Oathbound

by S W Clarke

  I set the tube down on the table. “I’m going to figure out the antidote. Then I’m going to get my power back.”

  The leather belt’s buckle clanked against the railing as Daiski leaned forward. “Listen, I don’t know how long this arrow’s effects will last.”

  I thought back to how long I had been under the effects of my Cupid’s arrow. It had only been about twelve hours. Would the same be true of Philia’s arrow and Daiski? I glanced back. “What’s your point?”

  “When I’m myself again, I won’t hesitate to kill your friends and bring you to the World Army.” He said it with such unblinking sincerity that a shiver passed through me.

  Justin rose. “You’re not going to get that chance.”

  Daiski ignored him and kept gazing at me; the arrow’s effects made Justin almost invisible to him.

  I stared at Daiski. “Why, though? You told me about the oracle, and not hitting the red button when you could have.”

  “Duty,” Daiski said. “I’ve been with the World Army for a decade. They’re my family and they want you more than they’ve wanted anyone, at least since I joined. If I were to bring you back, it would be promotions, praise and pride.”

  I turned fully toward him. “So what are you saying?”

  He sighed. “I won’t lose—at least, not to you or those Cupids or your boyfriend. I’m like … version 3.0 of him.”

  “Maybe, but you’re a lot uglier,” Justin shot back.

  “Version 3.0?” I said. So Daiski was spliced. That explained a lot about how he’d kicked everyone’s ass. “How many Others have been spliced to your DNA?”

  “Right now, about fifty.”

  “Fifty?” Empty Hell, that was hard to comprehend. “And what do you mean by ‘right now?’ ”

  “They want to make us amalgams of all the most powerful Others in existence,” Daiski said as simply as if he were ordering an appetizer at a restaurant. “And there are a lot of powerful Others.”

  “But that would make you Others,” I said. “You wouldn’t even be human anymore.”

  He laughed. “I know—isn’t that the craziest part of it? I’d have to become an Other to defend humanity. I’d have to become what I hated.”

  “You said that in the past tense.”

  “Did I? Well, I guess it was in the past. But if you asked me in my right mind, I would tell you I do hate them—and I would believe it. I do believe it. But I know I don’t hate you. I really don’t.”

  “Because you’re under the effects of Cupid’s arrow.”

  “Even if I wasn’t.”

  My gut cinched. “But you’d kill Justin and my friends, and you’d bring me back to Serena Russo anyway.”

  He shrugged. “I’m an arrogant son of a bitch whose only identity is the World Army.”

  I set the syringe down. “Are you telling me that I should let Justin kill you before you’re back in your right mind?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you to do,” Daiski said. “Because I won’t stop. Ever. The World Army won’t ever stop. And as soon as I hit that red button—which I’ll do, oracle be damned—they’ll come straight to me. And to you.”

  I just stared at him, the blood roaring in my ears. As I edged my way over to Justin, he didn’t stop staring back at me. “We’ll be back,” I whispered. “We’ll be right back.”

  I took hold of Justin’s arm, and he followed me out into the hallway. When I closed the door, Justin leaned against the wall outside, his arms folded. “Well,” he said, “he’s asking me to kill him. I think I should oblige.”

  I took his hand and pulled him down the hall.

  “Where are we going?” he said.

  I nodded my head forward, and he followed me to the doors and through them into the next car.

  “Where are the Cupids?” I asked.

  “You had to bring me over here to ask me that?”

  “I couldn’t ask you back there because Daiski could probably hear us through the door. He’s spliced with fifty Others, for GoneGods’ sake. How many are you spliced with?”

  “Five. And you saw what that did to my body.”

  Oh, had I seen. If it weren’t for Hercules’s vial of water from the River Styx, Justin wouldn’t be standing in front of me right now. That DNA splicing business was a risky prospect.

  “So how did Russo manage to splice fifty Others into that guy without his entire body melting?” Justin asked.

  I shook my head. “I have no idea. But I think we should use this opportunity.”

