Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine

by Andrijeski, JC

  “What if the Lao Hu go after you?” I said. “Trap you down there?”

  He shook his head. “They won’t. Not with the City’s construct down. They can’t bring me down alone and they know it.”

  “But what about Dragon?” I said, still not wanting to leave him. “You said you saw him in there…in the gardens.”

  “He didn’t hurt me,” Revik said.

  Exhaling and clicking, I grimaced, remembering the bare bones of their exchange. “You said he was fucking eating someone, Revik…raw. Anyway, he might hurt you this time. You don’t know.”

  I watched him stare off for a second or two, as if thinking. Then he shook his head, frowning slightly as he combed his fingers through his hair.

  “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so. He’s not here for me.”

  I bit my lip, wanting to argue with him again. Even so, I found myself thinking I knew what he meant. Dragon wasn’t here for Revik…not anymore.

  Maybe he never had been.

  Revik and I were just…I don’t know…stepping stones along the way.

  At that particular moment I couldn’t make myself care about any of that, though. Thinking about Dragon or what his motives might be was just more white noise.

  I didn’t want to leave him.

  I didn’t want to fucking leave him here, not for an hour…not even for ten minutes. I didn’t much care if it made sense or not. I wanted to scream at him about no separations, about agreements we’d made…vows we’d taken…but some part of me knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to bring any of that up right then.

  So I just stood there, watching his back as Revik rearranged his grip on the edge of the disguised organic, yanking it open the rest of the way with an effort, his tattooed forearm and shoulder straining. Once he got it open about four feet, he inserted his body through, peering around the edge of the opening to scan the garden and nearby trees.

  I watched him, feeling my heart pounding harder in my chest.

  I couldn’t seem to make myself walk away from him.

  I couldn’t make myself walk away.

  “Allie.” Revik turned, sliding back behind the stone wall.

  He kept his foot propped in the opening.

  That time, before I could read the look on his face, he caught hold of the front of my dress, pulling me towards him. When I looked up at him, meeting his gaze, there were tears in his eyes.

  “I don’t want to talk now,” he said, his German accent thicker. “I don’t.”

  I nodded, fighting to control my light. “Okay.”

  Leaning down, he kissed me, shocking me with the contact even as I felt pain expand off his light. The taste and shape of his mouth shocked me more, making my own pain exponentially worse. I felt that obsessive thing there as his aleimi slid into mine, as I felt that reaction coil through him again, a near-violence twisted into anger right before he pulled away.

  He liked the dress. He also hated that I was wearing it.

  He was fighting not to make a crack about it.

  He didn’t let go of me, though.

  “I love you,” he said, meeting my gaze.

  His words came out hard. His jaw clenched as he looked at me, his clear eyes brightening more. I felt it that time. I felt the emotion behind his words. I felt that love even as my heart clenched, feeling like I was going to suffocate from all of the pain that pulsed off him as he looked at me. I felt jealousy on him too, but that fierceness of love briefly overshadowed the rest.

  When he exhaled, wiping his face, I felt his pain worsen.

  Pulling me closer, he leaned his face against mine. “I’d do it for you again, Allie…all of it,” he murmured. “I swear I would…I’d do anything for you, wife. No regrets. None. Okay?”

  I nodded, grasping his arms. I held onto him tightly, maybe too tightly, my fingers and light desperate as I fought to control myself, to keep from wrapping myself around him, pulling him away from that opening in the wall.

  He didn’t let me hold onto him for long, though.

  Disentangling his arms, he kissed me again, more lingeringly that time.

  “We knew it might come to this,” he said. Clasping my fingers, he pulled my hand and arm closer to his chest, closer to his heart. “Allie…we knew. Both of us. You can’t blame yourself, Allie. You can’t…okay? I love you.”

  I nodded, fighting to breathe, to even see him clearly.

  I stared down at the grass, still fighting to breathe, still feeling like I was suffocating.

