Fatebound Read online

  It wasn’t a dinosaur, but it was the size of one. And it had a thick, armored hide.

  I could only think of one reason why a hellhorse the size of a house with three horns and an armored hide would be chasing a Mustang through southern Quebec in the middle of the night.

  That reason was Dr. Serena Russo. My former mentor, the lead scientist of the World Army, a cliché villain and a grade-A bitch. Just like Justin had said, she’d found us. Somehow, she’d found us.

  And she had sent another monster after us.

  “Uh, Isa,” Justin murmured from the back seat, “there’s something—”

  “I know,” I cut in. “We’re being chased.”

  Justin sat upright. “Since when did I get in the back seat?”

  Times like this—the worst time for him to get like this—Justin seemed drunk or feverish. It was the genetic modifications, whatever Russo had done to him to make him a “super soldier,” and his body was trying to fight them off like an illness. Because of it, he didn’t grasp the fullness of reality the way he did when he had all his faculties. So we were reduced to this: yelling at each other from the front and back seats of the car.

  It didn’t help that he hated being told what to do—he hated being seen as weak. And right now, with me driving and him useless in the back, I’m certain the part of him that hated his own weakness was yelling inside his head.

  “Why are you driving, anyway?” he asked.

  I didn’t have time to argue with him, and I couldn’t tell him what was going on because he’d want to help—needed to help—and in his condition, he’d just get himself killed. And because I loved him, I’d be right by his side, two lovers gobbled up by this Jurassic Park reject.

  “The man at the pumping station weirded me out,” I lied, taking a corner as fast as I dared. Why couldn’t I have chosen an illusion designed for racing?

  The monster was fast. A curse, given it was on our tail. But a blessing when it came to corners. Unable to turn like I had, it toppled over before regaining its footing, widening the divide between us by precious feet.

  I pushed the Mustang well beyond the speed limit, the road racing into view and disappearing under the hood as fast as my eyes could process. If anything happened to be out there, the car would flatten it.

  And if I didn’t, then this thing chasing us would take care of it.

  “What did the guy say?”

  “What guy?”

  “At the gas station,” Justin leaned between the seats. “We should go back there. Let me talk to him.”

  I put a placating hand on his chest and said in a voice far too soft, given that we were being chased by a dinosaur, “Oh nothing. Just creeped me out. You rest, honey. Please.”

  Justin resisted before lying down again. Under his breath he muttered again, “Why are you driving?” his voice trailing off in that way it does just before you fall asleep.

  He must have been out of it. But that was how it was when he went into one of his states: fleeting moments of lucidity.

  Not that I had time to worry about that now. Glancing back at the rearview mirror, I saw that the monster had regained those lost yards. It had closed in to within striking distance. I shrieked as, with one swing of its horned head, the hellhorse struck the car’s bumper. I felt the Mustang struggle to keep straight, the wheel bucking under my hands.

  Meanwhile, Justin slid and hit the back of my seat—hard.

  “Are you OK?” I yelled.

  “Shit, Isa,” he groaned. “You’re going to wreck her. Careful on those turns.” OK, now I was starting to worry. How could he not know what was happening? That horn cracked the bumper like thunder and he thought it was my shitty driving?

  He needed help. Well, if we survived this. At least getting eaten will solve one of my problems, I morbidly thought.

  And with me driving and him doing nothing, survival was low on the list of probable outcomes. Even though it was way, way outside my wheelhouse, I knew what I had to do.

  “Soldier”—I threw my voice as low and gravelly as I could—”get your seatbelt on.”

  My command seemed to work, because I heard a click from the back seat and a sarcastic, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Well, sass and compliance were better than sass and no compliance.

  “Thank you,” I said with all the gentleness I felt toward him. Despite everything around us, I felt a constant compassion for Justin Truly. That didn’t ever seem to change.

