ALLIE’S WAR SEASON TWO
BOOKS 3-4
by
JC Andrijeski
Copyright © 2014 by JC Andrijeski
Published by White Sun Press
Cover Art & Design by Jennifer Munswami at
J.M. Rising Horse Creations
www.facebook.com/RisingHorseCreations
2015
Ebook Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit an official vendor for the work and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
SYNOPSIS
“Everyone feels it, and yet…no one knows.”
Books three and four in the gritty, unique, psychic romance and apocalyptic series, Allie's War, introducing Allie Taylor and her antihero guide, Dehgoies Revik.
In Season Two, Allie grapples with who Revik really is, as well as darkness from his past that neither of them seem able to fully escape.
That same darkness might get all of her friends killed, start a real war between seers and the humans...and possibly just signal the destruction of the world.
Sword: Allie's War Book Three - Allie's newest enemy just might be her own husband, as he starts a human and seer war in an attempt to free his people once and for all.
Shadow: Allie's War Book Four - A new power is rising in the human and seer worlds, and it turns out, they may have shaped history for Allie and everyone she loves.
Series Summary
The Allie's War series is a psychic romance set in a unique, gritty version of Earth populated by a second race of psychic beings called Seers. Its heroine, Allie Taylor, was marked "The Bridge" from birth, born to be the leader of the Seer race and the bringer of the next stage in humanity's evolution. Unfortunately, to many Seers, that means the death of just about every human on the planet.
She is helped and hindered, awakened and impeded by her antihero partner, Dehgoies Revik, whose on-again-off-again relationship with the dark beings known as the Dreng may destroy them both.
The series takes place in a modern version of our world at the brink of apocalypse and a dystopian future. It spans centuries along with the lives of its main characters, the Seers, and the wars they fight with themselves and their human allies and enemies.
Praise for the Allie’s War Series
“Highly Recommend!” ~ Escape Into A Book
“Word of advice…remember to breathe!” ~ The Cabin Goddess
“The sexual tension is scorching...” ~ The Muses Circle
“[B]eware; you’ll immediately want to dive into the next installment.” ~ The Indie Bookshelf
SWORD
Allie’s War Book Three
Dedicated to
David
Prologue
MEMORY
I WOULDN’T LEAVE him.
They’d convinced me not to go inside, but I wasn’t leaving.
Planes screamed overhead. Bombs dropped on the White House roof. I screamed with them as they fell, and Tobias grabbed my arm, preventing me from running up the steps. The upper floors burned now. I saw curtains tatter after the windows blew out; I saw whispers of ash and cloth as they billowed out the blackened openings. Smaller explosions continued on the higher floors.
Tobias looked at Ullysa. I felt the two of them conversing, but I didn’t care enough to listen. My light was occupied anyway; looking for him, scanning the sky for planes, for humans I could feel closing in around us from all sides.
Only the topmost floor burned so far, two above the ground, and far above where I suspected he’d gone. Even so, I watched the flames warily, measuring their progress.
Kat stared up at the building with something like indifference on her face, her thin arms folded over the front of her tailored suit. The human world’s icons meant nothing to her.
I could feel enough to know she was a lot more worried about Revik than she was about me, though.
For an instant, I envisioned holding that gun.
Tobias grabbed my arm. I thought at first he had read my mind, but then he began dragging me down the path towards the East Wing’s driveway and gate. I scanned ahead, felt a car waiting for us there...but I wasn’t leaving.
Twisting around in his hands and kicking the male seer in the leg as hard as I could, I writhed out of his grasp. Before I’d formed a coherent thought, I punched him in the face. When Ullysa tried to grab me from the other side, I back-fisted her in the temple, driving her halfway to her knees.
She caught herself on the asphalt, holding her head in one hand, her light exuding shock.
But they both backed off of me after that.
For a little while, at least.
I wanted to do more. I could smell my husband on them still...on all of them. If I’d had a gun, I really might have shot all three of them...but for the fact that I knew I wasn’t right in the head, that there was something wrong with me still.
Silver threads floated, somewhere above.
I knew my light had woven back into his.
Lost inside his aleimi, inside the broken pieces of his mind...I fought for air, for some kind of clarity. He was so alone. He’d been alone for so long.
Ullysa and Tobias talked me down...or themselves, maybe.
I listened to them with one part of my mind, but most of me remained split, lost somewhere else. Unlike before, when I couldn’t hold the split in consciousness at all, or only for a few seconds at a time, now it was like breathing, to be in both places at once. My eyes glowed so I could barely see, and I felt silver strands writhing overhead, but it wasn’t me they were after.
It was him. All of this had been for him. Luring him here, hiring him to kill the boy...it had all been to bring him back, to make him operational once more.
They’d used me to bring back Syrimne.
