Games of Fate (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 1)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Fates were supposed to activate as a bonded triad of three seers. Activating alone might have done some hidden damage. “Are you sure she’s okay?”

  What were they going to do with a sick Fate?

  He touched her forehead. Most normals sidestepped around Fates, both the activated and the unactivated. They muttered words like “odd” and “untrustworthy.” Then they pointed fingers and screamed “Witch!” and burned the Fate at the stake.

  The beast sniffed her hair and shoulders. I do not know. He paused. You must cut the chains.

  Dragon pulled the bolt cutters from the tool storage under the floor. At thirteen feet from snout to tip-of-tail and twice Ladon’s width, Dragon was cramped. The beast’s body alone was the size of a table capable of seating six people. But the van provided room enough for him to at least turn and stretch his neck and tail.

  Ladon refused to take the cutters when the beast held them out. “You do it. You’re the one fretting.”

  You fret as well.

  “No, I do not.” She would continue to be a distraction Ladon did not need.

  Not all Fates are bad. Dragon nuzzled her again. No one deserves to be locked to Burners.

  Ladon’s jaw tightened. The beast was correct—not all Fates were bad. This one didn’t seem to be. Though good ones were few and far between.

  And she’d never be part of a triad. Never understand the bond that came with it. And because of the burndust in the shackles, her Fate’s seer was now and forever locked to the chaos of the Burners.

  He sat back on his heels. She did need their help.

  Dragon nudged Ladon’s shoulder. This is not her fault.

  Ladon nodded and touched the girl’s elbow. Like them, she’d been caught in this disaster. Unlike them, though, she couldn’t walk away from its consequences.

  He picked up the bolt cutters to snap the links connected to the cuffs. They’d need to cut off the restraints, but if he cut the chains now she could move when she woke up.

  Her eyes flew open.

  Her Fate’s seer reverberated through the van, rich and oscillating and as beautiful as the moonlight color of her irises. It washed over him, warming the connection he shared with Dragon as it sensed for information about either the past, the present, or the future.

  Feeling a seer normally made Ladon groan and crunch his nose as if he smelled something foul. But not hers.

  Hers felt incredible.

  She is not awake. Dragon poked her with his snout, first on her left cheek, then her right. She ignored him. A vision takes her.

  “Uncalled?” A Fate used her ability to harness the seer inside. The seer didn’t use the Fate. At least for every Fate he’d ever known.

  Dragon grabbed for her waist but she dodged. The chains rattled. Her hand splayed on the blankets and her hips twisted. One foot planted and the other pushed.

  Ladon fell flat on his back. The girl held his arms against the floor with her chains spread over his chest. She straddled his hips with her thighs tight around his waist.

  Dragon snorted.

  Shut up, Ladon pushed. Are you going to help?

  Why? the beast pushed back. You do not want help.

  The way her pelvis ground in slow waves against his shoved aside his anger and a new emotion coursed upward from his belly.

  “Well, now.” Dragon might be right. Maybe they should keep her around. He could use some distraction.

  A lock of her hair dropped to his cheek and glided like silk over his skin. It kissed his lips when more fell across his chin, a touch more intimate than he’d felt in centuries.

  Her eyes, soft yet intense, held his purpose. Her touch, gentle where she grasped his arms, made him want to weave his fingers into hers. The beat of her heart moved from her skin to his and his own pulse steadied.

  He breathed in her sweet, complex scent.

  “Lovely” didn’t come close to describing the woman who pinned him to the floor.

  But a blankness fluctuated with her openness. Nothing and everything reverberated across her features.

  Ladon’s grin vanished. “Pretty Fate, can you hear me?”

  Chapter Four

  Whatever caused the whispering thoughts sucked at Rysa’s skull. It sat on her head like a real thing and wiggled all burning and… nasty.

  She felt as if someone had grafted a new limb to her forehead. Nothing was there—no actual limb had been attached to her body—but something had been added. Something new and powerful that she needed to learn how to control.

