Well, and Marcus was on the list, too.
Jon figured he'd have to find some way to have a chat with him and Kara before they got ideas about bolting town. Hopefully without locking either of them in a basement storage room for a few hours, the way he had with Dante.
The bottom line was, given what they'd found out from Surli earlier that day, this wedding ceremony had probably pulled a lot of Allie's favorite people out of harm's way just at the right time. It still left those in San Francisco at risk, of course, but at least Aunt Carol was safe, and Surli had practically mentioned her by name. Jon didn't want to imagine what would have happened to their artistic, sharp but somewhat overly-idealistic aunt in the hands of the Lao Hu. Aunt Carol was a hippie at heart in a lot of ways, or a gypsy at least, despite her four kids. The Lao Hu would have rained on her happy parade in ways that Jon didn't even want to think about.
The fact that Revik had been so insistent that Jon invite friends and family from Allie's human life had been interesting to Jon. He didn't know if the motive there was guilt, or some sense of wanting family there, since he had no one but Tarsi, or simply a desire to please Allie...but Jon found it sort of touching.
Meaning, touching in that usual way Jon had with Revik, where he felt touched without being fully aware of what exactly it was that his brother-in-law was thinking or feeling.
Balidor assured them the dining area remained well-cloaked, but still, everyone held their breath when Revik and Allie first appeared in that box seat, and Allie stared down at all of them, her eyes reflecting the light of the chandelier. Jon had been sure she'd been staring right at the table where Uncle James, Marcus and Aunt Carol had been sitting, but her eyes seemed to go right by them a second later, right before she looked behind her, as if Revik had called her name.
Still, Jon could almost feel it when Revik dropped the bomb on her.
Aunt Carol and Uncle James were both staring up where she had been for a few minutes after she disappeared. Neither of them said anything to Jon right then, but he had a feeling that they might not have recognized her, if they hadn't seen Jon staring too.
Truthfully, she looked so different from the person he'd grown up with in San Francisco that he probably wouldn't have recognized her, either. Jon himself had already adjusted to two major changes in her that reflected in her physical appearance...one when she married Revik the first time in that cabin, and the next after she returned from her stint with the Lao Hu. Each time it had taken Jon a few weeks to adjust to how she looked, talked, acted...even how she carried herself, her very mannerisms.
She'd come out of her marriage to Revik taller, more seer-looking, harder somehow...and a lot more sure of herself. She'd taken control of the Seven and the Adhipan without batting an eye, and Jon had to question whether the old Allie would have made that transition so easily. She'd even been a little frightening at times, especially when she'd been matching wits with Revik while he was under the control of the Dreng and Salinse. It hadn't been Revik who'd pulled the cold maneuver that time...it had been Allie herself. She'd lied to him for months, convincing him she was considering joining him with the rebels, only to kidnap him and demolish his rebellion with the help of her sort-of ally at the time, Voi Pai and her Lao Hu army.
Jon understood why she'd done it, even then, but he couldn't help being a little off-balance that she'd been able to do it.
She hadn't exactly softened since those times, but something in her had changed, as soon as Revik took away the influence of the Dreng in both of them.
It had been harder to gauge all the differences that time though, since he did that right after they'd sprung Allie from the Lao Hu's stronghold in Beijing. Even without what Revik had done to remove the last of the Dreng's influences from her light, the Lao Hu had changed everything about her from the way she dressed to how she wore her hair to her facility with old-form Prexci and her ability to use seer sign language. Her actual mannerisms had changed from living with the Lao Hu, even though she'd only been there half a year or so.
According to the seers, if Jon could have seen the before and after of her aleimi, he would have been even more shocked by the differences.
Jon caught Allie's eye even as he thought it, and smiled.
She smiled back, but her expression still looked faintly stunned.
Currently, she was surrounded in a ring by Krista, Val and Desmond, three human friends from art school that she probably hadn't seen in at least three years even before the whole becoming a seer-terrorist thing.
