Revik

by J. C. Andrijeski

  Kali blinked again, but the scene in front of her didn’t fundamentally change.

  Her eyes focused incredulously on the young male seer lying on the pavement, struggling with the Asian female, who Kali realized must also be a seer from the striking turquoise blue of her eyes. Her long, black hair hung down, whipping at his face and shoulders. She wore a dark green tank top and what looked like American combat fatigues.

  Kali didn’t know her, but she recognized the male easily enough.

  It was Dehgoies Revik.

  “Raven!” he said in English. “Goddamn it! Get off me!”

  “Fucking bastard!” she spat at him.

  “Raven! Cut it out! Jesus… let me explain!”

  She slammed him in the stomach with her knee and he let out a gasp, clenching the muscles of his abdomen.

  He didn’t let go of her wrist, though, as she’d likely intended.

  She tried to head-butt him next, but Dehgoies managed to just get out of the way, right before he angled his body sideways to block another kick, that one aimed at his genital area. He shifted again, blocking her a second time when she tried to elbow him in the throat with the arm whose wrist he’d captured.

  “Explain?” she spat at him. “Really? You want to explain yourself to me, you piece of shit? Go on, Dags. Explain.”

  Her accent came out sounding Chinese, although Kali heard some German in there, too.

  The female seer Dehgoies called Raven gripped his hair next, slamming his head against the pavement. From his eyes, she nearly managed to stun him that time. He still didn’t loosen his iron grip on her wrist, however, and it occurred to Kali that he wasn’t really fighting back.

  Instead, he seemed to only be trying to keep her from hurting him.

  At least too badly.

  “Explain this, then… cocksucker!” she said, trying to hit him again.

  “Raven!” he said. “Stop it! Just fucking stop it, all right? Let me up!”

  The woman only fought harder to get her gun hand free of his grip.

  Kali frowned, trying to decide what to do.

  She couldn’t just let the Chinese seer shoot him, as the female undoubtedly looked like she intended to do. Somehow, she doubted any attempts she made to directly intervene would be welcome either––likely not by either of them.

  She could sense a domestic argument when she saw one. She knew her presence there, as another seer female, could very well make the situation worse, depending on the precise nature of their disagreement.

  With seers, domestic arguments could escalate, fast.

  Even so, Kali didn’t leave, either.

  Reluctant as she was to risk making matters worse, she wrestled with possibly trying to intervene anyway, to at least pull the Chinese female off him long enough to keep things from getting overly bloody. She was still standing there, trying to decide, when another male emerged from a bar across the street.

  He, too, looked like a seer, Kali realized.

  His amber-colored eyes shone in the sunlight on a strikingly handsome face framed by auburn hair under a khaki-colored cap. While closer to the Eastern European features some seers wore, there was a hint of Asian in the shape of his eyes and his cheekbones, as well.

  His full mouth curled in an expression somewhere between amusement and a frown, and while he moved quickly, something casual remained in the nature of his gait.

  Walking directly up to the two of them, wearing an open army shirt and combat fatigues held up by a leather belt, he pulled a handgun out of the holster hanging from that same belt, and fired three consecutive shots up into the air.

  Dehgoies and the woman froze in their struggles, looking up.

  The auburn-haired male’s gun then leveled on the Chinese female.

  Kali couldn’t help noticing the weapon he carried didn’t have any of the organic bells and whistles that the female seer’s had. Even so, it would kill her, particularly at that close of range, particularly given the way he aimed it at her head with a rock-steady hand.

  “Should I shoot her, Revi’?” the new seer said, cocking the pistol deliberately. Meeting the gaze of the woman with the tangled black hair, he smirked at her while continuing to aim his words at Dehgoies. “Your call, brother.”

  Kali felt her throat close, even as a shard of ice tried to enter her heart.

  The male seer standing there, with his auburn hair ruffling in the hot wind where it grew in a longish tangle, his army shirt open over what looked like an American flag T-shirt and a St. Christopher’s medal, was none other than Terian himself.

