Second Sight: The Rune Sight Chronicles

by Boyd Craven III

“It has an on and off rocker switch and… a second switch. It’s marked A or B.”

  “Click it to B,” I told her.

  She did and then turned to look back at me.

  “That’s it? It’s broke,” she said. “See, it’s not spinning. What does this have to do with stashing the book anyway?”

  “Now turn on the lathe,” I told her.

  She gave me a disgusted look and then pushed the rocker switch to ‘On.’ I heard the humming as the electric motor engaged, but not the lathes. A section of the wall swung back almost silently, and Rose let out a surprised squeak and glitter exploded in her wake. She flew to my shoulder and landed.

  “What the shit biscuit?” she screamed in her tiny voice.

  “I told you the back wall wasn’t solid,” I told her.

  “Secret passages?” she asked.

  “Secret stash area,” I told her and walked in, turning on a light switch on the other side of the wall.

  “Don’t get us locked in here,” Rose cautioned me quietly. “Holy shit!”

  The left wall of the cave was lined with shelves and ran relatively straight. The right side opened up into a cavern, and against the back wall of the bunker was my generator and a large fuel tank of diesel. I had regular electrical service at the faux cabin that I installed in the bunker as well to supplement my solar setup, but some of my equipment was three phase, and I needed more than regular power lines. This large generator didn’t measure its output in watts; it measured its output by kilowatts.

  “This is all food and tons of water,” Rose said, flying up and down the row.

  “And some things I don’t want to lose,” I told her, walking over to a shelf that had one-gallon bags of rice stacked on it.

  I picked up one, put the book down and then dropped the bag of rice over top of that. It didn’t hide it perfectly, but it was pretty close.

  “What’s back there?” Rose asked, pointing.

  “The old copper mine,” I told her, “from the turn of the century.”

  “You’ve been down there?” she asked me, wrapping her arms around her body.

  “Yes,” I told her, “most of the way. There’s a way out, almost two miles away near the base of the mountain.”

  “Is it guarded, warded, set to explode?” Rose asked me.

  “No, the exit is underwater, a little out of sight. I do have a ward set up like the siren I have to detect hostile mages, but that’s about it,” I told her. “By the time somebody trips that, I can blow the charges, dropping a large part of the tunnel system.”

  “Wait, you said it wasn’t trapped,” Rose said.

  “Failsafe. It’s the last charge that’d take out everything, the one I’d hit when all hope was lost.”

  “And drop a freaking mountain on somebody.”

  “Yes,” I told her quietly.

  “I’m creeped out.”

  “You were curious,” I told her.

  “Yeah, we all know what it did to the cat.”

  12

  We gated into Central Park, and I took Cindy’s hand. JJ and Dana held hands the same way, and I felt Rose’s wings on the back of my neck as she landed.

  “Where’s Rose?” Cindy said quietly as we started walking.

  “I’m the Shadow, and the Shadow knows everything,” Rose intoned in a surprisingly deep voice.

  “Oh, you’re doing your pervy thing of being invisible. Creeper,” Cindy shot back.

  Dana snorted, and JJ just smiled, rolling his shoulders.

  “What do you think this is going to be about?” Dana asked me.

  “How much do you know about the enforcers for the Council of Mages?” I asked her.

  “Um… they are creepy, sadistic, murderous and without any compassion.”

  JJ snickered then whispered in her ear, and she nodded.

  “But you’re okay. You’re not like any of the others.”

  “Reason I was asking, is we’re going to be working together on a strike force for the Council. Since I’m both an Alpha and a mage I have to figure out where and how the laws apply to me. You two are, I assume, still under Treaty rules as long as you’re working with me, so keep that in mind if we get into any scrapes.”

  “Got it, boss,” JJ said.

  “Sounds good,” Dana piped up.

  “What about me?” Cindy asked.

  “Like I said, I don’t know everything, but I’m going to have you read in.”

