Oracle (Dragon Oracle Book 1) Read online

  Fortunately, one pulled over to me before the man could catch up and I jumped in, giving him my address. Breathing hard, I looked out the back window to see my pursuer slow to a stop, seemingly a bit disappointed by how all this had panned out.

  I could feel my phone buzzing like mad, so I pulled it out and saw Mallory’s contact blinking across the scene. I didn’t want to deal with her either, so I just shut it off and slid it back into my apron.

  It was only around then that I realized I had left my art bag behind. Crap! Now I was going to have to go back tomorrow and pretend to be sick to explain disappearing in the middle of my shift again. I was lucky that I had a good work record before all this, because otherwise, I was pretty sure I would be fired.

  “You okay?” the cabbie asked, flashing me a concerned look in the rearview mirror.

  “Yeah. Just a bad breakup, you know?”

  The corners of his lips went up. “Ah, young love. As dramatic as it is fun.”

  “Yeah. Thrilling.” I dropped the conversation and let myself catch my breath. Thankfully, we were only a short distance from my house, so the fare wasn’t too bank-breaking.

  I ran up to our complex’s door, looking this way and that to make sure I was alone. Punching in the code, I made my way up to our floor and carefully, quietly slid my key into the lock.

  Turned out to be a fruitless effort, however, as my sister was standing in the foyer as soon as I got in.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” I asked, completely surprised by her presence.

  “What are you doing home so early?”

  I winced, realizing that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have my schedule posted on the fridge. But I didn’t like the idea of Mickey not knowing where I was if she needed help.

  So, I lied. I hated doing it and it made my stomach twist, but I did it nonetheless. “Man, you would not believe how dead it was. We had one customer the whole morning, so they sent me home.”

  She nodded slowly. Clearly a little suspicious, but it wasn’t like it was the first time my hours had been cut during the slow part of the week. “Very well then. I was actually going to take a nap, but would you like to watch a movie instead?”

  Good. If she was sleepy at this time, it meant she had taken her midday medicine like she was supposed to. “Why don’t you take a nap and we’ll watch a movie afterwards? I’m kinda itching to make some art.”

  She yawned, thankfully not seeming to notice my complete lack of an art bag. “Sounds like a plan. I don’t think I could stay up anyway. Wake me in a few hours?”

  “Sure, sis. I promise I won’t let you oversleep.”

  “Good stuff.” She yawned again and tottered off. I hated seeing her doped up, but it was so much better than the alternative. “Catch ya in a bit.”

  I waited until the door of her room closed before heading to mine. In a perfect world, I would have my own studio. But we were way too poor for that, so I had to settle for a small corner of my room.

  Not that I minded all that much. What we had now was so much better than what we had before, and while I didn’t like to think about the past, that didn’t mean I wasn’t grateful for how much things had changed since then.

  Once I was in the safety of my room, I slid off my glove. It felt good to be free of the thing and I wiggled my stiff fingers before sitting on my stool. As luck would have it, everything was already set up from the last time I had painted, so all I had to do was get comfortable and pick out the colors for my palette.

  There was something inherently magical about the transition of a blank, slightly scratchy canvas to a beautiful work of art. Like each layer of color was a spell and every brush was a wand. It was so easy to slide into a sort of trance as I began to work, letting my mind and spirit flow wherever the muses took me.

  Finally, my heartbeat started to settle and worry faded away. It was impossible to be stressed when I was so connected to my art, as if all the trouble was flowing out of me to end up as the grey, murky water in my brush-washing cup.

  Time flew by and it wasn’t until the light in my room had dimmed considerably that I remembered to look at the clock.

  “Holy crap, two hours?” I exclaimed. It had hardly felt like fifteen minutes!

  I debated whether I should wake Mickey back up, but decided another half-hour would probably be best. If there was one thing I had learned in the months I had been taking care of her, it was that the more sleep she got, the better her body did.

  Well, at least I could squeeze a little more time into painting. Grabbing my brush again, I looked to the canvas to see where I left off only to have that very same brush drop to the floor.

  I had drawn the white-haired man from the café. I hadn’t planned to, and yet he was there.

  That in and of itself would not be that disturbing. After all, I had wanted to draw him since the first moment I saw him. It wasn’t the fact that he was on my canvas that bothered me, but rather how he looked.

  Half of his face was human, and nearly as striking as the real thing, if I did say so myself. But the other half… The other half was something else entirely. His features twisted, morphed, turning in on themselves until they blended into something reptilian in nature. All the pleasant colors of his face faded, leaving only silver and black.

  Once more, dread washed over me. The picture’s gaze seemed to follow me, so I promptly turned it around on my easel, not caring if the still-damp paint smeared.

  Suddenly, I was feeling unsettled again. Was I not safe in my own house? It seemed that way.

  Realizing I didn’t want to be alone, I went to Mickey’s room and let myself in. It took a little effort to wake her up, but within a few minutes, we were huddled together on the couch, swaddled in blankets and watching a movie.

