“I won’t go to the Burners!” Rysa screamed. Her life was her own. Ladon had told her when she activated that her life was her own.
Faustus laughed. “You are Parcae. We are the living equivalent of the Fates. We do not now, nor have we ever, lived for the simpering desires of the petty.” He clapped loudly and skipped in front of the sedan. “What are you going to do, pumpkin, the first time your seers take the measure of a man and you know you must cut his threads and send him to his death? Will you wring your hands and blubber like a housewife? Fate will have its due, young lady. Fate always has its due. Your purpose is to give its glorious clarity to the world.”
Her uncle’s goal was to make her a weapon.
No. Her seers showed the truth—she was to become a weapons factory.
Her uncle’s future-seer danced like hammers on metal. “Yes! Now you see. You’re to be their lovely center. The one who gives them purpose! Someone needs to. Your aunt couldn’t do it.”
The nauseating truth clicked into place—Ismene was half dead. Dead enough to cause the sickness for her mother and her uncle, but not dead enough to hold still. “How?” Rysa yelled. “How did Ismene become one of them?”
“They got her. I couldn’t stop it.” Faustus jigged around pointing at the stars. “No one can predict what Burners will do.”
Was it an accident?
Her brain clicked back to the burning world, and fire over land and sky. Fire in her veins. Fire burning every nerve to nothing but anguish and she’d only care about her hunger. Stripped of her humanity, her Fatehood, she’d be fire uncontrolled.
Faustus shrugged. “Ismene’s blood made them useful. Regular Burners couldn’t set off a mall. I made the best of a bad situation. Do you know how hard it is to herd those damned monsters? And I had to have enough of her children to get the job done. Had to find the pumpkin.” He waved at Rysa. “Imagine my delight when I realized you’re the Ambusti Prime. The Jani are the best. The best.”
“But the world burns.” If she went to the Burners, she’d cause it.
Faustus shook a fist at random bits of air. “I’ve seen the truth for a very long time, niece. The same things you’re seeing.” He paced again. “It’s not you who causes Hell on Earth.” Faustus reached out his hand. “Our role is to stop it. You need to come with me.”
Ladon’s core tightened. He turned in her arms and touched her cheek. He didn’t plead. He wouldn’t plead. But she saw need. Need and ferocity and promise.
Everything she wanted stood in front of her, offering everything he had.
Ladon didn’t turn toward her uncle. He focused on her. “Where is Ismene?”
Faustus jigged in a circle. “How the hell should I know? She’s a Burner.” He danced forward. “Come out from behind him and act like the Parcae you are. Do the job fate’s given you.”
Ladon’s hand moved between their chests and he finger-spelled: Run. Van.
Faustus’s gaze darted to their vehicle as his seer thundered through the parking lot. “Stay here, Rysa. You need to come with me. We have work to do.” He tilted his head and stared directly at her forehead.
The spike in her head inched deeper and her skull felt as if it was about to rupture. She slapped her hands over her temples and all the whipping and poking of her seer-nasty turned outward.
Rysa didn’t understand how, but she pushed.
Ladon whipped around to face her uncle but kept his hands behind his back and gripping her waist. “Faustus!” he roared.
Her uncle mirrored her movements and touched his own forehead. A low groan rolled from his throat and he squinted. “She can’t do that. No one pushes back.”
The what-will-be seared into Rysa’s mind—Burner venom morphing her body into something caustic and violent. It was going to ravage as it scorched. A deluge of fire and transformation would to explode from cell to tissue to organ and out through her veins.
How was she supposed to push that out of her head? Her purpose was to create an army. Her Burner children were going to be like her, the Fate singular, and hold past, present, and future. Her purpose was to give them the order of the universe and the opposite of their Burner chaos. Her blood was meant to calm their ragings.
Every one of them would be stable and overpowering.
The agony of the vision knocked her backward. She couldn’t ignite into something soulless and malevolent that was meant to birth demons.
It couldn’t happen.
Faustus rubbed at his cheek. “I always knew the Jani Prime would bring about the cure.”
