Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Games of Fate
Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Book One
Kris Austen Radcliffe
Copyright 2017 Kris Austen Radcliffe
All rights reserved.
Published by
Six Talon Sign Fantasy & Futuristic Romance
Copyedited by Terry Koch and Juli Lilly
Cover designed by Lou Harper
Series dragon design and art by Christina Rausch
Plus a special thanks to my Proofing Crew.
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences are used factitiously. All representations of real locales, programs, or services are factitious accounts of the environments and services described. Any resemblances characters, places, or events have to actual people, living or dead, business, establishments, events, or locales is entirely unintended and coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
For requests, please e-mail: publisher@sixtalonsign.com.
Third electronic edition, September 2017
Updated and reformatted
version 8.25.2017
ISBN: 978-1-939730-47-3
Contents
Games of Fate
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The World of
Prologue
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
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
FLUX OF SKIN
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The Worlds of
About the Author
Games of Fate
Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon
Kris Austen Radcliffe
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Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon
The Series
Games of Fate
Flux of Skin
Fifth of Blood
Bonds Broken & Silent
All But Human
Men and Beasts
The Burning World
The World of
Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon
The Fates
(Latin: Parcae)
Live in bonded triads often made up of family members. Fates bond on a metallic object that embodies a context for their seeing. Prime Fates command an exceptional level of power and ability.
Past-seer: Able to read the truth of someone’s past.
Present-seer: Able to optimize the present situation for a desired outcome.
Future-seer: Sees the most likely future.
The Burners
(Latin: Ambustae)
Crazy, smelly ghouls who eat human flesh and who often explode when their hearts stop.
The Shifters
(Latin: Mutatae)
Class-one Shifters, like Prime Fates, command considerable power and ability. Shifters mostly live in clans and are often exploited by Fates.
Morphers: Able to morph their bodies within the basic human body plan.
Enthrallers: Able to control other people’s emotions through pheromone-like calling scents.
Healers: Able to heal—or unheal—with a touch.
The Dragons
(Latin: Dracae)
Ladon and AnnaBelinda, along with their dragons, form two human-dragon dyads. Both Ladon and AnnaBelinda are former Roman military commanders, and they are often known by their respective Roman honorifics, the Dracos and the Dracas. As brother and sister, they know each other as Brother and Sister, and as Brother-Dragon and Sister-Dragon.
Prologue
I’m sorry it starts this way. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to keep you from drowning.
That’s not how the science works. I can’t reach back in time and lift you out of the riptide of power that is about to pull you under. I can’t help you tread water inside the whirlpool that is your attention issues.
You need to do this yourself. I did. We had—have—no choice, you-who-will-be-me. For you, fate is about to trigger a new pass through these cycles. Fate is about to hand you ye
t another chance to make things right.
Keep your head above water. Breathe. And always remember what a wise man once said: “Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” There are no gods at play here. Only you.
And in you, I have faith.
—Prime Fate Rysa Torres of the Jani, Rock Springs Refugee Relocation Center, Wyoming, North America, January 29, 2087
Chapter One
Now…
Rysa’s attention deficit meds weren’t in her backpack. She fished through the lint under her laptop and caught only a pen and the corner of her wallet. Wads of paper and a few stray coins filled the bag’s recesses, but her pills were nowhere to be found.
The shadows in the back corner of the Continuing Education Building’s coffee shop didn’t help her search. Most of the café glowed with bright, friendly lighting, but attractive atmospheres attracted customers, and other people were distracting even on the days Rysa remembered her meds.
The rich coffee aroma and reverberating buzz of the shop’s espresso machine didn’t help, either. The noise added an extra layer of attention-stripping stimuli to the front tables, as did the flickering television screen on the wall, so this evening’s bout of homework—and digging in her bag for her stim meds—happened as far from the front counter as possible.
Not that she trusted herself to be thorough. No meds equaled a super-sized portion of “flighty” and a bottomless cup of “hyperactive.” The headache ratcheting up from her eyebrows over her scalp to the base of her auburn ponytail wasn’t helping, either.
Rysa dug her hand into her stupid pack again even though she knew she was wasting her time.
Her friend Gavin sat on the other side of the table. He tapped his pen against his sprawl of chemistry notes with a rhythmic slap slap, pause, slap slap that did nothing to ease Rysa’s distraction.
He’d long been more accommodating with her attention issues than most of her other friends, probably because he wanted to become a doctor. She was, after all, good “patience with a patient” practice.
