Cursed Seer

by J. A. Culican

  "I think they do matter."

  I shake my head at Birka. "Right now, we have no idea when or where Talon will die. Meredith has given us at least a chance to find out where. I’d rather know that than to know when without the where."

  Birka’s expression shifts to an iron mask, unreadable, but then she gives me a faint nod.

  I continue, "With or without all those 'if' questions, this is an opportunity we have to take. There are no other realistic options, right? So, we must find this woman and pray we can get her to cooperate quickly. I don't know when they'll kill Talon, but I feel it's going to happen sooner rather than later at the rate they’re making revenants. We should go look up our target today, not tomorrow. Right now, even."

  Birka takes a deep breath and holds it a moment before letting it out slowly. Then, her shoulders slump.

  As if that were some hidden signal, Luka jumps to his feet and brushes his hands together like he's dusting them off. "Okay, that seals it. Who's coming with me on the suicide mission?"

  That's got to be a rhetorical question. I don't think even Birka could convince any of us to stay behind on this one, and not just because we're tired of being cooped up. It's the first real lead we've had on Talon in far too long, and every one of us, save perhaps Meredith, has a personal interest in Talon's fate.

  I smile for the show of confidence. "Okay, everyone. Grab your field bags and get ready to move out."

  Of course, if and when we save Talon, I'll be right back where I started with the uncertainty and doubt regarding where things stand between the three of us. Still, even that thought does little to temper my enthusiasm at a chance to rescue him... and to get out of that damn safe house for a while.

  Chapter 6

  I glance at the windows to satisfy myself the drapes are shut to the nighttime view outside. It's probably unnecessary, due to the glamour protecting our temporary stakeout house—anyone looking inside will see only an empty house—but it makes me feel better. I don't need anything distracting me right now, even silly compulsions like this.

  When I look back at the monitor, I can actually see Jason's eyes sparkle with mirth. Meredith's Mortal-loving security expert grins and says, "Are you aware, that's about the tenth time you've looked over there? Are you expecting one of your companions to mess with your OCD by raising the blinds or something?"

  I shake my head. I don't have time for banter. "No, I just can't help it. We're about ready. How are things on your end?"

  He bites his lip, glancing at a monitor out of view of our video call. "It's impossible to be certain, but I've disabled all the defense systems I could find, and I have root-level access thanks to my uber skills. I've bypassed the monitor system so anyone viewing the cameras on IP will only see what I want them to see. I have a long loop of nothing happening repeating endlessly, and when we get out of here, that'll go away without a trace. I've even taken over what the system log files will report."

  I think my eyes had glazed over right around the time he said "uber skills," but I get the gist of it.

  "Thanks." I favor him with a smile, then check my watch. "We’ll begin our run into the facility in just over five minutes."

  "Yeah, I know. You had best go check over your team before we hit Go Time."

  “Roger that.” I flick the video connection off. We all have multi-channel communication gear, thanks to Jason, so we can easily switch channels and talk just by subvocalizing while we’re on the mission. We’ll be in constant contact with our new friend, the electronic security expert.

  I make my way into living room, where the rest of the team is finishing their preparations. We’re all experts at this now, so I don't really need to tell them what to do. Heck, they have more experience than I do by a long shot. "Hey, can someone check my gear and make sure I have it right?"

  Luka heads my way. "Absolutely. I got it." He inspects my various holsters and pouches, belts and straps. I'm not surprised when he's a little too handsy during his check, nor am I surprised at the little thrill in the base of my stomach this gives me. Thoughts of what I'll do when Luka and Talon are both free rush through my head, but I shove them away. Deal with the now, now.

  After a few seconds, Birka rolls her eyes. "If you two sweethearts are quite finished."

  Glenn snorts. "You mean, if they're done playing grab-ass."

  Birka shoots a withering look at him, but nods. "Quite. We do have a mission to attend to. Let's go through the plan one last time, shall we?"