  “Which opportunity is that?”

  “He’s willing to talk right now. He’ll tell me anything I want to know.”

  Justin shook his head. “You want to keep him around as a hostage? Seriously? Isa, I’m not saying that’s a dumb idea … that’s actually the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

  I stared hard at him. “And your solution is what? Execute him?”

  Justin averted his eyes. “He would have done the same to us.”

  “I trust the Cupids’ magic. I’ve felt it, Justin—it’s powerful. And it lasts a while.”

  His black eyebrow went up. “That’s not very comforting. How long is ‘a while?’ “

  “I need to ask the Cupids about that. I’m not even sure which one of them shot him.” I glanced through the window of the other room, which was empty. “Where are they, anyway?”

  “They’re comforting Hercules in the glass-ceiling car.”

  Comforting Hercules? I hadn’t realized he’d needed comforting. But I guessed I would figure out what that was about when I found him. “The glass-ceiling car? We have one of those?”

  Justin nodded. “It’s the caboose—last car on the train.” He nudged me. “Go on. I’ll keep watch over Mr. Murder in there for now. But I have to warn you … Hercules isn’t in a good state right now.”

  ↔

  The glass-ceiling car only contained four occupants. All four of them were demigods.

  Of the four, only one had a wail loud enough to hear through the door. I bolstered myself before I stepped through, plugging my ears as I came into the car.

  There, near the end, sat Hercules on one of the side-facing couches, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. Around him lay an array of empty wine bottles. He wept. The three Cupids sat at his sides, all offering consolation.

  The lights had been dimmed to see the night sky through the glass. My eyes rose straight to the ceiling—they couldn’t not—to where the zipper of the Milky Way cut across the sky, stars pouring out of it as if it had been torn and spilled its contents.

  The gods had left, but they hadn’t taken wonder with them. That lay with the world and its contents. That lay with the stars.

  As one of Hercules’s wails died away, I heard my name. My Cupid had spotted me.

  All three of them rose into the air, floated over to me.

  “What’s happened?” I said.

  “Herc isn’t in a good place,” my Cupid said.

  “Not since he lost that fight,” Agape added.

  “He’s always been like this,” my Cupid explained. “Full of fire and passion, for better or worse.”

  Philia started to say something, but he was lost beneath another sob. As it turned into a wail, we all clapped our hands to our ears. The entire car seemed to shudder as he sobbed.

  When he had reached the end of his lungs, we all lowered our hands. “Listen, Cupids,” I said quickly, “I need to know how long your arrows last.”

  “It depends,” my Cupid said. “Mine can last anywhere from twelve hours to several days.”

  “Agape is far more long-lasting than lust, so mine last anywhere from a week to several weeks,” Agape said.

  Philia raised a finger to speak, but Hercules had entered another bout of wails. We all plugged our ears again until he was done.

  “Friendship is like agape, but it’s not always as perfect,” Philia said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “F
riendship can last a lifetime, or it can last as long as lust. It depends on the person.”

  “So how long do your arrows last?”

  Philia shrugged. “Weeks. Then again, it could only last half a day.”

  “Which is it? Weeks or half a day? What does it depend on?”

  “On the strength of the feeling. On whether the recipient of my arrow would have been friends with the object of their friendship anyway.”

  “You hit Justin with one of your arrows,” I said. “That was how he became friends with Hercules.”

  Philia nodded.

  “How long did that last?”

  “As far as I know, it hasn’t yet worn off.”

  Well, that was heartwarming. I suppose Justin had only ever disliked Hercules because of our relationship, anyway. My eyes flicked to Hercules, who had grabbed a bath towel from the seat beside him and was blowing his nose.

  “If it does wear off,” I said, “what happens when you shoot them again?”

  All three Cupids shook their head. “It’s a one-time deal,” my Cupid said. “You can’t just string arrows together. You get greatly diminishing returns—much to Atë’s chagrin.”

  “Atë?” I said.

