Seer

Seer

Robin Roseau

Living Nightmare

Pounding

Blood-Sucking Lawyer

Cards

Travel

Socializing

Dinner with Solange

Together

Skiing

Weeks Ahead

Telling Solange

Aubree

Dreams

Plans

Part Two

Return

Spy Games

End Game

Author
‘s Notes

About the Author

Copyright

I struggled, but the vampire grabbed my chin and turned me to face her. It took on
ly a moment before I was trapped in her gaze. My outward struggles grew increasingly feeble until I slumped in her arms. Inwardly, I was screaming in terror, but my brain turned to mush, and with it, my body.

She lifted me, holding me easily by my arms. She carried me a short distance, never releasing my gaze, and I was powerless to resist.

But my heart was pounding in my chest.

We stepped through a door, and then she set me down on a cold
, metal table, taking care to never lose my gaze. I stared into her eyes and felt her mind continue to dominate mine as I lay on my back. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, but my brain didn’t really register what it meant.

Then there were more hands touching me. Cold instruments slipped between
me and my clothes, and they were cut from my body. The vampire lifted me slightly, and the clothes were pulled away from me.

One set of hands took my arm. There was a prick, and somehow without looking I knew I was being fitted for an I.V. It was taped efficiently into place. But I didn’t feel anything flowing into my body. The I.V. wasn’t to provide medication; it was there to withdraw my blood.
Somehow I knew that, too.

I managed to moan, “No,” but it did me no good. Of course it did no good.

The vampire clasped my head, repositioning as she shifted me until I was looking straight up, but her eyes remained in front of me, and I stared into them, lost in them. She moved her hands, one at the back of my neck, holding my head in place, her other opening my jaw.

Other hands appeared, being careful not to interrupt my line of sight with the vampire’s eyes. I would have struggled if I could. I would have struggled as the tube entered my mouth and slid down my throat. But instead I lay
there limply.

Another tube, this one smaller, was inserted into my nose. My panic increased, but I lay limply as my body was violated.

Somehow, I knew exactly what they intended for me, but I didn’t know how I knew.

There was another pause, and then I felt hands on my limp legs, spreading them widely. A moment later, there was another violation as they inserted a catheter.

I breathed heavily, panting in my fear, my heart pounding in my chest, the air whooshing in and out of the tube in my mouth. The vampire’s paralysis didn’t appear to prevent panic in spite of the lock over my mind.

They shifted me again, onto my left side this time, the vampire careful to maintain her gaze. There was pressure at my anus, and something slipped into me.

In my mind, I screamed and screamed.

A moment later, they lifted me, the vampire supporting my limp head and holding my gaze, other hands supporting the rest of my helpless body. They carried me a short distance, setting me
down again. The vampire spoke, but I didn’t understand her words, and I was rolled back onto my side then arranged in a fetal position. The vampire crouched beside me, still holding my gaze.

There was more minor jostling, and I knew they were making connections to the various tubes inserted into my body. The mechanical noises I hadn’t even registered before increased, and a machine began breathing for me, forcing air in and out of my body.

Then a frame descended over me, around me, and I found myself draped with a heavy, clear plastic sheet. The mechanical noises increased even further, and the air was sucked out of the space between the plastic sheet I was lying on and the one draped over me. The plastic tightened around me, then tightened even more. I’d once seen a fashion display where the models were packaged the same way. It had been eerie at the time. It was terrifying to be subject to the treatment now.

That was when I lost sight of the vampire’s gaze, but it was too late for me. Her control didn’t relax immediately, but slowly, and I lay limply in my prison as they continued to prepare me.

The frame lifted up, the world rotating to a proper, vertical rotation. I couldn’t see very well through the plastic, but I could see well enough.

Then we were moving as they rolled me back out the room into the larger room where the vampire had originally captured me. They rolled me past row after row
of barely-seen shapes hanging from the girders above my head. Even though I couldn’t see any detail, I knew what they were.

We turned, and then they adjusted my position. A moment later, I was lifted slightly, and I knew I was suspended in the air, just like all the other people had been suspended.

The vampire moved back into my line of sight, slightly below me now. She looked up at me as she watched me. I saw her mouth move. A moment later, I felt myself begin to bleed, slowly bleed.

I knew it was hopeless. I knew I wouldn’t escape. I knew no one would find me. I knew no one would rescue me. I knew I had become nothing but another vacuum-packed meal for the vampire.
I screamed my despair.

The vampire reached up and patted my cheek through the plastic. She smiled, her fangs showing.

I woke, a scream
in my throat, the image of the vampire’s fangs burnt into my mind. My heart was pounding out of my chest, and I was sweating, tangled in the bedding. I sat bolt upright, dislodging both cats, keening for a moment. I looked around wildly.

I was in my bedroom. The dim light coming from the window told me dawn was a short distance away.

I’d been up late last night, reading that horror novel. Clearly, that had been a mistake. I should have known better.

