Setting down the champagne, which may have been Garensche’s true motive in asking me, I took his offered hand, and laughed when he pulled me to him.
He moved with surprising grace for his size...and he knew the steps.
Then I remembered. He was a seer. He probably did this a few hundred years ago, when it was the height of modern fashion.
I laughed to myself as he steered me sideways, forcing me to follow his leg before he brought me with him on a turn.
He quirked an eyebrow. “Something is again amusing, Bridge Alyson?”
I shook my head, still smiling a little. “No.” I paused. “Thanks,” I added. “I do feel better.”
He smiled more genuinely. “Dancing is always one cure.”
“What’s the other?” I grinned, knowing the answer.
His smile turned slightly more mischievous.
He stepped longer, forcing me to make a real stride in the heels and the dress, and then pivoted me to the right. He pulled me closer briefly, then turned with me again...
...when someone else took my hand, sliding smoothly into his place. My whole body stiffened...even before he pulled me tight against him.
Even before I heard his voice.
“You don’t mind, do you, brother?” he said to Garensche.
I craned my neck, looking over my shoulder at the Adhipan giant.
Even if I hadn’t already known who held me, the other seer’s eyes told me more than I needed. The less bulky arm tightened around my body, long fingers caressing the bare skin of my lower back, most of which lay exposed by the dress. He pressed deeper into me and I sucked in a breath in spite of myself.
Reluctantly, I looked up.
Pale eyes met mine in a face I knew so well it shocked me.
He hadn’t even bothered to come in disguise.
I could only stare at him, seeing the scrutiny in his expression, the faint smile on his narrow mouth. His eyes didn’t mirror the smile though. Neither did the fingers that tightened on my back. He looked impossibly tall to me suddenly, although I knew I’d grown more than an inch since the last time I’d seen him in the flesh. Despite the angular face, he’d filled out some since I’d last seen him, too. In fact, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen him with his shoulders so broad, not even in the Barrier. He looked like he’d been lifting weights.
I looked back at Garensche, feeling oddly helpless.
It hit me then...I was afraid for him.
“Don’t be, love,” he murmured. Pain slivered through his light, even as it occurred to me that he was already hard where he pressed against me. His fingers caressed my back. “...You know me. I came prepared.”
Feeling me stiffen, he clutched me tighter.
“Don’t worry. I would never put you in danger, dearest...”
His lips brushed my temple, but his eyes continued to stare out over the ballroom...where I had no doubt that a larger commotion was already brewing. It occurred to me I should be able to hear it from the Barrier, but Revik held me so close all I could feel was him. It crossed my mind that he may have pulled me into some space of his own, too.
I still couldn’t manage to make myself speak.
Still, my feet followed his. I danced with him...for the first time in my life.
It struck me that if someone had told me a year ago that he could dance, I might not have believed them. At the very least, I would have found the idea funny.
And yet, it didn’t seem funny then.
His feet moved even easier than Garensche’s, but somehow with more weight behind his steps as he leaned into me. The same grace I’d seen on him when he fought hand-to-hand remained with him as he steered me through the space between several other couples. It struck me that he was making his way to the hallway on the other side of the marble floor...even as I found myself mirroring his steps, seemingly from another part of my mind altogether. I felt him reacting to my nearness too, and more than just in the physical.
I also felt him watching me minutely, studying my face with steady eyes.
I was trying again to speak, to form words...
...when Balidor appeared at my elbow, standing on the edge of the carpet, and between the two of us and the hallway. I felt more than saw the others with him...Chandre, Garensche again, Dorje, Cass, as well as that Wvercian I always saw with Cass these days, Baguen.
I stared up at Revik, then looked at Balidor.
I couldn’t see it, but I felt the gun. An organic, I knew it coiled around Balidor’s wrist, out of sight.
“Let her go,” he said. He spoke low, between clenched teeth. “Now. Back away from her, Dehgoies, and we’ll let you leave in peace...”
