by Jen Talty
Willow let her psychic wrap drop to the ground. She had to jump over the energy as it didn’t want to let go of her.
Gabe grabbed her hand and they took off running, making the corner around the street as tight as possible, sticking to the road versus the sidewalk. “I can still see different… different…I have no idea what the fuck I’m looking at.”
“I know, but it appears to be fading.” Willow stole a glance over her shoulder. “Looks like our siblings have the enemy occupied. The car is right over there.”
“You drive.”
“I was planning on it,” she said, snagging the keys and slipping behind the steering wheel. “Fuck. They see us.”
“Give me your guns and then get us the hell out of Dodge.”
As quickly as she could, she yanked all four of her weapons from their holsters and handed three of them to Gabe. “I wish we had time to get the rest of our arsenal.”
He pointed to the back seat. “Looks like someone stocked us pretty good.”
A dark Suburban raced toward them.
She slammed the vehicle into reverse, then punched the gas, turning the wheel hard. Gabe slammed into the side of the door.
“Jesus,” he muttered as he rubbed his head. “You could have warned me.”
“You told me to drive. That was warning enough.” As soon as the car faced the opposite direction, she changed to drive and put the pedal to the metal. “Hold on.”
“Thanks for worrying about me. Now just fucking drive without getting us killed.”
Willow focused on weaving in and out of traffic while Gabe fiddled with the weapons, AK assault rifles, handguns, and grenades. She tried not to be jealous as her fingers gripped the steering wheel, turning her knuckles white. Adrenaline filled her veins. Her pulse pounded. “Highway or back roads?”
“Highway,” Gabe said.
“Go straight to Lake George. Don’t look back. We will meet up with you as soon as we can,” Hazel projected.
“Did you hear that?” Willow asked.
“I did,” Gabe said. “And before you say it, yes, I noticed the table was at our favorite spot.”
She lifted her foot, easing off the gas as she headed north on the expressway. The traffic was thick, but not horrible, making it easy to speed past the slower vehicles without drawing too much attention.
Gabe held two weapons on his lap and every couple of seconds he turned his head left, right, and then turned and looked over his shoulder. “I think we lost them.”
“For now,” she said. “But we both know this is far from over.”
It took a good three hours on the road before Gabe felt as though he could relax, and even then he couldn’t bring himself to let go of the handguns. But he could tell Willow grew tired of driving and they needed to pull over, get gas, and get some food.
And perhaps do a little talking.
Now that they were on the other side of New York City, it would be a good idea to take a short break. “Pull over at this rest area.”
“I was planning on it.”
He stuffed the loaded weapon in his backpack and did a quick scan of the cars in the area. Nothing jumped out at him.
“Roll call. How about an update?” He knew it was risky reaching out to his brothers, but he didn’t feel like he had a choice.
Not anymore.
“I’m about an hour behind you,” Brett said. “Mallard and Riley were pissed at first, but they agree some of us should be together.”
“Some of us?” Gabe asked.
“They have taken Kim and gone into hiding. Kim is still in bad shape, and Hunter and Alexis have stayed behind to help heal her, so it’s just me, Hazel, Chad, and Savanah to the rescue.”
“We’ll take all the help we can get.”
“Hunter and Alexis will need to join us soon,” Willow interjected. “The full force of the Collective Order must be together in order defeat Roger and Caleb.”
“Agreed,” Brett said. “But we’ve learned Kim plays a role in the Collective Order and we need her healthy.”
“What role is that?”
“Interestingly enough, not only is she an Oracle, she’s a witch and she’ll be important to our children,” Brett projected. “Outside of that, we don’t know.”
“My research bridges the paranormal with the psychic, but the Collective Order of the past was adamant that witches and the like didn’t exist.” Gabe tossed the backpack over his shoulder as the vehicle came to a stop. “Mallard showed me a letter that Riley kept from the book that could have been from Dimitri that states he might have learned otherwise.”
“Our parents are sure full of secrets,” Brett said.
“Not secrets,” Mallard’s voice bounced in Gabe’s ears like a bowling ball striking all ten pins.
Gabe nearly fell to his knees as he stepped from the car. “Jesus. You scared the fuck out of me.” He was going to have to try a lot harder to keep that man out of his projections.
“Look to your right because I’m about to piss you right the fuck off.”
Gabe glanced over his shoulder and groaned. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Mallard is in New York?” Brett projected.
“Not him, per say. Just his stupid remote view.” Willow double-timed it toward the rest area building.
Gabe stayed one pace behind. “How is it we can see into your view anyway?”
“You and Willow have the gift to see more than one psychic plane. You can see energy ebb and flow from one state to the next.”
“That would have been a neat little trick to know about when saving my sister from Korean operatives, or locating a SEAL team from behind enemy lines, or better yet, stopping the torture of your son, Hunter.” Willow yanked open the door and stomped inside. “You had Gabe turn his back on his family. You made everyone believe he was a traitor, including me. You allowed—”
“No. I didn’t,” Mallard said with a stern tone. “Everything I’ve done has been based on research, or handed down from my parents or Riley’s, or come to us in visions, which as you know change as our world changes, and to be frank, the eight of you are as stubborn as mules and don’t always do as you’re told.”
