When the knock on the door came, Liliana knew it would be her best customer. Not because she foresaw it, but because it was time for their makeup appointment.
Out of habit, Liliana quickly checked to make sure all but her human eyes were closed and pulled her hair forward before opening the door.
She welcomed Janice Willoughby in with a sweeping gesture and her usual singsong speech.
“Oh, Madame Anna, I’m so glad you could see me,” the rabbit-kin blurted before the door was closed.
Janice already knew Liliana was spider-kin, so Liliana opened all her eyes to look at the woman carefully. Janice was an ordinary woman in her late thirties in her human form. She looked exactly like what she was, the harried mother of five active children. In her demi-rabbit form, she was cuter, less careworn, and sleekly furred with large, mobile ears and a twitchy button nose. In her full rabbit form, she looked like an unusually large brown rabbit. “I can see you just fine.”
Janice laughed and waved her hands in the air. “Well, of course you can. I just meant I’m glad I could get a makeup appointment so soon.”
“What has you concerned?” The spider-kin gestured for Janice to sit with her at the round table with the crystal ball in the center.
“A werewolf came to my house!” Janice shuddered as she sat on the edge of one of the three client chairs and dropped her purse in another. “And not just any werewolf, that would be bad enough, but a red werewolf! Right there on my front porch!”
Liliana looked with her fourth eyes into Janice’s recent past and was not surprised to see Pete knock on Janice’s door. The spider-kin nodded while Janice rambled on about being terrified and wondering if the beast would eat her children.
The ball in Pete’s hands brought him to the Willoughbys’ door. One of the new soccer balls with built-in metrics for measuring kick strength, distance, and accuracy. It flashed a light to indicate ideal impact point for various kick angles and sent telemetry data to indicate when it was off sides.
A little more looking around the familiar neighborhood, and a bit further into the past, showed her Pete’s golden-haired beloved living next door to the Willoughbys. She watched as one of Janice’s children playing in the backyard kicked the soccer ball over the fence into the teacher’s yard.
When Pete brought the ball to the Willoughby house, Janice opened the door, smelled the wolf, squeaked in terror, and slammed the door in Pete’s face.
Pete’s shoulders slumped. He lifted his hand to knock again, then let it drop with a resigned sigh. He left the electronic soccer ball on the porch and went back to his boyfriend.
“The red wolf means you no harm,” Liliana told her client.
“How can you be so certain?” Janice chewed on a fingernail and tapped her foot under the table. “Lou saw him at the shop on base too. He’s been there to get his van fixed, so he must work at Liberty. And you know how sharp Lou’s nose is? Well, Lou swears he smelled blood in an old stain in his van!”
Liliana considered blood stains in Pete’s van with her fourth eyes open and saw an image of a much younger Pete gently placing a badly injured Siobhan in his van. “Your husband’s nose is correct. The blood belongs to a fuchsia sprite.”
Janice covered her mouth in horror. “What kind of monster would kill a harmless little fairy?”
“Harmless” was not a word Liliana would use to describe Siobhan. She snorted. The diminutive warrior had very nearly killed her the day before. “The sprite is his friend. The red wolf was taking care of her after an injury.” Her curiosity was piqued, but she would search for more details on Siobhan’s injury another time. For now, she owed Janice her attention.
“Is he a danger to my children?”
For the sake of her best client, she looked and broadened her focus question beyond the red wolf who she already knew would never hurt a child.
Is there any danger to Janice’s children?
She saw some deadly Other predators prowl their neighborhood streets, but the scent of Celtic wolf-kin, the guardians of humanity and servants of the seelie daylight Fae, made most leave as stealthily as they came. A few predators braved the wolf’s scent and met the red wolf himself. That tended to be a violent, occasionally fatal encounter for the predator. “The Celtic wolf loves the Normal man who lives next door to you and teaches at your children’s school on base. The red wolf guards his beloved’s territory from other predators...”
