Dragon_The Final War

by JC Andrijeski

Jon found himself thinking it was about more than anything specific Balidor had said, but he couldn’t feel what. He definitely got the sense Balidor and Wreg were in perfect agreement about… something. Perhaps simply where their own loyalties lay now, even apart from Allie and Revik themselves.

  Jon wasn’t sure that reassured him.

  At the end of that silent stare, Wreg nodded.

  He picked up his own coffee cup in the same pause, sipping the remaining dregs as he stared at the surface of the wooden table.

  Then, simultaneously it seemed, both infiltrators shifted their gazes to the female seer sitting across from them.

  Allie’s light eyes reflected sunlight, once more focused distantly on the horizon. Jon could feel nothing in her light again.

  It was like she’d already died.

  Perhaps she simply watched that death approach.

  Perhaps she could see it, somewhere in their not-so-distant future.

  16

  CHANGE OF PLANS

  I WAS IN our room, packing.

  Well… my room now, I guess.

  It wouldn’t be mine for much longer, either.

  I’d given them a short window. I had twenty minutes to get downstairs. Thirty if I decided to slide past the deadline I’ve given my small team. I really didn’t want to do that, though. I wanted to catch Chandre before she got to Mumbai, which meant we had to get moving.

  I didn’t bother to look up when the door notification went off.

  I didn’t check the virtual feed for who it was.

  With twenty minutes remaining before I left this group behind, there was only so much yelling they could do at me before I walked out that door.

  I’d already said goodbye to the people I’d needed to say goodbye to.

  Lily had been the hardest. She’d seen Revik before he left, which had been difficult to take, but also strangely reassuring. I hadn’t gotten a real goodbye from him, but at least our daughter had. It didn’t make her any less confused.

  She cried when I told her I was leaving, too.

  No amount of explaining why really reached her.

  I cried with her. I tried not to. I tried to smile and reassure her, but I couldn’t help it.

  Lily would have felt it on my light, anyway. Why pretend?

  Neither Revik nor I had been those kind of parents.

  They were moving her out that night, but I wouldn’t let anyone tell me anything about where. Kali and Uye were waiting for them––Maygar, too. Balidor, Wreg and Jon would take her, along with the tank inside the armored truck and most of our team. Most of the civilians would be going with them, as well.

  Even apart from all that, apart from all the work they’d be doing to get on the road, to make their way to safer shores––only a handful of people knew where I was now.

  Even fewer would have come up here to bother me.

  I hoped it wasn’t Jon.

  Jon was the one person I wasn’t sure if I could take right then.

  He’d already come after me once after that initial meeting. He’d cornered me up here and all but accused me––or Revik, really––of planning this thing in advance. He accused me of going along with some fucked up plan of Revik’s, of Revik blackmailing me into being complicit with some martyr bullshit infiltration scheme that would get all three of us killed.

  He accused me of letting Revik bully me––or maybe he thought I was in on it––or that I might be bullying Revik. In the end, I honestly couldn’t tell what he was accusing me of.

  Jon didn’t seem to know himself, not for sure.

  He was operating on some hunch of his, or maybe a hunch of Wreg’s––or maybe a hunch Jon, Balidor, Wreg and Tarsi cooked up together. Whatever it was, wherever his suspicions originated, his uncertainty didn’t make it any easier to deal with him when he started yelling at me. Or when he started crying.

  The truth was, I couldn’t get out of there soon enough.

  I knew they’d keep hammering me and hammering me about Revik.

  I knew Jon would never understand why I wouldn’t go after him. I knew his anger and disbelief wouldn’t end as long as I was there, so I figured I’d let them chuck a few more rocks at me as I aimed my feet for the door and that would be the end of it.

  I needed to go the United States.

  It was the thought that kept me focused, my mind on track.

  I’d planned to go there anyway––not only to talk to Brooks, but to see if I could speed things up by leading my own hunting party for Dreng network seers. With Revik gone, finding the living pillars of the Dreng network was on me now.

