Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  “She is your mate,” Wreg said, his voice emphatic. “It won’t be coercion for long, Nenz. She will get over it. Trust me.”

  Revik grunted again, feeling his jaw harden as he flipped the gun in his hand, re-inserting it in the holster. He pulled out the other gun, checking it, too.

  “You don’t know Allie.”

  “True,” Wreg conceded with a hand gesture. “But I know you fucked a room full of humans and seers and she saw you do it… yet she still didn’t kick you out of her bed tonight.” Wreg gave him a meaningful look, raising an eyebrow. “A lot of seers would have cut off your cock for that, Nenz. Not put it in their mouth.”

  Revik winced, giving him an annoyed look. “I was saving her life. In D.C…. that op. I was there for her. It’s not the same.”

  “She is seer. Do you think she really cares why you did it?”

  Revik fingered his cheek with the bruise. “Maybe not.” He glanced at Wreg. “And she may have let me tonight, but I don’t think I’m off the hook for that one yet, brother. If I force her, it may be years before she lets it go. I need to show her it’s the best for everyone.”

  “Is she in pain?” Wreg said. “She must be.”

  “She is.”

  “She doesn’t care? Or is she dealing with it some other way?”

  Revik felt his jaw turn to granite. He looked at the Chinese seer.

  Wreg waved off his expression. “I am not implying anything, brother… just that fucking Adhipan prick, you know? Balidor. He seems too close to her. It is not respectful. And he is a pious fuck, you notice…?”

  “I noticed.” Revik didn’t speak for another moment.

  When he did, he forced his voice level, shrugging it off.

  “I understand why she’s angry. Hell, I more than understand. If she’d done that to me…” Heat flared in his light, making it hard to see. He forced a swallow, shaking it off. “The point is, I know I’m in the wrong. I need to be persuasive right now, not give her more reasons to want to get back at me. I hurt her in D.C. And she doesn’t like this…” He waved his hand towards the building. “The Bridge part of her isn’t fully awake yet. And she was raised around humans. The only family she’s ever known was human.”

  “You’re her family now, Nenz.”

  “I know that,” he growled. “I’m just saying, she’s bound to be sentimental. I can’t get pissed off at her for giving a damn. Not when I want her to feel the same about me.”

  Without changing expression, he motioned towards the flashing lights with the hand that held the gun.

  “What do you suggest? Should I go on foot?”

  “It feels like she is all right. The men will protect her. We should not leave the team up here without us.”

  Revik glared at him. “I asked how. What do you suggest?”

  Wreg sighed, gesturing in defeat. “We can get past. We’ll push them.”

  Revik nodded, placated. Still, he felt his shoulders tense as he watched her from the Barrier. Jon was with her still. The human looked stressed, probably from being shot at. Allie herself was dressing down Jax, the seer he’d left in charge down there––likely for shooting at them, or, even more likely, for being down there in the first place.

  He saw the other male seers staring at her in the torn dress while her light flared around her in anger. He felt arousal on them––out and out lust on a few.

  His jaw hardened more.

  Fuckers. He should have left her clothes. He’d thought if he left her without it might convince her to stay in the room.

  He should have known better.

  Wreg aimed the van for the sub-level entrance, maneuvering around the stopped cars covered in ash and debris. As they approached the parking entrance in the armored vehicle, Revik glanced at the other seer again.

  “You really think I should take her now?” he said, resting the gun on his thigh. “Just make her come with us?”

  “I think you want to,” Wreg said, steering around another car. “I think you’re already in pain again, laoban, and it’s only been a few hours.”

  Revik frowned. “She’s my wife, Wreg. This isn’t just about my dick.”

  “No.” Wreg smiled. “It’s not. But it strikes me as very reckless to leave her with these Code-followers, Nenz. Especially now, with her going public like this.”