I could feel him again, and I realized I’d known that, too, somehow. Maybe I’d even known who he really was from the beginning.
In any case, I wasn’t leaving until I knew he was out.
If he decided to kill me after that, then maybe it was for the best.
1
SEPARATED
I ENTERED THE ballroom in Delhi with my head held high, conscious mainly of the human press as I gripped the arm of the ancient seer standing next to me.
The reality of my newfound status in the human world hit like a blow to the face.
News crews slammed up against the velvet ropes like rampaging cattle, held back only by the line of seers covering security as I entered the long hallway. I could feel the vids crackle electrically as they caught my every facial expression. Self-consciousness about the dress flickered around the edges of my light, even as I fought to hold my expression still, befitting of the image I’d practiced projecting for days in front of mirrors in the Pamir.
It was my coming out party, I supposed.
I tried to keep my face neutral at least, if not exactly happy.
Vash agreed to accompany me, after much debate amongst the remaining elders on the Council of Seven...and in spite of Balidor’s near heart attack when he heard the details of my plan to approach the humans. I wasn’t offended, or even particularly dissuaded. Balidor’s job was to entertain such misgivings, and I desperately needed him to do his job...especially now, with half the world on the brink of all-out war.
As leader of the Adhipan, the elite unit of infiltrators charged with protecting the Seven’s elders...and, incidentally, me...Balidor had
a heavy load these days.
I wasn’t insensitive to that either. The problem was, I couldn’t afford to stay as safe and behind closed doors as Balidor would have liked. Doing so, in fact, would be akin to hunkering down in a cave...literally, in my case...and waiting for the Apocalypse while roasting marshmallows.
I couldn’t bring myself to go that fatalistic.
At least not yet.
“You look lovely, my dear,” Vash murmured in Prexci, likely to get my mind off that train of thought. “Do you suppose we should venture inside?”
Realizing I’d been standing on the foyer for a few seconds too long already, I squeezed his arm briefly, using my fingers to acquiesce in seer sign language. When I looked up, his dark eyes held a faint affection, but I saw the worry there, too. Balidor wasn’t the only one who thought this move of mine verged on suicidal...reckless, at the very least. But if ever there was a time that the human world needed to see a relatable face representing the seers, it was now.
The press followed us the rest of the way to the stairs, their lights illuminating the dark red rug that ran up the marble steps between massive columns.
Careful not to trip in the long dress, I made it all the way to the top of the next landing before I looked back on the crowd following us.
That time, I managed a smile.
I watched the press for a moment, thinking about how I had gotten here, how strange it was that I would offer to take this role after fighting it tooth and nail for the past year while seers tried to convince me that their mythologies and prophecies were true. I still didn’t really believe them. But the seers had decided I was the Bridge, a seer version of the chosen one...or one of them, anyway. Supposedly I had been born to lead them, to help both humans and seers through this semi-apocalyptic time, as humans prepared to evolve to a higher form.
Yeah, I know. Sounds crazy.
To me, too...but like I said, I’m not really the sit on the sidelines and watch the world go up in flames type.
Vash tugged on my fingers a second time, as if feeling this on me, too.
“They are waiting for you, my dear,” he said softly.
I nodded, gazing down over the crowd.
I tried not to think about what else had brought me here, or the fact that he might be watching me even now on the live feeds, along with however many million humans and seers. I still couldn’t think about him without an almost desperate degree of grief. More than that, I felt responsible, in ways I hadn’t even begun to catalogue yet.
But I should have known better than to think about him at all...even there, surrounded by the Adhipan and Vash and a few dozen other infiltrators.
A voice rose softly in my mind.
I like the gown, love, he murmured.
I froze, fighting to keep my reaction off my face.
His pain slid into me, coursing through every vein in my body.
You look... He let his light linger, softly sensual. ...good in a dress. Better than good. Fuckable beyond belief...
His pain intensified, grew more specific.
I fought it back, but my light flared...bright around my form.
Vash stiffened, grasping my fingers on his arm.
...Not that you don’t always, the voice added, softer. His light slid deeper into mine, slow, taking his time. But dearest, I admit... The endearment made me flinch. ...I’ve got a hard-on you wouldn’t believe right now. What do you say? How about we blow off the party for a few hours, so I can show you...?
He opened more. I let out a low gasp, my light coiling into his even as I fought to pull it back.
Then my heart clenched, really hearing his words.
Vash had already started to draw me away from the cameras’ lights, when Balidor exploded out of the line of guards to my left. The senior infiltrator appeared in a heartbeat, seemingly out of nowhere, clutching my bare arm in his fingers as he pulled his sidearm, keeping his body in front of mine. He wore a classic black tuxedo and it struck me that he looked pretty James Bond with his oddly human-like good looks and light gray eyes.
