First Sight
The Rune Sight Chronicles
Boyd Craven III
Copyright © 2017 Boyd Craven III
First Sight, The Rune Sight Chronicles
By Boyd Craven
Many thanks to friends and family for keeping me writing!
All rights reserved.
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Contents
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
About the Author
Chapter One
The crowd surrounded me, cheering, yelling, calling encouragement.
"Hit me," I told the dealer.
The dealer drew a seven and laid it face up in front of me. Cheers erupted all around the table and I smiled, pulling the stack of chips my way. I stood, and started filling the pockets of my suit coat with chips. I should've left a long time ago. I should've left hours ago. I grabbed the glass of scotch and threw it back. The smoky, peaty flavor hit my taste buds and went down my throat, igniting a fire in my stomach.
"That was well played," a silky voice said from behind me, as a woman wrapped her hands around my waist.
I set my glass down, and pulled her hands away from the pockets of my suit as I turned. My would-be pickpocket was in her early 30s, with long curly brown hair, and big dark brown eyes. She was a better pickpocket than any had seen in a long while. She had an olive complexion, which made it hard for me to tell which part of the world she came from. I’d prevented her hand from reaching into the pocket that I had just dropped some $500 chips in. She grinned, and her shoulders gave a little shrug as if to acknowledge the fact that I had caught her in the act of pilfering a chip or two. It had been a good night, and I had close to $80,000 in my pockets.
"Sorry ma'am," I said to her with a drunken smile, "it's all business tonight."
"Are you sure it's only business you’re after, here in Vegas?" she asked me.
The scotch wasn't the only thing igniting a fire in my lower stomach. One hand reached up and played with the ends of her hair, and her lips parted slightly, as if she was about to say something.
"I'm just a businessman," I told her.
"What does your business involve? Does it involve me?" she purred.
I started walking away from her, but I felt her hand slip into mine. I snickered, feeling confident. Strong, ready to take on the world.
"Lucky bastard." "Why is it guys like him…" Several voices whispered just loud enough to be heard over the din of the crowd.
"I'm cashing out," I called to the dealer drunkenly. "Walk you to the door Miss…?"
"You can call me Vivian," the woman said.
Vivian. The gorgeous woman looked familiar, but there was something about her that made me wary. I walked with her, hand in hand, all the way to the cashier, and started pulling chips out of my pocket, breaking the contact. She sat there quietly and watched as I produced my identification and my Social Security card, and I filled out the tax paperwork quickly, careful to make sure she didn’t see any of it. She didn't bat an eye when the cashier started pushing stacks in my direction. If there was anyone in this casino, other than the godforsaken computers, with facial recognition, this cashier would recognize me. She looked at Vivian, and gave her a slight nod. Was that a signal? Girls have this unspoken language, and guys like me never can catch a break when it comes to unlocking their meaning.
I stuffed four stacks of bills in the inner pocket of my suit and I made a motion towards the cashier. She nodded and, from my breast pocket, I pulled out one chip that I’d held back in reserve, and flipped it to her. She winked at me and gave Stephen, door security, a rather large nod. Vivian frowned at that, but didn't say anything as I took her hand and started leading her towards the front of the casino. I hadn’t planned on a date tonight, but sometimes things just happen. Boy, was she gonna be pissed when I exited… stage left.
"Who is she?" Vivian asked, her head nodding back in the direction toward the cashier we had just left.
"Just an old friend," I told her softly, "and I let her know to have security meet me at the door."
"Security? Oh, you need someone to walk you to your car after all? Are you a big spender or a high roller… Mister …?"
I held the door open for her, and she stepped through, with me following a close second behind her. I ignored her fishing for my name and turned to her.
"No, to protect me against you," I said, letting her know I was onto her game.
My arm was already reaching up, and my forearm blocked her wrist, which had been shooting towards my throat. The contact sent the hypodermic needle skittering out of her grip and, although I felt bad doing it, a quick rabbit punch in the stomach made her let out an ‘OOOoooof’ sound.
Security ended up being a 300-pound biker stuffed into an ill-fitting suit. The guy looked like his steroids had steroids for breakfast. He reached down and grabbed the hypodermic needle dropped by the would-be assassin, or kidnapper, and, as she was starting to stand up straight again after my sucker punch, he gave her a chop to the side of the neck. Her hand flew up as if to feel where the point of pain had come from, but just that quickly she was folding onto the ground again.
"Things are getting too hot here, Tom," the security guy said.
"Yeah, I get that," I said, running my hands through my hair, and then straightening the edges of my suit out.
"I don't think it'll be a good idea for you to come back here for a long time. When she wakes up we will find out who she is."
"Let me know who she ends up being, would you?" I asked Stephen, the security guard I'd been friends with her more than a decade.