  Cautiously, he added, “The humans will assume she was in on what we did here. I know you know that, but it will make the danger to her more.” At Revik’s scowl, he made another conciliatory gesture with his hand. “I know you want to respect her feelings, laoban, but we cannot afford to lose both of you to her stubbornness. Not when we both know she will have to come around to reality in the end… even if she wants to salve her pride, first.”

  When Revik gave him a sharp look, Wreg shrugged.

  The older seer’s lightly-scarred lips curled in a grin, right before he slapped the Elaerian on the shoulder.

  “Do not worry so much, Nenz! I saw how willingly she followed you tonight, brother. The pain is only making her anger worse. A few months of steady fucking, she’ll forget why she was mad at you.”

  Revik grunted. Still, he remembered the way she’d looked at him after and found himself unconvinced.

  “I’ll give her until after we make the run on the Registry,” he said. “Unless things get too hot. Then I’ll pull her. Or sooner, if it looks like the humans are getting too close.”

  “Five months can be a long time in wartime, brother,” Wreg warned. “Keep your eyes open, okay? Those fucking Seven are reckless with her life, and with their visibility to the humans. So is she, if you pardon my saying it, sir.”

  “I do,” Revik said, smiling a little. “…Pardon it. She’s nuts.”

  Remembering her as she spoke to that crowd of humans in that dress, a sliver of pain made his groin react. Inevitably, he found himself remembering her expression later that night, in the penthouse room, the look on her face as he finally got deep enough that her nails dug into his back. She’d been rough with him, too. Not long after, she’d hit him––probably after she’d felt some remnant of his time in D.C.

  He remembered her crying too, both of them in a kind of sex-induced fog.

  Wreg was right. He wanted more. It hadn’t been nearly long enough, not even to work out the basic kinks in their emotions from being apart for too long. Twice… almost three times. It wasn’t close to enough.

  One of those, he’d prolonged, needing to hear her ask. He could still see the look on her face as he coaxed words out of her. That hadn’t been enough, either. In some ways, it only made his frustration worse. She’d been holding back with him.

  He’d seen her out of control, really out of control. He knew the difference.

  Closing his eyes, he clenched his jaw against another thread of pain, even as the other seer spoke.

  “You already know the humans will try to use her to get to you,” Wreg said. “With Feigran still missing—”

  “Four months,” Revik said, his voice a touch colder. “That’ll give her time to assess her options. Even if I have to convince her after that, maybe it won’t piss her off as much. She’ll see what it’s like when we’re apart. The pain will be a fuck of a lot worse by then, too… assuming she can remain faithful to me for that long.”

  Wreg grunted, making a tilting gesture with his hand.

  “Assuming,” he murmured.

  Revik frowned. He knew the older seer wasn’t trying to needle him, but he also knew his gesture demonstrated only a reluctant acquiescence. Like he wasn’t going to argue the point, but he still thought Revik would regret making that choice.

  Revik hoped he wouldn’t.

  Regret it, that is.

  8

  DONE

  PULLING THE DRESS up higher, I fumbled with the ends of one strap, fighting to tie them together on my shoulder, just to get it out of the way.

  I noticed Jon deliberately not looking at me as I did it.

  Whatever Revik said t
o him in the corridor earlier, it rattled him. Jon could barely look at me at all since he showed up at the penthouse door.

  I didn’t have time to care about that now, though.

  I gave up on the strap a moment later, pulling Jon’s tuxedo jacket around me instead and buttoning the front.

  I tried like hell to focus on where we were going, what I might be able to do when we reached topside again. I strongly suspected it wouldn’t be much, in terms of minimizing casualties so far––but I might be able to keep things from escalating. At the very least, I could try to stop a shooting war from breaking out between the Adhipan and Revik’s people, assuming Balidor was back at the hotel and that hadn’t happened already.

  I felt Revik up there in vague touches, watching me through the construct. I couldn’t seem to feel much of anyone else, including Vash and Balidor, which told me the Rebels now controlled the hotel’s construct instead of the Adhipan.

