Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  I’d often wondered if Revik would really have done it, if push came to shove.

  I stared at the gun in ‘Dori’s hand. I let my gaze drift up to his face. I met the gray eyes, and saw there were tears in them.

  Even so, I could see it.

  He would kill me.

  His charge under the Adhipan was everything to him. He really believed he’d be responsible for ending the world if he let Revik have me.

  I was still staring at his face when the gun went off.

  “NO! NO! GODS! ALLIE!” The scream exploded from his light, tearing through the Barrier space. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make a sound…

  Terror came after. He hadn’t realized what was happening.

  He’d reacted too slow… hadn’t realized…

  “ALLIE!”

  Time slowed to a standstill. Just long enough for him to see every increment. The force of the shot threw her backwards, slamming her shoulder into the stone wall. Blood splattered as the bullet blew out her back, creating an exit hole that decorated the stairs in a wet slap.

  He shot her in the heart.

  Balidor shot her in the fucking heart…

  Revik felt something in his mind shatter. He stared at her body as it impacted the stairs, saw her struggle to breathe, blood on her lips. Her fingers grasped at the wooden bannister as her human friend, Cass, screamed.

  Allie was trying to get up, to pull herself up. He saw fear in her eyes.

  Her hands looked so small to him, so soft…

  Her hair covered the steps. The blood stain on her chest spread, pooled outwards, turning the white shirt she’d been wearing a dark crimson red.

  He could see it in her light. She was dying.

  He screamed again, feeling something in him tear open. Pain mixed with a desperation so dense he couldn’t move. His light cascaded outwards… and then, as he leapt from his body, trying to chase hers, he heard a command from the Adhipan leader, and…

  Everything went dark.

  He lost her.

  He lost where she was.

  In the same instant, it felt like he lost himself.

  18

  PAIN

  JON STARED OUT the window of a military truck, unable to focus his eyes.

  He leaned his jaw on his hand, only half-listening as the feeds ran in the background, coming through the satellite network. The rest of the crew opted to sit in the back, but Jon moved to the cab to keep Dorje company while the Tibetan-looking seer took his shift at the wheel.

  They hadn’t spoken really. Jon suspected the seer asked him to join him more because he was worried about him.

  Then he heard her name, and it practically forced him to listen.

  “…Rumors continue to circulate around the death of Alyson May Taylor, self-proclaimed ‘Bridge’ and leader of the newly reconstituted seer government, the Seven…”

  Jon glanced at the receiver, then at Dorje.

  “Must be Dehgoies’ people,” the seer said, before Jon could ask. “They’re probably hoping the other seers will turn on us, if they make it known how she died.”

  Jon started to answer, then didn’t. He didn’t really need to tell Dorje that he didn’t include himself in the “us” Dorje was referencing.

  “I know, cousin,” the seer said softly. “It is why we will distance ourselves.” He hesitated, looking at Jon. “Dehgoies, if he’s still alive, probably has bounties out by now.”

  “Bounties?” Jon grunted. “I’d think he’d want to do it himself.”

  Dorje gestured in affirmative, unfazed.

  “He’ll want to do the killing himself, yes. The bounties he will use mainly to find us. But news such as this would spread quickly to the seer feeds, especially the black market ones. Some hunters use mainstream human networks tactically, as well, to get the civilian population to help them look. It expands the pool of eyes who might see us.”

  “Us?” Jon said. “Don’t you mean Balidor?”

  Dorje shrugged with one hand, his expression flat.

  “I doubt that will be enough for him, cousin,” he said quietly. “Dehgoies will view us all as accomplices and traitors. For not murdering brother Balidor on the spot, for what he did.”

  Jon felt his jaw harden. If ever he’d been sympathetic to Revik’s tendency towards excessive violence, it might have been then.

  Still, he kept it to himself.

  The feed announcer continued to speak.