  Glenn says, "This residence is the emergency escape path for the staff inside. No one is supposed to know about it, but Luka's 'questioning' of the defense systems' designer gave us all sorts of juicy insights. Jason will turn off the laser trip alarms as we go, turning them back on after we’ve passed."

  I look up from my gear inspection. "Didn't he turn off all the alarms, though?"

  Burqa smiles. "Yes, dear. This is just an extra step to make sure we cover our tracks."

  I nod. It’s just in case. I like Jason’s attention to details.

  Glenn continues, "Once we’re inside, Jason will guide us through the maze of rooms and hallways to Talon's location..."

  Abruptly, the room spins and then fades away in the middle of Glenn’s speech, and I find myself in a new place. A place where Talon is strapped into a machine, and a security guard is about to run him through with a sword. Dammit, I've seen this vision before and this is the wrong time to be getting "flashed out" of reality.

  Something is different, though. Talon is not positioned the same way he was in my last vision. I look at the guard about to stab him, and his face is different, too. It’s not the man I ran into at the bar. In the background, I hear the familiar alarm blaring. I look up and find a huge skylight. Really, it's more like a glass ceiling looking up into the sky.

  I can see all the stars' positions with an almost supernatural clarity, and an idea hits me. I focus on burning that starscape into my memory. Just when I'm confident I have that image memorized well enough to tell at least what time of night it happens, and hopefully the exact day as well, the scene shifts and blurs.

  When it becomes clear again, I'm in a different room. I've never had this vision or any variation of it. I sweep the room with my gaze, then freeze in horror. This is no ordinary vision, no scene of one person's death. I see at least a dozen people lined up, being led one after the other into some sort of machine, a glass upright cylinder. It looks a lot like the power-harnessing rig they have Talon in, but this one has a glowing green haze within it. A man goes in, the light flares brightly, and when it opens up again, the man falls to the floor with open, vacant eyes.

  My heart skips a beat as I realize two things. First, he's quite obviously dead. Not harnessed, not drained, not tired. Dead.

  Second, I know the man. I recognize him and it takes only a second to remember where I know him from—my Roma clan. Disgust and terror wash through me, and I look at the rest of the lineup. I know them all. Near the end of that line, my sweeping gaze freezes in place.

  It's my mom and the man who raised me, a man who is probably my birth father.

  Those are my parents. They’ll die when Talon does.

  The vision fades, leaving me shaking, just as Glenn is wrapping up his summation. "...And then, we head back down the tunnel to this place, get the hell out, and trigger the pyrotechnics that will burn this house down and cover all our tracks from viewing Gifts. Easy-peasy."

  "Stop!" I shout. All heads turn toward me. "I had another vision, and it showed me some new things." I hear the edge of panic in my own voice.

  Luka cocks his head at me. "Important enough to derail our go time? We have like, two minutes left."

  "Yes, absolutely." I push my communication subvocalization thingy to my throat and say, "Jason. Can you tell a date and time based on the position of the stars?"

  Luka starts to ask a question, but I wave my hand frantically to cut him off.

  Jason says, "Yes, perhaps. Much depends on which s
tars. Why? We don't have time for astronomy lessons."

  "Yes, we do. I had a vision, with a clear view of the stars. I need to figure out how to tell the timeline based on that. Pull out and get your ass down here, please."

  Birka says, "Don't you dare. We go in one minute and fourteen seconds. Thirteen."

  "Birka, shut this mission down right now, or you'll be doing it without me. This is important. Just trust me, for once."

  If there's one thing any able ruler is good at, it's making snap decisions based on limited information when the situation demands it. "Fine. The mission is scrubbed. I repeat, stand down. Ella, if this turns out to be frivolous, it will definitely affect your credibility with us all. Understand? Talon’s life is on the line."

  I nod, letting out a deep breath as the tension in my shoulders abates. "Thank you. Jason, shut down your operation and get down here with a laptop or something so we can figure this out."