  It was nice, but even that couldn’t ease the feeling brewing in my stomach. If Mickey noticed anything, she didn’t say anything. But it was hard to tell how much of her was there and how much was still waking up from the grogginess her medicine gave her.

  Eventually, I was able to quiet my mind enough to catch the tail end of the movie, but I knew it was just a stop gap. Something inside me said this wasn’t over yet, and the white-haired gentleman was much more stubborn than I thought he was.

  And I was very rarely wrong.

  5

  A Touch of the Chase

  A knock sounded on my door, rousing me from the very deep—and thankfully dreamless—slumber I had fallen into. I opened my eyes with a long, low groan before looking to my door.

  Mickey was standing there, a wry smile on her face.

  “Apologies, did I wake you, Sleeping Beauty?”

  “You don’t sound very sorry.”

  “Probably because I’m not.”

  I snorted and sat up, my body protesting. It seemed like it very much wanted to stay at rest, but I had things to do. “So, do you need something or are you just doing your sisterly duty and tormenting me?”

  “Tormenting? How dramatic. I’ll have you know that I do have a purpose for rousing you from the dead. We’re out of protein, bananas, and broccoli.”

  “Ah yes, the three most important food groups.”

  “More shopping, less snarking,” she said, clapping her hands. “I know you have the day off and if you hurry to the public market, you might get there in time to nab some plantains.”

  That made me sit up as straight as a shot. “And then you’ll make tostones?” I asked excitedly.

  “Yes. Then I will make tostones. And maybe even maduros if you’re very, very nice to me.”

  I didn’t need any more motivation than that. I practically jumped out of bed and grabbed my nearest pair of leggings, hiking them on under the long t-shirt I had worn to bed. I gave my sis a kiss on the cheek, then grabbed my wallet and keys out of my apron before practically sprinting out the door.

  “You’re not going dressed like that, are you!” I could hear Mickey call after me.

  “Who have I got to impress? It’s
Tuesday at the public market! Some people don’t wear pants at all.”

  I heard a snicker as our door closed and then I was down the stairs and on the way to the bus stop.

  It was a relatively short ride to the market, about half of the time it took me to get to work, but my mind managed to drift off about a dozen times about different meals my sister knew how to make. It had been ages since she felt well enough to cook, so I couldn’t help but be excited on multiple levels.

  I arrived at the public market without incident and piled out of the bus with everyone else. I took care not to touch anyone, lest I start another inconvenient vision.

  I couldn’t say when the hallucinations started. I just knew that at some point in my childhood, I had gone from a normal, run of the mill, precocious little girl to one that woke up in the middle of the night screaming about terrible nightmares. From there, it transitioned to knowing things I couldn’t possibly know and speaking to people who weren’t there.

  My parents had feared the worst and took me into a therapist, only for that therapist to quit their field shortly thereafter. And the next. And the next.

  And then my parents had died.

  That had changed everything. The voices that whispered warning and advice changed to screams shouting of death and catastrophe. Everywhere I looked, I saw visions of terrible things happening to the people around me. It was terrifying, and it was driving me mad.

  It had taken me ages to get the help I needed. Every time I found a therapist who might be able to help, I bounced to a new foster home somewhere else and had to go through the whole thing all over again.

  But eventually, I had found one that was willing to listen and give me some medication to help me with the strange things I was tormented by. It took a little over two years of fiddling with dosages and brands until finally, I had been vision and voice-free for a little over a year, which was why I was very much not happy that all of it was returning. I had fought so hard to be healthy and here I was, backsliding again. I just wanted to be a normal, healthy girl. Was that too much to ask for?

  “Excuse me, miss.” Apparently not. I didn’t need to turn around to know who’s slightly accented, overly polite voice I was hearing. Without looking, I picked up my pace, hoping to disappear between the heavily crowded stalls. “Wait, miss!”

  I ducked between a fruit vendor and someone who I was pretty sure was hawking cheese—or manure, they tended to smell the same after enough time in the sun—and I was pretty sure I lost him. Looking over my shoulder, I couldn’t see him anywhere in the crowd, but when I faced forward, I practically smacked right into his chest.

  “I apologize terribly for pursuing you like this, but—”

  I darted to the right before he could finish speaking, squeezing in the open entrance of the building that held the meat section of the market, and quickly pushing through it. It only took me a couple of minutes to reach the exit on the other side of the hall, and I slammed through it out into the alley.

  I took off—I could get groceries later, after all—and sprinted toward the closest bus stop. I didn’t care where it went, or how long it took to get there. The only thing that mattered was that it wasn’t where the white-haired man was.

  I reached the end of the dark street, but just before I was about to step into the light, a scene flashed before my eyes.

  The white-haired gentleman was chasing after me. He reached the alley just as I was getting on the bus and the doors were closing. He tried to reach me, but I was long gone by the time he was out of the of the alley.

  It was weird to watch him watch me, but such was the nature of visions. Actually, as far as hallucinations went, this wasn’t a bad one at all. I had experienced much worse in my time.

  But then, something flickered at the end of my gaze and the vision turned so that I was viewing the alley from the street.