  “The Greek goddess of mischief,” my Cupid explained. “Not widely known, but man did she like us Cupids.”

  I turned to Philia. “I think Daiski is under the effects of your arrow.”

  “Daiski?” the three said.

  “The guy who kicked everyone’s ass,” I explained.

  “Ahh,” the three Cupids said.

  With a roar, Hercules rose from his seat. “I shall eat this Daiski! I shall sunder him from the earth.” He went to pick up his club, which I guess the Cupids had brought in, but he’d barely even lifted it before he set it down again and dropped back into his seat.

  Philia turned back to me. “Daiski was asking for you the entire time we were restraining him. He seems quite taken with you.”

  “How long do you think your arrow’s effect will last on him?” I asked.

  He closed one eye, a hand going to his chin. “Given what I saw, I would say three days.”

  “How certain are you?” I gripped his shoulders. “Philia, I need you to be sure about the three days.”

  His eyes widened. “I’m 92% certain.”

  So there was an 8% chance that Daiski would, at some point, revert back into the man who had so easily defeated all of us. I’d lived with worse odds.

  I nodded. “Good. Cupids, can you start a rotating guard outside the room we’re keeping him in?”

  Philia and Agape straightened to attention. My Cupid just flicked his hand. “All right, as long as I don’t get the graveyard shift.”

  “You three sort it out amongst yourselves,” I said, stepping past them. At the end of the car, Hercules had slumped back into his original pose.

  A man in grief.

  I crossed to where he sat, lowered myself to a seat beside him. He must have been four times my size—a muscled behemoth of a man. “Hercules.” My hand went to his back, where I felt the muscles rippling beneath the skin. I knew what I needed to say to reach him. “Tell me about one of your feats of strength.”

  He angled his face partly out of his hands, one bloodshot eye meeting mine. “What?” His voice sounded thick.

  “You were the most powerful warrior of the ancient world,” I said. “Surely you have a hundred tales to tell.”

  “More than that,” he murmured. “Thousands.”

  “Tell me one,” I said.

  He sat up, rubbing his face. “None of it matters now. I failed you completely.”

  My hand lowered to his wrist, slid into his enormous fingers. “Do you trust me?”

  He gazed at my hand. “More than anyone I’ve met in the modern world.”

  “Then trust me when I say you didn’t fail me in the war. That was only a battle, and we’re all still here to fight the next one.”

  Hercules indicated my calf. “He stabbed you, and I wasn’t there to stop him. I was asleep—I was powerless.”

  “My magic was stolen from me by the World Army,” I said. “But I’m not powerless. I’m going to use science to bring it back.”

  His eyes shifted to mine. In this almost-darkness, the outline of Hercules’s face couldn’t have painted a finer portrait of a man. “And what is your point?”

  “My point is that my power doesn’t just reside in my magic. And your power doesn’t just reside in your strength, demigod.” I smiled at the drunk hero. “We don’t just boil down to what we can offer people. We’re much more than that.”

  “What are we?” he whispered.

  “Many things,” I said. “All woven together into the tapestry of who we are. If you pluck one thread out you can’t define a person. You just have to accept the whole tapestry. And I accept you as you are, whether or not you win a battle for me.”

  “Oh, Isabella.” His fingers folded over mine in a gentle way. I wasn’t sure if that was because he was so drunk, or whether he was simply being soft with me. “You truly embody the Grecian ideals.”

  I was never good at accepting compliments, and particularly not those from attractive men sitting so close to me. “I don’t know about that.”

  “I do,” Hercules said.

  I cleared my throat as I rose. When I turned, all three Cupids had tears in their eyes.

  “That was beautiful,” Agape sobbed. “A true show of the highest form of love.”

  More compliments. More staring at me with big eyes. I suspected everyone in this car but me was at least a little drunk.

  “All right, boys,” I said as I passed through the Cupids. “It’s time to get cooking.”

