He should not.
Even apart from who she was.
Moving his eyes away from her heart-shaped face, those large, dark eyes and full mouth, he glanced down the length of the narrow brick corridor towards where Anale guarded the entrance to the alley. He squinted up at the overcast strip of sky beyond.
Jax and Holo were watching Loki though, their lights holding flickers of curiosity.
“Did their mission go well?” Jax asked finally. “In Macau?”
“No,” Loki said, clicking a little, although he couldn’t exactly blame them for asking. Moderating his tone, he added with a seer’s shrug, “...Apparently not. They were able to pick up most of the humans, but the seers had been sold already, and relocated to Dubai.”
They all fell silent at that. They knew Dubai was a Shadow city.
Holo grunted then, as if to lighten the mood. He pulled up his own weapon, wiping the sight with a cloth. He wore a F2000 like Illeg’s.
“I bet the big boss didn’t like that,” he muttered.
He didn’t look at the others when they glanced at him.
No one laughed that time, either.
Loki wasn’t sure what to add to his words. He knew they would hear all about it when they got back to the carrier, and that they were more or less secure here, as long as they stayed out of the Barrier, but it wasn’t really in his nature to share that kind of information, even when he got it secondhand. Oli told him about an encounter with a strange seer, too, who claimed to belong to some group of seers devoted to the Bridge, and that the Bridge herself had threatened that seer for what appeared to be some personal interaction with the Sword...or maybe because the same seer had stabbed Jon, Loki couldn’t quite be sure.
In any case, Loki got the sense that the story had a personal element...personal enough that he’d felt uncomfortable hearing it, especially long-distance. Not only did it make him not want to ask anything further of Oli herself, but in fact, at that point Loki cut Oli off, and pinged Balidor to take her off transmission duty for the field teams, since she obviously did not know the rules about discretion and unsolicited and unnecessary information.
He knew his own team would want to know all of these things.
He knew they craved personal information out here, whatever Illeg’s annoyance. Loki knew they would want to hear about it, if only to keep their minds off the grimmer realities they faced, but he still felt uncomfortable sharing such a thing.
So he didn’t.
“Do we have an approach plan?” Jax said finally. “For D.C.?”
Loki clicked softly, but didn’t answer.
Mostly because there was no need.
They all knew the Sword never proposed anything without a plan. Usually that plan would have a half-dozen contingencies in addition to the main approach.
Jax had merely been using words to pull Loki’s mind back to the present.
Sharpening his gaze, Loki motioned towards the north end of the alley where they stood, indicating he wanted them to get moving again. While the location had been fine for a short rest, it was far from secure. Anyway, they were on the clock again.
Anale took lookout duties at one end, and Ontari, who was ex-Ahdipan, stood a half-dozen meters behind them, keeping his gun aimed at the other end of the long passage.
“Stay with her,” Loki told Mika, motioning with his head towards the female human.
He didn’t look at her himself, but his mind made a mental picture of her anyway.
In terms of her features, she looked a fair bit like her biological daughter, their new teenaged computer whiz, Dante. Her light felt significantly different, however, in ways that Loki’s own light wanted to explore in more detail, to tug and pull and taste so that he could see more of it, and perhaps see more of her inside of it.
On a purely operational level, Loki still felt a faint rush from the thrill of victory at having found her at all. None of them had expected to find her...much less to find her alive.
The human had been resourceful, however.
Smart, which Loki liked, too.
Even Illeg, who could be gruff towards humans, noted that this woman must be highly intelligent, also like her daughter. Her situation had hardly been enviable when they found her, true, but Loki could not help but admire her for having found any means of survival at all, when so many like her had already died. She had explained to them, in an almost offhand but endearingly embarrassed way, that when the human bandits came to her, she offered them a choice, and then negotiated until they opted to keep her alive.
In the end, she convinced them she was worth feeding...and protecting.
She termed it as “worth a longer-term investment,” which Loki also found an interesting choice of words.
The female human was attractive, too.
A little too attractive for him, at least right then.
Loki needed sex, and badly. It wasn’t just this woman, he told himself. It was him. He’d been looking at the seers in his team a little too long, too, even before they’d found her.
Of course, he knew that was rationalization.
Partly, at any rate.
He hadn’t looked at any of the seers in his unit the way he looked at her. His light didn’t react to any of theirs in a way that even came close to the intensity he’d felt since they’d come across this human, either. Truthfully, he couldn’t remember reacting to anyone in decades the way he’d been reacting to the human female since they found her in that dank, drink and smoke-choked hole at the fifteenth floor of the reclaimed brownstone.
Even so, he knew that the more general need for sex must be making this worse.
He didn’t normally bed males, but he’d even been looking at Jax the other day, noticing the muscles on the seer’s shoulders and back while he washed off in the river following their initial scout of that human enclave at the northern end of Prospect Park.
But those had been momentary things, fleeting.
He had scarcely been able to tear his light off the human woman since he first laid eyes on her. And he still couldn’t seem to keep his light away from hers.