A rare few deadly Others through the past few years deliberately hunted Pete and also met ugly ends, as they should. But while Celtic wolves were strong, there were many stronger Others.
Do any pose a danger to Pete?
Janice hadn’t asked that question, but Liliana worried about the brave red wolf, now that she had begun to know him and saw the dangerous life he led.
It was difficult to pinpoint the moment in time without reference, but the vision was vivid. It had the feel of something in the very near future, within a week or less.
On some overcast night soon, an ordinary-looking man would creep across the Willoughbys’ lawn toward their neighbor’s house, avoiding the light from the windows. He wore jeans and a dark blue jacket and had curly black hair worn long, as was the modern style. Only the black band with an embossed silver crown on his muscular neck marked him as unusual.
The Order of the Wolfhound!
Most of the Wolfhounds were wolf-kin, dog-kin, or some other canine beast-kin, and they were all particularly trained and magically enhanced to kill Celtic wolves. They’d also kill anyone else who dared to stand between the unseelie and their “rightful” prey. Wolfhounds served only one royal Sidhe family. Liliana only knew of two living members of that family. One was Titania, the Queen of Air and Darkness, the most powerful unseelie Fae in the Western world, land bonded to most of Europe. The other was her daughter, Aurore Principessa, who had lived more than three centuries but had not yet been chosen by any land.
The curly-haired assassin hunted the quiet suburban streets of Janice Willoughby’s neighborhood, undoubtedly on the trail of Liliana’s favorite red wolf.
The vision was of the future, but not that far. Liliana held her breath in fear for her new friend. Pete did not have the needed magic to defeat such an enemy. If the Wolfhound found his prey, Pete would die.
Liliana did not have any way to pierce a Wolfhound’s protective magic either. If this assassin sought to kill Pete, Liliana would be helpless to stop him.
Instead of Pete, the Wolfhound met a tall, broad-shouldered man with a familiar, burn-scarred face, wearing a maroon button-down shirt and crisply creased black slacks. Liliana recognized the handsome Fae colonel, even though he wore no uniform. His sharply erect stance and buzzed short haircut still marked him like a neon sign as military. Colonel Bennet stood in the light of a streetlamp on the sidewalk in front of the Willoughbys’ house, tall and regal in the proud way he held himself.
A quick glance at the colonel’s wrist phone showed the date, only four nights in the future. And the time, near midnight, the peak of unseelie power.
She tilted her head, studying him in the brilliant light and deep shadows. A man of contrasts, as beautiful as a mountain, his face nearly as cold and remote.
He called to the Wolfhound with a voice resonating with the power of the deep earth, beyond his normal smooth baritone, a bass rumble of a command with magic to back it up. “Obaudio me, servus.”
Liliana recognized the Latin. Her father taught her both his native languages, Latin and Greek. “Attend me, servant,” the words meant.
Was the wolfhound working for the Colonel?
From what she’d seen, she thought the colonel knew of Pete’s nature and accepted him, even protected him. She had assumed he must be a seelie Fae, traditional allies of the Celtic wolves. But the colonel called the Wolfhound, and the wolf-kin, from the order of assassins created specifically to hunt red wolves, came.
The wolf-kin circled the colonel growling, as if uncertain if he should attack or run. “Who are you to dare call me off the hunt in the old way?” The werewolf shifted from human to demi-wolf form. His fangs and claws grew long. Black and charcoal gray fur spread across his skin. His posture hunched into a two-legged crouch.
The colonel stepped out of the circle of white light from the streetlamp into the thick shadows under a big old oak tree in the Willoughbys’ yard. His dark clothes and dark skin would make him virtually invisible if one of the Willoughby children happened to look out their window in the dead of night. The shadows seemed to thicken and embrace him, concealing him even more effectively from prying eyes.
In the shadow, the colonel transformed. He added over a foot to his already impressive height, and his handsome face changed to an inhumanly beautiful image carved out of translucent obsidian, flawed only where the scars had marred his human skin. A row of sharp, silver, backswept horns accented his brow like a deadly crown. He flexed forearm muscles carved from black stone, and silver claws extended from his fingertips. Silver needle teeth glimmered in the unseelie Fae’s mouth when he gave the Wolfhound a cold smile.