“No.” She’d create an army so incendiary neither Ladon nor his sister could stop it. They would be overwhelmed. Rysa’s Burner children would shred them, human and dragon.
“Get out of her head!” Ladon yelled.
Faustus walked toward them. “She’s seeing what all the Primes have seen for the last century and a half. I just opened the spigot.” His wrist circled in little twisty motions. “It’s not the Burners who end the world.” He halted inches from Ladon. “Who else makes fire?”
Who else—
The realization hit like her head had bounced on the pavement.
She was just another attack, another weapon in a battle fought in a very long war between the Parcae and the Dracae. Faustus thought her Burner children would be the fire he needed to fight a fire he could not control.
Rysa, the weapon of dragon destruction.
Another deep growl reverberated from Ladon’s chest. “Take care with what you insinuate, Faustus Aurelius Jani.”
Her uncle poked at Ladon but he pulled back before his finger touched. “Every powerful future-seer on the planet sees it. I see it. Her cousin Metus sees it. Oh!”
He pointed again. “All of Timothy’s descendants see it! And that ponce Daniel? It was the last bit of knowing his brain made before my children gutted him.”
Something was terribly wrong. She tried to push again, but her seers couldn’t move around the new visions.
“Leave me alone!” Rysa screamed.
“Come, pumpkin.” Faustus extended his hand one more time.
Ladon’s footing changed. The mention of Daniel turned his back as hard as granite. “She’s made her choice. She won’t go with you.” The words came out deep, with the authority of the ages filling all his pauses.
Faustus sighed another one of his grand exhales. “Get in the car! No more playing house with Ladon-Human. It’s time you grew up and faced your responsibilities. You’re Parcae. We do what we are meant to do.”
The air behind Faustus shimmered. Dragon swung a large metal pipe just as fire burst from his mouth. Her uncle’s future-seer thundered toward the beast and Faustus avoided the flames, but the pipe cut a gash into his cheek.
Faustus dropped back. Blood streaked his lip. “Ladon-Dragon!” His seer thundered again. “There you are. I know where you will be.” Her uncle danced out of the way.
Dragon tossed the pipe. Ladon twisted and pulled Rysa against his back with one arm and caught the pipe with his other.
He slammed the pipe into the asphalt. A crack blasted through the park and sparks showered their feet. Ladon leaned forward, the pipe like a pike in his hand, and pointed at her uncle.
Faustus laughed. Rysa backed away.
Right now, in front of her, Ladon’s body manifested the opposite of the gentle touches they’d shared before. He poised to kill.
He didn’t want to be a warrior anymore, or to fall to the expectation that he’d do battle. Yet here he was, between Rysa and her fate, and it frightened her more than her uncle’s attacks.
Faustus whipped a small knife—a knife he’d been hiding in his sleeve—at Rysa. She jerked to the side but the blade nicked her upper arm.
Ladon swung the pipe at Faustus.
Her uncle rolled and landed in a crouch. He sneered and drummed his fingertips on the asphalt, and pointed at Rysa’s temple.
Another future dagger pierced a new wound into her mind and she stiffened. Her
arm bled but she tasted death, all death—Ladon in blood. Dragon, his hide gray and lifeless. Herself with a bullet in her chest.
Dragon flamed again and flung Faustus at the sedan. Her uncle contorted midair and somehow landed on his feet. A haze billowed off his suit jacket, but he’d escaped the flame unharmed.
Ladon threw the pipe like a javelin.
Faustus lunged to the side but the pipe caught his jacket and speared it to the pavement. His shoulders wiggled and he yanked, but Ladon was on him and twisting his arm before he freed himself.
Faustus laughed. “She’s going to become what she’s meant to be. She’s Parcae. You can’t fight that.”
Ladon slammed Faustus against the ground. “She will decide her own future.”
Would she? Could she get out of Faustus’s grasp? Get away from the violence she spread into Ladon’s and Dragon’s lives?
“And produce you a litter of Dracae pups?” Faustus said. “That worked so well for your other women, didn’t it? Better she become a Burner.”
Ladon punched. Faustus spit out a tooth.
