Games of Fate (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 1)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  “Why?” Billy scoffed but walked toward her anyway.

  “Give me your hand.” She moved closer. His stench pricked her eyes, but she had a task to complete.

  Billy wiggled his hand out of his pocket and jutted toward her. She twisted his wrist so he could read her words when he looked down.

  She wrote: I will listen to Rysa. On his other hand: Bring Mira to Rysa.

  He stared, unblinking, at the words. “Why the bloody hell did you write on me?”

  “Get my mother, Billy. Bring her to me safe and alive.” Billy was the only one. No one else would help. No one knew where to search or cared to track or gave a rat’s ass about her mother’s spine. Only this Burner and his random loathing.

  She pushed the pen into his palm and backed away.

  His lip curled. “I hate Fates,” he muttered. “I hate all of you.”

  “Billy, please.”

  His red eyes closed to slits. “I’m going to skin her. I’m going to eat her myself.” He pointed at the roof. “Tell your boyfriend I hate him, too.”

  The Burner’s head angled and he planted his feet. Then he darted across the hospital drive, up the hill opposite the entrance, and vanished around another building.

  Something changed. The overwriting grew stronger. The world flattened.

  Maybe this had always been her life. No color, no interest, the best of everything in the past. She dropped to her knees on the hot asphalt.

  She should tell someone. But she couldn’t remember who, nor why he was important.

  They stepped around a large vehicle next to the clinic outbuilding—two males and a female. All three wore tight, black fighting gear, and tall, sturdy boots. The men, though stocky, had the same auburn hair and blue eyes as Faustus. They moved in the same cadence as her uncle as well, and were more heavily muscled.

  The woman walked in front, at the point of their triangle. The entire length of her dirty-blonde hair had been wrapped in leather cording and swung behind her head like a hammer.

  Each wore a silver and gold torque around his or her neck—torques that had been shaped out of a dagger sliced vertically from its hilt to the tip of its blade. The men’s sections each carried a reshaped half of the blade guard, but the woman’s section carried something that could not be cut—a jewel as red as a Burner’s eye.

  The woman did not look at Rysa. Her cloudy eyes didn’t focus. They were dead in their sockets.

  This Fate was blind, yet she knew where everything and everyone stood. Her ability blipped like radar as it touched Rysa. It squirmed through her uncle’s injection and replaced the world Rysa sensed with what the blind present-seer wanted her to see.

  Large guns poked from holsters on all of their legs and short swords from scabbards on their backs, except for the male on the right, who held a blade in each of his hands.

  The swords reflected nothing, though they should, because they were obviously some type of metal. But they were blacker than anything should be in the bright sunlight. Black like the night, as if they sucked away all sense of their existence. Their appearance alone sliced a hole in the universe.

  The other male crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the roof of the hospital. He pulled a pair of expensive sunglasses from a pocket and covered his eyes as he studied the building. Then he pointed toward Rysa and tipped his head before muttering something in French.

  The female nodded to her brother and walked toward Rysa. “Viens, cousine, nous avons du travail à faire.”

  “Come, cousin, we have work to do.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  One of the men fiddled with the leather cord around Rysa’s wrist and muttered French insults when he couldn’t undo the knot. The other responded with equally insult-sounding French words. The first grumbled and then wrapped Rysa’s wrists—plus the chain, thong, and talisman—in duct tape.

  They pushed her into the back of an SUV.

  She frowned at her hands and watched the Wyoming foothills pass by. She should have told someone she was leaving, but the world was in French now. No one would understand even if she tried.

  The blind woman rested her palm on Rysa’s shoulder. They were les Enfants de Guerre et leur cousine. If Rysa slept, maybe she’d dream in French.

  The road bordered a broad swath of railroad tracks and the exit was a long curve the driver took too fast. Rysa leaned into the blind present-seer. Her three cousins muttered to each other in strange inflections and vanishing consonants about stranger things.

  Wizards and demons, maybe. Magiciens et démons, peut-être.