  Her brain was trying to figure out how to use the new extension of her consciousness but the grafted-on thing wouldn’t listen.

  It kept turning on her, slapping inner, whispered-thought versions of Burner chemicals across first one cheek and then the other, then flailing around like an energy rope out in the real air, or like some horrific sea monster’s tentacle.

  Or tentacles—she couldn’t tell. This new nasty thing fuzzed out like Dragon had when he turned invisible. She couldn’t perceive the nasty tentacles, even though she knew they were there. Maybe she had an entire invisible Burner octopus in her head.

  A big, squishy, nasty octopus that burned sat on her mind.

  Someone talked to her. Words cut through her energy-tentacle-caused haze. “Pretty Fate, can you hear me?”

  Ladon. The man with the rich voice that was as warm as the sun.

  “Wake up.” Pretty, lovely Fate. He watched her with golden-brown eyes and more attention than she’d ever seen from a man.

  The nasty thing in her head whipped. It latched onto memories and dropped one into her vision—her ex Tom used to call her pretty, but then he’d thrust his shoulders forward and dig his fingers into her back.

  In the real world, the world right now, the energy flowing around her carried a different concept—beautiful. Not Tom’s trophy-pretty, but an understanding of the beauty of the world. Of lives lived, and variations, and symmetry. Of knowing what brings happiness.

  Beautiful smoothed over her skin and she knew Ladon would never dig his fingers into her back.

  He lifted her off his hips and set her against Dragon’s chest. Stars looped along the beast’s hide and filled her eyes with musical shapes and colors.

  Another memory—when she was a child, her father placed a kaleidoscope nightlight under her bed—the kind that threw planets and moons and comets and shooting stars onto her walls. The patterns and colors danced out from under the shadows of her covers, stretched by the angle of light to the floor into funhouse shapes five times the length of her hand, and she knew she was safe from the monsters.

  In the real world, she splayed her fingers over the colors dancing on Dragon’s hide.

  Ladon firmly but gently stroked her arm. “What are you seeing? You need to wake up.”

  The nasty thing whipped up another memory—her father said she was beautiful in mind, body, and soul. He wanted her to use all that beauty to help the world. Then he left, disappearing one day while she toiled at school and almost crying when she didn’t finish the math test because she couldn’t pay attention to the numbers on the page.

  Ladon held up a bottle. “Drink some water.”

  She sipped, hoping to wash away the other memories pressing against the inside of her head.

  “What’s your name?” He watched every muscle-twitch, every glance her eyes made, every expression. “Can you hear me?”

  “You are Ladon,” she whispered.

  He touched her shoulder. “That’s right. What’s your name?”

  “Rysa Torres.”

  “That’s a lovely name. It’s Latin. It means ‘laughter.’ Did you know that?”

  “I thought it meant ‘tower.’”

  A smile, as brilliant as the dragon’s hide, lit Ladon’s face. “Laughter of the Tower, you are.”

  “In your eyes, I see. It stops the nasty thing in my skull.” The words drifted out as a weird-vision truth set free into the river of energy flowing between man and beast.r />
  His smile transformed into something bright and perfect. “What are you seeing?” But then his lips rounded and confusion spread across his features.

  She’d see the light again. It would fill his eyes and he’d touch all of her and everything would be fine.

  Her hand lifted to touch his cheek.

  The normal parts of her brain, the parts the nasty thing had hijacked with its whipping tentacles and its blanketing vision-memories, those real parts released a firestorm of Danger! Terror!

  Scream now!

  The real world slammed down and the visions burst like the fire bubbles had when her activation began.

  The shackles twisted over bandages on her wrists. When did they bandage her skin? She jiggled her arm and the dull, thick iron sucked away all her body’s heat.

  The chemical stench of the ghouls drifted from her clothes hung in the air. It mixed with hints of engine oil, strong liquor, and day-old pizza.

  She shrieked. “Get them off me! Please—” The ghouls had shackled her. “Please!”

