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

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 time.

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.