Games of Fate (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 1)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Ladon stumbled and Rysa fell to the floor.

  Mira’s elbow landed in Faustus’s gut. “I hate you! You goddamned monster! I’ve always hated you!” She vomited onto the kitchen’s stone floor.

  “Ladon!”

  He spun around just as the Burner punched.

  The ghoul was encased head to toe in a wet suit but he gave off the Burner odor anyway, and he hit harder than any Burner Ladon had dealt with before.

  The Burner punched again but Ladon ducked and rammed the Burner against the stovetop. The ghoul’s fist came down hard on Ladon’s kidneys.

  Pain exploded through his lower back but he couldn’t let it take over. He had to breathe through it and end this fast.

  Ladon swung the stovetop’s metal grate and twenty pounds of metal contacted the Burner’s jaw.

  “Let go of me!”

  Faustus hauled Rysa into the tunnel. She kicked at his knee but he dodged and bounced her head against the wall.

  She crumpled to the stone floor. Ladon’s focus constricted to her, to the damage her uncle caused, and he willed her his strength. He’d will her his life, if he could.

  Rysa gasped.

  Ladon dropped the grating and sprinted down the tunnel. If he could get enough distance between—

  The Burner slammed him into the rock. The fiend grinned a stiff, luminous sneer as he pressed his palm against his own face and clicked his neck and jaw back into place.

  His other hand sizzled around Ladon’s throat.

  The Burner blew an acid kiss.

  Ladon coughed. His eyes blurred and he twisted against the ghoul’s grip. “You’re dead, Faustus!” he yelled down the tunnel.

  Faustus wrenched Rysa’s hair and dragged her away without a response. He offered no grunt or snigger or comeuppance, only his sour gaze as she screamed and kicked against his grip.

  Ladon tried to lunge but the Burner held him fast. “Not so tough without the dragon, are you?” The ghoul laughed.

  “Rysa! Fight!” Maybe she’d get away. She was strong enough.

  Faustus hit her again. He pointed past Ladon into the kitchen. “Mira! Come!”

  Rysa panted and clawed at his grip.

  Ladon punched at the Burner but the ghoul hissed and banged Ladon’s shoulders against the rock. The Burner tisked and sparks flew off his teeth.

  “Fate binds us, Ladon-Human.” Mira shuffled by and down the tunnel. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  Rysa bit Faustus’s wrist.

  He hit her again. “Bite me one more time and the stone wall will be the last thing you see, you little bitch.”

  Mira hit Faustus’s back. “She’s your niece!”

  They were family, not that Faustus cared. He had always been more Parcae than Jani. This attack on Rysa proved how little he’d changed since they lived as Romans.

  “Let her go!” Ladon yelled once again.

  The Burner shook Ladon. He fried Ladon’s neck with one hand and scratched at his forehead with the other.

  Ladon grabbed the rock wall and brute-forced his legs up as fast as he could between himself and the ghoul, then kicked before the Burner realized what was happening.

  They both tumbled into the tunnel.

  Ladon came down on top and smashed a knee into the ghoul’s face.

  The Burner howled and pushed off Ladon. He bolted into the cave—and toward Dragon.

  Faustus carried Rysa over the entrance ledge. “Save your beast, Ladon-Human,” he called.

  “Rysa!” The damned Burner didn’t know where to look. Ladon would grind Faustus into pulp and then take care of the ghoul—

  Mira’s seer chimed through the tunnel with such strength Ladon cringed. She pointed over his head. “Go!” she yelled, before she, too, dropped off the ledge.

  Ladon turned on his heels. How many times had he regretted pausing before listening to Timothy? He darted through the kitchen and picked up Faustus’s dagger as he sprinted into the living quarters.

  The Burner ran through the garden and was already halfway to the door to Ladon’s apartment.

  He threw the dagger, praying that this one time he’d be good enough without the beast. The blade sliced through the Burner’s spinal cord and lodged hilt-deep in his chest.

  The blast took Sister’s salad vegetables, and ricocheted off the walls. A storage shed blew over. Ladon bounced against the cavern’s rock wall.