  Something pushed at the spike in Rysa’s mind. Something that didn’t have the strength to push it out but tried anyway. It hid from the woman and did its best to fill the holes through which the French world poured.

  “Are you my family?” Rysa asked. “Êtes-vous ma famille?” She knew another way to talk, but she couldn’t remember what to do. Something about her hands.

  The man in the passenger seat stared around the headrest for a moment before answering. “Oui,” he said.

  A rail yard flickered by outside. Shipping cars dwarfed the SUV and blotted out the sky in a clipped rhythm of dark thrown by a car, fire thrown into a gap by the sun—dark, fire, dark—as they passed by a train.

  For Rysa’s entire life, she’d seen trains from a distance as long, winding chains of unbroken power that moved away without a care. A train carried what it wanted into the future and nothing could block its passage.

  The blind woman’s hammer-ponytail hung over her shoulder. Her dead eyes looked at nothing but her face concentrated.

  Magiciens et démons. Et les dragons, peut-être, Rysa thought.

  The woman clamped fingers around Rysa’s neck. “Stay calm,” she whispered into Rysa’s ear.

  Yes, Rysa would stay calm. She had no reason to panic again, or to run away. Her cousins had come for her. They were famille.

  The blind woman released her grip on Rysa’s neck. She sat back against the seat and continued to concentrate on things Rysa could not see.

  They turned through a gate and drove onto a track between the rail lines. Dust billowed around the vehicle as they drove and blocked Rysa’s view of the trains.

  The SUV stopped. The driver—the male with the expensive sunglasses—pulled the keys from the ignition. He murmured to the woman, who nodded.

  “We’re going for a ride on a train, cousin,” the man said in English. He pointed at a sleek, silver passenger car waiting not far away.

  The man in the passenger seat stepped out his door. He concentrated like the woman and the world filled with French clanging and electric static, like lightning striking metal.

  The driver watched Rysa in the rearview mirror. The man outside slapped the window and the French vulgarity dropped from the driver’s lips like sand washing through gravel. The lock clicked open and the lightning man jerked Rysa into the slowly strobing shade of the rail yard. She stared at his face. The moving train-shadows striped his features in French.

  “Il peut encore nous trouver.” More of his lightning pounding across metal. “Les Dracas ne suivront pas. Elles sont en colère.”

  Rysa did not understand French. She’d taken a little German in middle school, and remembered some of the Spanish her father taught her long ago, but she’d never learned French.

  Still, somehow, she understood what the man said: “He may find us yet. The Dracas will not follow. They are angry.”

  The blind woman cupped Rysa’s cheeks. “I cannot look while I hold her. She fights and I am fatigued,” she said in English. Her fingers dropped and she clutched Rysa’s arm.

  “Hmmm…” The driver rounded the front of the SUV and a new thunder much like the other man’s clattered across the gravel, but it struck backward.

  Rysa should understand how they did these odd things, but the words eluded her. Nothing worked and these three dragged her into dark-fire, dark-fire.

  “Les Dracos sont en amour.” The man with the
sunglasses pointed at Rysa and smirked.

  “The Dracos are in love.” Why did he point at her? She couldn’t remember who Les Dracos were.

  “Perhaps we use this, brother Metus? Non?” The driver’s sunglasses bobbed in his pocket when he crossed his arms.

  “We have orders, Timor,” the woman murmured.

  The forward-lightning man—the one with the too-black swords—his name was Metus. The backward-lightning man—the one with the sunglasses—his name was Timor. Rysa still did not know the blind woman’s name.

  She leaned toward Rysa. “Adrestia,” she said.

  Metus, Adrestia, and Timor, the children of war.

  Metus wiggled his shoulders and adjusted the swords on his back. He whistled as he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his pants and stood more like a ninja cowboy than any French assassin.

  “You wish to infuriate him more?” The lightning-sense rolled from Metus again. “He is already a danger.” He clutched Rysa’s chin. “As, I fear, are you.”

  Why was she a danger? French spun around her. French words, French ways. But somewhere underneath, something fought to bring back Rysa.

  Timor shrugged. “I will check the crew.” He walked off, the hilts of his own normal-looking swords poking above his head. Normal people stared, but he ignored them.

