Fionn closed on her, blue eyes glittering. “Use your Seer skill first. It will show you a number of…probabilities. The best part is if ye doona like the future ye see, sometimes ye can change it.”
“I suppose you have all five gifts, too?” She looked hard at him.
“Och aye, lass. And a few more to boot.” He took her hands, his gaze never leaving her face. “This willna take long. Let me help.”
He hummed a low, hypnotic melody. Without understanding how she knew what to do, she picked up a harmonizing thread. Not unlike the day she’d slipped inside his head, a scene blossomed before her. She was back near her cave. Bodies lay strewn in the streets. Coming close, she recognized many of them, and her heart ached. Somehow, Travis wasn’t there. Did that mean he was still alive? Was any of this real? Or was it a future that hadn’t yet happened?
She asked a Seer’s question, trying to sort what was real from what her eyes showed her. The bodies vanished, and she heaved a sigh of relief. Shelving her Seer magic in favor of Seeker skills, she went looking for others like herself and found them in caves and grottos, hiding from things that were trying to kill them. She tried to communicate, but no one recognized her presence, no matter what she did. She wondered what sort of magic rendered her totally invisible. Whatever it was, she needed to learn more about it. Though it was a problem now, she could think of lots of situations where it would be a boon. Finally, she grabbed a stick and wrote her message in the dirt. She put it lots of places so people would have to see it.
Danger. Do not trust the Old Ones. They are allied with the dark. Fight with us. Come to Ely as soon as you read this. Look for magic there, and you will find us. Once you’ve read this, destroy it.
For all their erudition, she was fairly certain the Lemurians couldn’t read English. I sure hope not. If they can, we’re in for a bunch of unwelcome guests. She thought she heard Fionn chuckle in the back of her mind. God, but she loved him.
“Good ye figured that out, mo leannán,” echoed in her head.
So now I’m his sweetheart…
She wrenched herself back to Seer mode. The scene shifted to Salt Lake City. Her childhood neighborhood didn’t look any worse than when she and Rune had left it. Good. It meant there’d be people to save. She wondered if she could do something from her trance state besides scratch messages in the dirt. It would sure save a lot of time. Ducking into a tunnel that she knew led to a Hunters’ den, she ran through it. Sure enough, three Hunters and their animals were home. They looked gaunt and worried. Aislinn touched one, but he didn’t so much as flinch. The bond animals—a cougar, a wolf, and a German shepherd—sniffed the air. They sensed her, but couldn’t quite put what they perceived into a cohesive whole without a visual.
Aislinn pulled Mage magic. Fionn poured power into her, helping. She’d never tried to combine two gifts at once—she’d always used them sequentially—but she was desperate. She was here. The Hunters and their animals were here. If she tried to return later with her body, they might be gone. She held her breath. Please, please, let them sense me.
The mixture of magics did the trick. One of the Hunters, a solidly built woman with greasy black hair, hissed. “Something’s here.”
“Yes, my name is Aislinn—”
The woman’s head whipped round. She raised her hands to pull magic. “Show yourself.”
“I cannot. I am far away. But trust that I am human. I come to warn you—”
Aislinn would have fallen to the floor if Fionn hadn’t caught her. They’d visited at least a hundred humans, spreading the word and exhorting them to tell everyone they knew. He backed her toward her bed. “Ssssh. Lie down, mo croi. Let me get you some mead.”
Rune jumped onto the bed, licking her face and chiding her about leaving—even astrally—without him by her side.
“She’ll be fine, laddie,” Fionn assured the wolf. “Stay with her. I’ll be right back.”
When he returned carrying a flask and a bowl of food, she’d kicked off her boots and stuffed a pillow under her head. She tried to smile, but it felt beyond her. “Why do I feel like an entire team of mules kicked me in the guts?”
He grinned. “Because ye just used more magic than ye’re used to—a whole lot more.”
“Look at all we did.” Pride filled her. “Once I’ve had something to eat, we can hunt down more people to warn.”
He sat next to her on the bed, offering first the flask, then the bowl of yesterday’s stew. “I have to admit that it was a good idea. We will need all the manpower we can gin up. A hundred humans would help a lot.”