  Anyway, I hadn’t been lying; it wasn’t safe for me to be around the others.

  There was also the Feigran thing.

  So yes… with all that in my head, I didn’t bother to check who stood at my door.

  Using a mind-trigger command, I let them in even as I lugged the heavy canvas bag I’d been filling with clothes and equipment up onto the bed. After crawling under the bed frame, I yanked out the weapons cache Revik had left behind, too.

  Tossing that on the bed near the satchel, I unlatched the black case and flipped up the lid, looking through the guns and magazines pressed into organic molds. I found myself weighing the advantages of bringing the whole case, even though most of these guns were more fitted to Revik than to me.

  I could always use them as back-up for the team.

  I tended to go with Berettas, like Balidor and Neela, but my favorite gun these days was the same kind Jorag wore a lot. It was also one of the first guns I’d learned on, back when Revik and Ullysa had been teaching me to shoot: an organic-modified Desert Eagle.

  Most of the guns in the case were in line with Revik’s “highly-modified Glock fetish,” as Wreg jokingly termed it––although he had a Desert Eagle and a few older models pressed into the molds. I knew Revik wore other guns besides these, as well.

  One of his favorites was actually a Browning hi-power, which I’d already noticed was missing from the drawer when he left.

  Forcing that out of my mind, and the tightening in my throat that accompanied it, I stared down at the case without really seeing it for a few seconds more.

  I was still staring down at it, hands on my hips, when the person I’d let in addressed me from the doorway to the bedroom.

  The voice made me jump.

  Not only the tone of it, or what he said––but who it was.

  It wasn’t one of the five or six people I’d halfway-expected.

  “Hello, Esteemed Bridge,” he said.

  I turned. Hand on my holster, I blinked at the seer’s face in confusion.

  Maybe some part of me was fighting to confirm his identity.

  Or maybe I was just in denial, since this wasn’t a seer I was prepared to deal with emotionally right then. He also wasn’t one I knew well enough to know what to expect.

  Him being Revik’s ex-boyfriend didn’t help––particularly in terms of the zero emotion affect I’d been fighting to hold on to.

  Rather than Jon, Balidor, Wreg, Tarsi or Yumi––it was Dalejem who stood there, wearing full combat gear and holding an automatic rifle.

  He wasn’t aiming the rifle at me, which I guess was a bonus.

  He didn’t smile when I turned.

  Rather, his forest-green eyes with the violet rings studied mine. His high-cheekboned face remained infiltrator-blank. His hands adjusted themselves on the rifle when my eyes drifted down to the combat gear he wore.

  When I didn’t speak, he let out a clicking sort of exhale.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said.

  I looked up at his face. Blinked again.

  Then I shook my head, clicking sharply under my breath. Without another thought, I turned my back to him, settling my eyes firmly on the case filled with guns.

  “No, you’re not.” Without looking over, I let my voice grow dismissive. “How are you even out of the hospital, brother? I suspect this is your concussion talking, in any case, becaus
e if you think I’m taking you with me, then you’re seriously––”

  “I wasn’t making a request,” Dalejem said. “I was merely doing you the courtesy of informing you. I am coming with you, Esteemed Sister.”

  I glanced over my shoulder, in spite of myself.

  Seeing the hard look on his disarmingly handsome face, I let out a humorless grunt, a smile touching my lips. “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” he said, gripping the gun tighter.

  I shook my head, clicking softly. Glancing back at the gun case, I muttered in annoyance, “Funny. I seem to remember you waxing quite eloquent on the whole ‘I serve the Bridge’ crap before. I guess following orders isn’t a part of that, brother?”

  “I don’t work for you directly,” he said, with barely a pause. “I serve you. There’s a difference. Further, your mother, Kali, for whom I actually work, will soon be in possession of your daughter.”

  My smile faded.