  My eyes returned to the mirror. The hellhorse had fallen back a few paces, but was closing in again. Preparing for another swipe at us, no doubt. If I could time it right, I could accelerate the car just before the next headbutt.

  But I didn’t get that chance.

  Ahead, something appeared out of the darkness, a flash of white in the night.

  A … a boy?

  As soon as I saw him, I screamed, my foot shifting to the brake. But he had already swept up onto the windshield. I’d thought he would have shattered the windshield or punched right through into the car, but the child we’d hit had simply slid up and onto the roof. As though he had meant to do that.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror, but no body flew out behind us into the darkness. Only the hellhorse appeared in the reflection, still close on the car.

  “What the hell was that?” Justin called.

  “I …” I hesitated. Had I seen what I thought I’d seen? It sounded ridiculous. “I think it was a boy.”

  “You hit someone?” Justin sounded horrified in his half-aware state.

  “Yes … and I think he’s still on the car.” I glanced up as though I could see straight through the roof. I didn’t know how any human would be able to stay up there, which meant this wasn’t a human.

  This boy was something else.

  A moment later, the hellhorse let out a noise—the first I’d heard from it since it had started chasing us, a sound between a bellow and a neigh. When I glanced in the mirror, something thin and angular flew past the creature, narrowly missing its head.

  It looked like a slender, feathered arrow.

  I heard two small thuds on the roof, and I knew that whoever was up there was an Other. A capable one, too; a second arrow flew into the night, this one nicking one of the hellhorse’s horns before pinging to the highway and being trodden underfoot.

  Capable, sure, but wooden arrows weren’t enough to deal with this thing. I knew for sure where the hellhorse had come from—Serena Russo, the World Army—but I didn’t know who was on our roof, or what his agenda was.

  All I knew was he was distracting the creature, and right now, that was good enough for me. The hellhorse had fallen a few paces back with the arrows now launched at him at regular intervals, each missing.

  Although, to be fair, I didn’t know if there was anyone—human or Other—who could hit a creature like this from the roof of a car at eighty miles an hour. The best thing I could do was drive, keeping the Mustang as steady as possible and giving our rooftop archer a chance to do his thing. Two more arrows shot off into the darkness, and then—

  Then the hellhorse bellowed.

  The thudding slowed, and I watched in the mirror as the creature disappeared from sight. All at once, we were a car driving alone on the highway, blasting through the night.

  Even so, I didn’t slow; I kept driving. We had to be close to the border by now, and who knew? Maybe this Canadian monster didn’t have his papers.

  A second later, a cherubic, upside-down face appeared at the top of my windshield. The wind flattened his blond hair to his head, but he carried a certain serenity in the way he gazed in at me. A chubby hand knocked on the glass, and I had two thoughts.

  So I’m not crazy after all. It’s the boy from the gas station.

  Then: Stop, Isa! He wants you to stop.

  I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to keep driving and take us as far from that hellhorse as this tank of gas would carry us. But this boy—this Other—had just saved us.

  At th
e very least, I could let him off this ride.

  I slowed the Mustang to a stop, my hands shaking as I detached them from the steering wheel. I watched the boy slide down the windshield onto the hood and drop off the side of the car with perfect agility.

  He didn’t have a scratch or a scrape. But that wasn’t the most curious thing about him.

  A tiny pair of wings—almost comically small—sprouted from his back. Even curiouser, he seemed almost to glow in the night. And it wasn’t precisely that his skin appeared luminous from within, but from without.

  Like he was haloed in light.

  All at once, I felt his peace, his serenity. I didn’t know this boy, but I sensed I could trust him.

  He came around to the passenger side and waved. A little blond, dimples in his cheeks, with a quiver and bow strapped crossbody. He tried the handle, but the door was locked.

  He cupped both hands and set them around his mouth. “Open up,” came his muffled child’s voice, “it’s the po-po.”

  I stared. The po-po? I must have heard him wrong.

  The car stalled out as I fumbled with the controls and managed to half-roll the back windows an inch down, then back up, before I finally unlocked the doors.

