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  Fatebound

  A Mortality Bound Novel

  S.W. Clarke

  Ramy Vance

  Keep Evolving Studios

  Contents

  Join The Clan!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

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  About the Author

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  Chapter 1

  Back in Brazil, we called this feeling chutar o pau da barraca. Or, literally: to kick the tent pole. To knock the whole thing down.

  Maybe I just wanted to kick something.

  Past the Mustang’s headlights, the darkness settled in like a blanket. No stars, no moon—just trees, a straight slip of highway and two headlamps defying the night. We had been running for three weeks, and every time they’d found us. The World Army. The human army. Dr. Serena Russo.

  Beside me, Justin’s hand hovered over the gearstick, as though at any moment he would need to use it.

  “We’re OK,” I lied, my hand settling over his. His fingers felt clammy; they shook. Frankly, I didn’t even know how he’d stayed upright this long. And yet his jaw remained firm as he stared out the windshield, his left hand overtop the steering wheel.

  “I appreciate your optimism, Isa,” Justin said. A dime-drop of sweat ran from his hairline down the side of his face, clinging to his jawbone.

  “Do you want me to drive?” I asked.

  “You can drive a manual?”

  “Actually, I can. Just not well.” In Brazil, An ex-lover had given me exactly two lessons before we’d broken up. But this wasn’t the time to bring that detail up to my current lover.

  “Let’s switch over we’re out of Canada.” The engine growled as he accelerated us. Outside, the trees had fallen away to open land, houses winking by.

  “All right,” I said. “Just know that I’m here.”

  His face turned a few degrees toward me. “Are you worried about me?”

  “You’re ill.” I said it so low I might not have heard it myself if I hadn’t voiced the words.

  And yet I knew he’d heard me, because the steering wheel’s leather creaked as his fingers squeezed. “My body’s sick,” he said. “But that will heal.”

  I sucked in air, remembering what had happened. What he had done back in Montreal. What he was capable of doing.

  Justin must have sensed my trepidation, because he squeezed my hand and spoke in a tone that would have soothed a wolverine. “My body is changing. Not my brain. Not my heart.”

  “Well, technically those parts of you are—”

  “You know I don’t mean technically, biologist.”

  My hand slid up his arm to his shoulder. “They didn’t see us leave, Justin. They don’t know we’re gone, where we are. Not this time. You can slow it down a little.”

  “They always see us, Isa. They know what I look like, what you look like. This car.”

  “I can change one of those things right now.”

  His eyes flicked to me, his face shadowed. “What?”

  I wound my finger into one of my red curls, pulled it taut. “Tell me what you want me to look like.”

  “You’re going to shapeshift right here in the car in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Trust me, I’ve done it in weirder places.” I managed a smile. “And it’s not shapeshifting.”

  He didn’t notice the smile, or didn’t feel up to returning it. “What about your passport? Your photo identification?” He flounced my red hair with one hand. “This is Isabella Ramirez, as confusing as that might be.”

  Sure, the name and the Irish appearance didn’t quite line up. Isabella Ramirez was Brazilian, but I looked like an Aileen O’Sullivan. Of course, that was the beauty of my life: my passport listed me as an “Other,” which meant I could be other. It wasn’t illegal for me to burn magic—not yet, at least—and so it wasn’t illegal for me to change my appearance as I saw fit.

  “I can shift back when I need to.” I snapped my fingers. “That fast. At least, until we can get me a new identity.”

  “I guess I’ll need to be someone else, too,” Justin murmured.

  I nodded. “When we stop, we can shave your hair off.”

  “Hey, I like my hair.”

  I lifted my hand from where it had rested atop the cap of his shoulder, drew my fingers through his black hair—one of my favorite things. I gave it a flirtatious tug. “So do I. It’ll grow back.”

  “OK,” he said. “I want you to look like whatever feels closest to who you are.”

  My eyebrows rose. “To who I am?”

  He gave a single nod, eyes never leaving the empty highway. His throat spasmed as he suppressed another cough. “You’ve been alive five hundred years, right?”

  “Five hundred and twelve.”

  “How many illusions did you wear in that time?”

  “Twelve thousand, eight hundred and thirty-two.” I didn’t even hesitate; I knew those faces like I knew that cells were the basic unit of life. I knew them as simply as I knew I loved Justin Truly.

  “Holy— Twelve thousand, Isa?” He glanced at me; I held his gaze. “OK, of twelve thousand, pick the one that’s you.”

  I sat back into the Mustang’s bucket seat, closed my eyes. An anxiety came over me, different from the constant adrenaline I’d felt since we had escaped Montreal in the night. Different from the heart-pain of wondering when and how we’d be found by the World Army’s lead scientist—my former boss, Serena Russo.

