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

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  A different sensation, felt by a different tentacle: Faustus hitting Ismene. Rysa tasted blood in her mouth.

  “Put me down! Worthless damned Dracos! All you two have ever done is strut around and look pretty.” Ismene or Mira, Rysa didn’t know.

  Ladon ignored her yelling. He carried her to the van and set her on the blankets. Dragon followed, slamming the door.

  Her mother seethed. 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 towel. “Keep pressure on it.”

  She blinked and pressed on her bicep.

  A jug of water gurgled as he ripped off the top. With a damp paper towel, he 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.

  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. Irritation worked from his eyes to his mouth. “Try to focus, Rysa.”

  “I can focus.” Mira and Ismene might flicker, but her own past flooded in. “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 move up and down would be fun.” She flopped against the floor.

  “When have I treated you that way?” He stopped dabbing, anger and hurt playing through his eyes. “I haven’t! I never will. I’m not some pathetic normal.”

  Rysa stared, caught by the memory of his stubble against her skin. “Come here. You taste good.” She stroked his stomach.

  He grabbed her wrist. “You’re out of control.”

  “You can get whatever you want just by walking into the room, can’t you?” Bloody fingerprints trailed across his t-shirt when she slapped him again. “Ladon-Human, the gorgeous sun-god, and his amazing Dragon.”

  He groaned, refusing to answer. Clean gauze pressed 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. No matter what we feel, we can’t help if we don’t know.”

  A jolt snapped through her limbs. Dread clicked and locked, thick and smothering. Her stomach retched and she leaned forward, gasping.

  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, queasy.

  The dread, dark and heavy and viscous, smeared over the world. “I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to—”

  “Stop! You can’t fall into that pit.” He pulled her to him. “Do you trust us?” As hard as his features were, his eyes still boiled with turmoil. “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, unable to stop herself. “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 tears welled up as the pain reverberating between her head and arm intensified.

  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 curl 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.

  A sob yanked at her chest. Foreboding pinned her arms and legs to the blankets. Her entire body shook. She was going to drown in waves of murder, gulping for air.

  “Rysa!” He gripped her shoulders. “Love, look at me.”

  She gulped again, scrunching closed her eyes.

  “Look at me!”

  A barrier dropped. Dragon’s hide and body froze motionless. He stopped, poised over the med kit, his talons retracted and his hand-claw shaped in an odd cascading pattern over the bandages and medications.

  New images broke: Cara Caras. Sensing her body’s rhythms when he touched her hip. The brilliant rainbow of joy because she understood his signs. The intense bonding he felt when his humans made love against his chest.

  Ladon lifted her onto his lap. Tremors moved through his fingers as if Dragon had transferred all of her anxiety to him. “Don’t let the visions take you. Stay with us.”

  The hold released and the panic inched back.

  Dragon tapped Ladon’s shoulder and he tilted his head, listening. “He’s going to give you something to help you sleep.” He set her down and glanced at the beast. “Give her an eighth of what I need.”

  I must stitch your arm. Dragon held the pill to her mouth and helped her sit to drink. She swallowed the water and the pill without a fight. Lying down, she watched him pull antiseptic and a needle from the medical kit.

  Ladon stroked her forehead. “We need to leave.”

  Agony bristled through her arm. Groaning, she rolled back and forth.

  “We’ll be okay.” He kissed her cheek.

  The pill made everything stand still and move fast at the same time.

  Ladon jumped down to the seats. He pulled the phone from the cup holder and dialed a number. “I’m not calling about Sandro Torres, Dmitri.” A pause. He dropped into the driver’s seat. “We need a healer experienced with Fates.” He glanced back at her one more time. “I’m bringing her to you. She’s been attacked.”

  Ladon pulled the phone from his ear. “Then ask Marcus! He can guide you. He—” Another pause. “What do you mean they’re gone? How the hell did Harold steal—”

  His head dipped and his hand rose like he was pinching the bridge of his nose. “No. It’s not the sickness. It’s—” He glance back at her again. “Then you find someone. Now.”

  Russian yelling poured out of the phone. Ladon pulled it away from his ear again. “You find a class-one healer and you find one now, do you understand?” Another pause. “I don’t care if they work for him,” he growled. “Let him try. If he comes near her, I’ll kill him and every member of his little cult.”

  Rysa reached for Ladon one last time before her consciousness dropped below the blood and fire.

  ***

  Inside the dream, Rysa’s back slammed into iron-hard clouds. The metal vapors billowed with dust and chains and wiggled into her nose. Inched into her ears. Filled her throat with acid grains. The clouds gripped her wrists with pulleys that twisted knives into her skin. Her back bruised against the dust, her kidneys savaged.