He wasn’t being patient tonight. He’d frowned about twenty minutes into the first problem when it became clear that helping her would take all night.
Rysa slapped a notebook harder against the table than she meant to. The table wobbled, and a loud clunk popped from its uneven feet.
Gavin’s hand jerked up and he leaned back.
Do you want help with your chemistry or not? he signed, his hands moving through the American Sign Language with quick precision. He wore hearing aids, but he and Rysa signed, too.
“Yes.” Rysa looked directly at him so he could read her lips clearly, knowing full well she’d also narrowed her eyes, even though she didn’t mean to. Her head throbbed and the pain was adding an edge to her already annoying issues.
She rubbed her forehead. “Sorry.”
She did need his help. This close to finals, if she didn’t figure out her assignments, she’d fail another class. The University would kick her out. She knew it.
Gavin’s shoulders slumped and he crossed his arms—his way of giving her the silent treatment.
How was she supposed to focus on homework without her attention meds? One more dig into the bag produced only a crumpled five dollar bill. She dropped it next to her notebooks.
Gavin scowled this time, and his gaze followed her hand as it dipped into the bag again.
He didn’t always understand his classwork. She’d helped him with Human and Environmental Policies last semester. He’d been a chore, no matter how hard she tried.
Did I mess up your evening? she signed before scraping her stuff into her bag and plopping it onto the floor next to her feet.
Gavin sighed. He usually had the laidback calm of someone who’d just finished a good workout. Women found his ease with the world—and his big blue eyes—charming. The boy had more contacts in his phone than the University had numbers in its database.
Gavin’s finger twitched as he pointed at her bag. Isn’t it a little late to be popping stim meds?
The headache flared behind Rysa’s eyes.
It came out of nowhere as a semi-nauseating ping against the inside of her skull. She bumped the table. Her calculator slipped off a book and jarred her chai and a splash plopped onto her Chemistry Principles syllabus.
Steam rose off the course description as if she’d dropped acid on it, not hot tea.
What just happened? She blotted a yellow stain as it spread across the syllabus. The liquid ate away the words and they bled onto the tabletop, destroyed by her impulsiveness.
“Rysa?” Gavin signed something, too. She didn’t catch it.
He sniffed and the titanium in his ears flickered with the light from the television behind her head. She’d sat with her back to the little café’s screen for a reason. News crawls and no meds did not mix well.
This morning, when she’d come down to the kitchen, her mom had been watching the news. A suburban Chicago mall had exploded last night. There’d been big fires in several towns along Interstate 94 between Chicago and Minneapolis, too. And a couple of the talking heads on the screens in the student union had been 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 breathe so you can drive home? he signed.
Breathe? Her syllabus disintegrated on the table, ruined by a splash of hot and random, much like her academic career.
She stared at the stain still spreading across her syllabus even though she didn’t want to. Her mind hyper-focused on this one perfect representation of her time at the U and wasn’t going to let it go.
“You should talk to Disability Services.” Gavin’s chair groaned as he shifted again.
A new rainbow of reflections danced across his hearing aids. She stared like a deer caught in headlights.
Gavin’s gaze jerked up to the screen behind her. The images must have changed.
Rysa closed her eyes. She wouldn’t 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 for no obvious reason.
Whatever stalked through Illinois and Wisconsin felt as if 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 was probably what had triggered the headache, and was as big a contributor to her inattention as anything else.
Today was not a good day to have forgotten 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 an American Sign Language 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 had reared its head during the interview.
Gavin’s jaw tightened. Pulling ninety-ninth percentile on all three parts of the GRE will only get you so far with grad school admissions.
She pressed on her forehead again. School, the fires, no meds—and to make things worse, her mom’s obvious pain this morning—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 had downed the juice in three gulps, more to keep her mom from worrying than because she’d 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 touched her wrist. “I just want to make sure you’re all right 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. Her head throbbed in short, intense pulses and his exasperation only made it worse.
She reached for her damned bag again. Maybe she had some acetaminophen. At least it would take the edge off the pain for the drive home.
Get some sleep. That helps, Gavin signed.
Rysa pressed her temple. 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. The war raging inside her skull flared into her eyes and the coffee shop’s lights suddenly blasted down as if she sat under a hot spotlight. The slick counters glinted as if fire popped off their surfaces. The scent of coffee filled her nose with a bitterness that made her sneeze, and the aroma of scones coated her tongue with gag-worthy sweetness.
All the chaos about school and the world and her mom fell away. 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.