Oathbound

by S W Clarke

  I leaned back against the table. “I hear it, too,” I whispered.

  His face lifted. “You hear the voice?”

  “I hear it right now,” I said. “It’s telling me I’m an idiot for believing anything you’re saying to me. It’s telling me I’m deluding myself into thinking the three Cupids and Justin and Hercules actually care about me.”

  “Oh,” he said. “That voice lies.”

  My voice grew small. “It does?”

  “I fought your people, Isabella—all five of them. The only thing stopping them from killing me was me. I mean, you’ve got fucking Hercules fighting for you. I thought he died like two thousand years ago.”

  “Me too.”

  He sighed. “But even Hercules doesn’t have the strength to change that voice.”

  I wrapped my arms around my body. “Nothing does.”

  “Except you.”

  “Except me. And trust me, I’ve read all the self-help books.”

  “Name one.”

  I raised a finger. “Self-Compassion.”

  “Read it.”

  I raised a second finger. “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”

  “Read it.”

  I raised a third finger. “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

  “Come on, that’s child’s play.” He let out a small laugh. “You know, I’ve never told anyone this.”

  “That you read self-help books?”

  “About the voice.”

  “I’ve admitted it to a few men.”

  His eyebrows raised.

  I shrugged. “How long have you been alive? Thirty years, you said?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I’ve got four-hundred-something years on you. Not to mention a whole lot of bad romance. Stuff comes out, you know?” I paused. “But you’re the first person who’s told me about your demons without being asked.”

  “Normally it’s you telling other people about yours?”

  “Normally it’s me telling them, and them rejecting me. Well, after the lust wears off or they see my real form.”

  “A pink mer-dolphin,” Daiski said.

  I opened my mouth in surprise, but then I understood. “Let me guess, you read a file on me.”

  “I know everything about you that’s relevant to my job.”

  “Nothing more and nothing less, right? Because you hate Others.”

  “People who hate themselves need a place to direct that hate,” he whispered.

  I said nothing at first. What was the right response to such a thing? It required tact, finesse, diplomacy—

  “But I’ve buried that deep,” Daiski said. “I’ve buried it so deep it took a demigod’s magic to bring the truth out of me.”

  “And when that demigod’s magic wears off …”

  “I’ll push it back under,” he finished for me. “Because I’m egotistical and arrogant and a son of a bitch … and most of all I’m afraid.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Of what?”

  He met my gaze. “That I can’t be anything else.”

  ↔

  I’ve always been drawn to men I fear. Maybe it’s a neurosis, or something broken inside me recognizing something broken inside him. For so long I thought meeting these men was an accident or coincidence.

  It took the truth a hundred years to seep in. It took a constellation of relationships, of the same narratives playing out—lust and then vulnerability and then come and then go, and then stay gone—to understand.

  Men I feared provided no constancy. They fulfilled the narrative in my mind that no man would stay, would want to stay, would truly love me. But even when we understand something deep and hard about ourselves, that doesn’t change a GoneGodDamn thing.

  I feared Daiski. I had been drawn to him all the same. That was why the World Army had sent him after me—as a lure. They had a file on me, after all. They probably knew all my tendencies.

  Daiski was dangerous, and perhaps incapable of being anything but dangerous. He had just told me as much.

  There on the train, I hugged myself tighter. “How many of you are there?”

  His eyebrows lowered; he sensed the shift in the conversation. “Just one of me, sweetheart.”

  “No—how many did the World Army send out? How many plants are there like you?”

  “Hundreds. They put us at every major and minor airport in New York, and then all along the transport hubs on the East Coast.”

  “Just for me?” My palms were getting cold, sweaty. I rubbed them across my knees.

  “Just for you.”

  “Merda. We’re not going to escape you, are we?”

  “Not likely.” His voice changed, grew softer. “Isa, why do you want to be a mother?”

  He asked it so simply my heart beat like a bird in a cage. He’s trying to get more information out of you. Don’t let him in. “Did Russo put that in my file?”

  “It was in the notes in her handwriting, yes.”

  Of course she knew; I had revealed it to her once, when she’d asked me why I was mapping Other DNA. That didn’t stop the heat rushing up my neck. Why should I be embarrassed to want such a thing? And yet I felt ashamed by the clinical notation of my deepest desire. It was in a file tucked into some office drawer. And, moreover, I felt ashamed of wanting such a thing.

  Some Others—and many humans—felt there was a reason pregnancy had been denied to Others. A reason why it had been granted only to humans. Because they were the true inheritors of the earth, or so the Make Earth Ours Again supporters believed.

  Make Earth Ours Again was a scourge on society, and they were particularly prevalent in the United States. They held rallies all over the country, and I had even seen a few red hats in New York City.

  “I …” I swallowed. “It’s an old story.”

  “So you’ve wanted it for a long time.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “Since October 14, 1917.”

  Amusement swept across his face. “You pulled that date out of the air.”

  “No,” I said. Already I was slipping into the past—back to that day. “I didn’t.”

  “What happened on that day, Isa?”