  Apparitions rode the updrafts. They bit with dream teeth she felt but couldn’t see, slapped with hands that couldn’t possibility hit.

  She should fall. Dr
op free, tossed in the dream gravity.

  Everything inside her body coiled. Every joint, every bone screamed. Dream hands wrenched and she crashed against the clouds.

  Gravity should pull her to the park’s asphalt. Yank her chest and snap her legs on the monkey bars. Twist her pelvis and snarl her neck in the swings. It should do what needed to be done.

  Glowing splatters hit the grass and clung like dew, blistering green to gray-brown sickness. It rained from Rysa’s body, rolling along her arms in acid droplets. Each drip adhered to an elbow, a finger, the tip of her nose. Surface tension sucked at her skin, but the drops weren’t shackled, like her. Gravity grasped.

  Fire rained down from her skin.

  Her nasty shrieked. It wanted to unfurl and do what it was meant to do. Helpless in the clouds, it would ignite if it got too close. So it vanished like Dragon, gone invisible to mimic the burning world.

  Below, he’d catch her when she fell. He caught her once. She’d melt his patterns and scorch his bones, but he’d catch her again.

  Ladon shouted but the storm overrode his words with dream hammers and drums and chimes so loud they dripped acid into her eyes. She couldn’t see his intent, or what-was-is-will-be.

  She should have seen the burning dust would strip his skin from his body. She should have felt she was the center of the storm. Its engine of knives and pulleys.

  Dream gravity yanked, but the burning world held her high. Droplets fell, but she did not.

  From above, Rysa dissolved the lives of the man and the beast who adored her, body and soul.

  31

  Rysa bolted upright. Phantom weight tugged her wrists as if the dream shackles still pulled her down.

  The nightmare flicked through her vision: Ghosts pinned her to a storm while she dripped acid onto the world below.

  How could she stop the inevitable? She hugged her knees, her forehead on her thighs, counting in and counting out, trying to find a tiny shred of control. The van’s roof blocked the clouds from pulling her into the sky like some alien abduction victim. The dream couldn’t steal her away.

  Her body calmed and her perception filled with a diffuse glow. Sun flowed through a lone tree outside and in through the vents. The world had become dappled in bright and white. Alone, she watched the light play through the interior like phantoms of the patterns on Dragon’s hide.

  A breeze moved through the open windows and out through the back door. It should lift from her skin the tingle and ache left by the dream. It should warm her body and she should breathe easy and be happy and find Ladon and wrap her arms around his chest and feel his heart beat against her cheek. She should know she hadn’t brought his death.

  How much of what she saw had been placed in her head by her uncle and how much were her own seers cracking under pressure? She didn’t know. Telling past from present from future took more attention than she could muster.

  The floodgate had been opened and now she understood the context of her talisman: Rysa, the Parcae whose purpose was to shape the Burners. Her fate lay in her status as weapon and as the bringer of Dracae death.

  Her bicep ached and she touched the cut. The bandages constricted under her ripped sleeve. She was dangerous, deadly, but Dragon didn’t care. He tended to her anyway, even though she’d bring ruin to both him and his human.

  The breeze carried Ladon’s voice into the van. She sat up, listening.

  “Are you going after her?” A pause. “South Dakota. Rysa saw bison.” Another pause. “Les Enfants.” A shadow passed by the driver’s-side door. “No one gets near her.” The shadow moved back the other way. “I could have said the same thing to you when you took up with Derek.” The shadow flickered. Ladon must have jerked the phone away from his ear. “And he’d be dead now if I had.”

  The top of the van creaked as a growl rolled in from above. Dragon must be on the roof.

  The volume of Ladon’s voice dropped. “Yes.” A longer pause. “I can’t control when it happens any more than you can.”

  The rumbling. They’d offered her a part of themselves last night. And she’d accepted.

  What had she done? Faustus was right. If she turned Burner, they’d never bring themselves to do what was necessary.

  She cringed, palm against her temple, a gasp escaping her throat. I’m going to hurt them, she thought. Her nasty circled between her and the thought, howling as if it refused to pay fate’s due.

  Dragon’s head swung down. He stretched in his neck and gently, he nuzzled her shoulder. She sat still, too tired to push away.

  “I’ve got to go.” Ladon’s shadow moved toward the driver’s door. “We’ll be there in less than an hour.” A pause. “Don’t be like this. I need your help.” The phone clicked.