  In the seconds that ticked by, my jaw hardened to granite.

  After another short pause, I faced him directly. I let that hotter light spark down from the higher areas of my aleimi.

  “What?” I walked towards him, letting that higher voltage of light snake out to where it would touch his. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

  Dalejem held his ground.

  Even so, I saw a flicker of nerves touch his light. I saw his fingers tighten on the gun as his pupils dilated. When I got closer, he only shook his head, clicking louder.

  “Save it, sister.” Giving me an immovable look, he shook his head again, his long dark hair stopping the movement slightly from where it tangled in the strap of his gun. He lowered his voice, making it harder still. “I don’t know what the fuck you and Revik are up to. I really don’t. But if you think I buy this bullshit story of yours, that he just up and left you and your daughter, then you really don’t think much of me. Or of the rest of your ‘followers.’”

  I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.

  “––Further, if you think I intend to let you just take off… by yourself… unprotected… given everything that happened in Dubai, then you might just be suffering from a concussion of your own, my oh-so-precious intermediary.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  It occurred to me for the first time that he was almost as tall as Revik.

  Maybe half an inch off, if that.

  He locked gazes with me unflinchingly.

  “Go on,” he said, his voice an open taunt. “Tell me a story, Alyson. Tell me how Revik would have left you… like you’re both claiming. Tell me how he’d leave his daughter. I could use a fucking laugh right now.”

  I folded my arms, exuding impatience with my light.

  “I don’t give a shit what you believe,” I said. “You’re not coming with me.”

  Dalejem shook his head, planting his feed wider apart. “Again. I’m not asking.”

  I let out a humorless laugh. “Male bravado. Nice.”

  “Just how do you intend to stop me, exactly?”

  I didn’t think.

  Uncoiling the telekinesis, I slammed him into the wall, hard.

  I did it hard enough that I winced, especially after I remembered what he’d done for me in Dubai––especially after I remembered he really had just gotten out of medical observation due to serious injuries from the same, including a head injury that nearly killed him.

  My jaw tightened at the thought, but I didn’t move, or try to help him.

  He slid down the wall, falling nearly to his knees before he caught his balance.

  “Pretty fucking easily, I’d say,” I told him. “And if you or my ‘parents’ threaten me with my daughter again, I’ll send them your head in a fucking hat box… brother.”

  Gripping the wall with his free hand, Dalejem pulled himself back up to standing.

  I still didn’t feel any fear on him.

  Mostly, I felt anger. Even now.

  I wasn’t sure if that made him brave or a fucking idiot, but he still didn’t seem to think I would hurt him seriously. He felt shaken, but that struck me as more adrenaline and physical shock than fear.

  I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t even really want to scare him.

  But no way was I letting one of my parents’ spies come with me to Denver.

  “Spies?” Dalejem snorted, his voice openly incredulous. “Gods. You and Revik––you are like the same fucking person, do you know that? You really think your own fucking parents are trying to harm you? That they would try to harm your mate? Do you have any idea how much they’ve sacrificed for the two of you already?”

  That made my light spark out in a harder anger.

  “My parents are dead,” I snapped. “Those… people… you’re talking about, they might be related to me biologically, but they sure as fuck didn’t raise me. It’s a little late to pull the mom and dad card now. Especially since all I really know about them is they ordered you to leave me under a freeway overpass when I was too young to crawl. Next to a dumpster, no less.”

  For the first time, Dalejem flinched.

  I saw it in his eyes.

  Surprise––maybe that I remembered it at all, or that I’d throw it in his face.

  I saw him thinking about what I’d said. I could see the light coiling strangely around his body in those few seconds, but I ignored that as well.

  “…Apparently they couldn’t even be bothered to abandon me themselves,” I added, unable to help the anger that crept into my voice. “Or was that supposed to absolve them of the karmic stain of leaving me to rot next to a human garbage bin?”

  My words visibly threw him off balance.