  “Revik,” I told him. “Revik…I love you…”

  But he’d already let go of me.

  “…More than anything,” I said. “More than anything, Revik…”

  I looked up.

  But he was already gone.

  He’d disappeared through the opening in the wall before I could even finish saying it.

  “What?” Balidor’s breath caught. He gripped the instrument panel of the helicopter where he sat shotgun to Varlan, who was flying the thing. “Brother…gaos. You are sure?”

  “Sure?” Deklan grunted, his Asian accent coming out more strongly. “Yes, brother, I am very sure of this. She killed five of us…”

  Balidor sucked in a hissing breath. Five?

  He felt his heart jerk sideways in his chest, even before he heard the names.

  “Sister Talei,” Deklan said, his voice blunt. “Sister Neela. That Chinese seer, Surli. Two of yours. Ike…he was killed while standing guard. Also Mara.”

  Balidor felt that pain in his light worsen, going from disbelief to a sickening grief, darkening his light. He fought with his own emotions, unable to answer for those few seconds.

  He had trained Mara. Recruited her...so he’d known her as a child.

  Ike came from Tarsi’s generation, but Balidor had run ops with him for decades. Centuries, really. They’d never been close personally, yet Balidor had known him well. Like all of those in the Adhipan, he’d been family.

  He had begun to befriend the ex-Rebel, Neela…hell, he’d slept with her during that rooftop bonding session, so recently enough that he still felt some of her in his light. He’d enjoyed it. Enough to get him in trouble with––

  Next to him, Varlan turned, his violet eyes holding scrutiny from where he gripped the cyclic in both hands.

  “What is it, brother?” he said. “What has happened?”

  Balidor shook his head, not answering.

  “…She also wounded brother Raddi severely,” Deklan resumed through the comm, his deep voice holding more anger. “…and brother Jorag, who has a concussion and a broken leg. That female seer, Kat…she was shot in the stomach. She is in danger of losing her life from loss of blood. We have her with human medics now, so I will pray for her to survive this…but they were unsure if they had enough blood available in her typing in their storage…”

  “Is a donor possible?”

  “We are looking at that now.” Deklan’s voice grew cold. “The rest of us would like to go hunting, brother. We are waiting only for your word.”

  Silence fell over the line.

  Balidor could feel Varlan listening to that silence, along with Wreg and Jon now too, who listened from the nearest row of seats.

  The four of them rode in an Mi-8/17 series Russian helicopter, heading directly for Chinese airspace now that the network had been downed.

  Balidor couldn’t believe the network was down, frankly.

  He’d scarcely recovered from what it was Dehgoies and Alyson had been doing, running what appeared to be a multi-level operation to infiltrate Shadow’s construct, where they’d intended Revik to be caught at one of those levels while they continued to run a different storyline at the next one.

  Her whole thing with Dalejem…but Balidor struggled to understand that, as well. He knew it would probably take more than a handful of meetings for him to untangle all of it, and to understand exactly what the three of them had cooked up to accomplish this.

  He honestly couldn’t decide if
he wanted to kiss the two of them or lock them in the tank for what they’d done, but he knew that was the same part of him that couldn’t believe they’d gone after the network in the first place…much less that their plan had been successful.

  A part of him still struggled with this, with what it even meant, or how long it might last…or how to capitalize on it now that this window had appeared. Alyson had already given him several sets of orders in that regard, the largest of those being to deal with that underground facility she’d found in Denver and to scan for any sign of the network resurfacing in the event they’d missed one of the storage facilities for bodies. Truly though, Balidor strongly suspected that none of them understood the full implications of what had just been done…including Alyson and her husband. Perhaps especially them, in that they had such intense emotional motivations for all of this, in addition to the rest.

  More worrisome perhaps, neither Balidor, Allie, Revik or any one else on their team had any idea at all what the Dreng might do in response.

  Balidor strongly suspected that they’d entered a whole new territory there.