  The plots lay shredded with a wide crater in their place. A fruit tree toppled. Benches caught fire. Six panes of the draconis fenestra shattered and the leaded crystal rained onto the fields.

  Ladon dropped to his knees. His home had been ripped apart. Rysa was gone.

  Her uncle meant to turn her Burner and Ladon had let it happen. He’d let Faustus drag her away. He might have to take her life by exploding her newly-incendiary body, all because he couldn’t take the chance of being too far from Dragon.

  He needed to keep his wits about him. If he descended too far, the beast would wake a hunter and smear flat every Fate within a thousand miles.

  He couldn’t. Rysa did not want him to become a monster like Faustus.

  Something glinted on the cave wall. It flashed and Ladon stared across the cavern at the spot. The threatening rupture of his control froze, somehow entranced by the dancing light, and he stood up. He walked through the shattered field and past the smoldering apple tree. He continued walking, and stepped around a shattered storage shed and through the stream.

  Mira’s wedding band hung on the cavern’s opposite wall, tied to a string with a note taped beside it. He pulled it down and turned it over in the reflected sunlight.

  He unfolded the paper. Across the front, written in Mira’s precise hand, was an address on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. An address, and five words: “You are right about Sandro.”

  Faustus couldn’t see the possibilities beyond turning Rysa. Once the venom hit her blood, she’d be cloaked in chaos. She’d vanish from his future-seer. No one could read Burners. So he didn’t know.

  She wouldn’t create an army. She never could. The venom would kill her.

  Shifters always died.

  He had no way of heading it off. Dragon slept, and would for another day. They’d follow, but they’d be too late.

  Ladon flipped the note over as he fought a need to shred the paper. Three more words were scrawled across the back: “Wake the beast.” Followed by another four: “What makes you tremble?”

  Ladon stared at the paper. He didn’t tremble. Nothing made him tremble. But… he looked down at the swath of skimmed hair on his chest. He and the beast, they mirrored more than their energy.

  A single chuckle rose from his throat.

  He touched Rysa’s spot before running for Dragon’s nest.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Faustus dragged Rysa and her mother to an unfinished building on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. It loomed over its suburban office park like a seventeen-story-tall, boomerang-shaped ogre. Lightning flashed. Reflections thrust across the glass-and-brick surface in jarring, high-contrast angles. The storm brewing over the mountains backlit the open upper floors and the entire area looked like the set of a forties’ black-and-white horror movie.

  Rysa leaned against her mother as they rode up the elevator at the center of the office park monster. Each floor clicked. The elevator dinged.

  The door opened.

  Faustus pushed Rysa out first. She stumbled onto the unfinished concrete deck and into the flapping plastic sheets.

  No walls to keep away the wind and the rain up here.

  “Let her go,” Mira said. Her mother’s present-seer hissed across the concrete deck of the unfinished floor. Her chiming had been consumed by a faster, discordant vibration that rattled Rysa’s teeth.

  Faustus squinted and slapped his sister.

  About halfway between Rock Springs and Salt Lake City, her uncle shut down her seers and her nasty yelped once before cowering under her consciousness. The spike in her he
ad now bled colorless heat into the void behind her eyes.

  She felt nothing. Not the spike, or her pain, or any of the emotions that should be flooding her mind.

  I’m normal again, she thought. Back to the hyperactive girl who failed school but aced tests. Who scared the other kids because she knew. Who hid with her toys and dreamed of a day when she’d swim in lakes and explore caves. Back before Ladon helped her find the will to fight for the life she wanted.

  Plastic tarps snapped and dust blew into her eyes when a wind gust blasted through the open walls.

  “Let us go,” Mira pleaded. “Please.”

  Faustus slapped her mom again. He wiggled his fingers when he pulled back his hand. “You don’t see the visions. You don’t know what they’re going to do.”

  He wiped Mira’s tears on his pant leg.

  “You don’t understand what you’re seeing! How could you? You destroyed our sister.” Mira waved her swollen knuckles. “You destroyed me. The future means nothing unless you understand its foundations.”

  “Is that so?” Faustus snorted. “Yet here you are, propelled by the same power that propels all Parcae.” He grabbed Rysa’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  “No!” Mira swung at him.