  Dragon puffed out little flames as he undulated in. Under her pain she felt his symphony. Dragon’s mind worked in patterns and colors, textures and shapes. He thought with the lights of his hide and when he talked with his hands he translated what he could. But he moved slower than he should and his hide had dulled since last night, his patterns losing complexity.

  “You’re tired, Dragon. I can tell.”

  Yes. I must sleep.

  “We will get you someplace safe.” A bit of understanding popped into her mind from her seers: Twenty-four to thirty-six hours, he’d sleep. Deep, like a stone, unmoving and unwakable.

  He wouldn’t, though, if he felt she was in danger.

  We are close to home.

  “Where are we?” They didn’t take her south, to the Shifters?

  Ladon crawled in through the driver’s door. He knelt on the step, a hand on each seat, watching her.

  Outside of Rock Springs, Wyoming. Human drove all night.

  “All night? Didn’t you sleep?” She looked around, trying to assess if he’d taken any blankets.

  The van was clean. Gone were the pizza boxes and the stray clothes and the empty coffee cups. The bottles were gone, too. Leaning over, she lifted the lid of the storage compartment behind the driver’s seat. Empty. All the vodka had vanished.

  Ladon didn’t say anything, but instead touched her cheek.

  Dull as it was, Dragon’s hide sped up. We will not lose you, he signed.

  Her seers laid bare their anguish when they lost other women: One, long ago, murdered. The second—her name had been Charlotte. He never named their son. Ladon held her in his arms as her life seeped away.

  He and Dragon shattered. Each color and pattern that was Dragon dropped away. Every action and response that was Ladon unraveled. Nothing remained but brutal anger.

  No more vodka. No killing Shifters. They weren’t going to lose her, as well.

  The pain in her temple flared. If they stayed with her, they’d see her ignite and become the one thing which could kill them: The Queen of Ghouls.

  White light flashed through her vision and she crunched over.

  Ladon pulled her to him. “I watched Daniel do the same injecting, once. He overwrote the other Fates’ abilities to control their seers, as if he had a remote control.” He closed his eyes. “Sixteen centuries and he only did it once. The triad he did it to were Timothy’s children. His nieces and nephew. They…” He trailed off. “He couldn’t control what they saw, only when they saw it. Like what’s happening to you.”

  Daniel broke their camera’s shutter mechanism. “Like he took away their talisman,” she said.

  Ladon nodded. “Yes.”

  The link around her wrist clinked against the little dragons of the insignia. Not like her talisman helped that much to begin with. She’d been dealing with random obnoxiousness from her seers since she activated.

  But this was worse. Every vision hurt. Her teeth rattled. The stench of Burners clung to everything.

  “We’ll find a healer who can help. I promise. But first you need to be someplace safe from your uncle.”

  The Shifter in the store had said something about Wyoming. “Are we going to your home?”

  He nodded. “You’ll
be okay.”

  But bloody anguish popped into her mind again. She shuddered, pulling away. “How’s a healer going to help me?” She needed a functioning talisman, not a sore throat cured.

  He held tight. “I’ve seen Shifter healers regrow a victim’s leg. I’ve seen them cure the Plague. And once, I saw a healer lay her hands on the head of a madman and make him whole. The strong ones, the class-ones, if they know what to do, they can work miracles. And I swear to you, I will find one with the skills needed to stop what is happening. You can’t hurt like this.”

  A healer made a madman whole. But could a healer make a Fate whole? And she doubted they’d find one who cared enough to help.

  Ladon kissed her cheek, his lips lingering. “I should have been watching for Faustus. If the War Babies had truly seen you as a threat, the Burners would have eaten you, not put on the damned shackles.”

  “This isn’t your fault.” Her uncle did this. Not Ladon.

  He leaned them against Dragon. The colors under their cheeks deepened and Ladon touched a swirl on the beast’s hide before he stroked down her arm.

  Each finger touched before weaving into hers. “Last night didn’t happen because you’re impulsive or because your family manipulated you into it.”

  But they had set her in his path. They’d manipulated all of them and used her inattentiveness. Her mother may not have understood why she did it, but she did it anyway.

  “I don’t think Mira had any idea that Dragon and I would become so… attached to you.”

  Another scorching vision of flame seared the back of her eyes. She refused to cringe. “It doesn’t matter. Faustus will get his way. All the powerful future-seers see the same vision. We can’t fight that.”

  “Yes, we can.” He sat up. “Fates do not always get their way.”

  No, Ladon and Dragon would be dead. Fates, Shifters, Burners had all tried. She felt it reverberate across the weave of his life. Both Ladon and his sister had outfought or outsmarted everyone who had ever tried to do them harm.