Oathbound

by S W Clarke

  They all missed.

  Or, I should say, the bullets may have hit, but they made so little difference in his charge that they might as well have missed. And Alcyoneus, as hulking as he was, angled his body with perfect deftness to slide past all three arrows.

  He swept in among us like a thunderstorm—“ALCYONEUS!” he yelled again—as the club swung up high and I threw myself as far from his trajectory as I could.

  Justin rolled the other direction, and I caught a glimpse of the Cupids blitzing the hell out of there like little bees ahead of the giant.

  I hit the ground in an explosion of pain, my left arm throbbing as I rolled to a stop on my stomach, staring after Alcyoneus.

  There, amidst all his hair, sat a man.

  A regular human riding that giant like a horse, two hands in his mane of black locks.

  Daiski.

  Another gunshot cracked through the plain. Justin was up on his elbows and pointing his gun at the giant.

  This time, I saw the bullet penetrate the bare skin of the giant’s leg. It went in and created a minuscule hole. But Alcyoneus reacted not at all.

  Well, that’s not entirely true. He got angrier.

  He swung around, roared his name again and charged at Justin.

  “Move!” I yelled, firing off my own gun in the giant’s wake. A waste of a bullet—I hadn’t even tracked him properly.

  The club came around in an arc and slammed into the ground where Justin lay on his stomach. Dust rose up, and everyone but the Cupids disappeared from sight.

  “Justin!” My voice sounded so small. I pushed myself to my feet as the three Cupids appeared by my side.

  “We cannot defeat him,” Philia said. “Not unless …”

  A roar rose from the dust—a man’s voice. Daiski’s or Justin’s? I stared at the spot where the giant had struck. Right now, I just wanted to see that Justin was alive.

  As the dust settled and Alcyoneus came into view, someone rushed out of the cloud.

  Justin, followed by Daiski.

  He dropped, swept around to catch Daiski as he ran. Daiski leapt over Justin’s outstretched foot, his cane singing through the air as he swung it around and rapped Justin on the arm.

  Behind the two of them, Alcyoneus lifted his enormous club for another swing at Justin.

  Two on one was unfair in the first place, but if one of those two was a giant? Well, that was just wrong.

  “Hey,” I yelled at Alcyoneus, both hands around my mouth. “Hey, dungface!”

  “What in the Empty Hell did you call him that for?” Philia cried.

  “She’s giving Justin a chance,” my Cupid said. “But she really needs to up her insult game.”

  Even so, it seemed the giant didn’t appreciate slights on his appearance. Alcyoneus’s dark eyes shifted, his head raising toward us. He turned in our direction, lowered his face.

  He was preparing to charge at me and the Cupids.

  ↔

  I’ve been attacked by quite a lot of angry humans in my life—most with brooms, some with shoes and even a few with guns—but I’d never been charged by a giant.

  I had never even seen a giant.

  And now I knew I’d be happy never seeing another giant for the rest of my mortal life.

  “ALCYONEUS!” the giant roared, stomping in our direction. The ground shuddered beneath us, and my brain decided to deliver a helpful theory: He could probably eat you like an hors d'oeuvre.

  My brain was probably right. It was definitely right. But that was the least helpful thing it could have delivered in this earth-shaking moment.

  “Does he only know one word?” Agape asked.

  “I guess that cloning process didn’t include brainpower,” my Cupid said.

  “We’ve got this,” Philia said.

  All three of the Cupids launched arrows at the giant. They powered straight into his shoulders and chest, lodged there with the fletchings blowing in the wind.

  And Alcyoneus reacted not at all.

  “Holy …” my Cupid said.

  “…Hera,” Agape finished.

  “Has that ever happened?” I asked.

  “Nope,” my Cupid said. “I don’t even think they penetrated the muscle.”

  I started backing up as the giant began picking up speed. “So now we run.”

  “Now we run,” the Cupids agreed.

  I backed right into a wall—a warm wall. A wall of flesh.

  A hand touched my shoulder. It was so heavy I nearly slumped to my knees.