Sometimes I had dreams, very vivid dreams that I somehow kne
w were real. Sometimes I dreamed about events from my own life, events that hadn’t happened yet. Sometimes I dreamed about someone else, and in those dreams, I might be witnessing events from outside that person or as that person. Sometimes the events were current; sometimes, like the events from my own life, they were from the future. From time to time, they were from the past, and some of those times, the distant past.

I could nearly always tell when it was a real dream. I could usually tell when the dream was about me, and I could usually tell if it was a current event or yet to occur.

This had felt like a real dream, but I couldn’t tell if that had been me in the dream, or someone else. And I couldn’t tell if it was present or future.

But it couldn’t have been a real dream. Vampires weren’t real, after all. They were a myth, like werewolves and ghosts and all those other things that go bump in the night.

But it had felt like a real dream, it had really felt like a real dream. But as I said: I could usually tell when they were real. Sometimes I was wrong.

I know. Who am I to say vampires were a myth. I was some sort of seer, after all.

By and large, the dreams didn’t do me much good. I’d never been able to prevent the events the dreams foretold, although I’d been able to mitigate the negative effects from time to time.

And I’d helped the police find that girl. I hadn’t prevented the abduction, but they found her, and they found the man who had taken her. They’d been sure it had been the estranged father, but instead it had been a stranger, a man picking a girl randomly from the available children at the park.
I’d presented myself at the police station, babbling nearly incoherently about a kidnapped girl. They took my statement, but I knew they thought I was a crackpot.

Two days later, they showed up at my home and arrested me. I’d had a rock solid alibi for the time of the abduction, and so they questioned me for hours, checked my alibi, and then released me. Three nights later, while they were still wasting their time with the father, I had another dream. This time I showed back up with a lawyer beside me.
I gave them the details, which they didn’t believe.

But they checked on everything I told them anyway. I went home, exhausted, and took a nap. I woke up from a third dream, called my lawyer, and told her to meet me at the police station. I was on my way out the door as the police pulled up in several squad cars. I immediately ran
into Nolan O’Keefe, the detective in charge.

“I know where she is!” I said. “I had another dream.”

Everyone froze.

“I was on my way to your station. My lawyer is meeting us.”

The detective studied me for a moment, then he led me to the back of his car. I realized later that they had expected my ride to be in handcuffs, but instead they treated me gently.

My lawyer was already waiting. The dream had been short, and I explained what I had seen. Five minutes later, I explained it all to the police. “I didn’t see the street, but I saw a house number. You’re going to find her.” I gave them the house number, then I described their raid on the house, including who was first in the house, who found the girl, and I gave a pretty good description of the lady police officer who would unlatch the girl and hold her in her arms while the girl sobbed.

They asked me a lot of questions, many of them confirming I’d been at home since leaving the station that morning. As they had me under observation, they were willing to believe me. They did a line up of five police officers, and I picked out the woman who would hold the girl. I did more lineups, pointing out several of the officers who would be on the raid.

That was when I realized. I turned to the detective. “You already found her. You already found her!”

He nodded.

“You’re trying to figure out how I know. You think I’m an accomplice.”

“The chief does,” he said. “Dreams.” He looked away, then pulled me to his office, my now silent lawyer in tow.

“Dreams,” he said again.

“Yes.”

“Have you had other dreams like this?”

“Not like this, but yes. Most of them mean nothing. This is the first one quite like this.”

He studied me a little longer. Then he slipped a business card from a holder on his desk, wrote a phone number on the back, and slid the card to me. “If you ever have more dreams like this, you call me directly. Use the number on the front first, but if you get the runaround, then use the number on the back. Don’t share that number with anyone else.”

I took the card. “Do you need me for the trial?”

He laughed, but it was my lawyer who answered. “No,” she said. “They aren’t going to put you on the stand to talk about your dreams, but the defense might.”

That was the only time I’d helped the police, and was by far the most dramatic instance of my dreams giving me something useful, if that’s what you want to call it.

I got out
of bed. I knew I wouldn’t sleep again. I was not typically an early riser, so getting up before dawn was not my preference. I stumbled out to the kitchen and started the coffee maker. I checked my email, responding to a few that had come in overnight, poured a cup, drank half of it, then headed for the shower.

It was in the shower I thought more about the dream. What had it been about the vampire? She had seemed familiar. I thought I should know her, but I couldn’t place her.

She had been beautiful, hauntingly beautiful, but I realized in another setting I would have found her stunning and attractive. She’d been carefully made up, her hair perfectly coiffed, and wearing professional business attire. She struck me as some sort of business owner, not a horrid vampire running some sort of blood bank for other vampires.

I suppose that could be a business in itself, but I would have expected the owner to appear much seedier.

In my dream, she’d been gentle with me, and perhaps even a little sad, although she had smiled at the end. I had imagined she’d been wondering how my blood would taste. But as I thought more about it, I wasn’t sure.

“It was just a dream,” I said out loud. “Why are you analyzing
this. Just. A. Dream.” I had a hard time convincing myself. “Vampires aren’t real.” I sighed. “Just like seers. Fuck.”

I washed my hair.

“Maybe it was a metaphor,” I said.

That happened sometimes, where the dreams were real, but they were a metaphor for something else. In the past, I had never figured that out until after everything was said and done, and the metaphor became obvious.

