Fatal Sight (Harbingers Of Death Book 2) by LeAnn Mason (book club reads .TXT) 📕

“All right, we’re the last ones out.”

He meant the last ones of the team. The passengers got to stay and brace for a crash landing. I’d watched, aghast, as my new teammates shifted into various avian species or sprouted hidden wings, yelled various forms of “see you there” to Dave, and abandoned the impending disaster without a backward glance at their new, flightless “miracle” of a clairvoyant.

“You ready?” Dave had leaned in close so I could make out his instructions.

“Ready for what? What do you mean out?” I shouted back, dreading that I already knew the answer.

“We’ve got to jump!” His grin was way too excited. He was clearly deranged.

I stepped back, a move that was easy with the angle of the plane’s trajectory, shaking my head violently enough to give myself whiplash.

“Nope. No, thank you.” If I ever saw Seke again, I was going to strangle him. This was just plain fucked up. Pun intended.

When Dave mirrored my step, I pushed my hands out, hoping to deter his advance. Instead, he walked until my palms made contact with his chest, reached out, and pulled me to him as he swiveled, leaning toward the impromptu exit.

“No!”

Then, we were falling.

I screamed, hard and long. Not a banshee scream, just that of a bat-shit scared woman who’d been hurtled from a crashing airplane without a parachute. “If I survive this, I’m going to kill you!” The wind stole my threatening words, tearing them back toward the descending plane without a care for my plight.

“Wooo!” The crazy bastard I was currently wrapped around was grinning like an idiot, one arm out to the side while the other held me to him. The guy didn’t even have two hands on me!

What the actual fuck?!

I didn’t dare remove one of my own arms in hopes of retrieving his stray appendage.

Without warning, I was distracted from my distress as the ground neared by a feeling I knew all too well of late. My lungs were taking in as much air as they could. A new kind of scream scratching and clawing its way from my diaphragm and scaling up my throat to launch itself from between my lips like the kamikaze I now believed myself to be.

Am I announcing my own death?

7

I rushed to the railing of the small Coast Guard vessel just in time to heave up the last vestiges of the meal I’d consumed while at the dock. The ocean and I didn’t get along any better than I and the sky did, it seemed.

Thank the gods the oversized owl shifter hadn’t dropped me to splat on the debris-strewn plains, but that whole experience made it pretty clear that I was not the best harbinger for the Air Unit.

One: I didn’t have wings.

Fine, we knew that going in. They’d trusted my team to look out for me. And I guess they had. I wasn’t escorted across the veil along with our targets. But I hadn’t been much help as it turned out either, which was the second reason I was quickly shuttled to my next gig.

Two: there was far too much screaming and fear of imminent death… for myself.

Do not overstay an untenable situation. If your gut tells you to walk away, do it. Trying to force success will almost guarantee a bad outcome.

Seke’s words echoed in my head all too often, especially now that he’d divested himself of me. I hated that his teachings made sense, that they stuck with me. Everything about that aloof god had stuck with me though.

Bastard.

I had, however, taken his advice on that one and peaced out the moment my feet hit the ground. Well, after I’d emptied my stomach of its contents and the dizziness dissipated enough for me to stagger away. They didn’t really need me anyway. Such a violent means of death would have obvious collections.

Would they all be like that?Probably not. But enough would that I’d rather jab out my eyes with a hot poker than endure it again. The team had seemed nice, but they were definitely adrenaline junkies, which I was not. I was raised to live carefully.

I’m not sure my situation has improved…

“Whoa, there, newbie. You’re supposed to keep that stuff inside,” a rough voice cajoled, clapping a heavy hand to my back where I bent over the surf, spitting to clear the vile remnants from my mouth.

A bottle of water appeared beneath my face, and I took it gratefully.

“Thanks.” I swished a mouthful and spit the contents out to join the rest of the undulating water below. Looking out over the dark blue waves curling to tips of white had my stomach threatening to unload again, my head throbbing.

The recruiting team should think about adding a wave simulator to their testing courses. There was nothing in what I went through in that grueling week to prepare my stomach for this constant motion. I’d visited the beach a time or two, but I’d never been on a boat. We stuck to the same country, my parents and I, for the same reasons we didn’t fly — too much of a trail left behind when you had to pass through customs and get documentation to be in a foreign place. Coasts had made Dad twitchy anyway.

Never put your back to a wall unless you can be sure of its solidity.

Damn, that’s not my dad’s advice. That’s a Seke phrase.

Both my dad and former captain were no longer a part of my life, but their voices continued to ring loud and clear, directing my life even though they’d left me on my own.

“Best to look out at the horizon for seasickness. That steady line tends to help, or so they say. I’ve never been bothered by the motion, so I couldn’t tell you if it really works.” The advice was spoken with sage wisdom and the shrug of a beefy shoulder. With a scruffy beard, curly hair, and