  Ladon grabbed the chains and pulled her to him, then snapped the link connected to her left wrist with a pair of bolt cutters. He repeated the action with the link on her right. The chains fell away.

  “Legs.” He scooped a hand under her thigh and pulled her foot around. The cutter snapped another link and he rolled her to the left, lifting her other foot, then snapped the last link. “Better?”

  Dragon tossed the chains into the corner.

  She yanked on the cuffs. If she curled her thumb maybe this time she could pull out her hand. She gripped the iron and yanked again, but agony fired up her arm and into her neck.

  Rysa doubled over and shrieked into the blankets under her body.

  Ladon held her shoulders. “We’ll cut them off. When we have you someplace safe. But you need to stop screaming.”

  “Take them off me now!” She yelled louder than she meant to. “Please! Take them off.”

  “We will. But I need to saw through them and I can’t do that in a parking lot. I won’t chance cutting you.” A slight pout pushed out his lip. “We won’t hurt you. I promise.”

  He glanced at Dragon. A pulse moved between the man and the beast and she had a distinct sense that he wasn’t being completely honest.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” She wrapped her arms around her chest and tried very hard not to rock back and forth. “Why did this happen to me?”

  “You really don’t know, do you?” Ladon massaged her shoulder. His fingers moved in little, distracting circles and arches. Calm flowed from his muscles into hers and for the first time since she woke up this morning, she breathed deeply.

  Her gaze moved from his fingers up his arm to where his black t-shirt sleeve stretched around his bicep. Even in the dim light, she saw the definition of his arms and wide shoulders.

  She’d been rescued by the most distracting man on the planet.

  When he let go, a sigh escaped before she could stop it. He smirked and looked away, and scratched the back of his head. The messiness of his wavy black hair juxtaposed with the shadow of stubble covering his square jaw and made her want to stroke his face. She wanted to feel the contrast, to understand why it worked so well to frame the olive tones of his skin.

  When he looked at her again, his fingers twitched as if he wanted to touch her again.

  The damned wiggling nasty thing dropped a realization into her perception—Ladon read the world with his hands. She knew the same way she knew their name. Energy connected him to the beast, but touching was how he learned. He wanted to dance his fingers on her shoulders so he could listen the way another man might move his head to better hear her voice.

  Those hands could hold the world steady.

  They could hold her steady. She saw it—he’d pick her up and bury his face against her collarbone. His strong arms would hold her more steady than she’d ever felt in her life. Then he’d lay her down along Dragon’s side.

  She touched her mouth. The nasty new addition to her mind flung the scene into her mind’s eye in vivid detail—they were going to end up naked together, and soon.

  But then her nasty dropped something else into her perception—a memory, but not her memory. Ladon throwing his jacket against the wall of the van. A distinct sense of grumble moving between him and the beast.

  Ladon didn’t like Fates. And she was now a Fate, whatever that meant.

  He didn’t like her kind, but he’d have sex with her.

  Chapter Five

  The sob came out of nowhere. It yanked on her throat on its way out, twisting and contracting everything between her lips and chest at the same time Rysa tried to inhale.

  She felt as if she’d swallowed a bowling ball.

  Every single cell in her heart said she could trust him. But she’d believed that with Tom, too.

  She rolled under Dragon’s forelimb and toward the van’s back door. She didn’t look at Ladon. She couldn’t.

  The door popped open and she dropped out the back. They were in the lot of the sporting goods store south of Highway 36, in a back corner, away from the doors. Traffic flowed by less than a block away and filled the air with a dull hiss. Trees rustled, crisp and unhappy this close to a freeway. The inky night siphoned off every hint of friendly light and the lot crawled with ugly shadows.

  Rysa staggered away from the vehicle into the lot’s potholes. The weight of the shackles made her stumble, but she walked anyway.

  “Don’t run away!”