  The boy opened the door, got into the seat and started climbing over the center console into the back seat. “What are you waiting for?” His voice, a sweet tenor, rang through the Mustang’s interior. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s an odontotyrannos chasing us.”

  With that, the thudding started again.

  Chapter 3

  Odontotyrannos. The word ran through my head and registered within a second. It helped that as an octolingual, I was fluent in three latinate languages.

  Tyrannos meant “tyrant” in Latin. Which made this a monster of antiquity, and the boy in our car one of the hellhorse’s—I mean, the odontotyrannos’s—contemporaries. An ancient Other, perhaps from Greek or Rome.

  And the thought occurred to me that the boy might be ...

  “Roll down the back left window,” the boy instructed, removing his bow from over his head.

  I turned the ignition and let off the clutch with a jerk, but (miracle of miracles!) we didn’t stall. We started down the highway with the thudding closing in, and I pushed us up a few gears as the boy’s knuckles rapped the back window. “You hear that? That’s the sound of glass in my way.”

  This had to be Cupid from Greek mythology. But I didn’t have time to think on it. We still had a three-horned horse chasing us.

  “It’s got an armored hide,” I called back, nonetheless feeling around for the right button. When I finally found it, the sound of wind rushing by filled the car, putting pressure on my eardrums.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” the boy shot back. “So you do the same thing you do with anything that’s got a tough exterior: aim for the weak spot.”

  I watched in the passenger side-view mirror as he leaned halfway out the window with his bow, one arrow withdrawn from his quiver.

  In the back seat, Justin stared at him with an open mouth. “Who the hell is this?”

  As much as I hated it, I kind of wished Justin would just stay under. These flashes of lucidity were distracting. “We picked up a hitchhiker,” I explained.

  An arrow flew in my peripheral vision, and I watched in the mirror as it missed the odontotyrannos, who was right up on us again. Except this time, it wasn’t going for our bumper. It was trying to pull up alongside us—the same side our vulgar boy-archer was hanging out of.

  He leaned back in, and his face popped around the passenger-side headrest. “Keep it steady. She’s coming up for a side swipe.”

  “She?”

  “Yes,” the boy shot back, clear annoyance in his voice. “Female odontotyrannos have three horns.”

  “How do you know these things?” I called.

  But he was already leaning back out the window, another arrow pulled from his quiver. “Just keep her steady,” he said again. Somehow, even with his face angled toward the window and the wind blowing all around us, his voice belled crystal clear through the cabin.

  I did my best to keep the Mustang steady, but with the way the odontotyrannos was coming up on our right, I had to veer us into the oncoming lane or be hit.

  “Hold on, you two.” I eased the sports car across the dotted line as the odontotyrannos thundered up beside us. I really hoped we weren’t about to pancake some poor schmuck driving down QC 141 in the middle of the night.

  But I had no choice.

  We flew down the highway, a red Mustang with a boy hanging out the side and an odontotyrannos preparing to throw her massive head into our right front wheel.

  I glanced over, spotted the boy taking slow and measured aim with the next arrow. If this one didn’t connect, we’d be eating bark. But in that glance, I saw where he was aiming: at one of the hellhorse’s red eyes—a weak spot. And he had the perfect angle.

  He waited. Waited.

  I pressed my lips together, keeping the car steady in the left lane. At any moment, all of this could implode in our faces—one way or another. “Shoot!” I yelled when I couldn’t wait any longer.

  With a twang, the arrow flew through the air and struck the odontotyrannos right in her soft red pupil. The shaft sank deep into the creature’s eye and held, the feathered end blowing in the wind.

  Good shot, I thought. Hell of a good shot.

  But I didn’t expect what happened next. I thought the arrow would infuriate her further, maybe slow her down a little before she came back with even more vengeance. She still had one good eye, after all.

