by LeAnn Mason
A groan and shout drew Raven’s attention back to the girl-on-girl action. She swooped around their heads, trying to make heads or tails of whose arms and legs were flailing around. She didn’t want to injure the wrong one... much. Seke would get all protective if Raven hurt Aria. Instead of helping, she circled again, a frustrated caw escaping her mouth.
The women rolled against a pair of trash cans, and one managed to get on top, straddling and strangling the other. The one on the bottom returned the favor, effectively putting them at a stalemate.
Suddenly, the one with silver hair, on the bottom, went limp. Had Aria passed out?
Raven swooped lower and saw the girl’s eyes glazed over. She was in the vision for only a second; then, the banshee’s mouth opened, and she gave a silent scream, the sound effectively cut off by the tight grip the undead bitch had around her neck, proclaiming someone’s death.
But whose?
When her eyes cleared, her mouth snapped shut into a baring of teeth. “Use what tools you have,” Raven heard Aria mutter to herself in a choked voice.
Aria let go of her opponent’s neck, which seemed like a reckless move, but before Raven could swoop in to save the day, the dirty, street-trained fighter grabbed a trash can lid and slammed it into the vampire’s head.
The blonde went limp immediately and slumped to the ground, leaving Aria to gasp air into her reopened airway.
Raven landed on the woman’s cracked skull, leaning over and twisting her head to peer one beady eye into the she-vamp’s. The orb was still black as night, but a sort of vacant sheen coated it as opposed to the malice-filled depths they’d encountered originally. She hopped off onto the ground and shifted back.
“Well, looks like we now have zero to interrogate. Nice going, Aria.” She was only half-serious, impressed with her teammate’s innovation. “Trashcan might be a good weapon for you. You can put a lid on your mouth too when needed.”
Finally sitting up, the banshee scrambled back, hands covering her mouth. For a second, Raven thought the girl was going to vomit on the poor re-deceased vampire and add insult to injury.
Maybe it was the first time Aria had actually killed someone. Despite how they’d met, the banshee had only seen deaths, never caused them first hand.
Raven still remembered the first time she’d accidentally caused a death during one of her first missions. She hadn’t needed the lecture from Seke about the nature of their work — collecting, not causing. No matter if it was an accident or deserved, taking a life was traumatizing.
“Aria...” Raven stepped forward tentatively, holding out a hand, feeling oddly empathetic. “Are you okay?”
“I… I saw it, and I just… I just did what I saw.” The woman’s eyes glazed over again, and she fainted.
“Shit!” Raven dove and caught the limp body right before her rolling silver-clad head hit the pavement. She eased Aria the rest of the way down, resting her head on her lap. “Great. I love being the support.” Sidekick wasn’t really her thing, but she had to admit they’d worked kinda well together.
“What happened?”
Raven looked up to see Seke and the rest of the team wedging their way, two abreast, down the narrow alley. There was no evidence of any body behind them. “She killed the vamp then passed out. And get this: I think she had a vision about the vamp’s death before she did it.”
If that was true, it was impressive; the director was never able to anticipate a vampire’s death — they were told only of a soul’s first death, not any subsequent ones.
“Yes, banshees can foresee all deaths. There is a reason the HD covets their skills.” Seke crouched down, touching Aria’s cheek gently in a caress.
Raven shared a look with Cole. “Well, I think having a death on her conscience was too much for our delicate flower.”
“No,” Gunhilde corrected sharply, causing Seke to pull back. “She’s having a vision. Look, her eyes are black.” Reaching forward, she peeled open Aria’s closed eyelids to reveal that the entire orb was a solid, terrifying, pool of liquid obsidian. “Quick, give her the shoe. It may help guide her.”
I hadn’t expected the alleyway to turn into a gilded hallway, so it took me a second to realize what had happened and get my bearings. When I did, my stomach dropped. This wasn’t a forced vision like I’d been having, which meant only one thing about the ending.