Liliana gasped. Surely that was some sort of glamour. Of all the many varieties of Fae, only Titania and her daughter, Aurore, had silver horns in the shape of a crown. It was the trademark of that royal Sidhe family. But the unseelie queen had no family in this land. That was one reason why Liliana, and so many European Others, fled to the New World. There were no Sidhe here of either the court of night or day to fight over the land’s favor.
The assassin’s eyes widened. “Your Highness!” The Wolfhound was a peak predator made of sleek muscle, trained in the deadliest arts and protected from most harm by dark magic. He dropped to his knees before what appeared to be the one thing he feared and obeyed, an unseelie prince of Titania’s lineage.
“Forgive me,” he growled, voice only partially human and accented with something from the part of Europe bordering on Russia. “I did not know any member of the royal family lived in the United States.”
Looking like an elegant piece of the night sky come to life, the shimmering black Fae accepted the wolf-kin’s obeisance as if it were his right to have Others kneeling at his feet. “I forbid this hunt. The red wolf is not to be touched.”
“But Princess Aurore ordered me to...”
A hand made of unforgiving stone with razor-sharp edges struck the wolf-kin across the face. The blow knocked the Wolfhound back onto the concrete sidewalk. “My sister does not rule here,” the obsidian Fae said softly, with no trace of emotion in his voice. “I do.”
The assassin sat up. His long, pink tongue caught a trickle of blood from the corner of his toothy mouth. The blood was the final proof. The leather collar embossed with the silver crown, provided by the queen’s own hand, protected Wolfhounds from most forms of physical harm. Only one of the same royal blood could so easily pierce that protection.
No glamour concealed the Fae’s true nature. Colonel Bennet was exactly who he appeared to be: an unseelie Sidhe prince, a son of the Queen of Air and Darkness.
Liliana shivered and twisted her skirt in her hands.
Janice Willoughby bit her thumbnail but didn’t interrupt Liliana’s vision.
A Sidhe prince lived in Fayetteville. A Sidhe prince with the potential to bond with the land and bring the bloody Fae wars to this continent lived on the Army base, only a few blocks away from her. Liliana considered again her impulse to pack up and move to the other side of the country.
But she fought a Celtic wolf in single combat just the day before for the right to stay in her home. She lifted her chin in defiance, even though the Fae prince could not see. She was not Fae. She owed Fae royalty neither allegiance nor enmity. And the unseelie Fae had, historically, been less hostile to Liliana’s kind than the seelie courts. The Queen of Air and Darkness had never sent her Wolfhounds to hunt spider seers.
Plus, she did not know this man. Just as Pete differed from the packs who slaughtered Liliana’s family, so this unseelie Fae prince was likely to be different from the seelie rulers who ordered the slaughter of her kind.
She would watch him, but if this obsidian prince offered her no hostility, she would do the same. And if the colonel did intend her harm, well then, she would consider whether it would be wiser to flee or to kill him. Sidhe without a bond to the land were not so very formidable. She could probably defeat one if she chose her ground carefully.
She would not give up her home lightly.
The visions of the future fractured at that point, divided into different future possibilities. It was a turning point, a moment when one small decision could fundamentally change all future paths from there.
One branch resulted in serious injury or death to the Fae colonel. The Wolfhound, enraged by the strike, would attack the Fae prince, surprising and killing him. But battles were rarely that simple. So many confounding factors meant the Fae might have a chance to fight back. In those visions, a brutal battle drew blood on both sides, but usually Colonel Bennet won. Even then, he paid for his victory with severe injuries.
This possibility flickered in and out of future existence like the light of a candle in a breeze, one moment most likely, the next impossible and vanished from her future sight, replaced by another equally likely but utterly opposing future.