  But instead, her head lifted as she pressed back against momentum, both forehooves plowing into the highway as she let out another bellow. It was like she’d come to a seat in the middle of the highway, and as she disappeared back into the darkness, I saw her swing her tri-horned head off toward the forest.

  In the back seat, the boy slapped a hand on the window and let out a whoop. “Still got it.” He slid back into the car and rolled his window up. “Been a few hundred years since I’ve had a challenge like that.”

  I kept glancing between the back seat, the road ahead, and the road behind. I swerved us back into the right lane, but I didn’t slow or stop the car. “What did you do?” I said. “She’ll be back, right?”

  The boy shook his head, settling into the seat. “Not for some time. I sent her off to hump the nearest tree.”

  My eyebrows raised as we met eyes in the mirror. “Who are you?” I needed confirmation.

  His dimples emerged. “Really? Look at me, I’m wearing a loincloth, I have wings, and—”

  Just then, Justin yakked all over the back seat.

  “Eww,” the boy crooned. “My bare feetsies!”

  ↔

  “You’re Cupid,” I whispered. “Like, the Cupid.”

  Now in the passenger seat, the boy turned away from the window and toward me. He made a finger gun, shot it at my face. “B-b-b-b-ingo. And you?”

  Even in the car, Cupid’s whole form seemed to glow. And I felt that same sense of trust I had when I’d first seen him. Plus, he’d just saved our lives; it probably wouldn’t hurt to be honest.

  “Isabella.” I gestured over my shoulder. “That’s Justin.”

  We had just crossed the border into the United States, and thick forests closed in around us. At the crossing, Cupid had climbed into the front seat and somehow procured a passport from his loincloth, and Justin had appeared well enough to wave from the back seat and pass the scrutiny of the customs officer when I handed over our paperwork.

  To get through, I’d had to shift briefly back into my old, redheaded form. That was the face on my passport, after all. And even though the boy had seen me do it, he hadn’t blinked or said a word. Which I guess made sense … he’d been around for thousands of years.

  “That wasn’t just a regular arrow you shot at the odontotyrannos,” I said as we drove away from customs.

  “Absolutely not.” Cupid alm
ost sounded offended at the suggestion. He reached over his shoulder, pulled an arrow from his quiver and extended it to me. As I drove, I glanced at it in the half-light. “They’re signature arrows,” he explained. His finger underlined a tiny engraving at the base of the shaft: Cupid’s Arrow, followed by a pair of floating hearts.

  I raised an eyebrow. “You put your name on your arrows?”

  He shrugged, replaced the arrow. “I’ve got a name to uphold, especially with the other two ‘Cupids’ ”—he double-quoted in the air—”running around.”

  “Two other Cupids?”

  “It’s a long story. How familiar are you with Greek love?”

  “It’s different from regular love?”

  “Oh yeah.” He waved a hand through the air. “We had all sorts of love, like Eskimos have words for snow. It was a better time, really. Anyway, those other two Cupids represent different types of love.”

  “What kind of love do you represent?”

  He leaned toward me, a tiny smirk appearing as his eyes flicked toward the back seat, where Justin sat. “The best kind of love. Eros.”

  I knew that word, eros. It meant desire—erotic love. Which was why the odontotyrannos had fallen deeply in love with a tree when Cupid’s arrow had struck her.

  Cupid shot a second glance into the back seat. “Your boyfriend doesn’t look so good.”

  I looked into the rearview mirror, spotted Justin’s unconscious face. After we’d crossed the border, Justin had fallen into a stupor. Whatever had happened, his head hung toward his chest.

  “We have to stop soon,” I said. “He’s not well.”

  “There’s a motel up ahead.” Cupid gestured into the darkness. “About ten miles down the highway. Can’t miss the sign.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I flew up this highway on my way into Canada.”

  My eyes flicked to his tiny wings, but I said nothing.

  “What, you think these are just for show?” One hand patted the feathered crest of a wing. “I may not have the span of an angel, but don’t underestimate these babies.”