  A low voice rumbled behind me. “Move aside, Isa. This is my foe.”

  I jerked around, my mouth dropping wide. Tears blurred my vision. “Hercules?”

  The son of Zeus was here.

  “How did you find us?” I asked.

  “He was drawn to him,” my Cupid said. “Just like the odontotyrannos.”

  Back when I had first met Hercules, he had defeated another creature he’d fought back in ancient times: an odontotyrannos. The two had been drawn together by an ancient blood feud.

  “When I escaped the facility, I scented Alcyoneus like a festering cloud in the desert.” Hercules’s eyes never left the approaching giant. His cheek bloomed with a single horizontal cut, dried blood running out of it. An identical cut to the one Justin had received.

  He stepped left of me, opened his mouth so wide his perfect ivory teeth gleamed in the sunlight, and Hercules leaned forward to roar back at the giant. In that moment, he had gone positively feral.

  Of course, during this little interlude Alcyoneus had nearly closed the distance between him and us.

  Things happened fast then—faster than I could process.

  One of Hercules’s hands went out, the palm flat, and he pushed me so hard all the air in my lungs was pressed out through my mouth. As I flew through the air, the giant’s club swept down where Hercules had been. The demigod disappeared from sight.

  Tiny hands grabbed each of my arms—two of the Cupids—and kept me from falling straight onto my back. They deposited me some twenty feet away from the new cloud of dust, out of which only Alcyoneus’s head rose as he examined the new crater he’d put in the earth.

  When I touched the ground, I gasped for air, but my lungs wouldn’t take it in.

  My Cupid patted me on the back. “Come on, Isa. Breathe.”

  All at once, my lungs opened. I dropped to my knees with the pure loveliness of desert air circulating in me.

  Already, arrows were singing past my head. The Cupids were firing off at the giant. “Go for the eyes,” Agape said.

  “But they’re so little!” Philia complained.

  Far off, I heard a man’s grunt. My eyes lifted to where Daiski had driven his cane into the dry earth instead of Justin’s chest. That was his grunt of annoyance I’d heard as my boyfriend rolled out of the way.

  And some fifty feet to my left, I heard a snarl of pain. From out of the settling dust flew one of Hercules’s chains, cracking the giant on his leg.

  “Ouch,” my Cupid said. “That had to sting.”

  “Not like he can kill him that way, though,” Philia said.

  “He’s just tenderizing him a bit first,” Agape said, letting loose another arrow.

  “What did he mean,” I said, “about the giant being his foe?”

  “Back in antiquity, Hercules fought Alcyoneus as one of his minor labors,” Agape explained. “And defeated him.”

  My eyes darted between both fights. Hercules and the giant, Justin and Daiski.

  In each case, the man I wanted to win didn’t seem like the obvious choice. He seemed like the underdog. Alcyoneus was impervious to the Cupids’ arrows, he must have been thirty feet tall and he was perhaps stronger than Hercules.

  And Daiski was Daiski.

  As a testament, Alcyoneus swung his club down on Hercules with lightning speed, and the demigod took the blow on his back, pitching forward. Across the sand, Justin—who had just gotten to his feet—suffered the same blow.

 
Almost as one, the two entwined men hit the ground face-first.

  I rose to my feet. “That doesn’t look like defeating him.”

  “He wasn’t fatebound to a human then,” Agape snapped. “That makes it harder.”

  “How did Hercules defeat Alcyoneus back in antiquity?” I asked.

  “By lifting him off the ground and choking the life out of him,” my Cupid said. “That was the only way. Alcyoneus cannot be defeated while his feet are on the earth.”

  Alcyoneus went for a killing blow, but Hercules managed to roll away just in time. He got to his feet, swung his chains around to rap the giant on the calf once and then twice. Which seemed to irritate the giant more than anything.

  At least Hercules had managed to move after receiving a blow from the giant. Justin, being human, hadn’t taken the hit nearly as well. He still lay on his stomach, and Daiski stood over him.

  Justin was the one who needed me right now. And Hercules needed Justin.