  I closed my eyes. For some reason, I wanted to tell him despite all my reservations, because I wanted someone to know Hinata’s story. Hers was the face I wore, after all. Hinata was the only real friend I’d ever had in Brazil. I had many lovers, of course, and some of those men were even my friends—for a time.

  But never the women. The women hated me.

  To them, I was a demon, an evil spirit, a monster who stole away their young boyfriends and husbands. And they weren’t precisely wrong—men often ran away with me—but they also weren’t quite right, either. I didn’t blame them; they couldn’t see the situation except through their own eyes.

  The truth was, for as often as I seduced men, they seduced me, too. I even fell in love with some of them.

  But Hinata, an eighteen-year-old Japanese immigrant who had come to work on a coffee plantation, saw me for what I was and called me a miracle.

  She liked me even when her mother hated me.

  She liked me even when her mother stalked into the road with a shotgun and aimed it at me.

  She liked me even when she heard her mother yell, “Monster!” and a bullet tore through my side.

  Hinata nursed me back to health, and we became closer than sisters—we became kin. For three years we shared our secrets, our longings, our fears. I took her to see my home in the rainforest, and she told me about the man she loved who could not love her back except in small, midnight doses. In kisses and trysts. Sometimes, even, in the bushes.

  Even the best of us, it seems, can end up falling for the worst of us.

  So when she became a mother at twenty-one—too young, but life so often occurs out of the order we intend—I loved her boy, even if he wasn’t mine. We both cared for him, played with him, watched him sleep.

  But I w
asn’t his mother, and this is the hardest truth to admit: I wouldn’t have died for him. And I didn’t.

  It was Hinata who died that night. October 14, 1917.

  I opened my eyes. Only a second had passed, and Daiski was still staring at me, waiting for me to tell him my story—her story. “It’s none of your business,” I said.

  He flinched a little, almost like he’d been stung. “All right.” He gestured with his chin at my jacket pocket. “It’s time.”

  I glanced down at my jacket. “Time for what?”

  “You have to hit the button on my watch. The silver one.”

  “Oh.” I pulled the watch out of my pocket. When I depressed the silver button, nothing happened. No click, no beep, no acknowledgment. What a strange thing, to know that my fate depended on the push of a button. And I was the one pushing that button.

  “Sometimes,” I said aloud, “life is so large and complex and wild. And sometimes …”

  “Sometimes it all comes down to a little, unimportant thing like this,” Daiski finished.

  I sat back on my legs, and our faces were closer together than they should have been.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well what?”

  “What happened on October 14, 1917?”

  Hinata. Even now, the three syllables in that order struck through me like a physical pain.

  Behind me, one of the beakers had begun fizzing like a can of freshly opened soda. I turned and picked up the beaker, eyeing it in the light. “Well, it looks like we’re ready for our first test.”

  “Test?”

  When I turned, I gripped the beaker hard. “We’re going to see whether this works.”

  His eyebrows rose with skepticism. “You’re going to drink that? All right, let’s see it.”

  “In front of you?” It was too risky to drink something like that in front of Daiski—I could react badly or pass out—so I would do so in the other roomette. I shook my head as I passed out of the room, “accidentally” bumping Cupid’s chair on the way.

  The demigod woke up with a snort. “Did he escape?”

  I pulled the door open. “Once. I caught him for you this time. Next time, you’ll have to answer to Justin.” I winked as I slipped out.

  Chapter 12

  The first concoction didn’t work. (And it tasted like socks.)

  Nor did the second, or the third.

  Four hours and twenty-five experiments later, I felt nauseous from all the chemicals in my stomach. And I was sick of Daiski and Cupid probing me every time I came back into the roomette to start over again. Daiski was like my persistent, unflappable friend who couldn’t take a hint—which was a role Cupid had already filled in my life. The two of them together were unbearably nosy. And even though I was used to endless fine-tuning and experimentation, I was getting too frustrated to work properly.

  I just wanted my magic back.

  I left the room in a huff. I had thought this would be easier than it was. Faster. Simpler. But of course, nothing big like this was ever so simple. I should have known better.

  Next door, I found Justin, Agape, Philia and Hercules crowded together, all five of them poring over an Amtrak map set on the table between them.

  When I came in, the hard lines of concentration between Justin’s brows dug even deeper as his face lifted to me. “You look like hell.”

  I pointed at the two Cupids. “Eros needs a break from guard duty. Would one of you switch out?”

  They looked at each other, neither moving.

  “I thought you were going first,” Philia said to Agape.

  “You were supposed to designate,” Agape shot back.

  “I’m never the designator!” Philia cried.

  “Cupids,” I interrupted, “would one of you please just volunteer?”

  Both pairs of toddler eyes met mine before Philia floated up, fixing Agape with a glare. “I shall go.”

  As he passed out into the hall, Justin rose. “Isa, we’ve got to get off this train sooner rather than later.”

  “Because of Daiski?” I said.

  “I don’t care what he says, or whether he’s been shot with one of the Cupids’ arrows—I don’t trust that he hasn’t let the World Army know where we are.”

  “I don’t, either,” I admitted. Now that I was out of Daiski’s presence, I wondered why I hadn’t been more concerned about this. Of course, the answer was obvious: he’d sucked me in. Had he even met the Oracle of Delphi, or was that just a lie to mess with my head? And I felt stupid for telling him about the voice in my mind. About Hinata—even just mentioning her.

