Page 1 of Carmine

Prologue.

Klutz

Aurora rarely had visions when she was asleep, but when she did, they were fuckin’ doozies.

My woman sat up gasping, and I cringed as I saw Aurora’s eyes were completely white. Something in my gut warned me to grab my phone, and I did, fumbling with it as Aurora drew in a deep breath.

I hit record as she began to speak.

“Disaster is imminent, she raises her voice but is ridiculed. Just because it’s never happened before does not mean it cannot now. She is drowned out by thousands. Ignoring her cries means we can no longer divert what is to come. The streets will burn red, orange, and yellow. Lava will flow, and the living will perish.

“And he who watches sees his sign. Twenty weeks from the third day of disaster, the enemy will move. His numbers unknown, but more than believed. Defences will fail, lines over-run, and many will die. The unwanted shall fall, and for the second time within six months, the streets will bleed red. An ally will… will what?” Aurora spoke in the monotone I’d come to recognise when she described her vision, but at the end, she changed to her usual voice.

I cocked my head. That was new.

“Aurora?” I asked, puzzled.

“An ally shall weep tears of blood through heavy losses…and I can’t see who. Who is it?” Aurora whispered, and I felt a shiver down my spine. Aurora never interacted with her visions. This was different.

“Who bleeds for the rest to live?” Aurora shrieked, and I winced at the high decibels.

“Who? Who? Show me!” Aurora cried and clawed the air. I grabbed her hands before she could harm herself.

“No! A trap? Who’s caught in it?” Aurora screamed again.

Aurora’s body stiffened, and then she collapsed, sobbing. It took me an hour to calm her down and get her back to sleep. As soon as Aurora was sleeping, I crept out of bed and dialled Drake.

“Yo?” he said sleepily.

“Aurora had another vision. We can expect lava running through the streets of RC within a week. And she gave us a warning: we’re going to lose an ally in the fight. I recorded it,” I explained, trying to get the information straight in my head still.

“Start from the beginning,” Drake ordered.

Chapter One.

August 2022

Molly.

Igingerly dipped the test tube into the steaming water. For safety, I was gloved up and using tongs, but I knew this little pool would be high in acidic levels. And they would be increasing. They had been for ten years. But despite my carefully recorded data, I’d been laughed out of the office and fired. I was lucky to have the personal fortune that my grandparents had left me to continue my work.

My career, as it was, was in tatters, and my name was a laughing point across the country, but I damn well knew I was right. Rapid City, South Dakota, and the surrounding towns were in deep shit.

Three years ago, I’d put together a data pack with all the information and facts I’d collected and presented it to my peers. For my efforts, I had not even been heard out, and my boss had ripped it up in front of me. Volcanoes, I was informed, did not exist in South Dakota. Which wasn’t what I was saying.Obviously, I knew full well volcanoes didn’t fucking exist there, but laccoliths did.

However, my boss had sacked and blacklisted me within the community. You’ll find that once you’ve been kicked from the head office of the U.S. Geological Survey team and labelled a nut, nobody wanted to work with you.

Still, I tried. I’d taken my data and headed towards EROS in South Dakota’s Sioux Falls. The assholes there had let me present it and also laughed at me. So, I ventured out to the Black Hills myself. A rise in earthquakes near Rapid City over the past century suggested underground activity, and nobody was monitoring it.

My hypothesis wasn’t an idea that I’d thought up out of thin air. I’d begun formulating it a decade ago when I noticed a faint seismic fluctuation around Rapid City. That had intrigued me because South Dakota was usually not a state we worried about. Intrigued, I began monitoring and checking into Rapid City’s past.

The area had experienced a big increase in earthquakes and tremors. Research backed up the knowledge I already had. There was no active volcano or any volcano in South Dakota. Yet I was staring at information that showed something was wrong. And that had started me down a route that blew my career up seven years later.

A noise made me peer up, startled, as a man in a leather waistcoat headed towards me. He looked vaguely familiar, as if I should recognise him, but I couldn’t grasp his name.

“Morning,” he said with a nod. There was a name on his waistcoat: Carmine.

“Hi,” I replied warily. I was alone, and what was the saying… nobody would hear me scream.

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