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His search had been a huge disappointment given his plans to create his own Fortress in Mexico City One. However, he was convinced there had to be a conclave of Seers somewhere, maybe someplace secret, maybe heavily misted by an unknown entity.
So tonight he would begin searching in the future streams, something he’d been avoiding. One of the drawbacks of future stream work was that any Seer’s activity could be detected by other powerful Seers. Granted, there were only a handful on Second Earth who had that level of power, but it sure as hell only took one, and the one he was avoiding was Marguerite Dresner.
Essentially, his activities in the future streams were only as successful as his ability to remain undetected. What he had going for him, however, was fairly substantial, since Marguerite hated being a Seer and avoided the future streams. So despite a certain vulnerability, he’d made the decision to launch his new life on Mortal Earth, which meant he needed to round up a batch of Seers, lock them up, and put them to work on his behalf.
He stretched out on the chaise-longue, the back of his heavily embroidered leather cowboy boots hitting a protective cloth covering. By nervous habit, he ran his hand over the carefully styled wave of hair along the right side of his head. The motion soothed him, eased his nerves.
The time had come. He could feel it in a smooth vibration of energy through his body.
Something big had been moving through the future streams for the last year, big but invisible, like a leviathan that surfaced in the ocean to taunt sailing ships, only to disappear beneath the waves, always pursued, never caught. He felt pretty certain this had something to do with obsidian flame, which had finally lifted its head just a few weeks ago with the blood slave Fiona, as well as with Marguerite. The women had worked together, coordinating efforts. The demonstration of their combined power had been impressive.
Yet he also understood that obsidian flame always came in threes, so another woman was destined to form the third leg of the triad. To date, she hadn’t shown up.
He let his arms rest next to his sides. He closed his eyes. The strong scent of patchouli surrounded him now, and because the air-conditioning kept a gentle stream of air flowing around the room, he could see the candlelight flicker behind his eyes.
He took deep lingering breaths as though the bottom of his lungs were somewhere near his intestines.
Slowly he let his mind open. If he moved too fast, the future streams would crash down on him, rendering him immobile and vulnerable. This at least he’d learned to manage over the centuries.
With his Seer’s eye barely open, he saw a broad spectrum of color, ribbons of light that went on, yes, forever, away from him, away from this point in time. His heart swelled and pleasure flowed through him. This was what he enjoyed most, this unexpected connection to what was his most essential gift.
He released a deep purifying breath and opened his mind just a little more. The ribbons began to move now, shimmering and rippling in waves. From his Seer’s eye, he moved to stand before the ribbons and lifted his right hand as if preparing to offer a minister’s blessing.
He lived in extraordinary times, as though the future had suddenly gotten in a big hurry and rushed toward Second Earth and Mortal Earth. He recognized the power behind this force—and it emanated from Commander Greaves. He was putting pressure on the world, on two worlds. Greaves had not lacked for ambition or for money. He had acquired the majority of Second Earth’s mineral wealth long before the value of the minerals was known. He could afford to build an army, two armies, a thousand armies.
But in response, as though the earth couldn’t easily tolerate the ambitions of sociopaths, new powers had emerged to contest Greaves’s megalomania. The Warriors of the Blood, always an extraordinary if small force against Greaves, had begun growing in power with the appearance of powerful mates, or brehs, in their lives.
And now obsidian flame.
He still couldn’t quite comprehend what such a powerful gift, based on a triad of connection, would mean for Madame Endelle and her administration. If he’d understood recent events, the first of the obsidian flame powers, belonging to Fiona, gave her a profound ability to channel the powers of others and even to allow a possession, which increased the preternatural power of both parties exponentially. Fiona had allowed a possession of Madame Endelle and together they had folded twenty thousand people from an arena disaster to safety. He could not fathom this level of combined power.
He knew that Marguerite was the second leg of this triad, that she had the red variety of obsidian flame, which meant that her already significant Seer abilities would be enhanced by her obsidian connection.
He positioned himself across from Marguerite’s ribbon. She was incredibly powerful. In the Seer realm—and this perhaps frightened him more than anything else—he strongly suspected that because of obsidian flame, she would now have the capacity to reach pure vision, or 100 percent accuracy in her visions. It was something he could not do, nor could any other Seer he knew. A Seer who had the capacity for pure vision would be of inestimable value to the person who had charge of her: She would be able to see events as they unfolded in the future exactly as they would happen.
He was tempted to enter her future stream ribbon to see what she was up to, but he hesitated because of her power—and because he valued his own skin. Her level of Seer power wasn’t the only significant preternatural ability she possessed. A couple of weeks ago, he’d tried to abduct her from Mortal Earth’s I-10, a major highway that crossed the lower continental United States. She’d been driving a convertible, top down, in the New Mexico area when he’d stopped her car, ready to apprehend her. But she’d delivered a hand-blast that had shot him deep into the sky as though he’d been nothing more than a rag doll. He’d been able to fold to safety mid-flight, but it had required the rest of the day to heal from all the burns. If he’d been a lesser vampire, he would have ended up very dead.
Basically, he’d given up on acquiring her, so he now turned his attention toward locating, if possible, a group of Seers that might be living in some kind of protected facility on Mortal Earth. If they existed, he’d find them in the future streams. Very little was hidden from him once he entered the ribbons of light.
So instead of taking chances with anything having to do with Marguerite, he focused his thoughts very specifically on hidden Seers of power.
As he let his mind go very loose with this thought held foremost, the future streams began to move slowly, then gathered speed until he was watching a blur of color that became very light in hue, almost white.