  “We leave as soon as possible.” Metus touched the woman’s cheek. “How do you fare, sister?”

  She tapped Rysa’s shoulder. “She is strong, but I am stronger.”

  Metus nodded. “Yes, you are. You are stronger than all of us. You are stronger than our aunt, dear present-seer.”

  A constricted curve shaped Adrestia’s mouth, tightening her already taut cheeks. “And you are stronger than our father, dear future-seer.”

  Metus glowered over his shoulder as he watched Timor walk away.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Dragon sensed French. A word here, a sensation there, all in French.

  Les Enfants de Guerre snuck in using Faustus’s damage and Adrestia hijacked Rysa’s seers. They’d snatched her out from under his nose.

  The shattering threatened—the dissolution that might drop both him and Dragon into the uncontrollable rending and violence that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—let surface again.

  Ladon picked up his damned phone. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe a normal called in something. He shouldn’t mess with the device while he drove, but if he adjusted the—

  The app pinged a hit—an unknown group with swords drove into the Green River Rail Yard. Rysa must have set up the search terms. When, he didn’t know, but he gripped the phone and stared at the screen.

  Every emotion he felt for her flooded his body. He smiled.

  They sped the miles between Rock Springs and the Rail Depot parking lot. And there, behind the building, Ladon caught the glint of guns belted to legs and scabbards over shoulders.

  He and Dragon vaulted out of the van, Ladon strapping his own scabbards to his back as he ran. The invisible Dragon scaled a rail car and jumped from the top to the next train.

  Ladon angled his shoulders as he approached the train. He leaped and one boot slid across the greased metal of the coupler connecting the cars. Shifting his body weight with his other leg, he flipped midair and righted himself against gravity.

  He landed in a crouch halfway to the next line.

  The next train moved. Ladon’s connection to Dragon oscillated as the train pulled away and the beast jumped from car to car. A smaller step, a slight pause, and Ladon hurdled the coupler between two cars. He pulled his head and shoulder back and rotated around the oncoming corner of the next car. The dirty metal grazed his arm and a sudden sting clipped his skin as he landed.

  A small welt of blood appearing on his bicep.

  The beast vaulted from the top of the train car. Ladon’s injury heated his already blistering anger and a deep growl rolled from the invisible Dragon as he hit the dirt.

  The War Babies turned toward Ladon and Dragon in unison.

  They stood as a three-point triangle surrounding Rysa. Behind them, a glistening passenger car waited at the end of a train.

  Metus raised his gun. His aiming skills and future-seer abilities argued, as they did for many Fates, and he’d never been a good shot. The Fate twitched and Ladon ducked, and the bullet flew by his ear.

  Adrestia pressed against Rysa’s back. Timor ran forward and pulled his gun. Timor’s weaponry skills outstripped both his father’s and his brother’s. Guns, bows, slingshots—the past-seer’s precision rivaled Ladon’s.

  But past-seers could not read what-is, or what-will-be.

  Dragon smashed Timor into the gravel and whipped the gun over the rail car.

  Metus’s seer rattled and he targeted the space over Timor’s body.

  Ladon ran up the back of the SUV. One boot pushed against the window as the other landed on top of the vehicle. He reached over his shoulder as he jumped and lifted a short sword from the mechanical arms of his scabbard.

  Metus swung toward Ladon, and his gun and the pulse of his future-seer rotated with him. Metus fired. Ladon twisted in the air and the bullet missed his side.

  Ladon’s boot hit the hood of the SUV. He rammed the other into Metus’s breastbone and landed in a crouch between Metus and Rysa.

  Flame shot from the invisible Dragon. His anger pounded through the entire rail yard, but Ladon would not be distracted. He kept his eyes forward and on Metus.

  The future-seer glanced toward Dragon. Ladon threw his short sword. Metus dodged and pulled his own, and whipped it at Ladon.

  Ladon caught the hilt.

  He sneered at Metus. He should have foreseen Ladon’s responses. He should have understood that his triad was about to become nothing more than bloody pulp.