  "I don't take orders from you, sweetie."

  Meredith's voice cuts in on the comm channel. "It's not an order, friend. But the mission is on hold, so would you please come down and help us figure this out?"

  She gives me a wink.

  Through the comm, he says, "Very well. Sorry about that. Everyone is tense and stressed out."

  "No offense taken," I say before cutting off my comm set. Then, I settle in on the couch to wait impatiently for his arrival.

  I don't have to wait long. Jason comes down from upstairs only a couple of minutes later, and I'm surprised at how quickly he was able to get out of the system and cover his tracks. He's the expert, though, so I don't question it. No one else does, either.

  He sits on the couch next to me, setting up his laptop on the coffee table. When he opens it, a screen pops up in some program I've never seen before, which shows a series of eighteen squares, three high and six wide. "This is the entire sky view for right now. Does it look like what you saw?"

  I sense everyone gathering around behind us, looking over the back of the couch at his screen. I ignore them and focus on the same thing. After a moment, I spot one square that looks like what I saw—almost. "This one. But the stars I saw were... Well, they aren’t positioned quite right."

  He nods and puts his hand on my arm. "That's okay. It would have been too much to ask for that to be the exact time. I would've enjoyed rubbing your nose in it.”

  I glare at him.

  “Hey, don't look at me like that. I don't even know this Talon guy. Regardless, I owe Meredith more than one favor, so I'm prepared to stay here as long as it takes to identify this with you. I just hope your memory is up to the task."

  It is. I memorized that sky seen with a desperation I've rarely felt before. Talon's life depends on it, and now, so do the lives of everyone in my clan. "Thanks. I know exactly where they were. Even some that had to be satellites, they were so bright. Maybe that'll help."

  Jason grins. "Hell yeah, it will." He interlaces his fingers, turns his hands outward, and cracks his knuckles with a machine gun sound. "Okay, I'm pulling up that one square. Use this pen mouse to point out exactly where in the sky you saw the satellites. Two would be better—and three will cut this process down quite significantly."

  Birka says, "Triangulation."

  Jason nods. "More or less."

  With that, we settle down into the process, quickly getting into a rhythm of displaying incremental time. It feels like minutes later, but a glance at my watch shows it's been almost an hour when Glenn hands me a cup of coffee. Somehow, I feel like this is going to take longer than Jason had thought, but there's no way I'm going to bed until I find out exactly when Talon and my parents are destined to die.

  Birka stares at me with narrowed eyes and a clenched jaw. "Are you certain? This is important. How sure are you of this timeline?"

  “Your son will die in two days.” It's easy to see that she is barely containing her temper, and I’m the closest one for her to take it out on. Despite my newfound confidence, the former queen still cuts an imposing figure, intimidating, especially now. I can't meet her gaze anymore, so I look down, but that doesn't make me any less certain. "I bet my own life on it. My vision happens in two days."

  "You never seemed particularly attached to your own life, dear. Swear it on Talon's life, because that's what you're doing." Her eyes bore holes into me.

  "I swear it." I nod to her curtly, feeling the oppressive, dejected air in the room like a leaden coat around me.

  "Very well," she replies. "You said there was a second part to this bad news. Let's get it over with. Will he be a vegetable by then, or is it something worse?"

  From the group gathered behind us, Jason says in a gravelly, half-breaking voice, "The news is bad for Ella, not you, Queen." He always uses some form of her former title, I notice. "Her parents and the rest of her clan aren't in the facility, yet. I found a transit authorization from a location I've never heard of—it's not on any of our official prison rosters—to this facility. They won't arrive until a few minutes before your son dies. Her only hope of saving them means that our attack timing will come down to minutes, cutting things dangerously close.“

  Birka grimaces. “Or rather, even more dangerously.”

  “You aren't all guaranteed to make it out alive, even if we pick the best timing for our attack and ignore this news."