  Six

  Raven

  “SERIOUSLY. What the fuck is the matter with you?” Dehgoies held the wet cloth to his mouth, where Raven had clocked him with the butt of the gun, not long after Terian dragged her off him.

  He looked down at the blood that came away from his lip, feeling another hot flush of anger as he realized it would probably swell.

  “Jesus, Ray,” he growled. “You need to lay off the coke. Or are you just pissed off because Galaith sent you back to this shithole in the first place?”

  Raven glared at him.

  Folding her arms tightly across the armored vest she wore, she propped her boots up on the table in the hotel suite he’d been sharing with Terian. Raven had a cut under one shockingly bright turquoise eye, but he hadn’t given it to her.

  It came from the car bomb she’d set off to get his attention as he left the Grand Hotel.

  He watched as she leaned over the mirror, snatching up the rolled-up 10,000 Vietnamese dong bill off the table where Terian left it, and snorting a thick white line of powder.

  He knew she did it partly in defiance of his words.

  He also knew that was mostly an excuse, that she would have done it anyway.

  He gritted his teeth, but took the same rolled up bill from her when she shoved the mirror in his direction. He did a line himself, gasping at the sting in his nostrils, feeling that metallic taste hit the back of his throat even as the drug set his aleimi on fire.

  He did another line before Raven rapped the table with her knuckles, motioning for him to pass the mirror back to her.

  From the other side of the room, Dehgoies saw Terian shake his head at the two of them, a faint thread of humor in his amber-colored eyes.

  “Who was she?” Raven asked again, gritting her teeth as her pupils dilated more under the coke. She rubbed her nose, sniffing as her aleimi sparked.

  Dehgoies only stared at her for a few seconds, feeling the high hit his light in stages. A head rush closed his eyes, causing him to relax into that sparking vibration, bringing a warm flow of nearly sensual pleasure. Seconds later, that hotter intensity cycled and ratcheted back up, hitting him with a flood of adrenaline, heating his aleimi, giving him a jolt of frustrated energy. That vibration coursed over his skin, making him grit his teeth harder.

  “Who was who?” he said.

  Raven threw the glass she’d been holding at him and he ducked, cursing in Mandarin when it shattered against the hotel wall behind him.

  Glaring at her, he tensed when she slammed her booted feet down from the table, leaning towards him, her eyes glittering with a deeper anger.

  “We said no seers.” Raven stared at him, her eyes holding a cold fury.

  When he didn’t speak, she clenched her jaw, slamming her hand down on the polished, reddish-chocolate wood to emphasize her words.

  “No fucking seers, Dags. No seers. It wasn’t an ambiguous request.”

  “I didn’t fuck any other seers, Ray.”

  “Not from lack of trying, I’m sure…” Terian muttered humorously.

  Revik turned, glaring at him.

  Undaunted, Terian gave him a smirking wink, right before he leaned over the table to pluck the rolled up Vietnamese dong from Raven’s fingers. Raven glared at him as he used the razor blade to chop up more of the coke after he dumped another small mountain on the rectangular glass surface.

  Not getting a reactio
n from him, Raven glared back at Dehgoies, as if asking if Terian was right.

  Dehgoies gave Terian a last hard look before looking back at Raven.

  “I didn’t fuck her, all right? Calm down.”

  “Why didn’t you, Dags?” Raven said, sarcastic. “Is Terry right? Did she turn you down?”

  Revik felt his face darken.

  Goddamned nervous reflex… he never seemed to be able to control it, not unless he was working and adopting another persona altogether.

  Unfortunately, Raven knew that about him.

  “You’re fucking blushing.” She stared at him coldly, disbelief in her voice. She pointed at him, looking up at Terian. “Do you believe this shit? This goddamned, kitre-so'h, dugra-te di aros son of a worm is fucking blushing.”

  Terian chuckled as he finished the line he’d been working on, sniffing hard and tilting his chin up towards the ceiling as he raised his head. He rubbed his nose, sniffing again and blinking hard into the afternoon light.