“Why are you here?” Gabe nodded to Willow as she pointed toward the bathroom. He stood in line at the coffee shop. “And how is it you can hear our thoughts when we don’t project to you? I specifically only reached out to my brothers.”
“If I tell you that you not only won’t believe it, you might figure out how to get rid of it, and I can’t risk losing the ability to track you,” Mallard said. “I know you’d take off, and that’s fine, but we still need to work together if we’re going to reinstate the Collective Order. And there is one major piece that your visions aren’t showing you.”
“Yeah. What’s that?” Gabe was going to have to figure out what the hell a psychic tracer was, where it was on his body, and how the fuck to get rid of it.
“We’ve only seen pieces, and we’re not exactly sure what it means,” Mallard said.
Willow reappeared just as he stepped up to place their order. Thankfully, they had his favorite pastry. Of course, Willow ordered two. It always amazed him how she ate so much junk and stayed so thin. She slipped her fingers between his, squeezing slightly.
A vision appeared between them.
It started with Brett standing at the head of the Collective Order table. He held out his hand toward Hazel. She joined him.
Chad stood off in the shadows under a tree until Savanah stepped into a ray of sunshine. She took his hand and they made their way to their seats.
Seconds later Hunter and Alexis strolled into the clearing, hand in hand, gazing into each other’s eyes with cheeky grins.
Willow sat on a rock, holding a rifle.
Gabe chuckled, but only because in the vision he leaned against a gate that led to the Collective Order table, cleaning a larger rifle.
In the distance, he caught a glimpse of a group of young children, maybe
fifty or so, sitting on wooden logs with captivated gazes focused on a tall woman with long blond hair, who used excited hand gestures and created colorful images in the sky to entertain the kids who responded with oohs and aahs and gasps.
A tall silhouette eased into the vision. Whoever it was, he kept his head low and his hands clasped behind his back.
“Who are they?” Willow asked.
“I don’t know, but I sense their psychic energy and it’s familiar, but I can’t place it,” Gabe said. “Mallard. Can you show us who these people are?”
“The woman is a seer and a teacher,” Mallard projected. “We do not know who the male is, but we believe he’s the final piece of the puzzle and we need you to find him.”
“Easier said than done.” Gabe rested his hand on the small of Willow’s back as he guided her out into the warm New York air. Every psychic had a unique signature that came in three parts.
Scent.
Energy.
And aura.
But the only thing Gabe could catch from the unknown man in the vision was a small portion of his energy, and it barely tickled Gabe’s skin, making it impossible for him to surmise anything.
“If all that was required for the Collective Order to be reinstated was the eight of you to be reunited, it would have happened already. But since it hasn’t, we need to find out who that man is and what his role is in the Collective Order. Kim had been working on tracking him, but she’s too weak right now to give us anything,” Mallard projected. “I sense Roger and Caleb. I must go. We can’t communicate too often or too long.” With that, Mallard’s hologram, and his vision, disappeared.
Gabe jumped up on the hood of the car. “What did you make of that?”
“I have no idea, but he has a point. There is a piece of the Collective Order that is missing or we’d all be at the table.” Willow leaned her hip against the vehicle and pulled apart her tasty treat, plopping a bite into her mouth. “You said you had a lot of research on your laptop. Is that stuff Mallard had you do, or did you do it on your own, and does he even know about it?”
“He knows I’ve been gathering data, but since I went AWOL, I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to him.”
“I can’t believe you up and disappeared like that.”
He arched a brow. “I didn’t really go AWOL. I went undercover, both for my country and for the good of our families, and I’m not going to have the same old argument with you.”
“I just want to know about the research.” She held up her hand. “But the cliff notes edition.”
“Some of it has already been proven wrong, like us.” He took her by the hand. “For the record. I didn’t tell you about the Collective Order or about who we were or what Mallard needed me to do because I was scared. And not just about what being part of all this meant, but when I showed up at your first Liberty Call, I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of feelings I’d have for you outside of you being my best friend. It hit me like a ton of bricks. My mother used to tell me that you were meant to be with me, and I thought that was so weird. You were eleven, and I was eighteen when my mom died and the thought of you and me was icky. When you joined the Navy, you were eighteen and I was twenty-five, and I still struggled with the age difference.”
“Obviously not very much because you had me out of my uniform and into my birthday suit in about five seconds.”
“You grew up nice.” He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “But getting back to my research. In Riley’s book, she shows a lot of handwritten journal entries by Dimitri. He was quite torn about what to do about his sons and wife because his daughter’s vision had them being murdered. But as you know, he sent them off to different parts of the world. We believe that his son, Edgar, was killed before he ever left Maryland.”
“And what about Endrit? What happened to him?” Willow asked. “We did a search and according to our findings he died at the hands of witch hunters.”
