by Prolusio
The Burners moved west. She didn’t need any sense of what-will-be to see their trajectory. They’d set more fires and eat more people. They’d kill in a random blaze of glory—the only predictable behavior the goddamned ghouls had.
“Bye, Mom.” The door slammed. Rysa’s key clanked into the lock tumbler. The sound of metal-on-metal erupted through the house, hot and angry.
Mira sat at the kitchen counter for a long moment and stared at the glass she’d handed Rysa. She’d never told her daughter what she was. Never explained about the Fates. Or about Burners or Shifters, either. She’d raised her as a normal. And Mira just sent her out the door, alone.
Without a word.
She wouldn’t call. Her seer jittered and jolted and stomped out demands that Mira prepare. Rysa will be fine.
Mira blinked, her gaze darting to the bottle of Rysa’s attention meds next to the bananas, behind the glass in front of her. She’d distracted her daughter and Rysa forgot to take her pill this morning.
Mira’s chest tightened. A lump sat just under her throat, a knot screaming she needed to pick up her damned phone and tell her daughter to come home. To say I’m sorry, honey. To make sure, like any real mother would, that her child was safe.
Her seer dropped an image into her mind: The beast stretched on the edges of a corn field somewhere in Wisconsin, then vanished, mimicking the stalks and the dirt and the sky.
The Dracos moved north to intercept the damned ghouls.
She’d never told Rysa about dragons, either.
Everything in Mira’s stomach came up in one violent retch. Her breakfast, her coffee, the pain meds she’d taken before she’d tuned into the violence on the screen, forced their way into her throat. She bolted across the kitchen to the sink.
The water ran down the drain in a static circle as she rinsed her mouth, held in place by universal forces she didn’t understand.
She let this happen. She let Rysa go.
Once, when Mira was a child, her father had given her and her brother and sister a task. A chore, he’d said. By the stream behind their villa. They were to follow his instructions exactly, no matter what happened.
She’d nodded, a good child.
The next day she lay on her bed, stone gray, as the medicus splinted her broken arm. Her father watched from the door, his eyes hidden in shadow.
“Why?” she’d asked. He’d seen it. He knew what would happen.
He held his black gladius, his talisman, in his hand. “No one is as bound by fate as the Fates themselves.” He sheathed the blade and the sound filled every corner and room of their villa. “Always remember that, daughter.”
Mira of the Jani pushed away from the sink. Alone in the house, she would prepare.
Find her blade.
And may the gods grant Rysa a weapon as piercing as her father’s sword.
Follow Rysa and Ladon’s story in GAMES OF FATE
1
Rysa’s meds weren’t in her backpack. She fished through the lint under her laptop, catching only a pen and the corner of her wallet. Wads of paper and a few stray coins filled the bag’s recesses, but her pills were nowhere to be found.
At lunch, she’d emptied all the pockets and stacked her stuff on one of the ugly lounge chairs in the student center. No pill bottle then, either.
Not that she trusted herself to be thorough. No meds equaled a super-sized portion of “flighty” and a bottomless cup of “hyperactive.” She dug her hand into her stupid pack again.
Gavin sat across from her with his palms flush against the coffee shop table. She slapped down a notebook and the table wobbled, a loud clunk popping from its uneven feet. His hands jerked up and he leaned back, frowning.
Do you want help with your chemistry or not? he signed, his hands moving through the American Sign Language with quick precision.
“Yes.” She looked directly at him so he could see her lips clearly, knowing full well she’d also narrowed her eyes, even though she didn’t mean to. Tonight, patience wasn’t one of his virtues and his behavior wasn’t helping her make sense of her attention deficit world.
She needed his help, too. This close to finals, if she didn’t figure out her assignments, she’d fail another class. The University would kick her out. She knew it.
Gavin’s shoulders slumped and he crossed his arms—his way of giving her the silent treatment. He’d frowned about twenty minutes into the first problem when it became clear that helping her would take all night. He didn’t have to remind her by shifting around in his chair and tapping his finger on his elbow when her mind strayed. How was she supposed to focus on homework without her attention meds? Rysa pulled a crumpled five dollar bill out of her bag and dropped it next to her notebooks.
He scowled this time, his gaze following her hand as it dipped into the bag again. She could tell by the way his neck tensed that he wanted to sigh, but sighing made guys look pathetic and Gavin wasn’t one to diminish his manliness.
Her lips bunched up. He had no right to act like a jerk because she’d lost her meds and wasn’t tracking her homework. It’s not like he always understood his class work. She’d helped him with Human and Environmental Policies last semester. He’d been a chore, no matter how much she tried. For a guy who was pre-med, he sure had issues understanding the bigger picture.
Did I mess up your evening? she signed, her hands working as fast as his through the ASL. A flick of the bag’s straps and it plopped onto the floor next to her feet. “Were you sexting with that sophomore again?” This time she didn’t look at him. His hearing aids worked just fine.
He stared, his expression flat. Gavin usually had the laidback calm of someone who’d just finished a good workout. Women found it charming. The boy had more contacts in his phone than the University had numbers in its database.
