Shadow (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #4): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  Table of Contents

  SYNOPSIS

  ONE: Blood Traitors

  TWO: Demonstration

  THREE: Caged

  FOUR: Hope

  FIVE: What Do You Talk About?

  SIX: Forever and Ever

  SEVEN: First Contact

  EIGHT: Locker Room Talk

  NINE: Georgetown

  TEN: Some Days I Submit, Some I Won’t

  ELEVEN: Ground Zero

  TWELVE: Take Down

  THIRTEEN: Reconnection

  FOURTEEN: Worry About You

  FIFTEEN: Second Time

  SIXTEEN: Beginnings

  SEVENTEEN: What I Do To You

  EIGHTEEN: Unexpected Callers

  NINETEEN: Worlds Collide

  TWENTY: New York

  TWENTY-ONE: Varlan

  TWENTY-TWO: Torturer

  TWENTY-THREE: The Teacher

  TWENTY-FOUR: Why

  TWENTY-FIVE: Emissary

  TWENTY-SIX: Audience

  TWENTY-SEVEN: Kuchta

  TWENTY-EIGHT: The Promise

  TWENTY-NINE: Dear Friend Of Mine

  THIRTY: Dark Screams

  THIRTY-ONE: Opening

  THIRTY-TWO: The Lesson

  THIRTY-THREE: Burial

  THIRTY-FOUR: Answering the Call

  THIRTY-FIVE: Substation

  THIRTY-SIX: Laboratory

  THIRTY-SEVEN: Graduation

  THIRTY-EIGHT: Exhausted

  THIRTY-NINE: Poor Judgment

  FORTY: Scars

  FORTY-ONE: Lena

  FORTY-TWO: Finished

  FORTY-THREE: Give Him Whatever He Wants

  FORTY-FOUR: Resigned

  FORTY-FIVE: Last to Know

  FORTY-SIX: City of Snow

  FORTY-SEVEN: Payment

  FORTY-EIGHT: Blood Oath

  FORTY-NINE: Different Strategy

  SHADOW

  Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #4

  by

  JC Andrijeski

  Copyright © 2017 by JC Andrijeski

  Published by White Sun Press

  Cover Art & Design by Damonza.com

  2017

  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 retailer for the work and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  SYNOPSIS for Shadow

  "All what he has done, he has done for the greater good..."

  Following the disappearance of the infamous “Sword” and leader of the anti-human rebellion, Allie finds herself despised by every free seer in the western world...and most in the East. Hiding in an underground cell to stay alive, Allie also struggles with yet another visage of Revik, who turns into a feral animal once free of the Dreng.

  She only has one shot at saving him, and it means learning more about his past than she ever wanted to know. It also means re-earning his trust, a near-impossible task given what she had to do to get him free.

  Meanwhile, a mysterious force rises, known only as "Shadow,” boasting an army of powerful and ancient seers...seers with a darker agenda than even the Rooks.

  Dedicated to

  Kathryn

  1

  BLOOD TRAITORS

  THE CROWD SURGED, shouting in more than one language beneath liquid, virtual reality marquees lining the buildings of downtown Hong Kong.

  Images swam down the screens like colorful water, flickering snapshots of the current scene down the street interspersed with talking heads and images of a burning skyscraper in São Paulo. On the ground, three dimensional holographic projections tried and talk to individuals in the rapidly growing crowd, to convince them to buy gold or go to a spa or win a free vacation by staying in this or that hotel.

  Most people walked right through them as if they weren’t there.

  Their eyes remained trained upwards, staring at the feed streams displayed on the marquee screens above. From their eyes and light, their headsets were tuned to the same news channels running on the rotating screens overhead.

  The crowd formed a funnel shape in front of the tallest of the downtown office buildings, covering the street leading to the bottom of the skyscraper steps. Local police barricaded the crowd from reaching anything beyond that, standing behind metal fences flashing with rotating lights, wearing riot gear and holding pitch black shields.

  Above the police stood a row of tall, silent-seeming figures wearing all black and carrying automatic weapons. Wearing organic armor, they stared out over the crowd with no expressions in their brightly-colored eyes, or their angular, high-cheekboned faces.

  Balidor stood just above that, behind the line of SCARB and Lao Hu infiltrators.

  Around him and below him stood probably fifty other seers and humans in total, most of them wearing uniforms, all of them armed.

  Glancing at Cass, he fought the impulse to order her back inside, on the other side of those bulletproof glass doors.

