Oathbound

by S W Clarke

  “No—he never came,” I said. “What happened?”

  Hercules deposited the twelve-pack on an armrest, dropped into a seat. It creaked with his weight, but didn’t give completely. (That had happened once before since I’d met him.) He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Sit, Isa. I have things to tell you.”

  I sat. Justin stood by my side. “Tell me,” I said.

  Hercules drew a great breath into the bellows of his lungs. He opened his mouth, then unhooked one of the cans from the twelve-pack. When he cracked it open, he upturned it until the whole thing emptied into his mouth.

  He swallowed, pressed the back of his hand over his lips and muttered, “Hard cider? Hardly more than water.” Then his eyes met mine, and another shadow passed over them. “This World Army isn’t to be trifled with.”

  “You saw them?” Justin asked.

  “Saw?” Hercules swiped a hand through the air. “I fought them. Dozens—more than I can recall. Cupid and I fought together for a time, but we were soon overwhelmed by their … contraptions.”

  “Cars?” I offered. “Guns?”

  “Yes, those things. They also fired canisters of smoke, and that was when I lost Cupid of Eros in the fray.”

  “Define ‘lost,’ ” Justin said.

  “He disappeared. For a time I could hear his arrows, and then I fought alone. I fought for my life, and yours, Justin. And to return to you, Isa.” Even now, when Hercules called me Isa, it made parts inside me that I didn’t know could quiver feel like jello.

  Especially since we’d kissed in Hera’s garden. A fact which I still hadn’t discussed with Justin.

  Then I processed the rest of what he’d said.

  Alone. He’d fought alone.

  “Merda,” I breathed.

  “Do not underestimate Cupid of Eros,” Hercules said. “He’s more capable than you may think.”

  “Then where is he?” I said. “He isn’t here. He should be here.”

  We lapsed into a brief silence as the train gained speed, the city’s underbelly passing by faster and faster through the window. Soon, with a single radiant beam, the entire window lit up. We were out from under the city. We were under the sky again. Above the treeline, wispy clouds filled the sky. Except for one giant cumulus, which reminded me of Cupid’s little cloud he rode on.

  “This is all my fault,” I whispered.

  “Isa,” Justin said.

  “If they haven’t taken him for research, they’ve killed him.”

  “Isa,” Hercules said.

  “I’ll never see his little powdery fart of a cloud again.”

  “ISABELLA!” came a muffled voice. A child’s voice.

  A voice through the window.

  I raised my wet face and nearly fell back into my seat. There, at the window, Cupid’s chubby cheeks were pressed so hard into the glass that air bubbles were trapped beneath his face.

  He was riding that GoneGodDamn cloud beside the train.

  Hercules shook his head with pride. “Would you look at him? Marvel of a cherub.”

  I rushed to the window, tried to pry it open. “It’s locked.”

  “They don’t just let you open the windows on these trains.”

  Hercules raised a finger. “Allow me.” He gestured left for Cupid’s benefit, then swept the door open and stepped out into the car.

  “Where’s he going?” I said to Justin.

  When I spun back, Cupid had disappeared from the window.

  Justin hesitated. “I think … I think he’s going to open the train door.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “When it comes to Hercules’s strength, I don’t think the question is whether he can. It’s whether he chooses to.”

  Nossa Senhora, Justin was right. Hercules could probably derail the whole train with one outstretched foot if he wanted to.

  We dashed out after the demigod, who was in the process of pushing open the outer door to the car. The wind blew in, throwing his brown curls back, and for a moment, he looked straight out of a photoshoot.

  Then, with a thud, Cupid flew in and landed face-first on the floor.

  ↔

  Twenty minutes later, the four of us sat in a booth in the dining car. Between us lay six hotdogs, two portions of fries, and the rest of that twelve-pack of cider that Hercules was rapidly making his way through.

  Beside him, Cupid was squished up against the window. But he didn’t seem to mind. He accordioned a hotdog into his mouth. “It was crazy,” he said around all the dough, “they bazooka-ed the whole GoneGodDamn house. Just kablooey!” He threw his hands up, slapped them back down on the table.

