The Seer (74 page)

‘Was our
wedding this bad?’  she whispered to Fabian.

‘No, ours was
perfect,’ he smiled.  ‘But there is nothing more boring than other
people’s weddings.’

‘You can say
that again.’

Mistral tried
to concentrate on the words Leo was saying but ended up thinking about the
election again.  Although his position was yet to be officially confirmed
by the Council, to all intents and purposes Leo was the Ri’s new Divinus and
had assumed the long coveted role with natural ease.  More out of boredom
than any real interest, Mistral studied his aura  A swirling mist of deep
royal blue appeared above his head, like his own personal patch of summer
sky.  Fine lines of colour crackled across the surface of blue; amethyst,
deep purple and mustard yellow.  Intrigued, Mistral tilted her head
slightly and focussed harder, staring intently at the blue cloud, pushing her
mind to See into his.

What do you
See?

Mistral was
dragged out of her trance by Phantom’s impatient thought.  She blinked and
turned to meet his piercing green eyes.  ‘Tell you later,’ she mouthed,
smiling at the look of chagrin on his face. 

Glancing over
at Leo again she was disappointed to realise that the ceremony was still going
on.  Staving off the desire to yawn, she looked around restlessly. 
To alleviate the lethargy she could feel creeping over her, she began to study
the other guests.  There were fewer than had attended hers and Fabian’s
wedding, but then, Grendel had been a warrior for far less time than Fabian. 
Nearly all of the villagers were there, but Mistral could tell from the cloud
of auras above their heads that most had attended purely for the wedding feast
that would be held in The Cloak afterwards rather than out of any genuine
liking for the half-troll.

Mycroft Casterton
was stood beside Serenity, his partner for the day.  The Magnate member
had accepted his resounding defeat in the election with surprising good grace;
to the dismay of the twins who had hoped he would follow Malachi’s lead and
depart the Valley in high dudgeon.  Mistral accidently caught Serenity’s
eye while her gaze ran across the crowd and gave her a polite smile before
swiftly looking away again.  The last thing she wanted today was an
in-depth chat about her pregnancy.  Feeling the onset of terminal boredom,
Mistral decided to spend a little time on her new favourite addiction. 
She gazed up at the pale blue sky, letting her eyes mist over while the
tendrils of her mind unravelled and flew out across the Isle; reaching for the
dark thoughts of Malachi Nox.

A slight
furrow creased the skin between her eyebrows as his thoughts murmured in her
mind.  Phantasm was right; they were too controlled, almost mundane. 
He was fooling her gift and veiling his true thoughts somehow.  She
refocused, forcing her mind deeper into his, seeking beneath the layer of banal
complaints about the long walk, the hardness of the ground at night and the
monotony of eating roast rabbit ... seeking out the real thoughts he was so
cleverly concealing.  Her frozen expression went unnoticed by all the
other guests, apart from Fabian and the twins who knew exactly what she was
doing. 

Mistral’s face
remained expressionless while she experienced the disorientating sensation of
falling into Malachi’s consciousness, tumbling helplessly down into the darker
depths of his mind until she was submerged in a swirling black vortex. 
All around her was glimmering darkness, so dense it was almost tangible. 
Even the consistency of the air surrounding her seemed to subtly thicken,
slowing her somersaulting fall until she was revolving slowly through a viscous
substance.  Staring around with wide eyes at the sparkling blackness,
Mistral realised she was deep inside Malachi’s subconscious.  Intrigued by
the liquid feel of her strange surroundings, Mistral experimentally stretched
her arms out wide.  Turning her palms downwards, she began to move her
legs slowly, like a swimmer treading water.  Immediately her fall slowed
until she was floating, suspended in the glistening ether of Malachi’s psyche. 
Fascinated, Mistral moved a hand slowly in front of her face, watching the
bright trail-backs that sprung from her fingers she marvelled silently at the
bizarre experience her gift was affording her.  Lights suddenly flickered
in the inky blackness and a series of startling images flashed before her eyes,
too fast for her to make out clearly.  They abruptly vanished, leaving
Mistral staring at the burning trail they scored across the darkness.  She
turned in a slow circle, peering cautiously through the murk to try and see
more images.  More appeared, streaming past her in a confusing array of
colour to fade rapidly away, only to begin again almost immediately. 
After the third explosive display Mistral realised that the same images were being
revealed over and over.  When they appeared for a fourth time she was
ready and turned to follow their progress as they sped past her.  She
immediately recognised the village square, the cobbles wet with rain … and some
unrecognisable objects laid around … Mistral focussed as the same scene flashed
by again, recoiling slightly when she realised that the cobbles weren’t wet
with rain, but another liquid entirely.  The scene abruptly slowed,
drawing her in until she was completely immersed in Malachi’s vision, seeing it
through his eyes. 

