Rebirth of the Seer

by Peter W. Dawes

  I could hardly argue with the change of subject without prying against her wishes, especially when I still had no idea what the hell Lydia had been alluding toward. “No,” I said in the most agreeable manner possible. The last thing I wanted was for her to get another wild notion that she had to take care of me after some mysterious departure, for her to set me up with her sister or some such nonsense. So I vowed to never bring up the subject again.

  ***

  Seven years later, the vow I made was about to be broken.

  Monica smiled at me weakly as I strolled into her room the next evening, still lying in her bed clad in a hospital gown with her blankets covering her body. I had waited several hours upon rising to disturb her, but the sound of a soft groan compelled me away from the meticulous polish of my arsenal of weapons. They did not need it, but my mind had been far too occupied to engage with anything else. I was not fully settled we were secure despite the Order’s ignorance of our whereabouts. Now, I found myself staring at her, wondering where in the heavens to start. “Are you in pain?” I finally asked after a few moments had passed.

  “A lot of pain,” she said. Her pallor ghastly, she looked as though she could have benefitted from a shower and a proper feeding. I almost wished she was a vampire so I could be of some assistance. “I think the anesthetic finally wore away.”

  “I forgot to steal a supply of medicine for you.” I frowned, both at the oversight and at her general appearance. “I shall have to arrange for some antibiotics, at the very least. You seem to be out-of-the-woods, to use the vernacular, but we do not wish for you to get an infection.”

  “I have a trick or two up my sleeve, but that’d be a nice gesture if you could.” As she shifted, I winced and the way her clenched teeth gave away what an agonizing decision that had been. She shut her eyes. “Come to think of it, put higher priority on the painkillers, Flynn. I’d take a fever over this.”

  “For the sake of your comfort, I shall attempt both, but I do not know if Chloe can help me or if I shall need to sneak into the hospital instead.” Motioning forward, I walked to the edge of her bed and sat. A sigh prefaced my next statement. “I left just as it seemed we were letting bygones be bygones.”

  Monica opened her eyes. “Chumming with your old buddies while I slept?”

  “Hardly.” I smiled wanly. “I believe she thinks I am a monster. Perhaps best for her well-being.”

  “Now, don’t be a Grumpy Gus, I’m in too much fucking pain to reiterate all the stuff I’ve been telling you lately about being on the right path.” She sighed as though it had become contagious. “We’ve got enough enemies. It’s about time we had a friend.”

  “I suppose you are right.” Glancing away, I studied the wall as my thoughts returned to other concerns. “Perhaps you might grant me some peace of mind. Is it a wise idea for us to be here, or should I be preparing to move you again? You told me the Order does not know about this place and I am assuming that did not change.”

  “They still don’t know. My last conversation with them before our meeting went only marginally better.”

  “You mean it was bereft of stake-wielding elders?”

  “Something like that.” I looked back at her in time to see her frown. “They said they’d be calling the Seattle headquarters to tell my parents I was out of my flipping mind. I told them to shove it up their asses.”

  “Tactful as ever.” The thought inspired a grin despite myself. I chuckled softly. “Your insanity has been well established, my dear. I do not think you need to prove it to them any longer.”

  “Thanks, Flynn. Coming from a former sociopath, that means a lot to me.”

  “I shall find the appropriate Hallmark card for you.”

  “When you care enough to send the very best.”

  I shook my head. “I once told you that you unnerve me and it strikes me as funny just how much becoming allies with you has not changed the sentiment. You vex me even worse than you had before.”

  “It’s a gift. Came with the rest of my endearing attributes.” Her grin broadened and I could not help but to mirror its playfulness. I startled when I felt her hand touch mine, but closed my fingers around it as though to grant an implied request for comfort. Her smile faded. “They don’t know about this place, but I don’t think we should stick around here any longer than a few more days. I may have it protected, but they’ll find us eventually. The magical wards paint a subtle bull’s-eye on us if they think to look for them.”