  She turned around. From the outside, their black, mean-looking van loomed over the corner of the lot, bigger than any delivery truck she’d seen. Some sort of faded and unreadable lettering ran along one side like some ominous warning to anyone who dared to scrutinize the vehicle.

  Dragon hopped onto the pavement and a line of invisibility ran down his neck and back as he passed through the van’s threshold. Ladon followed, landing in front of her and a good six feet from the bumper, and reached for her elbow. “Don’t call your seer until you get your bearings.”

  “Seer?” Was that what the nasty thing in her head was? Did she have a seer because she was a Fate?

  Her body pulled in on itself. Ladon didn’t like Fates, no matter how he acted, and Rysa’s nasty seer-thing wasn’t going to let her forget it. “Don’t touch me.”

  “I’m sorry.” He pulled back abruptly and raised his hands in the air. “If you don’t want our help, that’s fine. We’ll drop you somewhere. Your family can deal with those…” He pointed at the shackles on her wrists. “… and whatever those Burners did to you.”

  He frowned and thrust his hands into his pockets. “But we think you should be careful. Your seer feels as if it’s turning on and off by itself. Right?” He nodded over her shoulder.

  Warm breath blew against her ear and the invisible Dragon nudged her side.

  “He agrees.”

  Calm pulsed toward her from the big beast. Her body leaned against his neck without her willing it to. She probably looked ridiculous, slanted into thin air as she was, but Dragon didn’t care that she’d become a horrible creature with a nasty thing in her head.

  She glanced at Ladon. Was he making those little calculations men always made? He wasn’t staring at her breasts. He watched her expression instead.

  Tom never watched her face when she was upset. He always looked away.

  Men were so confusing.

  The shackles scraped her shirt and dug into her skin. She’d pull the damned things off, no matter how much it hurt. Then throw them into the Mississippi River and run away. Maybe she’d disappear into the mountains out west. No men. No Burners. No Fates.

  “Rysa?” Ladon had moved closer when she wasn’t paying attention—close enough she could throw her arms around his neck, bury her face against his chest, and cry until she couldn’t cry anymore.

  He really was distracting. And confusing.

  “I can’t think,” she whispered. Not that she could ever think. All these thou
ghts about sex with a man she just met made it worse. Things might get weird between them in the future, but now, in the present, she needed his help.

  So she should quit her blubbering, no matter how overwhelmed she felt.

  Rysa wiped away a tear, careful not to scrape her cheek with the shackle, and stood up straight. “Why is everyone calling me a Fate?” She was just a college student, not some Old World god.

  Ladon glanced at Dragon. “You’re a Parcae. A Fate. Not a god-Fate, like the old cultures believed. Your kind’s been calling themselves Fates since your Progenitor realized it both terrified the normals and made them reverent. You’re supposed to activate as part of a bonded triad of three. One sees the past. One the present. The other the future.”

  But she’d been alone. “Others?”

  Did the Burners eat them? Her stomach knotted again. What had she caused?

  “Hey, hey, don’t make that face.” This time, he took her elbow, even though she’d told him to stay back.

  She didn’t pull away. She couldn’t. He touched her and calm cascaded through her body, and she leaned into Dragon again. Why did she respond to Ladon that way? Maybe Dragon calmed her, not Ladon. The beast sure seemed more accepting of Fates.

  The questions whipping around inside her head felt as nasty as the new thing he called her “seer,” but having Dragon pressed against her back and Ladon holding her steady kept her at least a little grounded.

  “We’ve been tracking the Burners all day. You’re the only Fate they went after.” He nodded to Dragon again. “So no one else has been hurt. And even if they were, this isn’t your fault.”

  He didn’t know that. Didn’t “fate” mean inevitable? Maybe just being her was enough to cause all this.

  She didn’t say it out loud. She had enough problems without adding a man-and-dragon pity party to her life. “What happened?”

  Ladon nodded over his shoulder at the wider world. “Do you have two mothers and a father? Or two fathers and a mother? One must have spit out your activation ten, maybe twelve hours ago.”