  We’d made it to the front of the building, and I walked up to the door. I held my hand up to knock and then hesitated. I checked the futures where I knocked and saw in all of them, that the door was going to open by Nobbin, the half-troll goblin hybrid. I’d thought he’d got killed in the undead mess almost a week ago, yet here he was. I turned off my sight and knocked.

  Just as the slit on the door was opening, “Nobbin, it’s Wright. I’m expected.”

  There was a grunt on the other side, and when I saw his eyes in the slit, I was already hearing him turning the bolts, and then the door was swinging open.

  “How know?” Nobbin asked when I walked in.

  “He can read the future, dumbass,” Rose said with a smirk and an upturned nose as we walked in.

  “Actually,” Dana said, “I could smell him from about ten feet away; Troll and Goblin?”

  “Yes, smart doggy.”

  “Hey,” JJ said, but he wasn’t really mad.

  “What? You no canine? Nobbin sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay, Mister Nobbin,” Dana said in a kind voice, “with our senses, our smelling is one of our greatest sense.”

  “Trolls is eyes. Goblins is hearing. Nobbin has very little of both.”

  “Yet you guard the mages; you alone are their first line of defense. Brave Nobbin, brave and noble.”

  Dana’s words made the half-troll stand up straighter, and a smile made him show all three of his blackened teeth. I tried not to shudder, but I admired how Dana, by stating the obvious, had diffused a situation that JJ or Rose would have complications with, with their quips. On top of that, Dana was right. Nobbin had an important job, and he was quite literally their first line of defense.

  “Thank you,” I told Nobbin. “Were you injured in fighting off the zombies?” I asked him, looking to see if I could find any evident bite marks.

  “No much. Nobbin has tough skin like trolls. I bash many heads but got stuck in stairwell until two wolfs come bash heads. Is you people?”

  I was impressed at the long sentence.

  “No, but allies of the Wright Pack,” Dana finished for him.

  “They good fighters. If allies, good to have friends like them.”

  “I would be honored if you too would be friends and allies of ours,” Dana said half statement, half question.

  “I… Nobbin…” He turned back toward the door, closing it and then stood there, his back to us. “Yes,” he said finally.

  Dana patted him on the shoulder. “Thank you, Nobbin. We have some business here today with our boss, Tom, but I’ll make sure we stop on our way out and say goodbye.”

  “Thank you,” Nobbin said, his voice sounding thicker than normal.

  “Let’s go,” Rose said, landing on my shoulder. “I’m really starting to feel bad about pixing his balls.”

  “You pixed his what?” JJ asked.

  We ended up in a conference room, waiting on everybody. My small pack was whispering across the table from Dana and I. Rose was devouring a banana from a bowl of fruit that had been placed in there.

  “Where does it all go?” Dana asked after a moment.

  “You ever see her glitter bomb somebody?” I asked.

  “You mean, she turns food into glitter?” Dana asked me.

  “Well, in a manner of speaking,” I said.

  “I’ll pix your—”

  She covered her mouth with her free hand and pointed. Two of the strike team we’d laid waste to when we’d liberated the knife from storage, walked in the door. As soon as they saw me, JJ,
and Rose, their eyes turned stormy. Vivian walked in, a new bounce in her step. She looked to Cindy and I and smiled broadly, and sat down on the other side of the sheriff.

  “We have to talk later on,” Vivian whispered loud enough to Cindy that I heard her.

  “Okay,” she whispered back then gave me a look and dropped a wink.

  Zoinks.

  I looked into the futures where the next person would walk in the door and saw that it was going to be—

  “Zania, Rasmussen, and Kiersten,” I said softly.

  “What?”

  The three of them walked in the door a moment later. Rasmussen walked to the head of the table, a spot we all had unconsciously kept open for him. Mage Kierston took the chair on the other side of Vivian near Rasmussen, and Zania sat down next to me.

  “So you going to hold my hand again, look longingly into my eyes?” Zania said when I was about to say hi.

  “He what?” Cindy asked an icy note in her voice.

  “Oh yeah, at the hospital after healing him, he took my hand and longingly stared into my eyes. I thought he was going to go all creepy McCreeper right there in front of everybody.”