  Virtual signs and even some physical ones taped to metal and plastic piping waved above the heads of the seers and humans making up the still-growing crowd on the other side of the Hong Kong police. Balidor saw T-shirts programmed to display many of the same words as the signs. Characters danced in flashing letters across chests, flashing in off-kilter pulses with the signs, even as the chanting from the crowd itself grew louder.

  “BRING HER OUT! BRING HER OUT! BRING HER OUT!”

  Flyers whizzed by, some merely documenting the scene while others projected still more signs and images. Others, owned by the Hong Kong police, issued warnings for the crowd to stay calm and not breach the barricades or risk arrest.

  Yells grew louder when more uniformed seers appeared at the front of the glass doors. Like Balidor himself, they didn’t wear SCARB uniforms, but wore the black uniforms and gold insignia of the seer military, the Adhipan.

  Looking up at them, Balidor caught the eye of Chinja and frowned.

  He considered ordering them back inside the building, then decided it wouldn’t make any difference. The crowd already knew she was inside.

  “Where is the bitch!” a woman yelled, screaming in the face of the Hong Kong guard. “Bring her out! Bring her out here!”

  The Hong Kong guard’s face didn’t move.

  Looking at the pale pink eyes of the woman shouting, Balidor flinched. Clearly, she was seer. Humans stood next to her, most of them wearing Third Myth shirts and holding similar signs as the seers.

  “Bring her out!” the woman screamed again. “Bring that whore out here!”

  “Traitors!” another seer, a green-eyed male that time, shouted up at Balidor and the other Adhipan, spitting in disgust. “Blood traitors! Slaver whores!”

  “Where is he?” another male shrieked. “Did she kill him? What has she done with him?”

  “Where is the vow-breaking bitch?” the pink-eyed female screamed from the other side. “Is she torturing him right now?”

  The seers and humans near him picked up their words.

  In seconds, the chanting changed.

  “WHERE IS THE SWORD? WHERE IS THE SWORD? WHERE IS THE SWORD?”

  Pieces of cement and gravel started flying through the air.

  The Hong Kong police knocked back some of it with batons and shields, but some chunks reached the upper steps. Bottles
came next, along with handfuls of light-colored dirt they threw on the human soldiers, a not-subtle insult calling them “worms.”

  Balidor ducked a piece of cement without taking his eyes off the crowd, noting the number of flyers now aiming cameras at them. Some of those must be using facial recognition software.

  As if she heard his thoughts, Cass grabbed his arm.

  “You shouldn’t be out here,” she said, her voice half a shout to be heard over the crowd. “‘Dori… you need to go back inside. They’ll ID you soon.”

  He turned slightly to look at her. “It won’t matter, Cass,” he said, also half-shouting. “We’re all traitors now.”

  She frowned, her brow furrowing. “I’ve seen feeds talking about you,” she said. “They were calling you Allie’s lover, ‘the adulterer.’ There were pictures.” Pausing, she added, “And there’s a good chance the Rebels have people here. If any of them see you, they’ll overrun the barricade, ‘Dor, whether they know she’s inside or not. You have to know the Rebels blame you.”

  Slightly annoyed when he realized she was right, he nodded, wincing as a sharp chunk of rock glanced off his shoulder. He pulled her further behind him, his eyes scanning back over the flashing signs and clothing.

  Most displayed some variation of “Traitor,” “Worm-fucker,” “Race Traitor,” “Whore,” “Vow-Breaker.” Balidor saw a few that simply read, “Bitch.” One said, “The Royal Bridge is a Royal Cunt” in giant, flashing orange letters.

  He stared around at the growing numbers, feeling his trepidation worsen.

  With it, his anger returned, too.

  “This is madness!” he shouted to Cass over the raised voices. “Suicide, at the very least! Why in the name of the gods did she want to come here?”

  Cass clutched his arm tighter, sliding behind him when a thrown bottle headed their way.

  Grateful at her fast reflexes, which were almost seer-like, he held up an arm to shield her as the crowd surged again. The sheer number of them was starting to put too much pressure on the barricade. Soon, the police would be forced to either retreat or open fire.

  Balidor relished neither option.

  “We cannot let her come downstairs,” he said. “There will be a full-blown firefight on the streets.” He gave Cass another look. “We cannot even confirm she is here. The building will be overrun if we release any statement at all, even on the feeds.”

  He felt her agree.

  He knew she didn’t like him reading her without permission, but, standing this close, it was almost impossible not to feel her thoughts.