Still shaking from what I’d done to that vampire, I started jogging down the hall, heart in my throat. “No, no, no,” I chanted. “You can’t die. Not yet. Not when I’ve just found you. I’m coming for you!”
I’d wanted the vampire to die. So much so that apparently it had added some extra oomph into my swing with the trash can lid. Raven had confirmed she was dead. I shouldn’t feel anything about that because she was dead to start with... and she and her kind were responsible for kidnapping and torturing my mom. She’d been an unnatural.
However, staring down at the lifeless body as I’d done many times before — like the moment the cops had caught me — was different when you knew the blood on your hands was intentionally there.
This was my doing.
I shook my head, trying to focus on my current vision. Even if I couldn’t control this one, it could tell me a lot. These kinds of visions told me what was coming. There might still be time to get to Bermuda before whatever I was witnessing happened. It could be helpful to know the details of how my mother was supposed to die... so I could do my damnedest to prevent it.
I scanned the doors along the hall, skipping quickly over the bloodstain on one wall that had been left by my mother’s face when the vampire had tossed her in a previous vision. My teeth gritted, and the remorse over the vampire woman’s death began to leave my system, clearing my head and spurring me faster.
“Where are you, mom?”
I turned at the end of the hall and paused. There was a massive ornate door at the end of an expansive entryway, and I ran toward it. Believing it to not be an obstacle, I slipped through.
Stumbling outside into bright sunlight, I threw up my arm, blinking hard. I tripped down a set of stone steps and blinked at the beautiful tropical garden. Turning, I stared up at the outside of a stone mansion. It was bland and in some disrepair but gargantuan. An ancient and warped sign hanging over the door from rusted nails read in fading letters, “St. George Psychiatric Hospital — Founded 1678.”
I paced backward down a gravel drive, mouth hanging open.
Suddenly, a piercing wail slipped out the door.
“Mom?” I cried out, half in relief, half in terror. “Mom!” I ran back into the vampire den, back down the hall, tracing the sound.
A swarm of vampires came scurrying forward, and I slipped right through a few of them at the back, joining their ranks to turn a few corners into an abandoned wing that was less decadent than the corridor I’d first appeared in. One swung open a metal door befitting my solitary confinement days and lowered a ladder that had been leaning against the wall outside.
I stepped forward, peering down into a familiar flooded room. Several vamps reached the bottom, a couple trying to quiet my mom. I cried out, though she didn’t, as they roughly pinned her against a damp stone wall.
The rest of the vamps who’d made it to the bottom were encroaching on something on the pedestal. My eyes widened as I stared at the display that looked almost like a sacrifice. Ember’s eyes stared vacantly up at me, a blooming circle of red spreading across her chest.
“Damn, she killed her,” a vamp said in frustration. “The banshee’s gone mad.”
The gurgling sensation started low and built up my throat, pushing its way to the surface. Just like my banshee mother, I began screaming at the top of my lungs as the vision faded and I was propelled back to the alley where I’d killed someone… just as my mother would soon do.
28
My sight snapped back to me just in time for my death screech to hit its peak, the wailing breaking only long enough for my lungs to inhale enough air
to immediately expel again. My eyes darted all around, taking in exactly where I was… and what had happened.
This scenario was what landed my ass in the pen last time. My heart rate kicked into overdrive with the remembrance, but my ear-splitting pitch didn’t waver, didn’t let on the panic setting my limbs into rigidness.
This time… I’d actually done it. I’d killed the body lying bloody at my feet, and my fucking scream was going to get me caught. Again.
You need to learn to suppress your urges.
The Seke in front of me was saying something probably identical to the one in my head. But this one just wouldn’t be put back in its cage.
The ability was here for good, and that was kind of okay; I needed it now so I could rescue my mother. Consequences be damned, I wouldn’t stop now, not when we were so close.
We.
