First Sight: The Rune Sight Chronicles Read online

  "You're the best friend I've got," I told him truthfully, breaking the unspoken rule I had for myself.

  "And that my friend, is very, very sad. You need to get out of town, wherever town is, wherever you're at. Council Enforcers are no joke."

  "Trust me," I said with a big sigh, "I know. I just wish I knew why they were after me, after all these years."

  "The Council of Mages has never made much sense to my kind," Stephen said. "But they are the most powerful individuals on the face of the earth."

  I grunted, knowing that, as insecure as I felt about my magic, he was right. My feelings of inadequacy over my lack of magic were obvious to those who knew me... The two tricks I did know, they were doozies and I wanted to keep them secret. Even from him. There had been a time when it hadn’t been as much of a secret, but I’d buried it. Buried it deep.

  "Listen, thanks for the call and the information. When I get back into town, I'll be in contact with you. Normal payment?" I asked him.

  "I want a full cup this time," Steven said softly. "A shot glass of your blood won't be enough for the favor I did for you tonight. Going against a Council Enforcer, even by accident? I never know if I'll get another taste."

  "If next you see me, and I have a cup of blood left in me, it's yours," I told him and then hung up the phone.

  I turned the phone off, and then pulled the battery out and laid back on my bunk, staring at the black ceiling.

  I scanned the futures. I didn't see anything that was coming for me, and I didn't see any more interruptions as far ahead as I could look. Then I looked at the future to see how long I could fall back asleep for. My mind worked on that, and I could feel my magic coming through my blood softly. Blood, aged to perfection, at least according to Steven. It was an exercise I performed every night. If I was careful, I could look between 3 and 10 seconds into the future.

  The one thing I’d learned since my mother's death was that I was unlucky enough to be a Seer. It wasn't that I could just see the future, it was that I could see all the potential futures, for at least 3 to 5 seconds, sometimes 10, if I was lucky. With most mages who are seers, this drives them insane. It had nearly done the same to me, in the 40s, when I had briefly been a visitor at an asylum back at a time when that wasn't politically incorrect to do. It had given me time to focus on my developing gift. And to answer endless questions, as the police and government tried to figure out who I was, and how the boy that had disappeared from a murder scene and shown up a couple years later, had hardly aged at all.

  Those two years in the asylum had taught me focus. They’d taught me meditation. I’d often sat in my room and spent my entire waking time looking into the future, and trying not to lose myself. That was why diviners or seers or fortune tellers are so uncommon. They start looking into the future, all the futures, and they get lost. Some people never learn how to turn it off, the sight. That was what I called it anyway, the sight. Most of them, the mages who can’t handle it, would rather take their own lives than learn how to deal with the psychic fallout.

  The other trick I could do really well was actually a result of my sight, and the fact that my magic was stunted. The back wall full of weapons? Most of those I’d either made, modified, or had carved runes on their surfaces. I had a single stage reloading press tucked away under one of my workbenches, where I made my own bullets. For half a decade I’d spent time as a professional hunter. If there was any reason why the Council might want to find me, it was probably that. I’d never worked as an assassin, though many people had tried to get me to. I'd only worked to put down evil, wherever it was found. Bullets with runes carved into their lead or silver, depending on what I was hunting that day, were very effective. It's really hard to miss, when you can see into the future before you ever pull the trigger, and have time to adjust your aim. I was younger, cockier back then, and now years later… It might be the death of me.

  "Why now?" I asked no one in particular.

  I stared into the darkness, and felt myself drifting off to sleep, with a sense of déjà vu. I’d been getting that a lot lately. That's how I roll.

  Chapter Three

  My alarm clock buzzed on my phone and I rolled over and muted it. I got up, letting the motion sensors turn on some of the lights, but I walked over to the wall near the end of my bunk and flipped the switches on that turned on all the lights, regardless. Bright brilliant white light flooded the space and I stood there a few moments, letting my eyes adjust. I followed the wall to the left of my bunk toward the only area of my bunker that was boxed off. The bathroom. I could have left that open to everything else, like I had my sleeping quarters, but when I was taking care of business I still liked the smaller space and the feel of privacy.