With them stood Mika, one of the shortest seers Jon had ever met, and Chinese in appearance. She was one of the prostitutes who worked for Ullysa in Seattle, and someone Allie apparently befriended during their first stay there. Ullysa was walking around somewhere too, and another seer from Seattle named Yarli, about whom Allie also spoke fondly.
Kat, another seer from the Seattle crew, was not in attendance, for which Jon was beyond grateful. If anyone could have trashed this whole wedding thing, if nothing else by whipping Allie into a homicidal rage, it would be Kat.
Revik brought her downstairs not long after they went through some ritual food thing, which Wreg and Jax seemed to find hilarious. Most of the foods from their past together had been inside jokes that for the most part escaped Jon completely. Generic canned human soup, some kind of seer veggie burrito, two other seer dishes he'd never even heard of before. The only one Jon chuckled at in the slightest was the sampling of curry, which they'd eaten pretty much the whole time Revik was locked in that tank, being deprogrammed or whatever.
Jon had been asked for his input on what dish they should give them to represent their relationship now...along with Wreg, Balidor, Jax, and just about the whole ex-Seven and Adhipan crew.
After a fair amount of bickering and off-color jokes, all of them had unanimously decided, pretty much while laughing their asses off the whole time, on a seer dish that was considered an aphrodisiac...something with a lot of rare herbs and a land animal that Jon had also never heard of before. They assured him it was a highland creature distantly related to the rabbit, something that seers had eaten for millennia and that was perfectly safe. Even Tarsi got in on the joke when she arrived the day before, carrying a few pouches of herbs and bark and roots that were supposed to be used in the traditional version of the recipe.
Revik's aunt was now decked out in traditional seer robes, taking Vash's place as the elder overseeing the ceremony. As a part of that role, she was supposed to supply food at some point, too...something about a vision of their future together.
From what Jon could tell, the conspirators, which seemed to include everyone but Allie herself, had created some fusion of human and seer ceremonies and traditions, leaning more heavily on the seer end since so many more seers had been involved in the planning.
Jon himself had picked the venue, having been here once with a boyfriend, what felt like a million years ago now, during a tourist trip to New York to visit friends.
It was probably the only time he'd ever come to New York without Allie, so he figured it was a safe bet she'd never been here. It certainly wasn't Jaden's kind of place.
It turned out to be ideal in terms of security, too, so Balidor and Wreg had jumped at the suggestion, buying the place out for the night and (of course) tampering with all of the government-required security feeds and spending a few weeks setting up a construct that went all the way out to the main road. They'd even hired out their own staff, utilizing mostly seers from the House on the Hill, as well as a number of refugees who made it through security checks.
As far as Jon could tell, Wreg was already drunk.
Apparently bored with Allie's art school friends, he'd been leaning on Jon for the last hour, telling him about how in the old days, Revik would have had to wrestle some kind of mountain cat as part of the ceremony, and afterwards, Allie would cut out its still-beating heart and feed it to him...all of which, Jon couldn't help but be profoundly grateful he was missing.
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br /> He could see some sort of commotion going on towards the front of the room though, and wondered if the ceremony itself was about to start.
The whole thing struck him as mildly chaotic compared to your average human wedding, with everyone wandering around the room, pausing to eat and drink and flirt...it was nearly impossible to tell when something important might be about to happen.
Even as he thought it, however, Wreg smacked him on the shoulder with a grunt.
"No, you're right, brother...they'll do the formalities now. Tarsi's ready with whatever she's been doing up there..."
"Which is what?" Jon said, giving Wreg a slightly incredulous look when the large seer leaned most of his weight on his shoulder, nearly toppling him as he jumped off the table where they'd been leaning. "No animal sacrifices, I hope?"
Wreg laughed, pounding him again with one hand. "No, no...nothing like that, little brother. She's been up there, calling on the beings behind the Barrier...you know, to witness the whole thing..."