  “Isa,” Justin said slowly, “Hercules, the Cupids and I talked about what to do with him.”

  “And?”

  He sighed. “We can’t just let him go.”

  My stomach slid over. I didn’t like the idea of a man—any man—being executed. And us being the ones to kill him? Even worse. It put me in mind of my encantado sister, Ananda, who had killed countless people over the centuries. She and I were always at odds in a simple, stark way: she used her fists to solve problems, and I used my mind.

  I glanced at the other two. Hercules and Agape wore grim faces. “You’ve all decided without me,” I said.

  “Daiski’s a soldier, Isa,” Justin said. “He would have done the same to all of us.”

  “We’re not him,” I said, grabbing his hand. “Let’s just get off the train.”

  But I could tell by the way the three remained silent that it was decided. All had suffered at Daiski’s hands; little Agape was still wearing the bandages on his face from where he’d taken Daiski’s blows.

  “I haven’t finished my work.” I held up a half-full beaker. Maybe this would distract them from wanting to kill a man. “Twenty-five experiments and no dice.”

  Agape reached out a chubby hand. “May I see?”

  “Uh, sure.” I passed him the beaker. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but it definitely wasn’t what came next.

  He held it close to his face, swirled it around. Without warning, he took a sip of the concoction. He closed his eyes as he considered it, like he was sampling wine. We all stared, and when Justin and I met eyes, he just shrugged.

  When Agape’s eyes opened, he handed me back the beaker. “You’re missing one eighth of a liter of distilled dihydrogen monoxide.”

  I laughed, but both Justin and Hercules looked confused. “Is that something we can obtain?” Hercules asked.

  “Doesn’t sound like it,” Justin replied. “I mean, we’re on a train. And that stuff sounds complicated.”

  My Cupid pulled open the door and looked around. “What’s up, gang?” He floated in proudly, his chest out. “I’ve successfully kept the prisoner quarantined. I can report that he was sleeping when guard rotation occurred.”

  I ignored him. “Agape,” I said, “with all due respect, dihydrogen monoxide is not the issue.”

  Agape raised a finger. “And what respect do you think is due to me?”

  “Well, you’re a two-thousand-year-old Cupid, and you probably know a few things. But this is modern science,” I explained, “and I’m pretty sure water isn’t the missing ingredient to making this work.”

  “Dihydrogen monoxide is water?” Justin said, his cheeks reddening.

  My Cupid flew to my side and cupped his hand by my ear to whisper, “Agape has a degree in chemistry.”

  I turned to him. “What?”

  My Cupid nodded. “Graduated with honors exactly three years after the gods left. I like to give him shit because he’s Agape, but uh”—he seemed to be noticing my growing anger— “I probably should have mentioned this sooner, shouldn’t I?”

  “Yes,” I said to both him and Agape. “You should have.” I stared hard at Agape. “You have a B.S. in chemistry?”

  Agape nodded.

  Elation warred with my frustration and quickly won out. Agape was exactly who I needed right now.

  “All right, you’re my new bestie.” I took hold of th
e demigod’s arm and pulling him out of the room. “Dihydrogen monoxide,” I muttered as I closed the door behind us. “Are you for real?”

  “Quite real,” he said as we came into the hallway.

  As we did, Philia barged out of the second room clutching one hand over his eye. “YOU GUYS”—he threw his other arm out—“HE’S GONE!”

  Agape and I just stood there, staring at him.

  Philia danced up and down, his wings propelling him. “Did you hear me? I said he’s gone!”

  “Who’s gone?” Agape asked.

  Philia gestured with a frantic hand back at the roomette. “The ninja.”

  My heart leapt into my throat. “Daiski?” I croaked.

  Agape and I rushed to the adjacent room, pushing the door open. Inside, the belt still hung on the railing, but Daiski wasn’t there. The window was open, the wind rushing audibly by and throwing my hair up into my face.

  “Nossa Senhora,” I murmured. “What happened?” I asked Philia.

  “As soon as Eros left the room, the ninja started mumbling really quietly,” Philia began. “I kept saying, ‘What was that? I can’t hear you.’ But he kept his head down, so I kept getting closer to hear him.”

  “And?” Agape said.

  “When I got close enough, he kicked me in the face,” Philia cried. The little demigod was actually crying. “By the time I got back up, he was gone.”

  “Oh Philia,” Agape said, throwing a hand over his shoulders. “You naive little cherub. You just wanted to hear what he was saying.”

  Justin appeared behind us. “What’s going … Oh. Oh shit.”

  Hercules piled in behind Justin with a growl. “He was to be my kill.”

  My Cupid spun on Philia. “You had one job.”

  Philia broke into loud bawling, and Agape patted him.

  “Just calm down, Cupids,” I said as I stepped into the room.

  Justin came around me and approached the open window. “He couldn’t have fit through there.” He proceeded to survey everything: the beds, the ceiling, even tapping the walls, like Daiski had disappeared inside them. But I suspected Daiski wasn’t even on the train anymore.