Dragon: Bridge & Sword: The Final War (Bridge & Sword Series Book 9)

by JC Andrijeski

  We’d landed in Langley approximately six hours later.

  About half of that time hadn’t been in the air; it had consisted of refueling, collecting refugees, tending to the more seriously wounded. It also consisted of listening to Brooks scream at me and threaten me with sight restraint collars––among other things.

  Being yelled at took up a good chunk of my flight time, as well.

  I was pretty much on my own for most of that, with the exception of Talei, who was both a help and a source of stress. She treated me more gently than she ever had, presumably because of the incident with Dragon, but somehow, her softness with me only made it more difficult to keep the incident out of the forefront of my mind.

  I’d been more relieved than I could hide when the plane finally landed.

  Everyone scattered like mice once we got here, human and seer.

  The ramp lowered on the tail end of that cargo plane where we all shivered like drowned rats without enough jackets. Everyone practically ran to the waiting ground transport. Even Brooks and I had been almost blue with cold inside that tin can of a briefing hold.

  By the end we were both too tired to even argue.

  I could tell she was as exhausted as I was, and probably as disheartened, when she told me we’d meet again after we’d gotten some rest and a chance to check in with our respective intelligence sources.

  Upon landing here in Virginia, I didn’t bother to give any orders other than to tell them all to get some sleep. By then it was evening again, and most of us were going on forty-eight hours without sleep.

  I let everyone find their own rooms.

  Brooks assigned us a whole building of government barracks, probably to keep us away from the humans occupying the main buildings that housed the CIA, but I hadn’t tried to find out anything about food or water yet. I didn’t want to ask Brooks herself. She’d barely said two words to me after we left that briefing cube.

  I knew she was still furious with me, for a lot of reasons, even though her remaining senior military leaders admitted to her that I’d probably saved all of their lives. By then they’d seen the reports of what Dragon did to the other areas of the underground compound, and the bodycount he’d left behind in every section he touched.

  I knew Brooks heard them.

  I also knew she didn’t care. Not yet, anyway.

  She might never care, not enough to forgive me. Regardless of her conciliatory words at the end of our last meeting, I knew she would have liked to throw me in a holding cell––under major sedation most likely, collared definitely.

  I honestly couldn’t bring myself to care. Not yet, anyway.

  Moreover, I would have liked to see her try it.

  Lying there, staring up at the beige ceiling, I realized I needed a shower.

  Even more than I needed to lie there and not move––or more pressingly, maybe––I needed a damned shower.

  Groaning as I dragged myself up off the bedspread, I winced as my weight came down on the leg that had been branded by Dragon’s glass knife.

  Had that been yesterday? Or had it been the day before?

  I fought to remember.

  As I did, I realized I was on the verge of hallucinating, I was so tired.

  Limping to the door, I bent down to unbuckle the organic, anti-grav boots I still wore, fighting to kick them off and nearly face-planting into the door when I did. I finally got them off after multiple tries for each boot. I winced as I peeled my socks off, and not only because they smelled positively vile.

  I was beginning to think I might have to burn everything I was wearing once I got it away from my body.

  Dropping the socks on the floor by the boots, I unhooked the straps holding my vest together next, unlocking them one by one with fingers that suddenly felt weaker than maybe they ever had. I wanted to cry, I realized. My light still felt fucked up beyond belief.

  I hadn’t thought a single coherent thought since we’d left the plane. I’d finally let go of my stranglehold over my light as we touched down on the Langley airstrip.

  Now I felt like a zombie. A weepy zombie who hurt all over.

  I could barely make sense of my clothing.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, fumbling with buttons and zippers and catches of various kinds. It seemed like it took forever before I got it all off.

  Then, as I stared down at the pile of the clothes on the dark-brown carpet, it hit me that I’d undressed in the wrong place. I still had to walk down the hall to reach the showers, which were military-style and communal.

  I decided I didn’t care. At all.

  I stopped long enough to pull a towel out of the cabinet, but I only gripped it in one hand, not wanting any part of it to touch my filthy body. Holding it away from myself somewhat, I took a deep breath, then opened the door to the main corridor.

  I didn’t bother looking to see if anyone was around. Even so, I was relieved when I didn’t hear anyone in the hall, or see or hear anyone in the showers. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure if I’d seen anyone on this floor of the barracks at all.

  Maybe they’d decided to give this floor to me. We weren’t exactly hurting for space.

  I reminded myself how much worse it could have been.

  Somehow we’d managed not to lose a single infiltrator in that mess. Right now, I almost couldn’t think past the relief around that single thing.

  I was even grateful we hadn’t lost Kat, and that was saying something.

  Reaching the open shower area, I said a silent prayer for hot water and hung my towel up on the low tile wall by one set of three shower heads. Twisting the knob marked “hot” I nearly groaned when the pipe rattled and nothing came out… but after a few seconds, something in there made a gasping noise and water coughed and spluttered out of the end.

  It picked up speed a few seconds later.

  Then it started to warm up.

  That time, I nearly groaned in the other direction.