The world rocked like a canoe and Rysa pitched to the side. She would have slammed her head on the pavement, maybe shatter her elbow, but Dragon’s invisible hand laid her down.
“Your boyfriend’s going to die in a rain of blood and fire, pumpkin, and you’re the cause.” Faustus chuckled out a gurgle more than a laugh, and pushed against Ladon.
Rysa pulled herself to her knees. “It doesn’t have to happen. I won’t let it.” She’d pay attention, even if it killed her. She wouldn’t become something evil.
“We’re Parcae! Control is irrelevant!” Faustus yelled.
“Your visions are wrong.” Ladon slammed Faustus against the pavement again.
“All Parcae are having false visions? You are an idiot.” Faustus grunted. “Of course, it might be the Dracas. But I think it’ll take both of you to cause the damage we see.”
“If I stay with them, if I see it coming, I can help them. I—”
Faustus laughed again. “You can’t stop what’s coming with kisses and hugs! Please, child. Dragons are feared for a reason.”
Ladon lifted Faustus off the pavement and punched him again.
“I see what you will do!” Faustus licked blood off his lip. “Your kind is more dangerous to this world than all the Mutatae and Parcae combined! You can snap my neck but others will stop you. It’s fated.”
“It won’t be them!” Blood dripped down Rysa’s arm and her stomach churned. The visions flared. She couldn’t think.
Faustus chuckled. “She has you wrapped around her little finger. When she turns Burner, you won’t hurt her. The beast won’t, either. My dear sister and her impeccable present-seer. She’s the best.”
Ladon smacked Faustus’s head against a car window. Glass cracked.
“Her army will end you. You won’t defend yourself!” A small gun dropped from Faustus’s sleeve. He pushed it into Ladon’s ear. “Silly me. Forgot about this. I blame the dust. Heh.”
Ladon stiffened.
“Maybe I should kill you now.” Faustus frowned. “But martyring you would cause your sister to rampage.” Faustus pushed Ladon off. “And we know what happens when one of you rampages, don’t we?”
Faustus snorted and backed toward the driver’s door. “Tell you what, pumpkin. I’ll give you more time with the Dracos, how’s that sound? So you can say your good-byes. Then we’ll talk again.”
Faustus saluted with the gun. “She was born for a purpose.” Then the driver’s door banged closed.
And the future banged in Rysa’s head.
Chapter Thirty
Memories that weren’t memories blotted out the world. Rysa’s body shook with jolts and spasms. Her gut knotted. Three seers snapped between past, present, and future and the Jani Prime overrode Rysa. She frothed, mind, body, and soul.
The spike in her head—the wedge forced in by Faustus—opened up her seers to the blinding light of everything. Most everything. At least all things Jani no matter how much Burner chaos swirled around her mother or in the veins of her aunt.
Rysa’s body ebbed in venom and flame.
Somewhere in the middle of America, a War Baby hit her mother. The others made burndust in a turn off down the road. They were also torturing a Burner—the British one named Billy who found Rysa first.
He and a few other Burners had followed her mom.
Mira tried to run into the prairie but the War Babies’ past-seer slapped her and grinned under his expensive sunglasses.
“Mom!” Rysa’s cheek stung as if the past-seer had hit her and not Mira.
Ladon picked her up off the gritty pavement. Her uncle had driven away but she and Ladon and Dragon were still exposed, still out in the open, in the middle of the park’s asphalt parking lot.
“What are you seeing?” Ladon asked.
She wasn’t seeing anything. She was feeling her mother’s rage.
Rysa cringed as she mirrored the flailing pain of her mom’s present. She thrashed in Ladon’s arms, more like Mira than herself.
A different vision from her past-seeing tentacle raked her body—Faustus hitting Ismene. Rysa tasted blood in her mouth.
“Put me down!” she yelled. “Worthless damned Dracos! All you two have ever done is strut around and look pretty.” Ismene’s or Mira’s anger spit out the words. Rysa didn’t know which.
Ladon ignored her yelling. He carried her to the van and set her on the blankets. Dragon followed and slammed the door.
