Games of Fate (Fate ~ Fire ~ Shifter ~ Dragon #1)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Hurt played through his eyes and his neck tensed. But he caught it and his expression turned stony. Then he caught that look, too.

  She shuffled her bare feet on the gravel. “We don’t know each other,” she whispered. They didn’t, no matter how entwined they felt.

  His neck tensed again. “You’re right. We don’t know each other.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. “I should think before being so forward. I have no right to touch you as if our time’s been decided.”

  He stepped back. Only a couple of inches, but it felt as if he’d moved into a different time zone. “I apologize. Again.”

  Nodding, she wrapped her arms around her chest. She felt cold, like the sun had gone under storm clouds. Rain fell on her life at the same time she rejected the only umbrella available.

  Human is sorry, Dragon signed.

  “Dragon!” She’d been so distracted by Ladon’s closeness that she’d forgotten the beast’s questions. “I’m fluent. I took the translator’s exam last year. I was going to work for Disability Services but my attention issues got in the way.”

  Rysa can sign with me. The beast knocked Ladon’s shoulder. She is fluent. He knocked Ladon’s shoulder again.

  He shrugged, ignoring the beast, and pointed at her wrists. “Burndust makes metal brittle so Dragon’s been testing the chains. He thinks he can heat a link and make you a bracelet.”

  Dragon signed yes.

  “But we cut you a length you can carry just in case.” He pointed at the sweats, then over his shoulder. “It’s in the van.”

  She looked down. No pockets.

  “I’ll find a pouch. Or we’ll make one. Don’t worry.”

  He’d stuck his hands in his pockets again. And he watched her wide-eyed, like a puppy.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He nodded, a quick grin appearing then vanishing off his lips. “Let’s get those off.” He motioned to the side of the van. “I found the hacksaw. Don’t use it much. It was under the theodolite, of all places.” He shrugged again as Dragon nuzzled her hair. “Next to the duct tape.”

  “Wait.” She stared at the back of the van. Tripods, a theodolite, a compass, and other surveying instruments she couldn’t identify littered Dragon’s blankets. Distracted again, she stepped forward, peering around the beast’s bulk. “Why do you have a theodolite?”

  The old-school brass and steel instrument rested next to the door. Sunlight hit the level bars and green glinted off the glass tubes. The love child of a microscope and a pirate’s spyglass, its gyroscopic wheels gave it a vaguely science fiction aura.

  Ladon walked backward toward the van. “There’s more to life than killing Burners. Sometimes we need to measure elevations. Those cabins in Jackson Hole don’t pick their own views.”

  The theodolite, the tripods, the licensing number on the back corner of the van—Ladon and Dragon worked a job. “You survey?” She bounced a little, unable to stop herself. “In Wyoming? In the mountains? I’m studying natural resources management. Fragile ecosystems. Caves mostly. I want to go to the Caverna de las Brujas in Argentina. My dad’s from Cordoba. Are there caves where you live? My parents took me to Carlsbad when I was a kid and—”

  She stopped midsentence when he smiled. It wasn’t some “aren’t you cute” or “that’s nice” smile. His entire face smiled. His mouth, his cheeks, his eyes all drew upward. Every guy she’d gone out with grinned and looked at her breasts, running through their mental calculations weighing horniness verses uneasiness. Not Ladon. He smiled because of her.

  When she was a kid, she’d walk off grids in the backyard and pretend they were different ecosystems with different plants and animals for her to explore. She’d asked her dad for a theodolite to help her mark elevations, but he said he’d have to look up what it was first. Then he moved out and she never saw him again.

  Ladon had a real theodolite in the back of his van. He wasn’t just some god sent to earth to kill Burners. He was a real man with a real job and real skills beyond fighting and he could teach her how to measure the angles of the land.

  “Will you show me how to use the theodolite?”

  The smile turned into something deeper. Dragon flashed behind him and Ladon laid his fingers on the beast’s neck. A complex wave blazed across Dragon’s hide. It overrode her pain and anxiety. They all stood on the gravel, Dragon nuzzling Ladon, then her, then Ladon again.

  “Yes.” He didn’t say anything else. Didn’t repeat the word. He offered a simple yes that filled the space between them. Yes, beautiful. Yes, for you.