Being surrounded by my teammates — by friends — made this situation infinitely different than the last. For starters, I wasn’t alone. No one flinched. No one gawked or cried out. No one pointed accusing fingers. No one paid me, or the corpse, any mind.
It wasn’t until my death announcement finally gurgled to a close, my chest heaving and mouth gulping heavy breaths of stale, liquor-heavy piss-scented air did I finally realize just why there was no reaction.
“Did you cloak me?” I asked, searching for Gunhilde. She nor Torgny were touching me so… Turning my attention to find Cole, I took in the towering, dark hellhound’s eyes glowing a bright crimson, adding another glow to the neon-lit alley.
He dipped his head once without a word. He was concentrating pretty heavily on keeping the scene concealed, I’d guess.
“Thank you,” I said sincerely. My eyes threatened to fill with traitorous tears to indicate my emotional overload, but I forced the liquid to retreat.
Dad was wrong. I didn’t need to rely on only myself. Life would be infinitely better with people along the way who were willing to help me. And that included my mom.
Seke was right. His wisdom about working as a team, trusting in each other, and watching each other’s backs was proving much more solid advice than most of my father’s teachings. I wasn’t alone. I didn’t need to be alone. If I was going to survive this crazy life, I couldn’t do it alone.
We were the Harbingers of Death Prison Unit, and we needed to stick together. We needed to find our missing piece.
Ember… who was dead. I’d feared my mom would die in that vision, but she hadn’t. We still had time to save her. But we needed to get there before she lost it and took out Ember. It could rally the vampires against her. They might dispose of her knowing that she’d gone off the deep end, thinking her no longer useful.
“I can’t believe she did that…”
“Can’t believe who did what? Come off it, Silver. Now is not the time for cryptic vision crap,” Raven growled. Her back was to me as she faced the direction with the most possibility for detection: the street.
Tourists bustled by, laughing and shrieking in drunken knots of stupidity without even a glance down the dark, dank alley. There were no flashing lights and loud music to distract them from their course.
That was good. Cole’s cloak had kept our mess from prying eyes. At least, so far. I knew he wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer without completely exhausting himself. He couldn’t do that. We needed him.
“My mom, she seems to have… killed Ember.” The sentence flopped out, unwelcome and gross.
“What?!” Voices chorused around me, confusion and anger spilling from each mouth nearly in unison as they stared at me in varying degrees of disbelief and outrage.
“I— I don’t know. I can’t believe… What the hell?” My mind continued to spin around what I’d seen: my mother seeming to have slain a member of my Harbinger team moments after ending up in the same cell together. “Why? Why would she do that?”
Seke stepped forward, arms wide as he moved to keep the supernatural knot from tightening to the point of choking me. “Let us all take a step back and a deep breath. Ember is the one of us who does not view her death as a final outcome. It is a functioning part of who she is.”
I watched as a proverbial lightbulb went off over the handsome god’s dark, wavy head, his eyes crinkling and lips tipping up at the corners. Maybe Seke was a little off his rocker, too. Was there something in the water? Had the vamps given him something… something they also gave my mom? He seemed pleased, proud even.
“If you don’t tell us what you’re smirking about, Captain, I can’t guarantee that I won’t be screaming for you next,” I warned.
My body was coiling like a spring, tightening with the thought that I might lose some of my newfound team when I’d only just realized how important they were to me.
“What exactly happens after Ember dies?” Seke asked as though he were in the bunker’s gym, quizzing us on tactics.
I’d never witnessed it. I kind of wondered if she was reborn as an infant or just resurrected as she was… like the vamp body I was ignoring.
“She comes back,” Raven answered vehemently as if just saying the words meant that Ember would not be gone forever.
“How?” Seke pressed, looking at each of us in turn, waiting for more.
“With fire…” Gunhilde answered, realization dawning on her warrior features. “Vampires are highly susceptible to fire.”
“Exactly. My guess is that Ember’s rebirth is a part of a larger plan,” Seke said in satisfaction. Pride for his team member’s resourcefulness and resilience shone in his eyes, through his body, as his chest lifted and feet widened. “We need to be there, ready to assist when the time comes.”