This usually meant that something between now and then would shift the balance of probabilities so that one future would become the most likely and the other would cease to be possible.
In the other alternate future vision, the Wolfhound would not attack but would instead be subservient to this unknown scion of the family he served.
Liliana watched that branch of future possibility.
“Please forgive me, your Highness,” the wolf-kin whimpered, his eyes on the prince’s feet. He arched his neck to one side to expose his throat in submission. On hands and knees, he crawled backward out of the tree’s shadow, putting himself out of arm’s reach of the deadly Fae. “But I serve the princess. She is not known to show mercy for failure.”
Mercy was not a word Liliana had ever heard associated with Titania’s daughter. Princess Aurore’s punishments made the Goblin King’s predilection to roast his enemies alive and eat them seem…unimaginative.
Magnanimously, the prince inclined his head to the assassin. “I will speak to my sister. I will let her know this red wolf is under my protection.”
The Wolfhound gasped in shocked surprise.
Liliana gasped with him.
An unseelie prince protected a Celtic wolf? That fit with what Liliana had seen of the colonel and Pete’s relationship. But the Order of the Wolfhounds had been created by the unseelie queen specifically to combat the threat of the red wolves.
Pete violated all her expectations of Celtic wolves. His best friend and mentor was an unseelie goblin, and apparently, an unseelie prince protected him.
Janice gasped too, hand over her mouth. She could not know what Liliana saw, but the spider seer’s reactions made her foot tap the floor rapidly.
Like a person might do when trying to make friends with an unfamiliar dog, the dark prince extended a hand to the Wolfhound, fingers down, the back of his hand facing the assassin.
Hesitantly, the wolf-kin crept back into the deep, strangely moving shadows of the oak tree in Janice Willoughby’s yard, his belly all but scraping the ground, drawn to the commanding black silhouette of the Fae prince. “Thank you, your Highness.”
The prince stroked the assassin’s hair, dark curls winding around long, slender, clawed fingers, resembling living volcanic stone. “You have only done as you were ordered. There is no fault.” His hand tightened in the wolf-kin’s hair. He pulled the assassin’s head back painfully until the wolf-kin looked up at him.
Softly, the wolf-kin whimpered, but he made no move to defend himself. His eyes slid away from the prince’s. He licked his lips.
The tall prince bent down. His black eyes shimmered red in the deep shadows as if lit from within by fire.
Obeying the unspoken order, the werewolf met those fiery eyes for a moment, his entire body quivering in terror.
A silken deep voice purred softly. “I’m curious. My sister would not send an assassin all the way to the United States to kill a red wolf simply for existing.”
“I…I cannot speak for my lady. I do not know her reasons.”
Twisting the hair in his hand, the Fae prince arched the wolf’s throat back until he whined. “You must have some theory of your own,” the deep voice purred conversationally. The fiery eyes spoke of barely contained rage, but Colonel Bennet’s voice gave away nothing.
“A sword! Princess Aurore told me to search the red wolf’s house, slay the wolf and anyone else there, and bring any sword I found to her.”
“A sword.” The obsidian prince’s eyes narrowed. “Why is a sword so important?”
“She didn’t say, your Highness. I swear I don’t know why she wants it.”
“I believe you.”
The wolf-kin sagged with relief.
With his free hand, the prince lashed out, crushing the wolf-kin’s windpipe with a single lightning-swift movement.
He tossed the choking, dying wolf-kin to the ground and gestured with his hand. The roots of the oak tree moved like the tentacles of a giant octopus, wrapping around the wolf-kin’s limbs, even as he struggled frantically.
The prince closed his hand and moved it downward.
The earth moved, making way as thick roots pulled the werewolf underground. He opened his mouth, trying to scream despite his crushed larynx, and a big root shoved between the canine fangs. It emerged out the back of the werewolf’s neck in a fountain that turned the churning soil to mud. It was black in the shadows, but Liliana’s imagination knew it should be red. Dirt covered the wide-eyed face as the roots pulled the assassin deeper. One clawed hand scrabbled frantically at the oak tree’s trunk, leaving deep gouges in the bark, then it, too, was pulled beneath the earth.
