* * *
“In a nutshell, my father has completely lost his ever-loving mind,” Kiara said from where she sat beside Julian on the couch. The wound on her forehead directly above her left eyebrow hadn’t needed stitches, but the doctor had put a small bandage on it. While she still seemed a little worn-out, Caleb noticed she wasn’t as pale as she’d been earlier. Then again, that might have something to do with the fact that she was near Julian. The moment he’d draped his arm around her shoulder, the tension had visibly drained from her body. “He wants to destroy the world to save it.”
That announcement was met with the requisite stunned silence, but Caleb still found himself focusing more on Julian than the words Kiara had just spoken. He couldn’t help it. Something about the guy irritated the hell out of him.
Based on everything Brielle had told Caleb about her brother, it was hard to think of him as anything other than a self-centered, selfish douche canoe. Kiara Harrington either didn’t know that or didn’t care. Either way, it seemed clear she was enamored with the man. Caleb knew it was none of his business. Kiara was an adult and could do whatever the hell she wanted—with whomever she wanted to do it with—but Julian was trouble. Caleb could recognize that better than anyone. The man had used his sister like a Get Out of Jail Free card for most of his life without any thought to the danger it put her in. And now, he was already trying to work his way back into Brielle’s good graces, probably wanting to make sure she’d be ready to come save his ass when things went bad again. There was no way in hell Caleb was going to stand by and let her brother use her again. Not now that he’d finally realized how important she was to him.
“Maybe you should back up a little bit and start at the beginning,” McKay said. He was leaning back against the mantel in front of the unlit fireplace, arms folded and a grim look on his face. “Tell them why your father and the Harrington Group stole the nukes.”
Kiara took a deep breath, nodding as Julian hugged her closer. “Before I do that, I should probably mention that my father isn’t like any of you. Actually, I’m not, either. No one in my family is. We’re videns. You would call us seers.”
“You mean like fortune-tellers?” Forrest asked, and Caleb could tell from his teammate’s expression that the man thought Kiara was messing with them.
“Actually, you’re closer than you think,” Kiara admitted. “There have been times in the past when my people have posed as fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, oracles, and psychics in order to earn money. But we haven’t done that in recent times, mostly because it simply isn’t necessary now.”
“Because your family—aka the Harrington Group—is rich, right?” Misty asked curiously. “I imagine being able to see the future would make financial investments easier.”
Caleb had to admit he hadn’t thought of that, but Misty was right. Knowing what the next big tech trend would be, what city would see a housing boom, or where the next war might happen would make it easy to get rich.
“All videns can see the see the future to a certain degree,” Kiara said. “Though it would be more correct to say that we see the different possible futures. We call them different pathways. Some of us are better than others at reading these pathways and winnowing down the thousands and thousands of event paths, separating the more likely from the merely possible. My father is the best who has ever lived at this and it has made the family rich beyond belief. It’s why he has been the head of the family and the CEO of the group for so long. Unfortunately, it has also driven him a little insane.”
Beside Caleb on the love seat, Brielle’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t understand,” she said, echoing the exact same thing he was thinking. “How did walking these pathways do that to your father?”
Kiara reached up to tuck her long hair behind her ear. “For many years, my father walked the pathways that would lead to money and power for the family. But over time, his focus shifted from gaining wealth to protecting us from those he thought might harm us.”
“Such as?” Caleb prompted, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees.
“At first, it was SEC regulators planning to investigate the group,” she said. “Then it was other supernaturals scheming to steal from us. Soon, he was looking for individual criminals intent on kidnapping or stealing from members of our family. That’s when he hired Uriel and those other Vandals to be his security goons.”
“Wait a minute,” Caleb said, holding up a hand. “Vandals? You mean like the people on the History Channel?”
Kiara’s lips curved. “Actually, yes. A number of the Germanic warriors that ravaged a good part of southern Europe and northern Africa were supernaturals like the ones you’ve been fighting. Once they were defeated by the Roman army, they scattered and disappeared for a time. They’ve recently started showing up again, hiring themselves out as mercenaries all over the world. Many of them have flocked to Uriel because of his powers, which none of the other Vandals possess, as far as I know. The moment my father heard of them, he hired as many as he could. He sees them as the foundation for his future army.”
From where he stood by the overstuffed chair Misty was sitting on, Forrest frowned. “Hiring these Vandals is bad enough, but spending so much time looking for enemies under every rock and tree sounds a little bit obsessive. It must have consumed a lot of his time and energy to do that.”
“Obsessive is a good word for it,” Kiara replied. “My father would spend hours—sometimes days—walking the pathways, looking for information and links between one unlikely possibility and the next. Spending that much time on the paths can be addictive for all but the strongest videns. No one else would even consider trying to do what he did on an almost-daily basis.”
“Am I the only one who feels like I’m missing something here?” Caleb asked, looking around at his teammates before turning his attention to Kiara again. “How does a man—even one who’s obsessed and addicted like your father—go from using his supernatural talents to make billions of dollars to stealing nuclear weapons?”
Kiara sighed. “Because it’s the nature of the pathways to show the viden walking them exactly what he or she wishes to see. If you’re looking for paths to fortune, that’s what you’ll see to the near exclusion of anything else. If you seek power, the paths will skew you in that direction. And if you look long enough and hard enough for death and destruction, very soon, that is all you will see.”
Caleb nodded. He completely understood that. It was the main reason he’d stopped reading the news. Almost everything in it was depressing as hell.
“That’s what really drove my father mad,” Kiara continued. “Spending so many years walking through one horrible event path after the next and trying to see how they might come to pass has essentially twisted his view on everything. All he can see now is the evil in the world. He can’t see the good, even when it’s all around him.”
“Regardless of his twisted view of good and evil, I’m assuming there’s some particular future event that has your father worried?” Misty said. “Something that scared him enough to think that stealing all those nuclear weapons is the better alternative.”
Kiara nodded, her expression turning desolate. “He’s become obsessed with the threat of worldwide nuclear war. He’s convinced that in the very near future, some rogue nation will launch a weapon that will trigger an immediate retaliation from the target nation, which will be followed by a launch from an allied nation. On and on like dominoes, until every nuclear power has committed themselves completely.”
“You’re talking about the end of the world,” Brielle murmured while everyone else in the room was stunned to silence, including Caleb. “Is this truly what he’s seen? Isn’t launching the nukes he stole going to start the chain in the first place, like some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy?”
Kiara shrugged. “My father doesn’t care about the world. He only cares about the group. As far as whether he’s seen it, the short answer is yes. The longer answer is that his perspective has become so twisted that it’s unlikely we can trust in anything that he sees related to this subject. By stealing those nukes, he’s practically willed the whole thing into existence. As for why he stole them, he isn’t planning to use them in a preemptive strike. At least not like you think.”
Caleb exchanged looks with Brielle, then the rest of the team. The trepidation he felt was mirrored on everyone’s faces.
“My father has decided that the best way to deal with the possibility of full-scale nuclear war is to destroy all of the world’s nuclear weapons—or at least as many as he can reasonably reach,” Kiara added. “That’s what the nineteen remaining weapons are for. He’s going to use them to power an enormous laser strike that will annihilate every weapon they can reach.”
No one said a word for a long time. Even Jake and McKay, who had already heard most of what Kiara had just told them, seemed shocked.