Her mother seethed somewhere far away. Rysa tried to contain it, but Ismene also foamed across the threads of the Jani.
Rysa tasted metal and hammers.
Ladon covered the knife wound on her arm with a paper towel. “Keep pressure on it.”
She pressed on her bicep.
Ladon ripped the top off a gurgling jug of water. He wet another towel and dabbed at the cut. “We need to stitch that.”
Her mother forced her way into Rysa’s vision again. “Bison.” Lots of angry bison. Her mother put up a fight near a big herd of American Bison.
His brows knitted. “Where?”
A “Welcome to South Dakota” sign flicked through her seers, but the sky was bright. “They entered South Dakota this morning.” She shook her head. “Tomorrow morning. I don’t know.”
“We fix this first.” He pressed the towel against her cut again.
She slapped at his hand. “Let it bleed! What difference does it make?”
He leaned back. “Rysa. Please.”
“You’re like all the other guys. You smile and then get mad when I talk too much and can’t sit still. I’d think watching my boobs bounce up and down would be fun.” She flopped against the floor.
“When have I treated you that way?” He stopped dabbing. “I’m not some pathetic normal.”
Rysa watched his jaw. His stubble against her skin had felt so nice. “You taste good.” She stroked his stomach.
He grabbed her wrist.
“You can get whatever you want just by walking into the room, can’t you?” Bloody fingerprints trailed across his t-shirt from her touch. “Ladon-Human, the gorgeous sun-god, and his amazing Dragon.”
He groaned and pressed clean gauze against her arm.
Her mother’s memories flickered like cards in an animation. “You’re a good man. Better than any of the Jani.”
She remembered her mom staring at her little stuffed toy. “He’s a good dragon, but you know that already, don’t you?” Rysa muttered her mother’s words. “He’s special because he’s Rysa’s dragon.” What they meant, she didn’t know.
Ladon glanced at Dragon and a pulse moved between them. “Tell us what you’re seeing. We can’t help if we don’t know.”
Thick and smothering dread clicked and locked onto her limbs. French words pushed aside her English—“Les Enfants de Guerre ont ma mère,” she groaned. “The War Babies have my mother.”
Ladon’s face blanked.
/> The van came back into focus. “What’s happening?” The pain from the cut throbbed up her arm to her shoulder. “My mom’s gone. I can’t sense her anymore.”
Hot agony rippled from the wound and she leaned into Dragon. “I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to—”
“Stop! You can’t fall into that pit.” Ladon pulled her to him. “Do you trust us?” He looked toward Dragon. “We won’t burn the world. I swear to you, we won’t do that.” He touched his forehead against her cheek as Dragon poked at her arm. “It’s a trick. We’d have to be Burners.”
Her seers thumped with images of blood and fire but she leaned her head against Ladon’s shoulder anyway. “I see it coming.” She’d bring their death.
Ladon kissed the bridge of her nose. “We need to stop what’s happening to you right now. I’m taking you to Dmitri.”
The pain reverberating between her head and arm intensified and she coughed out a gasp.
Ladon cupped her cheeks. “You need to sleep.”
She nodded. “What about my mom?”
“We’ll get it sorted.” He glanced at Dragon before touching her wound. “Dragon will stitch your arm.”
If she ran away and found a hole to crawl into she wouldn’t become the catalyst her uncle saw. “I can’t be that. I can’t become that.”
Her mother returned—Mira hit a War Baby.
Rysa winced. “She’s fighting them.”
But the vision flicked away and left only a ghost. Foreboding pinned her arms and legs to the blankets. Her entire body shook. She was going to drown in waves of murder.
“Rysa!” Ladon gripped her shoulders. “Love, look at me.”
She gulped and scrunched closed her eyes.
“Look at me!”
A barrier dropped between her and all the stimuli flooding in from senses that were not her own. All sense of her mother’s actions ceased. All the low-level rage from her aunt vanished.
Dragon’s hide and body froze motionless. He stopped, poised over the med kit, with his talons retracted and his hand-claw shaped in an odd cascading pattern over the bandages and medications.
Games of Fate (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 1) Page 22
