“Spit? That’s disgusting.” She shook her head. “My mom was watching the news this morning. I think she’d been watching all night, to be honest. She wouldn’t turn off the TV after the mall in Chicago exploded. She looked so distraught I almost stayed home, but she handed me a glass of orange juice and said to go—oh, my goodness.”
Rysa touched her mouth and the damned shackle smacked against her chin.
He didn’t say any words, though his expression said uh-huh.
“Why would she spit in my orange juice? Why would she do that and not tell me? Those ghouls almost—” The same pressure behind her eye that she’d felt in the café expanded and contracted, pulsing like a tire pump.
Ladon took her other elbow. “Sit down before you fall over.” He nodded toward the van’s bumper.
Dragon climbed in first and Ladon sat next to her with his arm behind her back but not touching. “We’ll help you figure out what’s—”
“But you don’t like Fates.” What motivated that outburst? Her attention issues? The nasty new thing in her head? She really was a freak.
Her back stiffened. “Sorry!”
His mouth opened, then snapped shut. After a moment, he scratched the back of his head. “So that’s what you saw.”
Part of what she saw. But she was determined to ignore the other part, at least for now. She might not be able to shut up, but she could act like an adult around men. Even this one.
“It’s true that we don’t trust most Fates.” Ladon watched a father and two teenagers leave the store. “We’ve had bad dealings in the past. Even good people who can see the future can be… difficult.”
Ladon glanced over his shoulder at Dragon again. Equal parts of what felt to her to be regret, anger, and resignation flowed across the energy connecting them. “But that has nothing to do with you.”
A new vision came out of nowhere and hit her hard—vomit-orange and acid-filled Burner fire flowed in front of her eyes. She saw it, tasted it, but didn’t hear or feel it. She buckled forward anyway and dropped her head between her knees.
“What the hell?” Would her visions always be this chaotic? They came out of nowhere, like random partiers throwing beer bottles.
The vision dropped back into the recesses of her brain.
“You’re not calling the visions, are you?” Ladon didn’t touch her. He sat next to her, his arms and neck rigid, and stared at her face.
“They come out of nowhere and take over what I’m seeing and—”
“Your talisman is chaos.” He said it like someone had just dropped a rotting fruit onto his palm. Oh, that’s gross.
“Talisman?” What did that mean?
“Your family should explain.” His gaze dropped to her wrists. “It’s a Fate thing and we don’t fully understand it ourselves.”
He meant the shackles. That was the real reason he hadn’t dug out a saw and cut them off her arms and legs. “I have to wear them, don’t I? I can never take them off.”
The Burners had done something to the metal. Made it part of them. And now it was part of her, because she’d become a Fate wearing them.
Ladon said something about cutting off the cuffs anyway, but she didn’t follow. All she could think about was that she was as much Burner as she was Fate.
“What if I have a vision while I’m driving?” Rysa swayed back and forth even though she didn’t want to. “Oh my God what if they start and don’t stop? I don’t want to die.”
“Rysa!” He gripped her elbows again. “Metal locks a Fate to a purpose. It’s like… like…” He looked up at Dragon, then nodded. “It’s like a filter. My brother-in-law has these covers he puts on his camera lens sometimes. He says they’re to polarize the light. It’s like that. Your talisman is a filter on your abilities.”
“I don’t want this filter! It’s the worst filter ever!” She pulled away and dropped her head between her knees again. “Can’t I get a new one?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. It’s set when you activate.”
“So I’m doomed to see the world through flesh-eating stupidity for the rest of my life?” No wonder her seer felt like a nasty monster ripping apart her brain. “Does this mean my ‘filter’ is ‘crap that randomly blows up?’”
Ladon chuckled. “We don’t know. A talisman’s context isn’t always obvious, even to the triad bound by it. When is the complete context of anything clear?”