  Sticking my head under the increasingly hot water, I finally conceded defeat and turned on some of the cold, too, if only to keep from scalding myself. Third degree burns would definitely take some of the bliss out of the hot water thing, and my leg had already started to ache under the bandage.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, sighing under that steady stream.

  The hot water didn’t lessen, which is all I cared about.

  Digging a sliver of soap out of one of the trays under a shower head next to mine––stretching so most of my body remained under the hot water while I did it––I lathered as best I could, allowing myself a single, wistful thought of shampoo.

  At that point, I would have settled for dishwashing liquid.

  I was still standing there when some part of my light phased out.

  It came out of nowhere––maybe just because I was so exhausted.

  Or maybe because he’d been thinking about me. Or because our light was just so damned connected he couldn’t help himself. Maybe because, like always, our timing completely sucked. We always seemed to know how to do things when and where it would hurt the other the most, when we were the most vulnerable to the other’s light.

  Either way, I felt a mind-numbing cloud of his pain––and enough from his light to know he was fucking.

  He was fucking and talking, losing control maybe, although I couldn’t tell if the person he was with even knew him well enough to be aware of what was happening.

  He felt alone. His loneliness swam over me, hurting my heart.

  He was lonely, depressed––

  I felt so much emotion and just him in that, I could barely stand to have it in my light, even as those same things made me reach for him in near-desperation. Somewhere in that, he seemed to grow aware of me there. I felt his loneliness worsen––the part of him that was conscious now, that was still with me in some sense.

  The pain in his light turned excruciating, more than I could stand.

  I let out a weak cry, losing sight of the r
oom around me. The white tile, the water, the florescent flicker of light tubes over my head, it all went black.

  Somewhere in that, I heard words.

  It’s our anniversary. It’s our anniversary, baby. One of them… the first one.

  Images came with it.

  The two of us waking up in Seattle. His arms around me, the first few times he regained consciousness, so much heat in his heart and light he could barely stand it.

  Disbelief that he was getting to hold me.

  Disbelief that I was curled up against his light and bare skin.

  Then the last time, when he woke up from that pain to find me standing at the doorway with Ullysa, looking at him, fear in my eyes.

  I’d been afraid of him.

  He’d wanted me, even before he’d wrapped his head around what happened between us while I’d been feeding him light. He’d wanted me so fucking badly. Almost as badly as he’d wanted Ullysa to get the fuck away from me––to get out of my light and stop touching me with her goddamned hands.

  Then I’d left and he’d begged me for sex even as he kicked himself, furious with himself beyond reason for driving me away, for being an asshole when I was obviously as scared as he was… when I didn’t know anything, when I didn’t have any way to understand what had happened between us.

  Memories I didn’t know crowded at me next. Things he’d never told me.

  How fucking angry he’d been when Kat appeared in the doorway of that room.

  How he’d considered confronting me. Chasing me down in the kitchen and telling me exactly what I could do with my goddamned “offer.” Telling me I could go fuck myself––or fuck her, if all I wanted was to hurt him. Telling me that if I saw him as a whore he’d be happy to oblige my opinion, with as many people as I cared to throw at him.

  But he hadn’t done that either.

  He’d been afraid he’d lose it for real if he saw me. That he might break things. Scare me. He’d known he wasn’t rational. He’d known he was so far from rational at that point that he couldn’t trust himself to even fight with me.

  For those few minutes or seconds or whatever they were, I couldn’t see past his memories of that morning, or the crashing confusion of emotions roiling in his light.

  It put me there, too.

  Standing in that dated pink tile shower in Ullysa’s building. Standing there, wet and naked and in pain, his light wrapped into mine, nearly strangling mine. That wanting in both of us that twisted into distrust and fear and then back into longing when one or the other of us pulled away. I’d been terrified of that wanting. I’d felt so completely lost from it, from him, from just being away from his light and skin––

  I remembered that confusing conversation in the kitchen.

  I remembered how I’d wanted to chase down Kat too, feeling somehow that I’d fucked up, that I’d made a mistake in telling her she could see him. Trying to decide what I’d say to him, how I’d even explain ordering her out of his room.

  That feeling of a mistake only worsened the longer I stood there, until I knew I’d made a mistake. Maybe a big mistake. Maybe something I wouldn’t be able to take back––

  His pain worsened, growing unbearable, even as I felt him reaching for me, emotion expanding off his light.

  He was coming then.

  I felt it, saw it behind his eyes as his body jerked, spasming inside…

  Whoever she was. Whoever the fuck he was with.

  Hurry, Allie, he sent, from that higher, more silent place. Hurry, baby. Please. Gods, please. I can’t take much more of this.

  Some part of me fought back.

  I fought him, shoved him out of my light, maybe harder than I’d ever done, even outside that farmhouse in Colorado. I used structures I normally only used for the telekinesis, slamming against his aleimi, hitting out at him in the space, punching him––anything to get him away from me. Anything so I wouldn’t have to hear her under him, or see her hands caressing his chest.

  When I could see again, I was lying on the tile floor.

  The water was beating down on me from above, hurting my skin, blinding me where it fell on my face and hair.