"I'll get word to you in the usual way," he said in a voice that was low and gravelly. "But Tom, I'm serious. You come around here too much lately, and you're starting to be known again. It's time to make a fade."
I nodded to him and fished the necklace out that I was wearing under my dress shirt. I found the Elk carving among the many charms on the necklace and pushed a small measure of magic into the runes carved all the way around it. I double checked to make sure nobody else was watching, then activated it. There was a flash of purple and I closed my eyes and took a step. When I opened my eyes, I was home.
Chapter Two
The thing about magic, is that either people have it or they don't. Is a kid, I was always taught that maybe 95% of the human population didn't have magic, and even a smaller number than that didn't believe in magic. I'm not talking about the magic you can see up on stage at one of the fancier hotels in Las Vegas, I'm talking about real magic. For the other 5% that either believed or could perform some sort of magic, very few were any good at it. And then there were people like me.
I was born with my magic stunted. I never knew my father; my mother was a… for lack of a better term, a sorceress, a witch, a mage. It depends on what books you read and what movies you watched. We lived our lives on the run, as if there was always someone hunting us. I was almost 10 years old when I found out that there really was someone hunting us, and that my mother wasn't crazy. That's when, in the middle of the night, the hotel door had been kicked in.
I rememb
ered that night vividly. We'd been traveling and, to use one of my mother's favorite sayings, "a rolling stone gathers no moss." I didn't know what that meant at the time, but I do now. The longer we stayed in one place, the more my mother used her magic, and the easier it was to track us. The night the council came for my mother, she hid me away, in the back of a closet, and used one of her most powerful illusion spells to hide me from the men. She obviously hadn't trusted me to listen to her instructions, because she bound me there with her will, the basis of her magic.
I listened in blind panic, to whomever she tried to fight off which, to me, sounded like half a dozen men and women. I could hear a crackle of electricity, a crash, and smelled smoke as fire magic was used, there was a sudden popping sound as a shield dropped into place, and then the earth-shattering sound of an explosion as something rebounded and hit the ceiling of the hotel room we'd been hiding in. I heard screams, then sobs, and a lone gun shot rang out. I sat like that, mute, for almost 20 minutes, before her spell wore off. When I could move, I stumbled as if the hands that had been holding me back suddenly let go as I was pushing my way forward.
I didn't hear, either because of my own crying, or the fact that I'd been deafened by a magical explosion, but I suddenly found myself feeling alone, at 10 years old. The two police officers who had just come on the scene were standing over my mother and were startled as I came barreling and screaming out of the closet like a demonically possessed person when the bindings my mother had cast had worn off.
That was in 1939. A lot had happened since then, and a lot hadn't. Set adrift, I came in to the magic on my own. Like I said before, it was stunted and I was all alone.
I shook my head and wiped my eyes as the purple shimmer faded from sight. I had come to in my safe space, a long way from Vegas. Hell, Coalville, Utah was quite aways away from anywhere. The room was much the same as I’d left it, almost 3 weeks ago when I’d started my gambling binge.
It was a long rectangular concrete room, with fluorescent lights set to automatically turn on with the motion detector. They started flickering to life as I moved about, making the emergency lighting turn off one by one. The 20 x 40 concrete room resembled a combination of a metalworking shop, an ammunition factory, an armory, and a bunker. Along one wall was two sets of bunk beds, a small kitchenette, and a small bathroom built into the corner near the back. The opposite wall was dedicated to metalworking tools, a work bench and a reloading area with dies.
If somebody knew what they were looking at, they'd recognize some of the stuff. Sure, I had a lot of the common metalworking tool work: mills, lathes, different types of welders, and a large 50-ton shop press and a mini forge. To the left of that, was what looked like the tools used by a jeweler. Actually, they were tools used by jewelers, all around the world.
The back wall was dedicated to my real profession. Gambling was just something I did when I couldn't stand the four walls pressing in on themselves, if I wanted to make some fast cash, or if I was lonely. As I’d just found out, not only was it an easy way to make money, but it was also very easy way to get noticed again. I'd been running from the Council since that night in 1939, almost 80 years ago.
Not that I looked bad for someone who was close to being 90. I didn’t look a day over thirty. That was one of the only benefits of being a mage.
I checked everything over, making sure nothing had been touched, nothing had been moved. Then I went and checked my security system and saw that there had been no breaches, not even any attempts. The monitor outside showed me was what Spring looked like in Utah. Outside of my hidden glass door, an elk and a baby walked slowly up the side of the mountain. They had absolutely no problem being so close to my gravel drive, nor the Jeep I had waiting out there.
"I need to go to the bank today, but I'm just too damn tired," I said, looking at the monitor, making the cameras outside switch views so I could see all around my stronghold.
