First Sight: The Rune Sight Chronicles Read online

  I thought about that. “Why was he questioning Serek?”

  She hesitated.

  “Come on Rose, I trust you, can’t you trust me?”

  “I made a promise,” she whispered, and took the toothpick I’d set on the table and speared a grape.

  “Ok, I won’t make you break your promise,” I told her.

  “You won’t?” she asked, and confusion lit her face as the syrup from the grape ran down the toothpick.

  I watched, silent, staring at her. When the liquid touched her tiny hand, she shook her head as if to shake water out of her hair and then devoured the grape before licking her hand clean.

  “No ma’am,” I whispered as JJ grew quiet, near wakefulness.

  “I want to tell you, but there’s parts I promised I would keep secret. You know the rules we have to keep.”

  “I do, and a promise is a promise,” I told her. “Are there any parts you can tell me?”

  “Why does it matter?” she asked.

  I thought about it and shrugged. In the scheme of things, it really didn’t.

  “I think more for background. It seems like I’m a bug stuck on a big spider web. All the threads seem to connect somehow, but since I’m so close, I can’t see the pattern of the weave.”

  “That was… a good analogy, for a dumbass,” she said and then started eating again.

  I waited and pulled out a chair and sat as quietly as I could, hoping to let JJ finish his sleeping. Growing boy and all… and maybe it’d help keep the girls away. Who knew. I really needed to learn more about that stuff.

  “As far as my powers go, I can move things with my magic and I can poof, like you’ve seen before. I can make myself invisible, but that’s about it. I’m even more limited than you are, if you were to compare the stunted natures we both have.”

  “I thought there was something special about your dust, your… glitter?” I asked her, grinning.

  “Well, duh!” she said between mouthfuls.

  “Well?” I asked her.

  “Well what? It’s magic. It’s life.”

  “Your farts are magic, they give life to things?”

  “I don’t fart glitter… I do not… frag off,” she said in a huff.

  I started laughing and she looked at me angrily, but realized I wasn’t laughing at her so much as at her losing her cool. She gave me a smile as my chortles tapered off.

  “Where’s the party?” JJ asked sleepily.

  “No worries JJ,” I told him, “Go back to sleep, sorry I woke you.”

  “Sssss cool….” he said sleepily and rolled over.

  I saw Rose looking at me with her head cocked.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “What did Rasmussen say about me?”

  “Sigmund.”

  “What did Sigmund Rasmussen say about me?” she asked, being more specific.

  “That you were a five-inch-tall, Victoria’s Secret model.”

  She smiled, happy with that compliment for some reason.

  My phone rang. I’d forgotten to turn it off, but that was because I almost never got signal in the apartment. When I saw it was Cindy’s number, I checked the time; it was 4am. I hit the talk button.

  “Hey, can’t stop thinking about me, can you?” I asked. “Those handcuffs?”

  Rose snorted.

  “Mr. Wright,” Vassago’s cold voice came out of the phone, and I could tell it was on speakerphone by the echoes. Every muscle in my body clenched. “Judging by your greeting, I can see that I found the perfect leverage.” I heard Cindy in the background screaming for me to not listen to him and Vassago’s cultured British voice telling her to shut up.

  If I’d been chilled before, I was downright frosty now. I hadn’t checked my sight and had started with wit and charm, noting that for somebody who could see the future, I was somewhat blinded.

  “I shall not hurt the mundane cop and her mother. I need you to retrieve my other knife from the Council of Mages, and only then will they both remain safe.”

  “What?” I asked him.

  “I’m offering a trade. Retrieve my knife and we’ll make a trade. The old lady will only slow me down, so I’ll spell her to sleep for a couple of days. If you play it straight, you can get both women back unharmed.”

  “You son of a bitch—”

  “Do you know of the Arches National Park?”

  “Yes,” I told him through clenched teeth.