Gabe nodded. “That’s what my initial findings are too. But there is one account told by a woman by the name of Gretta Wilson that Endrit was murdered by a werewolf by the name of Doyle Grove.”
“That name sounds familiar.” Willow pulled out her cell and tapped on the screen. “I feel like I’ve seen that name somewhere before.”
“Since I’ve never believed in werewolves or vampires, I wouldn’t know what the life expectancy of such—”
“About three hundred years,” Willow said. “Not that I believe in them, but in high school I became obsessed with all things paranormal and the possibility that the Collective Order had a faction of creatures that Dimitri hid, including in his own family. But I came up empty-handed.”
“When you think about some of the things we can do that go beyond being psychic, you were probably headed down the right path.” Gabe tugged her, pulling her between his legs, wrapping his arms around her slender body. “My abilities go beyond what a psychic can do.”
“Mine are growing. So are all of our siblings’. But that was all to be expected.”
“Not this.” He pointed his finger, giving it a little wiggle, concentrating on the single rose slowly appearing in his hand.
“Holy shit.” She snagged the red flower. “How did you do that?”
“I wish I could say it was magic, or some cheap parlor trick.” He pointed to the rose bush in front of the building. “It’s more than moving or transposing organic material. I’m still learning what I can do, and it’s coming more naturally now that you’re here, but something tells me we are part of the paranormal world.” And his research showed him that her parents knew and that might be why they were forced to go underground.
As in to fake their own murders.
Chapter 5
Willow hung the towel on the rack before making her way from the bedroom to the deck that overlooked Lake George. This cabin had been their little piece of paradise whenever she and Gabe had a long weekend between deployments. For three years, they got lost in each other and forgot about the rest of the world, if only for a short period of time.
What struck her as interesting as she pondered the past was that they never really discussed the future. If she brought it up, he wanted to keep things in the here and now. She was young and living the dream. She had her entire life ahead of her and the weight of the world had yet to come crashing down on her shoulders.
Looking back, she realized it was because he knew they would be separated and that he would break her heart.
She sat on the rustic wooden chair, lifted her feet, and set them on the railing. Boats hummed along the shoreline. A few kids frolicked in the water while their parents relaxed with a cocktail on the docks. She ran her fingers through her wet hair. Gabe had known her better than anyone, and he knew the one thing she hated more than anything was people making decisions for her.
Being the youngest of four, her sisters did that to her all the time and it made her batshit crazy. She had told her family she’d joined the Navy just to get away from them. Not a single sister believed her, and with good reason. Besides struggling to take orders and respect the chain of command, the only reason she’d joined the Navy had been to be with Gabe.
When that ended, so did her desire to have a career in the armed forces, though it wasn’t a bad gig when she could play with firepower.
The sound of an engine caught her attention. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled.
Gabe jumped from the rental, carrying a to-go bag from their favorite burger joint down the road. “I got a six-pack too.” He lifted some cold ones.
“Wonderful. Let’s eat right here and watch the sunset.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll bring out some plates and stuff.”
“Good. Because I’m not moving.” She rested her hands on her stomach and closed her eyes. Since they’d left Baltimore, she’d focused her thoughts on the problems her family faced and not on what happened between her and Gabe.
Or the fact neither one had reached for the condoms he’d said were
in his nightstand.
For the three years they dated, they never used them because she had an IUD, so they weren’t necessary as a form of birth control and since they were in a monogamous relationship, they didn’t need the condoms.
She understood statistics and they didn’t change from one person to the next. It only took once and just because Alexis was pregnant and Savanah probably was too, that didn’t mean Willow wasn’t either.
A warmth filled her veins. It was as if she’d stepped into a hot spring on a snowy winter’s day. Puffy white flakes floated in her mind’s eye while a white-gray streak swirled around, creating a bubble, opening up to a vision where a woman sat on a grassy patch by a lake with a baby in her lap.
“Hello, Willow. I’ve been waiting for you,” a familiar voice said.
“Ms. Underwood?”
Gabe’s mother turned and smiled. She swayed left and right, patting the baby’s back. “You’re surprised to see me,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I am.” Willow immersed herself in the vision and took a seat next to Gabe’s mother. She glanced around and saw no evidence of her reality, only the elements of the vision. She had no idea if she’d drifted off to sleep for a second and this was some weird dream, or perhaps it was some kind of cosmic video tape that had been saved for her to open on a given date.
Didn’t matter. Eventually, everything that couldn’t be explained, would be, only the average person might not be open to all the cosmic possibilities. And there were points in Willow’s life where she wouldn’t have believed half of what happened in the last month.
“You’ve grown into a beautiful young woman,” Rina, Gabe’s mother, said.
“Thank you,” Willow said. “How is it that we are here? Together?”
“You mean because I’m dead?”
“Exactly.”
“Once your sister and Hunter crossed the abyss, they unlocked the frozen plane.”
“The frozen what?” Willow asked.
“It’s the place where certain paranormal creatures were frozen in time, unable to move about their cosmic space freely. Mostly, they freed ghosts, but it also unlocked the Raven Cauldron.”