  “I shall take your word for it.” My eyes drifted away again, as though gravity demanded I look away when I felt the mood turn more solemn. Once more, I frowned. “I have had a feeling ever since the Council meeting that my days in Philadelphia are coming to a close.”

  “I don’t think we’re needed here anymore. You’d be policing the rank-and-file vampires and I think the natural order’s set right enough that we need to back the fuck off. Truthfully, I think Lydia’s mission is out there somewhere else.”

  “I have the same suspicion.” My eyes met Monica’s again, sharply, at the mention of Lydia. While I tried to mask the reaction I had been suppressing, my eyes lacked the protection of my glasses and she saw something in my gaze which gave my thoughts away. Still, she remained still, and waited for me to make the observation I had been weighing since her injury. My frown deepened, but my posture remained unchanged. “You have not been forthcoming with me,” I said. “There are corners of your mind you have kept hidden; ones I should have known about by now.”

  A mixture of guilt and nervousness surfaced in the way she regarded me. Taking a deep breath, Monica looked away. “I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. For a while, I know you believed a lot of things about her that weren’t true. And given the fact that you didn’t trust me… I figured knowing we were related wouldn’t help.” Her eyes found mine again. “Flynn, you have to understand… Everything I kept from you was for a reason. Contrary to what you might believe about my so-called blind faith, I’m well aware that dealing with you is something I have to do with caution. Telling you Lydia was my sister wouldn’t have helped me reach you. You would’ve brushed me off as someone with an agenda.”

  I sighed, wanting to contradict her opinion while unable to do so. At the same time, I was not willing to admit she had a point. Her hand squeezed mine and she broke the silence, frowning. “You’re mad at me, now, aren’t you?”

  “She only mentioned you once,” I said, ignoring her concern in favor of pressing forward. I did not wish to confess to harboring any ill feelings, even if I was. “In the strangest manner, too. It was enough that I dared not ask about it again for fear of listening to another confusing litany of babble.” My gaze fell to my feet, my heart sinking marginally as the memory returned. “I suppose it slipped my thoughts since then. I never associated you with the girl Lydia mentioned, regardless of how well the shoe fits.”

  “Lydia told me. I believe her words were, ‘I think I just freaked Peter out.’”

  I could not contain the smile. “She nearly did.”

  “That was Lydia.” I glanced back in time to see her eyes shut. “Always bursting at the seams to tell you things you couldn’t understand yet. You have no idea how many conversations we had about you. Especially toward the end.”

  Perking an eyebrow, I studied Monica, my smile fading. “Lydia expressed her concern over my well-being to you?”

  “She never stopped talking about it. But yeah, she did tell me when things began changing. She said you started off distant and went from distant to cold. Something about the vitality in you washing out so much, it left you hollow. She said she followed you to the coffee shop one night and watched you talk to Sabrina. That’s when she realized what was happening to you.”

  A pang of guilt racked my stomach, threatening to twist it into knots. “She saw me with Sabrina. Gods, she must have thought I meant to cheat on her.”

  “No, she knew. At the same time, she sensed your loyalties swaying. We both figured out she w
as priming you for the picking, but Lydia couldn’t confront Sabrina on her own.” Monica sighed. I sensed the air turn heavy with the weight of the past. “We had the same father, but her mother was killed by a vampire. It haunted her for the rest of her life.”

  I nodded, despite the fact that Monica’s eyes remained closed. “She alluded toward it,” I said, “but did not state what manner creature had killed her mother. Simply that it had a connection to the supernatural.”

  “Well, Lydia wasn’t going to do anything without the Council’s permission, which pissed me off to say the least. Not too long after she saw you at the coffee shop, the Council encountered Robin and the entire situation took a nosedive into clusterfuck. I begged her…” Monica stopped abruptly.

  I furrowed my brow. “Begged her what?”

  Her lids finally lifted. “Once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker. I told her to bring your powers out. She kept insisting she needed the Council’s nod of approval, but time ran out. The Philly council contacted the High Council in Seattle and before another seer could sneeze in their general direction, Lydia was dead and you were turned.” I saw her grit her teeth. “I’ve never been buddies with the High Council, but you could say that set me over the edge.”