  “…No one in the Seer government has come forward to officially deny or confirm her death. However, it is known that her purported husband, Syrimne, a seer terrorist who also goes by the name ‘Dehgoies Revik,’ is missing as well. Sources within SCARB have suggested he is now being investigated as a possible suspect in her death by human authorities…”

  Clicking softly, Dorje looked back at the road, pulling down the fur cap he wore before gripping the steering wheel with both hands.

  Jon continued to listen to the feed broadcast, in spite of himself. The reporter continued in the slightly metallic voice of his avatar,

  “…Known more commonly among seers by her religious title of ‘The Bridge,’ Taylor first became famous when outed as a sleeper agent living among humans. Her seer blood wasn’t discovered until her human-registered age of twenty-eight years old, at which time she was declared a fugitive of the World Court and Seer Containment. There is no way to know her true age. Medical authorities still cannot explain…”

  The voice fuzzed out, covered by static.

  A tightness came to Jon’s throat, making it hard to breathe.

  The reminder right then, of her life as a human, was a bit more than he needed.

  “…Following her exposure and subsequent flight,” the announcer continued as they rounded another curve in the road. “Taylor became an internationally-known terrorist during the deadly attack on the Royal Faire cruise ship, the Explorer…”

  The announcer’s voice fuzzed out again from interference caused by the mountains.

  When they rounded another turn, it rose louder than before.

  “…Taylor is still labeled a terrorist by the World Court and at least fourteen of the twenty-six countries in the Human Alliance. Authorities in several different branches of law enforcement and SCARB have attempted to take her into custody, but the backlash from the seer community and lack of hard evidence as to specific terrorist activities as defined under the Human Protection Act forced SCARB to revoke its warrants for her immediate capture and arrest…

  “Following the attacks in D.C., and a need for stability in the more peaceful factions of the seer community, a compromise was drafted, giving exception to her quasi-religious status. That agreement allowed her to remain in Asia, providing she adhere to the restrictions on movement and occupation required by non-sponsored seers…”

  Jon felt his jaw harden again. “Agreement” my ass.

  They’d realized they needed Allie.

  They’d been desperate, trying to find any allies they could in the seer community, anything that might provide a counterbalance to Syrimne in the wake of that fiasco in D.C. Allie had been their best hope. While she hadn’t declared war on Revik the way they might have hoped, she at least presented unattached seers with an alternative.

  “…Details as to cause of death remain unclear,” the voice continued. “But it is thought she was killed by a faction of her own people who rose up against her leadership in the wake of the incident in Delhi last month.

  “Still another group blames Syrimne for her murder, but so far, no evidence has surfaced to support that theory, either. Although they were both present for the bombing in Delhi, it is still unclear whether they were working together or fighting on opposite sides. Rumors of both estrangement and alliance have surfaced since the incident in D.C. earlier this year…”

  Jon felt Dorje’s eyes on him from the driver’s side.

  That time, he didn’t turn to meet the other’s gaze.

  THE EASTERN EUROPEAN infiltrato
r kept his voice low, looking nervously towards the door to the suite’s bedroom before he returned his eyes to Wreg. He’d been acting as their chief medic for a few years now, having been trained in the healing arts during World War II, where he’d posed as a human physician for several years to hide from the Nazis.

  “He won’t take any food. I don’t think he can, sir.” The seer’s sunset-orange eyes held a frozen thread of fear. “Sir, I don’t think––”

  Wreg waved him off, not wanting him to continue.

  “Get out of here,” he said.

  He frowned at the bedroom door after the other left, fighting back a reaction in his light as he tried to think through what to do next. They didn’t have to move him immediately, so Wreg opted to stay where they were, in a hotel in Amritsar, India, where their plane landed only a few days earlier.

  He didn’t see any point in trying to chase the Seven now.

  They could do it after. When the boss had finished with this thing, this horrible end they had left for him, then his people would seek justice.

  Wreg knew that he, himself, still suffered from denial on this.