  For now, however, Balidor very much felt like him and his team were playing catch-up. Even their physical responses to the change felt more reactionary than not. They’d only obtained the helicopter itself less than an hour earlier. Varlan negotiated the deal in trade––mostly livestock and seeds but also some fuel––when they stopped off at a small island off the coast of Taiwan that morning.

  “Brother, there is something else,” Deklan said via the earpiece. “The human president. Brooks. She is missing. Some of her people are dead, too.”

  Balidor’s jaw tensed.

  Again, he tried to put himself in Shadow’s shoes, and in those of the Dreng more generally. His mind flipped through scenarios, good and bad, thinking about what Shadow might see as the next logical step, given what had just been done to him.

  Balidor found himself reeling with the implications there again, even as he tried to decide whether emotion might factor into this on the Dreng side, as well, even if they weren’t beings in the sense of being human or seer.

  Revenge? Would this be a revenge-type scenario?

  Or would they approach it with pure logic?

  Balidor knew he wasn’t alone in being off-balance. He felt strongly Shadow had not seen this coming either, that the multi-leveled, op-within-an-op charade that Allie and her mate had been running over the course of the past nine or ten months had truly managed to surprise the Dreng beings operating down here, on the ground at least.

  But now this. Chandre. Brooks.

  This had to be some level of their response.

  Why would Shadow want Brooks?

  Balidor realized he knew the answer to that, too.

  “Gaos di'lanlente a' guete…” He felt his face go cold as it lost most of its blood. Turning in his seat, he shouted back into the helicopter’s main cabin, not caring who heard him. “Wreg! Jon! Up here…now!”

  He heard them unstrapping safety belts and regaining their feet, right before the curtain twitched and Wreg appeared in the doorway of the cabin. His broad shoulders filled the opening almost entirely in his full combat gear.

  He stared down at Balidor, his obsidian eyes holding a denser understanding.

  Balidor didn’t wait to discover what the other seer had already felt on his light.

  “They’re going to nuke China.” Balidor took a breath, feeling the understanding lodge in his chest. “Wreg. They’re going to nuke China. For real this time…to take out the Bridge and the Sword.”

  Squeezing past Wreg’s bulk, Jon walked up closer to Balidor, gripping the back of his flight chair in his hands as he swayed slightly in the turbulence.

  “Why would they do that there?” Jon said, speaking loudly over the propellers. “Didn’t Allie say he has an underground facility there? Why would he nuke his own facility?”

  Balidor shook his head, even as he fought to think.

  “Maybe he knows it is breached.” He frowned. “…Or maybe he knows it would not be at risk. Nenzi said it was far underground,” he added. “Maybe he built it to survive such a thing. Clearly from the compound in Denver he expected things to go this way eventually. Allie seemed to be suggesting that nuclear war was the next step for them…”

  “Then why wouldn’t he have done it before now?” Jon said. “Back when he was threatening the Lao Hu…before he sent Revik there?”

  Balidor blinked at him, startled at the flat tone in the other’s voice.

  It hit him that Jon was in his own kind of lockdown mode with the military stuff, probably something he was increasingly picking up from his partner, Wreg. The two of them were so far in one another’s light by now, Balidor had noticed a lot of tendencies and skills transferring between them, borderline seamlessly at times.

  But the military thing with Jon could be especially pronounced for some reason.

  Meeting Jon’s light hazel eyes, Balidor exhaled.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are we sure the trigger is neutralized?” Wreg asked. “Nenzi won’t turn on her and kill her now, will he?”

  “Not for that reason,” Balidor said grimly.

  Seeing the harder look coming to Wreg’s eyes, Balidor frowned, wishing he could unsay it, but he couldn’t. He shrugged, trying to blow by it instead.