  As tempted as I was to commiserate, I found myself latching onto her less-personal confession. “You were the one who counseled her to bring out my abilities?” I asked.

  Her gaze flicked back to me, then jumped away again. “Yes. I’d seen them do it to a seer who’d been injured on the field. Some dark magician sent his powers into hiding and one of the sorcerers had to rip them back out.”

  “Sounds rather painful.”

  “Not as painful as being without something you’re used to having at the ready. It’s like losing an arm. Granted, he’d already realized his calling, but I thought the same rule applied. Lydia wasn’t so sure. She never told anyone I gave her that advice, though, or else the Council wouldn’t have let me come out here.”

  I could not tell if it was born out of confusion or being overwhelmed, but the more I attempted to grasp the complexity of what Monica had done, the more I found myself staring down the absurd. Shaking my head, I issued an incredulous laugh. “Allow me to get this straight: I murdered your sister and became a vampire, and despite this, you came all the way from Seattle to honor a pledge you made to Lydia prior to her death? You guided me, even when you realized the monster I had become, and brought my abilities out while the Council balked to do so while I was human?” I scoffed. “Woman, you are truly mad.”

  “I can still stake you, you know.”

  “It would have been better had you, from the look of things.”

  “Flynn, don’t presume to know my motives, thank you very much.”

  “Please tell me,” I said, not bothering to mask my dumbfounded amusement, “Just what you have up your sleeve next. Will you dive from a cliff or run headlong into the seventh level of hell on a whim? I wish to know just how nonexistent your sense of self-preservation is.”

  Monica narrowed her eyes. “You find this fucking funny, don’t you? You don’t get it, though; you never have. You see these women who keep putting their lives on the line for you, and all you think is that we’re lunatics. Not once have you stopped to ask why we do it.”

  “Ah yes –” Looking away, I sneered out of profound annoyance, already anticipating where this was headed. “– The higher purpose. The great calling. This is what leads women to run headlong into suicide on my behest.”

  “I waited for you for four years,” Monica said, visibly trying to control her temper, “If that’s what you want to know. I paid my dues as an elder’s assistant and told my father I felt an obligation to replace Lydia – which, I might add, was me lying through my teeth to one of the members of the High Council, an offence that could have gotten me confined to the archives for the rest of my natural days. And yes, part of it was for Lydia, because I loved her, but the five-fucking-million dollar question you’ve never asked yourself is this…” She raised an eyebrow, staring me down as though not in the slightest bit of pain or discomfort. “How the hell did a watcher who – God, as much as I loved my sister, I still have to say this – had a good head on her shoulders, but not a lot of savvy… how did she and a she-vampire both peg who the hell you were before you even got your calling?”

  I shrugged. “As far as I have understood it, they knew how to recognize a would-be seer and were fortunate in stumbling upon me. Are you telling me now this is suddenly important?”

  “Oh, Flynn. All pre-med, no time for electives. Yes, it’s important. If that sort of thing was luck, Sabrina and Lydia should’ve gone to Vegas and played the slot machines.” Letting go of my hand, Monica shifted, and though I saw her wince at the effort, she pulled herself to a seated position. “Lydia said you have many trials ahead of you and though she has an inside line to the Fates, she could’ve guessed that when she was still alive. It’s unheard of for someone other than a team of sorcerers to find a seer, and that’s a seer who’s gained his abilities. We’re not talking about the ones who haven’t. No matter how gifted the watcher was, she couldn’t have found a would-be seer if her life depended on it.”

  Monica and I stared at each other, locked in a stalemate. When she did not blink, I felt myself sober, the humor of the moment stolen like a breath in the wind. “They should not have known who I was?”

  I watched a smirk curl her lips, an evident sign she was pleased to have shaken me up. “No. Yet, Lydia knew almost right away. She didn’t tell a soul except me for two years and, even then, only gave you up when the vampires found you. In a way, I think she wanted all of us to stay blissfully ignorant.”