Shouts rose from the humans as the gun grew visible. I looked down the stairs, dimly aware of the press as they reacted in alarm below, now stampeding in the opposite direction, towards the glass doors.
Balidor’s stance didn’t falter.
“Is he here?” he said to me, his gray eyes scanning faces. “Alyson! Is he here? Alyson! Answer me!”
I felt a flicker of amusement right before the presence evaporated from my light.
“HELLO,” I SAID, clearing my throat.
The organic mike picked up my voice, and the word echoed across a ballroom that might more accurately be called an amphitheater. Round tables covered in white cloths, dishes and thin-lipped tulip glasses spiraled out from the stage in a symmetrical pattern. The five-star hotel in New Delhi was housed in an old, mansion-like building built in colonial times. It was owned by seers, which was the only reason Balidor agreed to having it there.
Why that reassured him now, I had no idea. Perhaps it just made the logistics easier, in terms of taking over the Barrier construct the locals already maintained.
“Thank you for coming,” I added.
The press sat in the front rows, taking up more than half of the chairs in the long room. These were the elite corp though...not the scavengers we’d met outside. Knowing they risked being kicked out by an overzealous Adhipan, they sat perfectly still at their white-clothed tables, only the lights on their image capturing devices active as they waited. At the expectant and slightly bored looks on their faces, I knew they were waiting for me to finish saying whatever I had to say...so they could get to why they’d really come.
Behind them sat a more varied party; representatives from the few countries I could get to even acknowledge my invite. The United States sent an underling of some kind, probably the nephew of the undersecretary of transportation, but at least they’d come at all. China politely ignored my invitation, as I’d expected. Italy, France and Sweden represented at least a fraction of Europe, but Germany, Austria and Switzerland ignored me, too. So did Japan. South Africa ignored me, but Mozambique, Niger and Zimbabwe sent people. So did Canada, Mexico, Uruguay, Cuba and Panama from the West.
Brazil ignored me, as did Argentina and Peru.
No one came from the Middle East, but that didn’t surprise me, either.
Standing in front of several hundred people in formal wear was even harder than I’d imagined while practicing for this speech.
Even so, something kicked in once I stood behind the podium.
Maybe it was Vash and the others, holding me up from some place inside the Barrier. Maybe I retained some faint memory of the small amount of acting I did after college, or the speech and debate classes I took in high school. Maybe it was sheer dumb luck, or all the practicing I’d done.
In any case, the words came easier than I expected, and not too fast.
“I know what many of you are thinking,” I said.
I paused, looking out over the spread of humans who watched me silently from velvet-backed chairs.
“I am aware of what I am to many of you. What I symbolize, at least...”
I paused again, giving them another second to hear this.
“...I am hoping you can listen past that, to my words.”
I straightened, aware of the heat of the lights on my shoulders.
“...My name is Alyson May Taylor,” I said clearly. “And up until a year ago, I thought I was just like you.” I paused again. “...I was raised among humans, like most of you were. I loved my brother...a human...and my parents...also human. I had human friends. I went to a human school. I had a normal, human job. I dated human boys...”
Feeling a pale stab at my light, I glanced sideways, faltering less than a heartbeat.
“...And I feared seers,” I finished. “Just like you.”
I paused, looking around at them once again.
It was quiet enough that I could hear the stray co
ugh.
“I am not here to convert you to any religion,” I said. “Nor am I here to defend the actions of any of my kind...not even my own. I am here to make a plea...for peace.” I paused once more to take in the blank sea of faces, partly-obscured by the lights shining in my eyes. I took another breath.
“Things have escalated, it is true. I know there is distrust. Fear. Anger on both sides...and cause for it, again on both sides. I know there have been unconscionable acts of war...” I looked around at faces, saw that most of them were still with me, more or less.
“I know people have died. Too many people,” I added.
Again I paused, looking around at them.
“...The only way to stop this,” I said. “...is for some of us to stand up. To demand that it stop. To not do the easy thing, and let the fear and madness take us to the brink...along with all of our brothers and sisters...
“It will not help us to assign blame,” I added, gripping the podium in my hands. “...It will not even help us to be right. We can, all of us, be right. We can be right all the way up to the moment the first bomb drops...and it will not save either of our peoples. It will be cold comfort to our children, too...”
I waited another beat, then glanced at Vash.
“I did not ask to be the leader of these people,” I said, looking at him a beat longer, taking in his kind eyes. “Nor do I think I have the experience, or the skill to do them justice in this regard. I am not one who was raised in their laws...”
I paused again, looking around the room, taking in faces, forcing myself to see them as real.
“But I accept that they wish it of me,” I added, my voice final.
Allie's War Season Two Page 1