  Dehgoies watched his friend’s pupils dilate sharply, turning his irises nearly black.

  Terian bent down to do another line, but Raven continued to glare at Dehgoies from around the blocking angle of Terian’s body.

  “She did, didn’t she?” Raven snapped. “She turned you down. You asked her for a fuck and she said no. Didn’t she?”

  Dehgoies felt his face continue to warm as he turned over Raven’s words, knowing he’d already betrayed himself to her, that it didn’t matter now.

  Maybe to distract himself, or maybe to distract her, he glanced at the bag of coke on the counter and wondered if they should start mixing. It might be a bad idea, with him and Terian still technically on call, if in a waiting posture and unlikely to be on duty until the next day at the earliest. Still, the times weren’t written in stone.

  It could be tomorrow. Or it could be the day after.

  It could be later that night.

  When he glanced back across the table, Raven’s eyes glinted with a denser anger.

  Dehgoies held up a hand, heading her off.

  “We said we would try the monogamy thing,” he reminded her, his voice short. “We said we’d try it. If she’d said yes, I would have asked you, Raven… I would have fucking asked. All right?”

  “All right?” she snapped, imitating his voice angrily. “No, it’s not fucking all right, Dehgoies. It’s bullshit, is what it is. Asked me? Are you fucking serious? How stupid do you think I am?”

  She stood up and he flinched back in spite of himself, feeling his jaw clench as she loomed over him, his muscles tensing as he tried to decide if he was going to have to fight her off a third time.

  She looked like she might be getting ready to hit him even as he thought it, then seemed to change her mind.

  Folding her arms, she made a disparaging sound.

  “…So she didn’t want you, huh?” she said scornfully. “Poor Dehgoies. No wonder you don’t want to talk about her. No wonder you blushed like a fucking schoolgirl when I asked.”

  Grunting angrily when he didn’t speak, she kicked the leg of the chair where he sat, jerking her chin towards his face.

  “So?” she scoffed. “What did she want from you, then? What, Dags? If not to suck your cock, then what?”

  Terian chuckled, even as he walked over to the bar, pouring himself a drink.

  Dehgoies felt his jaw harden more.

  He watched Raven, silent, as she moved away from him, walking over to join Terian.

  Once the auburn-haired seer finished making a drink, Raven poured herself one, plucking a new glass from the counter over the stocked bar that came with the room. Dehgoies followed her movements warily as she added ice from the cooler, grabbing a bottle of his stuff, the Woodford, which was expensive and already running low.

  He didn’t say a word as she splashed the last of it generously over the ice.

  He knew she did it to irritate him. Bourbon wasn’t even her drink.

  It pissed him off anyway.

  A fucking car bomb. Jesus. She set off a fucking car bomb, because she found out he’d gone after the seer who’d been tailing him.

  Grunting in irritation, he pulled the mirror back over to him, sliding it over the wooden surface of the table. Re-rolling the Vietnamese currency note with deft fingers, he briefly used the razor blade to consolidate the last of the remaining scratch from the previous lines they’d already consumed.

  He disposed of the last of it in a single inhale, sniffing sharply to get that bitter taste back in his throat and to clear his vision.

  The hit sent a similar ripple through his aleimi, but less intense that time.

  He was still having trouble getting that other seer’s light out of his.

  It had been over an hour since he’d left her by the pool.

  Dehgoies felt Terian’s humor from the other end of the room, and knew the other male seer listened to his and Raven’s interaction with more interest than he let on. Terian had always been remarkably talented at hiding his innately sharp perceptions and observations by either acting like an ass or acting batshit crazy.

  Moreover, the fucker heard everything.

  Even through Revik’s aleimic shields, Terian heard just about everything he was thinking, at least when he bothered to listen.

  It was a talent of his that Dehgoies both admired and found deeply irritating.

  He wasn’t about to explain himself to her.

  He wasn’t about to explain himself to either of them.