  When I tried to pull myself up, I let out a low gasp, fighting tears as my hand slipped on the tile. I whacked my head on the low wall behind me and let out a muffled cry, cutting it off by biting my lip. Still gasping in pain, I clenched my jaw to remain silent, mostly because I was afraid someone might hear me and come in.

  But that only brought my mind back around to Dragon, to what he’d done in that underground lab.

  He hadn’t explained himself. He hadn’t said anything.

  I could scarcely believe it when he’d started undressing me.

  Feigran stood there, watching us from the wall, unmoving. He’d looked more fascinated than turned on, but something about those yellow eyes studying mine as Dragon held my light clenched in a fist, yanking down my combat pants with hands that were both urgent and strangely businesslike.

  Not long after that, he’d been inside me.

  I don’t think my mind had even caught up at that point.

  I’d heard Dalejem let out a cry. I remembered Dragon doing something––I remembered worrying he’d killed Jem, but I could still feel him gasping, still making low cries and realized Dragon had only restrained him in some way.

  Apart from the brand, which he’d done before he even took off my clothes, he hadn’t hurt me.

  Maybe it would have been better if he had.

  He held me still with his hands and light, but he’d been gentle for the act itself. More gentle than Revik often was.

  More gentle than most of my clients in Beijing had been.

  Then Dragon wound into those structures in my light––

  I’d lost control. I’d totally and completely lost control.

  I couldn’t help myself, any more than I could when Revik did that to me.

  At some point, I left my body entirely. I think I actually came, but I couldn’t be sure of that either. I couldn’t see anything by then. Stars.

  Nothing but black night and stars.

  Wincing, I shut my eyes, fighting the coil of grief that wound into my gut. Shame lived there. I knew it was irrational. I knew it, but I couldn’t make the feeling go away. I was ashamed of my loss of control. I was ashamed of my body’s reaction, my light’s reaction, beyond what I could even think about now.

  Panting, that hot water still beating down on my head, I tried to block it out of my mind.

  Pain wound into my light, behind the shield I still wrapped around myself as I sat on the dirty tile floor. I fought back every emotion I could, everything that wanted to boil up to the surface, to touch me in any way.

  He hadn’t kissed me. Maybe he couldn’t because of the mask, but his eyes grew soft at the end. I’d seen stars in his light, that denser blackness.

  As he left with Feigran, he spoke to Dalejem, not me.

  “Don’t worry, brother,” he’d said. “You’ll get your turn.”

  Dalejem hadn’t answered him, but I’d felt his anger, a deep, despairing helplessness that touched me if only because I felt the genuine emotion behind it.

  I tried to force that out of my mind, too.

  I knew Dalejem had watched Dragon fuck me.

  I knew he’d seen me lose control.

  I had no idea how it looked to him from the outside, or what he’d felt from me. I hadn’t felt judgment on him. I hadn’t felt anything on him, truthfully, not about that.

  Then again, Dalejem was Adhipan trained. I probably wouldn’t know what he felt, not unless he chose to tell me. So far, he hadn’t.

  He hadn’t said anything about it at all, directly, at least.

  Instead he’d argued with me about operational priorities around Brooks. He thought we should just manipulate her light and take her with us, screw negotiations. He argued Dragon had to be our priority, that we couldn’t screw around with human politicians when we had more pressing things to deal with. H
e wanted me to order Declan to take out Novak on his own.

  He’d also informed me I needed to see a medical technician before I met with her.

  He’d argued those things for half the drive back to that farmhouse. He’d also argued that I had to contact Balidor right away and let him know what happened––and I knew he didn’t only mean that we had a rogue telekinetic on the loose.

  When I disagreed, he told me I was in shock.

  When I argued the same could be true of him, he told me he didn’t matter––that I was the one who’d been hurt.

  That was the closest he came to acknowledging what happened to me, directly at least. Although he’d obviously had zero qualms about telling the others.

  Wincing, I tried to force that out of my mind, too.

  I couldn’t, though, not at first.

  Knowing he’d probably told them for operational reasons didn’t help; nor did it remove the feeling of betrayal I’d felt when I came out of that farmhouse and realized they’d all been talking about me. Dalejem and I may have fought, but I honestly hadn’t thought he actively disliked me until that moment.

  Since the op in NORAD, I’d reassessed that impression, leaning towards the operational thing again, but truthfully, I had no idea what he was thinking.

  I hadn’t known how to ask him either, or even if I should.

  Either way, I didn’t want to talk about the thing with Dragon with any of them. I honestly didn’t see the point. I barely remembered the act itself. I had no idea why he’d done it, or what he wanted from me. Whatever he’d done to my light, I couldn’t explain my reaction to any of them. I wasn’t the kind of person who felt like talking solved much anyway.

  Besides, there was only one person I really wanted to talk to, and he was the one person I couldn’t talk to right then.

  But I couldn’t start thinking about Revik again.

  I had to get out of there.

  I’d been lying on that floor too long already. The thought of someone finding me like this, sprawled out naked in the showers, finally got me moving.

  When I pulled myself up off the tile the second time, the pain in my leg shot up to my back. I ignored it, fighting myself upright in another burst of effort and straining arm muscles, my light halfway out of my body as I struggled to control my mind.