“Because if I die today, I need you to know it was Khrystiana and her pets that killed my mother, and I need you to tell Cindy that I think she’s kind of a big deal and I really lo—”
“Stop,” Rose said, kicking a small drop of water at me, “Stop that shit right now. You know how easy it is to pix your balls to your butt cheeks while you're naked in the shower?”
“Rose—”
“Stages of grief, asshole. You’re about to get really pissed. Like, you’re going to hulk out. Yes, if something happens, I’ve got your back, but I need the hulk right now.”
I shivered despite the steam coming off the water hitting me. Maybe she was right. The dream was so real, the fear was such a tangible thing. The pain of losing my mom was crushing, but… she was right.
“There you go,” Rose said, nodding. “And after you’ve cleaned up, come on out. We’ll have some breakfast, lunch, whatever. Then we’re going to plan out how to kill the Empress.”
I smiled, the first time since I’d woke up. I liked that idea, I liked it a lot.
18
“Hey there,” Cindy said as I took a stool next to her in the diner.
“You here for food, pie or to steal my daughter's heart away?” Cindy’s mom said, wiping her hands on an apron.
“Um… at least two of the three in one sitting.”
“Then pie it is, I won’t even mention the other two in case I’m wrong about one of them.”
“Hi,” I said kind of awkwardly and then put my elbows on the counter and leaned over and bumped my shoulder into hers.
She was in uniform, and her hat was sitting on the empty stool to her right. She leaned back and hugged me and soon I was hugging her hard.
“Don’t Hakuna my mattattas,” Rose said from somewhere behind me.
“Sorry, didn’t know you were there,” Cindy said quietly.
I sat back up straight as what looked like half an apple pie, still in the baking tin, was sat in front of me with a dollop of whipped cream the size of a softball.
“You looked hungry,” she said, smiling. “Now I’ll get you your regular, so you can have some time to talk.”
“Thanks, mom,” I told her.
Cindy bit her lip, and for a moment her mom scowled at me in mock anger, then grinned. “Little lady, you want to help me in the kitchen? I’ve got fresh fruit and some honey?”
“Sure!” Rose said, invisible to all of us but her mom and I felt her fly past as the air from her wings marked her passing.
“You’d think she was trying to give us some time alone,” Cindy said, pulling a mug of coffee to her lips and taking a large sip.
“She is, otherwise Rose would have done it for me,” I told her and dug into the pie before pushing the tin between us.
“No thanks. Sounds like you’ve got something on your mind,” she pushed the tin back in front of me.
“I do. Remember that thing I was going to do?”
“Yes, do a little Nancy Drew stuff?”
“I prefer Scooby Doo, but yeah. It worked, and we found him.”
“What happened?” she asked softly.
“A near zombie outbreak summoned flesh monsters. We had to put down the two mages and creatures attacking us, but we found Vassago,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper.
“I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“The two mages who attacked us… they were the Empress’s sons.”
She took a long pull of her coffee as I took another bite of edible heaven and she waited.
“I’m guessing that’s not a good thing?” she asked.
“You see what happened in Los Vegas?” I asked her.
“Stunt team, some kind of animal accident? It was on the news.”
“Probably part glamoured,” I muttered.
“Wait, you mean that was… that wasn’t you, but who was it?” she asked.
“Khrystiana’s Pet Demons. I gated to the arches to get them away from people and—”
“Wait, real demons, like heaven and hell, the devil, angels, and demons?”
“Yes,” I said softly, “at least, we associate them with demons, they really don’t talk to polite mages.”
“And then what happened?” she asked, taking another sip as an excuse not to look me in the eye.
“Mage Kiersten was killed, and we barely banished them both. I got a round into Khrystiana, but with a pet healer there, she’ll likely be on her feet, ready to summon her pets back from hell.”
“Oh, damn. So you did have a busy day.”
“Yeah.”
I ate the pie, and she reached over the counter and got a mug out for me and then pointed at it. A passing waitress poured some of Juan Valdez’s finest Columbian black gold into my mug. It was almost too hot to drink, but I managed. I saw Cindy’s mom poke her head out of the batwing doors that separated the kitchen from the rest and she made a little wave at me before ducking back in there.
“She thinks we’re going to be married and have grandkids soon,” Cindy said.
I sprayed coffee and started choking. Cindy laughed and thumped my back.
“I got it.” The waitress who’d given me coffee went behind the counter and proceeded to clean up my mess with a wet rag while I coughed so hard my eyes watered.
“Damn, didn’t know you were that scared of commitment,” she told me, smiling, but her eyes were welling up with tears.
I reached down the counter and took her hand and gave it a squeeze and didn’t let go. After a moment, she turned hers and squeezed mine back.
“I have to live through today before I go making promises I can’t be sure to keep,” I told her.
“I wasn’t, I mean… I didn’t propose… you didn’t—”
I poked her in the ribs. She squeaked and squirmed sideways despite me getting mostly the side of her vest she wore under her uniform shirt.
“Dammit, Tom,” she hissed, “you almost made me spill my coffee.”
