Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine

by Andrijeski, JC

  I nodded, still bent over, fighting to control my breath and light.

  He didn’t move away, or take his hand off my back.

  I barely noticed. My mind still reeled around the flicker I’d felt of Revik, strongly enough that it must have blacked me out entirely. I must have been offline for at least a few minutes if Brooks and the rest of them had gone.

  I’d felt something in those few seconds of contact.

  Meaning, something other than the one thing…which felt a hell of a lot like my husband getting a blow job from someone who wasn’t me. I fought again to control my light as the thought reverberated, fought to focus on the detail that actually mattered…the one that had some bearing on what I was trying to do.

  Once I had, I realized I’d already known.

  Feigran had imparted that piece of information, too. It might have been his final gift before Dragon took him.

  Revik was going to China.

  16

  FALL OF AN EMPIRE

  Revik stared out a dirty car window streaked with rain. His jaw ached from clenching it.

  He fought to shut out the pain that still coiled around his light. Guilt lived there too, a denser pain that had little to do with separation and more to do with what he’d let happen in the back rows of the plane on the way here.

  They’d left Lhasa that morning, flying to Beijing.

  He’d spent weeks in Lhasa, picking the last of his team and doing his best to get them all more or less on the same page in terms of the operational hierarchy. He’d also made at least a superficial effort to learn the basics of their individual skill sets and personalities, as well as some of the more intimate ties between the various players.

  Over five weeks had gone by since he left Bangkok.

  Over a month. A fucking month.

  He’d felt Allie in part of that…strongly enough that he knew she must have felt him, too. He couldn’t block it out. He’d tried, but he couldn’t.

  He’d be more careful next time.

  He knew he might be kidding himself though.

  He’d tried to be strategic about it. He put them off for weeks…longer than he probably should have, given what he’d told Menlim. When his repeated refusals of sex in Lhasa didn’t stop them from asking questions, pushing him about Allie, about his separation pain, about his unwillingness to engage with them in more intense bonding, he realized he couldn’t continue to put them off forever. He figured if he let it happen more or less where the rest of them could feel it, they might be more willing to leave him alone.

  He knew why they were hounding him.

  It wasn’t because they wanted him, much less that they wanted his light. Most of them still hated him for deserting. Most of them still saw him as a traitor.

  So yeah, this wasn’t about wanting to fuck him.

  This was about Allie. It was about hurting his wife.

  They hated her. Some of them, like Ute, hated her to the point of unreason.

  Revik felt that hatred seethe off their light, pretty much whenever her name came up. He heard their voices fill with contempt whenever she got a mention on the feeds. He’d overheard detailed rape threats…descriptions of what they’d do to her if they ever got a hold of her in person. He’d had to fight to keep his mind closed and his body still when they threw those threats in his direction, or even when he just walked into a room at the wrong time, which happened more often than the other.

  They blamed her…for a lot, it seemed.

  So yeah, Revik knew what the constant offers of sex were really about.

  Trying to fuck him was just another way of throwing a dart at his wife’s back.

  Hell, they were probably under orders.

  Whatever the truth of that last part, letting that infiltrator blow him where the others could feel it hadn’t worked, in terms of getting the rest of them to back off.

  It hadn’t even worked temporarily. He’d been propositioned twice more before he even got off the damned plane.

  Shoving that off his light with an effort, he tried not to think about the fact that he’d felt her while it was happening. He knew that was probably his fault, whatever he’d tried to do at the time. He’d always had terrible control when it came to keeping his light away from his wife’s while he was fucking.

  He’d been dragging her into his sex life for longer than he cared to admit. He’d done it as far back as Russia…before he’d even met her as an adult outside of the Barrier.

  He couldn’t think about this now.

  He couldn’t fucking think about this now.

  Shoving the guilt and separation pain further out of his light, he focused on the mud-streaked view through the tinted windows.

  They’d been picked up at the airport by a full blown military convoy.

  He should have expected that, given whose name he traveled under again, but the sheer sophistication of the resources still blew his mind. He knew it was meant to. It was likely meant to intimidate him, too. He felt Menlim dancing around their uneasy truce like a lion circling its prey, waiting for it to be separated enough from its herd to take it down.

  So far, “Shadow” had honored that agreement––on the surface at least.

  He’d kept Revik out of the main construct.

  He’d allowed his light to retain a fair amount of autonomous space, feeding him information via individual seers, uplinks, data terminals and virtual landscapes versus the construct itself. Those means of imparting information lay in direct contrast to the elaborate Barrier spaces he knew his subordinates accessed for more in-depth information, but since he was cut out of a fair bit of that for security reasons anyway, he didn’t much care.

  After a number of meetings with Menlim’s current circle of military leaders, they’d determined to give him China.

  They wanted him to breach the Forbidden City.

  Menlim acted as if he’d bestowed some great favor in giving him this job, but truthfully, the thought of what lay ahead made Revik feel faintly sick.

  Granted, he had no lingering love for the seers of the Lao Hu.