Revik took his eyes off me. He smiled at the Adhipan leader, but his eyes flashed with a coldness that made me flinch.
“I’d like to have a word with my wife,” he said. “Do you mind?”
“That’s not going to happen,” Balidor said. “Step back. I mean it.”
Revik’s eyes narrowed. “Really.” His gaze flickered upwards, as if scanning the balconies above the main floor. “You think this is a good idea, Balidor? Taking me on in here...in front of all these people...when you have absolutely no idea what I’ve brought with me?”
He paused, his eyes shifting back to the older seer.
“...Or whether I might crack your spine in half, for interrupting a private conversation with my wife?”
Balidor didn’t flinch. Not visibly anyway.
“Let her go,” he said. “You’ve made your point. We have four on you now...how many of us do you think you can take down simultaneously?”
Revik’s gaze grew colder still. “More than you might think.” He pulled me tighter against him, so that I lost even more of my breath, and glanced at my face. “Gods. I sincerely hope you aren’t fucking this prick.” His gaze leveled on Balidor’s. “...You aren’t,” he said to me, softer, without taking his eyes off the other male. “...are you, Alyson?”
“Revik,” I breathed. “...please. What are you doing?”
“I want to talk to you,” he said, his focus still on Balidor. “Tell your guard dogs to go away...would you, love?”
“I told you,” Balidor said. “...that’s not going to happen.”
“Allie?” Revik said. “I’d really rather not break the promise I made to myself. About not killing any of your friends...”
I looked up at this, but he didn’t return my gaze. I knew the look in his eyes though, recognized it from the boy who’d once held the more dangerous parts of him in a different body. Sliding a hand lower, I caressed his thigh deliberately through the tuxedo pants he wore...until I saw his eyes close.
He looked at me then. His eyes didn’t soften exactly, but something in them de-charged as I watched.
I looked at Balidor. “It’s all right,” I said. “He won’t hurt me.”
“Allie...no!” Balidor growled. “Absolutely not!”
“I’ll be all right.” I glanced up at Revik. “Won’t I?”
He pressed against me again. “I can’t promise no marks at all, love...” His focus returned to the Adhipan leader. “But nothing permanent.”
“Allie!” Balidor waited for me to turn. “Hurting you might not be his plan. He might intend to leave here with you...”
Revik shook his head, once. “Not until she asks me.” His eyes closed again, briefly. “And she will ask me,” he said, softer, nuzzling my face. “One of these days. Won’t you, Allie?”
Swallowing, I looked only at Balidor.
“It’s all right,” I said, quieter. “Please. Don’t do this. Not here.”
“Allie, if he takes you—”
“He won’t.”
Balidor looked at him, then at me. I could see it on his face; he didn’t believe Revik for a second. For that matter, I wasn’t sure I did, but I couldn’t deal with the thought of a shooting match breaking out here, with all these people and a few dozen in the press to document all of it.
I knew Revik.
He wouldn’t have come unless he had at least a few contingencies in place. He wouldn’t have walked out onto the ballroom floor without a very clear idea of how he would walk off...or what he would do if Balidor refused to back down.
I knew this about him. Despite everything else, that wouldn’t have changed.
Looking at Balidor, I saw him read some part of this, whether in my eyes or somewhere from the edges of my mind.
“Please,” I repeated. “Just let me go with him. I’ll come back.”
“Here,” Revik said. Pulling a gun out of his jacket, he flipped it neatly in his hand, passing it to me, handle first. “I’ll let her have this, if it eases your mind, Balidor. She’ll call if she needs more. Fair enough?” He bent down, kissing my throat, putting enough light in his tongue that my vision slanted briefly.
“Now fuck off...” he murmured, looking at Balidor again.
Balidor didn’t move though, and I continued to watch him, worried about what he might do.
But the Adhipan leader’s worry seemed equally focused on me.
“Allie,” he murmured. His gray eyes were on mine. “Please...don’t. For the love of the gods, don’t...even if he doesn’t take you.”