  This was the anxiety of thrill. Changing my appearance one of the most wonderful, enduring pleasures of my life.

  And I knew exactly who I wanted to look like.

  My eyes opened, shifted to Justin. “What if you don’t like the way I look?”

  “Isabella”—his hand finally left the gearshift and drifted to my thigh—“it’s not about that. I mean, it’s about more than that. I picked you.”

  Ah, I thought. This is why. This was why I’d chosen a life on the run with this man. This was why I would let the World Army have me before they’d take him.

  I reached down to the hem of my sweater and pulled it up over my head.

  “What are you doing?” Justin asked.

  “These clothes won’t fit once I’m done.” I started on the buttons of my jeans. “Don’t worry—I brought other sizes.”

  “You expected this.”

  “It’s in my nature,” I said. “It’s what encantado do.”

  Thirty seconds later I’d stripped down, the buttery leather touching only my bare back and legs, the Mustang purring beneath me. “Don’t get distracted.”

  Justin’s eyes flicked toward me, surveyed me once in the almost-darkness before returning to the road. This time he did smile. “Too late.”

&
nbsp; Maybe tonight would be one of those nights. I could nearly touch what floated between us, that buzz of energy. “This won’t be a minute.” Though in truth it wouldn’t take anywhere close to sixty seconds. Shifting to this form would be like passing under a bridge in the rain, a split-second absence of noise.

  My eyes closed once more. When I opened them, they would be brown. The thigh beneath Justin’s hand would be longer, a bit more slender. I would tell him in a soft alto that I was done.

  And no one except him and I would know who I was.

  Such was the power of the encantado.

  ↔

  At the gas station, Justin climbed out of the car and stumbled toward the trees. I watched through the open driver’s-side door as he gagged, and by the time I stepped out, he was already wiping his mouth.

  He didn’t like me worrying about him. So I passed around the back of the Mustang and opened the gas gauge. “I’ll fill her up.”

  He stood with his hands on his knees, bracing himself as if he’d run miles. “Just flip open the flap and turn the nozzle …”

  “I’ve got it, dear,” I teased. I turned toward the pump, which had only two options: leaded or unleaded. Above us, a neon sign flickered in the night, beckoning drivers in. And past the two pumps, a little convenience shop glowed with a half-light. Through the window, a man surrounded by peanuts and scratch-off tickets watched his tiny television.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” I said to Justin.

  I passed into the shop, the bell chiming as I did. Hot, recycled air blew my hair back, and I was grateful for the stale scent of the place.

  Here was a little bit of calm, a tiny sanctuary on the highway.

  The man raised his lidded eyes to me, which widened as they passed up and down my body. I knew what that look meant. I knew it in the way his spine straightened, his elbow hitting the counter. “Evening. What can I do you for?”

  “Thirty dollars of unleaded.” I slipped the money from the front pocket of my jeans onto the countertop. For a moment I observed my own fingers; where before they had been pale, freckled, they now bore golden undertones. I appeared part Asian.

  “You driving that red Mustang at the pump?”

  My eyes lifted to the owner. “Me and my boyfriend.”

  “Pretty ride.” He received the money and rang me up. “What’s brought you out to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night?”

  “We like the middle of nowhere—it’s quieter,” I said. “How far to the border?”

  He handed me my receipt. “Oh, another half hour. Headed to the Big Apple?”

  I smiled, but said nothing else. In the past few days we’d been driving back roads and country roads, deciding where to go next. We couldn’t return to Montreal, that was for certain. It was only after two days of going nowhere that we’d realized we needed to get lost.

  And where’s the closest place you go when you want to be lost? New York City, and the anonymity offered by 8 million humans and Others crammed into 300 square miles.

  Not that I said anything to him. I’d gotten in the habit of ignoring probing questions from strangers. I lifted the receipt. “Thanks.”

  When I came back out, a little boy stood in the center of the parking lot.

  He was staring straight at me.

  I stopped, and he and I observed one another. He couldn’t have been more than three, and he was clutching an oversized, fluffy sheep to his chest. Also, someone had dressed him in nothing but an old-fashioned white loincloth.

  “I found you,” he said in a musical little voice.

  I came forward and bent toward him. “What was that?”

  He gazed up at me, his blue eyes and blond hair almost cherubic under the overhang’s stark light. “I found you before my brothers did.”

  I scanned the parking lot. A blue sedan sat not far off. “Are your brothers in that car?”

  “Isa,” Justin called, “we should head out.”

  I straightened at once. After what had happened, Justin and I didn’t hang around places for long. I touched the head of the boy’s sheep. “Gotta run. Go ahead back to the car, OK?”

