  “Wow.” Then Shifters were more than simple shapeshifters. A lot more.

  “You be careful if you run into one. They’re a slippery lot.” But he smiled and patted her thigh. “Don’t worry too much about it. The Great Sir won’t let any malicious Shifters near you, will you?”

  Dragon blew out a tiny flame and rubbed Rysa’s side again. She chuckled, feeling better than she had in a long while, and wrapped an arm around his neck.

  Harold leaned close and winked. “I’ve made an art of annoying Ladon-Human. I’m very, very good at it. Anna-Human ignores me.”

  She squeezed his fingers with her free hand, smiling too, happy that he seemed to have accepted her. “Hopefully, I won’t be annoying.”

  His eyebrow arched. “I don’t think you have to worry about that, either.”

  Until they spent time with her. “Thanks for the clothes.”

  He squeezed back. “You sleep. We’ll get those damned things off tomorrow. I think he’s got a plan for making you a talisman that won’t, you know, be so obvious.” He scratched Dragon’s crest. “Ladon-Human’s always got a plan.”

  Dragon nodded.

  “They’re good at what they do, Rysa.” He traced a little star flowing by on the beast’s hide. “Only idiots mess with the Dracae.”

  Dragon rolled onto his back. Squiggly lines burst across his belly.

  Harold laughed. “See? He can be scary when he wants.”

  The squiggly lines turned into tiny sword-shapes.

  “He’s a big mimicking lug, that’s what he is.” Harold stood. He stopped in the door and grasped the frame. “You’re a rare find, if you didn’t know. A Fate with all three abilities. Doesn’t happen very often.” With that, he closed the door and walked away.

  Dragon touched her cheek. Unease rippled across his hide.

  “I’ll go to sleep.” Things might be clearer in the morning.

  Dragon dimmed to a soft shimmer. She stripped off her dirty clothes and folded her jeans. She set them on the floor next to Dragon’s front limbs. Pulling a fresh t-shirt over her head, she crawled into the bed, and laid down her head to watch the reflected stars and squiggles and glowing triangles glide across the walls.

  “Good night, Dragon,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “How long has it been since you’ve slept?”

  Ladon steadied the porch swing with one hand and held his vodka in the other, as Harold dropped onto the slats next to him. The chains creaked and the bolts in the porch’s ceiling groaned. Harold paid no heed. Ladon looked up and checked the sagging roof anyway.

  “Why the sudden concern?” His relationship with Harold had never been good. The man bristled at what he called “the arrogance of the long immortal.” Perhaps Harold had softened, now that he approached five centuries of his own feet walking the earth.

  Harold scowled. “Marcus and I talked.”

  Ladon glanced at his phone. Nothing on the app. Jani vengeance had probably already descended onto the Burners. The War Babies were cruel enough to slice bits off that British Burner and use his flesh to detonate the others. They’d take his limbs and leave his torso, then dump him in a field to fizzle to dust.

  Not a good death for anyone, even a Burner.

  All these years, the War Babies had stayed in Europe and kept a low profile away from Ladon and his sister. Ladon didn’t pretend to understand Fate machinations or their convoluted justifications for allowing the murdering scum to continue to breathe. Nor did he care. He’d vowed long ago to peel their skulls if they ever again came near the people he cared about.

  He took a swig of the vodka. It helped him tolerate the terrible world and the whine of his damned phone. Landlines weren’t noisy. He took another swig and shifted the assault rifle on his lap. He’d picked the large one with a scope that could hit anything within three hundred feet of the house. He couldn’t be too careful, down here by himself.

  “I had a nap before the Chicago incident,” he said.

  Harold shook his head. “How long has it been since the Great Sir slept?”

  Ladon glanced at the porch roof and the room above. “We left Wyoming seven days ago.”

  “A week?”

  “Yes.”

  Harold scratched his ear. “He can’t go much longer.”

  Ladon stopped a mouthful of the vodka in mid-tip. “I know my own dragon.”

  Harold sat back on the swing. “Since when is he yours? You’re his.”

  The whine from the phone was bad enough without Harold’s opinions adding to the noise. “You know nothing.”

  “I know he’s hers, now.” Harold nodded upward.

  Ladon and Dragon would keep Rysa safe. They’d help her
find her way. But her reaction earlier when Ladon had touched her hair made it clear she didn’t trust him. Though she seemed to trust Dragon.

  He took another sip. The beast was showing a strong attachment. He’d be inconsolable when she went her own way. He’d mope and his hide would dull to shadows for months. Maybe a full year. “She’s a Fate.”

  “That she is.” Harold grabbed the vodka and took a swig. He coughed, then shook his head. “Jesus, man, what are you drinking?”

  Ladon shrugged. This case of vodka did have an abrasive edge. He didn’t mind. It helped him stay awake.

  “Where the hell did you get this?” Harold held out the bottle and scrutinized the Cyrillic on the label.

  Ladon shrugged again. “Derek’s cousin.” His brother- and cousin-in-law didn’t get along half the time, but Dmitri’s business holdings were a connection to the modern world Ladon and his sister could not live without.

  Plus, Dmitri supplied the best weapons. And vodka.

  Harold returned the bottle. “Pavlovich is providing you with booze? And it hasn’t started a Shifter civil war?”

  “Dmitri does what he wants. No one dares tell him otherwise.” The offending Shifter “disappeared.” Ladon never asked about Dmitri’s practices. Not knowing seemed the best course of action.

  Harold laughed. “Right. I’m sure.” He took the bottle and gulped another drink. Whistling, he handed it back. “That’s going to kill you. All these centuries and bad Russian vodka is what’s going to do you in.”

  “Can’t die.” He pointed up at the room above. “What would Dragon do?”

  Harold laughed and the swing jiggled. “I’m going to stamp WWDD on one of those stupid rubber bracelets.” He tapped across his wrist.

  The odd cultural references should make Harold endearing. They didn’t. “What the hell are you on about?”

  Laughter roared out of the other man. “Still clueless about the wider world, I see?” He shook his head. “The more things change, the more you stay the same.”

  Ladon and the wider world didn’t get along. “The more things change, the more annoying you become.”