The village
square, lit by the moon, the cobbles wet with the blood of slain bodies. 
So much blood!  It formed crimson rivulets between the wet cobbles,
pooling in the gutters, trickling down into the drains.  The hot coppery
reek was intoxicating, filling her nose with every breath she drew, fuelling
the raw thirst she could feel scraping at her throat.  Mistral heard a
voice that was not familiar; a low, rasping growl.

‘You have
served your tribe well Malachi!’

The laughter
that escaped her lips was not hers, neither was the savage sense of retribution
that flooded through her as she gazed at the misshapen forms sprawled on the
cobbles.  Feeling a contemptuous smile stretch her mouth, Mistral watched
a booted foot kick over the nearest corpse.  A wave of satisfaction
flooded through the body she was occupying when she looked down to meet a
familiar green gaze.  She tried to close her eyes and block out the
horrifying image, but it wasn’t her eyes seeing the vision, it was Malachi’s. 
Trapped within his subconscious, she was forced to take in every detail of
Phantom’s chalk-white face, his bloodless lips open in a silent scream, his
blonde hair stained with blood.

Imprisoned in
the darkest recesses of Malachi’s mind, Mistral was powerless to resist the
sights he inflicted on her while he strode across the square, revelling in the
carnage the vampire tribe had wreaked.  The bodies of her brothers lay
sprawled on the blood-soaked cobbles, their limbs flung out in unnatural positions,
like discarded dolls.  Malachi laughed darkly to himself with each corpse
he kicked over, making Mistral See the blood-spattered face of each through his
eyes.  Phantasm, his beautiful face drained to an alabaster marble;
Xerxes, his long hair matted with his own spilt blood; Samson, his scars
bleached white in the cold moonlight; Cain, his impish smile frozen into a
grimace of agony, and Brutus, his laughing face twisted into a death mask of
agony.  Another sound reached her ears above Malachi’s laughter; the
greedy sucking noise of something feeding.  Malachi turned, compelling her
to see the repulsive creature slaking its thirst at the throat of another
warrior, twitching with the last throws of life. 

‘Good hunting
brother?’  she asked in Malachi’s cold voice.

The creature
flung aside its spent victim and turned to look at her.  She screamed in
horror, but no sound escaped the lips of her prison, they curved into a smile
of satisfaction.  The vampire’s skin was powdery white, like suede, the
scarlet eyes lidless and the heavy-jawed mouth filled with a double row of
jagged teeth, dripping with the blood that ran freely down its chin.  It
opened a lipless mouth to speak in a voice she knew better than her own – 

‘Mistral!’

Other voices
joined in with the vampire’s ... calling desperately ... dragging her up and
out, away from the bottomless pit of the hell she was in.  Her eyes opened
to see heavy drops of blood floating down through the sky, landing on the
cobbles to form the carmine rivers of her vision.  Laughter reached her
ears, contorting to become the agonised shrieks of her dying brothers, and in
the background the persistent tolling of the warning bell sounded the alarm ...
too late!  Far too late for her dead brothers.  Convinced she was
still trapped inside Malachi’s subconscious, Mistral closed her eyes and moaned
quietly.

‘No more,
please no more –’

‘Mistral! 
Look at me!  See me ... I’m here –’

The echo of
her words to a dying brother pierced through the fog of horror shrouding her
mind. 

Saul.

His death had
been real.  What she had Seen was merely a sick fantasy.  She opened
her eyes again to see not blood but red rose petals falling through the
sky.  The tolling of the warning bell changed to become the joyous peals
of the village bells celebrating a wedding.  The cries of the dying became
calls of congratulations to the newlyweds.  Mistral gazed numbly at the
sunlit village square, letting the bright scene dispel the harrowing intensity
of her vision.  

‘What? 
What did you See?’