  Back at the Mustang, Justin had slumped back into the driver’s seat. I sensed another decline coming on.

  “Still alive?” I opened the gas gauge and hit the unleaded button.

  He mumbled something.

  “Still alive,” I repeated as the car gurgled with new fuel. At my feet, a puddle reflected my face back at me: dark-eyed, a heart-shaped face with a softer browbone. Pin-straight hair lapping over my shoulders. I was fuller-lipped, my expression unreadable.

  You could hardly tell I felt sick with concern.

  A vibration hit the center of the puddle and emanated out to its edges, sharding my reflection. I blinked, went still with my hand still clutching the pump. Had I done that?

  No, I hadn’t moved. Maybe—

  But before I could theorize, the puddle jumped again, my face distorting as the ripples pushed outward. A second later, another ripple.

  “Justin,” I said, “are you doing that?”

  “Doing what?”

  Another second, another vibration. Another. Another. The puddle no longer had time to settle before the next set of ripples hit.

  I lifted my face, squinting out past the neon sign into the darkness. The World Army couldn’t have found us out here—not yet. It was too soon. And yet, as I stood next to the car, I felt the vibrations through my thick-soled boots. A regular thud-thud, thud-thud.

  Could be road work, I thought. Or problems.

  Given our luck, I was betting on problems.

  I yanked the nozzle free, threw the flap shut and replaced it at the pump. “We have to leave,” I called, crossing around to the passenger-side door. “Right now.”

  When I dropped into the seat, Justin didn’t move. “Justin?” I shook his shoulder, and a little groan emanated up from his chest. “We need to drive.”

  No movement. He had lapsed into delirium—and each time it lasted longer.

  I threw open my door and came around to his side. I took one of his arms and pulled him out of the car. “Love, get in the back seat.”

  “We’re not out of Canada yet,” he murmured as we moved toward the rear door.

  “Leave that to me.”

  He seemed to accept this, because when I opened the door, he practically flopped across the seat and lay there on his stomach. GoneGodDamn Serena Russo and her gene splicing experiments.

  She was killing my boyfriend.

  I glanced down at the puddle, where the vibrations came quick now. Over in the convenience store, the bags of chips swayed from their clips. Even the owner had glanced up and out the window.

  And that little boy still stood in the parking lot, staring after me.

  “Run inside,” I called out to him.

  The best thing I could do for the boy right now would be to distract what was coming away from this gas station. Whatever was out there was after me and Justin—I knew that with chilling certainty.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat and put on my seatbelt. I turned the ignition, and the Mustang came to life. I set my right foot on the brakes. “Come on, Isabella Ramirez,” I murmured, staring over the gearshift. “You know what to do.”

  I couldn’t remember a day in the last year when I hadn’t given myself a pep talk. Cheesy, but effective.

  I pushed the clutch with my left foot and set the gearstick in neutral before I started the engine. It turned over with ease, and I moved into first gear. I slowly started pushing down on the accelerator as I let up on the clutch. But I had the same problem I’d had decades ago: I let up on the clutch too fast and the car jerked forward, the gears grinding before it stalled.

  In the back seat, Justin lifted his head. “That didn’t sound good.”

  I groaned, staring at the rearview mirror. Nothing had appeared, but the thudding—it was more a shaking now—was audible. Audible and fast.

  Whatever was out t
here was closing in on us, and it was large.

  I started the car again, and stalled again. Again. The third time I got us out of the gas station and onto the highway. As we accelerated, I shifted into second gear. A little grinding, but no stall.

  That was the thing about me: I was a quick study, but terrible under pressure. Combine the two, and you got Isabella stop-starting two people to their inevitable deaths at the hands of what was surely a dinosaur.

  Hey, I was a college sophomore and a biologist. Like every other college student, I had seen Jurassic Park. I knew what was up.

  We passed fast and faster down the road, and I expected the noise to diminish, but that didn’t happen.

  It grew. Whatever was behind us was catching up, even as I shifted into third gear. We passed a speed limit sign; I was already going ten over, which meant whatever this was was moving faster than us.

  “Please no dinosaurs,” I prayed, my eyes straying between the road and the emptiness behind us in the rearview mirror. “No Jurassic Park.”

  As I prayed, the emptiness behind us shifted into movement. My eyes locked on the mirror as a creature emerged from the night.

  Not a dinosaur. Dinosaurs didn’t have red eyes.

  Chapter 2

  What slipped out of the night was unlike anything I’d seen in five hundred years. And I had seen a lot of strange creatures.

  First its two black hooves, pounding the highway so hard the steering wheel vibrated under my hands. Then its horselike head, red-eyed with three horns sticking out, lowered as though to ram the back of the car. Whatever it was—horse, elephant—the creature was enormous.