  I tried to reach Garensche, too, along with Dorje, Tenzi, Garend, Chinja––pretty much in that order. I tried pinging Chandre, too, although truthfully, I worried about Chan with Revik in the picture. A few people told me she’d sympathized with the first Rebellion during World War I, and may have even fought with them in a small way.

  At the very least, I knew her loyalties were divided, even more than Cass and Jon’s.

  I worried it might be worse than that, though.

  At times, I worried Chan might actually be working for Revik––as in, infiltrating our camp for him. Balidor warned me that spies undoubtedly existed among our people. Apparently, infiltrating one another’s camps was something seers did as a matter of course, and the Rebels had been known for such inner-circle infiltrations in the past. They’d even had someone on the Adhipan during the war, along with numerous plants among the Seven.

  For the same reason, I strongly suspected Balidor was already limiting Chan’s access to intel. I hadn’t asked him about her specifically, but I knew he was monitoring a few people more closely than others, and conducting regular checks among his own people.

  I knew Chandre was having personal problems, too, so I didn’t want to jump to conclusions before I knew anything concrete. She’d been borderline depressed since everything went down in D.C. Her and Cass's break-up hadn’t helped, especially since Cass more or less cheated on her with the Wvercian ex-Rebel, then moved in with him.

  I admit, I didn’t get the Cass-Baguen thing.

  I did know he used to work for Salinse. For the same reason, Balidor probably watched him more closely than anyone else in our camp.

  When I asked Cass how Baguen felt about coming over to our side after being with the Rebellion, she’d given me a wry smile, then shrugged. According to her, Baguen saw absolutely no difference between following me or following Revik, since he believed without a doubt that the two of us would be working together soon, anyway.

  I have to admit, his answer rattled me a little.

  It rattled me even more after what that Indian seer of Revik’s said just now.

  Gripping my hands together in my lap, I tried not to think about what might be happening upstairs.

  Revik promised he wouldn’t kill any of my friends.

  I had to believe him. I had to believe he’d found some way to clear most of my people from the building before he’d done whatever he did.

  I had to, because I couldn’t contemplate the alternative.

  “What the hell is this?” Jon muttered.

  He slowed the SUV, leaning over the steering wheel to peer up the last piece of underground ramp before us. A number of people stood outside the vehicles parked there. All of them held guns. Most of those guns pointed at an armored truck with dark-tinted windows that stood, engine idling, between the four emergency vehicles parked there with rotating sirens.

  Whatever the truck in the middle was, it looked military.

  In the background, I could see smoke illuminated by orange streetlights, the occasional flyer breaking up the light. The sound of helicopters echoed down the cement tunnel. I heard people talking over megaphones, but at too great a distance for me to make out words. Anyway, they were probably speaking Hindi, and I didn’t understand Hindi.

  I reached out with my sight, felt the humans circling in the air in helicopters.

  They were in a state of panic.

  Revik had already claimed responsibility.

  Clicking out of the Barrier, I focused back on the armored truck with the darkened windows. It occurred to me that whoever was inside, they could probably see us.

  “What should we do?” Jon said.

  “Drive up, Jon,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.” I glanced around the interior of the SUV, looking for something, anything that might be useful. I didn’t see anything in my cursory glance around the back, or when I opened the glove compartment.

  As we drew closer to the grill of the armored truck, I saw Balidor standing in front of the seers on the ground. Something in me relaxed when I saw him. I relaxed even more when I noticed Cass standing next to him, and Tenzi on the other side of her.

  Balidor’s lips were moving. From the orientation of his eyes and light, he was talking to someone in the armored vehicle.

  At least nine other Adhipan seers stood there, too, all of them with guns trained on the camouflage-colored truck. I also saw Chinja and Illeg, from the Seven’s Guard. They also held rifles aimed at the truck, but I noticed they looked uneasy.

  I touched the key on the dashboard that rolled down the window. Instantly, the smell of smoke filled the SUV, along with the smell of burning hair, plastic and more distinctly animal smells. Grimacing, I fought past the heavy taste, trying not to think about the fact that I was inhaling it into my lungs.