  “Um… you’re lying,” Cindy said.

  “How would you know?” Zania shot back.

  “It’s the one thing I can do really good,” Cindy told her. “Want to try again?”

  “His sincere apology put her off guard, and she is ill-equipped to deal with genuine feelings of thanks and warmth,” Rasmussen said, his deep voice filling the room.

  Cindy’s gaze shot to him, and her eyes opened wide. She took my hand under the table and squeezed.

  “What?” I whispered to her.

  “I thought he looked familiar before, I’m getting that same feeling again.”

  Rasmussen cleared his throat, and everyone looked at him. That’s when Mage Zania touched the skin on my arm, and I felt her magic coursing through me.

  “What are you doing?” JJ asked suddenly, half rising to his feet.

  “Hold,” I commanded and noticed that Dana and Rose had started making their way to me, then paused.

  “That’s what Carl was talking about,” Rasmussen told me. “Let Zania finish her assessment.”

  I relaxed and felt the life being squeezed out of my hand by Cindy. Zania then moved her hand and touched my forehead. Immediately I felt the cool touch that had awoken me after we’d fought off the zombies. Her hand warmed up as the magic flowed through me, and I looked at her, her eyes rolling back in her head.

  “Is it as we thought?” Mage Kiersten asked.

  Zania didn’t answer for a few more heartbeats and opened her eyes and considered mine.

  “Yes, there was a block put in his head. I don’t recognize the signature of the mage.”

  “Perhaps because it was before your time,” Mage Kierston told her.

  “Just about everyone here is older than me,” Zania said. “My mother would maybe recognize the work better, but I already removed it…”

  “Can somebody explain what is going on?” I asked.

  “Yes, first though, I’d like to introduce your team—” Rasmussen started.

  “Team? I’m not working with them,” one of the two mages from Vivian’s former strike team said, and the other looked around the table with a scowl and nodded his agreement.

  “Then the two of you need not worry about it. Clean your desks out,” Rasmussen ordered.

  I looked into the futures at possible outcomes and saw that in one, both expressed shock at being sacked completely; in another, angry words were exchanged, but when I checked the futures for violence I saw none. I closed down my sight as my head was starting to spin.

  “You’re firing us?” the mage who’d remained silent asked after a couple moments.

  “Yes, you’re both unwilling and inflexible. I’ve got no use in the department for that, and since oversight of the BI is my charge, you’re fired. Get out,” Rasmussen said calmly.

  They both rose to their feet, and the second slammed his chair into the table as he slid it home. The first left his open and just glared daggers at JJ and me. Rose blew him a kiss which made him focus in on her, then his eyes stayed on Vivian a little too long.

  “Now I see how things really work around here. Nepotism and treachery.”

  “Get out of here before I pix you,” Rose said, flying high, suddenly eye level with them, her small wand pointed at the rude one’s face.”

  “What, you think you’re enough to pull that trick on me again, little faerie?” the mage said, and a glow started emanating from his right hand, low to his side.

  I was about to shout a warning because I checked the futures where he attacked Rose, and in one of them, he used some sort of force magic to swat her out of the air, hurting her severely. In the other one… Rose waved her wand, and the mage fell, his hands going to his groin, already shouting hoarsely in a high pitched, feminine sounding version of Donald Duck.

  “Well, I pulled a trick again, just not the same one you saw,” she said then pointed her wand at the second mage who had stopped what he was doing. “You want some?”

  “No ma’am,” he said and walked sideways out the door, never letting his eyes leave Rose until he was out in the doorway where he pulled his friend roughly to his feet.

  “It seems we are now two members short,” Rasmussen said after a moment. “I hadn’t foreseen their refusal, and when I looked into their minds, all I saw was hatred and betrayal.”

  “If it isn’t a big dealio,” Zania said, then popped a small bubble from some gum she’d been chewing, “I’ll volunteer. Wright is going to need somebody to patch him up. Sure, he’s got charms falling out of his ass, but when you look at the way he gets dinged up on a regular basis and the fact we need somebody to counteract Vassago—”

  “That’s where I come in,” Vivian said. “Death mage,” she said and pointed to herself.

