Oathbound

by S W Clarke

  Justin lifted his face. “Good.”

  I pulled the claw from Daiski’s bicep. I stared at it, turning it beneath the sunlight. Daiski hadn’t moved when Justin threw the claw at him. He hadn’t fought back. “Why?” I said. Why had he allowed himself to be beaten?

  His white teeth appeared between his bloodied lips. “I wanted to hear what happened on October 14, 1917.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” I wiped tears away with the back of my hand.

  “Considering I just let your boyfriend beat me up, I think it’s the least you can do.”

  Justin barked a laugh. “Let me?”

  The earth rumbled. Behind me, Hercules dropped Alcyoneus to the ground, where the giant lay still—dead. He lay exactly where I’d seen him in the vision.

  And Daiski lay exactly where he’d been.

  This was the vision exactly. A potential future had become the future.

  “How did you do it, Isa?” Daiski asked.

  I knew what he meant: bringing us both into the vision of the future. I lifted my left hand, still in gauze. “Serena spliced me with the oracle.”

  Daiski laughed, spat blood beside him. “She’s like a genie, isn’t she? You wish for a new arm, but you don’t get the arm you expect.”

  Except genies were bound to their owners. In this case, Serena wasn’t bound to me—I was oathbound to her. Or, more specifically, to her son.

  Justin pushed himself upright. “Serena spliced you?”

  My eyes lifted to my boyfriend. I gave a nod.

  “Well, shit.” He pulled himself to his feet. “So you’re part oracle now.”

  “I don’t know what I am.” I certainly didn’t feel anything like the grand old woman I’d met in New York. She had experience, gravitas—and I’d just had two tinder-sparks of the future.

  Justin’s hand extended to me. “We need to go.”

  My fingers nearly settled into his, but I held back. “Just give me one minute. Gather up the Cupids and Hercules.”

  His eyes flicked to Daiski and back to me. I saw the surprise, the discomfort in that eye-flick. But he only said, “All right.”

  I watched Justin walk away.

  Daiski gave a wet cough. “They did something to him.”

  I turned back around. “What?”

  “Down in the facility. I was instructed to bring him to the medical ward.”

  That was where I had found Justin: on a medical bed, a constellation of electrodes attached to his head.

  “What did you do?”

  Daiski rolled his eyes, the whites flashing. “Hell if I know. I’m just the guy who brings them in.”

  I took a quick breath, glancing back at Justin. He leaned down to grab up his backpack. He didn’t look different, but I could still see him laying into Daiski in my mind’s eye. The thought came to me again: I had never seen him so vicious.

  I turned back to Daiski. With a deep breath, her name came out of me, “Hinata.”

  Daiski’s eyes found mine. “Hinata.”

  “There isn’t much to say.” I paused and took a long, dry breath of desert air. Then I told him everything I had only thought up to that point: about my friendship with Hinata, about her pregnancy, about the son I’d treated like my own. Everything up to the one night that changed our lives.

  I lowered my voice to a whisper. “One night, three men from the local village came for Hinata and her three-year-old son.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of me.” I lifted my finger to my chest. “Because they thought the two of them were cursed. Over the centuries, villagers got things into their heads about encantado.”

  Daiski said nothing. So I continued to the end.

  “They brought them outside. Had them stand facing away. When they raised the only gun they had between them, Hinata threw herself in front of her son. She yelled for him to run away.”

  “Did he?”

  “He did.” My voice lowered almost to nothing. “But they got him anyway.”

  Silence fell between us. Five, ten seconds of the wind blowing over the flatland.

  He cleared his throat. “Hinata knew they would get him.”

  My eyes refocused. “What?”

  “She knew they would get her son. She wanted him to go knowing he was loved that much.”

  He was right; I had thought the same thing when I’d heard. For some reason, that had made it hurt more.

  “Isa,” Daiski said, “head straight south. In five miles you’ll come to a gas station.”

  “What about you?”

  “I think I’ll lay here a while. They’ll be around for me soon enough.”