  I hate the fact that he said it out loud. Somehow, it makes it more real for me. And I know what Birka will say, even before she says it.

  "I'm not jeopardizing my son's life to wait for these people. I'm sorry, Ella. I know they are your family, but they aren't mine. They aren't even Wraiths, much less any of our kind. They're mortals, and not my concern beyond the fact that I care about you. I don't apologize for caring about my son more, though."

  Still behind us, Luka says, "Birka, this is Ella we're talking about. Her family. If it was your family, you'd expect us all to do whatever we could to save them, and we would gladly do it. You know that. How is this any different?"

  Birka surprises me by not answering right away, though I expected her to resort to her usual authoritarian, commanding ways. Instead, she looks down in silence, and I wait for her response with my heart beating in my ears. My family's lives may well depend on her cooperation.

  The seconds tick by, each an eternity. I don't know how long I wait, holding my breath, before she finally answers, "Jason, how much time do we have between her family's arrival and my son's death?"

  "Fifteen minutes, plus or minus five."

  "Too close." She huffs a sharp burst of air out through her nose. "But I have another idea. If we just go in now to save Talon, we can destroy the equipment on our way out. They won't be able to drain your family like you saw in your vision, right? That buys us some time to save them once Talon is safe—and then we'll have our best warrior with us, as well."

  Ida picks now to join the conversation, startling me. "They have other facilities, though.” I'd almost forgotten she was here because she's been silent since Glenn came back injured, despite Birka healing him so quickly. “Just because they couldn't use this one doesn't mean they won't just use another the next day, and this time, we wouldn't know where or when."

  "No," Luka replies, "but what if we intercept Ella's family before they ever get to the facility, and then rescue Talon well before he's in danger of fulfilling Ella's vision?"

  Looking at Jason's face in the monitor, I already see the fatal flaw in Luka's idea. Inside, I scream at Jason to say it'll work, that he sees some way to do it that will work out that I don't see.

  "No. If we do that, they'll know you're running around Mortals Landing. They'll hunt you with everything they have, and I guarantee they'll boost security around Talon. They could very well change their plans entirely."

  Luka's strong hand grasps my shoulder sympathetically from behind, and I hate it because it's the idea's death-knell. He agrees.

  I fight back tears, and all I can get out is, "Oh. Now... Now what?"

  "Now," Birka say
s with an edge of finality to her voice, "we save my son and hope for a lucky break that lets us save them all while we're there. In other words, we play it by ear."

  I hate that idea, but I don't have an alternative. I won't sacrifice Talon, knowing how he'll die if we don't save him. At least I didn't actually see my parents die in the vision. That gives me some hope. I stuff my fear and pain down deep inside. "Poor odds are better than no odds. Let's get planning."

  They don't know it yet, but I won't be leaving that facility without my parents—with or without my team's help.

  Getting into the facility is fairly straightforward with my Jennifer Kirkpatrick ID, taken from the security system designer when we questioned her. Or rather, when Luka questioned her. I try not to think about that, but I'm glad he looks a little ashen, in a way, because it means he didn't kill her.

  As easy as it was to get inside, however, that was just the beginning of the outer layer of defenses. According to Jason, the whole facility uses a layered defense, with each layer a little more secure than the last. The only one we might have trouble with, he thinks, will be the final security checkpoint to get into the lab itself, where Talon is.

  The only problem with that is that we don't know where it is. There's a gap in both the camera coverage Jason is monitoring and the security layout Jennifer installed. I'm more worried about that than I am the final security checkpoint, but no one else seems to share my worry, so I'm keeping it to myself.

  From right behind me, Glenn says, "The next checkpoint is around the corner."

  I glance down the hallway, and it bends to the left up ahead. I glance over my shoulder at Glenn to thank him for the reminder, but then I feel silly for bothering to look—his enchanted earring renders him invisible.

  He whispers, "Cameras. Say something to Birka."