Rook (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #1): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  I tried to reconcile them, couldn’t.

  My eyes shifted first, meeting Ullysa’s in my attempt to escape his.

  Her returning smile held amusement. She folded her thin arms, quirking a pencil-darkened eyebrow at Revik.

  Turning, I walked wordlessly out the door. I saw Ullysa’s eyes widen in surprise, just before she moved out of my way.

  I didn’t stop walking. I didn’t even slow down enough to realize I didn’t know where I was going until I’d passed another three doors. Then I stopped dead, standing in the darkened corridor. By then, I was having trouble breathing.

  Anxiety clenched my chest.

  I held the wall, tried to turn it into anger, like he had.

  The pull to go back to him was nearly physical in its intensity.

  My mind fought to sift through details of the night before.

  We definitely hadn’t had sex. Anyway, hadn’t those other seers said Revik was a prostitute? So was Ullysa, for that matter––so were all of the seers here. Sex wouldn’t faze them; it certainly wouldn’t have elicited such glee from Ullysa. Remembering what Kat said about Revik in that regard, what she’d shown me with her light, I fought with a hot flood of… God, something… that briefly took over my mind.

  It grew intense enough to scare me, past any semblance of rational thought.

  A memory flashed inside my mind––of seeing Jaden in that bar, of finding myself suddenly holding a bottle decorated with a strange woman’s blood.

  Christ. Was it jealousy?

  The stories I’d grown up hearing about seers started to come back, every feed broadcast I’d ever seen or heard about them and their sexuality. Yet most of those made no sense to me now. According to everything I’d heard, seers were incapable of relationships. They were sexually insatiable, and they didn’t discriminate. Remembering those flashes of Revik and his wife, Elise, I found myself thinking those stories couldn’t possibly be less compatible with what I’d seen.

  In those memories, Revik felt intense love for his wife. He’d loved her to the point of insanity; he’d nearly killed himself over her.

  The feeds also claimed seers were predatory with sex.

  They said seers seduced humans by hooking into their victims’ fantasies and delusions until they lost themselves entirely inside the seer’s mind. Those stories always made it sound deliberate, though, and whatever happened between me and Revik the night before, it didn’t feel like Revik had done it intentionally.

  In fact, he seemed to blame me for whatever occurred.

  As the thought sunk in, I remember more about the night before.

  I remembered asking him for something.

  I remembered a promise.

  It was vague, though. I remembered a lot of light, Revik crying.

  Was he angry at me for that? Had I broken some kind of seer etiquette, asking him for something he didn’t want to give, something he didn’t feel he could refuse, because of who I was? He hadn’t seemed angry, though. Not last night.

  He’d kissed me, hadn’t he? Or had I imagined that, too?

  It definitely didn’t feel like we’d had sex. No matter how battered my body was, I was still like 98% certain I would have noticed. Besides, I wanted sex. I could tell Revik did, too. Even in his anger, I could feel that wanting on him. I might even have been waiting for him to wake up for that very reason.

  The admission made me feel a little queasy.

  Images rose from the night before, confusing me more.

  Whatever that had been, it hadn’t felt like a dream. My attempts to convince myself I’d imagined it rang hollow, too. No, they were definitely memories. He’d been a Nazi… a married Nazi with a death sentence for murdering his commanding officer for screwing his wife.

  That guy Terian had been there.

  The pain in my stomach worsened. I knew some of it was that seer pain I’d felt before, but now it was mixing with the stress of not knowing how to process any of this.

  I stared at a nearby ajar door breaking the dark walls of the corridor.

  For a long moment, I only stared, without really seeing it––then my eyes clicked back into focus. I realized I was looking at a pink tile wall.

  It was a bathroom.

  Pushing off the wall, I made my way over to it, limping as my body’s battered state grew more noticeable. I closed the door behind me, only to stand there indecisively, my back pressed to the wood. Finally, I turned around and sat on the toilet.