  “You went back to the rowhouse?” I asked.

  “Zipped over there after the fighting died down. Between Herc and I, we took out a lot of soldiers, Isa. They must have sent an entire platoon after you. Is that the right word?” His eyes shifted to Justin.

  Justin shrugged. “I’m not with the army.”

  “But you’re a soldier.”

  “I’m a fighter. I don’t know what else you’d call me anymore.” He fingered the rim of a can of cider. “Justin. Just that.”

  “Anyway,” Cupid said, “Herc here laid about twelve of them flat with one swing of his club. GoneGods I wished I’d had my phone out. That vid would have gone viral on YouTube for sure!”

  Hercules waved a hand. “It wasn’t so many.”

  “Oh, the son of Zeus has decided on modesty?” Cupid scoffed. “You’re too old for that now, buddy.”

  “I don’t take pride in killing men any longer,” Hercules said, his voice lowering. His eyes shifted to me. “I saw her, Isa.”

  “Her?” I asked.

  “The woman you speak of. Your mentor, and your enemy. The one who ordered me shot in Hera’s garden.”

  I didn’t want to say her name. So she had escaped Hera’s garden and was back at it. And by it, I meant making my life miserable. “Where?”

  “On the street in front of the house. She looked different than before.”

  “Different how?”

  Hercules’s eyes flicked through space as he tried to find the words. “Stronger. More powerful. It’s difficult to describe, but after so many battles, you know strength when you see it.”

  Justin and I turned to one another in the same moment. I could see the question pass between us. Was she modifying herself? Splicing her own genes?

  And why not? The guinea pigs had already undergone the testing. The process was being refined at rapid pace. GoneGods, if only cancer were as detested as Others, every form of it would be cured in a month.

  Cupid was talking again. “So we’re safe here? You did your Breaking Bad business?” He was referring to the nanobot in my bloodstream.

  Justin nodded. “We’re safe.”

  I sensed a pair of eyes on me, and when I looked up, someone was passing down the aisle. I recognized the same black-haired man from the cafe in Penn Station. This time, the look he gave me was unmistakable.

  It said: I want to know what you taste like.

  And just like that, he had moved on. His black hair gleamed under the fluorescent lights as he touched the door activator with his foot and entered the connector to the next car.

  “He is good looking,” Justin said. My gaze swept around, and I found my boyfriend smirking.

  Heat swept up my neck. “Sorry.”

  Justin threw an arm around me. “My lover the encantado loves to love.”

  “I love you,” I said to him.

  “I know. And you love these two.” He pointed at Hercules and Cupid.

  The heat moved up to my cheeks as I tried not to meet eyes with Hercules. It wasn’t that I wanted to keep my kiss with the demigod a secret … after all, it was what I had needed to do to save his life.

  I was afraid to tell Justin because it had become more than saving his life. When I’d met Hercules’s lips, I had felt it through my entire body. And I knew what that feeling meant. That was what made it frightening.


  So what do you do when something deeply scares you? Legal anesthetization.

  I grabbed one of the ciders off the table. When I popped the top, Justin kissed me on the crown of my head. “Drink up,” he whispered into my ear. “Tonight, let yourself to feel what you need to feel. We’re safe.”

  Great. Just when I was feeling guilty, my boyfriend had decided to be extra loving. Which meant I needed to get extra drunk.

  Forty minutes later, I pointed a wary, unsteady finger at Hercules and Cupid. “You two are bad influences.”

  Cupid hiccuped, leaned forward. “The worst.”

  “The two of you, inebriated on water.” Hercules had somehow acquired a bottle of wine, which he sipped straight from. He had slumped halfway onto Cupid’s shoulder. “I hardly feel anything.”

  “I feel everything,” I whispered. “You know, I never even met Selene. I never even saw that succubus’s face until she appeared on the TV. She was very pretty.”

  “My Megara was pretty.” Hercules’s eyes bore a drunk glaze. “We had six children. Hera drove me crazy and made me kill every one of them.”

