“About five years ago, I saw a news report about a missing woman and her family’s search for her. I’d never seen her before, but after the report, I had a vision of the husband, who was pleading to the cameras for his wife’s safe return, strangling her to death and throwing her into a river. Four days later, they found her body on the shore of a river and arrested her husband.”
“Did you tip them off where to search?”
“I made an anonymous call. I don’t know if they took it seriously or not.”
“What exactly did you see about this hunt?”
“A lot of death,” she murmured. “More than usual and worse than usual.”
She tried to recall the exact details of her vision as she related them to him. “In my vision, I saw humans and vampires fleeing through the woods while the Savages chased them down in vehicles. A pickup truck ran over a woman.”
Jack recalled the brutal scene outside the barn as Charlie spoke of it with uncanny detail. The screams of the dying resonated in his head while the coppery tang of blood and the more acrid scent of gunpowder returned to him.
“It’s almost as if you were there,” Jack said.
“Was it really that bad?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Jack confirmed.
The clipped word came out harsher than he intended, but he didn’t like recalling what happened at the barn. While they were fleeing their pursuers from the barn, he told Mollie they only needed to be faster than the slowest ones. The words, though true, were callous, but he had to get away from all the death he couldn’t stop.
The haunted look in Jack’s eyes said all Charlie needed to know about what happened at the barn. She wished she could ease his torment, but she didn’t know how.
“The worst part is not knowing when my visions are going to take place,” she said. “Maybe I could help someone if I knew, but…”
Her voice trailed off, and she turned to watch the waves crashing against the sand. “Sometimes I think my ability to see into people’s lives and catch glimpses of the future is more a punishment than a gift.”
“Punishment for what?” Jack asked.
Charlie shrugged. “My parents could tell you a million different reasons, but I don’t know, being born I guess.”
Jack’s teeth ground together at the mention of her parents. He’d like to pay them a little visit and see how they enjoyed being tied to their bed for a week. They’d given Charlie bread; he wouldn’t be so kind.
“And what reasons would your parents say?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Charlie mumbled. “Maybe I was too willful as a baby. Maybe God believed I was born evil and punished me for it, or maybe I threw up one too many times and the devil entered my soul. Whatever the reason, the visions are my cross to bear, and I’ve done it for years.”
“Doesn’t God only give you what you can handle?”
“Supposedly. My parents saw it as the devil’s work when I told them about the boy.”
“Your parents sound like assholes.”
Charlie snorted with laughter. “They are or were; I’m not sure if they’re still alive, and I don’t want to know. I’d love to tell them what I’ve become. They’d see me as nothing but the pure embodiment of evil. It would be kind of fun.”
Jack chuckled. “It sounds like they would deserve it.”
The amusement vanished from Charlie’s face. “They would, but I can’t ever see them again.”
“Why not?”
“I’m afraid that if I ever saw them again, all the abuse and cruelty would come flooding back to me, and as a vampire, I might kill them. And then Iwouldbe the evil thing they always believed me to be.”
“You’re not evil.”
“I know that now,” she murmured. “But there were times…”
Her voice trailed off. She didn’t have to finish her sentence for Jack to know what she’d been about to say. There were times when she’d believed her parents were right and she was evil.