  Yes.

  “Let’s cut off those cuffs.” He extended his hand and nodded toward the plank suspended between the sawhorses.

  She sat on the back of the van while Ladon held the shackle. He sawed, his gaze never leaving the line he cut through the resin binding the cuff together. Dragon lounged on top of the van, the talons of one of his claw-hands dangling over the edge and his big head resting on the other. He looked quite clean and comfortable with the sun bouncing off his shimmering hide.

  “Not many people know what a theodolite is.” The saw ground into the joint and filings scattered across the plank. “Maybe you can work with us when you’re done with your schooling. My contracts are always asking about environmental management and water features.” He stopped and blew on the cuff.

  “I’d like that.” A job, in this economy, and one in the mountains. A smile bubbled up and it took all her effort not to bounce. Which she shouldn’t do, anyway. The med was giving her a tummy ache.

  A bad one, too, probably because she’d missed her dose yesterday. She rubbed her midsection with her free hand.

  Ladon yanked the cuff apart and she lifted out her wrist. The burns weren’t bad. Her skin looked sunburned. When she unwrapped the bandages before her shower, the bites had healed to scrapes, too.

  “You heal faster than any Fate we’ve ever met.” Ladon worked at the other cuff until it popped off, too.

  “I’ve always healed fast. I don’t get sick, either, though I do get side effects sometimes.” She rubbed her stomach. “My mom said it was because of my hyperactivity. My body’s speedy.”

  “You okay? You look pale.” He lifted her leg to the plank.

  Being both a spaz and a wuss wouldn’t help anything. She sat up straight. “It’ll pass. I took one of my meds.”

  Ladon positioned her leg, careful of her knee, and rotated the cuff so the joint was up.

  “Thank you, by the way. For helping me. And finding my meds.”

  Ladon nodded toward Dragon. “He found them.”

  The beast’s hand dropped down and he signed Yes.

  Ladon chuckled as he worked on an ankle cuff. “We’ve been watching for Burner activity. They’ve been quiet.” He dusted the filings off her foot.

  She nodded toward the house. “Marcus is meditating. Maybe he’ll give us some direction.”

  The cuff popped off and he switched to her other ankle. “Your safety comes first.” He nodded for emphasis. “We’ll get the visions under control. He’ll help.”

  “The world’s going to burn.” It dropped off her tongue and slapped aside the brief moments of happiness she’d felt earlier.

  Ladon set the saw next to her ankle. “You don’t know that. It could mean anything.” He glanced up at Dragon’s perch on top of the van as he returned to sawing the cuff. “We don’t believe it anyway. You’re one of the best people we’ve ever met.”

  He didn’t know that, either. He couldn’t. They’d just met.

  Dragon’s head and hands swung over the side of the van. We know. We are connected.

  Ladon cut through the last cuff, but didn’t pull it apart. He glanced up at Dragon and a pulse moved between them.

  A wave of nausea pulsed through her gut, mimicking their energy flow.

  “He’s going to get the piece he cut earlier. So you’re not without your talisman.” Ladon looked sad, like he’d just told a child she’d never be an astronaut. O
r a firefighter. Or a decent human being.

  The beast hopped off the side of the van and disappeared around the front.

  Ladon pulled the final cuff apart.

  Pain ratcheted from her kidneys and roared through every joint in her body. A gasp pushed between her lips.

  She leaned over the planks and vomited up her med, the water, and the little bit of bagel she’d eaten after getting out of the shower. Her body rejected what it once tolerated. Her nasty did not like stim meds. Not at all.

  Harold yelled from the house. Something about Marcus having a seizure. He wouldn’t wake up. The words ran past Rysa’s ears so fast she couldn’t catch them.

  She fell off the bumper and her arm scraped along the gravel. Her shoulder hit hard. Her nasty growled, coupling itself to Marcus’s ability, and she felt the Parcae sickness eating away at his body. He’d done so much for her. She couldn’t let him die this way.

  “Dragon!” His name croaked from her throat.