  He had no love for their leader, Voi Pai, in particular…and not only because she’d betrayed him and Allie time and again, breaking truces and kidnapping their friends on more than one occasion. She’d made his wife into a whore. Worse, she’d given Allie to Ditrini, who was obviously insane, even to those who obeyed his orders.

  Revik’s anger on that point wasn’t limited to Voi Pai, either.

  The rest of them let it happen.

  Even with who she was, they’d let Ditrini do that to her.

  Worse, many of them had taken advantage of her powerless state at the time.

  Revik had seen bits of that as well, in his hallucinogenic tour of her time there. He wished he hadn’t. Moreover, he knew that whole series of events hurt Allie more than she pretended. Some of those people she’d considered friends. Some had even pretended sympathy to her predicament prior to their joining in on the abuse.

  Hell, Revik probably had Terian of all people to thank for keeping her alive in Beijing.

  Allie told him that “Ulai,” the seer whose body Terian inhabited––unbeknownst to her at the time, of course––had been the one to finally convince Voi Pai to intervene with Ditrini.

  By then the psychopath had already beaten her nearly to death. He’d tattooed her with his mark, raped her repeatedly, goaded others to rape her. He’d made her into a slave in all but name. A real one, from what Revik had seen via his wife’s light…and he’d seen a fuck of a lot more about that than he ever wanted.

  More than he’d ever be able to forget, most likely.

  It occurred to him he still owed Balidor a drink for taking that fucker Ditrini out.

  His personal issues with the Lao Hu leadership notwithstanding, this job still didn’t sit well with him. The thought of desecrating the holy City bothered him more than he wanted to think about, regardless of what he thought of the current administration.

  Image
s forced their way into his mind: images of him and the rest of the Dreng soldiers dragging out seers, kicking and screaming…seers who had once formed the most powerful cadre of his people known to exist anywhere in the modern world. They would have to shoot some of them, of course. No way would the City fall without deaths.

  Knowing the Dreng they’d make examples of some of them in other ways, too.

  Children lived behind these walls. Maybe a significant chunk of the seer children left living after the disasters of the past few years lived there.

  So yeah, in addition to Allie, Revik found himself thinking about Lily, too.

  He frowned, sinking his weight deeper into the padded bench in the back of the armored transport as he fought to think. Forcing both Allie and Lily out of his light and mind, he tried to think about this objectively. Perhaps he had more options here than he’d taken the time to really contemplate. He’d gone into it expecting and planning for a military op, of course…it was what he knew. It was what Menlim expected of him.

  Allie had always been the one with the diplomacy skills.

  Revik was a soldier.

  Even so, Menlim had specifically left the planning of this op up to him, including discretion in terms of approach and handling of the aftermath.

  Revik knew that had to be a test of some kind, too.

  He didn’t much care.

  Fitting a headset around his ear, he cleared his throat, feeling it go dry for some reason. It hit him then that this would be the first real order he’d given during a live op under Menlim in more years than he really wanted to think about. He remembered the so-called “compromises” of those years, too. The thought brought a harder pain to his chest. It also brought an unwelcome wave of emotion from that time, one that inevitably made him feel younger.

  He hit a code for his current Second, clearing his throat again.

  “Sir?” Tan’s voice was clear, alert.

  Unlike with some of the others, Revik didn’t sense any resentment on him.

  He hadn’t sensed much resentment on any of those he’d hand-picked before he left Hong Kong. The team he’d built via the resources Menlim offered him, first in Hong Kong and then in Lhasa, where he expanded in both numbers and skill sets, had been respectful to a fault.

  To his face, at least…and at least where Revik himself was concerned.

  The one exception had been Ute.

  He’d kept her out of his leadership team as a result. That hadn’t been personal either; Revik didn’t kid himself that any of these people were his friends. He simply didn’t have time for that shit in the field, and open insubordination was a morale-killer.

  He knew he’d been thinking of Allie in removing Ute, as well…in addition to Ute’s nearly open defiance of him in their one and only private meeting. Maybe he’d been thinking about Allie more than he should have been, under the circumstances.

  “Yeah,” Revik said, clearing his throat again. “I want to try something. Before we storm the gates.”

  Tan seemed to catch some flavor of Revik’s thoughts in his light.

  “A diplomatic approach, sir?” he said.

  Again, Revik caught no flavor of sarcasm there.

  “Something like that,” he muttered. Still thinking, he said, “Do we have any way to communicate with the seers inside the City? Directly, I mean? Without blowing anyone’s cover?”

  Revik felt a flicker of appreciation off Tan.

  And yeah, no one had told Revik that Menlim would have spies and other operatives waiting for them inside the City walls.

  But they would. Of course they would.

  “Yes, sir,” Tan affirmed. “Direct line to their infiltration units. Would you like me to patch you through to them now?”

  Surprise flickered off Revik’s light. Even so, he barely hesitated.

  “Sure.” He cleared his throat again, feeling his hands tighten on his pant legs. “Yes. Thank you. I’d like that.”

  He knew this wasn’t a battle where surprise would either be possible or a necessity.

  So yeah, this couldn’t really hurt them, even if it was a complete waste of time.

