Visions fated sight book.., p.1
Visions (Fated Sight Book 1), page 1
Visions
Fated Sight Book 1
Elle Lincoln
Copyright © 2021 by Elle Lincoln
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Editing by Elemental Editing and Proofreading
Proofreading by Bookish Dreams Editing
Cover Design by Covers by Christian
Created with Vellum
Contents
Trigger Warning
Prologue
1. Vanessa
2. Vanessa
3. Vanessa
4. Vanessa
5. Hades
6. Vanessa
7. Vanessa
8. Vanessa
9. Vanessa
10. Pim
11. Apollo
12. Vanessa
13. Vanessa
14. Vanessa
15. Greyson
16. Vanessa
17. Vanessa
18. Vanessa
19. Vanessa
20. Apollo
21. Vanessa
22. Vanessa
23. Vanessa
24. Vanessa
25. Vanessa
26. Pim
27. Vanessa
28. Vanessa
29. Hades
30. Vanessa
Greyson
Author Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Elle Lincoln
Vanessa
Did you remember to disconnect your naughty audio from your bluetooth?
Trigger Warning
Hey friends so a few things before you read this. There is the insinuation that Persephone abuses Hades. This is only implied and not shown.
This book also deals with a mate who commits what the main character believes is suicide. However the character in question is immortal and cannot die. But I recognize the sensitivity of the situation.
If any of these these things are triggering to you please, please take heed.
Prologue
Twenty-Six Years Ago
The clack of heels against stone hammers off the rock walls, each tap-tap-tap spearing straight through the soul.
Torture.
Such a blasphemous word, and yet one that pays homage to what happens here in the bowels of hell.
One would think that the pits of Tartarus would hold nothing but heat to rival that of a scorching volcano. That the skin of a mere human walking through the halls of this dungeon would simmer, boil, then fall off like melting wax.
They would be right.
But also wrong, so very fucking wrong. Here in the deepest, darkest recesses, where no light lives and no wind swirls, the cold becomes all-consuming. Mind-numbing.
No, it isn’t the heat that kills. The fires of Tartarus would be welcome. It is the dungeons below Tartarus that destroy the eldest of the gods, those who roamed the realms long before man, afore the sniveling of mortals became a torture unto itself. It is here that they strip away their power, laying them bare upon the cool stone.
But hearts still beat for the immortals, for the deathless, who cannot succumb to the blissful sleep of the void. Magic keeps the dark organ flowing with putrid blood, while time slowly erodes memories into insanity. Death would mean salvation.
That clack echoes around the darkest chambers. Moans fill the air, holding false hope that those footsteps belong to one who holds empathy.
Empathy does not exist here.
It is nothing more than a void.
Of life.
Of magic.
Of hope and dreams.
Outside the cell doors, those footsteps slow to a stop before the locks disengage. One, two, then more and more, until the heavy, magic-laden door opens with the piercing light of a lantern.
Eyes squint against the light that flares into the void like a thousand suns, and warmth seeps in around the curvy calves of a creature loathsome to this hell.
A queen of the damned.
She crouches low, her eyes full of glee at the pain she inflicts. When she opens her mouth, it’s to release a siren’s lure. “I have a bargain for you, demon.”
Throat dry and unused, he scratches out a reply. “W-What?”
“You want freedom?” Lips once dreamed about by Cupid himself smirk without humor.
No answer floats in the stale air. All creatures want freedom, especially those rotting in the void. “Cost?”
“That, old friend, is negotiable.” She sets her lantern aside, the light casting long shadows into the cell.
Light, the giver of life, which allows most creatures to flourish, burns across the floor, chasing back the void. Creatures scuttle away, their long forms nothing but an outline in the inky dark.
But in all things, there is balance. Without the void, the darkest among the monsters would not survive. Without the light…well, they’d have nothing to taunt those who exist here.
That light shines on the king of fucking monsters, who was born of the acid of hell and the dirt of this cell. He presses up on shaking palms, his muscles, atrophied from eons of disuse, trembling with the effort.
The scratchy reply croaks from parched lips. “Deal.”
Tinkling laughter echoes around the void, stirring the creatures in the cells along the hall. Fear leaks into the chamber like a lover’s caress. “You don’t know what I need of you, demon.”
“Does it matter?”
“No.”
“Then tell me the price I’ll pay for my freedom.”
Her vacant eyes stare off into the inky blackness before she swiftly picks up her lantern. Standing, she turns to stalk down the hall on those clattering heels. “Follow me, demon.”
A gust of sickly sweet wind wraps around the cell, teasing and taunting with the bite of freedom.
There is no other choice.
The void or the light.