“Better watch it, last time we joked and joshed each other, it turned into a food fight, then almost went pornographic.”
She turned red in the face and looked around to see if anybody had heard that comment.
“I’ll have you know that—”
“Food’s here. I know you must be famished, you are looking so thin suddenly!”
“I am, thank you,” I said as she laid a plate down.
The burger was so big it hung over the bun by an inch all the way around. She must have used half a pound or more of burger to make it, and I saw it’d been topped with swiss, olives, tomatoes and of course, catsup and mustard, no mayo. My favorite.
“Thank you, Mom,” I told her.
“You keep calling me that, I’m going to make you have to earn the title,” she said, pointing at Cindy.
“Dammit, you two,” Cindy cursed.
“She is used to being the one to pick on me,” I told her mom.
“Yeah, now she’s on the ropes. Better ask her now!”
I waited and looked up at her mom sideways then back at Cindy who was turning red in the face.
“Cindy, with everything that’s going on, this is the very last thing I should be doing—”
“Then don’t,” she said, looking left and right.
“But the truth is, I’ve liked you for a while, and I never thought that—”
“I’m not doing this,” she said, standing up.
“…I’d ask you if you’ll go out on a date with me sometime. Your choice of days?”
She snorted and then dropped back into her stool.
“Don’t make me use my billy club on you,” she hissed as her mom walked back into the kitchen.
“Naw, you wouldn’t use those on me,” I told her.
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because you’d have to cuff me afterwards.”
Rose was still invisible, but when she started laughing, it came out of thin air in front of us. Everyone in the diner could hear it and turned to look at the
source. I pointed at Cindy, who in turn, smacked me on the shoulder.
“Not in here, lover boy,” she said and pinched my leg under the bar.
“Uh huh. But… if something were to happen to me, I wanted to let you know… I mean… there’s a good chance she’s going to throw everything she has at me now…”
“I get it, you’re in the danger zone. That’s how I live my life,” she said, tapping the badge on her uniform, “Sometimes people want safe lives. So they get a safe job. People like us…”
“Aren’t always destined to grow old, sitting in the rockers and watching the deer come down the mountain?” I asked her.
“No, that makes it sound like you have a death complex. I mean, you and I. We’re never going to have a safe life, but it is whatever we make of it.”
“Exactly. And no matter how this shakes out,” I told her softly, “I want to be a part of your life. However you’ll let me.”
The air in front of us was suddenly making retching noises, and I looked into the futures and saw that she was about to get—
“Rose,” Cindy’s mom hissed.
“Oops.” And then there was a popping sound.
“I’d like that,” Cindy told me after a long pause. “And yes, we need to go on a real date sometime. Instead of running and gunning and having assassins and monsters and zombies—”
“We also met a vampire and a flesh golem yesterday,” I interrupted to grin as she did a double take.
“And… wow, I don’t know what I was about to say. But yeah. That.”
I grinned and dug into my food.
“So what are you doing for dinner later on?” Cindy asked me.
“I don’t know, whatever you’re cooking,” I told her.
“Whatever I’m cooking? Really?” she asked, her mouth quirked into a half grin that I knew meant she was about to hit me with food or tackle me.
I didn’t bother checking the future to see which one it was. I just watched her expression, barely noticing the front door to the diner open and a figure stepping in.
“Excuse me miss, can I have a word with you two?”
The voice was British, cultured and I knew it. I spun on my stool, putting my hand out to hold Cindy’s hand that had twitched in recognition.
“David,” I said quietly.
“David?” Cindy said, her body quivering at seeing her kidnapper standing four feet behind her.
“My mundane name for public purposes. May I join you two for a moment?”
“This isn’t a good time,” I told Vassago.
“No, it isn’t for me either. See, I just had to do a major healing on somebody,” he said sitting down beside me, every fiber of my being wanting to run and get out of his range of touch, “It seems like the empress was shot. Perforated her liver. She was nearly dead when she caught up with me. She’s sleeping now.”
“What is the bad guy doing sitting in my mother’s diner?” Cindy asked me quietly, her right side pressed up close to me to mask to the rest of the diner that she had her hand on her gun.
“I think he wants to talk, seems he’s an unwilling subject of the Empress.”
“Do you trust him?” she asked.
We were loud enough that he could hear us, but I had a field of eff’s, and it was completely fallow.
“Not at all,” I told her.
“Good, as I was saying,” he said with a sniff, “You’ve nearly done what no other mage in history has done. She was closer to death than you ever have been, Wright.”
“Yay me?” I said sarcastically.
“Why aren’t we shooting him?” Cindy asked.
“The Empress has my daughter hostage, has for the last hundred and five years,” Vassago told her quietly.
“I… you’re telling the truth,” she said.
“Yes, which is why I wanted you to be here when I talk this out. See, when the three of us, your mother you and I… anyways, my power allows me to see and to fix people—”
“Or to rip their life force out of them,” I said with a growl.
“That too, but I knew that you were essentially a living breathing polygraph machine.”
“That’s true,” she said softly, her hand relaxing in mine again.