  Even so, Revik found himself wishing he’d thought of this earlier. Like, say, in Hong Kong, before he’d picked the remainder of his team. As it was, he’d be winging it blind…something that was also a lot more his wife’s style than Revik’s own.

  He didn’t have long to think about that, either.

  “Laiki,” a male seer said into his headset. “Who is this? I’m not getting an ID lock.”

  Revik took a breath. “Dehgoies Revik,” he said. “The Sword. I would like to speak to the honorable Voi Pai, if that would be in any way possible, brother.”

  Silence greeted him.

  He’d more or less expected that.

  “Are you leading them?” the other seer said in Prexci. “That kitre-so'h army bearing down on us…is that you, Illustrious brother?”

  “It is.” No point in being cagey. “Therefore there is some time urgency to my request, as you might imagine. I still had some hope that we might avoid violence…of the more serious kind, at least.” Pausing, he asked politely. “Are you now leading the infiltration units for the Lao Hu, brother Laiki?”

  “No. That would be sister Jai-Nua,” the other said, his voice holding an edge. “Who is currently working on how to cut your army into tiny, dust-like little pieces, my Illustrious Brother.”

  Revik sighed, clicking even as he leaned back on the bench.

  “My desire to speak to your mistress is sincere,” he said, exhaling again. “As is my wish to keep this confrontation from becoming necessary, in terms of serious loss of life.” He paused. “You must know you can’t win this?”

  The other seer smiled. Revik heard it through the line.

  “You sound pretty confident, my brother,” the seer said next. “Perhaps you are lost? Perhaps you do not remember where you are? I had heard that the Illustrious Sword goes soft in the head when separated from his mate for too long a time. Is that perhaps the problem…?”

  Revik felt his jaw clench.

  Mostly from the reference to Allie.

  “Perhaps you’ve forgotten I’m telekinetic?” he returned in a harder growl, switching from Prexci to Mandarin like the other had done. “Or perhaps you’re a bit soft in the head yourself, my brother? Given your undoubtedly laudable skills, you must know my orders come from someone other than my wife. Someone with far less generous of a spirit…although admittedly, someone you’ve given far less cause for offense. In this case, I’m not sure that will help you very much though, brother…given who he’s chosen to lead up his offensive force.”

  The silence on the other end grew tense.

  “Mistress Voi Pai has agreed to speak with you,” the seer said next, his voice changed, now formally polite. “Please hold the line, Illustrious brother.”

  Revik didn’t have long to wait that time, either.

  The voice that rose next made him wince physically.

  His frown twisted into a full-blown scowl before the end of her greeting, as her words immediately brought a series of memories rushing unwelcome to his light and head.

  “Illustrious Sword! I am so very honored, my beautiful brother…so honored…” she said, her voice dripping with a sickly sweetness that he remembered all too well.

  Revik’s teeth gritted more. Enough to hurt that time.

  “Am I told true, my brother?” Voi Pai lilted into that silence, her voice arch, borderline amused. “Are you really calling to negotiate with me? I am so…flattered. Truly.”

  Revik tried to fight the anger out of his light.

  He tried for a few hard beats of his heart.

  He failed.

  “I’m not making the offer for you, you sociopathic cunt.” His voice came out cold as ice, an open threat. “I’d kill you without losing so much as a minute of sleep, sister…and I only wish I’d been the one to pull the trigger personally on that raping psychopath Ditrini, to whom
you gave my wife as a goddamned birthday present. I make this offer solely for your people. For the next generation of Lao Hu seers. Perhaps you should think of them before you give me more fucking reasons to ignore my allegiance to my people’s cultural heritage and decide to simply follow orders in killing however many of you as I deem fit to meet my military objective. For either way, the purpose of my employer would be more than satisfied…”

  Scarcely taking a breath, Revik added even more darkly,

  “If you expect him to reign me in…or to even give a flying fuck…you’re deluding yourself, sister. So you might want to think pretty fucking hard before you start goading me right now. Really fucking hard, in fact…since I’m the only quasi-sympathetic ear anywhere in the vicinity who could actually keep your people from being slaughtered like cockroaches over the next forty-eight hours…”

  That time, when he paused to take a breath, he forced himself silent.

  So much for negotiation skills.

  Several hours later, Revik found himself walking into an audience chamber, surrounded by Menlim’s people, most of whom had weapons up and ready.

  For the most part, the weapons were a formality.

  As a part of his “negotiation” he’d forced the Lao Hu seers to dismantle the security protocols in their construct.

  Since then, Menlim’s people had begun to crack and dismantle it piece by piece, with a methodicalness and speed Revik couldn’t help marveling at…even as it unnerved him.

  He watched them pull it apart, examining, mapping and snap-shotting unfamiliar structures for later study even as they broke them apart. Every aspect got recorded both in the construct and via the organic tech mapping program they employed, detailing every nuance into a Barrier map that highlighted any and all engineering feats found inside the previous construct that Menlim’s team hadn’t yet incorporated into their own designs.

  The speed and efficiency with which the work got conducted blew away anything Revik had seen before, including in his previous stints working for the Dreng.