  Faustus bent her wrist and she screamed.

  “Next time, I break it.” He waved at Rysa. “Only we were capable of dealing with this. No one else could maneuver the Dracae. Only the Jani Prime.”

  “I hate you,” Rysa screamed. “You murdered those people in Chicago! The Burners were your tool. You did it. You destroyed Ismene’s life. You twist and destroy everyone you touch.”

  Rysa tried to pull away but Faustus slapped her across the mouth.

  Mira spit at her brother. “I sent her to Ladon! When we were young, when we all served the Empire and his sister claimed retribution and you and Ismene paid dearly for our father’s conceit, Ladon never treated me or Ismene like meat. Not once. He let us live when the Dracas wanted our heads.”

  Surprise darted across Faustus’s features.

  “That’s right! He’s always regretted what he did! The first time Ismene and I escaped from you? When the ash from the mountain fell? When you and Father schemed? We found him. He let us go! Ismene and I tried to hurt him but he made sure we reached the port. He’s a better man than you. He’s always been a better man!”

  Mira tried to pull Rysa to her side. “I wasn’t hiding from our sister. I was hiding from you.”

  Ladon had only told Rysa about the girl. He hadn’t told her that he’d protected her mom. But he wouldn’t. Protecting is what he did. To him, it wasn’t special.

  Mira yanked Rysa’s face around so they were eye to eye. “I do forgive him, honey. He’s worth forgiving. I hope you can forgive me.”

  “Mom.” Her mother had never felt she had a choice.

  Faustus’s ice-cold grip clamped down on Rysa’s bicep. Mira’s pleading hands pawed and her wild eyes were a whirlwind of love and hate.

  “It changes nothing.” Faustus shoved Mira into a stack of sheetrock.

  “You are as much Torres as you are Jani.” Mira held up her bandaged forearm for Rysa to see. “Maybe more. Use it, daughter!”

  Her mother’s words made no sense. Why would being a Torres be as important as being Jani?

  Faustus wound an electrical cord around Mira’s wrists and tugged her toward an open wall support. “You’re staying here.”

  “You’re going to die!” Mira yelled. “You undo what you’ve done or you’re going to die!”

  Faustus dug his fingers into Rysa’s back and pushed her forward. “So says the present-seer.”

  They walked from the elevators into the left wing of the building and around a gas-powered winch attached to a spooled cable.

  Faustus snatched down plastic sheeting and the wind cracked it against his face before it tumbled away. He spit out dust. “You can hate me all you want. It will have no effect on the future. You’ll birth an army. They’ll follow you.”

  Twice Faustus pushed Rysa over pallets of concrete blocks and stacks of girders.

  “I will not do this.” Ladon told her that words held power. She’d use hers to find her strength. She’d snatch her control back. Her uncle interfered, but her seers—her nasty—were part of her.

  Not part of him.

  Faustus continued his droning. “After a while, you won’t remember hating me. You won’t remember your mother. You won’t remember sleeping with the Dracos. But you’ll always be Parcae, and you will always go to your fate.”

  “Pathetic, ignorant, ugly motherfucker!” Rysa spit in his face.

  He wrenched her wrist and blinked for a moment as if he couldn’t speak. “Whore!”

  He pressed the insignia bracelet into her flesh and the metal dragons poked into her skin. She focused on the new twinge. It let her feel, at least a little.

  Faustus shoved her forward. “When the time comes, the Burners will do what they were meant to do. The Burners will end fire with fire.”

  Inside a tool cage on the open edge of the deck, a man wearing a light blue cardigan and holding a pipe between his lips paced from mesh side to mesh side, muttering into the wind. He clapped when he saw Faustus and a cloud rose off his skin.

  A Burner.

  “Tell her to let me out!” The ghoul jigged around a generator.

  Adrestia stepped from behind a stack of sheetrock. “It is not your station to demand anything, Bob.” A ragged laceration on her cheek and a bruise around her eye bloated her face. She lumbered toward her father like a zombie Fate.

  “I hope that scars up nice and pretty.” Rysa signed bitch at her.

  Adrestia muttered something in French. Faustus muttered back and yanked Rysa toward the cage. The Burner sniffed and pointed with his pipe.