The obsidian prince flattened his hand and waved it in a smoothing motion.
After a moment, the oak tree stilled, and the grass crept back across the disturbed ground. The suburban lawn was left greener, but otherwise the only sign the deadly Wolfhound had ever been there were a few scratches in the tree trunk.
In this possible future, the unseelie prince staggered and leaned against the tree for a moment. He shook his silver-crowned head as if to clear it.
Liliana tilted her head sideways in assessment and watched the unseelie prince for a moment more as he recovered from the costly earth magic.
What an interesting person.
Twice in visions, she had seen him kill, once to protect Sergeant Giovanni and now to protect Liliana’s favorite red wolf. She felt an odd thrill in her belly at the thought of her life path crossing more with his. Sidhe royalty of any court were always dangerous, but the unfamiliar sensation she experienced felt far more warm and tingly than fear.
She couldn’t help but see again the way his eyes once followed a drop of water into her modest cleavage, or that moment when he told her he wished he could believe her, a drop of rain dripping from his hat.
On the future night four days from now, Janice’s children would sleep undisturbed if the second vision she saw came to pass.
Next door, in the arms of his human beloved, Pete lay safely, unaware of the death he had narrowly avoided.
As she watched, warmed by the sweet scene of the two men cuddled together, a momentary flash of bloody horror interrupted the vision. Blood splattered the walls. Pete’s beloved lay on the bed staring at nothing from dead eyes, his chest ripped open, rib cage hollow, the blankets soaked in scarlet.
Pete fought like a madman, throwing the assassin through walls and hitting him with his furniture, but nothing he did could so much as muss the assassin’s fur beneath its magical protection. The Wolfhound laughed as he ripped into Pete’s throat with his claws.
Liliana blinked her fourth eyes, shuddering in horror, and the vision shifted back to the other possibility. Pete slept peacefully, his arms warmly embracing the man he loved.
Out in the Willoughbys’ yard next door, the crown of silver horns shrank into the colonel’s skull as the unseelie prince shifted back to his human form. The shimmering, translucent obsidian skin faded to deep, polished mahogany brown. Colonel Bennet nodded tightly, as if satisfied, and took a steadying breath. Slowly, with great effort, he straightened to his original knife-blade straight posture. Only a slight trembling in his hands betrayed the exhaustion his use of powerful magic caused.
The colonel was the key. If he survived his encounter with the Wolfhound assassin, Pete and his beloved would be fine. They would never even know they’d been in danger.
“Well, is he?” Janice asked the spider-kin when she could stand the suspense no longer.
Liliana blinked. “Is he what?”
“Is the Celtic wolf a danger to my children?” Janice asked again, fond exasperation in her tone.
“I see no danger to your children in the near future.” Liliana gave her best customer a sheepish smile. “I am sorry. I got a little lost in other times and possibilities.”
Janice sighed and sat back in the chair across from Liliana at the round table. “That’s a relief. I still don’t like having a red wolf spending so much time right next door though. And with Lou too.” Almost as an afterthought, she asked, “The werewolf won’t hurt my Lou, will he?”
Pete would not harm the shy rabbit-kin mechanic, but out of duty, Liliana looked for intersections between Lou Willoughby’s life path and Peter Teague’s.
A pack of wolf-kin, coyote-kin, and hyena-kin all in full canine form chased the rabbit-kin mechanic in his human form. The pack all wore black collars with embossed silver crowns. They were all members of the Order of the Wolfhound.
Pete ran on Lou’s heels in demi-wolf form. The red wolf was not one of the hunters, but a shield to the innocent rabbit, guarding his retreat with bared fangs, claws, a pistol, and knife after knife bouncing harmlessly off his enemies’ thick fur. He got the rabbit-kin to safety, then turned to face the wolf pack alone.