  I saw it, there and gone, but he only looked away, color rising sharply to his cheeks right before he shook his head.

  “You don’t know anything about that,” he said.

  “Don’t I?”

  “No,” he growled, glaring at me. “You don’t.”

  I shrugged, averting my gaze. “Well, I’m sure it’s a fascinating story.” I turned my back on him, focusing deliberately on the gun case. I let my voice turn polite. “Unfortunately I don’t have time to hear it right now, brother. Perhaps when I get back?”

  Looking at the case, I decided fuck it, I’d bring the whole thing.

  Yanking on the leather strap to close the polymer lid, I shut it, latching the case on each side then spinning the combination lock closed with my thumb.

  I picked the case up by the handle, only pulled off balance a little by the weight as I turned back towards where Dalejem stood between me and the door. I was about to grab the canvas satchel with my other hand, but Dalejem stepped forward, taking it from me before I could.

  Frowning, I looked up at him, more in disbelief than anger.

  “Do you have some kind of death wish, brother?” I said. “Or do you just not find female telekinetics particularly scary? Maybe I need to call brother Wreg up here?”

  “Maybe I just have more faith in my Esteemed Bridge than to believe she would harm a brother simply for wanting to protect her,” he said, his voice gruff.

  That time, when he met my gaze, I was startled to see tears in his eyes.

  Dalejem added, his voice rougher, “…Maybe I think she would respect that a friend of her husband’s would not wish to see any harm come to a dear friend’s wife, particularly when her husband is not in a position to aid her himself.”

  I let out a disbelieving laugh, but Dalejem gave me a direct look.

  That time, his eyes sparked with an inner light.

  “…Particularly when that husband visited his friend prior to leaving,” he added darkly, his voice low. “Particularly when he asked his friend to act as his wife’s personal guard… whether his wife complained about that assignment or not.”

  That time, I could only gape at him.

  Dalejem let his words hang, but only for a few short beats.

  Then he shrugged with one muscular hand.

  “I didn’t belie
ve a single other fucking thing he told me, of course,” he said, his voice gruff. “But I believed him when he made this request in regards to you. Some promises must be given, no matter what the pretext. Even if one is lied to again and again and again about why such a thing might be necessary.”

  When he met my gaze that time, I felt my vision blur.

  I fought to speak, to argue with him maybe, but he kept talking before I could.

  “Perhaps you might try to understand my desire to help you, in addition to him,” Dalejem said, his voice holding more emotion. “And perhaps you might realize I have my own reasons for agreeing to my friend’s request, regardless of his bullshit reasons for asking. In either case, I already requested and was granted reassignment from your parents… as well as my old friends in the Adhipan. I admit, I had hoped the life debts we share between us might be enough for you to feel some obligation to me, as well. At least enough to allow those requests to stand.”

  He paused deliberately.

  “Was I wrong in that, sister?” he said.

  I stared at him, genuinely thrown.

  I couldn’t get past the Revik part.

  Had Revik really gone to him? When?

  In the middle of the fucking night? In the dawn hours of the morning?

  Had he gone to talk to him before the bonding session or after? Before he talked to Lily or after? Weeks before? Maybe back when Dalejem first regained consciousness––or when Revik first decided for certain that he intended to leave me here in Bangkok?

  Why, though? Why would Revik be assigning me bodyguards now?

  Why would he do that?

  But I already knew why. I understood perfectly.

  I just didn’t want to.

  Jealousy seethed briefly through my light, although I did my best to push that back. I didn’t need that crap clouding my mind along with the rest of it.

  Dalejem didn’t wait for me to process it all.

  His jaw still hard, he bent down, grasping the handle to my canvas satchel in the hand not gripping his rifle. Hefting the bag easily, he slung the whole thing over one shoulder, pushing the gun down to get it out of the way. Without looking at me directly, he gestured politely towards the bedroom door, using the fingers of the same hand holding my bag.