Even as he thought it, he caught her looking at him, her dark brown eyes appraising.
Whoever these assholes are, they’re all pretty hot…
He realized with a jolt that had come from her, her mind. He had gotten too close to her light; he could hear her thoughts.
He looks almost Middle Eastern. But damn. Like a movie star of the hot sheik. Why does he keep staring at me, though? He looks at me like I annoy him or something...
She continued to stare at Loki, seemingly oblivious both to the fact that he could both read her thoughts, and that she was staring at him, too.
She did seem to notice that he was reacting to her, and to the intensity of her stare, but he couldn’t tell how she interpreted that exactly, despite her fleeting thoughts. Those thoughts still seemed to occur on several levels, as if she tried to talk herself into one interpretation even as she reacted to at least one other.
He found himself trying to follow both trails, but parts of her still eluded him.
Unfortunately, the fact that she was able to block him, at least to a degree, only managed to turn him on more.
God, she thought then. I wonder if they really do know where Dani is...
A different kind of separation pain infused her light, one that touched him enough that he had to look away.
Even if they don’t, belonging to them can’t be any worse than being one of Balucci’s women…and none of them has tried to touch me, at least. Her dark eyes focused on Loki again. He seems to be in charge. Wonder where he’s from. He doesn’t talk much, compared to the others. Not even in that other language...
He listened to her, fighting not to react to her open appraisal of his body.
Still, more than anything, Loki could feel the woman’s puzzlement, her attempt to wrap her mind around who they were, whether they were friends or foes, what they wanted from her, her fear
s about the safety of her daughter, whether she could believe anything they told her.
Most of her surface thoughts held an element of bravado, but the vulnerability he felt below that nearly made him sick with want. He couldn’t look at her at all now, even as he continued to strain for pieces of her thoughts, seeking the underlying emotion.
She seemed to think they’d rescued her from that fortress by the park.
That should work to their advantage in persuading her that they meant her no harm.
Even as he thought it, Loki felt another dark flicker of pain, seeing her staring at his body through the bulkiness of the organic armor he wore. He didn’t manage to suppress the pain fast enough that time, and Mika, the small, Asian-featured seer from Seattle, grinned at him, thumping his back with one small hand.
You need to get laid, brother, Mika told him teasingly. Are you really going to try and bed that woman? Her eyes flickered to Dante’s human mother. You might do better to try and court Illeg, brother...although I’ve heard Chinja can be possessive, so maybe you’d have a fight on your hands there, too.
Loki didn’t answer, but turned his head to gaze down the alley, using his light in subtle touches to assess whether anyone had noticed their small group, either from the street or one of the nearby buildings. They’d managed to shake, push or knock out all of the human soldiers and muscle who tried to follow them after their extraction of the human woman herself.
He still felt no one.
Glancing back at Mika, he motioned his head back towards the open end of the alley.
Move ahead, sister, he told her politely. Head west. Towards the landing area.
Smiling at him, Mika touched his back again, right before she leaned towards his ear. You know, Dante may not thank you for trying to get into her mother’s pants, brother Loki.
Loki suppressed a grimace, and did not answer.
Patting his back again, Mika grinned, obviously enjoying teasing him for some reason, since she’d been doing so pretty much since they’d left the aircraft carrier, and even though the Bridge and Wreg had put Loki in command of this group.
Maybe she liked to harass him because he did not react much in a way that was visible.
His personality had that effect on some seers, he had noticed.
Even the Bridge, at times.
Dante really may not like it, Mika teased again. ...which means Vik won’t like it...or the Bridge. Or even the Sword. Not even if you ask nicely and give her many favors with your tongue and cock. Not even if you don’t push her too hard with your light to get her to comply. Remember, brother, the Bridge...she thinks a bit like a human with that kind of thing...
Loki gave her another blank look, but Mika only laughed.
I’ll suck you off as a favor, brother, she told him. If you really need some relief...and it looks like you do. If it cannot wait until you return to the fodder of the refugee pens, then just ask. Are you any good with your light, though, brother? Or has it been too long?
Loki felt his skin warm, especially around his neck and ears.
It wasn’t really embarrassment.
Instead, she’d managed to re-ignite the separation pain in his light, intensely enough that he couldn’t control it entirely for those few seconds.
He found himself thinking about the American-accented seer’s offer almost objectively. Maybe he could use the light contact, no matter how brief...even if she meant the offer partly in jest. He had little to offer her in trade, though, and he knew the other woman worked as a professional prior to joining the military arm of their group in New York.
She might expect payment. She seemed to be offering him something for free...he would need to discern that for certain if he tried to take her up on her offer, but he knew the whole thing might be a joke, anyway.
He knew he did not really want her.
Loki could tell the female seer did not really want him, either. His pain had turned her on. She found him attractive in the physical sense, but it did not go beyond that for her, which was pretty much exactly how he felt about her.
Loki did not really like that feeling of charity, either.
He wanted a willing lay, not a favor.
Mika must have picked up on some of that, too, because she laughed.