  Zania rolled her eyes. “Yes, but I can counteract him ripping the life out of somebody if I’m in contact with them the same moment. Plus, I am pretty sure I’ve got him beat in more ways than in just the magical department,” she said, her eyelid dropping a saucy wink.

  “I too would like to join up,” Mage Kiersten said. “It seems that what Wright lacks is proper knowledge of the magical community. I could serve a role as council liaison. My niece, Vivian, is good, but she’s only three decades old—”

  “Aunt Kiersten!” Vivian shouted, and I grinned.

  “You’re still in your dirty thirties?” I asked her.

  Rose snickered, and JJ’s jaw dropped open. “Wow, you’re a lot older than I thought. Good thing—”

  “Good thing what?” Vivian demanded.

  “I mean, I don’t go for chicks as old as you,” JJ said.

  “You had the hots for my aunt!” Vivian shot back, annoyed.

  “Well, wanting to do the vertical bop is different than spending a lifetime together,” JJ said.

  That was when I understood what JJ was doing. If he was going to be a part of the team, he needed to bury this hatchet. The only effective way to do it was to do it in public where she couldn’t kill him, and do it in front of people, and come off like it was his fault so she could save face. It was brutal, and I knew it had to have hurt Vivian, but it wasn’t nice, nor comfortable to behold. Still, I didn’t know how else it could have gone down.

  “Sorry,” I told Vivian, “I was just joshing you a bit because you’ve been so elusive about your age.”

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Rasmussen said. “Now, if we’re done horsing around… Wright, you have the blood?”

  I pulled the rag out of my pocket. I’d folded it and put it in a plastic bag. I handed it over to Rasmussen who took it and examined it. I scanned the futures to see what he’d say, but it was what I’d feared.

  “Too old and I’m guessing cleaning chemicals were used to wipe the splatter off?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Sorry, I worried about that. Was there an
y left from the Arches where I blew out his knee?”

  “Yes,” Kiersten said, “though we used the samples up trying to track Vassago down the first time.”

  “We might have another way,” I said and pulled out of my breast pocket two sheets of paper I’d carefully folded.

  “What’s this?” Rasmussen said, taking it.

  It was a full-color photograph of the front cover of the book I’d picked up and then a picture of the book opened, both sides of the pages detailing the athame. This was the tricky part. I didn’t fully trust Vivian, who knew I’d kept the athame, but the athame gave me protection against her turning her magic on me. Hell, it protected me against most active death spells and as closely related as Life and Death magic were, I had a feeling that with some experimentation I might be able to recreate something through trial and error that would counter Vassago’s ability to rip the life force out of me too. Until I knew… I didn’t want to hand it over, to be stored in the Council’s library.

  “This is a book that went to auction in Massachusetts,” I told him as he passed the picture of the cover around and then began examining the second page. “The second page details the effects of an athame that the UC who held the portal open for the undead was holding onto. It’s a focus item that prevented the zombies from attacking him,” I half lied.

  “What does that have to do with Vassago?” Zania asked as the first picture was handed to her.

  “He tried to buy this book. He had a black card, but the auction house wasn’t taking it. The book went for almost twenty-five thousand dollars, cash only sale.”

  Vivian whistled.

  “Who ended up with the book?” Kiersten asked.

  “It went to an agent who was buying for a collector. I spoke with the agent who, in my opinion, verified it was Vassago. Right down to the David Bowie haircut,” I finished.

  Rasmussen steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them, looking at me. Suddenly I realized that he was trying to read me, to see if I had left something out. I had, so I did something totally off the wall. I imagined being entangled passionately with Cindy, every lurid thought I’d ever had about her over the last year or so, and there had been a lot. Rasmussen sat back in his chair, looking me over. I wasn’t sure if he’d got all of that, or if he’d given up, but he didn’t say anything. He’d already been mildly embarrassed once; I found that out with Dana and JJ.