  “Please explain to me what this means.”

  The smirk evaporated, given once more to a serious expression. “Flynn, you’re probably one of the most powerful seers ever born. With the shiny title comes a blessing and a curse. The blessing is the Fates have deigned to give you to us in the first damn place, but everything has a balance. The curse? If we’ve been given such a powerful seer, it means there’s an evil just as powerful you’ll have to face.”

  My blood turned cold, my hands suddenly aching for the comfort of Monica’s again. I took a deep breath, both to sort through my thoughts and steady my nerves. For as much as my watcher’s words had already impacted, I could sense I still had miles to go before I fully grasped the enormity of what I had been told. “This is why I am such a monster when my thoughts turn wicked,” I murmured, the words being produced before I could stop myself. “If I truly am capable of that much power then my own evil could possibly eclipse that which I was brought into the world to vanquish.”

  I felt warm fingers caress my leg, glancing back without realizing I had looked away again. My gaze fell first to the palm gently stroking my thigh, in a gesture more reassuring than suggestive, then rose to engage the concerned expression on Monica’s face. I frowned. “Monica, are you certain it is not best for me to turn myself in? What if I am now that very villain I should have slain?”

  “You aren’t. I understand how you feel that way, but trust me when I say the sorts of shadows people like you fight are much more treacherous than you’re even capable of being. Lydia fought for you, and I fought for you, too, because the man given these abilities knows what to do with them. And he’s in there, regardless of whether I call you Peter, or I call you Flynn.”

  She shut her eyes and slowly relaxed against her pillows again. “The fact that you even see your inner demons should tell you something,” she said, continuing. “If you were ever that far gone, you wouldn’t care. You’d just rip the world into shreds and laugh while doing it.”

  “That is the very thing I fear becoming.”

  Silence settled between us, my mind spinning in some effort to digest the notch I had ascended on the supernatural food chain. Quickly, however, I determined it would take more than a few moments of meditation for me to do so. “You must rest,” I said at last. “I will
keep guard and tend to your wounds before we progress onward. Perhaps Julian shall wander into the wrong part of town again and anger more of the local residents.”

  Monica snorted, looking at me with a grimace after producing the abrupt noise. “Gods, Flynn, don’t make me laugh. It hurts when I laugh.”

  I smirked. “My apologies.” Laying a hand atop Monica’s, I felt moved to pull it to my mouth and kiss the back in a gentlemanly fashion. A soft smile tugged at her lips as I lowered it. “Thank you for protecting the soul of this rascal,” I said. “Even when he seems bent on mocking your motives.”

  “Don’t mention it.” A blush rose on her cheeks briefly before lightening back to her sickly pallor. Her eyes shut and our grip disengaged. “And thank you, once again, for your protection.”

  “You are quite welcome. Get better… for both of our sakes.”

  Standing, I left the room without adding any additional thoughts, pausing only to shut her door before I entered the living room. Mental fatigue nipped hungrily at my heels, demanding I rest before attempting to form some sort of plan for our escape. I ignored it for a little while longer, content, instead, to lie on the couch and watch the front door. My mind wandered down a myriad of paths, some dark, and others daunting, and at the end of it all, I knew one thing for certain. My footing was much more precarious. The descent seemed that much steeper should I lose my way. A mountain of concerns weighed down my shoulders, but even those could not stop the eventual close of my eyes.

  Sleep became a welcomed thing, a cherished commodity I was apt to indulge for one more day. It quieted the notions running through my mind.

  And heaven only knew how much I needed to seek respite from.

  Chapter Seven

  I had barely assumed the duty of being Sabrina’s assassin when fate, or her conspirator serendipity, took an interest in me. Fresh from my first assignment, with the high of accomplishment sluggishly bleeding out of my veins, I mused at how the details had unfolded over a glass of Scotch and found one particular element of my work lacking. Rather than simply congratulating myself over a job well done, I could not help but to observe my target was now dust with no stories left to tell about who did him in and how.