Kris Austen Radcliffe - [Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon 01.5]

by Compulsio

  This morning, when she came down to the kitchen, her mom had been watching the news. A suburban Chicago mall exploded last night. On the drive to campus, the radio announcers had been on about big fires in several of the towns along Interstate 94, between Chicago and Minneapolis. All day, pundits had infested the news channels blaring in the student unions, bobbing their heads and pushing up their glasses, ranting about terrorists or gas leaks or 911 calls that may or may not have indicated a suicide bomb—

  “I’m sure you left your meds at home.” Gavin leaned back as he spoke. Why don’t you calm down so you can drive home? he signed.

  Calm down? Her syllabus disintegrated on the table, ruined by a splash of hot and random, much like her academic career. She stared at it even though she didn’t want to. Her mind hyper-focused on the one perfect representation of her time at the U and it wasn’t going to let it go.

  “You should talk to Disability Services.” His chair groaned as he shifted around again.

  A new rainbow of reflections danced across his hearing aids and her attention snapped to the brilliance in his ears. His gaze jerked up to the screen behind her.

  The images must have changed. She’d seen the stories at lunch: Before sunrise, a theme park in The Dells had exploded with a fireball visible from the interstate. Black River Falls had ignited in the middle of the afternoon. She’d come out of Chemistry to find the entire campus stopped, everyone staring at their phones and—

  Rysa breathed, refusing to turn around and be caught by the news. She’d spent her last class staring out the window toward the east, her anxiety creeping up. Whatever stalked Wisconsin felt like it was about to burst from the horizon and scorch all of campus—and her in particular. The effort it took not to freak out made her head ache and was as big a contributor to her inattention as anything else.

  Today was not a good day to forget her meds.

  Gavin said something again. Her face scrunched up as she tried to parse it.

  “Rysa, did you hear me?”

  He’d said something about Disability Services.

  What are they going to do? she signed back. Follow me around and nag me all day?

  They’d turned her down for a translator position when she applied last year even though she’d aced the exam and had no hearing difficulties of her own. Her damned ADHD reared its head during the interview.

  His jaw tightened. Pulling ninety-ninth percentile on all three parts of the GRE will only get you so far with grad school admissions.

  Why was he being such a dick? School, the fires—and to make things worse, her mom’s obvious pain this morning before she left the house—all combined to make the perfect Storm Rysa. At breakfast, her mother had held out a glass of orange juice, her hand shaking and her joints swollen and red. Rysa downed the juice in three gulps, more to keep her mom from worrying than because she wanted it.

  The juice had distracted her, which was why she’d forgotten her meds. They were probably on the kitchen counter between the empty glass and her mom’s prescription pain killers.

  “I’m going home.” She needed to get away from all the campus television screens. The blinking made her squint.

  Gavin wrapped his hand around her wrist. “I just want to make sure you’re alright before you go off to graduate school. I can’t help you with your courses if I’m in Boston and you’re somewhere in the Rockies.”

  She stared at his fingers until he let go. All her spazziness made her head throb in short, intense pulses and his exasperated fussing wasn’t making it better. She reached for her damned bag again. Maybe she had some acetaminophen. At least it would take the edge off for the drive home.

  Get some sleep. That helps, he signed.

  She pressed her temple. What did he know about what helped? Her head felt as if every muscle on her scalp was about to fight-club her sinuses.

  The pain hadn’t been this bad a moment ago. Her head had hurt all day, but now the war raging inside her skull flared into her vision. The coffee shop looked too bright.

  In one sudden moment all the chaos about school and the world and her mom fell away.

  Nausea welled up.

  Her mouth opened. Pain-fueled words about how Gavin should stop patronizing her because he just made it worse wanted to spill out. Sentences about the future and the past and how right now in the present she felt like she was going to throw up and she’d get control of her ADHD and he could be as mad as he wanted but he didn’t have the right to—

  Blades of blinding light stabbed behind her left eye. Terrible, hideous light coming out of nowhere and burning like she’d looked directly at the sun.