  I rose to my feet. “I meant what I said.”

  “That business about me being good?”

  “Yeah, that business.”

  He pointed at my new arm. “Me letting you go has nothing to do with me being good. It’s to do with that oracle.”

  I gazed down at him. “When I touched you, you finally believed what she’d said to you back in New York.”

  He snorted. “How could I not?”

  I took a step back. “Bye, Daiski.”

  His eyes turned up toward the sky. But as I turned around to meet up with Justin and Hercules and the Cupids, I knew he would be watching me go. I had foreseen it.

  Chapter 23

  We had only walked half a mile when two of the Cupids stopped.

  Philia and Agape.

  “They’re coming,” Philia said.

  The rest of us turned back toward them.

  “We have to leave you now.” Agape pointed behind us, into the empty distance. “We’ll keep them occupied.”

  “No.” I flashed a glance at my Cupid, who looked as surprised as I did. “Come with us.”

  Together, both Cupids whistled. Their little clouds came floating down from the sky and hovered in front of Justin, Hercules and me.

  “Take the puffs,” Philia said. “They’ll get you there fast.”

  I took a step toward them. “Please don’t.”

  Agape closed the distance between us, floating less than a foot from my face. “Don’t cry, Isabella. We knew we were only meant to help you get where you needed to go.”

  Philia appeared next to him. “This is part of helping you. Let us help you.”

  I choked a sob, stomped my boot into the dirt. “Merda. Not like this.”

  “Sometimes, like this.” Agape lifted my chin with his chubby finger. “Just know that we believe in you.”

  Philia set a hand on my shoulder. “We do. Goodbye, Isabella.”

  My Cupid appeared in the circle. “You two asses,” he said. “You could have let me know you were going to pull this stunt.”

  They shrugged. “Would it have changed anything?”

  My Cupid glared. “I would have had more time to berate you.”

  Suddenly we were all enveloped in a pair of enormous, powerful arms. “Oh, come on, all of you!” Hercules sobbed, squeezing the rest of us. And for one, glimmering moment since Hinata had died so many decades ago, I felt like I had kin.

  Ten minutes later, the desert raced beneath us like water, the puffs casting tiny shadows over the earth. Behind me, my Cupid said, “How do you know we can trust Daiski about the gas station?”

  “I just have a feeling.”

  “Oh boy,” Cupid said. “Feelings.”

  I made a face over my shoulder. “You’re a Cupid.”

  “Yeah. It’s exhausting. Sometimes I dream about living in a commune of sociopaths.”

  I snorted. “But you came to me.”

  His dimples appeared. “But I came to you.”

  When we arrived at the single-pump gas station set along the ribbon of highway, I wondered if Cupid had been right about distrusting Daiski. The place looked abandoned. The windows were foggy and blurred, so Hercules insisted on being the one to enter first.

  When he ducked through, the door belled.

  That was a good sign.

  “Oh,” Hercules said as th
e door shut behind him.

  I turned to Justin. “Oh?”

  “I think that was a good ‘oh,’ ” Justin said.

  “A good oh?” my Cupid said.

  “I mean, he’s Hercules,” Justin said. “He doesn’t underreact too much of anything.”

  He had a point.

  Justin pulled open the door and we followed him into the small convenience store as the old-fashioned bell rang again. Around us lay a small array of foods and drinks in coolers … and one Hercules with his elbow on the counter in front of a young blonde.

  He raised his opposite hand, three fingers up. “Not one, not two, but three immortal heads.”

  The young woman popped her gum between her red lips. She looked as charmed as she did confused. “A hydra, you said?”

  Cupid floated to my side, pointed at a payphone. “You have a quarter? We can call an Uber.”

  “An Uber, out here?” Justin said. “That’s going to cost everything we’ve got.”

  The woman leaned around Hercules. “You said an Uber? They don’t come this far out. It’s only about thirty miles to Dry Lake, though.”

  “Dry Lake?” Cupid sighed and lowered his phone. “I miss New York.”