In the end, it was only a matter of time before beasts roamed the earth once more.
1
Vanessa
Present Day
“And all the ghoulies say I’m pretty fly for a dead guy.” My long-lost lover’s lousy singing blankets the desolate plane surrounding us. “Da-na-da-de-na-da-de-na.”
The longer he chooses this particular kind of violence, the more my tortured ears bleed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as he rolls his body like a seasoned male stripper, his smile full and similar to that of the Joker’s. Each thrust teases my eyes, or rather my hormones.
Only I can see his body, so at least I don’t need to get jealous if any other woman looks at him.
Averting my eyes, I try not to stare at him, but I admit my willpower is not that strong. “Your penis looked at me.” His thrusts turn a little more deadly at my words as his dick presses against the soft material. It’s truly distracting, at least until he opens his mouth. He always has to ruin the moment with that smart tongue of his.
“Baby, any time you want to touch…” His tattooed hands tease the edges of his shirt just enough to show me a brief stretch of dark hair I know scatters across his chest and leads down to an outie belly button. “All you’ve got to do is ask.” He winks at me as soon as he catches me looking.
My eyes get stuck on the tattoo inked on his chest, a chest I kissed once upon a time with hair I once threaded my fingers through. My fingers touch my lips, where I can almost taste him on my tongue.
Then he died. The creature standing before me flickers in and out until my vision focuses on his very dead body. Luckily, the app on my phone beeps, pulling me out of that depressive spiral.
“Ditto!” A squishy purple body wiggles across the phone screen until I can collect him. A shiver of pleasing satisfaction hums its way through my body at a job well done.
“Angel, baby, are you asking to touch me? Because I need you to say the words.” Pim’s voice turns tortured, finally catching my full attention.
“What?” I blink at him, trying to recall what he was talking about. I know I heard every word he spoke, so what was he saying?
His arms drop. “I thought you came out here to visit me.” He points an accusing finger at my phone screen. “Not to play Pokémon.” His tone dips just a little with disappointment.
“But ditto.” I blink at him, confused by his tortured state. I did come out here to play Pokémon. He is just an unfortunate side effect of me leaving the safety of the town.
His shoulders slump forward, his brown bowler hat tipping and falling to the ground where it doesn’t cast a shadow. A moment later, it disappears from this plane, going wherever it is that ghost hats go. Deep breaths he doesn’t need test the buttons of his white dress shirt, while his suspenders hold up his pants. He’s handsome, truly. With full sleeve tattoos and a smile that stretches across his face with a mirth that screams mischief. My fingers itch to trace the lines of his jaw, just as they always used to.
Once, he made my heart stutter in my chest. He was the perfect bad boy who intrigued a young naïve girl, stealing my heart with seductive words and promises all good little girls want to hear.
Then he stepped in front of a train, stealing my sympathy for his dumb ass and making me realize I was not a good little girl. I wanted to bring him back from the dead and push him off that platform for hurting me.
Eight y
I shouldn’t feel like I did when I was so much younger. I was a fool who blindly fell for the bad boy. But he still makes my heart trip over itself. He still steals my breath when he gives me that sexy as sin smile. I told my best friend it was a tragic accident, which she assumed was a car accident, and I never corrected her. Especially when I watched him do it.
My pulse skyrockets the same way it always does when I look at him, and all I see is him jumping onto that train platform. All I hear is the train hitting him. The thud still echoes in my ears late at night when no one is around to chase away the nightmares. I can still hear my broken sobs as the security guards stopped me from rushing to him.
All those years ago, I had to learn to hold my emotions in check. I grit my teeth and hold back my tears, reviving that lesson. I give him one of my signature smiles. The way he looks at me with his chin dipped just so, his dark eyes alight, makes him look psychotic, as though a devil whispers in his ear, telling him just how to cause chaos.
My heart doesn’t know the difference between psychosis and love as it flutters in my chest, and maybe something broken inside of me calls to something broken inside of him.
“You’re killing me, Angel.” His voice turns dark and gravelly as I stare at him. Shivers dance over my skin as my nerve endings sing and beg for his touch.
“But, Pim…” I press my palm against his chest and lean in close until my nose brushes the stubble of his chin. My tongue laps at his neck as I inhale his essence of leather and sin before I whisper, “You are already dead.”
“But, Vanessa,” he mocks, clenching my waist as his fists scrunch the soft material of my skirt, “you make me alive.”
I stumble forward into his hold, his erection pressing against my belly. A breath expels from my lungs as fire that has nothing to do with the Arizona heat licks at my skin. He isn’t wrong. My touch breathes life into him, making him visible for the world to see.
I don’t know why.