  “Get my knife, bring it there, and I’ll trade your cop girlfriend. Meet me by the Arch closest to the highway. You have three days.”

  There was a click and then I got a repeated busy signal. He must have touched the phone or had one of the ladies hang up the call. I fumed.

  “He pulled a bad guy move, didn’t he?” Rose asked.

  “Wake up JJ,” I told her, “We’re going back to Utah, but first…” I was already dialing Vivian’s number.

  “You’ve reached the messenger of Vivian Sparks,” a young man’s voice came across.

  “This is Wright,” I told him. “I need to speak with Vivian.”

  “Sir, normal hours are from 8 AM to 6 PM. In the case of an emergency—”

  “Listen up slap nuts,” I shouted into the cell, “This is a very big emergency. I need to speak to her in the next ten minutes. Can you get in touch with her?”

  His voice suddenly sounded different to the sleepy indifferent tone he’d had a moment before. “You’re the new specialist on the task force.”

  “Yes, and I need her right now. I’m headed to the office.”

  “I can’t give you the knife,” a very tired Vivian said for the fourth time.

  The sun had already started rising by the time we got there and the office was starting to hum with activity. My call had triggered the strike force to assemble. Vivian had not been listening to me and we’d gone from sitting calmly in one of the larger conference rooms to the main room where the secretary pool operated when I got agitated. She was not listening and nobody else was backing me up.

  “You don’t have a lot of choice, they took—”

  “Yeah, and despite who she is, she’s still a mundane. We don’t and won’t make a trade with Vassago—”

  “Don’t interrupt me again,” I snarled at her, already having explained to her that Cindy wasn’t a normal mundane. “You are seriously not listening to me.”

  “And you’re not a council enforcer,” she snapped back.

  I pulled my necklace out and touched the new pendant and watched her face flush in anger. “This says that I am. I am going to…” I hesitated when she reached out to touch me.

  I looked into the futures where I let her and realized with a start that she was going to zap me with her death magic. She was going for the equivalent of a supernatural taser effect, something she was quite good at. If her skin touched mine that way, then I was going to be knocked out for days and I didn’t have days. I had exactly two and a half, because she’d been holding me up, demanding me repeat myself while giving refusal after refusal. Confronted with somebody hostile who did not have my best interests at heart, I did what I normally did when attacked, or well, was about to be attacked.

  It was almost in slow motion, seeing real life play out in the futures I’d already seen coming. I ducked under her touch and made my own move. My arm lashed out to my left. She was standing a little offset to me so I already had her in view when my clothed forearm smacked her in the face. Agent Black flinched at the violence and I could hear JJ behind me, roaring a challenge at the two enforcers who were running to assist a partially stunned Vivian.

  “You dare?” She demanded, wiping a smear of blood from her nose.

  “You were going to zap me. Come at me again—”

  I ducked as reading the future showed me that if I didn’t, I was going to get knocked over.

  A body flew over me, hitting Vivian in the chest, and JJ howled. Vivian went flying backwards in a tangle of arms and legs. A bloody werewolf, in the middle of downto
wn NYC, transformed. A furry missile almost four feet high almost knocked me over as he pushed past me and rushed the other three members of Vivian’s strike force team. Vivian got up, a little shaky on her feet. JJ leapt at the agents behind her and transformed into his hybrid form in mid leap as two of the three mages started drawing energy to attack.

  I checked the futures and saw he was about to lay down a serious hurt on them without turning up dead, so I focused on Vivian who only had eyes for me, and not in the way most men like pretty women to look at them.

  “You’ll regret that,” she said, a ball of black energy forming by her hand.

  Behind her, JJ transformed again into his full wolf form, and was rushing, feinting and biting at agents, all the while dodging hastily aimed spells. I scanned the future and saw Vivian wasn’t just going for a knockout punch this time, she was building her will up to where her magic would be enough to take me out. Forever. That’s why I scanned the futures for where I hit an exact spot I was aiming for, and shot her in the foot. I drew my right-side M&P and put a silver bullet in her foot just a moment before the spell was released.