  It wasn’t until I’d relieved myself that it occurred to me that through that whole exchange with Ullysa and Revik, I hadn’t been wearing pants.

  Clasping my hands between my bare knees, I let out a strangled laugh.

  I sat there for what felt like a long time. My body was unbelievably sore. Not sex sore—just run of the mill falling down a hill after being handcuffed to a car then driving off a bridge and smacking my skull sore.

  The nausea worsened as soon as my bladder wasn’t full enough to distract me. I gripped the edge of the pedestal sink, afraid I’d throw up if I tried to stand. It felt like some part of me had been broken and smashed, then reassembled with pieces missing––or maybe with new ones woven in with the old.

  I still sat there, paralyzed, when Ullysa knocked.

  After the second knock, she tried the handle. Opening the door cautiously, she handed through clean clothes and a basket with soap and shampoo. I felt her concern, and once she’d placed everything on the tile, I felt her hesitate, about to speak. Preempting whatever attempt she might make to communicate, I reached over with one foot to push the door shut.

  Even through the door and intervening corridor, I could feel him.

  His anger was still there, pulsing at me, but so was the other, unmistakable now, until the two wove together, impossible to separate as distinct feelings.

  He wanted me to come back, I realized with a dim sort of confusion.

  He was having the same reaction I was, and on more than one level.

  For a moment I doubted what I felt, then a sliver of his pain hit me, weaving into some part of me I couldn’t see. My body’s reaction was immediate, and violent. My stomach hurt, but it wasn’t just that. I felt my face flush, my chest and thighs warm. I felt myself start to respond, to reach back in his direction, and I panicked, pulling that part of me back.

  His pain worsened, turning liquid.

  It was unmistakably sexual.

  I was still sitting there when he dropped the pretense, asking me openly to return to the room. When I didn’t respond, he pulled on me harder, letting me feel the want behind it, until I clutched the edge of the sink.

  Stop, I thought at him, gasping. Please, stop.

  After the barest pause, his presence receded.

  Somehow I remained lost in his light. My skin flushed as I realized the flavor of his thoughts. He was having trouble not fantasizing. He wanted me to come back. He wanted it so badly he wasn’t thinking rationally anymore. He wanted to fuck. The word hit at me; the desire behind it stole my breath, making me clutch the sink harder.

  On the surface, he asked me again. Politely, that time.

  When I let out a short laugh, his mind retreated. But not entirely.

  I felt him thinking again. Then he started to open his light. I felt emotion expand off him; that vulnerability I’d glimpsed in the room mixed with his desire, enveloping me. It grew stronger as it intensified his pain, as it slid deeper into my light––

  I panicked, pushing him back.

  That time, he withdrew until I barely felt him.

  Still flushed, I staggered to my feet, buying myself time by examining the bruises that ran all along my legs and arms. Limping to the tub, I bent to twist the porcelain shower knobs all the way to hot. I tugged the shirt over my head, dropping it on the floor. As water heated in the ancient pipes, I stood in the basin, shivering.

  I tried to ignore the waiting I felt behind his silence.

  Allie, he sent softly. …please.

&n
bsp; The pull behind it cut my breath.

  Gaos… please. Please…

  Pain flickered around the spaces between us, and for an instant, I hesitated, staring at that void, feeling it with him. The lost feeling worsened.

  Then I stepped under the hot water.

  I let my mind go blank as the smell of steaming hot lake water rose off my hair, sliding off my body like a second skin. I lowered my head as the water beat at it, sending brown, brackish water down the sides of the tub and into the drain.

  I felt him watch me as I continued to stand there.

  His light flickered around mine, silent, waiting.

  For a long time, it didn’t move away.

  16

  REJECTION

  I STOOD BEFORE a silhouette target, trying not to feel foolish as I fumbled with the safety of the gun I gripped in both hands. Ullysa told me twice what kind of gun it was, but all I remembered was what Ivy called it—Baby Eagle.