I don’t even know what I am, only what I can do.
My mamas tell me I’m God’s special cherub sent to them at their lowest point in life—a version of the nickname Pim adopted the moment he met them. I always let them tell the story of how the orphanage called them and how they loved me at first sight. They took the role of doting mothers to an extreme that I will forever be grateful for.
There is just one problem. They don’t know me.
They saw then, and still see now, what I want them to see—the cherub my moms call me, the angel Pim calls me—but they don’t realize that my eyes see a world that shouldn’t exist. That my mind delves into the darkest parts of what has been and what could be.
A friend once called me a soothsayer, but inside, I know I’m something far more sinister than that. I just don’t know what. So I smile, I nod, and I push past the dread of the unknown that clogs my throat.
Swallowing thickly, I push away from Pim, though my body screams in protest for just one more touch. “Well, you are just going to have to wait.” I wink over my shoulder as I saunter back to my 1969 Mustang Boss, my flip-flops clapping over the ground.
Both the car and the shoes are completely ill-fitted for the desert, but they suit me.
“Hello, Bruce.” My hand glides over the dark green hood, just a slight graze, and I can feel the heat rolling off of it.
“What do I have to do to get you to touch me like that?” Pim winks over to the passenger side, or rather does that teleportation thing ghosts do, wearing a frown on his perfect face.
“Live.” I’m only partially serious. Okay, no, I’m serious.
“Low blow, Nes, low blow.” Crossing his arms, he pouts. His pink lips tug down as though that will appeal to my no touching rule when it comes to the dead.
The sun sets behind him, casting him in a halo I know he doesn’t deserve. “Why did you do it?”
Pim’s face falls, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Then you know you cannot touch me.” If he does, he will only break my heart once more. I’m barely holding on as it is.
“Stay.” His palms press against the scorching metal of the hood, a reminder that he is dead and I am not.
“You know I limit my time out here,” I murmur. If I stay any longer, then…then the visions will come. The last eight months have been a respite that I don’t want to give up, at least not yet.
“The only one looking for you was me, Nes.” It’s the same argument he’s been using since he found me, and it’s a dead argument. Just like his pulse. He’s also wrong, I can feel eyes on me. Not now, but they will come, and I will have to run.
“Maybe,” I hedge.
“And I found you.” He preens, always so pleased with himself. It took me weeks to hike from Lake Tahoe to Eternal Hollows. A few days in, I thought it was someone else hunting me, but alas, it was just Pim, my ghostly ex-boyfriend.
“You did.” The car door squeals in the fading afternoon light. I slide into the driver’s seat, hiking up my long green skirt. The heat is overbearing outside, and inside, it’s stifling.
Yet I embrace it.
Maybe that is a part of the psychotic aspect of me. The heat doesn’t bother me, hell, I’m barely sweating. I glance at my phone, and the screen is black with a heat warning. Even my long brown hair flutters around my body and down to my waist like a halo, and not a single hair sticks to me with sweat.
I was born for the Arizona heat.
“One kiss says it doesn’t start,” Pim comments with one arm on the seat behind me, his legs crossed.
I turn the key in the engine and listen to Bruce purr. I bite the corner of my lip and give Pim a teasing smile. “What was that?” I slam the door and pull out onto the broken road. Even with the heat, the potholes don’t compare to the ones in Pennsylvania. I still avoid them at all costs, though, because Bruce is my baby.
“You just got lucky.”
“You are just angry I’m not staying out here with you.” My thumb begins a slow tap on the steering wheel as I head toward town. The long road stretches out before me, while nothing but desert brackets the lone asphalt. Waves of heat dance in front of me to the beat of the earth. Sometimes, I can hear that beat if I listen in the dead of the night when I can’t sleep.
“Of course I’m angry. I lost you for eight years, then I find you, and you find the one town in the United States that’s a dead zone.” He doesn’t hide his annoyance, and his voice creeps higher as he speaks. “A crossing of ley lines to boot!” he yells to the cloudless sky.
His argument is valid. Ley lines should amplify magic. But here, tucked away at the edges of the country, something voids that magic. Or so I’m told.
“That one town is the only town that will help me keep my sanity.” It feels as though I’ve been running from myself for so long that when I finally found out about the dead zones, I stopped running and sprinted.
A year ago, something broke inside me, and with it came a torrent of painful visions that I could not control. They took over my life, stealing every hope and dream I ever had.
That’s when the nightmares began.
The visions gained momentum.
They aren’t all incredible glimpses into the future either. Some are so horrific that they steal my breath, my sanity. So yeah, I ran to the one place in the world where the visions can’t take my life, where I could regain control and just be me.