  I stripped and took a shower, washing away the smell of the casino and the cheap perfume that Vivian’s embrace had left on me. She had been alluring enough, but last night I’d broken one of my personal rules. I’d been having a good time, drinking un-watered drinks, and I’d let a strange woman get close. Damn, I’d broken a lot of my own rules.

  After I was showered and scraped clean and shaved, I headed out to dress and see what I had for breakfast. I had to make a bank run today and, if I was lucky, I had some information waiting for me in a nearby town regarding a book I wanted to run down.

  I dressed quickly and found what little food I had left in the fridge had gone bad. That sucked, and as much of a modern-day prepper as I was, I didn’t feel like making a meal from scratch. Even everything in my freezer sucked, and I realized that my favorite microwave sandwiches were all out. I’d have to do some shopping, take my trash to the dump, do my bank run and…

  A buzzer went off for two seconds, and then it repeated once again. I walked over to the work station with my security monitors and wiggled the mouse. Most mages can’t be around technology, but my magic doesn’t blow out delicate electronics like it does the other 99.99% of mages in the world, a fact I often used to hide and deny my existence, when I’d been hunted in the past and confronted. It had literally saved my life. What I saw on the screen was the Sheriff’s Blazer parked next to my Jeep.

  I also saw a mass of red hair, loose curls falling half way down her back, and one freckled cheek which all but covered the screens as Sheriff Cindy Raines tried to stare into the camera as if she could see in.

  I triggered the button for the intercom. “What are you selling? I’m looking for girl scout cookies, Avon and a third wife, but I don’t think I ordered the police presence.”

  She backed up from the camera, laughing silently. She pushed the talk button outside. “Mr. Wright, I’m hoping to get your help with something, but I don’t have any cookies or Avon. I could however, offer you some of the best apple pie this side of the Mississippi, and a big mug full of coffee as a reward.”

  “Oh God, woman, you’ve got me. Who do I have to kill?”

  “Open up, will you?” she asked, smiling, though I could hear a hint of irritation in her voice.

  “I’ll be right there in a second. I literally just got out of the shower.”

  “That’s an image every girl wants stuck in her head while she waits.”

  Wait what? Was she serious, or did she mean…

  I was already dressed, but still felt naked. I walked to the back of my bunker, where the cache of weapons was, and pulled out an inside the waist holster for both my left and right side. Then I pulled down my favorite guns. The Smith & Wesson, M&P Shield, in .45. Each pistol held six in the magazine and one in the chamber. I checked that both were loaded, put them on safe, and holstered them. I tossed two magazines in each pocket before grabbing my keys, my wallet and a long plaid flannel shirt to wear over my T-shirt. A Gerber folding knife was the finishing touch. I put my palm against the hand reader and an honest to God bank vault door clicked as it unlocked.

  Hydraulics are a wonderful thing, and they made it easy for me to pull the door open and then shut it behind me. No sunlight hit my face, instead I was in what I called my
coat room. It looked homey enough, a ten foot by twenty feet one room space. A bed took up one side, a rudimentary kitchen was in the other, and with the closing of the vault door, two bookshelves slid to cover it. All of this was powered by a solar array, but I had also tied into the grid for when I needed to use some of my more exotic tools to work, along with even more secrets.

  I heard the buzzer again and grinned. She was impatient today. I looked at the mirror and saw my blondish hair was still dark and damp from my shower. I’d taken to wearing it a bit on the longish side after watching NCIS LA. I always had a scruff of a beard, trimmed daily. Other than that, I looked pretty well put together, if I had to say so myself. I wondered what Cindy had in store for me.