“She’s got my daughter hostage, and her pets have been sent back to the depths of hell. It’ll be days or weeks before they are strong enough to be summoned again.”
“Still telling the truth,” she whispered.
“So why tell me? What do I have to do with it?” I asked him.
“I need your help.”
“Dear, would you like some pi—”
“Yes, please,” Vassago said turning and touching Cindy’s mother’s wrist.
My hand went inside my suit coat and came out with a full sized 1911, conflagration runes on the bullets, the pistol now inserted in his ear.
“I merely touched her to see if the healing was still going on, and to give her a boost.”
“Still true,” Cindy said, her voice choking.
The diner had gone silent, and Cindy’s mother was looking at him, her lips trembling.
“I’m one of the good guys today,” Vassago told her quietly.
She looked at Cindy who nodded. “You’re the reason why my head is clearer lately?” she asked.
“Yes, and I’m sorry for any distress I caused before, I truly am.”
Cindy was nodding, not bothering to tell me.
“I can’t promise it’ll last. Early-onset Alzheimer’s is something I would have to work on constantly to get ahead of. What I can promise you is that you will have many more years of health and more good days than bad. I don’t know how many, this guy is the future seer,” he said, using his elbow to jab me in the side like we were friends, “But I did what I can. I might not make it back from a journey I’m about to go on, but if I can, I will come back once more to help fix the wrong I’ve done for you and your daughter.”
“True,” I murmured, and both ladies nodded.
“I’ll get you some pie, be right back.”
I felt Rose land, this time on the shoulder away from Vassago. I looked over, but Cindy hadn’t noticed or realized the little Fae had returned. She was still my ace in the hole. I holstered my gun, and the talk in the diner started back up after a long nervous pause.
“Do you know where your daughter is being held?” I asked him.
“I do,” he said.
“Is it in whatever type of stronghold the House of Shadows is in?” I asked him.
“It is.”
“Are you willing to turn on your mistress so easily and forsake her cause?”
“To get my daughter back, I’d kill God himself,” he told me softly.
“I might need to bring some people in with me.”
“This needs to be a small operation, a burglary, more than a smash and grab. There are too many heavyweight players there. Ideally, you, me, maybe one or two more. If we have to resort to fighting, we’ve already lost.”
“Ok,” I told him thinking, then realized the question I should have asked ahead of time, “One last question.”
I can’t believe I’m doing this.
“Sure,” he said, more statement than a question.
“Why me?” I asked him.
He opened his mouth and shut it, then looked to Cindy who shrugged at him.
“You can see the future. You can travel pathways in your mind before you actually travel them. With a veil, you could figure out a way in and out of there without being seen.”
“What if I don’t have a veil?” I asked him. “My magic, it’s not that complex. I can see the future and…”
I reached into my pocket. Since I’d shown the necklace to Vassago, the artifact had been resting in my pocket, and I pulled it out.
“Ahhh yes, which is what gave me the idea, why I thought you might be able to help.”
“It’s effect works as a veil?” I asked him.
“It does,” he said, and I examined it again. The cha
rm hanging from it was nothing special, something that looked like it was worked out of pewter.
“When I check the futures of me putting it on, nothing happens,” I told him.
“You have to push your will into it, like you would activating a gate stone, and speak a command word. Some of the House of Shadows’ oldest relics work in this manner. Command words are very specific to the item, and sometimes we cannot find what language nor command word is needed to activate an item. Your runes are clever, by the way. The bleeding one you hit me with on our first encounter would have done away with one such as me if I hadn’t already been warded against something like that.” He pulled up his sleeve and showed me that he was wearing a gold charm bracelet.
What I knew of runes was what I’d been able to figure out on my own. I’d spent decades avoiding the magical community as much as possible, and there were entire branches of magic I knew nothing about. Summoning was one of them, along with entities that took bodily possession of humans be they spirits, demonic or ifrit.
“What’s the command word?” I asked him.
He leaned forward to me and whispered in my ear softly before leaning back. “I only heard Sebastian mutter it once. That’s the trick with charms like this, they run on your life force, but they activate and deactivate with your will and command. It runs off your magic while it’s in effect, but that one Sebastian could wear almost nonstop.”
“So he was probably in the Council’s Bureau office when we were attacked,” I muttered to nobody in particular.
“Or just on the other side, invisible.”
“One last thing,” I told Vassago.
“If you help me get my daughter back, you can ask me anything,” he said solemnly.
“You killed my father,” I said softly.
“I will repay any past transgressions if you can do this one thing with me, for me.”
“Truth,” Cindy said softly.
“Ice cream, who wants some?” Cindy’s mother said from the kitchen, coming out with three large bowls in her hands.
“I uh…”
“Eat your burger, Thomas, you’re getting too skinny, maybe David Bowie and I can share mine,” she said and dropped a saucy wink at Vassago.
“Mom!” Cindy said.
“I’m old, not dead,” she shot back, and I had to shake my head at the turnaround.
Second Sight: The Rune Sight Chronicles Page 18