Rationalization... she sent to him, the thought sing-songing in his mind.
Loki followed her gaze to the human woman, feeling his pain worsen when he saw her staring at the two of them, a faint crease between her eyebrows as she looked from him to Mika, her full mouth puckered in a frown.
He hadn’t yet managed to tear his eyes off her brown-skinned face, when Mika spoke once more in Loki’s mind, her words holding more compassion that time.
Fair enough, my handsome brother, she murmured softly.
Leaning over him, she kissed him on the cheek, ignoring Loki’s surprised wince as she straightened. Mika winked at him when his eyes followed her up to a standing position. Massaging his shoulder again briefly, Mika began to walk, following the direction of his earlier gestures down the trash-littered alleyway.
Loki watched her outline as she approached Anale and the lingering daylight.
Even as he looked away, Mika sent him a brief flicker of pain, one he felt all the way to his groin. Let me know if you change your mind, though, brother, she sent, softer. The offer didn’t contain as much charity as you seem to think.
Loki did not answer that, either.
Instead, inexplicably, he found himself looking at the human woman again, only to find her staring at him, too, a deeper frown turning down the edges of her full mouth.
A girlfriend? Or maybe he’s just sleeping with her...? Loki felt the woman muse.
His cock hardened painfully, catching him off-guard when it occurred to him that the thought had bothered the human. It might have even made her jealous, although she did not seem to have admitted that fact to herself yet.
Loki fought to pull his mind off her, off the woman’s full mouth and Mika’s offer of oral sex and whatever else, even as he heard Mika herself laugh quietly in front of him, as much in his mind as in the open air.
Forcing his eyes off the human woman, Loki did his best to make his face blank once more. Unreadable.
He wondered if he was having as much success with that as usual, however.
THEY MADE IT to the Chinook in just under two hours.
They stood outside of it for a few minutes, on the empty, cracked asphalt of what had been a school playground, at least according to the woman with them.
The woman even seemed to recognize it, Loki though, watching her look around, a faint sadness in her dark eyes. He wondered if she’d gone to school here, if she had memories in this place, ones that were personal, and had to fight to keep his light off hers to find out. He wanted to comfort her, in any case. He could see the shock wearing off her slowly, not just of her rescue, but maybe of the shift in her reality, from slavery and certain death to something a lot less certain and still only barely tinged with hope.
To Loki himself, this place looked entirely desolate. It reminded him of war-torn areas of his youth, of human bombs, of dead bodies.
It also looked abandoned.
The field’s grasses had turned to a near-swamp in the intervening months, high and green in places, but brown and smelling of mulch and mold from the rains, especially near the chained link fence that separated the field from the road. To his left, in the distance, Loki saw a brown brick building, windowless, that stretched the length of the block on the other side of yet another street. He guessed, from the woman’s fleeting memories, that this had been the school itself.
Directly in front of him, a sad-looking remnant of school pride stood in the form of rusted metal bleachers. Empty now, the bleachers overlooked the waving grasses of the field, limp now in the slanting, sideways rain of another tropical storm.
At least one dead body lived under there, too, Loki knew.
He could smell it, even from where they stood
.
He glanced at the woman again, and saw her shove her small, white-looking hands in the front pockets of her black jeans. She wore four rings, he noted...silver, chunky things that looked less like they had emotional meaning than that she liked to wear them for other reasons. He wondered almost if they had served as weapons, in that horrible place where they’d found her.
She caught him staring again, though, and he averted his gaze, fighting not to react to the way her light clung to his, maybe looking for reassurance.
More images flickered through her mind, memories of this place.
Loki felt her grief. He realized she was coming out of a kind of shock, from being underground for so long. Shock of memory, of realization that her world had crumbled even further while she’d been away.
Fear of the unknown. Grief.
Tearing his light from hers, from her memories, he fought to refocus on his task.
Blinking into the rain, he faced his small team, and the Chinook parked just behind them.
According to their pilot, Preela, and Rex, the muscular seer Loki left with Preela to help her guard the Chinook from any potential breach, the two of them had spent most of their seven mission hours on the roofs of the nearby buildings. They’d been forced to do so, apparently, primarily to get away from militia groups and armed human gangs. They had spent a lot of that time on the same brick building that stood behind them, although apparently at least one human gang lived inside those windowless walls, too.
So far, all of those who tried to accost them had been human, so they had been able to push a good number of them away...or at least persuade them not to aim missile launchers and other larger weapons at them while they were in the air.
Preela even managed to get the bird refueled at the nearby JFK airport.
That feat alone impressed Loki, as well as others on their team, he could feel. Given the plundering that had gone on there, too, she must have been resourceful, indeed.
From what Preela reported, and the far-less-talkative Rex confirmed, they’d had to fight their way through elements of one of the local militias for that, too, since one of the bigger groups had taken to guarding the fuel as part of their own personal cache. That same human militia had determined some means of converting and diluting the higher-octane plane fuel to a version they could stretch out for use in ground vehicles.
Allie's War Season Four Page 75