Fatal Sight (Harbingers Of Death Book 2)

by LeAnn Mason

  His lips pursed. “Let me see it, and I’ll give you my price.”

  “Above three thousand,” I reminded him.

  I wouldn’t budge on that. I was lowballing as it was. The ring was probably worth more than that on materials alone, not to mention the craftsmanship — and who knew how priceless in age and provenance it was. Seke was a god after all. It could have been crafted by some Celtic goddess he knew in his Ancient Egypt days... or born from divine power, fabricated in Hell itself. But I couldn’t mention that part, and if I went too high, the dude wouldn’t take it at all. A few grand could get me far from here and tide me over until I found a job; I’d learned to be thrifty.

  A thick tongue darted from the man’s dry lips to lick the cracking flesh, eying me. I wasn’t the type to own such fine jewelry to sell, but he wouldn’t care about stolen goods. He was probably gauging whether I was the type of person who might be full of shit, talking out of my ass.

  “Take it or leave it,” I pressured.

  He shrugged and turned away, feigning indifference. “I’ve never gone above two. Leave it.”

  I nodded. “Fine.” I lifted the ring out, swiveled it in my fingers so it glinted in the fluorescent lights. “Your loss.” I called his bluff and shouldered open the door.

  “Wait!”

  I grinned at my reflection. Got him.

  When I left only a few minutes later, my pockets were bulging. I’d divied up the cash into different pockets in case one got picked and to better conceal the lot of it, but I still felt like a target as I headed back toward the motel to crash for the night.

  If I was going to be on another long bus ride, I wanted to get a good night’s sleep on Seke’s dime first. Never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that.

  Raised voices caught my attention. I continued walking slowly so as not to appear concerned since some fed off of fear. I didn’t alter my trajectory, but all senses slipped down a dark hallway where a man had a woman pressed up against a floral wallpapered wall.

  Wait. A hallway?

  I glanced down and found fancy, royal-blue carpeting beneath my feet.

  Shit. A vision. A vision in the middle of my walk home in a shitty neighborhood? Not good. Without that druid, my powers were running rampant, and I hadn’t yet gotten control of them. Seke and I had still been working on that when he sent me packing.

  A moan tugged my attention back to the long corridor dotted with closed doors between me and the couple and beyond. Sconces glowed dully at irregular intervals that failed to properly illuminate the area. In fact, they flickered like candles. The woman’s face was mashed against the wall. The guy at her back was tall and clad in a dark-hued suit that tucked him neatly into the shadows.

  He pulled her head back, fingers buried deep in her hair, and slammed her face into the wall with a sickening thunk.

  “You think I’m going to believe you have nothing to tell me? You live in exchange for what you offer.” He wrenched her back against his chest, her chin tipped up. She panted, blood leaking down her chin. A spot of it added a bright stain of red to the pink floral wallpaper. His head dipped toward her ear. Though whispered, his next words carried to me. “And if you give me nothing, then you die. Remember that.” His tongue flicked out and lapped up the blood that slid down her cheek, the trail of crimson vanished in its wake. Then, he threw her with the force of a wrecking ball. Bodily, she crashed into the wall and collapsed, sinking to the ground in a boneless heap, unconscious. A streak of red like a sticky slug trail was left behind to mark her slip into oblivion.

  A scream crawled up my throat, and though I tried to clamp it down, it slipped from between my shocked lips. I’d gotten better at understanding my urges. But I hadn’t yet figured out how to stop them. The scream that spilled from my dumb mouth didn’t proclaim death. It signaled that that woman’s end was coming. Soon.

  “Whoa! Relax, little one. Hush now. You’re awake.”

  I reacted, hand slapping something from under my nose. When I blinked my eyes open, my lips snapped shut — fast. There was a gorgeous chestnut-maned beauty leaning over me, a scar slicing down her cheek.

  “Smelling salts,” she explained, lifting a small vial up and then tucking it into the cleavage exposed by her armor. “What did you see in your vision?”

  Wait. Armor? I twisted, trying to sit up and look around. Was I still in the vision? “I... uhh a woman dying.” My answer was distracted, faint. Where the fuck was I? Who was this chick?