  Instead of flying directly at me, it went over my head as I was already running towards the falling woman. I lowered my shoulder at the last second and rode her to the floor as she hissed, howled and screamed. She fought me physically like a wild banshee, her hair whipping as she attempted to headbutt me. The blood from her broken nose was still running and more than once I felt the hot sticky liquid hit me. I caught sight of JJ leaping out of the way of an ice dagger, thrown by a water mage, and he bounded at the man, catching him with his claws, coming close to completely eviscerating him.

  Vivian quit struggling on me so hard and my attention was diverted to JJ. I was about to scream to him not to kill anyone when a small fist caught me in the throat. My air cut off and for a second I sputtered as Vivian rolled to her feet. I checked the futures for my immediate harm and saw I was about to get zapped by some form of chain lightning. I rolled out of the way as the smell of ozone and the crack of lightning filled the space where I had been a second ago. I rolled to my feet to square off against Vivian, who was leaning against a desk to take the pressure off her bad foot. She was chanting softly, molding a black ball of energy between both hands with a polishing motion.

  Her concentration on the spell was almost absolute, so when an explosion of glitter hit her in the face, she lost control of the spell. I’d seen this coming with my sight and was already moving. My left hand blocked her right that held the twin of the chromed .380 that she’d tried to use on me before. Two shots went into the floor beside my feet and I squeezed with all my strength, feeling bones grinding. Vivian had tears, snot and blood flowing down her face, but she raised her right hand to zap me with a hastily put together bolt when I pistol whipped her. She fell limply, and I fell on top of her, not wanting the death mage to get a chance to take another shot at me. I straddled her waist and held both hands above her head, my pistol still in my right hand.

  She looked up at me, dazed, her eyes a little out of focus.

  “I have a healing charm for you,” I told her, pulling her arm down to use a knee to finally pin one arm to her side so I could pull it out of my pocket, “Tell me where the knife is and I’ll get out of here.”

  “I always knew you were nothing more than a rogue, Rasmussen was wrong about—”

  I headbutted her, interrupting her monologue, knocking her out. With so many shots to the head, maybe she’d spend a couple of days in hospital, laid up like I’d been. Depended on how much of a priority catching us was, and how big of a hornet’s nest I’d stirred up… maybe the healers would make her a priority. That scared me, slightly.

  “Boss, that was uncalled for,” Rose said from behind me somewhere.

  I rolled off her and held up her right hand, the one I had trapped. A gleaming pistol fell out of her grip where she’d found it on the floor while I had been repositioning her to get the healing charm. JJ roared his displeasure as people screamed and the non-fighters ran out of the room, some upstairs, some to the outside entrance to get away from the enraged lycanthrope.

  “Oh, sorry about that,” Rose said, “I didn’t see the gun.”

  “Note to self, that hurts,” I told her, rubbing my forehead before dropping the healing charm in Vivian’s hand, the spare one she’d given me when I’d been laid up in Salt Lake City.

  I pocketed her little replacement gun and got to my feet as JJ rose on his back paws and transformed into a human. This time, his clothing didn’t all make it; his shirt was tattered shreds, but at least his butt was covered with his usual loose-fitting shorts.

  “What was she thinking?” he asked, looking at the downed agents who were moaning, mostly unconscious, some bleeding from various cuts and bites.

  Nobody looked terminal. “She was thinking that, even though I’d been promoted to the team, I was the water boy. She tried to take me out, three times.”

  “I think you showed her that you’re not an easy Alpha to take on,” he said with a grin.

  “You didn’t do bad yourself, you got what, five?”

  “He got four, I pixxed the other,” Rose said.

  “Pixxed?”

  “It’s a thing. He’s knocked out. So, unless you’re not done whipping it out and comparing for size, let’s get the knife and go.”