  “What the hell?” she gasped. A real gasp, one that, in a split second, forced air all the way down into the base of her lungs. Her hands clutched her forehead.

  This wasn’t withdrawal symptoms because she missed her meds. Her brain just exploded. She was going to keel over in this little coffee shop under the Continuing Education Building and that would be the end of everything and she’d die.

  Spots popped into her vision and floated like wiggly balloons between her and Gavin. They churned, each one its own burning, liquid universe. The spots didn’t look real but she knew if she touched one, it would ignite and fire would spurt onto her hand.

  A spot ruptured. Her nose filled with an acid stench so overpowering she stopped breathing.

  One word overrode everything: Aneurism.

  “Gavin…” She choked out the whisper. Her gut mirrored the pain behind her eye, squirming with an infestation of the fire bubbles. They burst in her stomach and ate her flesh. She’d have retched but the muscles of her belly and chest didn’t move. They wouldn’t respond. They—

  Gavin stood up and pointed at the screen behind her head. He hadn’t noticed her panic. “A gas station in Stillwater exploded!”

  Half an hour from campus. Her chair knocked over when she turned toward the screen. The seatback scraped against the concrete floor and a nauseating metallic screech filled the coffee shop. The sound rasped against her ears, solid and touchable, like the spots. It hung in the air around her limbs, a new phantom weighing her down.

  Gavin stared at the screen behind her head. The freshman server behind the counter stared at her.

  “What’s happening?” Her lips formed the words, but her ears didn’t hear. No vocalizations left her throat.

  Gavin’s gaze jumped from the screen to her and his face blanched. He shouted at the freshman. His mouth moved, his words forming, but she didn’t understand. Something about calling 911.

  Gavin, the freshman who stared at her with terror-filled eyes, the coffee shop’s ugly halogen lighting, the darkening evening outside—it all spun. The planet got on a carnival ride and left her standing alone in the void.

  She blinked. Warm air hit her nose as she pushed through the shop’s door. The spots took on a sharpness that would rip her to shreds if she didn’t get away. Their edges would slice and fiends would eat her whole.

  The world fuzzed out as if someone had slapped a dirty bandage over her eyes. Where her feet landed, she didn’t know.

  A spot burst and a memory flashed: Her mother this morning at the kitchen counter watching the television. She’d rubbed her knuckles and Rysa had wrapped her arm around her shoulder. “Go to class,” her mom said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t hit me!” Gavin yelled.

  Her hand hurt. Her nails dug into the real skin of her real palm. Gavin staggered back into the evening gloom, his nose bloody. But—

  Did she hit him? He glared at her like she was some kind of monster.

  “I don’t… I d-don’t understand,” she stuttered. They stood on the hill, half way between the coffee shop and the student parking lot, standing under the streetlight where the path intersected the walk from one of campus barns. But she didn’t remember—

  Ano
ther spot burst. Her vision filled with orange and hot yellow dropping over the world like a curtain.

  She stood alone in the yellow bull’s-eye of a different streetlight. This one flickered like a strobe, buzzing and popping like it was about to explode. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly as her eyes adjusted to the pulsing shadows. The pressure in her head ratcheted and—

  How the hell did she get into the student parking lot three blocks from the shop? She was losing time. Losing her sense of space. She felt like she was dying. She had to be. Her body dragged her out here to commit suicide and she couldn’t stop it.

  A man, tall and lanky like Gavin, walked toward her between the hand-me-down cars, his step bouncing as if he was about to break into a tango. He wore red running shoes and a black nylon jacket over a blaze orange t-shirt—the fabric version of the damned fire-spots eating her mind.

  He stopped a few feet away, a deep inhale bowing out his chest. His hand swept in front of his nose and he sniffed the air like some cartoon character breathing in fancy perfume. Another inhale and his head tilted at an angle that should have popped every vertebra in his neck.

  “Who…” she stammered. Where was Gavin? “What…”

  “Right where you’re supposed to be.” The man’s thick British accent made his words sound almost unrecognizable.