  “Ah, careful. You might fall off. That would be a bad tumble.”

  Confused, I raised my arms, feeling around me. My heart stuttered as I found nothing on either side. Above my head, my fingers latched onto... hair. I smoothed them down and felt a warm body, muscles moving beneath my palms and a thick layer of course, dense hair.

  My mouth opened as wide as my eyes.

  “Shhh,” the woman insisted. “Do not scream. Seke was right. You still do not understand your powers.”

  I tried to process. “Seke? What? Are we... Are we on a horse?” I didn’t feel the back-and-forth jostle I expected from a horse’s gait, but it sure felt like one.

  The woman’s steel eyes lit up, and she grinned. She looked truly fierce. “Meet Torgny.”

  She helped me sit up, keeping my legs astride the beast, my ass in the saddle, facing the wrong direction… and I immediately almost fell off.

  My hands flew to the woman’s shoulders, gripping tightly. “We’re flying,” I gasped, staring at the ground far below. “And you’re not using reins.”

  “I do not need them. Torgny is not guided by force.” The woman winked. I took in her outfit and accent.

  “You’re...”

  She nodded. “A valkyrie. Gunhilde,” she introduced herself.

  “Aria,” I said faintly. “And I would really like to get back on the ground now.” I squeezed my eyelids shut, trying not to think about the feeling of jumping out of an airplane.

  Gunhilde laughed. “Your mother never liked flying with me either.”

  My eyes flew back open, but before I could ask anything, Torgny suddenly plummeted, and my stomach planted itself firmly in my throat, blocking all sound from escaping my lips — including the scream that Gunhilde didn’t want to come out.

  18

  “Holy hell,” I gulped once we had landed surprisingly smoothly on the glorious ground. I swallowed down the vomit that burned my throat, threatening to spew forth with even those few words.

  Flying was so totally not my thing.

  “You really are just like your mom, you know that?” Gunhilde declared, patting Torgny on his sleek, black neck.

  He tossed his head. A shake snaked down his entire body. And then, he was gone. A huge man with wild black hair that hung past his shoulders stood in its place. Brown eyes the same color as the animal assessed me.

  “Holy hell,” I repeated. “A... horse shifter? I didn’t even fathom that those existed,” I breathed, still staring at the horse-turned-dude who luckily — or unluckily — wasn’t naked. That part of shifting, at least, seemed to be purely fiction. In real life, the ability seemed to encompass clothing too. Though this pair’s attire was certainly something out of the storybooks or maybe the history books.

  Torgny just snorted, a very horsey reaction that brought a smile to my lips, unbidden. My mirth appeared to irk him, and he prowled forward, a movement that caused his shiny armor to clink lightly. It was a decidedly predatory movement I’d never associated with a horse. But then, there was a whole lot I didn’t understand about him and supes in general.

  “Whoa.” I held up my hands to keep the horse-man at bay and winced, regretting my word of choice when his nostrils flared.

  Gunhilde leaned in to whisper the last with a very pointed look and a chin jerk behind me. “Why don’t you let us in so we can talk. In private.”

  I turned and noticed we were back at the rundown motel, in front of the door to my temporary abode. “But… I was on the street. There wer
e people,” I puzzled, looking to my new… acquaintance. Her appearance distracted me. “What’s with the armor anyway?” My mind had too many things to focus on, and my attention bounced from one to another with rapidity. Bouncing again, I remembered what she’d said: Your mother never liked flying with me either. “You knew my mother?”

  A look of exasperated consideration flit over the valkyrie’s face as she worked through my questions, possibly deciding what to address first.

  Torgny, on the other hand, stared at me silently from near the door where he stood like a sentry. I kind of wanted to start making faces and gestures, waving a hand in his face just to get a reaction. He reminded me of those British palace guards with the funny hats and unflappable demeanors.

  “I bet he’s fun at parties, huh?”

  I fished in my pocket for the key card, and my fingers closed over a wad of cash I’d bartered for. I breathed out, a sudden hitch of worry that I’d been mugged when I… passed out or went under — whatever it was called when a vision took over.