Pete fought valiantly, but his weapons and claws could not pierce the pack’s protective magic, nor could even his specially made bullets. The highly-trained assassins were skilled fighters and fought cooperatively. The red wolf didn’t stand a chance. While Liliana watched, Pete was torn to pieces.
Liliana slammed her fourth eyes shut and gagged, stomach heaving. She swallowed hard.
That vision had the overbright, washed-out colors of a future vision, several months ahead in time at least. The image flickered and faded in and out, as if it were not a likely future.
Reassured by that thought, she risked another look.
What are the alternative possibilities for that moment?
For Janice Willoughby, the other, more likely future was even worse. The Wolfhounds ripped her husband to bloody shreds with no one to protect him.
Liliana covered her mouth in horror.
If he defended the rabbit-kin, the beautiful red wolf would die, but Janice’s husband would die if he did not.
“What is it? Tell me what you see, Madame Anna,” Janice demanded.
Liliana closed all her eyes tight.
The future she’d seen was not close or certain. There was still time to help steer the rabbit-kin and the Celtic wolf onto a path that would allow both Pete and Lou Willoughby to survive.
Liliana consoled herself with that thought, chanting in her head, This fate is not set. The future is never certain until it becomes the past. It was something her first mother and her older sister both said often, whenever they saw a dark future possibility. She gulped in deep breaths to calm her jangled nerves.
Inside her mind, the screams of the good-natured rabbit-kin mechanic still rang. His blood and Pete’s stained her inner vision.
“The red wolf is the opposite of a danger to you and your kin.” Liliana twisted the fabric of her skirt between her fingers. “Trust him. Danger will come to your husband some time before a year has passed. If the red wolf is there, he will protect your Lou. He will sacrifice his own life, if necessary, to keep Lou safe. If he is not there, your husband will die.”
“Oh.” Janice’s eyes got very big. “I shut the door in his face.”
“You must make amends for that social offense,” Liliana advised her. She wondered what path would help to make certain Pete would be there when Janice’s husband needed him. The image of the Celtic wolf protecting the rabbit had been very flickery, very unlikely. “Be kind to your Normal neighbor, the golden-haired man who teaches your son.”
“I’ll bake a cake for the PTA!” Janice exclaimed.
Liliana’s lips twitched with amusement, piercing the dark mood of the bloody visions lingering in her mind. Every person used the talents they were given. If her husband’s life could be saved with excellent cooking, then Janice Willoughby was uniquely qualified.
“Your cakes would make even the fiercest Other into an ally.” Liliana patted her hand, a brief, rare gesture.
Janice blushed at the compliment. “Will it really work? Will that be enough to make sure the Celtic wolf protects my Lou?”
Reluctantly, Liliana opened her fourth eyes again.
With Janice following a path to friendship with Pete’s beloved, will Pete be there to protect Lou?
The image of the lone red wolf standing against the vicious pack of killers while the rabbit-kin escaped still flickered, barely possible.
Liliana cocked her head to one side, wondering. That should have worked. Janice would follow her advice. Liliana had guided Janice for years.
Why is the future where the red wolf protects the rabbit-kin still so uncertain?
An ugly image assaulted Liliana. Powerful, brutal, and vivid. Close in time and almost certain.
Liliana jumped up onto her chair. She lifted her hands to defend herself. Her reflex was to extend her arm blades, but the danger wasn’t to her. She squeezed her fourth eyes shut, but she couldn’t shut out the image of Pete’s lovely blue eyes, wide and staring with death, his face twisted in a silent scream of agony and horror, his body wrapped in a spider-kin’s web. It was the one death that genuinely terrified the brave wolf: death by widow spider bite.
It would claim him soon, probably today.
“No,” Liliana whispered.
“What is it?” Janice asked, fear in her voice. “Is my Lou going to die?”
“No, no, no!” Liliana said more forcefully. She jumped off the chair and retreated to the corner of the room by the inner door. The spider-kin turned her back on her best client and twisted the fabric of her skirt until it nearly tore. “No more questions today. I am tired.”
