However, the more I ranted the less Soheil seemed interested in gunning down the vampire who’d bloodied his wife. But now I was just as pissed at her as I was at him. I marched over to her and yanked her to her feet. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, woman.”
Her eyes went wide as I touched her, which let me know she wasn’t a pure fraud. Generally I’d have dropped her wrist like it was on fire, but this time I held on. Let her have her visions. I hoped they gave her nightmares for a year. Finally she ripped her arm free. “What kind of monster are you?” she blubbered, rubbing her wrist like it had been in manacles. I looked at Cole. He quickly translated.
Wrong thing to say, missy
. I closed on her, because she’d backed away when I’d let her go. “The kind who’s going to kill you, your husband, and all of your children if you don’t confess, right now, to every single crime you committed against that man.” I pointed back at Vayl, looking as fierce as I possibly could, hoping she wouldn’t call my bluff. I’d never kill a kid. But Zarsa didn’t know that.
She covered her face with her hands as she began to cry. But she started talking too. “You must understand, I had my reasons. I . . . I had good reasons!” she wailed.
“Confess!” I roared.
She cowered from me and I felt like the worst kind of jerk. But, dammit, I wasn’t the one still waving an automatic weapon around the room.
With Cole translating almost as quickly as she spoke, she began speaking. “I have visions, yes!” she cried. “I See when I would rather be blind! But I cannot stop them. And they tear at my soul. When I touch a woman, I see her father’s fist crashing into her cheek. I feel her loathing at being forced to submit to a husband she did not choose for herself. And I know I cannot change these things. I am only the witness.”
I darted a look at Cassandra. She nodded gravely.
Oh yeah
, said her look.
Been there; tried to forget that
.
Zarsa went on. “But always I find a way to hope. I have Soheil and my children. Life is not always bad. And then a man comes to Soheil. He is the owner of this house. He hires Soheil as the caretaker and says for us to come here. To invite you to a reading. We are happy to have the extra income. Until the day I am cleaning and I pick up the key he has left us.”
Oh shit, Zarsa, stop!
I wanted to yell.
The Wizard’s watching you right now!
But I couldn’t warn her. Couldn’t make a move without betraying what I knew. So I sat tight and hoped for the best.
“The vision I have from holding this key is of a horror before unknown to me. I See doom for my people. Brothers strangling their sisters only to make their corpses walk again. Murderers lopping off heads like they are halving melons as their bodies writhe with parasitic monsters. Women setting themselves afire. My own children crying as they are forced to watch an endless procession of hangings. And behind it all someone laughing and laughing. It” — she held her hands out, almost pleading with us — “how can I tell you of the despair I felt afterward?”
Zarsa dropped her head as if it was just too heavy to hold up anymore and shook it. Every eye in the room was glued to her. No one spoke as she pulled herself together.
“That night I dreamed,” she said in a small voice. “A man came to my door, power rolling before him like thunder. I knew all I had to do was open my arms and it would be mine. I could take it, mold it, and use it to transform myself. To fight the vision of the key.” Though her arms still covered her stomach and she rocked on her knees like a mental patient, her eyes were dry. “This is why I must turn,” she said, her voice little more than a rasp. “I must have Vayl’s strength, his magic. So I told him he could meet his sons.”
“Even though it will kill them?” I asked. A pang went through me at breaking my promise to Cassandra. I’d probably go straight to hell for it. Spend eternity eating my hair and arguing with my mother. Oh well.
I could tell the question shocked Zarsa. She gave me such a how-did-you-know stare that Cole didn’t even bother with a translation.
Vayl came forward, his shoulders hunched as if someone had set a crate full of lead on them. “Meeting Hanzi and Badu . . . will lead to our deaths?” he asked.
She met his eyes squarely. “Sacrifices must be made to prevent the horror,” she said flatly.
“No, Zarsa,” I said. “You can’t prevent the horror by becoming one.” I glanced at Vayl. “No offense meant, boss.”
“None taken,” he replied.
“And look what this plan has done to your marriage,” Cole urged. “You don’t want to lose something so fine and rare, do you? Or do you enjoy putting your husband in such a crazed state?”
“No! Of course not!”
“And what about your children?” I asked.
“I act for them!” Zarsa exclaimed fiercely. “This world I saw, it is possible because too many have already failed to fight! Because fear is a weapon this man wields like a bully’s club. If I do not stand, my children will be crushed! I cannot, I will not allow that!”
I glanced at Soheil. The AK-47 hung at his side, nearly forgotten in the surge of pride that had washed away his previous rage at his wife. “She’s a pistol, isn’t she?” I asked him.
