Free Riven by Dean Murray Page A

definitely coming at us from the
south. Once I found the mountain range I even found that old highway that
runs up from Arizona."
    Ash and I both
leaned forward slightly. This was new. Kristin hadn't ever been wrong
before, at least not when it came to the big picture, so when she'd
told us that she'd seen an attack coming we'd just started working
through contingency plans and put our visitors on high alert.
    Those who had just
been here as guests rather than allies had mostly departed and then
we'd all spent a tense three days expecting an attack at any point.
The attack still hadn't materialized, which had some of my allies
more jittery about my actions over the last few hours than they
otherwise would have been.
    Ash looked at me
as if to let me ask the question, but I nodded for him to go ahead.
Kristin always responded better to Ash than to anyone else.
    "Were there
vehicles on the road?"
    Kristin nodded,
but now something new was bothering her. "There were a few cars,
a SUV and some kind of cargo truck, but nobody freaked out so they
must not have seen the werewolves."
    There was a pause
and then Kristin shrugged, almost like she was putting whatever had
been bothering her out of her mind, and then she continued. "Once
the attackers arrived at the estate I only caught flashes of things.
I saw Alec pulled down by a pair of them out in the garden and then
everyone scattered. You put a bunch of rounds into one from the roof,
Ash, but then it jumped up there with you and practically tore you in
half."
    Reliving the
memory was obviously hard on Kristin, but she managed to continue
with only a slight catch to her voice. "James and Isaac tried to
double-team one of the werewolves out by the garage, like they were
trying to buy time for some kind of getaway, but they didn't last
long either."
    It was my turn to
ask the questions. "Did you see any of them inside the house,
Kristin?"
    "No, I was
still just kind of floating above everything while the fight was
going on."
    "Did you see
anyone else? Louis, Rebekka, Jasmin, Dominic?"
    "No, just
you, Ash, James and Isaac."
    Donovan seemed to
have figured out where I was headed. He was fumbling through a stack
of papers on his desk.
    "Here it is.
Demolition on the Adams Bridge was started the day before Kristin had her dream."
    I nodded. "That's
what I thought I remembered from our discussion two weeks ago. You'll
need to confirm when they had it torn down enough that it wasn't
drivable, but I'd be very surprised if it was still navigable by the
time Kristin fell asleep."
    Kristin was a
quick study, but there was just too much she hadn't had a chance to
learn yet. "What are you saying, Alec? That my gift isn't
working anymore?"
    "No, I'm
saying that I don't think this was a precognitive dream, I think it
was implanted inside your mind by an outside force."
    Rebekka and Louis
were both nodding now, but it was Ash who gave Kristin the last
piece. "Dream Stealer. It all makes sense when you factor him
into the picture. Your point of view wasn't from the ground, which is
what you're most familiar with, it was from above which he could
experience for himself with a simple flyover."
    Kristin understood
now. "Right, and I saw the four of you die because you are the
four who in his mind are key to protecting the pack. I didn't see
anyone else because Dream Stealer wouldn't have known that we're
allied with Tonopah and Las Cruces."
    I waited while
everyone settled back down and then started ticking off the key
points. "This means that we'll have to take all of Kristin's
precognitive warnings with a grain of salt. Even if the Coun'hij
isn't ready to attack us, they'll do this kind of thing as a way of
keeping us off balance and paralyzed, so we're going to have to be
very careful about letting another such attempt delay us from doing
stuff that we know is important."
    Rebekka nodded.
"You're right. In hindsight, you were right to send that group
out earlier today, even if you haven't been