She jumped off the bumper and yanked on the cuffs. Pain ratcheted up her arm, worse than the first time she tried to pull them off, and she groaned. “I don’t care if I need them! Get them off me! I don’t need a filter that doesn’t work!” She’d start panting if she wasn’t careful.
“You can’t! It’s worse without a talisman.” He followed her off the bumper. “It’s like looking at the sun. You get everything. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”
“I don’t care.” The panting started. Maybe she’d die of a panic attack. That’d be ironic.
“Rysa.”
The warmth of his eyes caught her hyperactive attention and she flitted away from thinking about a panic attack to being caught by a supremely distracting man’s irises.
Because that was her ADHD. Was she dying? Maybe. Was Ladon handsome? Why, yes, he most definitely was. His golden-brown irises edged toward uncanny. They were still a real color, but brighter than they should be, as if a touch of Dragon’s lights played through them. His black hair and warm skin were the same. His eyes just showed it more.
Her vision jigged like it had when Billy grabbed her. Jigged and danced away from all her distractions so her nasty thing could show yet another uncalled vision—her mother gripping a long and bright sword with both hands.
The Burners knew who activated Rysa—her even tastier parent.
Rysa wasn’t their only quarry.
“Burners!” she coughed. “They found my mom!”
Ladon pulled her into the van.
Chapter Six
“Where?” Ladon pushed garbage off the passenger seat into a plastic bag before offering his hand to help her down the step from the raised floor to the front of the van. Behind them, Dragon closed the back door and the roof vents.
Rysa avoided the gearshift and brushed away crumbs before buckling into the passenger seat.
“North,” she said. The quickest way was Interstate 35W, which was visible through the windshield.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed the house. The call rolled to voicemail. “Mom! Something’s happened. I know—Mom, why didn’t you tell me? Burners are coming for you! I see it. I know what they are! They know what I am. Damn it!” She disconnected the call.
“What am I supposed to say?” She should have called right away. She should have called the police and sent them to her house. The ghouls were going to hurt her mom. “Why didn’t you stop them on campus? Why—”
“Because they eat people!” Ladon slapped the steering wheel. “Or you would have been blown up in the crossfire. Or—” He stopped in midsentence.
She’d distracted them. Pure and simple, she’d drawn away their attention and the damned Burners were going to eat her mom because of it.
Her mother’s cell phone went to voicemail, too. “Mom! Someone found me.” She glanced at Ladon, but decided not to leave his name. “He says he’s going to help. Mom!”
She cut the call, not knowing what else to do. “Hurry! Please. I don’t know what to tell her. Stay home, don’t stay home.”
Why didn’t her mother answer the phone? “I’m sorry!” burst from her throat. “This is my fault. You could have—”
Dragon’s big hand wrapped around the seat and stroked her belly. The strength she felt flowing from him silenced her outburst.
“This is not your fault.” Ladon put the key in the ignition. “What’s your mother’s name?”
“Mira.”
Ladon’s hand stopped just before he turned the key.
“Mira? What is her last
name?” His entire body stopped moving and his shoulders cinched. His neck tensed to hard cords.
He wouldn’t look at her.
“Why?” But she already knew. The Fates he’d had bad dealings with were her family. Or her mother’s family, whoever they were. It’s not like Rysa knew any of them. “It’s been my mom and me since my dad left—”
“What is her last name?” His fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white.
Dragon swung his head low. Sharp patterns burst across his hide.
“Torres.”
Angry energy reverberated between Ladon and Dragon, but the beast threw back an overwhelming and complex wave. It made no sense to Rysa, and it only made Ladon angrier.
Her panic gushed up from her stomach and into her throat. “You’re not going to help us, are you?”
His cheek twitched. He tried to cover his irritation with a stone face, one signaling “badass warrior,” but it didn’t quite work.
She turned to plead with Dragon. “My mom works for the school district. She does curriculum planning. She doesn’t… She’s not bad. I swear to you. We moved here from California after my dad left. To get a fresh start. It’s just us. My mom doesn’t even date!”