  Cupid and I met eyes. He shook his head as if to say, Be careful—this is his sorest spot.

  “Hera,” I slurred. The Greek pantheon floated fuzzily in my head. “She was your mother?”

  Cupid made a face and leaned away just before Hercules slammed the bottle on the table so hard it nearly shattered. Two booths over, an Amish family straightened and stared at us.

  “My mother?” Hercules boomed. “You think that selfish, meddling, loathsome bitch was my mother?”

  “No.” I waved my hands in front of me. “Absolutely not.”

  “She was my step-mother, and an abominable one at that,” Hercules said. “She tried to murder me a hundred times. And when she could not, she compelled me to kill my sons in my own hall. The oracle said I would have my vengeance.”

  The fog in my brain cleared a little. “But the gods are gone.”

  “She told me I would kill her,” Hercules growled. “I will kill Hera.”

  “I think this guy’s reached his limit,” Cupid said.

  “Agreed.” Justin slid out of the booth. “Come on, demigod.”

  Hercules’s gaze meandered up to Justin’s face. Even in my drunkenness, the fury written across those divine features made me shiver. “I’m going to avenge a great wrong,” he whispered.

  “How about you avenge that great wrong after you’ve sobered up?” Cupid tried to squeeze out from between the window and Hercules, but he was pinned. “I’ll get you to bed, Herc buddy.”

  “It’s fine,” Justin said. “I owe him one after he didn’t get the two of us killed fighting the World Army today.”

  “Are you sure?” I said to Justin.

  He nodded, grasping Hercules’s hand and attempting to yank him up. Instead, he got pulled most of the way down. “Help me out here, Herc.”

  After a minute, the two of them stumbled down the aisle together, I could swear I heard him making a pass at Justin. Then, when Justin declined, his ranting about Hera resumed.

  I set both hands around my can of cider. “He gets a little bit …”

  “Scary,” Cupid said. “I know. Back in his day, he was the best friend you could ever hope for, and the most fearsome enemy to anyone who crossed him.”

  “What did he mean about killing Hera?”

  Cupid shrugged. “Beats me. Probably forgot the gods are gone. He’s only been alive again for two and a half months.”

  “Right.” I raised my drink to my mouth, paused with it at my lips. There, at the other end of the car, I thought I saw two more Cupids walk through the door.

  “Uh”—I lowered my can—“I think I’ve reached my limit, too.”

  Cupid followed my gaze, turning around in the booth and slinging one arm over the edge. “Oh, by the GoneGods,” he whispered before leaping to his feet and pointing past the Amish family to the other end of the car. “You fuckers can just turn right around.”

  Chapter 5

  Across the car, one of the Cupids floated into the air. “Excuse me? Did that small man just tell us to—”

  The other flitted up next to him. “Is that Eros?”

  “Are those your brothers?” I asked.

  Cupid dropped back into the booth, set both hands on the table. “Be cool. Don’t look at them.”

  I tried hard not to. “They’re coming this way.”

  “Ero-os?” came the sing-song. It sounded like my Cupid’s voice, but different. Higher pitched, more ... benevolent?

  Soon, the two Cupids flew over to us. My Cupid hid behind a can of cider, and I pretended to be staring out the window into the night—which was really just me staring at my own reflection.

  “Hello?” said one of the Cupids. His chubby hands were at his hips. “Eros, don’t pretend like you don’t see us.”

  With a groan, my Cupid—whom the other had called just “Eros”—performed a slow and methodical turn of the head toward the other two. “Why are you here?”

  One of them lifted his cell phone. “GPS tracking. Remember, so all three of us can find one another in a pinch?”

  “I’m changing my settings right now, stalkers,” my Cupid said.

  “That’s her, isn’t it?” In the window’s reflection, I spotted one of the Cupids was pointing at me. “It’s the encantado.”

  I finally turned toward them. There, just cresting the surface of our table, two cherubic faces gazed at me with perfect serenity. It was absolutely adorable, and a little unnerving. Something about the big blue eyes coupled with those bows and arrows.