  The same caustic stench from the ghost spots rose off his skin.

  Real stench. She gagged, her lips and nose curling in a futile attempt to keep the chemical sewage rolling off this creature out of her lungs.

  His teeth gleamed in the dim parking lot light. “Calling yourselves Fates.” He shook his head, tisking. “You see the future but you know nothing.” He grabbed her arm.

  “Let go of me!” The man made no sense and she hyper-focused on his fluorescing mouth, ignoring everything else. His teeth glinted, sharp and too bright. They’d rip her apart if they got near her skin.

  She really was dying. Will die. The weirdness in her head bled into the real world and this man was its manifestation. All the spots, all the phantom smells—they were about to kidnap her. For real.

  Her vision jigged like she’d changed the channel for a microsecond and then switched back to what she had been watching before. But in that microsecond, in that very brief flash when she saw something she knew wasn’t really there, she saw the man lean forward to bite her shoulder.

  Bite and rip flesh and take himself a right good snack.

  Her chest tried to fill with air and her throat tried to constrict to make as loud a high-pitched noise as it could, but only a whisper came out: “Ghoul.”

  He grinned at her with his razor-sharp teeth. A loud sniff rushed into his nose. “You smell tasty, luv. I might take myself a nip now, before you finish activating.” He licked his lips.

  “Activating?” She wasn’t dying of a brain aneurism. She didn’t know why, or what it meant, but the word held truth.

  Ratty fingerless gloves clamped over her mouth and nose. “You’re a bit of a freak, aren’t you? Can’t hold still. Stay normal for a moment longer, darling.”

  “Let her go!” Gavin jumped the lot fence, his feet pumping as he landed.

  New panic flooded in, different from what she felt for herself. The ghoul will kill Gavin. The scene played through the pressure behind her eyes: He’ll lock onto her friend’s throat. He’ll feel a surge of hunger and he’ll salivate like an animal. Then his hands will cook Gavin’s flesh.

  Run! she signed. Go!

  The slow dread of certainty fizzled through her consciousness, as heavy as the stink wafting off the man. Something bad was about to happen. Something as terrible as this ghoul.

  Gavin halted like he’d run into a wall. He gagged, bending forward. The stench must have hit his nose.

  “He your boyfriend?” The hand over her mouth loosened.

  “Please don’t hurt him.” The ghoul could take her, but Gavin had a life ahead of him. He’d do good. Become a wonderful doctor.

  The ghoul’s eyes narrowed and his head tilted again as he peered at Gavin. He flicked his chin toward campus. “You better listen, little normal. Better run. Before my mates find you.”

  Gavin stepped back, both his mouth and his hands working but not making sense.

  “Run!” Rysa screamed. He had to get away. She’d make sure—

  Then the world flickered hot yellow again and Gavin was gone. The ghoul stood on her other side, anger dancing though his eyes.

  “Do not do that again!” He slapped and caustic chemicals burned her cheek. Yanking hard, he dragged her toward the break in the fence framing the walk to the road. “Claw me one more time and you’ll be lucky if you keep your arm, you stupid cow.”

  She didn’t remember clawing him. She didn’t remember Gavin running away, either. What did she do? She’d had another blackout and lost more time.

  Nothing made sense.

  The man dragged her through the lot gate and into the street. He pushed her forward with one hand, the fingers of his other tapping in the air as if he played an invisible piano. The tips glowed and smoldered one at a time, turning on and off as he pressed each imaginary key. “Quiet now, luv.”

  A dark-gold hatchback with rusted side panels and blistered paint weaved down the street. A blue van, just as ratty, rushed from the other direction.

  The man inhaled, his chin up. “Time to meet the family, princess.”

  2

  They tumbled out of the vehicles. Ten, twelve, maybe more, their stench so thick it hung in the air like a sick yellow-green mist. Rysa coughed and the man holding her by the neck laughed.