Ladon started the engine as another burst fired between him and Dragon. “Tell me her given name.”
She didn’t have a choice. Mad or not, he’d already figured it out. “Januson.”
Ladon hit the steering wheel. He slammed on the brakes and the van skidded down the hill of the store’s driveway. “Of course,” he muttered.
“Is my mom some sort of war criminal? Did she free Nazis or bomb villages?” Because the way he responded, the Fates must have had a hand in all the horrors humans inflicted on each other. “Tell me!” This was too much. Not her mom.
Ladon released the brakes. “Your mother is Mira of the Jani Prime.” He looked back at Dragon. “Most likely.”
Not that Rysa understood what the name meant. Or why it felt ominous. An image of her mother as an old-time silent movie villain popped into her mind, complete with a top hat and a huge mustache to twirl. Her mother cackled, but since she was in black and white, a dialog card appeared instead. Bwa-ha-ha! it said.
What the hell was her nasty showing her now? “What does that mean?” she yelled. She slapped the seat. The Burners were bad enough, but now her mother was some sort of supervillain?
Rysa Torres, the subpar Fate, locked to ghouls and unable to control the flaming visions pirouetting behind her eyes, with a supervillain mother in a top hat and a handlebar mustache.
Ladon slapped the steering wheel again. “Are you always like this? So volatile? Because it’s getting on my—” He stopped suddenly when a wave of light pulsed across Dragon’s hide.
“I…” What should she say? Gosh, looks like I’m a supervillain, too? But me, I’m a spaz! “Sometimes I can’t pay attention. I get worked up. I don’t have my meds.”
Ladon grunted. “You don’t need to yell.”
She didn’t answer. How many times in her life had she run off a boy or a friend or teacher because she couldn’t calm down?
“Do you know anything about your family? The Jani?”
She shook her head. How many Fates could there be? What if the planet teemed with supervillains?
“There aren’t many of your kind.” Ladon leaned forward slightly and peered at the road. “Most triads aren’t Prime. Often, a new Prime triad will break off and start a new family line. But not always. Your family doesn’t. They consolidate power. It’s their context.” He looked her over. “Mostly.”
“So my mom’s part of one of these Primes?” Who the hell called themselves Prime anyway? It sounded autocratic. Something despots did.
“Your mother can read what-is. Make choices to optimize outcomes in the present situation.” He switched lanes. “Your aunt Ismene is their past-seer. You can’t hide anything from a past-seer. They know what-was. How you got to where you are. Your uncle Faustus is their future-seer. He’s…”
Ladon grumbled. “They are not… nice, Rysa. They were once the Prime triad of the Roman Empire, until the Christian emperors decided they were satanic.”
Dragon snorted.
Her mother’s gold eagle. It must be her talisman. “My mom always wears this little eagle. Or I think it’s an eagle. It looks old. And well-worn, like it had been handed down to her. She said it was a family heirloom and one day I’d inherit it.”
Ladon’s grip on the steering wheel intensified again. “The talisman of empire. The Jani Prime knew how to manipulate and control the flow of political information. They were very powerful, in their time. Kingmakers, at a time when making a king meant controlling the civilized world.”
Her mother controlled kings. And emperors. “Wait.” The implications of what Ladon said about Rome sank in. “How old is my mom?” She looked old enough to be Rysa’s mother, but just barely. People asked if they were sisters all the time.
“How old are you?” She looked back at Dragon. Were they immortal? “Am I going to spend eternity with randomized burning visions?” Would she be sitting in some old age home in five hundred years, her brain totally fried?
Ladon’s brow furrowed. “You ask a lot of questions.”
What did he expect her to do? “That exit.” Rysa pointed at the off-ramp.
He pulled onto the county road and headed east.
“Am I going to turn into a Burner?” She bounced in her seat. “I don’t want to be a Burner.”
Ladon exhaled and glanced into the mirror. Another surge burst between him and Dragon. “You’re not going to turn into a Burner.”