  It was like she had magic too, and she knew instinctively when I was in town. She was never wrong. Not that an upstanding citizen such as myself ever had to worry about the law (much), but I’d helped her out in the past and her elderly mother loved to ply me with food. The Sheriff’s mom somehow thought we were a couple, but it was the furthest thing from the truth. I pretended as much as I could for her sake, but I hadn’t been close with a woman in a while, and that was one of my rules also.

  But that was one that I always seemed to mess up, and had to consciously fight myself whenever I was around Cindy.

  “Hey,” I said as I opened the door.

  “Gonna invite a girl in, or do I have to use the cuffs?” she asked, a grin touching her features.

  I opened the door wider and she breezed in. If there ever was a woman I would have been close or intimate with, it was Cindy. She stood a good couple inches taller than me, almost six feet. She smelled like cedar and something floral that she used in her shampoo. It was heady, and although she looked slightly older than me, I still had a good fifty to sixty years on her. I didn’t ask; guys aren’t supposed to know things like that. Still, she was in her mid-thirties if I did have to know, and as normal and mundane as they come. Not that she looked normal, she looked like a huntsman’s wet dream come true, except she was wearing the colors of the law.

  “Cuffs? Promise?”

  She turned bright red as she realized what she’d said and at how I’d elected to take it, her face turning almost the same color as the freckles that sprinkled her cheeks.

  “Dammit Tom, why does everything turn into sexual innuendo?” she asked, trying to be serious and failing, a smile creeping across her face.

  “Sorry, I’ll behave. You want some coffee?”

  “I’d love some,” she said, taking off her wide brim hat and walking over to my roughhewn table.

  “I thought you were bringing pie and coffee?” I asked, noting her empty hands.

  “It’s for later, when I take you to the diner!”

  I watched her out of the side of my eye as she sat down on the rustic bench seat, the surface smoothed by our many conversations here. When I’d first moved in full time, I’d been an oddity for her. She was naturally curious, because of all the construction equipment and noise that had been made the first month or so, but then had been disappointed to see that, from the outside, it looked like I’d blasted a small flat area off the side of the mountain and put in a very small cabin. Did I mention that she was the only other neighbor on almost half a mile of gravel driveway? Plus, she was single. Probably. I had deliberately tried to avoid that topic.

  “Coming right up,” I said, loading the percolator up and then striking a match and holding it over the burner on the crude kitchen cooktop.

  “Uggg, when are you going to go modern?” she asked. “A percolator leaves grounds in the coffee.”

  “Maybe I keep it like this to run off any wayward neighbors who come over, asking for help,” I said.

  She turned to look at me and I shot her a smile so she would know I was teasing. She grinned back and then got a serious look on her face again.

  “So, what do you need help with?” I asked her.

  “You remember how you helped me track that Elk last winter?”

  “The one that survived too long, despite your perfectly placed shot?”

  “Yeah. Listen, this is going to sound off, but something went after Bessie last night and all I have are tracks in the snow and some blood trail.”

  “Bessie was hurt?” I asked her, knowing how she babied her cow.

  And I mean, it was like her dog, but huge. Like… imagine a horse-sized beast that followed you around everywhere and even slept on her porch if she let it. Bessie was a big baby, and I’d been worried that her favor was going to be something that involved my old line of work, or questions about how I managed to live out in the boondocks, like a hermit, and why sometimes things would just mysteriously happen out here. Something attacking her pet cow? I could deal with that without worrying about the Council of Mages. I hoped.

  “No, she’s fine, but I think the blood is from whatever attacked her.”

  “You’re a hunter; did it leave any kind of identifiable tracks?” I asked.

  She looked at me and then the floor. That was about when the silence dragged out to an uncomfortable level and I could smell the percolator doing its magic. I walked back over to that and pulled two ceramic mugs down form a wooden shelf, roughhewn cedar, same as everything else in the cabin… and poured two cups. I grinned when I saw some grounds settle into the bottom of her cup. I killed the propane stove and turned and sat down across from her.

  “This is going to sound stupid,” she muttered, looking deeply into the cup.