  I approached the counter. “We have to get to Vegas.”

  “Vegas?” She popped her gum again. “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” she said. “How did you all get here, if you need to call an Uber?”

  “We walked,” Hercules said at once. He reached behind him without looking, slid open one of the refrigerators and grabbed a glass bottle of cola. He nipped the top off with his teeth. “Do you mind?”

  Before she could respond, he began drinking. Everyone watched as he downed the bottle in one go. When he was finished, he set it on the counter between himself and the young woman. “Ahh.” His lips settled into a smile.

  “You’ll need to pay for that,” she said.

  Hercules winked. “I will.” He swept his hair back from his face. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Sara.”

  “Well, Sara, I’m Hercules. And I’m glad to meet you.”

  I cleared my throat. “Sara, if you take us to Vegas, I’ll put you up for a night at the Bellagio.”

  She glanced over at us and back at him. Well, at the bulging muscles of his arm still set on the counter. She turned toward the back room. “Hey, dweeb.”

  “Yeah?” came a young man’s voice.

  “Take over the register. I’ll be gone a few hours.”

  “Hey,” I whispered to Sara when the others were busily grabbing HoHos and salted peanuts, “do you have any pregnancy tests?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry.”

  So I would have to wait until we got to Vegas.

  When we came around the back of the station to Sara’s Toyota Corolla, Cupid groaned. “I am not riding on the roof of another compact car.”

  Hercules elbowed him, and Cupid nearly went flying. “Don’t be rude to the lady. She’s being kind.”

  “Fine—I call shotgun,” Cupid said.

  We all piled in—Justin, Hercules and me in the backseat, and Cupid in the passenger seat beside Sara—and got onto the highway.

  As we pulled away from the gas station, Cupid stared out the rearview window.

  I glanced back. Nothing but desert greeted me. “Do you think your brothers are OK?”

  “I don’t know.” He sighed. Then, “Wait a GoneGodDamn second … stop the car!”

  Sara glanced over. “What?”

  Cupid waved a frantic hand. “Pull over!”

  She did, veering us off onto the shoulder.

  As soon as the car stopped, Cupid threw open the door and leapt out.

  In the back seat, the three of us stared out the window. Justin shook his head. “What the hell is he doing?”

  I rolled down the window. “Cupid?”

  “Shush.” He stared back into the desert, one hand shading his eyes. Suddenly, with a thwip!, an arrow lodged right in the center of his chest.

  I gasped, but Cupid only began giggling. He yanked the arrow out of his chest and held it aloft. “They’re OK! It’s a love-gram from Agape.”

  My mouth hung open. “A what-gram?”

  “It’s how we communicate over long distances.”

  Hercules snorted. “By shooting each other in the chest with arrows?”

  Cupid spun toward the car. “That’s a lot of condemnation from someone who literally tries to screw everyone he meets.”

  When Cupid got back in the car and we started off again, Justin leaned toward my ear. “How did you escape to find me down there, in the facility?”

  I gritted my teeth. The last place I wanted to imagine was that facility—those medical beds, that centaur laid open on a metal slab. “I didn’t escape. I was allowed to leave.”

  “Who let you leave?”

  “Serena.” I stared down at my gauzed hand, but instead, I saw her face. Serena Russo, the woman to whom I was oathbound. I didn’t break my oaths. I would finish my research. I would save her son’s life.

  But beyond that, her words had been ringing through my mind from the moment I’d escaped. “Soon we shall share the burden of motherhood.”

  Motherhood.

  I set one hand on my belly. I needed to figure out what those words meant.

  To be continued…

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  Chapter 1

  Las Vegas—the heart of fantasyland. The city was at once more lively and more terrifying than any place I’d been. And after five hundred years of immortality and a recent escape from a secret underground army facility, that was saying a lot.

  But at least we were free. For now.

  I shielded my eyes from the kaleidoscope of colors outside the car’s backseat window. “How can anyone live here?”