  “She seemed to think Menlim had no access to the trigger with the network down,” he explained. “He clearly needs access to the light of other beings to activate it, and with no network tying the Dreng directly to Earth and those other beings, he is powerless to use the trigger, too.” Pausing, he shrugged, flipping one hand sideways. “Perhaps not being able to control Nenzi is enough of a reason for this move. But there was more to it, too. Something she did not tell me. It is only a suspicion of course…”

  “Meaning…what?” Jon said. “The trigger’s still there, but Menlim can’t reach it?”

  “Meaning there is no dugra a’kitre trigger,” Wreg said, answering for Balidor even as he exhaled in understanding. “The trigger is that fucker, Dragon. Menlim had some way to make him do his bidding…now he doesn’t.”

  Balidor saw understanding bleed over Jon’s expression.

  Jon opened his mouth, but Balidor cut him off, hearing the edge in his own voice.

  “We don’t have time to discuss all of that now,” he said, his voice warning. “We’ll go with the Bridge’s hypothesis on that unless we hear otherwise. We have to assume that’s why Dragon was ‘helping’ us with those network seers…and presumably killing their current bodies to collect the new ones all in one place.” He paused, but only just. “Has anyone heard from her since she gave the order on Denver? We need to pull her and Dehgoies out of there…right now. I’m assuming she’ll still be easier to reach than he is.”

  Wreg nodded, his expression hardening. Touching his headset, he receded into the Barrier even as he did it.

  “On it, brother,” he said.

  Balidor snapped, “…And open every fucking channel we have over there, including to whoever we have access to in the Lao Hu…that person Laiki Allie mentioned. Also Voi Pai. Find out if we still have any contacts left in SCARB over there, the Chinese government, civilian authority…anyone. Contact the refugee camps, too…”

  Still thinking, Balidor felt the dread in his light worsen as the enormity of it washed over him. “…Have someone send a message to the Wvercians, too…and the human refugees around Beijing itself. Find out if they have an alarm system…a loudspeaker system…anything we can use to communicate to large groups of people. We need to get them to move as far away from the Forbidden City and the rest of Beijing as they can…”

  Pain filled his light as the sheer number of living beings grew more real behind his eyes.

  He could feel Wreg and Jon reacting to his pain, even as they receded into the Barrier, igniting links to do as he said.

  Balidor switched over himself, first trying his private link to the Bridge bef
ore he attempted Dalejem, thinking he might be able to reach one of them via the Barrier if he was close enough, now that the construct was gone. When no one picked up after a half-dozen pulses, he split the channel and went direct to Lao Hu infiltration.

  He got no answer there, either.

  “Gaos…” he said, feeling that pain worsen.

  They had no idea when Chandre took Brooks.

  For all they knew, the missiles could be on their way already.

  He opened up another channel for Vik, sending a brief message to have him and Dante check the satellites without waiting to talk to the seer in person. They had open skies again, from a surveillance perspective at least.

  Someone should be able to see the damned things if they were really coming.

  “What do we tell them?” Wreg said, blunt. “There will be fucking riots if everyone learns the truth at once, Adhipan…it will be as bad as telling no one at all. They will kill one another and themselves trying to get out…”

  Balidor knew he was right.

  Even so, all he could do was shrug, feeling his jaw harden as it hit him again.

  “We cannot not tell them, brother Wreg,” he said. “…We cannot.”

  Feeling Wreg’s light change as Balidor’s words sank in, Balidor heard him sigh, right before a pulse of grief left him, dense in the small space of the Russian cockpit.

  “Agreed,” he said.

  Balidor felt Jon’s light wrap into Wreg’s, even as he moved to stand closer to him.

  For a long time after that, none of them spoke aloud.

  Nor did they stop trying to contact anyone they could find.

  I walked fast along the wall, trying to stick to the trees even as I mulled over what made the most sense, in terms of finding my way out of Beijing. Given that I had to get to a place where I could transmit, I couldn’t use the same exit as Revik. The airport was still inside the zone where all communication links were being monitored.

  Jem and I tossed around a few secondary exits.

  Even then, we’d had a pretty good idea that Revik and I might need to split up.