  “Cindy, we’ve been friends for a year now. You aren’t going to sound stupid.” My words tried to reassure her, but her face told me either I was too stupid to be alive, or she didn’t believe me.

  “They were large, clawed footprints. About… say, a size seventeen in a shoe size.” She took a long slug of her coffee, ignoring the steam rising off the cup.

  “You are saying it’s a Bigfoot?” I asked her, wondering if there was anything like that in the area.

  “No, I mean… I don’t know,” she said with a sigh.

  She looked up at that moment and our gazes locked. I had to break contact first, so she wouldn’t see too much inside of me. Locking eyes with a mage, even a two-bit one like me, could trigger something that had happened to me twice since my mother died. It wasn’t pleasant. You could see in the other person’s soul, and they could look into yours. If you’ve read books by some of the modern-day science fiction and urban fantasy authors, they have fancy names for it, but I just called it a gaze after reading a book by Jim Butcher. It’s very damn personal, and there are no secrets between the two who get a chance to look at each other’s secrets.

  “What if it was a werewolf?” I asked her, and took a drink just as she was swallowing.

  She snorted and then blew coffee all over me. Suddenly I was coated in regurgitated coffee, feeling the sting of the hot liquid. I backed up and wiped my face with the sleeve of my flannel and then walked behind a choking Cindy and thumped her on the back a couple of times. I took a dish towel from the counter as she got her coughing fit under control. She grabbed a napkin from the holder on the table and blew her nose as I wiped off the limited spray that hadn’t soaked into the wood. I grinned, trying not to be too amused by her reaction. Honestly, it was one of the most endearing things I’d ever seen. I know how weird that sounds, but when you’ve lived as long as me, it’s the little things. Human interactions, feelings. The romantic in me wanted to grin and make it into something more.

  “Sorry, you caught me off guard and I snorted,” she sputtered.

  “Well, it’s a big world out there. I don’t know if people believe in that kind of thing, but if they do about Bigfoot…” I let the words trail off.

  I’d often been curious, wondering what Cindy knew about the supernatural world. For example, I knew by sound that some of the howls you could hear at night didn’t come from coyotes and wolves. I knew there was a pack of Weres around the area, but I’d purposely avoided them. They could scent a mage as well, and the fact that
the Alpha hadn’t come to introduce himself told me that he’d been avoiding me the same way.

  “You don’t believe in that kinda mumbo jumbo, do you?”

  “Well yeah,” I admitted with a straight face, “I kinda do, sometimes.”

  She looked up at me to see if I was joking and then let out a deep sigh and took another sip. I waited. This time, there was no fiery explosion of some of the best caffeine the Gods could have concocted, many thanks to Juan Valdez.

  “I’m glad I’m not the only one,” she said, grinning over her cup.

  “Seriously? I thought you were going to laugh at me,” I told her, still straight faced and fishing.

  “When you grow up in the hills out here,” she said as if 7,000 feet of elevation was a hill, “you sometimes see strange things. Things you can’t explain. It’s best to have a flexible mindset in order to sleep easier at night.”

  I nodded and took another sip. I reached down my right side, under my flannel, and pulled out the compact .45. Her eyes got big as she realized I was carrying and she hadn’t had a clue. I didn’t have to be a psychic to know that, but I did see she was just about to tell me that through my sight. Instead, I spoke, breaking her train of thought.

  “Yeah, the world is a weird and scary place sometimes,” I agreed, pulling a magazine out of my pocket.

  Coming up with the wrong one, I reached back in and brought another one out. It was the one with a dot of red nail polish on it. I thumbed out three shells and handed them over to her before finishing unloading the magazine. She looked at the silver bullets as I unloaded my gun, put three lead bullets on the bottom of the magazine, and topped the last three off with silver. I chambered a silver bullet, ejected the mag, put a lead bullet in and called it good. In my mind’s eye, I knew I had one silver bullet in there, then one with runes scrawled into the soft lead, then the next two were silver and the last three were lead with runes again.

  “Silver bullets? Are you serious?” she asked.