Quite often, my dreams match the memories I get when I use a gate charm to jump locations. I know I mentioned my magic is stunted, but I've got two tricks, and oh boy, are they good ones.
In my dream, my mother and I were fleeing across the desert again. Most of the time we stayed in the United States, but not always. This time we were fleeing across New Mexico, as fast as we could go.
"Thomas, what are the types of magic?"
My younger self groaned, already sick of the endless questions, the teachings. All I ever wanted to do was finish reading one of the books my mother had said my father had left for me. I was sick and tired of the constant homeschooling and nomadic lifestyle, and dealing with my mother’s constant fear. It was infectious, her fear and anxiety.
"There's the elemental magic," I told her, "first magic, fire, air, water, earth. Those are the basics, but you say you can do a lot more with them than just that. Then there's more different types of magic than just elemental magic. There's life magic, there's death magic, there's people who can conjure, and then there's necromancy," I told her, trying to remember at least one type from each field of study.
"Very good," she said looking to my right and taking her eyes off the road for a moment, "but that's not all of them, is it?"
"Well," younger me told her, "there's also branches of magic that hurt people. Not like burning someone or freezing them in a solid block of ice, but magic that makes them go crazy. The stuff that’s dangerous to people like us," my younger self had said, wondering if I would have ever come into my magic.
"Very good," she told me without looking up this time. "And what kind of magic would that be?"
"Well, there's a few different types. There's beings you told me about, they seem to eat the soul. With that they can do weird things. Strange things. Telekinesis, mind control," I told her, thinking there was more, but my mind was blank.
"Yes, and not all of those require someone to be vampiric in nature. There are some that, if not controlled, can have bad consequences, such as making somebody go crazy. Can you think of any?”
I shook my head, the motion making her smile at me.
“Some of them, give some mages the sight."
"I know, but no Seer’s ever lived beyond the age of 30—"
I woke up a few seconds before my phone started ringing. I didn't have any hard core pre-cognitive abilities, but if you pay attention to the sight for long enough, you always leave part of it open, even if it's just a crack. I'd already sat up in the bottom bunk, and was reaching for the phone when it started ringing. Rammstein’s Du Hast started blasting into the darkness. I fumbled with the phone, the bright display blinding me in the dark. I slid my fingers across the code, unlocking my phone, and hit the green button on the screen and dragged it to the side, answering the call.
"Somebody better be bleeding or dead. Or I'm gonna make it happen," I said grumpily into the phone.
Steven's rough voice said, "That woman was a council enforcer."
"Shit!"
"Yeah, I had the cops pick her up. My contact at the Las Vegas Police Department says that vial was full of an anesthetic. Not poison."
"Shit!"
"You just said that. Listen, what I said before? About you not coming around here no more? Don't."
"In light of the situation, I don't think I can. Did I get away clean?"
"I had Daniela scrub the video of our encounter. By the time the Council sent back-up for the enforcer, it was already too long since you gated out of the area. One of them tried to follow, but couldn't get a fix on your location."
"Thank God." I let out a big sigh of relief, not realizing how terror-stricken the words ‘council’ and ‘enforcer’ were to me, and how hard they made my heart beat in fear.
"Are you in any trouble?"
"No, but one of them did stop and talk to me."
"What did they want?" I croaked.
"They wanted to know how I knew you, and where you would be."
"And what did you tell them?"
"The truth," Steven said, with finality
in his voice.
I winced. I'd always deliberately been vague with Steven, but he was one of the true immortals in Vegas. He’d been there when the gangsters first opened the casinos, and first opened the brothels for the rich. He'd been feeding off of Vegas for nearly as long as I'd been alive. Steven was a vampire, but one of the good guys. There was no fooling him, especially when he could look right inside a person's mind, and see the soul and the aura of the man within. He was also a damn good guy to have on your side, but not one I'd ever been comfortable calling my friend, at least out loud. I might have to rethink that though; he’d done me a solid.
"So, what did you tell them?"
"That you're a regular gambler at this casino. That you don't like going to any of the bigger and nicer casinos on the main drag, and that you usually go back to the hotel with a new woman every time you visit."
I heard a hint of a smile in his voice, and although technically he was right, even Steven hadn't realized that the women were just a cover. We’d get back to the hotel room, and I would walk into the bathroom and gate out, back to a stronghold. The women were paid handsomely, and if they kept their mouths shut, they always knew all they had to do for the night was whisper in my ear and keep my drinks full, and they would make four to five times more than their normal wage in the brothel.
"Well, I guess that can't be too bad. So, they have no idea where I went?"
"I have no idea where you went. Or where you go, for that matter. If you didn't already know, we aren't exactly BFFs," Steven told me, and I could hear a hint of a smirk in his voice.
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