Jon gave him a puzzled look, not only because Wreg continued to hold his arm. "You mean Tarsi is calling on some ancient, super-sacred beings in the middle of..." Jon looked around, seeing Neela, another of the ex-rebels, laughing as she grabbed at Jax' ass. "...This? Doesn't that strike you as somewhat..."
"...Momentous?" Wreg grinned.
"...Sacrilegious," Jon amended. "And a little bit..."
"...Apocalyptic?"
"...Barbaric, I was going to say." Jon sighed, walking alongside the seer, who somehow managed to look even more muscular and warlike in a high-collared tuxedo.
Like Revik, he wore one with a Mandarin-style jacket, only without the vest below. With his hair mostly down for the first time Jon had ever seen it, but for a single ponytail on top that made him look even more like Ghengis Khan, he looked, well...Jon stumbled in his mind for a moment on the word, then realized what he was looking for was good.
Wreg looked really good.
"You flirting with me, youngster?" Wreg said, raising an eyebrow.
Jon startled, turning to stare at the seer before he'd had time to think.
Realizing that he hadn't done anything to censor his previous thoughts, or the appraisal that came before it, he found himself fumbling for words, flushing in spite of himself. Before he could come up with a half-way coherent answer, he felt something in his belly like a long, hot pull, strong enough that it had to have been deliberate.
"Jesus, Wreg..." he said, feeling his face grow hotter.
The seer only laughed, clasping his shoulder.
It crossed Jon's mind suddenly that the other man had been touching him a lot lately. Maybe more than was normal.
But Dorje hadn't even been dead a month. Thinking about Dorje brought a sick feeling to his chest, strong enough that the seer seemed to feel it.
"Hey, little brother..." Wreg's fingers tightened on his shoulder, pulling him against him. His voice also grew lower, more concerned. "Hey...no, it's not like that. I'm not doing that..."
"I didn't think you were doing anything," Jon said, forcing out the words.
Still fighting to get his equilibrium back, he shook his head, realizing only then that he'd come to a dead stop on the floor, one arm wrapped half-protectively around his chest.
"It's fine, Wreg...it's not you. Really. You didn't do anything wrong."
Before he could force his feet to move again, the seer pulled on his arms, yanking him into a hug. Jon couldn't react fast enough to decide if he was for or against being embraced by the ex-rebel, and ended up just standing there, unable to move as the seer sent another flood of warmth into his skin through his aleimi...that time, a solid heat that soothed Jon through his flesh down to his bones.
Jon found himself taking a deeper breath in spite of himself, exhaling that same breath in a kind of relief. He hadn't realized it, but something in his chest had nearly closed down entirely in those few seconds.
Wreg didn't let him go, but massaged the back of his neck with one hand, seeming to will him to relax more with his hands and his light.
Jon found himself leaning against the seer, until most of his weight was on Wreg's upper body. By the time Wreg let go, Jon almost regretted it.
"You all right, little brother?" Wreg said, his voice lower, worried-sounding again.
Jon nodded. "Yeah. I'm good." Feeling his face warm a second time, he avoided the seer's eyes, overly aware of Wreg's hands on his shoulders. "...Thanks. I'm good. Really."
Wreg only hesitated another minute, before nodding, once, seer-fashion.
Stepping back, he released him entirely, then seemed to be gauging whether Jon could hold himself up under his own power. Once he'd appraised him for a few seconds and seemed satisfied, he made a more articulate gesture towards the stage.
"We should go," he said, still studying Jon's face with that unnerving scrutiny. "We'll miss the festivities...and I think I'm supposed to do something up there."
Jon nodded, fighting to relax once more, now that the seer had let got of him. He still couldn't bring himself to meet Wreg's gaze.
"You and me both," he said, attempting to smile. He motioned with his head towards the area of the stage. "Okay. Lead the way...I'm ready."