  Shock maybe. That the fuckers would have gone this far. That they would have taken out an intermediary being… only to take out another.

  He could not help but blame himself.

  He should have had the Bridge taken hostage in Delhi. He could have ordered the extraction himself, without the boss. If the boss pitched a fit, he could have told him it was a requirement for security reasons, that he was overriding his orders in the interests of his personal safety.

  Hell, it would have been the gods’ truth.

  He knew that, even then. He hadn’t wanted to interfere.

  Hesitating another beat of time, he pushed open the bedroom door. Glanced around the orange-painted wood, he let his physical eyes adjust as he took in the scene.

  The room was dim, lit only at the lowest setting by two lamps on either side of the bed. Blankets lay in a pile on the floor. Even the silk sheets crumpled just past the edge of his bare feet. Someone had drawn the curtains—heavy, embroidered drapes with a Middle Eastern pattern to them––to block out the afternoon sun. A couch stood against the opposite wall with gold upholstery. A low table stood beneath it, still decorated with a tray of Turkish coffee, which had to be something like two days old now.

  Those details, along with the embroidered wall hangings and hand-woven rugs were all that remained to remind Wreg of the flawless setting it had been when they arrived.

  The Sword lay on the bed, sweating.

  He looked like he’d sweated off a third of his weight already.

  He gripped one edge of the mattress with long hands. When Wreg saw his face, he flinched, seeing the pale eyes glowing an emerald green. Pain glimmered out at him, cutting his breath, even standing more than a dozen feet away.

  He withdrew slightly, made nervous by the charge he saw in the Elaerian’s light.

  Even as he thought it, a bulb in one of the table lamps exploded, shedding glass in a halo of powder. Some of it hit the Elaerian’s arm, making tiny nicks in his skin.

  The Sword didn’t flinch, didn’t seem to feel it at all.

  “Gods be damned,” Wreg breathed. “Fuckers.”

  Steeling himself, he walked to the bed, sitting down beside him.

  “Nenz,” he said, soft.

  He rubbed the man’s shoulder, trying to reach him.

  “Nenz… come on, friend. We need you. We need you to go after them.”

  Pain contorted the other’s features. His eyes closed, as if to block it out. It only seemed to worsen though. Even as Wreg thought it, the pain billowed out at him again, along with enough grief that Wreg got lost in his own light.

  He felt his fingers tighten on the other’s shoulder.

  “Nenz,” Wreg said. “My friend. I am so sorry.”

  The Elaerian’s gaze met his, his eyes narrow, but Wreg had his doubts he could hear him much, if at all. Pain still hardened his features.

  His skin looked almost sallow as he pressed his face into the mattress, as if trying to feel something, anything but whatever crawled over his skin.

  The only thing he seemed to respond to at all was the hand on his shoulder, and that response resembled a kind of lost frustration, more like a reminder of lack than any real comfort in being touched.

  Hesitating a second longer, Wreg removed his hand.

  He considered trying to talk to the Elaerian again, to see if he could reach him. Although, truthfully, to say what, he had no idea. Perhaps he should keep trying to touch him––hold his hand maybe, give him some bare feeling of contact. An expression of empathy, anything.

  A moment later, though, he thought better of it, seeing the light in those eyes spark brighter.

  The reality was, he couldn’t help him. He couldn’t ease things for him in any way. The man’s mate had died.

  He would die, too. It was just the way of things.

  All they could do really, was stay with him until it was over.

  They could avenge him when it was done.

  19

  KATHMANDU

  JON STOOD ON the warped wooden deck outside of a youth hostel.

  The hostel itself, a converted house of four stories, stood at the base of a hill directly below a monastery located on the far outskirts of the city of Kathmandu, Nepal.

  He could almost be back in Seertown, with the prayer flags strung from the rooftops and the views of snowy peaks and scattered clusters of high-altitude trees and tile-roofed dwellings. He’d even glimpsed a few of those tawny monkeys in the trees near the lower part of the city, chattering at one another and stealing food from vendor carts and open windows.