“And now we know where we’re going.”
“And where’s that, Silver?”
I looked up at her. “An abandoned mental institution. Well… no longer abandoned.”
Raven crossed her arms. “Not the most resort-like part of Bermuda. But I guess it makes sense.”
I was about to agree — abandoned island asylum full of the undead?! Horror movie stuff right there — when the bird-woman gave me a verbal burn as hot as Ember’s phoenix.
“It’s just where you belong.”
“Let’s go save Enid,” Gunhilde said, stepping between me and Raven.
“And Ember,” Cole added.
I nodded. “Together.”
I joined the rest of my team, who had already gathered at the edge of the crescent beach of the cove, staring out at the ocean. My bout of air-sickness from riding Seke the full distance between Florida and Bermuda had taken a while to recover from.
The day was just beginning to break, the sun’s bright rays beginning to crest the horizon, casting bright tangerine streaks and glinting sparkles across the water completely at odds with the briny smell.
Behind us loomed St. George’s Island and, not far inland, according to the research Cole did before we took off from the mainland, was the hospital the vampires had commandeered as their base. And within it… my mom. And Ember, putting up the good fight.
But for a moment, everyone collected themselves after the long journey, preparing for what was to come. I hadn’t yet had a vision of anyone dying, but that didn’t mean nothing could go wrong. I hadn’t seen Jessica’s death in advance, and serious injury or debilitation wouldn’t ping banshee radar.
“Are you ready?” Seke asked, angling slightly in my direction. Shadows swirled lightly around his wrists and fingers. The black tendrils tentatively reached out to approach my skin as if wondering if they would be welcome to do so. I didn’t know if they were an extension of Seke or some sentient entity, but the uncertainty was reassuring.
How quickly the supernatural has become comfortable, become home.
Unafraid of the shadows like I used to be, I reached over and entwined my fingers with his. “Ready,” I answered, not only for him but for myself as well.
Sometimes, a verbal affirmation was the last step you needed to take to become a badass. I was hoping that would be enough this ti
me.
The process of rebirth never got any easier.
Seeing as Ember’s soul never left her body, she was aware of the heat — heat beyond what anyone or anything should withstand, beyond what anyone could survive. Her flesh bubbled before crisping, turning black as the muscle and fat melted away beneath. It was so hot that eventually, even her bones would be reduced to charred ashes.
But then?
Then, her normally feathered bird would emerge from within, sheathed this time in flame.
It was the only time her true phoenix showed itself, and it was invigorating, though it never lasted long enough for Ember’s liking. She wished she could be this unstoppable with every shift.
This time, she would try to draw out that part of her cycle for as long as she could hold it before she collapsed and rose, once again, human. But there would be no luxuriating in the prolonged magnificence. Her flickering form had a mission.
It was Ember’s time to shine — or rather, to be the light that burned away the abomination of the undead who thought she was just some unimpressive shifter — an unimpressive, dead shifter. She would show them all what a phoenix could do.
29
As soon as I’d said, “Ready,” it was as though I’d pulled the trigger, giving the “go” word. My team and I turned almost simultaneously toward the interior of the island.
We’re coming for you, Mom, Ember.
I wasted no time in running up the beach — not an easy feat — and leading my team toward the mental hospital. As I inspected the easiest path through the vegetation at the edge of the sand dunes, I skidded to a stop.
“Ah!” Something plowed into me from behind, and I landed face-first in the sand.
Pushing to my feet with Seke’s help and spitting granules from my mouth, I heard Raven vent, “It’s her own fault. She can’t just stop like that without warning.”
“You should’ve kept your space. Rear-end collisions are the fault of the driver in the back. Didn’t you learn that?” I replied hotly, on edge with the high stakes of our mission. My mother was just yards away — supposedly. And I’d just seen something that made me think we might have a direct route to her.