When Jon started to walk, he felt Wreg watching him still, as if trying to decide whether to speak. When they reached the edge of the crowd, one of his thick arms wrapped around Jon's shoulders unexpectedly, pulling him closer once more.
"I'm sorry, brother, if my words hurt you..."
Jon shook his head, not meeting his gaze. "They didn't. It's not you, Wreg..."
"You're in pain, you know," Wreg said, his face still uncomfortably close. "We all feel it. We just want to help, brother..."
"Pain?" Jon looked up at him. "What does that mean?"
Wreg released him slightly, shrugging a little as he began to move them both through the people at the edge of those gathered in a denser half-circle.
"You know about separation pain?" he said finally.
Jon nodded, wary. "Yeah."
"Well, it's coming off you, brother...in waves. I'm not the only one who's noticed."
"Since when?" Jon said, remembering what Allie had done to him that day.
"Since your lover killed the old man," Wreg said, gesturing lightly with one hand as he guided them through the middle of the crowd.
They were close to the front now.
Jon flinched a little at his wording, but he didn't answer.
It was too late, anyway.
He could see Allie and Revik standing directly in front of them now. Allie was laughing, her shoulders and dark hair covered in white flower petals. Her face and eyes shone positively radiant as she looked up at Revik, who was also covered in flower petals and wore what looked like one of those old seer ceremonial hats, with the strange structure on top that might be made out of wax. Allie laughed again when she looked at him in it, and Revik leaned down to say something in her ear, right before she laughed again.
One of the officiating seers separated them, pulling them to two distinct standing areas, as if they were preparing to have them fight some kind of ring match. Apparently, they weren't supposed to be touching, much less sharing private jokes.
Tarsi stood over them now, watching them like they were a couple of misbehaving kids she was trying to figure out what to do with. Her clear eyes...eyes that could appear so much like Revik's...shone in the overhead lights, the latter consisting mostly of tiny bulbs colored in pale blues and pinks and greens.
"Where are the two witnesses?" Tarsi called out, right as Jon tried to move another few feet forward through the crowd.
"That's us, isn't it?" Jon asked Wreg, still trying to use his size as a shield.
"Yes, it is...hurry up, little brother!"
Wreg grabbed his wrist and brought him the last few feet through the crowd to where Allie and Revik stood on a slightly raised platform on the stage. All of the onlookers in the group seemed to be carrying flowers now...even All
ie's human friends, and their Aunt Carol and Uncle James. The flowers that covered most of the tables, the same ones that most people now clutched in their hands, were of a type Jon recognized, although he didn't know their name. White and star-shaped, they had a delicate beauty that Jon recognized from shrines in Seertown. He couldn't remember seeing flowers like that since the last big festival in Seertown, in fact.
Funnily enough, that festival had been the celebration for Syrimne's birthday.
That had been before they knew Revik was Syrimne, of course...but still, in retrospect, it was strange, in terms of the timing of everything. Allie had nearly been shot in that pool hall above the cafe that afternoon, they were pretty sure by ex-Rooks. She probably would have been shot, if Balidor hadn't wrestled her to the floor and sent his people after the shooters.
Something about the memory made the pain in Jon's chest worse.
Remembering that time in the bar with Cass and Chandre and Allie made him strangely nostalgic, although his mind knew the feeling made no sense. He'd been lost then too, a newcomer to Seertown and still trying to deal with what had happened while he'd been Terian's plaything in that bunker in the Caucasus Mountains. Hell, he'd still been trying to get used to the fact that his sister was a seer, that he would never return to his life in San Francisco...how to button shirts and tie his shoes when he had only three fingers on one of his hands.
Looking at Allie now, the time between then and now felt vast.
Still, he'd never seen her look so happy. She was still grinning at Revik, even though one of the seers standing next to her...Yumi, Jon realized, after he gave her a second look in the ceremonial robe she was wearing...kept smacking her head lightly, probably to get her to stop sending to Revik. Yumi only seemed to be having minimal success.
Allie's War Season Three Page 49