  “Cupids,” I said, “I need you to help Hercules survive that giant.”

  Somehow I’d managed to keep hold of the handgun Justin had given me even after Hercules had pushed me aside. I gripped it hard as I started toward Daiski.

  “What are you going to do?” my Cupid yelled from behind me.

  I fell into a run. “I’m going to shoot a man.”

  Chapter 22

  “Daiski!” I shouted across the desert.

  The World Army operative had dropped to a straddle atop a face-down Justin and was binding his hands behind his back. Daiski’s brown eyes lifted to meet mine. As did Justin’s, his face caked in dirt.

  Left of me, the earth shuddered as the two titans duked it out. Just don’t lose, demigod.

  That would mean the loss of Justin, too.

  I kept approaching with the upraised gun. The barrel of it drew a straight line to Daiski’s heart. “You’re not keeping your promise.”

  Daiski’s eyebrow went up. “I’m not?”

  “You said you would kill them.”

  “Are you disappointed?”

  I kept walking. “Surprised.”

  One of his shoulders lifted. “I’ve got superiors—they wanted him alive.” He didn’t seem concerned about the gun pointed at him. He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a zip tie.

  “Call the giant off,” I said.

  Daiski joined Justin’s wrists and bound them with the tie. “Or what? You’ll shoot?”

  “I’ll shoot.”

  “You’re not that kind of woman.”

  He wasn’t wrong; my hand was shaking so hard I was amazed I hadn’t dropped the gun. It felt foreign and heavy in my grip, like something not meant to be held so much as to behold, like a dangerous beast in captivity.

  But he wasn’t right, either.

  My finger slipped into the trigger guard, and with a deep breath, I depressed the smooth curve of metal until the gun jerked in my hand and the blast echoed through the flatlands.

  Twenty feet away, Daiski dropped straight onto his back with a hole in his black shirt.

  Justin turned, half-lifted from the ground. “Holy shit, Isa.”

  I just stared. “Merda.” GoneGods, what had I done? I’d thought shooting Daiski might stop Alcyoneous, whose control he seemed to be under, but the giant’s next swing defeated that theory. He lifted the club high above his head and brought it down before him like he was trying to split the earth in half.

  Or just one demigod. Hercules, who refused to be put down.

  I ran to Justin, kneeling beside him. I reached into the lip of my boot for El Lobizon’s claw. “Hold on.”

  Justin was still staring at Daiski. “You killed him.” He glanced around at me. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was awed or dismayed. Maybe both. I know I felt a mixture of both as I pressed the claw’s deadly edge to the plastic binding Justin’s hands. This was more the purview of scissors, but you made do with what you had.

  The zip tie was surprisingly resistant, especially with how my hand was shaking.

  “Isa,” Justin said. I sensed his head turning.

  I lifted my eyes. “What is—”

  A hand settled around my neck, yanked me back. When I looked up, it was Daiski’s face above me.

  “Next time,” he said, “shoot where the body armor isn’t.”

  I screamed, tried to pull away. But the harder I pulled, the tighter his grip around my neck got. He dragged me away from Justin, my feet kicking and writhing in my wake. I felt his fingers right over my carotid, sensed the impending darkness.

  I wouldn’t last more than fifteen seconds before I passed out.

  “Daiski,” I gasped. “Please.”

  My hands reached up—both of them—and gripped his wrist. When they did, it happened again.

  I was transported to a different time.

  This time there was no Pythia. No Garden of Hera. No tree. Just the same endless desert. But this was definitely the oracle’s power working. I could feel that something had changed.

  I wasn’t in the present anymore. I was in the future.

  A future, at least.

  I lay on my back, the sun squintingly intense above me. I shaded my eyes, turned my face aside. There, running through the desert, were Justin, Hercules—and me, Isabella. The three Cupids flew alongside.

  Twenty feet away, a low and dark hill jutted from the ground. No—not a hill. A giant.

  The giant Alcyoneus lay still on the ground.

