I glanced at Balidor, realizing the room had gone silent again.
I saw him looking at me, his gray eyes flint-like.
“You have already made up your mind,” he said.
“‘Dori, it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“No, Allie...it is a blatant trick, a manipulation of the bond...and a cruel one, too. Do not fall for it, I beg you!”
“He might kill Vash if we don’t,” I began.
“He will assuredly try if we don’t, yes.” Balidor’s eyes hardened more. “Explain to me, Allie, how that fact makes him an attractive mate to you in any way. Explain it, please...because I am unclear why you would be considering sharing a bed with a monster who would kill a being such as Vash, who acted as a father and protector to him for decades...”
I felt my jaw harden. “You’re overstepping your bounds, Balidor.”
“I don’t think I am,” he said. “My job is to keep you alive. If you do not have the mental capacity to do it yourself, I am completely within my ‘bounds’ as you call it, to declare you unfit and make such decisions for you...”
I felt my fingers curl into fists on my thighs.
Looking at Cass and Jon, I saw that they had paled, too. But they weren’t exactly jumping up to defend me, either.
Jon, seeming to see it on my face, swallowed, meeting my gaze directly.
“He’s right, Al,” he said. “You can’t trust Revik in this. I talked to him that night, in Delhi. He was clear. He has absolutely no intention of respecting your free will in this...or in much of anything to do with the two of you. He told me point blank that he’d kill anyone who touched you, Allie...”
I frowned, looking again at Balidor.
Seeing the expression on his face, it struck me that there wasn’t even a flicker of surprise there at what Jon had said.
“You knew about this,” I said. I looked at Jon. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Jon’s voice grew exasperated. “When, Al? When was I supposed to tell you that? Before or after your husband set off a friggin’ bomb in the lobby of a five-star hotel? Or somewhere on the flight here, when you spent most of it crying in the cargo hold...?”
I felt my jaw clench so hard it hurt my face.
“You didn’t want to hear it!” Jon said.
My hands clenched into fists. “How dare you?” I said. “You act like I’m some love-struck teenager...and when have I ever let any of you down?”
“You left with him, Allie!” Balidor said. “How can we trust you, when he snaps his fingers and you go? Worse, you slept with him...are you really so ignorant that you didn’t know this would reinforce your ties to him? Do you think you can just play at being the wife of an agent of the Dreng...?”
I glared at him. “If I’d known I was being tested—”
“Still, you sound like a child!” Balidor smacked his hand against the wooden stair support. I jumped, in spite of myself. “Alyson! You are only convincing me that you have no idea what you are facing in him!”
“You have no right to speak to me this way!” I said. “What makes you think you have the right to order me around—”
“So it is only your husband who can do this, then?”
Anger rose in me, so abruptly and intensely I almost couldn’t control it at first. In the same instant, I realized it didn’t all feel like mine. Revik was listening to this.
“Allie!” Cass said, jerking my eyes to hers. “No one here is disrespecting you!”
“Bullshit!” I glared at Balidor, hooking my fingers under the collar. “Is that what this is really for, Dori? In case you can’t keep me in line?”
Balidor’s eyes flattened. “It may be too late for that,” he said.
Staring at him, I realized I’d said it without meaning it, but that he was deadly serious. As if seeing it on my face, he shook his head, clicking sharply.
“Alyson!” he said, once more smacking his hand on the wooden support to draw my eyes. “I am the leader of the Adhipan! I cannot permit the Bridge to go over to the Dreng! Do you not see this? He is corrupting you, Allie! He is doing it as surely as I am looking at you! We are already halfway the enemy in your eyes!”
“Hey,” Cass said. Her voice sounded nervous. “Back off a little, ‘Dori. I don’t think it’s as bad as all that...”
“This from you?” Balidor said, turning on her. “You wear his fucking mark, Cassandra! Your lover is one of Salinse’s people! For all we know, he’s a traitor, reporting to him about where we are...”
Cass’ eyes narrowed to slits. “Wait just a minute...”
Jon stepped preemptively between Cass and Balidor, holding up a hand to each of them.
“Stop it!” he said. “Right now! This isn’t helping anything! We’re supposed to be helping Allie with this, not bullying her...” He turned on Balidor. “You need to back off, ‘Dori...right now!”
“This is great,” Balidor said. He turned on me. “I take orders now from humans! How can I protect you like this, Bridge? How? How can I protect any of us, if you insist on acting like a child, instead of what you are?”
My fury rose, making it hard to see him clearly.
Seeing my face, he exhaled an angry rush of air.
For a long moment, he only stood there, clicking to himself. When he met my gaze again, his expression hadn’t softened.
“Alyson,” he said. “Do you not realize that I am not blaming you for this? If you were raised seer, you would not be insulted by my claiming you have no real agency in this. It is a fact of being a seer...it is a fact of bonding!”
I forced myself to look away, to retract my light, recognizing I didn’t feel quite right again. I took a breath. “‘Dori,” I said. “Just lay off with that, okay? I heard you. You don’t have to keep saying it over and over—”
“He is taking advantage of your ignorance in this very thing!” he cut in anyway. “He is pretending the coercive element of this bond does not exist...making his plea to you all about choice...your damned feelings for him! It is not simply about choice, Allie! It is not simply a matter of compromise, of emotion. What he does to his light, he does also to yours...if you knew more about your own biology, you would understand this! You would not be making it personal!”
I stared at him incredulously. “Me, making it personal?”
Ignoring this, Balidor gestured sharply at Jon and Cass.
“I am not insulting them either!” he said, his voice rising again. “...They cannot help you with this! Do you see? They cannot! Their opinion is meaningless in this regard, Allie...it is less than meaningless!”