  “It’s the strip, Isa,” Justin said beside me. “People love it.”

  I stared at my boyfriend. “Love this?”

  “I love this!” Hercules boomed out the other backseat window, slapping one hand on the side of the car. He had rolled it down and leaned his head fully out. His brown curls whipped so gently he might have been in a photoshoot.

  “Did you see that?” Cupid pointed out the window of the Corolla. “A guy in a Make Earth Ours Again hat. The bigotry is spreading.”

  “Make Earth Ours Again?” I repeated. It sounded vaguely familiar.

  The little demigod spun to me, his blue eyes twinkling beneath his blond hair. “MEOA, for short. They’re the vilest of the vile, and they hate Others. They think the Earth belongs to humans … and only humans. They have a point.”

  I looked at Cupid in shock. “You agree with them? I mean, you’re an Other.”

  Cupid shrugged. “This was their world first. We kind of were forced on them. I get why they’re frustrated. I don’t agree with them and hope that one day we can all hold hands and sing Kumbaya, but I get it.”

  “No blind hatred, huh?” I winked at him. “You’re all love.”

  “Love is understanding the other. The better I understand them, the better I can show them who I am and the faster we can all get to kumbayaing.”

  “Huh.” I was impressed by the little cherub.

  Hercules ducked his head back inside. “I’ve noticed a preponderance of men in red hats in this city. What does it signify?”

  I couldn’t help smiling. It wasn’t that the demigod listened selectively so much as he seemed overwhelmed by all the newness of the modern world. He had only been in it for a few months, after all.

  Cupid groaned. “Herc buddy, if you pass one on the street, give them a good wallop for me.”

  “I’d be careful about that,” Justin whispered to him. “He’s—”

  Hercules had already leaned back out the window as we passed another group of hat-wearers. “STEP TOO CLOSE AND I’LL WALLOP YOU!”

  “No violence, please,” I ca
lled out. “They haven’t done anything to us.”

  Hercules slapped the side of the car again. “I did not need to understand the hydra to know its evil, just like I also need not understand these mongrels to know they’re evil.”

  “Please stop hitting my car,” said Sara, the human who’d given us a lift from the gas station in the middle of nowhere. She’d been giving us increasingly dubious looks in the rearview mirror the longer we’d ridden in the car. I didn’t blame her; Hercules and Cupid together could be a bit … overwhelming.

  Justin yanked Hercules back inside. “There’s a bunch of them walking around. Is there some sort of rally going on?”

  “Yep,” Sara said. “Biggest rally of the year is happening this week in Vegas.”

  “This week?” Justin, Cupid and I said in unison.

  Hercules growled out the window at another group of MEOA supporters. They stopped and stared after us as we slowed and Sara put on her turn signal.

  “We’re here,” she said with what sounded like relief. No doubt she regretted agreeing to give us a lift to Vegas, especially after Hercules and Cupid arm wrestled on the center console a half-hour in. “This place is fancy.”

  “Holy Hera!” Cupid said as we rolled up to the hotel.

  “Do not speak that name,” Hercules growled. He really, really hated the goddess Hera. Which made sense, considering she had tried about a hundred times to kill him back in antiquity.

  Cupid lowered his eyes with regret before looking out the window again. “Sorry, big guy.” He pointed at the hotel. “We’re staying here?”

  I swallowed, staring at the hotel through the window as Sara pulled us into the driveway. “We’ll see about that.”

  Five minutes later, we stepped onto the sidewalk, all our faces angling up, up, up. I had to squint against the lights, swivel my head left and right to take in the expanse of it.

  The Bellagio.

  This was where the resistance had sent us?

  I had promised Sara that we would put her up here for the night in exchange for bringing us to Vegas, but I didn’t even know if we could cover half a night.

  Hell, looking at the four of us—fresh from a fight with a giant and a World Army assassin in the middle of the Nevada desert—I didn’t even know if they’d let us into the lobby. We looked like we’d been to Burning Man and then spent forty days and forty nights wandering through the desert.