  He knew exactly why Raven had carved him out as a part of her territory, and why she wanted him to stay away from other female seers… and it had little to do with how she felt about him as a person. Deghoies was just one rung on a very tall and unendingly ambitious ladder––a ladder Raven saw as hers, that had her name spray-painted all over it.

  Raven wanted power.

  Raven wanted to be at the top of the Org network.

  Dehgoies was a part of that plan, for now at least, so she wanted him by her side. If she had to beat the hell out of him to keep him by her side, she would do it without a second thought. She would also lie to him without a second thought, manipulate him without a second thought… shoot him in the head without a second thought.

  She would also drop him like wet shit without a second thought, if she found someone who could get her up that ladder faster.

  All of this… her following him, the car bomb, the jealousy, the gun, the threats… none of it was because she cared about him, or feared losing him, per se.

  With Raven it was more like possession being 9/10ths of the law.

  Revik was hers.

  She’d be damned if she let any non-Org, foreigner bitch hone in on her property.

  With the rumors circulating around Galaith’s plans to name his successor in the next few weeks, Raven had clung to Dehgoies like glue, reminding him every time he turned around of the deal they’d made with one another.

  He’d pretty much had it, truthfully.

  Even apart from the headache that still throbbed the back of his skull, and the swollen lip, and being constantly yelled at, not to mention getting hit with shrapnel in the middle of downtown Saigon… he didn’t like being told what to do. He didn’t put up with it from anyone. He sure as fuck wasn’t going to put up with it from some power-hungry viper who only wanted to use him to get closer to Galaith.

  He still liked sex with her.

  They’d had a lot of fun together over the past few months, even with her crazy bullshit––and sometimes because of it.

  If he’d wanted a wife, though, he would have looked for one.

  He sure as hell wouldn’t have chosen her, whatever her talents, in or out of the bedroom. Raven would as soon stab him in the back as watch it for him, and Dehgoies didn’t let himself forget that for even a second.

  Either way, he and Raven weren’t close.

  They certainly weren’t close enough that he would confide in her about his personal reactions to the female seer he
’d just spoken to by the pool of the Grand Hotel.

  Particularly since he still couldn’t explain those reactions to himself.

  He didn’t even like the fact that Raven had obviously been watching him from the network, well enough to know he’d followed the other female, and that he’d been turned on by her. Raven hadn’t seen enough to know he hadn’t slept with her, (not from lack of trying, Dehgoies was sure), but he found that only mildly reassuring.

  He sure as hell hoped Raven hadn’t felt or heard anything about his actual conversation with the other female, especially towards the end.

  If Raven did know something, and decided to act on that information before Dehgoies himself had decided what to do, he might actually be forced to kill her––or hurt her, anyway––to keep her quiet. Raven, that is.

  Galaith wouldn’t be very happy with him if he did that.

  Sooner or later, he’d have to tell Galaith what that female seer said, anyway.

  He knew that, but he could feel his reluctance.

  That was new, too.

  He didn’t really want to probe what that reluctance was about.

  He needed time alone first. He needed time where he could think, without the rest of the network––or Raven… or Terian––breathing down his neck. He needed time to look at everything that strange seer had told him, everything he’d felt on her, objectively.

  One thing he did know; he didn’t want Raven anywhere near the female seer he’d talked to today at the Grand Hotel.

  At the thought, his mouth curled into a harder frown.

  He hadn’t even gotten her name.

  He could still taste her light, enough to get him hard if he let himself go there, but he didn’t know her damned name. He’d barely been thinking straight, the whole time he spoke to her. He’d let her control the entire conversation, and him, even down to when he’d left.

  He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

  Then again, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a conversation with a female seer who wasn’t either a recruit or a full-fledged member of the Org.

  He pushed aside the memory of her, if only because it brought him too close to the rest of it. He couldn’t let himself think about what she’d actually told him, not here, not in the same room as Raven… much less Terry. He would need to find some way to go over all of it in his head, without his thoughts being picked up by the network, or by Galaith.