  I let us into the room. Forcing my eyes to skip over the bed Seke had slept on, I sat on my bed. Gunhilde circled the room then hopped on the dresser top. I eyed Torgny, who’d taken up the same pose he’d held on the other side of the door.

  “Yeah, a real bundle of energy.”

  Gunhilde smirked. “Biggest question first. I did know your mother just as I know many of the existing harbingers currently working today. The valkyries don’t join the teams. We tend to act more as liaisons or as extra help on bigger jobs.”

  “Bigger jobs? What does that mean?”

  “Massacres, bombs, natural disasters with high body counts.” She ticked them off on her fingers then shrugged. “Things like that. My normal missions are battles; warriors. We do a lot of military and law enforcement retrievals,” Gunhilde said with apathy. It was a job, no room for emotion. She’d probably mastered all the many lessons my parents tried to impart to me. Maybe she’d been a source of their wisdom.

  I could picture that. She was a fighter, standing in my dingy room. Gleaming armor, which covered all her soft, vital parts, glinted under the dim light, giving her body a bit of a halo effect. She looked like Athena… only Norse… “Damn, valkyries are badass.”

  “And don’t forget it,” Gunhilde returned. A femme fatale smolder that would put even Jessica’s to shame took over her lovely chiseled features, that long scar on her cheek not able to detract from its effect. “We are the ultimate harbingers, going so far as to influence which predicted deaths actually occur. A valkyrie is only permitted to hold her position by the results of her missions.”

  “What does that mean? You can choose to not be a valkyrie?” I wondered if maybe I could use a Viking trick to not be a banshee…

  “It’s not really a choice. The only time you truly have a choice is when your mortal life is cut. That is when you can choose to become a valkyrie or continue into Valhalla as Einherjar. Either way, your remaining existence is filled with fighting, pain, and much, much bloodshed.”

  Oh, damn.

  “So how were you and—” I indicated the sentinel again “—a flying horse able to swoop in and steal me off the street in the middle of the day… with plenty of thuggish onlookers?”

  “We work for Odin, the allfather. That comes with power. Being servants of Asgard allows us the ability to be cloaked to the non-supernatural. Only those reaped for Valhalla or fellow supernatural beings can see us, though standing out in the open, especially with Torgny in equine form is something we try to avoid. Every once in a while, a human has been known to glimpse a ghostly outline of something through the glamor, not to mention that we are still solid and can very much be felt.”

  Gunhilde pointed at the bed opposite mine. “Torgny, come. Sit. You will sense danger whether you stand or not. I think you’re making Aria jumpy.” She eyed me as she made the request of her companion. He didn’t move, though I thought maybe, just maybe, his muscles were a little looser, his stance less rigid.

  “So, what are you doing here? How did you know where I was?”

  “Seke asked me to come. He said you had some questions and that you needed support. And… that you wouldn’t accept it from him right now.”

  “Try ‘never again,’” I muttered with indignation. He’d burned me too many times.

  “I believe, in time, you will forgive him,” Gunhilde replied, flicking her chestnut mane from where it spilled over her engraved chest plate.

  I rolled my eyes at her tone. She appeared confident that there would be a reason to forgive him. Right now, I couldn’t see it. He was trying his damndest to give me reasons to turn away from him. Yes, he kept me out of jail — this time — but he’d sent me away and kept a lot of vital information from me.

  Thinking about Seke was pissing me off again. I focused on Gunhilde to distract myself, my eyes catching on the swirling lines as I took in her battle-ready exoskeleton. Looking closely, I noted several rudimentary characters — runes — shimmering on the metal. The source of her enchanting power possibly? It looked a little like my rune but not quite. Would she know about that?

  I had been about to refute the idea that I needed any support, but if she knew about the binding rune, she might have potential.

  “You were having a vision when we found you, were you not?” she asked, bright eyes searching my own as her question pulled my attention.

  I nodded.

  “What did you see?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “Because I want to help you understand and ultimately control your banshee powers,” Gunhilde said with infinite patience.