“Are you sure?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he peered down her street when they turned.
“That house, up there. The gray one.” Rysa bounced again, the need to run for the front door and pull out her mother almost overwhelming what little control she had left.
They slowed and Ladon kept his gaze steady on her home. His posture changed—his anger about the Jani resurfaced as he stared at the front door. “Your mother will not be happy to see me.”
His words vanished before she caught them and disappeared from her consciousness. Her mom was alone with monsters and the man who said he’d help was having second thoughts. Again.
“It’s dark. Maybe she left. Maybe she’s okay.” Rysa pointed at the house. Maybe she wasn’t inside and Ladon’s oscillating attitude didn’t matter. “Do you think she’s okay?”
He stopped the van a few houses away, up the cross street but still in view. “Please be quiet. No more questions. Let me concentrate. We need to know if Burners are about.”
Was she still talking that much? “Can she get away from them? They caught me. Will she black out, too?”
Ladon grimaced.
“Do you feel Mom’s seer? Should I be able—”
“Be quiet. Please.” A blast moved between him and Dragon. “We’re not close enough for me to feel her seer. I’m not sure about you.” He scrutinized every inch of the house and yard, and pointed at the front door. “The power’s been cut. The house isn’t on like the neighbors’. No residual lights. No humming.”
Rysa blinked. The nasty thing in her head sat up like a sniffing dog. She felt a distinct need for caution. “They’re here.”
His stone face didn’t change, but his gaze darted over the windows and the areas on either side of the house. “You need to stay calm. Don’t run off. And try not to fire random seer bursts at us. Not when we’re dealing with Burners in close quarters. We know this is new to you, but if you focus, you can hold it in check.”
She watched the house, not really listening. She’d heard this all before: Concentrate, Rysa. You can do it. It’s not that hard. You’re a smart girl. Use some of those smarts to pay attention.
“Rysa? Did you hear me?”
When she looked back, he’d started to slip on his armored jacket.
“There’s another one in the back.” Ladon flipped
a sleeve toward Dragon as if commanding her to put on the other jacket. As if she was just another problem he needed to corral.
“Just because my mom’s part of this Jani Prime, you decided not to be civil?”
“Civil? You’re the one yelling.” He finished pulling on the jacket. “When this is done, you and your mother can go your own way.”
Ladon had no desire to use her. He’d been friendly because helping was what he did. But she’d become the new face of this Jani family he detested and he’d clicked off any possibility to connect with her, as a friend or otherwise, no matter how much Dragon badgered him about it.
She’d told him she had problems paying attention. She didn’t have her medication. With everything happening, he shouldn’t expect the most iron-willed person to hold it together, much less her.
She’d try anyway. Her mom was in trouble. But Ladon’s words hurt more than his anger or his annoyance. They hurt worse than any time Tom had rolled his eyes. Worse than any teasing by a classmate. Worse than her elementary school counselor’s disappointed sighs. More than her mother’s exasperation or the arguments between her parents. Worse than anything.
The words shouldn’t hurt. They’d just met. But a connection to Ladon and Dragon vibrated from the future and made the hurt echo.
Light burst from Dragon and he touched her shoulder.
She was twenty years old, for Heaven’s sake. Twenty. She screwed up all the time. This path through her life was well-worn. Her soul should be hardened and she should threaten him with some plucky comeback and a Fate ninja ass-kicking because he acted like a jerk.
But it wasn’t in her. Not with this man and this beast.
Ladon’s eyes widened. His fingers grazed her forearm. “I know this is hard for you. I’m—”
She didn’t hear the rest. The weird visions happened again. She saw the sky stained sick with Burner fire. She felt disconnected, disoriented, as if the shackles anchored her body to the underside of the clouds. She drowned in a wispy sea of acid rain.
And so did her mother.
A loud pop rocked the house. The entire building shook and the windows rattled. The house was about to burn. A fireball was about to rip through the entire block.
Games of Fate (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 1) Page 5