“All right,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “All right...Balidor. I understand what you are saying. Can we please talk to Vash about this, though? He really had a different take on what—”
“Vash loves him, Allie! He is not objective on this! And he is not an infiltrator either. You need to let me do my job, or ask me to step down...”
I crossed my arms. Resting them on my thighs, I just looked at him for a moment, trying to think past the anger and confusion in my light.
Finally, I let out a short laugh, feeling my jaw harden.
“Is that what you want?” I said. “You tired of being on the losing side, ‘Dor? Because I’m sure Revik would welcome you with open arms...”
“I highly doubt that, Allie...especially since he knows full well how I feel about you. As it stands now, he would kill me the first excuse he got.”
I stared at him. For an instant, my anger faltered.
Jon and Cass stared at him, too.
“‘Dori...” I began.
“...And I warn you. If you ask me to step down, you will force my hand. I won’t let him take advantage of this thing between you. I won’t.”
I looked away from where I’d been focusing on the flowers at the foot of the stairs.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Take it however you like,” he said. “But I think you understood m
e just fine, Alyson...”
“Balidor, if he finds out you’re holding me against my will, he’ll kill every one of you,” I said. “How is that better?”
“I won’t hand the Bridge to the Dreng,” he said. “I won’t, Allie. If that means sacrificing myself to that cause, I will.”
“Dori’—” I began, frustrated, but he cut me off.
“Or even sacrificing you, Alyson.”
My eyes narrowed. “‘Dori, stop threatening me. I mean it.”
“It’s not a threat...”
“That’s enough!” I said, rising to my feet. I heard him in my voice, for real that time, but I only paused long enough to meet Balidor’s gaze. “You need to step down, ‘Dor...at least for now. You’re clearly not capable of being objective about this...and I need clear heads.” I turned to Dorje. “...Get this fucking collar off me. Now. I’m going to take him up on his offer. It’s stupid not to...and Vash seems to think whatever damage I could have done by sleeping with him has already been done.” I looked at Jon and Cass.
“It’s six months. It’s worth what...and who...we might save in six months. If I can’t make him see reason in that time, we’ll try something else...”
I swallowed then, as something else occurred to me.
“Just in case, though...I’ll need a group of you to get Vash out of here. Find a place to hide him, in case Revik is using this as some kind of distraction...”
I descended the stairs, my hand on the railing. It wasn’t until I was nearly to the bottom that I realized Balidor stood there, directly in my path.
“Get out of my way, ‘Dori,” I said.
“I can’t do that, Alyson.”
His voice held a veiled emotion that made me pause, my hand on the bannister.
“You can’t?” I said. “Get out of my way, ‘Dori!”
“...I am truly sorry,” he said. “I cannot tell you how sorry I am. I would have done anything for you, Bridge. But this...this, I cannot.”
It took me another second to realize he was pointing a gun at me.
Staring at his hand with the gun, I felt my breath come to a halt.
Time slowed as the reality of it sank in.
Staring down at Balidor’s flushed face, it occurred to me suddenly, that killing me had been the contingency plan for Revik once, too. He’d been tasked by the Seven with removing me from the equation if he failed to get me safely out...if it looked like the Rooks, and therefore the Dreng, would likely gain custody of me.
That had been back when he was still my bodyguard, like Balidor was my bodyguard now. Back when it was Revik’s responsibility to make sure I didn’t inadvertently end up becoming like Syrimne.
I had often wondered if Revik would have done it.
I stared at the gun in ‘Dori’s hand. I let my eyes drift up to his face, and met the gray eyes, and saw that 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 that 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 then, 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 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.
13
PAIN
JON STARED OUT the window of a military truck, unable to focus his eyes. He leaned his chin 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 had moved up to the cab to keep Dorje company while he took his shift at the wheel.
They hadn’t spoken really. Jon suspected the seer had 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, the self-proclaimed leader of the newly reconstituted seer government called The Seven...”
Jon glanced at the receiver, then up at Dorje, whose mouth firmed.
“Must be Dehgoies’ people,” Dorje said, before Jon could ask. “Wanting to flush us out. Make the other seers turn on us...”
Jon started to answer, then shut his mouth. He didn’t really need to tell Dorje that he didn’t include himself in the ‘us’ Dorje was referencing.
Dorje seemed to hear him anyway.
“I know, cousin,” he 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 said. “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 feeds. Some hunters even use the human networks tactically...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 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 has come forward to officially deny or affirm...however, it is known that her purported husband, Syrimne, a seer terrorist who also goes by the name ‘Dehgoies Revik,’ is missing as well, and considered a suspect...”
Clicking softly, Dorje looked back at the road, pulling down the fur cap he wore before gripping the steering wheel with both hands.
Jon found himself continuing to listen, in spite of himself, as 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 as a sleeper agent...a seer raised among humans until she was twenty-eight years old, or at least appeared to be that age in human years. Medical authorities still can’t explain...”
The voice fuzzed out slightly, covered by static.
Jon turned over the words, feeling a tightness in his throat that made it hard to breathe. He k
new Allie and Revik were unique among seers in terms of their biology; they could both mimic the aging patterns of the dominant race to which they’d been exposed. Still, the reminder right then, of her life as a human, was a bit more than he needed.
That same biological quirk allowed Allie to blend with humans for years in San Francisco, and kept her above suspicion in terms of her race cat. Jon couldn’t count the number of times he’d used her apparent age himself as evidence, either to convince himself or someone else that Allie literally had to be human.
“...Following her exposure and subsequent flight,” the announcer continued. “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, likely from interference caused by the mountains themselves.
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. this year, 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 and they’d been desperate, trying to find any allies they could to take on Syrimne in the wake of that fiasco in D.C. Allie had been their best hope, and while she hadn’t declared war on Revik the way they might have hoped, she at least presented unattached seers with an alternative.
Allie's War Season Two Page 17