Brianna sat still, afraid to move. Darkness and silence surrounded her like a tomb.

She had no idea how long it had been since she’d been left there. Hours? Days? So long that her body had grown stiff with lack of movement and cold.

The fae had untied her before leaving her alone, but still she sat, unable to move from the hard chair because she was so afraid. In all the time she had sat, nothing had moved—there had been not a single sound—yet she was not alone. This she knew. That was why she was afraid, why she sat as still as possible in the hard chair. Something was in here with her, something she feared more than anything, though she did not know what it was.

Brianna closed her eyes, and nothing about the scene around her changed. The dark was still dark. She thought of Paulie and the lost look on his face when she had been dragged away from him.

“Brianna! Don’t leave me, Brianna!”

There had been no confidence in him then, none of the strength she had witnessed on the journey through the Great Nothing. He had been the same Paulie she had known for so many years, and he had been terrified. The image of his pleading face, of the way he’d pulled against his captors to be near her, floated before her.

Oh, Paulie, how we’ve failed you. How I’ve failed you.

She could not get that thought out of her head—how she had failed those who had relied on her, even if they did not know it. Her family had been given a sacred task, and, somehow, they had failed. Had it been her fault? Should she have seen what was to come? Yes, she should have. That was her task as the Seer.

She should have known.

Shadows danced in the darkness around her. Brianna wrapped her arms around herself as the feeling of another presence grew stronger. Her breathing came in gasps as she fought off panic. She saw nothing, heard nothing, but knew it was there, knew it could see her. She squeezed her eyes closed as a child might when confronted with something they did not want to see, hoping it would go away on its own.

Instead, the darkness behind her eyelids swirled like the shadows beyond, pulsing with colors and shapes. The shapes coalesced into images that slipped through her consciousness faster than she could latch onto them. She saw blood and violence, death and chaos.

Faster and faster the images came. She was helpless to stop them, helpless to escape them. She saw the mangled bodies of people she knew and of complete strangers. It was not only Halden’s Mill she was seeing. The visions raced through humanity like an unquenchable fire. War and destruction, death and hate—these were the ways of the world into which she was seeing.

“Silly Brianna, the end was inevitable.”

The visions faded, and Brianna found herself curled on the hard ground, her face damp with sweat and tears. She opened her eyes, but the darkness had not changed. She sat up, her wide eyes scanning the blackness.

“Paulie?”

Footsteps shuffled nearby, and a form materialized from the darkness. “I’m here, silly Brianna. You left me with the bad guys.”

“No, Paulie. I’d never leave you.”

“You left me.”

Though the darkness remained, Brianna clearly saw Paulie standing before her. His face was swollen and bruised, his Batman costume torn and bloody. Blood oozed from a gaping wound in the center of his chest. Brianna gasped and tried to kick away, but her back hit the chair on which she had been sitting.

“They hurt me, Brianna. They hurt me, and they killed me. Pretty soon they will hurt you, too.”

Hot tears rolled down her face. “You’re not Paulie,” she whispered.

“What was that, silly Brianna? I didn’t hear you.”

“I said, you’re not Paulie!”

The thing that looked like Paulie shifted, and Fallon stood where Paulie had been a moment ago. “They hurt me too, Bri. They raped me before they killed me.” Fallon was almost naked, her clothes torn from her bloodied body.

“They killed us, too.” Brianna spun her head to the left where her parents emerged from the darkness. Both of them were covered in blood, blood that still flowed from their slit throats. “You weren’t there to help us,” her mother said. “We were all alone.”

“We always took care of you,” her father said, his voice wet with blood. “Where were you when we needed you?”

“I needed you, too, Brianna.” This time from her right. She did not want to look, did not want to see more, but she did look. Conall—or the beast he’d become—glared at her with his wild eyes and scratch-covered face.

Brianna’s mind screamed at her to flee, but there was nowhere to go, no escape. She knew Conall was dead. Did that mean that the other images she was seeing were real as well? Were her parents and Fallon really casualties in this war that had taken them by such surprise? No, she refused to accept such a thing.

She closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands, but the visions assailed her still. Her family vanished, only to be replaced by images of Halden’s Mill. In these visions, the town was not the peaceful place she had known all her life. She watched as flames danced from rooftop to rooftop. Cars and trucks crashed into storefronts, leaving a trail of fiery debris in their wake. Bodies of those she had loved and cared for littered the streets. Screams and curses echoed as hatred, lust, and a multitude of carnal emotions drove them to insanity.

Never had Brianna experienced visions with such clarity and detail. Could this be real?

“That’s the question, isn’t it? Is what you are seeing real or illusion?”

Brianna looked up. Liza McCarthy stood over her, arms folded across her chest and a slight smile on her lips. She was dressed in a shimmering gown that clung to her body as though custom made for her. Brianna knew that she had never seen a woman so beautiful—a true fairy princess. Simply being in her presence made Brianna feel small and worthless.

“You have always been so certain of your visions, haven’t you?” Liza walked a slow circle around Brianna. “You thought you knew everything, were prepared for anything. You weren’t prepared for me, though, were you?”

“You aren’t Liza.”

Liza completed her circle and dropped her gaze to where Brianna sat. “Oh? You are certain of that, are you? You are a fool from a family of fools. Your lives have been for nothing. You have failed. We have won.”

“It isn’t over yet.” Brianna’s words carried much more confidence than she felt. She watched in horror as the thing that had been Liza shifted again, the beautiful image melting away and forming once again a vision of Paulie.

“Silly Brianna. It’s time for you to die.” Paulie’s right arm lifted, but it was no human arm. A long, curved appendage with a sharp stinger at the tip rose before Brianna, looking much like a scorpion’s tail. The stinger twitched once before flashing out faster than Brianna’s eye could follow. It struck her in the thigh, just above the knee. She cried out and rolled away as the arm pulled back for another strike.

“It would be so easy to finish you now,” the Paulie-thing said. “But that wouldn’t be any fun, would it? There is more than enough poison in you to kill three of your kind, but it will be slow and painful. Just as you deserve.” He turned away and then paused. Brianna heard him laugh. “I’d like to tell you to enjoy your last few hours of life, but you won’t. I, however, will enjoy your screams very much. Goodbye, silly Brianna.”

Brianna lay on the cold ground clutching her stricken leg. She could feel the poison as it began its steady flow through her body. The pain was not yet intense, but it increased with each heartbeat. She could feel the poison as it moved up her leg. It began like the heat of infection but quickly turned white-hot as if scalding each nerve.

Another minute and she found herself shaking uncontrollably as fever and chills washed over her. Her mouth was dry and had a vile taste that seemed to rise up from her bowels. She cried out, not only from pain but also the hopeless unfairness of it all.

Her mind flashed back, seeking anything she might have missed, any clue in her visions that could have prepared her for the fae attack. Nothing came to her. It was getting too hard to think, anyway. The pain had grown so intense that it demanded her full attention. She heard screams and dimly realized they were her own.

I am a Finn. I’m not dead yet. There is hope as long as there is breath.

Brianna forced her mind away from the pain, away from her circumstances, and focused on the one thing that had protected her throughout her long life. Her thoughts turned to prayers and her prayers to inner calm. The pain was still there, but it was distant, unimportant.

She sharpened her focus and let her mind pull away from her physical self. She was aware of a presence flowing along with her, a being of love and power. It said nothing, did nothing, but its simple existence was enough. Her mind sped away from the darkness and pain toward the one place she knew so well.

Home.