“‘Allie?’” Revik said, mimicking the other seer’s voice as he raised his head. “...‘Allie, please...?’” Humor stood out in his words, but I heard the hardness underneath. “I have to say, brother Balidor...could you be a little less informal with my wife? At least when I’m standing right here?”
I tugged on his hand. “Please...Revik. Let’s just go.”
He glanced at me again. Gripping my hand tighter, he took a step to the side, pulling me with him as he began to walk around Balidor and Garensche, giving a short nod to Dorje as he passed. He winked at Cass when we reached her and Baguen, favoring her with a narrow smile.
“I like the tat,” he said, nodding to her upper arm as we passed.
Cass glanced down at the blue and white mark of the sword and sun, visible above the lines of her red, strapless dress. I saw her struggle with a reply as he chuckled, leading me past her...and then something in her eyes grew almost conflicted.
I saw that look on her face, and feared it almost.
I knew they’d been close from the Terian thing. I also knew she spent most of her time these days with seers that Revik was likely already halfway on the road to recruiting.
But I couldn’t think about that, either.
He wove us through the remnants of the crowd between the dance floor and the hallway beyond. I saw faces watching us, but none of them were human apart from Cass. Not a single person in the human media gave us so much as a glance, which told me either he was pushing them himself, or someone on my side or his was doing it for him.
I glimpsed us in the giant hallway mirror as we left the ballroom.
My throat closed when I saw him leading me by the hand in a tux, me following in a jade green dress that looked like something out of a period movie, but for the low back with the single glittering strap across the middle.
It took me another moment to realize what bothered me so much about the image. It was how I’d once imagined we might look together, someday.
The thought caught in my throat until I purposefully blanked out my mind.
A kind of dread lived in me at the thought of being alone with him, but even that wasn’t uncomplicated. I knew it was an illusion of course...like going home with the guy who looked just like the ex-boyfriend who left you on the altar.
I couldn’t really have him, but I knew a large part of me didn’t care about that, either.
That part of me would take whatever I could get.
3
DIFFERENCES
HE KNEW WHERE he was taking me.
He didn’t hesitate as he led me through the main hallway and then down a side corridor. At the end I found myself unsurprised at the sight of a service elevator. He led me inside and hit a button without looking at me. His fingers still squeezed mine, however, and I felt reactions in his light, a sparking vibration that bled through my fingers.
He wasn’t nervous exactly, but his anticipation vibrated my skin.
I felt the boy there, too, and it occurred to me that parts of him might have more at stake in this than others. I had no idea how well he’d integrated the different parts of himself by then, or how the collection of them viewed me. I had no idea who I was dealing with at all really...or how they might flow and interchange.
He only spoke to me once.
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen Feigran?” he said, apropos of nothing.
It took me another few beats to comprehend the question.
“Feigran?” I managed.
“Yes.” His pale eyes met mine. “Have you seen him, Allie?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“You’re sure?”
I stared up at him. “Of course I’m sure. Why would I lie?”
His fingers relaxed slightly.
Feigran was Terian...what was left of him anyway. Another psychotic seer, Terian had been split in more pieces than the two or three that had once made up Revik. The original body, Feigran, had recently dumped down in the Pacific somewhere and disappeared, and none of my people had been able to find him.
Clearly Revik was looking for him, too. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know why, but something in the question made me nervous.
I fought with the idea of asking, but couldn’t find the words.
We rode the rest of the way up in silence...reaching the top floor of the hotel, or at least the top floor reached by that elevator. The button, marked PH, clicked off right before the elevator stopped. Without looking at me, he tightened his hold on my hand and led me off.
No one had walked on or off the thing while we were on it; I wondered if that had been arranged, as well.
It crossed my mind that maybe Balidor had been right; maybe he was going to take me somewhere after all...for all I knew, a helicopter waited for us on the roof. But I felt him tense as he took me down the hallway, reaching into his jacket to lay his hand on the gun I knew lived in a harness there. He’d rarely been without one when I knew him.
