Oathbound

by S W Clarke

  But we had nowhere else to go.

  According to the note the head of the NYC resistance had left me on the train, I needed to find my sister, Ananda, who worked here. She was our only and best hope. Of course, we’d also had a … fraught relationship. But maybe four years of mortality had changed that. Maybe.

  Justin stepped up to my side. “Just walk in like you own the place.”

  My eyes met his, and I wondered how he so often sensed exactly what I was feeling. He was my boyfriend, but at some point he had also become the one person who never left my side. My friend. Ordinarily I didn’t mix lust and friendship—we encantado believed in a separation of the two, to avoid dullness and familiarity with our lovers—but with Justin, that seemed impossible not to do.

  We had been on the run together for six months. And despite everything that had happened between me, him and Hercules, that bonded two people. Bonded us.

  A smile touched my lips. “That I can do.”

  “Ooo, time for a little encantado glamor,” Cupid whispered to Hercules.

  “She’s never without glamor,” Hercules murmured as we started through the doors into the Bellagio’s lobby.

  My heart squeezed, and I straightened; GoneGodDamn Hercules, always with the right words on his tongue. It was almost like he was a demigod. It was almost like he had charmed a thousand women.

  Justin and I passed inside, Hercules and Cupid and Sara following behind. We came in to a chorus of chains dragging across the tile—Hercules’s manacles, still enclosing his wrists from when he’d been held captive at the World Army’s facility that morning.

  And the army was still coming for us. In six months they hadn’t stopped coming for us, which meant we needed to find Ananda sooner rather than later. After my face had appeared on TV as a suspected arsonist back in New York, I didn’t even like being in public places anymore.

  We stood beneath an enormous ceiling sculpture, which sent a hundred different wisps of colors beaming down on us. It was gorgeous, and befitting a hotel this fancy. Except no one was looking at the ceiling. I pretended every concierge and guest in the lobby wasn’t staring at our group, that we weren’t the biggest spectacle in this lobby.

  Or, at least, not one worthy of being escorted out by security.

  We approached a receptionist who looked overwhelmed, her eyes flitting between all of us. Every time she looked up at Hercules, her eyes rolled halfway into her head to see his face. She cleared her throat. “May I help you?”

  I put my hands on the counter, leaned forward. “I’m looking for Ananda.”

  She blinked. “Ananda?”

  “A female.” How to describe my sister? She could look like anyone. I leaned closer. “A young woman who works here, maybe?”

  The receptionist’s expression still maintained its professionalism, but I saw the dubious droop of her mouth. “We have many women who work here. I’m sorry, I don’t know an Ananda.”

  A flutter of worry started in my chest. “Is there anyone whose name starts with the letter A?”

  “We have many employees whose names start with the letter A.” I sensed the receptionist was being purposefully obtuse, maybe trying to get us to turn back around and drag our chains and dust back the way we’d come. Every guest in the lobby was gawking at us, after all. We were kind of an eyesore.

  “All right,” I said slowly, “I think you’re not telling me the truth. I think there is an Ananda working here, and you know who I’m talking about.”

  The receptionist’s eyes hardened at once, and I realized I wasn’t accomplishing much. “Listen, lady,” I began. When her eyes hardened even more, I knew I was digging myself farther in.

  Hercules set a hand on my back and leaned in to whisper, “Is your womanly cycle blooming forth?”

  I flared on the demigod. “I don’t get PMS,” I growled with as much control as I was capable of, “because I don’t get GoneGodDamn periods.”

  But I might be pregnant, I thought, resisting setting one hand over my belly. It seemed like the most absurd thing in the world, but Serena Russo’s words hadn’t stopped running through my mind all day. “Soon we shall share the burden of motherhood.”

  Serena Russo was an evil bitch, but she wasn’t a liar.

  “For someone not blessed with the mortal burden of womanhood,” Hercules remarked to Cupid, “you’d think she’d be more chipper.”

  I sighed. I had promised Sara I would put her up here for the night. I had to not get us kicked out of here. “I’m sorry, I’m just tired,” I said to the receptionist. “How much is your cheapest room for tonight?”

  I sensed the receptionist’s relief as we crossed back into the realm of what was normal, what she had been trained for. “Let me look that up for you.” Her pretty pink fingernail tapped the mouse button. “We do have a room with two double beds available on the second floor.”

  “How much?”

  “$1,498.”

  Nausea rose in me. “Any others?”

  She clicked again. “We have a penthouse suite.”

  Cupid flitted up by my side. “How much?”

  “$2,998.”

  “Do you always knock two bucks off the top?” I said before I could stop myself. It wasn’t just the prices—it was that we were alone. Completely alone. Even Roger, the head of the resistance in NYC who’d given me the tip about Ananda and the Bellagio, was dead. Another casualty of the World Army.

  Hercules stepped forward, and Justin and I parted for him like a wave. It wasn’t even conscious—he was just that kind of demigod. “Good evening,” he said. His dimples appeared, and even though he was dragging GoneGodDamn chains behind him and he was matted with sweat and a little blood, I knew that receptionist was done for.

  I saw it in the blush rising up the length of her neck.

  Hercules leaned forward. “What’s your name?”

  “Oh boy,” Cupid groaned.

  ↔

  Five minutes later, we had a room. But we weren’t even the ones staying in it. Sara was.

  “Thank you for getting us here,” I said to Sara as we stood in the middle of the lobby. “It means more than you know.”