  Ladon spun the sword around his wrist. The dark-as-midnight blade reflected no light. Its cutting edge all but disappeared. Ladon flipped it around and laid his new toy against his scabbard.

  The edges of his perception jarred. Rysa hooked into his connection to Dragon.

  “Let go of me!” she screamed.

  She siphoned again and yanked on his connection to Dragon. Pain fired through every fiber of Ladon’s body.

  She stretched their limits.

  Ladon ignored the million needles raking his nerves and willed the stream of energy between him and the beast tighter.

  Dragon volleyed pattern and color to Ladon and the beast’s sudden frenzy burst into Ladon’s vision. He tried to shoot back calm, but Rysa drew too fast. Fatigue gripped Dragon and the beast couldn’t slow the siphoning on his end of their connection.

  Ladon planted his feet to keep from swaying. He wouldn’t stagger. He would not allow Metus to see him weakening. Rysa battled to overpower Adrestia’s hijacking and by all the gods he and Dragon would give her what she needed to do it no matter the agony it caused.

  Rysa’s gaze locked to his. “Ladon!”

  Adrestia clamped a hand over her mouth. The siphoning vanished.

  “No!” Ladon dropped to his knees. She had almost freed herself. If they willed her more—

  Adrestia spun Rysa toward Timor. Her present-seer blipped toward Dragon. She pulled her own gun and backed toward Rysa and her brother.

  Behind Ladon, heels scuffed on the gravel. He ducked and swung around, and slammed Metus’s head into the ground. Future-seers lost advantage in close quarters. Their ability delayed their responses by a microsecond and in hand-to-hand with Ladon or Sister, it meant their death. Better to dodge, as Faustus had.

  Metus clucked and grabbed for Ladon’s leg but Ladon kicked at his face. Metus rolled and Ladon’s boot scraped his cheek.

  The future-seer’s features hardened. “Fâché, maintenant, n’est-ce pas?”

  Yes, Ladon was angry now. “Your seer finally working, connard?”

  Metus swung his other short sword. Ladon kicked up with both feet as the blade passed by his arm.

  He slammed a boot into Metus’s gut. Ladon finished t
he back-flip and landed in a crouch. Metus slid across the gravel.

  He dropped the midnight blade at Ladon’s feet.

  The sword had opened a hole in his t-shirt and skimmed off the bottom half of his chest hair.

  Too close. The blade clinked against the gravel and Ladon caught the hilt. He lifted his second blade off the other scabbard and replaced it with Metus’s. He now stood before Metus with his own short sword in his fighting hand and the future-seer’s two midnight blades safely enclosed in the scabbards’ mechanical arms.

  Dragon boomed from the top of the passenger car.

  “You’re an idiot, Ladon-Human.” Metus sneered.

  Timor and Adrestia had Rysa. They had pulled her into the car while he fought Metus.

  Ladon broke for the train but it accelerated west, toward the river. His gut heaved. The train moved away and his connection to Dragon stretched too much.

  Dragon dropped off the car and to the gravel.

  Metus, behind them, started the SUV.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Ladon unlocked the van and the remote sounded the familiar whoop whoop. Dragon rolled into the back as Ladon slid into the driver’s seat.

  The rail service road paralleled the lines. They’d pace the train faster on concrete than on the dirt next to the tracks.

  Ladon accelerated out of the parking lot.

  They needed to cut off the train before it left town, but Metus intended to cut them off first. The future-seer sped alongside the train.

  She fights, Dragon pushed.

  She did. She fought. They had to get to her before the War Babies completely overpowered her mind.

  “There they are.” Ladon pointed at the train as it rattled along picking up speed. Three miles beyond the yard, the tracks crossed a wide overpass spanning the road. From there, the line looped over the Green River and headed west. If he reached the overpass first, he could get to the tracks.

  They’d get Rysa back.

  Long-buried memories of other loves—other women who had called up the rumbling from Ladon’s soul—punched into his consciousness like a sledgehammer. The blunt force knocked into the real world and Ladon gripped the wheel.