“Maybe she’s a blood-sucking lawyer,” I said, laughing. Okay, yeah, it was a cliché, but don’t blame me. I don’t make up the dreams, after all. But that would explain a lot of it, if it were even one of my real dreams.

I didn’t always recognize a dream as real, but it was rare that I just knew it was real and was wrong. This one felt so real, even forty minutes later.

“Just a dream,” I said again. “Or if it’s a metaphor, I’m never going to figure it out, anyway.” And I redirected my thoughts towards my work day.

* * * *

I was a technology consultant. I had an undergraduate degree in computer science, and I had worked as a programmer for years. Then I earned an MBA, and now I was strongly sought after. A common problem amongst programmers is an inability to understand and anticipate the needs of the business. A common problem amongst business leaders is an inability to communicate with their programmers. I could talk to both groups.

The type of work I got varied. I still could be called in for pure programming, although this most often happened with my oldest clients, the ones I had programmed for years ago. New work tended to be as a project manager.
A client might bring me in when their own IT — Information Technology — department was too overworked to fulfill some requirement, or perhaps didn’t have the expertise in house. But what had been happening with increasing regularity was an IT manager would listen to a business requirement and then provide a work estimate that far surpassed the expectations of management.

In those cases, I would be brought in to listen to what upper management wanted, and then I would review what IT said it would take. Sometimes IT was right on with what they thought it would take, and I would go back to management and tell them to trust their IT manager. Other times, IT would have a “not invented
here” syndrome, which was very common, and they wouldn’t be considering already available choices to help them solve the problem. In that case, a few pointed questions could get the project on track.

I charged through the nose for my analysis, but if they then hired me to help with the project, I charged a more reasonable hourly rate.

What I hated was when IT refused to consider what I had to say. At that point, I was obligated to tell upper management how I would solve the problem, and why my way was better than IT’s way. Typically, the IT manager would be at the meeting. It never went well. I wasn’t very good at office politics, but I was good enough to know I was making an enemy.

But I wasn’t being paid to validate
IT’s prejudices. I was there to provide my best possible analysis, and I was unflinchingly honest about it.

I finished in the shower, dried off, wrapping towels around me, and headed back to my computer. I verified my schedule for the day,
then headed back to the bathroom to dry my hair and finish getting ready for the day.

* * * *

It was a week later I received a call from a longtime client.

“Sidney Welsh,” I said, answering my phone.

“Sidney,” said a jovial voice. “Ed Frank.”

“Hello, Ed,” I replied warmly. “How are things with you?”

“Good, good,” he said. “Have you been enjoying the summer?”

“In between clients,” I said. “I’ve been bicycling a lot. I did the Iron Man ride this year, but just the 100-k ride.”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

I laughed lightly. “The Iron Man bicycle ride. It’s every spring. There are three routes. The longest is one hundred miles. There’s also a one hundred kilometer route, and I rode that. I’m not up for a hundred miles.”

“That still sounds like a long ride,” he observed.

“Sixty-two miles,” I said. “It’s referred to as a metric century.”

“Oh,” he replied. “I see. I think I’ll leave that to you young folks.”

At forty-four, I was hardly young, but I supposed compared to Ed, I was.

“What can I do for you, Ed?” I hadn’t had any work with him for a couple of years, so he couldn’t be calling about any current or recent projects.

“I need you.”

I laughed. “That’s what they all say, Ed.” It was nice to hear. I loved when a satisfied client called me back. It told me more about how well I had done for him than words of thanks at the end of a project. Of course, I liked those, too, especially when said in the hearing of other, potential clients.

“I am buying another technology firm,” he said, “and putting together a due diligence team. I want you on it.”

Due diligence was the process whereby a team of people verified that a particular company was actually doing the things they said they were doing. The team would check the company’s books and bank statements, talk to existing clients, and interview key employees. If it was a technology company, the team would also review the related technology to verify it was up to snuff. Depending upon the complexity of the tech, this could be easy or a lot of work.

“How much time are you expecting from me?” I asked cautiously. I had a number of important clients already. As I was self-employed, I was always on the prowl for more work, and I hated turning anyone away. But I made it a rule to never over-promise.
Under-promise and over-deliver was the motto amongst true professionals.

“There’s the initial meeting, and then you’d have to fly out for a week,” he explained. “After that, probably another one hundred and fifty or two hundred hours spread out over six to eight weeks.”

“You want a thorough analysis,” I observed. “How big is the team?”

“Small,” he said. “I’ve got my business people to look at that side of things. I just need you to evaluate the technology.” He paused. “I want you, Sidney.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Ed.”

“I’ll give you one of my best programmers,” he said. “You don’t have to look at product viability or the books. But I want to know what I’m getting into with the software.” He paused. “It’s a software as a service company.”

“Are you buying the tech or the customer list?”

“Both. The tech has to work. I need to know if the code is any good. I need to know if the people are any good. I would prefer to keep the team intact, but if they’re already halfway out the door, or if they’re poor at their jobs, we’ll pull it in house.” He paused. “I’ll want you involved long term, but we can worry about that later.”