  “Billy! You found her, huh?” The smallest of the group lunged out of the hatchback. Slight and willowy, he—she—Rysa couldn’t tell for sure—wore tattered sweats low on her ass and a baseball cap twisted to the side. She stopped close and tapped her foot on the asphalt as she leaned forward, her little fists pushing into her hips.

  The air whistled into her scrunched-up nose. “Yep, she’s one of them, alright. Pricks!”

  This thing in front of Rysa was a child, no older than ten.

  The kid jumped straight up into the air and spun in a half-circle, landing on the precise spot she’d launched herself from but with her back to Rysa. “Bring’em out!” she yelled. Another bounce and she faced Rysa again. “Party time, skankadoodle.” Little sparks popped between her fingers when she clapped.

  Billy waved his hand in the air, his fingers skittering like they had a mind of their own. “We’re too visible. He’ll find us again, like at the park with the rollercoaster. That way.” He pointed east, toward Wisconsin. “The Fells. Kells.”

  “The Dells, dickweed.” The child shrugged.

  A woman with dirty hair jerked out of the van, a balled up blanket in her arms. She staggered backward into the bumper—the weight she carried obviously throwing her balance—and she dropped the bundle.

  Chains unfurled. Shackles bounced against the van’s door.

  Metal clinked across the pavement.

  Rysa’s mind drowned in a final flood of panic. She’d been able to keep some wits about her. She’d sent Gavin away. But the pressure behind her eyes screamed and these people had chains and she needed to get away before—

  Time hiccupped. She had her hand around the neck of the dirty-haired woman. The skin of her palm burned as if she’d touched a hot stove and she shrieked, pitching backward.

  How did she get away from Billy? She must have slammed the female ghoul against the van. Her stomach rolled. They’d kill her now. Chained or not, no way would they let her live.

  “Bitch!” the woman shouted.

  Her teeth glowed like miniature, bright-white scalpels. Rysa tried to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth. But the woman had a grip on her arms and heat pushed toward her skin and the panic wouldn’t stop.

  “Lizzy!” Billy caught
the woman’s arms. “Hush now.” Wisps of something—smoke, dust, ash, Rysa didn’t know—rose from the woman’s skin when he touched her cheek.

  The child skipped over, her little finger poking at Rysa’s chest. “Get her up!”

  Lizzy let go and another ghoul snatched Rysa’s head back. Disorientation overrode all sense of up or down. A raw scream erupted from her throat, sound finally pushing out. Hands lifted her hips into the air. More held her legs. The ghouls flung her up high above the pavement and giggled when they caught her on the way down.

  The chains rattled and the child’s harsh laugh hissed through the air. Billy’s grip on Rysa’s thigh tightened. The heat from Lizzy’s palms burned through Rysa’s shirt to her skin.

  The sky above glowed. Reflections of Minneapolis set the cloud deck ablaze and the sky swam in yellow-green, like the haze from these monsters. They held Rysa’s neck, waves of burning acid stench rolling to her nose from their breath.

  Mutters arose from the ghouls as they carried her away from the vehicles. Someone clamped shackles onto her wrists. Big, thick manacles like she’d seen in bad movies. Rysa thrashed, but another set clamped onto her ankles.

  They held her above their heads but the heavy chains pulled down her limbs. Her back arched as her shoulders and hips wrenched downward. She saw only the night above, the clouds hanging over the world the way her body hung over the asphalt.

  Heat seared from the metal across Rysa’s right wrist. Pain jolted her mind as bright bolts and white noise. Maybe she’d black out again. Maybe she’d blink and be on top of the blue van, her body turned ninja to rain death down onto the ghouls.

  But they held her tight.

  She couldn’t turn her head but she felt what the child did. She saw the sky but a finger melted resin into the lock and bonded the metal around her wrist.

  “Stop! Please stop!” Tears blurred her eyes. Her voice rasped. The acid haze burned away every thought in her mind.

  One of the ghouls screamed and the heat at her ankle stopped. A loud crack puffed next to her head. More screams, and the hands under her back and hips let go.