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

Ugh. Another Seke lesson.

“Tell me about the vision,” Gunhilde said, pulling me back on track.

I pushed the ring from my mind — it was gone now — and thought for a moment, trying to recall exactly what I’d seen. “It was gloomy. A corridor with many doors like a hospital or hotel hallway. It was lit by candles in sconces along the walls. There was a man, well-dressed but shadowed, accosting a woman, threatening her.”

Gunhilde leaned forward. “What did he say?”

I tried to remember exactly what his phrasing was… “You live in exchange for what you offer. Then, he threw her down the hall with superhuman strength, knocking her out.”

“Superhuman strength?”

I nodded. “He was weird. I remember… he licked the blood off her face.” Wait. “A vampire?”

Gunhilde fidgeted, looking unsettled. Torgny’s eyes flashed to her, what looked almost like alarm widening the orbs to show white all the way around the dark irises. That look I’ve seen on crazy horses in movies… I kept a side-eye on Torgny as I shifted my attention back to his— mistress? Partner? Rider? I’d have to ask about that dynamic another time.

“And the woman? Did you recognize her?”

The question brought me up short. Why would I recognize her? I looked probingly at the valkyrie and her steed. What weren’t they telling me?

“What did she look like?” Gunhilde pressed.

“I didn’t see her clearly. Dirty, thin, tattered clothes. I thought she might be homeless. Maybe she prostitutes to survive?”

“What about her hair?” Torgny asked, stepping closer with muscles clenched tight.

Odd question. Maybe an ex of his or something? “I don’t know, maybe gray? There was a lot of dirt.”

The mood in the room plummeted with my description. Torgny came to stand behind Gunhilde, a strong hand on her shoulder on which she rested her own as her head bowed, heavy with unseen weight.

“What? Who is she?” I asked, perturbed. I didn’t like the ominous gloom-and-doom thickness in the air. It made my heart rate kick up and a shiver skitter across my skin. Somehow, I knew I wouldn’t like the answer, but I needed to know.

“Your mother, Aria. That was your mother.”

19

“No.” I had said the word a few times already. “No, it can’t be. My mother is dead. My visions… they show the future.” I felt like Torgny had lost his reserved demeanor for a second and sent me a steel-armed, kidney-killer punch. I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to encourage it to draw in oxygen. “My mom is in the past. Was in the past,” I corrected myself, denial warring with hope.

“Did you see her body? Are you sure she died?”

I tried not to think about that. “Well, no, but...”

“You lost her, but she didn’t pass over.”

I blanched. “She’s a vampire too?”

Gunhilde shook her head. “No, no. Supernaturals cannot become vampires.”

“But vampires are supernaturals.” I canted my head, shifting the silver strands unattractively tousled into a rat’s nest during our Pegasus flight or whatever Torgny was. I couldn’t remember what the vamp I’d met yesterday, Tony Biscotti or whatever mob-vamp’s name was, had said about that. Clearly, he wasn’t human anymore. So, he had to be a supe, right?

The valkyrie’s face scrunched up, causing the scar on her cheekbone to pucker. She was as much a warrior as those she reaped. “In a sense. They start as human, so they’re not quite the same as a regular supe. That’s why they’re not... encouraged.

“Your mother used to call them unnaturals.” Her face broke out into a grin, stretching the scar tissue in the other direction so that it pulled into a grotesque indent. Instead of detracting from her formidable appearance, it just made her look more badass. I wondered how she got it. “The nickname was a favorite amongst the first Harbingers of Death teams. You know what they did, right?” She looked sharply at me, and Torgny copied the stare.

“Yeah.” I retreated under the glare. “They hunted vampires. Seke told me.” My gaze dipped, and my stomach fluttered at the name.

Stupid stomach. Maybe I’m just hungry.

“They exterminated the vampires,” Gunhilde corrected with a slam of her fist to the dresser to punctuate her point.

I jumped, bouncing slightly on the bed. Torgny didn’t so much as flinch. The urge to shoot a spit-wad or paper airplane at him rose. Was he ever taken by surprise?

“Vampires aren’t supposed to exist. They’re humankind gone wrong. Like a plague of parasites.”

I nodded. That’s when they first became a major problem, I remembered: the Black Death. There were too many people dying... and the unbanded harbingers couldn’t keep up with the demand. The HD was formed to keep a better handle on sorting souls ASAP… and not missing any.

The first ones fixed the vamp outbreak. The later ones — like the HDPU — stopped that disaster from happening again.

I frowned. “If they exterminated them, then why did I meet a vampire yesterday? What is my mom doing with a vampire? Because I don’t have visions of the past,” I reminded the room at large. It would be reasonable that a vamp had gotten hold of her when she was hunting them in the 1300s, and the scene would have made sense for that time period, especially with the candles. But we’d been on the run centuries later when she ‘died.’

Unless... I’m worse at being a banshee than I thought and I’m mixing up visions and a weird case of narcolepsy with vivid dreams...

Denial was keeping me calm. I wasn’t sure I wanted to believe that the dream had been a vision and the woman in it had been mom. If that was her — if she was alive — then so much was wrong with that.

“She’s been alive... this whole time?” My wall of defense began to crack. “Shit.” I pounded the bed. It had less impact than Gunhilde’s fist on the dresser. “I knew I should have looked for her. Dad searched, but...” My head jerked