  Chapter 11

  I was a biologist. More specifically, I was majoring in genetics—quite a different specialty from chemistry. And while I had only taken two chemistry courses at McGill, I knew I could do this.

  I stood in front of the three-beaker lab the resistance had given me, a now-naked Daiski restrained to the wall behind me, and the same words ran through my mind. You are a badass scientist, I repeated as I picked up each piece of equipment and cleaned it in the tiny sink. You know what you’re doing.

  And I did, but I always needed the mantra to remind myself, too.

  In the corner, my Cupid snored away. After I’d convinced Justin to let Daiski live, he had guarded Daiski for the first ten hours, and now Cupid had shifted in. After four hours he had lapsed into sleep, and I hadn’t tried to wake him. If anything happened, he would be up and out of that chair like an angry bee.

  Meanwhile, I still hadn’t slept. The downside of Amtrak trains? Their coffee was pretty bad. But it helped a little, and right now, I needed to stay awake more than ever.

  I had a day before we arrived in Las Vegas. I’d already pressed the silver button on Daiski’s watch to hold off the World Army, which meant I had bought myself some time to get myself back into fighting shape.

  But those weren’t the reasons I knew I could handle this. I lifted the syringe I’d pulled from Daiski’s jacket, carefully uncapped it and pressed the stopper down to expunge the whole thing into a beaker.

  “You’re a geneticist,” Daiski said behind me.

  “I know.” As morning came, I held the beaker up in front of the window, swirled the liquid around in front of my face.

  “And you don’t even know the ingredients to the antidote.”

  I lowered the beaker, grabbed my phone. “I know.”

  “So how are you going to do this?”

  I pressed a button and held my phone out for him to see. “My two friends: Google and YouTube.”

  The intro tune to a tutorial video echoed through the room. Daiski laughed. “Really?”

  “Really,” I said. Google and YouTube hadn’t been gifts from the gods—they’d been gifts from humanity. Sure, they brought a lot of bullshit along with them, but so did every invention. If you knew enough about your subject, and if you knew who to listen to, you we
re golden.

  It was in sifting through the detritus that you could change your world.

  As I worked, Daiski chatted with me. It was unnerving at first, waiting for signs of his slow degradation back into the man who had fought us all. But after a few hours, it wasn’t at the fore of my mind.

  Maybe because he made me laugh. He was devilishly funny, Daiski from Alvin, Texas—Daiski without inhibitions. Daiski who believed with all his heart that he was my friend. He kept me company as I experimented with one ingredient after another.

  “You know,” he said after we had talked for two hours about the ethics of exotic dancing based on our mutual experiences at the Nymphos strip club, “I don’t hear that voice right now.”

  “What voice?” I asked.

  “The one that’s always telling me off. The one that calls me an idiot when I misspeak. The one that tells me I was meant to fuck up. The one that tells me I’m destined to blacken everything I touch.”

  Silence fell, and I slowly lowered the two beakers in my hands, set my fingers to the edge of the table. I lowered my face, feeling caught off guard. He’s trying to get into your head.

  And he was succeeding.

  “It’s a voice in your head?” I murmured.

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you heard it for?”

  “Always. I can’t remember not hearing it. I guess that’s why it’s so surprising.”

  I turned to face him, folding my arms. “I thought you were an arrogant son of a bitch.”

  He chuckled. “That’s what arrogance means, Isa.” He had taken to calling me Isa over the last few hours. I couldn’t say I found it un-charming. “It’s a desperate cover for the opposite of arrogance.”

  It felt strange, uncomfortable, to watch this man step out of his clothes. He was going emotionally nude, as it were, just baring it all. In my younger years, I would have found this kind of sad truth off-putting. A lust-killer.

  Back then, I liked arrogance. Cockiness—in every sense of the word. Mostly I liked it because it helped me distract myself from my own feelings of inferiority. And, as the centuries had taught me, humans and Others—all of us, every sentient species—will do whatever we need to do to avoid deep, driving pain. The kind of pain you can’t bandaid over.