  “Al, what are you doing?”

  “Slow down,” I told Jon.

  Jon let the SUV roll down to about five miles per hour, then stopped altogether, directly blocking the path of the armored truck.

  Balidor’s voice grew audible, rising as the SUV’s engine idled.

  “We assumed you had him,” the Adhipan leader retorted. “Wouldn’t you be allies again these days? Isn’t he on your team now, brother Syrimne?”

  I felt my breath stop.

  Jon turned, still hanging over the steeling wheel. “Did he say—”

  “Shhh,” I said, holding up a hand. “Yes.”

  I couldn’t hear Revik answer him, but Balidor’s voice grew louder still, his words still in Prexci. “We have no interest in Feigran. You are chasing ridvak, thinking we would hide such a piece of excrement from you––”

  Revik must have cut him off. I still couldn’t hear his voice.

  “Why in the gods’ names would she?” Balidor retorted.

  Revik said something else I didn’t catch.

  Balidor gave a short laugh, still holding his gun steadily on the passenger window of the armored truck. Unlike the others, his facial expression and light showed absolutely no discomfort around training his weapon there.

  “Your delusions will have the best of you, Rook. If you weren’t such a psychotic child, I might even feel sorry for you––”

  I felt the hair on my arms start to rise.

  A faint electrical current flickered over my aleimi.

  “Damn it,” I muttered.

  I snapped the latch on the SUV’s door, sliding down to the concrete ramp below. Jon lunged in my direction, but missed grabbing the cuff of the tuxedo jacket I wore by a few inches. I slammed the door over his protests, hugging the jacket around the dress as I ascended the rest of the way up the ramp.

  “Revik!” I said. “Don’t!”

  I felt his light, a whisper of surprise off him.

  In that split second, it occurred to me that ‘Dori was right. My shielding really had gotten better. When I glanced back at the SUV, I noted that the windshield wore the same darkened glaze as the armored truck up ahead. I couldn’t see Jon at all.

  Revik was focused on me
now, though.

  I could feel it through the one-way glass.

  “Don’t kill him!” I raised my voice, frowning. “He’s telling the truth. I already told you we don’t have Feigran. And so help me god, I’ll make you kill me if you kill any of them. I don’t care how much he needles you…”

  I gave Balidor a warning stare at the last.

  Balidor frowned, but didn’t speak.

  I walked up to where he and the others were now staring at me, too. Balidor, along with Cass, Chan and Dorje, stared the hardest. From their stunned expressions, I had to assume they’d thought Revik already abducted me, and was keeping me somewhere else.

  Ignoring them beyond a cursory glance, I focused back on the passenger side of the armored truck, opposite to where Balidor stood.

  “What is this obsession with Feigran?” I said. “What do you want with him?”

  I reached the section of driveway where I could see Revik through the open window. His pale eyes narrowed as he took me in, but I was startled to see that my appearance there had affected him, thrown him off balance somehow.

  It occurred to me again that he really hadn’t felt me there.

  Noticing my scrutiny, he averted his eyes, glancing at the seer sitting across from him, who happened to be Wreg.

  I nodded to the Chinese-looking seer.

  “Wreg,” I said.

  His eyes turned vaguely appreciative. I saw him look me over, smiling.

  “Bridge.”

  “Since my husband doesn’t seem to be talking, I’ll ask you,” I said to him. “What do you want with Feigran?”

  “He is a menace, Esteemed Bridge,” Wreg said at once, his voice respectful. “We’d like to make sure he doesn’t pose a threat to us. Or to anyone else.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “You, Esteemed One.”

  “I see.” I folded my arms, looking back at Revik. I felt my jaw harden when I saw the smoke and ash on his face, and on the dark sweater he wore. “Proud of yourself, husband?” I swallowed thickly, fighting the emotion that wanted to rise. “I suppose it wasn’t enough to kill a few million in one war—”