Phantom’s hissed
whisper dragged Mistral’s gaze away from the sight of Grendel and Liliana
kissing to be confronted by two sets of green eyes.  The twins … who she
had Seen mangled in death only moments before.  Reaching up slowly, she
touched the skin of Phantom’s cheek with the tip of her finger.

‘Ah brother,
but you are so warm.’

‘That’s
because I’ve been shouting at you for five minutes!  Where the hell have
you been!  We thought you were dying when you screamed!’

‘Hell!’ 
Mistral laughed a little wildly and closed her eyes.  ‘Nearly –’

‘I think we
should continue this conversation somewhere more private.’  Fabian
muttered and pulled her by the hand, leading her away from the village square
towards their house.

Only when
Mistral was sat on their sofa with a cup of water in her hand did Fabian kneel
down beside her and gently repeat Phantom’s question, ‘What did you See?’

She stared
wordlessly into his dark eyes, wondering how to try and even begin describing
the bloodbath of Malachi’s hidden desires, ‘Malachi,’ she finally breathed his
name with an involuntary shudder. 

‘Tell me,’ he
urged softly, reaching out to take her hand.

‘I Saw … his
tribe … hunting,’ she continued in a repulsed whisper.  ‘There was so much
blood!  The square was running with it!  Malachi … he is going to
offer the Valley up to the tribe out of revenge … I – I  Saw my brothers,
all my brothers … slain –’

Silence
followed her revelation.  She closed her eyes, inexorably sucked back into
the abattoir of her vision.

‘Stop
it!  Right now Mistral!  I won’t tell you again!’

The green eyes
that met her distant stare shone with life, contradicting the glassy dead stare
of Malachi’s fantasy. 

‘Please try
and focus Mistral, stay with us.’  Fabian’s voice was soft, but the
warning glare he gave Phantom was not. 

Mistral drew
in a deep breath and looked at Fabian, drawing strength from his deep gaze,
‘He’s been fooling my gift with mundane thoughts whilst keeping his true
desires hidden.  But I’ve Seen them now –’ Mistral faltered and closed her
eyes again at the memory of her vision.

Fabian gripped
her hand more firmly, speaking to her in a voice that held an unfamiliar note
of urgency, ‘I know this isn’t going to be pleasant, but you must tell me
exactly what you Saw.’  

Mistral nodded
and drew in a shuddering breath before she began to recount her vision. 
She refused to allow her voice to betray any emotion and kept her eyes closed,
knowing that they would expose the true depth of her horror.  

‘Did you See
yourself?’  Fabian demanded the moment she finished.

Mistral
finally opened her eyes and looked at him with a surprised expression, ‘No …
nor you.’

Fabian
narrowed his eyes, ‘Then I think there is more to Malachi’s dark fantasy other
than a wish to exact bloody revenge.’  Rising to his feet he turned to the
twins, ‘I am going to find Leo.  Phantom, I want you to bring your
brothers and Samson here … and Gleacher, but do not tell them why! 
Phantasm?  Please stay with Mistral.  It is vital that you keep her
here!’

Phantasm held
Fabian’s look and nodded in understanding, he knew that Mistral wandering off
in person was not the concern, but in her mind.

The sound of
the door banging shut made Prospero bark and snapped Mistral out of her
stupor.  She gave herself a shake and rose to her feet before walking over
to the stairs.

‘Where are you
going?’  Phantasm asked quickly.

Mistral paused
with her foot on the first step and frowned at him over her shoulder, ‘To start
packing of course!  We need to get to the Northern Range and head the
tribe off!  Malachi was still travelling when I read him but he must be
close now … he left the Valley over a week ago –’

Phantasm
immediately strode over to grab her arm, ‘You are going nowhere!’

Mistral shook
his hand off angrily and carried on walking up the stairs, ‘Watch me!’

‘I can’t
believe you!’  Phantasm immediately flared.  ‘Just for one moment in
your life can you actually think about someone other than yourself?’

Mistral halted
half way up the stairs and whipped around to glare at him, ‘I am!  The
whole damned Valley as a matter of fact!’ 

‘Don’t try and
lie to me Mistral!’  Phantasm snorted disdainfully.  ‘You don’t give
a damn about the Valley!  You could barely stay awake during Grendel’s
wedding just now!  You just want to go along for what you see in your
warped mind as the chance to have a good fight!’