  “Oh, you bet.” Her eyes had gone all glittery and wide ever since we’d entered the city. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-one.

  “We are in your debt,” Hercules declared, lifting her hand and setting a kiss to the back of it.

  I eyed Hercules. “I think we’ve paid most of that debt off.”

  Sara’s eyes flicked to what I held in my hand. “Can I uh …”

  “Oh!” I extended the $1,098 room key out to her. “Of course.” Hercules had gotten $400 knocked off the bill, which still made it the most expensive single purchase I’d made in my entire lifetime—after my college education.

  She took hold of the other end of the key, and the tiniest little tug-of-war took place in the lobby before I acquiesced.

  “Thanks,” she said quickly.

  As she disappeared toward the elevator bay, Hercules started after her.

  Cupid flew in front of him and pushed Hercules back. Well, I should say he tried to—it was more like he put his hands on Hercules’s bare chest and floated backward as the demigod strode forward. “Hold up there, big guy.”

  “Hercules,” Justin said, “we need to stay together.”

  Hercules stopped, a sigh echoing through the lobby. His entire body seemed to wither. He blew a kiss to Sara, who looked disappointed as she stepped into the elevator. When he walked back to us, his great arms folded together. “Why was I brought back to this world, if not to partake in the spice of life?”

  “To complete your undone labors?” I offered. As an encantado, I wasn’t even jealous if he wanted to have an evening of fun. But Justin was right: we needed to stay together. “You know, avenging a great wrong and all that.”

  He waved a hand through the air. “What good is avenging great wrongs if you don’t also bring about great rights?”

  Justi
n and I exchanged a confused glance.

  “And what rights are those?” I asked.

  “The rights of ultimate pleasure.”

  “He’s talking about making whoopee,” Cupid chimed in. “And implying that he’s excellent at it.”

  “Legendary, actually,” Herc said.

  I groaned. “Thanks for the clarification.” Retreating to one of the plush couches, my hand slid over my belly. Was that what Serena had seen when she’d walked through the portal in the garden and seen into the future? Me, pregnant? But such a thing wasn’t even possible—Others were infertile, all of us. We had the parts, they just didn’t do anything since the gods had left.

  Heck, I didn’t even have one of the necessary components to an actual pregnancy—sperm. Those little guys still had to …

  My thoughts trailed into silence. That night when I’d been shot with Cupid’s arrow, I had slept with someone. Maybe it was Justin, maybe it was Hercules. Maybe it was both. The point was, I had slept with someone.

  Maybe I did have all the components inside me.

  But what would have made them work? After four years of nothing, why would I, an Other, become pregnant?

  The bottom line was: I needed to find a pregnancy test, stat. But the little shop in the lobby was closed, we were car-less, and I still hadn’t found my sister.

  When I sat and set my face in my hands, I felt the cushion depress next to me. I knew exactly who it was. “Are you all right?” Justin asked.

  My hand slipped quickly off my belly. “Not in any sense of the word, no.”

  “What about in the we’re-not-dead sense of the word?”

  He was right. But right now I resented his rightness. “Oh, don’t start making me grateful for things. I just spent $1,000 on a room with two double beds, and I don’t even get to sleep in one.”

  Hercules and Cupid sat on the couch facing ours. Cupid picked up a book on garden topiaries and opened it on his lap. He looked like a toddler reading a picture book.

  Within a few seconds, Hercules was snoring, his arm slung across the back of the couch and his head on his shoulder. Over at reception, the charmed employee kept making eyes at him. That was probably the only reason we weren’t being kicked out.

  I had no idea where to go next, or who to reach out to. We were alone in a strange city, with ...

  My thoughts were interrupted by loud voices ringing through the lobby from a nearby hallway. They were getting closer. The voices grew distinct as they approached—a man and a woman. Neither of them sounded happy.

  All three receptionists were staring in the direction the voices were emanating from. They sounded like they were walking fast, the woman’s shoes clicking across the tile as they argued.

  Finally, with a yelp from her, they emerged into the lobby. A gorgeous bottle-blonde in a cocktail waitress’s outfit—still holding a silver platter under one arm—stalked across the tiles. She walked with admirable sureness in those six-inch heels, her big curls bouncing around her face as she headed toward the reception desk.

  The guy following her wore a sloppy suit, still carrying a drink. “Come on, honey,” he slurred. “I gave you what you wanted. Don’t pretend like you didn’t tuck that $100 right into the neck of your dress.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the waitress said. “Leave me be.” Something about her voice—her cadence—sounded familiar.

  But he didn’t leave her be. He was drunk, and she was beautiful—the perfect storm for harassment. As they crossed toward the center of the lobby, not twenty feet from where we sat, he grabbed her by the arm and tried to spin her toward him.

  She spun toward him all right.

  I’d just begun to rise when the waitress took the platter from under her arm, gripped the edges in both hands and swung the flat of it into his face. Metal echoed on bone as she clocked him right in the nose.

  The guy dropped at once, sprawling like a starfish. The receptionists gasped together as a small line of blood ran out of one nostril.

  “GoneGodDamn patrons making me wish I never took this job,” the waitress said.

  I definitely knew that voice. I stared at her, still standing over the drunk, breathing hard with the platter in one hand. “Ananda?” I whispered.

  As soon as I’d said it, she spun toward me. Her blue eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open. She recognized my voice, too.

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