She slapped the table when he groaned and her calculator slipped off a book, jarring her chai. A splash plopped onto her Chemistry Principles syllabus. Steam rose off the course description as if she’d dropped acid on it, not hot tea.
Gavin’s pointer finger twitched. Isn’t it a little late to be popping stim meds?
A yellow stain spread across the syllabus and her attention snapped to the paper. The liquid ate away the words and they bled onto the tabletop, destroyed by her impulsiveness. She blotted at them, blinking.
“Rysa?” Annoyance worked across his features in little tics.
He signed something. She didn’t catch it.
He sniffed and the titanium in his ears flickered with the light from the television behind her head. She’d sat with her back to the little café’s screen for a reason. News crawls and no meds didn’t mix well.
This morning, when she came down to the kitchen, her mom had been watching the news. A suburban Chicago mall exploded last night. On the drive to campus, the radio announcers had been on about big fires in several of the towns along Interstate 94, between Chicago and Minneapolis. All day, pundits had infested the news channels blaring in the student unions, bobbing their heads and pushing up their glasses, ranting about terrorists or gas leaks or 911 calls that may or may not have indicated a suicide bomb—
“I’m sure you left your meds at home.” Gavin leaned back as he spoke. Why don’t you calm down so you can drive home? he signed.
Calm down? Her syllabus disintegrated on the table, ruined by a splash of hot and random, much like her academic career. She stared at it even though she didn’t want to. Her mind hyper-focused on the one perfect representation of her time at the U and it wasn’t going to let it go.
“You should talk to Disability Services.” His chair groaned as he shifted around again.
A new rainbow of reflections danced across his hearing aids and her attention snapped to the brilliance in his ears. His gaze jerked up to the screen behind her.
The images must have changed. She’d se
en the stories at lunch: Before sunrise, a theme park in The Dells had exploded with a fireball visible from the interstate. Black River Falls had ignited in the middle of the afternoon. She’d come out of Chemistry to find the entire campus stopped, everyone staring at their phones and—
Rysa breathed, refusing to turn around and be caught by the news. She’d spent her last class staring out the window toward the east, her anxiety creeping up. Whatever stalked Wisconsin felt like it was about to burst from the horizon and scorch all of campus—and her in particular. The effort it took not to freak out made her head ache and was as big a contributor to her inattention as anything else.
Today was not a good day to forget her meds.
Gavin said something again. Her face scrunched up as she tried to parse it.
“Rysa, did you hear me?”
He’d said something about Disability Services.
What are they going to do? she signed back. Follow me around and nag me all day?
They’d turned her down for a translator position when she applied last year even though she’d aced the exam and had no hearing difficulties of her own. Her damned ADHD reared its head during the interview.
His jaw tightened. Pulling ninety-ninth percentile on all three parts of the GRE will only get you so far with grad school admissions.
Why was he being such a dick? School, the fires—and to make things worse, her mom’s obvious pain this morning before she left the house—all combined to make the perfect Storm Rysa. At breakfast, her mother had held out a glass of orange juice, her hand shaking and her joints swollen and red. Rysa downed the juice in three gulps, more to keep her mom from worrying than because she wanted it.
The juice had distracted her, which was why she’d forgotten her meds. They were probably on the kitchen counter between the empty glass and her mom’s prescription pain killers.
“I’m going home.” She needed to get away from all the campus television screens. The blinking made her squint.
Gavin wrapped his hand around her wrist. “I just want to make sure you’re alright before you go off to graduate school. I can’t help you with your courses if I’m in Boston and you’re somewhere in the Rockies.”
She stared at his fingers until he let go. All her spazziness made her head throb in short, intense pulses and his exasperated fussing wasn’t making it better. She reached for her damned bag again. Maybe she had some acetaminophen. At least it would take the edge off for the drive home.
Get some sleep. That helps, he signed.
She pressed her temple. What did he know about what helped? Her head felt as if every muscle on her scalp was about to fight-club her sinuses.
The pain hadn’t been this bad a moment ago. Her head had hurt all day, but now the war raging inside her skull flared into her vision. The coffee shop looked too bright.
In one sudden moment all the chaos about school and the world and her mom fell away.
Nausea welled up.
Her mouth opened. Pain-fueled words about how Gavin should stop patronizing her because he just made it worse wanted to spill out. Sentences about the future and the past and how right now in the present she felt like she was going to throw up and she’d get control of her ADHD and he could be as mad as he wanted but he didn’t have the right to—
Blades of blinding light stabbed behind her left eye. Terrible, hideous light coming out of nowhere and burning like she’d looked directly at the sun.
“What the hell?” she gasped. A real gasp, one that, in a split second, forced air all the way down into the base of her lungs. Her hands clutched her forehead.
This wasn’t withdrawal symptoms because she missed her meds. Her brain just exploded. She was going to keel over in this little coffee shop under the Continuing Education Building and that would be the end of everything and she’d die.
Spots popped into her vision and floated like wiggly balloons between her and Gavin. They churned, each one its own burning, liquid universe. The spots didn’t look real but she knew if she touched one, it would ignite and fire would spurt onto her hand.
A spot ruptured. Her nose filled with an acid stench so overpowering she stopped breathing.