It struck me that I still clutched the one he’d given me, hidden in the folds of the green dress.
Whatever he’d halfway expected, though, didn’t materialize. He relaxed after we turned the corner. Two of his people stood at the entrance of a hotel suite.
I knew they were his, even before I saw the tattoos.
Both of them bowed to me respectfully, rising to their feet as we came into view. One I didn’t know, but looked at me with a near-reverence that was more than a little unnerving.
The other, a giant, Chinese-looking seer with a long, braided ponytail and arms covered with tattoos, I recognized. Balidor had shown me his picture while debriefing me on Revik’s inner circle. We’d also met briefly when I woke up from whatever drugs they’d given me to get me off the White House grounds in Washington D.C.
He had originally belonged to Salinse.
“Bridge,” he said, bowing again in a friendly way. “Esteemed sister. We are honored by your presence...more than words allow.”
“Wreg,” I said, nodding back.
The one I didn’t know started a bit, seeing the gun in my hand, but Revik waved him off, warning him with a look. The seer stood out of my way then, still staring at me in the dress, the expression in his eyes bordering on worshipful.
Religious fanatics. Great. Nice company he was keeping.
I bit my lip as the door was opened for me. I felt both of them watching me minutely. I felt their deference to Revik, but their curiosity, too.
I knew Wreg helped plan the operation at the White House.
For that, alone, I could have punched him in the mouth.
Revik had been himself back then, more or less. He’d been trying to rescue me from that same psychotic seer named Terian and an even more psychotic telekinetic kid named Nenzi. He’d succeeded, in part by killing the boy
.
The only problem was, that boy was actually a vessel for a part of Revik himself.
My husband, so it turned out, was the most famous seer who had ever existed.
Made infamous during World War I, he had killed thousands of humans and “traitor” seers as part of the first organized seer rebellion against human beings. He’d been coerced into it by his human and seer handlers, initially anyway. They’d broken him, and then brainwashed him, mainly through psychological abuse and outright torture...but that didn’t change the basic facts.
They’d turned him into a sociopath, at worst. At best, a severely misguided religious fanatic with a mandate to wreak vengeance on humanity for its crimes.
Following the war, Vash and the other seer elders tried to save whatever sanity remained in him by breaking his aleimi, or living light, into several pieces.
One of these, the most dangerous, had been housed in the body of a twenty-two-year-old seer and buried inside a mountain prison in India. Until Terian unearthed the kid the previous year, Revik never knew he existed, or even who he really was.
Neither had I, unfortunately.
Vash and the other elders had thought they were helping him.
I even understood. He’d been beaten and psychologically abused for years, from childhood on up, by radical seers who wanted him as a living weapon. They’d hired human kids to torture him, isolated him, removed any incentive to fight back by killing everyone he cared about. Then, when there’d been hardly anything of him left, they instilled a God-complex to give it all meaning to him. His mind was soaked in the ideology of sacrifice, destiny, racial superiority and sacred duty. So when Vash and the other elders finally managed to bring him in, they realized they couldn’t rehabilitate him through any normal means. His mind was too badly fractured.
They were faced with a choice: kill him, or split his mind, give him a new identity. They decided on the latter.
They’d invented Dehgoies Revik.
The problem was, I fell in love with Dehgoies Revik. I married Dehgoies Revik. And now, Dehgoies Revik turned out to be, if not a complete lie, a pretty damned big half-truth.
I still couldn’t quite forgive them for not telling me, especially Vash. I knew when I met the boy that there was something about him...something that, even in the beginning, felt disturbingly familiar at times. When I studied Syrimne in the Barrier, I could feel it, too. Like I knew him, like this was someone I had a connection to, in some way. I had thought it was the race thing. Everyone told me that we were the same, Syrimne and I. Intermediary beings. Tarsi, Vash, Balidor...even Maygar...they all said the same thing.
Allie's War Season Two Page 3