  18

  When Rysa was little, before school lasted the whole day and she played on the patio under the olive tree for hours with her plastic forest and her animals, she’d hear the neighbor’s dog bark. Huge and black as the monsters her father scared away with her nightlight, he’d growl and snarl. But she wasn’t afraid. He couldn’t get over the wall between her yard and his.

  Until the day he did.

  His front paws hit the top of the painted blocks, his teeth bare, his back paws scraping away chunks of concrete. He tore for her and her toy horses and the juice box Mommy gave her for a snack.

  Her mouth opened, but no words, no sounds, came out. Just her little body needing to throw up and run and curl into a ball all at the same time.

  That’s how Rysa felt when the vision’s jaws clamped down and she screamed “Dragon!”

  Only desert, dust, and low buildings the same beige-gray as the earth existed here, in this isolated bubble of time. Unknowable boundaries cut it off from the universe, but somehow Rysa got in. The sky burned as blue as a wall of plasma flame. The square fence of razor wire could rip apart anything that might climb over it.

  No insects buzzed. The sun scorched and Rysa’s skin should prickle, but this unreal world made no noise and laid down no touch and she’d lost her sense of direction. Up, down, left, right, all swung around her like a carnival ride.

  Yet blood stained the ground. A hand lay in the dirt next to her feet. Burners gorged themselves on a five course Shifter meal.

  Behind her, deep in the courtyard, two SUVs, their doors flung wide, sat at an angle to one another. Ping.

  A sound.

  They were out of sync, the tan vehicle faster than the black. Ping Ping.

  She’d moved from silent visions to talkies. But the sounds swung with the unhinged directions and made her want to vomit up not just her guts, but her lungs and her heart, too.

  On the other side of the courtyard, a lean man with hair auburn like Rysa’s, eyes blue like the sky, thundered a seer through the courtyard. It felt familiar, like her mother’s chimes-in-the-storm, but it blasted forward. This man’s seer rode a train into the future, and like a train’s whistle, it dropped low as it moved away, drawn out into hammers beating on metal in the center of a thunderstorm.

  A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman knelt at his feet. Her seer shifted higher, compressed as it approached the present. Hers, cymbals.

  Faustus. Ismene. Her mother’s brother and sister. Her uncle. Her aunt. People she’d never met, but she knew, deep down, were family.

  L'avenir et le passé du Premier Jani. ‘The future and the past of the Jani Prime.’

  French? Rysa’s gut tangled into a tighter knot. If French froze her in place inside this world whipping in funhouse circles, could she find Marcus?

  Ping. Ping. Ping.

  Faustus slapped Ismene and she cried out, but no sound left her mouth. Rysa read Faustus’s lips: My sister is a whore.

  Ping.

  A whisper in her ear: “Qui est Premier Jani Triade maintenant, mon Père?” ‘Who is the Jani Prime Triad now, Father?’

  Rysa jumped, but nobody stood next to her. Yet they were here, invisible like Dragon, two brothers and their sister.

  Family, but not her uncle and aunt. These three would have been consigned to the kid’s table with her during holidays, whispering in French, all snarky, because they were older.

  Her cousins. And they were better.

  Power oozed from the French words whispered in her ear. These three would steal her toys and tear her holiday dress because they could, and no one dared say a word about it.

  These three, they knew how to wage war. They filtered fate through strategy, and they were not to be trifled with.

  Her cousins—the Jani triad. Les Enfants de Guerre. The Jani Prime wasn’t so Prime after all.

  Faustus slapped Ismene again. Whore. But it was the same slap, replayed. This place was an afterimage, a memory. Rysa watched what she didn’t know how to access earlier—the moment her mother’s triad died.

  “Je l'ai cousu.” Next to Rysa’s ear, the female laughed. ‘I stitched it.’

  “Les Brûleurs sont illisibles. Papa ne sait pas.” ‘Burners are unreadable. Father didn't know.’ The future-seeing brother kissed Rysa’s cheek.

  Rysa screamed, but no sound left her throat. She staggered, but the vision twisted into hot reds and ripping teeth. Ping.

  “Nous allons la trouver, cousine. Celle que nous avons manquée. Puis elle ira à son triade.” ‘We will find her, cousin. The one we missed. Then your mother will go to her triad.’

