“Brianna,” Emily whispered.
Aern’s hand automatically came to her waist, because the word was full of emotion and understanding. Brianna had given all of the Seven Lines hope, she had turned six men who were more than capable of helping, but at a cost too great for any of them to bear. Because it would hurt her; it was taking something from Brianna each time, exhausting her.
And they needed her.
Aern turned to find the entrance, Brianna and Logan making their way from the building behind them. Her face was wan, but determined. She knew better than anyone the importance of the occasion.
In the end, Ellin and Wesley stood at the window of the gatehouse while Aern and Emily waited near the side door. Brianna sat on the ground at Logan’s feet. He didn’t appear comfortable with the situation, but no one was prepared to argue with her while she was searching for some sort of vision.
“I just want a clue,” she muttered, visibly annoyed with whatever had fogged up her view of the shadows. Her arm twitched, purposefully elbowing Logan in the shin. “Tell Rhona to hold back, he won’t get clear of the tree falling.”
Logan pressed the device in his ear, repeating the message as Brianna instructed. Given where Rhona was positioned, he must have replied something like, “What tree?” because Logan’s response was clipped, an order. “I said hold back.”
Emily glanced out the window, tapping a finger on the handle of her blade where it rested beneath her shirt. She’d drawn her hair into a tight ponytail, double-knotted the laces of her shoes. “How long?” she asked again.
“Soon,” Brianna said, eyes tight against whatever image rolled through her mind.
The lights flickered, a brief instant of darkness before they were back again, too strong. The monitors lining the wall shot through with static, and then flashed white; a quick buzz sounded in Aern’s ear before it snapped, an electric pop that caused him to jerk the device free, toss it onto the floor. The room was suddenly bright, lit with sparks, and then nothing remained but the pale glow coming in through the windows, sunlight filtered by a narrow line of trees.
“They’re here,” Brianna said from the floor.
“That is so creepy,” Emily replied.
“Not a coincidence, I’m guessing?” Ellin asked of the surge that had just disabled their electronics and cut the camera feed. She didn’t take her eyes off the window that was now their only warning of the shadows’ coming approach.
“No,” Wesley said from beside her. “I felt the spike. It’s coming from the tree line over there. They’ve hit the guard houses and everything in about a fifty-foot radius.”
Aern glanced at Logan, their communication systems completely down and no way to alert the others, to tell them where at least one shadow hid. Wesley saw the exchange and said, “I’ll go.”
“I’ll follow him,” Ellin said, eyeing the distance to the trees he’d indicated. “I can make it.”
Brianna pushed herself up from her spot on the floor, no one moving until she spoke. “That should work. When you get outside, take the wide arc, let them come past you.” She pressed a finger into Wesley’s chest, warning him. “Only this one. Don’t approach the others.”
Wesley nodded, and Aern could feel that he trusted her order without reservation. There was a silence, a sudden stillness, and Brianna said, “Now.”
All eyes fell to the window, metal bars resting over shatterproof glass.
Chapter Twenty
Brianna
Brianna watched as the iron gatework between the sculpted block walls that bordered the property melted to a pool on the asphalt below. It was only minutes ago that she’d been surrounded by Logan’s team, an awkward scene where she’d instructed them all to remove their shirts and they’d done so without so much as a snigger. And now she stood with Logan and Aern and Emily, waiting for unknown shadows, seven opponents the man from her visions wanted her to destroy.
Because they were coming for her.
Brianna wasn’t a killer. She didn’t want to be the cause of war, of any man’s death. But if the flashes of visions she was getting had shown her anything, it was that if she didn’t fight, if they didn’t win, a great number of them would die. She pressed her fingernails into her palms, forcing the images down—bodies strewn across the lawn, mangled and torn, trees uprooted, scorched earth. As if a tornado had raged through the yard. She would do it, she would fight. But she wanted there to be a way to make it right.