  Dad had been more of a rifle and shotgun kind of guy.

  “Stop stalling,” Ullysa said. “You have only perhaps a few more days before you and Revi’ must leave here, Esteemed Bridge.”

  I nodded, only half-listening.

  Being here, surrounded by seers, I forgot we were in Seattle most of the time, even as I watched the skyline change from day to night and back again through the windows of the upper floors. It was as though the building and all its contents remained disconnected from its physical location in the middle of the human city.

  The one thread between it and us was the steady stream of clients for the prostitutes.

  I still couldn’t grasp the extent or prevalence of this kind of thing, meaning, seers living under the radar, smack dab in the middle of human civilization without any controls. I was curious about it, sure, but a little hesitant to ask a lot of questions at this point. I’d already made the mistake of mentioning SCARB once, and managed to silence an entire room.

  It had been Kat, of course, who broke the silence.

  “Why doesn’t SCARB mind our lack of sponsorship?” the Russian seer sneered. “Well, perhaps, cub, we do them the courtesy of not killing them out of deference for the preciousness of living light? You see, what you call ‘sponsorship,’ we call sla-ver-y. Unless you know a way to own a seer’s aleimi without owning the seer? If so, please share it with the rest of us. You truly will be our savior then, oh holiest of Bridges!”

  Some in the room hid smiles, but I also felt pulses of anger aimed in my direction.

  “Would you like sponsorship, cub?” Kat asked, her lips lifted in a cold smile. “Shall we call SCARB for you? Perhaps they mind your lack of sponsorship now, eh?”

  Only later did I muster the nerve to ask Ullysa more about what aleimi meant.

  As Revik had said, aleimi was the seer word for the light bodies I’d seen behind the Barrier, those structures and geometries I’d seen on Revik and myself, as well as on humans. They also called it “living light,” or, more commonly, just “light.”

  Ullysa further defined aleimi as, “the ability to carry light.” When I asked if this was like “soul,” she shook her head. She said humans and seers were equal in soul, but they differed in this ability to carry and manipulate light.

  No direct translation of the word existed in English, she said. It was strictly a seer word.

  I was learning that even seer language had a Barrier component––meaning, the words contained meanings that required an ability to see with the added structures in their light. Generally speaking, their words carried more compound meanings and nuances in general.

  One seer word often needed a sentence to translate into English.

  Ullysa said more about this, about words being symbols and all symbols having unspoken layers. Since more than half of all shared seer culture came from Barrier-consciousness—a split consciousness unshared by humans—translation of many of their core symbols to human language remained literally impossible.

  I even understood this, in part.

  I’m not sure how much understanding it helped me, though.

  Ullysa and I now stood in a cement, sound-proof bunker built into the hill, complete with a firing range and rows of storage lockers that held everything from ammunition to plant seeds to casks of water and enough food for everyone in the building to eat for at least a few years.

  Ullysa jokingly referred to it as their “ark.”

  She stood behind me, looking like a movie star even in protective glasses and with soundproofing mufflers over her ears.

  “You should let Revi’ help you with this,” she said loudly over the sound-deadeners, repeating herself for the fifth time.

  I nodded, staring at the target.

  When Ullysa clicked at me, I glanced over at her face.

  “Why will you not speak to him?”

  “I really don’t want to bother him right now, Ullysa,” I said.

  “Why?” the woman said, exasperated. “Because of Kat? You threw her at him, and now you complain when he uses her to cope with—”

  “Stop!” I held up a hand. “Seriously. I don’t need to know about his ‘coping’ methods. It’s none of my business. Or yours.”

  With Ullysa, I’d given up pretending I didn’t care where he slept.

  Anyway, she was right.

  It was my own damned fault.

  That first morning I’d woken up in Seattle, I’d entered the kitchen after my shower, wearing borrowed clothes and following the smell of coffee and faintly burned toast. There, Kat and two others, Ivy and the African-looking seer from the night before, looked up from where they lounged on barstools, leaning against a marble countertop next to platters of eggs and toast.