  “Why? How?” I tried to remember what abilities valkyries had. They were warriors — I remembered that much. I didn’t see how she could teach me to control my abilities if she didn’t have experience with them herself.

  “Your mother. I was around when your mother took up her role with the Harbingers of Death, and on occasion, she told me about her training. We’d become… good friends.” She paused, turning away to dab at her eyes before composing herself and returning to face me with a plastic smile affixed.

  She knew my mom, better than Seke, it seemed. Help controlling my powers was a start. Not quite at the level of my druid plan, but it could help.

  Information is the most important asset. Collect it like you would treasure.

  Seke’s stupid voice piped up in my head, unwelcome. But it had a point. Okay, so I wouldn’t kick out the authoritative intervention Seke sent me right away. This was also the first person I’d met who knew mom — really knew mom — besides dad. “I miss her too.”

  “Enid was a good woman.” Both Gunhilde and I turned at the deep-timbred declaration.

  “Oh, my gods… he speaks,” I quipped, earning me a droll look from the otherworldly shifter.

  “So. Let’s talk about the vision you had and why you had it.”

  “Why I had it?” I blinked at the valkyrie. “I’m a banshee. Isn’t that the whole deal? That and the screaming death thing?” It didn’t seem like the best start if that was her first question.

  “What were you doing? What were you thinking about?”

  “Well, I had found a ring Seke left here.” I pointed to the nightstand wedged neatly between the two queen beds. I was still able to vividly picture the platinum-and-diamond piece as if it continued glinting under the halo of the accompanying affixed lamp. Pity, really, that I had to let it go.

  “A ring? Did it look like a man’s ring? Like something Seke would wear?”

  “Huh.” Now that she mentioned it… “No. It was very feminine. Thin silver bands and sparkly diamonds. It looked like a Celtic knot. Seke is much more of a gold wearer, I’d think. His skin tone is too warm for silver, wouldn’t you say? What?” My guests were looking at me with smirks and quirked eyebrows that insisted they knew some secret.

  “Firstly, you’re right. Seke wears gold, probably a by-product of the Egyptian era. I knew there had to be a reason he asked
me to step in,” Gunhilde muttered as an aside, leaving it at that and making my mind leap to guess at the rest of her thoughts.

  What reason? I barely restrained myself from prying further.

  Composure is the key to success. Do not let yourself be waylaid by unimportant details. If you cannot think, you cannot effectively act.

  Ugh. Another Seke lesson.

  “Tell me about the vision,” Gunhilde said, pulling me back on track.

  I pushed the ring from my mind — it was gone now — and thought for a moment, trying to recall exactly what I’d seen. “It was gloomy. A corridor with many doors like a hospital or hotel hallway. It was lit by candles in sconces along the walls. There was a man, well-dressed but shadowed, accosting a woman, threatening her.”

  Gunhilde leaned forward. “What did he say?”

  I tried to remember exactly what his phrasing was… “You live in exchange for what you offer. Then, he threw her down the hall with superhuman strength, knocking her out.”

  “Superhuman strength?”

  I nodded. “He was weird. I remember… he licked the blood off her face.” Wait. “A vampire?”

  Gunhilde fidgeted, looking unsettled. Torgny’s eyes flashed to her, what looked almost like alarm widening the orbs to show white all the way around the dark irises. That look I’ve seen on crazy horses in movies… I kept a side-eye on Torgny as I shifted my attention back to his— mistress? Partner? Rider? I’d have to ask about that dynamic another time.

  “And the woman? Did you recognize her?”

  The question brought me up short. Why would I recognize her? I looked probingly at the valkyrie and her steed. What weren’t they telling me?

  “What did she look like?” Gunhilde pressed.

  “I didn’t see her clearly. Dirty, thin, tattered clothes. I thought she might be homeless. Maybe she prostitutes to survive?”

  “What about her hair?” Torgny asked, stepping closer with muscles clenched tight.

  Odd question. Maybe an ex of his or something? “I don’t know, maybe gray? There was a lot of dirt.”