Page 24 of Professor and the Seer
Enyo didn’t seem too bothered by what I’d done. Bane, back as his cat, always looked grumpy, so hard to tell how he felt. Dina, however, didn’t hide her emotions as she stalked with attitude and anger. As for John, he looked pensive.
I stuck close to him without touching. Didn’t have to, as he bubbled me without asking. My sisters might have been insulted, given their strong feminist attitudes, but I basked in the quiet.
We walked for several miles, trusting Bane knew where he was going. He followed his nose and led us to a shitty-looking motel that made me inwardly cringe. This wasn’t the kind of place where nice futures came to pass but a desperate spot for desperate people. Like us.
The one thing we had plenty of? Cash and credit cards. Bane had a stash on the yacht we escaped the island on. Good thing, since we’d lost all our stuff in the escape. Once we got back home, we’d have to replace the items we’d left behind. Not much in my case. One passport and one credit card on a joint account with my sisters.
Despite the lonely location, we could only rent two rooms at opposite ends of the motel. Enyo and Bane got one. The other I shared with John and Dina, she and I in one bed, him in the other. A spell was cast over the room to let me sleep in peace.
Kind of.
I had the weirdest dream. Or was it a memory?
I found myself back in the cavern under Bane’s castle. The pillar that had cursed a line of Wardens going back centuries stood floor to ceiling, too fat for me to hug, the height of it inscribed with the same symbols as those tattooed on my back and the backs of my sisters. On the dais before it lay the bodies of monsters, those that died as we defended the inscribed column. By we, I mostly meant Enyo. In my dream, I arrived at the point where the portal bound in the pillar had begun to open because Bane chose to abandon his post to save the woman he loved.
So romantic. He’d chosen my sister over the rest of the world.
I watched as the doorway to another realm opened, not that I could see anything but darkness. Then again, I hadn’t been really concerned about what lay on the other side once the lightning strike began. The bolts of power had emerged rapid-fire, striking everything in the room.
Had being the key word. My dream differed in its recollection because instead of zaps of lightning I saw a shadowy figure materialize on the threshold. A cloak covered them head to toe, the cowl of it too deep to see the face within, the fabric more like smoke. It swirled and reached out, only to get wispy when stretched too far and snap back.
The being in the cloak moved from the portal, the head-to-toe covering making it seem as if it floated. As it crossed the dais, its hooded head turned and looked. My gaze followed, and I saw the battle I’d lived through. The demons that had been attacking were dying from the lightning that I realized did appear, not as bright flashes but rather lances of darkness. Those lances pierced the monsters, killing them. As I kept pivoting to see, I startled, for I caught sight of myself standing still, my head back, mouth open, and eyes unseeing. That expression was repeated on Dina’s, Enyo’s, and even Bane’s faces. Weirder than seeing myself? Everything happened in slow motion. The death throes of the monsters were exaggerated, even as the cloaked being moved at a normal speed.
Who or what was it?
As if it heard my mental question, the being swiveled, and I’d have sworn it stared right at me.
I definitely heard a voice. “Hello, prophetess. I’ll be seeing you and your sisters soon.”
Wait, what? Before I could ask a question, I was shaken awake.
Groggy. Disoriented. It took a few blinks before I recognized Dina leaning over me. “About time you woke up. Everyone’s waiting for you in the car.”
I rolled out of bed and had to ask my bustling sister, “Do you remember seeing anything coming out of the portal?”
“What?” Dina cast me a frown over her shoulder.
“The portal under the castle on the island. When it opened, did you see anything?”
“Lightning. Why?”
“I just had a strange dream.”
Dina paused. “Dream or vision?”
“I don’t see the past.” Only I realized that wasn’t entirely true. When I’d met Carillo, I had gotten a flash of the many things he’d done over the decades. Could it be my power now included the past as well as the future?
“We can talk about it on the ride.” Dina exited the motel room, and I grimaced. I hated road trips.
It took me only ten minutes to use the washroom and get ready. I emerged and almost staggered as the world crashed in on me. The rusty car parked two doors down would be piled with too many people, most of whom would die in a crash when they tried to evade a patrol. The dusty section of sidewalk I stood on would be the scene of a murder investigation, a young woman killed by her trafficker for refusing to obey.
I did my best to shut my mind against the flood. My nails dug into my palms. I took several breaths, trying to control my anxiety. It didn’t work. Visions kept flooding in.
John noticed and pushed away from the dusty sedan he leaned on. “You okay? Need a bubble?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, only to freeze as I stared at the car they’d rented for the next leg of our trip. A car I saw leaving without me, or John. Before I even knew what I’d say, my mouth spoke for me, “I’m not going with my sisters.”
Dina overhead. “What are you talking about? Of course you are. It will be a little cozy, but we only have to endure it until we get to the airport. I’ll magic up some fake IDs so we can catch a flight home.”