  “I sent a group text that I found her, and that I’ve got it under control,” my Cupid said. “Philia, Agape, I know you both saw it. I got the read receipts.”

  “You all have a group text?” I asked. Where did they even fit the phones in those loincloths?

  They ignored me. “What did you expect us to do, Eros? Just stop trying to find her? Go back to living our lives?”

  The other raised a finger. “You know three Cupids are better than one.”

  “I absolutely do not know that,” my Cupid said.

  “Hold on here,” I said. “Can we all please be introduced?”

  “There’s no need,” my Cupid said. “They’re leaving.”

  I turned to the other two. “My name is Isabella Ramirez.”

  “We know,” they said in unison.

  I cleared my throat. “And you two are …?”

  One pointed a thumb at himself. “Philia.”

  “That means friendship,” I said slowly. Score one for Greek Mythology 101.

  “The best form of love,” he whispered to me behind his hand. I noticed that where my Cupid’s arrows were tipped with white feathering, his were tipped with baby blue feathers.

  “And I’m Agape,” said the other.

  “Love of man?” I said, unsure my Greek was holding up. His arrows were feathered in a soft hue of green. There was also a certain lightness to him that the other two didn’t have. Even the Amish family was now observing Cupid of Agape with smiles.

  “Unconditional love,” he clarified. “Transcendent love.”

  “There he goes again.” My Cupid spun his finger in the air. “Agape always thought the gods loved him best.”

  Agape said nothing; he only beamed. I could see where the sibling rivalry between Cupid of Eros and Cupid of Agape had occurred—Agape was the golden child, forever unaware of his exalted status.

  “We’ve come to aid you, Isabella Ramirez,” Agape said. “Howsoever we can.”

  Before I could speak, my Cupid rose to his feet in the booth. He looked like an out-of-control toddler in a restaurant as he pointed one angry finger down at the other two. “Over my tiny dead body.”

  Philia and Agape looked like someone had hit a puppy. Then a certain mischievousness crossed Philia’s face. “You don’t tell us what to do, Eros.”

  “Oh, I absolutely do. I may not be the olde
st, but I’m the only one here who’s lived in the real world since the gods left. Not you two, faffing around in your Stepford mansion in Greenwich.”

  “It’s not our mansion,” Agape said. “But we do have the full run of it. What can I say? Our benefactress loved ancient Greece. It’s not our fault you chose a different path.”

  My Cupid shot them a withering look. “You call that a path? You fly around some rich lady’s house shooting your little arrows and posing for her Instagram selfies. I bet you can’t even shoot straight anymore.”

  The other two Cupids gasped, hands over mouths. I looked between them, waiting for someone to say something. “What?” I said.

  “That was a dire insult, Eros,” Philia whispered.

  My Cupid folded his arms. “I stand by it.”

  “Well,” said Agape, reaching over his shoulder to grasp one green-feathered arrow, “I suppose we shall see about that.”

  “Whoa,” was all I managed to say before all three had drawn arrows and nocked them in their little bows. Three Cupids, three bows, three arrows.

  It was a cherubic standoff.

  “Don’t even,” my Cupid said. “I have the high ground.”

  “Cupids—boys—demigods.” I rose from my seat. “Surely this can wait until we’re not in an enclosed space.”

  None of them looked at me. The other two lifted into the air, wings flitting like hummingbirds. “What was that about the high ground?” Agape said.

  My Cupid floated up off his seat, and soon the three of them were nearly at the ceiling.

  “Cupids, please!” I called up to them. Before me, the Amish family was packing up their sandwiches and hustling to get out of the car. I gestured for the Cupids to fly back down. “You can all help me. I’m all about eros, philia and agape.”

  “No, Isabella,” my Cupid said. “This precedes you. It’s two thousand years in the making. These two always thought their loves were better than my love. More important. Bigger.”

  “They’re wrong!” I said.

  “You’re GoneGodDamn right they are,” my Cupid said.

  “How dare you invoke the gods,” Agape said. “Know your place, Eros.”