One word overrode everything: Aneurism.
“Gavin…” She choked out the whisper. Her gut mirrored the pain behind her eye, squirming with an infestation of the fire bubbles. They burst in her stomach and ate her flesh. She’d have retched but the muscles of her belly and chest didn’t move. They wouldn’t respond. They—
Gavin stood up and pointed at the screen behind her head. He hadn’t noticed her panic. “A gas station in Stillwater exploded!”
Half an hour from campus. Her chair knocked over when she turned toward the screen. The seatback scraped against the concrete floor and a nauseating metallic screech filled the coffee shop. The sound rasped against her ears, solid and touchable, like the spots. It hung in the air around her limbs, a new phantom weighing her down.
Gavin stared at the screen behind her head. The freshman server behind the counter stared at her.
“What’s happening?” Her lips formed the words, but her ears didn’t hear. No vocalizations left her throat.
Gavin’s gaze jumped from the screen to her and his face blanched. He shouted at the freshman. His mouth moved, his words forming, but she didn’t understand. Something about calling 911.
Gavin, the freshman who stared at her with terror-filled eyes, the coffee shop’s ugly halogen lighting, the darkening evening outside—it all spun. The planet got on a carnival ride and left her standing alone in the void.
She blinked. Warm air hit her nose as she pushed through the shop’s door. The spots took on a sharpness that would rip her to shreds if she didn’t get away. Their edges would slice and fiends would eat her whole.
The world fuzzed out as if someone had slapped a dirty bandage over her eyes. Where her feet landed, she didn’t know.
A spot burst and a memory flashed: Her mother this morning at the kitchen counter watching the television. She’d rubbed her knuckles and Rysa had wrapped her arm around her shoulder. “Go to class,” her mom said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t hit me!” Gavin yelled.
Her hand hurt. Her nails dug into the real skin of her real palm. Gavin staggered back into the evening gloom, his nose bloody. But—
Did she hit him? He glared at her like she was some kind of monster.
“I don’t… I d-don’t understand,” she stuttered. They stood on the hill, half way between the coffee shop and the student parking lot, standing under the streetlight where the path intersected the walk from one of campus barns. But she didn’t remember—
Another spot burst. Her vision filled with orange and hot yellow dropping over the world like a curtain.
She stood alone in the yellow bull’s-eye of a different streetlight. This one flickered like a strobe, buzzing and popping like it was about to explode. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly as her eyes adjusted to the pulsing shadows. The pressure in her head ratcheted and—
How the hell did she get into the student parking lot three blocks from the shop? She was losing time. Losing her sense of space. She felt like she was dying. She had to be. Her body dragged her out here to commit suicide and she couldn’t stop it.
A man, tall and lanky like Gavin, walked toward her between the hand-me-down cars, his step bouncing as if he was about to break into a tango. He wore red running shoes and a black nylon jacket over a blaze orange t-shirt—the fabric version of the damned fire-spots eating her mind.
He stopped a few feet away, a deep inhale bowing out his chest. His hand swept in front of his nose and he sniffed the air like some cartoon character breathing in fancy perfume. Another inhale and his head tilted at an angle that should have popped every vertebra in his neck.
“Who…” she stammered. Where was Gavin? “What…”
The same caustic stench from the ghost spots rose off his skin.
Real stench. She gagged, her lips and nose curling in a futile attempt to keep the chemical sewage rolling off this creature out of her lungs.
His teeth gleamed in the dim parking lot light. “Calling yourselves Fates.” He shook his head, tisking. “You see the future but you know nothing.” He grabbed her arm.
“Let go of me!” The man made no sense and she hyper-focused on his fluorescing mouth, ignoring everything else. His teeth glinted, sharp and too bright. They’d rip her apart if they got near her skin.
She really was dying. Will die. The weirdness in her head bled into the real world and this man was its manifestation. All the spots, all the phantom smells—they were about to kidnap her. For real.
Her vision jigged like she’d changed the channel for a microsecond and then switched back to what she had been watching before. But in that microsecond, in that very brief flash when she saw something she knew wasn’t really there, she saw the man lean forward to bite her shoulder.
Bite and rip flesh and take himself a right good snack.
Her chest tried to fill with air and her throat tried to constrict to make as loud a high-pitched noise as it could, but only a whisper came out: “Ghoul.”
He grinned at her with his razor-sharp teeth. A loud sniff rushed into his nose. “You smell tasty, luv. I might take myself a nip now, before you finish activating.” He licked his lips.
“Activating?” She wasn’t dying of a brain aneurism. She didn’t know why, or what it meant, but the word held truth.
Ratty fingerless gloves clamped over her mouth and nose. “You’re a bit of a freak, aren’t you? Can’t hold still. Stay normal for a moment longer, darling.”
“Let her go!” Gavin jumped the lot fence, his feet pumping as he landed.
New panic flooded in, different from what she felt for herself. The ghoul will kill Gavin. The scene played through the pressure behind her eyes: He’ll lock onto her friend’s throat. He’ll feel a surge of hunger and he’ll salivate like an animal. Then his hands will cook Gavin’s flesh.