It was what Liliana said to clients who stayed too long. Janice had not been there that long, but Liliana desperately wanted her to leave.
“But...um...okay.”
With her face in the corner and her back to her client, Liliana watched Janice pull a pay card out of her purse. Liliana hadn’t noticed until that moment that she’d opened her second eyes, the ones she used in combat to see all around. They sometimes opened instinctively when she was frightened or upset.
Janice punched a number into her wrist phone, authorized it with her thumb print, and dropped the pay card in the elaborate jar Liliana kept beside the round table. People used to put paper folding money in the jar. Now they put pay cards in it. Barely anyone used paper money anymore.
“I have to know though, Madame Anna.” The rabbit-kin hesitated at the door. “Is my Lou safe? Will the Celtic wolf protect him?”
“If the red wolf dies…” Liliana swallowed the lump in her throat and leaned her forehead on the corner walls. “If he dies, take your husband and your children and move away to another city. Without the Celtic wolf, Fayetteville will no longer be safe for your family.”
“What’s going to happen to him? The red wolf, I mean.”
With a bitterness the rabbit didn’t deserve, Liliana wondered why Janice cared what happened to the wolf-kin she had so callously rejected. “No more questions today. I am tired,” she repeated.
“Can you see me again next week?” Janice asked.
Visions of Pete’s gruesome death consumed every part of Liliana’s mind. Her hands shook as she ran the fabric of her skirt through her fingers again and again. She barely heard the question Janice asked. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Pete would die.
Horribly.
Today.
Face to the corner, the spider seer crouched down, trying to block out the sight of Pete’s staring eyes. Pete’s screaming mouth. Pete’s sunken pale cheeks. She squeezed down in the corner into as tiny a ball as she could and rocked, hands over her first, third, and fourth eyes.
Janice Willoughby left at some point.
The day her parents died, Liliana saw it, even before it happened. She watched her eldest brothers and their children, her father, and her first mother all torn apart. She had seen it like a record stuck in a bloody groove, a slice of time looping again and again uncontrollably through her mind. Blood and death and screams, over and over. The family she loved reduced to meat and blood. At that age, she had not yet divided her mind into compartments to separate each vision and shut out what she didn’t want to see. She couldn’t stop the visions. She was paralyzed by the overwhelming horror. Helpless, useless, trapped in her own mind. Only shutting her mind down completely, going into the blank place where there was no time, could make it stop.
Liliana had only just begun to know the compassionate red wolf. Already she had seen him die twice and seen an assassin murder his strongest protector, the handsome Fae colonel. She felt a surge of unreasoning anger toward Janice. Why had the stupid rabbit woman made her look?
She opened her fourth eyes a tiny slit to look at Janice’s future, half-hoping she would see something awful happen to her. Instead, she saw the rabbit-kin baking batch after batch of cookies, along with the cake she had already promised. With a look of stunned delight, the golden-haired teacher who owned the red wolf’s heart accepted the generous gifts for his bake sale fundraiser.
Janice’s attitude toward the red wolf and his beloved had radically changed. Liliana saw a potential future flicker into uncertain possibility where a deep friendship developed between the rabbit-kin homemaker and the Normal teacher. That possibility hadn’t existed until Liliana spoke to Janice. The rabbit-kin’s path altered, as had her husband Lou’s by extension and their children’s. Liliana now knew the fate of the Willoughby family was intertwined with the fate of the Celtic wolf and his boyfriend. With her advice to Janice, Liliana changed Pete’s future in a small way for the better.
It reminded Liliana that she wasn’t helpless this time, like she’d been when her family was slaughtered. She could change what she saw.
She risked a quick glimpse into the future, but saw the same three ugly deaths, one close in time and nearly certain, one in a few days if the Fae colonel died trying to protect him, and the other waiting to claim the red wolf in less than a year if he somehow escaped the first two.
She had helped a little, but Pete was still going to die.
Liliana stopped rocking and stood up.
Not if she had anything to say about it.