  “Yeah, I have a feeling that I made things worse, but we’re short on time and I didn’t have a couple days to spend out cold.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know why she has such a hard on about you boss,” Rose said.

  “A what on? About me?”

  “Never mind… I kinda know where the evidence lockers are,” Rose said.

  JJ turned to her and grinned, “I do too. One of those two girls I was talking to in the sandwich shop? She works there.”

  An idea formed. “What’s the chances that this commotion has spread through the whole building?”

  “Oh, I’m sure it will, especially since you and Vivian fired a gun, but the mundanes don’t want to run into a mage fight and the mages don’t know exactly what they are dealing with. We just took down a council strike force by our threesome.”

  “That sounded way dirtier than it should have,” JJ told her. “I mean, when you consider the size differences—”

  “Where is the knife stored?” I shouted at them.

  “That way,” they chorused, pointing towards a hallway.

  I started running.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What’s going on?” A stern woman who looked to be in her mid fifties, warning black robes, stood at the end of the hallway, her arms folded.

  Her robes matched the style Rasmussen had worn, and I slid to a stop, a good ten feet away from her. I saw the futures where I attacked and saw she was ready for that, with fire. She’d torch me alive, incinerate me to ash. I held up a hand so JJ didn’t wolf out and turn himself into a wolf kebob. With my other hand, I pulled my necklace out and showed her the charm.

  “Specialist Wright,” she said in a voice that wavered, but not from illness or infirmity. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “I don’t have a lot of time ma’am,” I told her. “You’re with the council?”

  “I am, and that does not answer my question: what are you doing?”

  “I need to get the knife that was used to kill the Librarian.”

  “He didn’t have the job yet, but why? Why should I allow you to pass by me when you’ve left the field office shattered and I’m hearing reports of injuries?”

  “Who are you, lady?” JJ said, his low voice clearly angry.

  I looked over to see him shaking, but held back by my word only.

  “I am a member of the senior council. I wouldn’t try anything funny Mr. Jones, I know all about you three, and none of it is very frightening to me.”

  “I need the knife. It’s related to the case that Rasmussen deputized me for. Vassago has kidnapped a not quite mundane sheriff who’s my neighb
or. He wants it in trade for her life. Vivian attacked me in a fit of anger, so I had to deal with her. I even left her a healing charm after I shot her, so… they are all going to live. We didn’t take anybody out of the fight for good, just a few hours.”

  The lady’s stern look had me checking the futures. In some, her arms seemed to start to illuminate and burst into flames, her entire upper torso glowing with a furious fire, before killing all of us. In another future, she did nothing, but sent us on our way. Yet another future, she… let us go? That was a problem I ran into from time to time. Though her face looked set, the senior council mage hadn’t chosen a path, yet. I was seeing the three choices she was mulling over, and all I knew was that two out of three times I wasn’t going to get the knife and save the girl if I was held up, dead or turned away.

  “If it helps,” JJ said, “Vivian tried to shoot him in the back yesterday, tried to zap him unconscious today, and hurled a ball of death magic… then when he was trying to reason with her, she pulled a baby gun out and tried to put a cap in him again.”

  “A… cap?” the woman said, focusing on JJ for the first time.

  I looked into the future of him taking a step forward and then cut the thought off.

  “Don’t do it JJ, she might think you’re eye candy, but we don’t have time for you to romance her.”

  “But boss, she’s wickedly hot. Like a total silver fox, I bet her bod under that robe—”

  “JJ,” both Rose and I screamed.

  He clamped his mouth shut and the woman’s mouth seemed to quiver before the side of it pulled up into a wry grin.

  “His mating season?” she asked.

  “Yeah, it’s hell.”

  “Come on…” JJ said, but I waved him into silence.

  “Sorry, but I was put on a deadline. If Vivian had listened, we could have coordinated something or planned to take out Vassago once and for all, but she wouldn’t listen and I’m desperately running out of time.”