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

head, my fingers latched onto... hair. I smoothed them down and felt a warm body, muscles moving beneath my palms and a thick layer of course, dense hair.

My mouth opened as wide as my eyes.

“Shhh,” the woman insisted. “Do not scream. Seke was right. You still do not understand your powers.”

I tried to process. “Seke? What? Are we... Are we on a horse?” I didn’t feel the back-and-forth jostle I expected from a horse’s gait, but it sure felt like one.

The woman’s steel eyes lit up, and she grinned. She looked truly fierce. “Meet Torgny.”

She helped me sit up, keeping my legs astride the beast, my ass in the saddle, facing the wrong direction… and I immediately almost fell off.

My hands flew to the woman’s shoulders, gripping tightly. “We’re flying,” I gasped, staring at the ground far below. “And you’re not using reins.”

“I do not need them. Torgny is not guided by force.” The woman winked. I took in her outfit and accent.

“You’re...”

She nodded. “A valkyrie. Gunhilde,” she introduced herself.

“Aria,” I said faintly. “And I would really like to get back on the ground now.” I squeezed my eyelids shut, trying not to think about the feeling of jumping out of an airplane.

Gunhilde laughed. “Your mother never liked flying with me either.”

My eyes flew back open, but before I could ask anything, Torgny suddenly plummeted, and my stomach planted itself firmly in my throat, blocking all sound from escaping my lips — including the scream that Gunhilde didn’t want to come out.

18

“Holy hell,” I gulped once we had landed surprisingly smoothly on the glorious ground. I swallowed down the vomit that burned my throat, threatening to spew forth with even those few words.

Flying was so totally not my thing.

“You really are just like your mom, you know that?” Gunhilde declared, patting Torgny on his sleek, black neck.

He tossed his head. A shake snaked down his entire body. And then, he was gone. A huge man with wild black hair that hung past his shoulders stood in its place. Brown eyes the same color as the animal assessed me.

“Holy hell,” I repeated. “A... horse shifter? I didn’t even fathom that those existed,” I breathed, still staring at the horse-turned-dude who luckily — or unluckily — wasn’t naked. That part of shifting, at least, seemed to be purely fiction. In real life, the ability seemed to encompass clothing too. Though this pair’s attire was certainly something out of the storybooks or maybe the history books.

Torgny just snorted, a very horsey reaction that brought a smile to my lips, unbidden. My mirth appeared to irk him, and he prowled forward, a movement that caused his shiny armor to clink lightly. It was a decidedly predatory movement I’d never associated with a horse. But then, there was a whole lot I didn’t understand about him and supes in general.

“Whoa.” I held up my hands to keep the horse-man at bay and winced, regretting my word of choice when his nostrils flared.

Gunhilde leaned in to whisper the last with a very pointed look and a chin jerk behind me. “Why don’t you let us in so we can talk. In private.”

I turned and noticed we were back at the rundown motel, in front of the door to my temporary abode. “But… I was on the street. There were people,” I puzzled, looking to my new… acquaintance. Her appearance distracted me. “What’s with the armor anyway?” My mind had too many things to focus on, and my attention bounced from one to another with rapidity. Bouncing again, I remembered what she’d said: Your mother never liked flying with me either. “You knew my mother?”

A look of exasperated consideration flit over the valkyrie’s face as she worked through my questions, possibly deciding what to address first.

Torgny, on the other hand, stared at me silently from near the door where he stood like a sentry. I kind of wanted to start making faces and gestures, waving a hand in his face just to get a reaction. He reminded me of those British palace guards with the funny hats and unflappable demeanors.

“I bet he’s fun at parties, huh?”

I fished in my pocket for the key card, and my fingers closed over a wad of cash I’d bartered for. I breathed out, a sudden hitch of worry that I’d been mugged when I… passed out or went under — whatever it was called when a vision took over.

I let us into the room. Forcing my eyes to skip over the bed Seke had slept on, I sat on my bed. Gunhilde circled the room then hopped on the dresser top. I eyed Torgny, who’d taken up the same pose he’d held on the other side of the door.

“Yeah, a real bundle of energy.”

Gunhilde smirked. “Biggest question first. I did know your mother just as I know many of the existing harbingers currently working today. The valkyries don’t join the teams. We tend to act more as liaisons or as extra help on bigger jobs.”

“Bigger jobs? What does that mean?”

“Massacres, bombs, natural disasters with high body counts.” She ticked them off on her fingers then shrugged. “Things like that. My normal missions are battles; warriors. We do a lot of military and law enforcement retrievals,” Gunhilde said with apathy. It was a job, no room for emotion. She’d probably mastered all the many lessons my parents tried to impart to me. Maybe she’d been a source of their wisdom.

I could picture that. She was a fighter, standing in my dingy room. Gleaming armor, which covered all her soft, vital parts, glinted under the dim light, giving her body a bit of a halo effect. She looked like Athena… only Norse… “Damn, valkyries are badass.”

“And don’t forget it,” Gunhilde returned. A femme fatale smolder that would put even Jessica’s to shame took over her lovely chiseled features, that long scar on her cheek not able to detract from its effect. “We are the ultimate harbingers, going so far