  I understood; I wasn’t watching this through my own eyes … I was watching through Daiski’s. When I’d grabbed his arm, it had allowed a connection between us. It had allowed me to see into his future.

  And I didn’t just see what he saw. I felt what he felt. I heard every thought.

  A radiance grew inside Daiski like music, as did the soft, comforting memory of an old woman in New York City. The Oracle of Delphi, holding his palm in her two hands. “The encantado needs protection.” That was what she had said to Daiski when he’d met with her.

  The memory stayed with Daiski as he lay in the desert, watching us run away. He could have risen then. He could have at least called in a force to deal with the escaped fugitives. But he had been egotistical and promised he could return them on his own (with the giant’s help).

  No … it wasn’t egotism. It was another impulse.

  He hadn’t wanted to capture me. Not at all.

  He had wanted to save me.

  He had wanted to protect me.

  That was the radiance he felt. That, and what I said to him before I’d started running across the desert.

  I had said: “Daiski, you’re …”

  But I couldn’t hear the rest, because the words dissipated along with the vision. The future melted away, leaving me back in the present.

  In a moment I was inside my own body again, seated on the ground with Daiski’s hand around my neck. My hands still gripped his arm as though no time had passed.

  I raised my eyes to meet his. He stared back with something like terror.

  “Daiski,” I began. What was it I had said to him in the future? “Daiski, you’re …” I had been inside his mind, but the vision had faded before I could hear the rest.

  Now was the moment, I realized, for me to say whatever it was I needed to say to get him to release me.

  What was it he would want to hear?

  “Daiski, you’re …”

  Daiski had told me his secrets back on the train. His pain. He had revealed many things to me: his childhood, his father’s death, feeling crazy. Joining the World Army. Always seeking glory, recognition. Through it all, I knew that we were alike in one important way.

  We both heard that awful, damning voice in our head.

  I knew what I needed to say. It was exactly what I would want someone to say to me.

  “Daiski, you’re good,” I whispered. “You’re not—”

  His fingers tightened around my throat. “Stop.”r />
  I couldn’t stop, even though the words came raspy. “You’re not broken. You’re worthy as you are.”

  Neither of us moved.

  That is, not until his grip loosened. Slowly, by degrees, he let go until his hand fell away.

  I let go of his arm, the two of us breathing hard.

  Across the arid space, another boom sent sand forty feet into the air. Hercules and Alcyoneus were still battling. Except this time, when the dust settled Hercules held the giant above him. Alcyoneus was airborne, and Hercules had both chains wrapped around the giant’s neck. He was slowing squeezing the air out of him.

  Nearby, my Cupid whistled. The other two were cheering.

  “Fuck,” Daiski rasped above me.

  I thought he meant the battle, but I caught a glimpse of El Lobizon’s iridescent claw arrowing through the air. My eyes fell on Justin, who’d freed himself from the zip tie and rolled onto his stomach. He had thrown it at Daiski.

  He always did have good aim.

  I spun around as Daiski took a step back, the claw jutting out of his bicep. He yanked it free, his face passing through a range of emotions. Shock. Annoyance. Anger. OK, maybe only three emotions. And two of them were variations on the same feeling.

  Justin let out a yell and rose from the ground. He charged into Daiski, knocking him flat on his back. Given the force with which they fell, I could tell Justin was using his powers—his spliced powers. And he was channeling Hercules’s strength as he began wailing on Daiski’s face.

  ↔

  I scrabbled across the hard ground to Justin. “Don’t kill him!”

  He didn’t stop.

  He had blood on his knuckles. Daiski’s blood. I had never seen him so vicious.

  I knelt beside him, grabbed one of his arms. It swung like a piston in motion, even with my hand on it. “Justin, please don’t kill him.”

  Some inkling of my presence penetrated Justin’s brain, because he slowed. With one last punch, he dropped sideways from his straddle atop Daiski. Justin fell on his back, breathing hard under the sun.

  Before me, Daiski lay still. He had a split lip, a quickly bruising eye and a nose at an odd angle. Blood ran into his hair. But he was awake and aware. He groaned up at me. “That sucked.”