  It felt almost homey to him, which would have come as a surprise to him even a few months ago, before everything happened with Revik, and before Allie got abducted by Terian.

  He didn’t know why he was still here.

  They’d left him with money and clothes. They’d even given him a way out, if he wanted one––meaning a way back to some semblance of human civilization that approximated what he’d known for more than thirty years before all this. Not the States, of course. Jon couldn’t travel incognito there easily, given who Allie had been, but he had identities that would work in South America, Australia and parts of Asia.

  He might have to get surgery of some kind, if he wanted to make it permanent, but he should have enough now to get a job at least, to start over in some way.

  He hadn’t left Nepal, though.

  He didn’t know why. Even South America would have been closer to his old stomping grounds than the seer-dominated tracts of central Asia.

  Cass and her seer boyfriend, Baguen, were staying at the hostel, too. They were already talking about crossing back into India, though, maybe heading for Kasmir or Pakistan, or even Shimla in the Himalayan foothills where a number of seers still lived.

  The Nepalese seers, according to Cass, didn’t like humans much.

  Jon couldn’t bring himself to latch on to Cass and Baguen as a ticket out of there, though. He loved Cass, but she moved in her own orbit these days, and it wasn’t his.

  He hadn’t admitted it to himself fully, but he was waiting for Dorje and Balidor to return. The problem was, he had no idea if they would. There’d been no word from anyone since they’d parted company outside of the human city that lay an hour south of Seertown.

  The rest of the seers seemed to be waiting, too.

  They’d set up camp in the mountains above the youth hostel, utilizing part of the old human monastery that stood there. Local seers had taken the monastery over a few years previous, converting the bulk of it to living quarters for a small settlement of their religious scholars. They’d reluctantly accepted the seers flying under the Adhipan’s flag as guests when approached for aid, and by extension, all those seers traveling with them.

  The name Adhipan carried weight in most parts of the seer world, from what Dorje had told him. They had been
protectors of the seer “soul” for thousands of years, so the Nepalese seers probably felt they had no choice but to be hospitable.

  They were housing Feigran in the monastery, too.

  Jon was told he could visit, but they didn’t want any humans spending the night––something to do with the rules of the Nepalese seers who lived there. Given his complete and utter inability to pose a threat to them of any kind, it was unclear to him why the rule existed, but he’d hardly been in a state of mind to argue.

  Anyway, with Allie gone, Jon knew he meant nothing to them now.

  Less than nothing, as Balidor had said.

  He was unsure what to do with himself here, even in the short term. He found he was having trouble thinking lately. Not just thinking; he was having trouble focusing on anything, even things right in front of him. When he slept, his dreams were disturbing.

  He still couldn’t get his head around what happened in India. It felt like part of him remained trapped there, in that room beneath the stairs, replaying it again and again.

  He’d heard Allie and Balidor arguing.

  He’d heard things from each of them that made a lot of sense.

  Allie had been surprisingly clear about the Revik thing, despite how hard it must have been for her to hear what he wrote in that letter.

  Jon also didn’t believe the letter to be pure manipulation, at least not the way Balidor did. He knew Revik––as a result, he believed the letter to be essentially what Revik claimed it was, an attempt to humble himself to Allie in the hopes that she might soften towards him after their blowout in Delhi.

  Jon had been surprised by the wording of it at first––the formality made it sound like something written in the distant past, not like the Revik he knew at all.

  Yet, the longer Cass read, the more Jon heard his friend in the words, and especially in the feeling behind it. He’d verged on desperate-sounding, Jon thought by the end, despite what Balidor said. Allie’s fury at her husband in Delhi seemed to have penetrated whatever odd cockiness Syrimne maintained around the two of them. Through most of that letter, he’d sounded genuinely terrified he’d lost her––or might be losing her, at least.