  I could see forms running up to the man, armed with weapons I couldn’t see, they were so cloaked in shadow. They set upon him with a demonic ferocity, and before I could even utter a shriek, the alley floor was coated in slick, red liquid.

  I gasped as I was pushed out of the vision and my head reeled. I caught myself on the wall and suddenly became aware of several things at once.

  First, it was that the bus was rushing down the street, unimpeded by the light, non-rush hour traffic. Secondly, it was that someone was bursting through the door at the end of the alley. And finally, I could feel that my vision was rapidly hurtling toward reality, like there was a time-clock in my head.

  I was being handed a choice. If I got on that bus, my problem with the white-haired stranger would come to a very abrupt and violent stop. But if I turned around, if I faced whatever was happening to me dead-on, I just might be able to save his life.

  Of course I wasn’t going to let him die.

  “Stop!” I cried, whipping around to face him.

  He did indeed skid to a stop, his eyes wide as he almost plowed into me. “Miss—”

  “Shut up!” I snapped, grabbing his collar. “Listen here, in about ten seconds, something is gonna drop down from the roof and attack you. I don’t know what they are, or how they got there, but they are going to cut you down unless we get out of here right now.”

  But instead of running, the young man caught my arms and tried to talk over me with words that he had obviously been rehearsing.

  “Miss, please stop running. I mean you no harm, but I need to talk to you.”

  Why were people always so dumb? Apparently in movies and real life, they didn’t seem to get that if someone was yelling at you to run, there should be a whole lot more actual running and about one hundred percent less asking questions.

  “We’re both going to be harmed if we don’t get the hell out of here!”

  “What are you—” But it was too late. The same shapes I saw in my vision dropped from the roofs to either side of the alley. Although, unlike what I had seen, they now had actual bodies. They were all human, but they were armed with…swords!? Who carried around swords in the middle of a city? Was there a comic convention going on that I didn’t know about?

  I tucked all those questions away and pointed. Realization finally dawned in the man’s eyes and he whipped around to face them.

  I had to hope that him knowing the attackers were present was enough to keep him from getting killed, and I slowly backed away.

  I had every intention of bolting, but the moment my white-haired pursuer sprang into action, I found myself glued to the spot.

  He…he certainly was something else.

  My jaw dropped to my chest as he leapt at the first attacker, slamming him into a wall only to whirl about and deliver a crushing kick to the front of another’s chest. His moves weren’t like any martial arts I had ever seen, more like some sort of European boxing, but more efficient. With only a few more punches, the last of the attackers slid to the ground with a groan.

  “Did…did you just knock three men unconscious in thirty seconds?” I asked, eyes wide with wonder.

  “Come,” he said, ignoring my questions to walk past me and grab my gloved hand. I hated being manhandled. I didn’t care if this guy was the next Lone Ranger, he wasn’t about to touch me without permission. I yanked myself away and he looked back at me with surprise. “Come, we must go.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I snapped.

  “Apologies, but we don’t have time for this right now.” He reached out to grab my other wrist and the moment our skin touched, we were pulled into a vision yet again.

  I was floating above the city, not quite in my body, but not quite out of it either. My mind drifted, an untethered force across the sky. I could see things that shouldn’t have been humanly possible, and yet I didn’t question it.

  Hundreds of thousands of people, all going about their everyday lives. Running errands, going to work, falling in love, falling sick, dying, it was a whole cycle of life and everything that it could be. People who were winning. People who were los
ing. It had a balance to it.

  But then, at the edges of what I could see, shadows began to cloak the buildings, slowly rolling forward like a wave. As they moved, everything the darkness swallowed gave out a futile cry and then withered. There was no more living. No more trying. Only death.

  I gasped and hurtled back into my body, my heart going a mile a minute. When my actual sight came back to me, I found myself staring into piecing green eyes.

  “You’re a seer.”

  6

  Seeing Things

  “I’m a what?” I asked incredulously.

  “A seer!” he breathed. “A soothsayer, fortune teller, oracle. Many names, but all the same result. You can see things out of time’s linear path.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  He looked at me incredulously, like he couldn’t believe that I wasn’t jumping into his arms at the revelation. “That is the second vision that you have pulled me into. Either you think I’m an idiot, or you’re too stubborn for your own good.”

  Abruptly, I was done with this whole situation. I didn’t want to know who the fighters that attacked him were, I didn’t want to know why touching him made my brain jump the tracks, and I didn’t want to know what the hell being a seer meant. “You know what?” I spat. “I have grocery shopping to do.”

  “W-what? Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I’m serious!” I turned and marched right back to the public market, stepping over the bodies around me. I knew I was being unreasonable, but I couldn’t help it. I had spent my entire life shoving down these strange things my mind did, and acknowledging them now seemed almost impossible. The whole thing was probably some sort of psychotic episode. Yeah, the alley was probably empty and I was just standing around looking like a loon while I argued with myself.

  “I— Wha— You just… At least let me carry your groceries.”

  “That would be unnecessary.”