  “Oh… she smells scrumptious.” He sniffed again. “And different from you two.” He climbed the mesh with lightning speed and hung from the top of the cage with the pipe between his teeth.

  Adrestia hit the metal with a rod. “Tais-toi!”

  “I will not shut up!” Bob bit down and his pipe snapped in two. “Hey! That’s my favorite pipe!” He dropped to the floor and smoothed the front of his cardigan. It crinkled and scrunched like a plastic tarp. “I don’t have to be quiet if I don’t want to. I’m doing you the favor here, not the other way around.” The tarp-cardigan contracted into rows of permanent wrinkles under the heat of his fingertips.

  He sniffed again. “I smell Dracae.” Bob raised his hands and stepped back. “One of them didn’t follow you, did they? Because you promised.”

  “No. The Dracos-beast sleeps and the Dracas hate Parcae,” Faustus said.

  “I don’t see why. Fates are delectable.” Bob smacked his lips and did another jig.

  Faustus waved at the cage. “Back away from the gate.”

  Adrestia hit the side mesh again and swore at Bob in French. The Burner flipped her off.

  “She’s mean.” He nodded toward Adrestia. “Where’s the two who put me in here? One of them said you’d bring some Shifter for me to snack on when I was done.” He clapped with sparks and a wispy smoke.

  Rysa’s seers were silent, but what-is pointed to this fate. She was about to be turned into the Queen of the Burners by a demented Mr. Rogers.

  “This is not the future I choose.” She needed to fight, not be an automaton like Adrestia. “That Dracae you smell? He took care of the other two—” Rysa pointed at her cousin. “—and he’s going to take care of you, Burner.”

  Bob chortled and smacked his lips at Adrestia. “Can I eat the mean one?”

  Faustus swung a wrench at the cage mesh with so much force it dented. Sparks flew as the wrench slid down the wire. “Show some respect,” he yelled.

  Bob stepped back and his hands raised again. “I’m just asking.”

  A gust blew through the open floor and picked up the Burner’s stench. Faustus gagged. Rysa staggered back. Bob’s teeth flashed like the lightning behind him. Arms pull
ed Adrestia into the grid of the ceiling.

  And the past rode in on the wind.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Adrestia disappeared before Faustus could pull her down.

  “Burners! She can’t see them.” Faustus spun around aiming his gun at the shadows, then at Rysa’s head. “This is your fault! Metus and Timor should have been with her.”

  “What did you think Ladon would do? Ask them nicely to give me back?”

  Faustus pointed the gun at her chest. “Your talisman’s chaos. We didn’t see the Dracas giving a damn.” He flicked his gun at the darkness above. “Addy!”

  Bob laughed. “Addy. That’s a cute name for such… a… bitch!” He shrieked the last three words and hopped up and down giggling like a fool.

  Rysa dropped to the floor and pressed her back against a wheelbarrow. “Fix what you did to me so I can use my seers.”

  Faustus punched her this time.

  She tasted blood. He’d split her lip. Pain raged through her head—it, too, might split, or pop like a damned Burner.

  Maybe she should let Adrestia die. What did she care? After everything the War Babies had done, they deserved to have their present-seer eaten by ghouls.

  But her mom hadn’t raised her to be coldhearted—to be Parcae. This wasn’t what Adrestia would have chosen, if she knew how to choose.

  Rysa couldn’t let Adrestia’s fate strip her to bones and meat. “You trained them to be your attack dogs.” Her seers clicked a small bit of understanding through the fog. “You had her killing by the time she was five!” He did this to them when they were children.

  Faustus leaned against a stack of sheetrock. “Damned Ambustae. Where did they come from?”

  “Let me out!” Bob howled. “I saw them first!” He climbed the mesh.

  Faustus scratched his head and the butt of his gun rubbed against his temple. “We watched this place. Burners don’t come to Salt Lake City. We were careful.”

  “Papa! Ça fait mal!”

  Rysa had spent her life dragged behind her attention issues, bruising and breaking every time she hit a sharp edge or a terrible divot. But, she realized, her issues belonged to her. They were part of her.