  I avoided Kat’s stare, focusing on the eggs and trying not to notice that I could still feel Revik. His presence coiled into me, wrapped into my light in a way that should have been cloying, but pretty much did the opposite. I could feel the part of me pulling on him, too, not content with the amount we were connected now.

  Briefly, hunger overshadowed the other thing I felt.

  All three seers looked up when Ullysa entered the kitchen behind me.

  It was the African-looking one who focused first on the empty space above my head, presumably noticing the same thing that captivated Ullysa earlier. After scanning me thoroughly with a sharp gaze, she glanced at Ullysa with raised eyebrows.

  When the same seer looked at Ivy, Ivy only smiled, making a shrug-like gesture with her hand before lifting a mug of coffee to her lips.

  Kat gaped above my head in open disbelief.

  “He’s awake.” I met Kat’s eyes. “You can see him, if you want.”

  Ullysa stiffened. Shock wafted palpably off her light.

  The African seer and Ivy exchanged looks as well. None of them spoke, but I felt their minds crackle around me. My words snapped Kat back to her usual hard demeanor.

  Even so, her smile had the faintest bit of surprise in it as well.

  “Thanks, worm. I accept.”

  Her choice of words hit me strangely.

  Still, I didn’t speak as she rose to her feet. She walked out of the room, not bothering to close her robe as she brushed by me on her way out. The African-looking seer left, too, but her eyes held as much puzzlement as Ullysa’s. It didn’t feel as though she were following Kat.

  Ivy stayed.

  She and Ullysa remained silent as they piled eggs and toast on a plate for me and poured me a cup of coffee, shoving cream and sugar within my reach.

  Ivy finally broke the silence.

  “He might not like that,” she said tentatively. “Even if the two of you have decided to wait to complete things. He still might not like what you did.”

  I halted a forkful of eggs halfway to my mouth.

  “I just mean…” Ivy looked at me apologetically, shrugging with one hand. “You offering him to Kat. Even if you are trying to be generous, he might take it… wrong.”

  She hesitated, looking to Ullysa for help.

&n
bsp; Ullysa was more direct.

  “He will definitely take it badly,” she said. “It is rejection. More than rejection. For a seer, it is an overt insult. Are you angry with him?”

  I stared between them, gripping my coffee mug. I cleared my throat.

  “No,” I said.

  Ullysa finished pouring herself a glass of juice. Not doing a very good job of hiding her puzzlement, she clicked softly, exhaling in a sigh.

  “Bridge Alyson, perhaps the circumstances are not clear to you. Males are quite vulnerable after. Given his history, Revi’, in particular, will have trouble with this. That would be true even without Kat there.”

  She studied my eyes and face. Once she had, her expression softened.

  “Please do not take him personally right now, sister,” she said. “Or do anything rash. He agreed, the same as you. There are no ‘mistakes’ with these things. Give him time to adjust. He is perhaps not reacting to this in the way you imagined…” She gave Ivy a knowing smile, chuckling a little. “Revi’ is not typical in some respects. But he is still seer.”

  At my silence, Ullysa glanced at Ivy.

  Gesturing delicately, she added, “If he has asked you to wait to complete things, it is likely logistical only. He may wish for a construct in a more secluded location, away from other seers. Revi’ can be quite traditional, in his way.” She exchanged another wry smile with Ivy. “In any case, be assured, sister. The delay won’t be for long.”

  I looked between them again, feeling my sense of unreality worsen, even as my pulse turned borderline painful in my chest.

  Ullysa’s smile faded.

  She and Ivy exchanged another glance, this one worried.

  Ullysa said, “Surely you must sense some portion of… what occurred?”

  I felt my face redden. I was about to ask, when Ullysa cut me off.

  “No,” she said decisively. “No… gaos. I assumed the two of you had spoken about this. If you have not, this cannot come from us. It cannot. You must speak to Revi’.”