  Chicago, the attacks in Wisconsin, were all inciting events designed to throw the present into chaos and force the last member of the Jani Prime out of hiding. Had Rysa been a side effect like the nausea her pill gave her? Was she to be something Les Enfants de Guerre threw up all over the world?

  “Oui.” ‘Yes.’

  The vision swung. The slaps reset. The pings grew louder.

  Noise exploded into this unreal world. A severed arm hit the side of the tan SUV with a dull smack. It slid down, wet and sucking, and thudded into the dust.

  Burner giggles echoed from the four corners of the enclosure.

  Rysa grasped her ears, trying to block it out. Too loud, too grating, she felt as if she’d see the spots again. But this time, when they popped, they’d rupture her eardrums.

  She knew the real intent of locking her to the Burners: It removed the threat of her Prime seers. One Enfant laughed. Revulsion wafted off another. They’d deal with her mother. Then they’d deal with her. They were, after all, the children of war.

  The female’s fingertip touched Rysa’s nose. “Imaginez que vous êtes en sécurité.” ‘Pretend that you are safe.’

  But she wasn’t. They’d find a way in. They’d rip open her soul and let in cockroaches to suck it dry.

  Ping Ping. Ping. Marcus. Where was Marcus?

  Ping Ping Ping. The dings erupted into full music and the resonant beauty of the past filling the courtyard, a bubble of safety between her, the blood, and her cousins.

  The vision wavered. Faustus and Ismene froze in mid-slap. The SUVs flickered. Right next to Rysa, so close she heard their heartbeats, one brother held Marcus by the neck.

  This brother, the past-seer, flinched. He pressed his temple. “Bâtard. Je vais percer votre intestin, vieil homme.” ‘Bastard. I’ll pierce your gut, old man.’

  Marcus, young and handsome and not at all an old man, his thick black hair cut short and his body lean and strong, his eyes bright with intelligence, grinned as he grasped her fingers.

  The past-seeing brother of Les Enfants de Guerre looked down at their joined hands. Fear registered in his eyes.

  Dust swirled. The wind howled, a deafening scream reverberating between the buildings. The vision of Faustus and Ismene hiccupped.

  Marcus stood to the side of her uncle, his head low, his iron eyes predatory.

  But Marcus held her hand.

  When the do
g attacked, when she was a child, her mom stepped between Rysa and the black hate hurdling across the yard. Her dad caught the animal in mid-lunge, his big arms contracting under his shirt. Both her parents danced and the dog slammed against the concrete patio. It broke and a wet crack echoed off the yard’s fence.

  The dog whimpered once.

  Now, in her vision, talons slammed Les Enfants de Guerre into the dirt. They sloshed, wet, and for the moment, broken. Wherever their real bodies squatted forcing this attack, all three vomited.

  But they didn’t whimper.

  The Marcus holding her hand touched her cheek. “Thank you.”

  19

  Rysa’s scream echoed through the house. Ladon held her on his lap, his arms tight around her shoulders to contain her thrashing limbs. Above her, Dragon smashed against the ceiling. Plaster fell, white chunks dropping into her eyes and Ladon’s hair.

  “Dragon!” She pitched off Ladon’s legs, “We’re out of the vision! It’s okay. Stop!” He’d smashed the War Babies. He’d gotten them out. He’d followed her into her blackout and pulled both her and Marcus out of its depths.

  The beast calmed and his body draped over the couch. He touched her cheek and her shoulder. A big eye looked her over, his head so close she breathed his heat.

  “Marcus guided him into the vision.” Ladon’s entire body leaned into hers, a shield against any new threat. “We heard French.” A growl rolled from both the man and the beast. “The War Babies.” Another growl, louder than the one before.

  A wave blasted between Ladon and Dragon. The beast roared.

  “Where are they?” Ladon let go and slammed his fist into the floor. A crack echoed through the room when a floorboard shattered. “They’re dead!”

  “They killed my aunt and uncle and they sent the Burners after my mom. Everything that’s happened was to make sure that they’d be the Prime triad.” How could anyone knowingly unleash so much death?

  They’d bound Rysa to the Burners so she couldn’t become a threat to their power, like they didn’t understand what they’d unleashed.