  Therefore, he felt her irritation at Allie, at the danger she’d put them all in, seemingly without any thought to the consequences. Cass resented how, even now, Revik, a.k.a., Allie’s husband, a.k.a., Syrimne d’Gaos, a.k.a., “The Sword,” always seemed to factor first in Allie’s mind, regardless of any other consideration.

  Hearing Cass’s thoughts, Balidor found himself agreeing with her.

  He bit back a surge of fury at the thought.

  Of course, the logical side of his mind couldn’t dismiss Allie’s concerns entirely.

  If the Sword got loose now, it would be an unmitigated disaster. Given her husband’s notoriety, getting him completely off the grid without anyone knowing where he was, or even what condition he was in, had to take precedence.

  Right now, Dehgoies was, quite literally, the most dangerous man alive.

  Scanning faces among the shouting seers and humans, Balidor felt his unease worsen.

  More and more, as he scanned their collective light, he felt the organization there, some direction from outside. The calming influence the Lao Hu and Adhipan seers were attempting to descend over the thickest parts of the crowd shook under multiple hits from seers interrupting or stopping their efforts. Balidor knew some of those hits came from the crowd itself––but he felt a hell of a lot coming from outside, too.

  Unfortunately, they had numbers on their side.

  The constant shaking of the construct rendered the effects of the calming influence close to zero, even with over a dozen infiltrators working, fighting to keep the threads intact.

  He was about to turn to Cass again, when a shout went up from the crowd.

  Anger surged higher from the crowd’s light––high enough that Balidor could feel something had changed. Looking up, he saw his face filling one of the liquid monitors displaying network feeds. The anger in the crowd intensified as his face flickered onto more than one screen.

  Screams rose, emotions flaring in a sharp wave that told him Cass was right.

  Either the news of his role in the Sword’s capture had spread, or more free seers among the Rebels remained un-identified than even the Adhipan and Lao Hu supposed.

  Ironic, really, that he was hated for destroying the Sword’s marriage, given how things had turned out.

  “‘Dori!” Cass grabbed his arm, worried. “We have to go! Now!”

  He turned, meeting her brown eyes, which had widened in her face. She clutched the strap of an automatic rifle with one hand, gripping his sleeve in the other as she looked around his armored body at the crowd.

  Balidor glanced over her head and saw the giant Wvercian, Baguen, watching the two of them from a few yards away, a scowl on his full lips. Everyone instinctively gave the Wvercian a wide berth, even the most grim-faced of the SCARB soldiers. It left a circle of space around the blond giant’s form. Wvercians, an ancient ethnicity of Chinese seer, usually stood at around seven or eight feet tall, and carried the weight of two regular seers.

  Cass leaned closer, speaking in Balidor’s ear. “‘Dori! I mean it! They’re losing control of them… we have to go!”

  Looking back at the crowd, Balidor scowled. Instead of answering her directly, he switched on his secure network link. “Tenzi? Is someone showing her this? She must realize she can’t come down here. We have to evacuate. As soon as possible.”

  “Agreed, sir.” Tenzi sounded relieved. “She’s still in the room. Jon is with her… and Dorje. We all agree with your assessment on the inadvisability of her addressing the crowd.”

  Cass let out an audible snort, making it clear she was listening in on her own link.

  When Balidor glanced at her, she rolled her eyes.

  Giving a humorless smile of agreement, he focused back on the male seer.

  “Okay, we’re coming up,” he said. “Keep her in the goddamned room. That’s a direct order, brother, and I’m invoking security privilege to overrule her in the event she disagrees.” His voice hardened. “Trank her, if you have to. We’ll bring her out through the roof once we’ve mapped out all the flyers. I don’t want her moving until then.”

  “Understood, sir. We have––”

  Shots rang out.

  Balidor dropped as seers around him began to instinctively hit the deck.

  Gunfire being more common in seer versus human-only enclaves, reaction times were swifter among those of his own race. Many humans continued to stand or half-crouch over the sidewalk, eyes wide as they tried to figure out what was happening.

  Their visibility doubled when the seers dropped.

  On the plus side, it probably gave Balidor the most accurate seer-to-human headcount since the crowd initially gathered.

  He ducked lower as bullets whizzed dangerously close by their small group. Yanking Cass down alongside him when her head remained too high, he turned as more screams erupted from the crowd. Before he could shove Cass towards the glass doors, another pattering of gunfire erupted, loud in the confined space between buildings.

  That time, it seemed to come from both sides of the velvet ropes.

  Gaos. This could turn ugly, and fast.

  A bullet came close enough to his head that Balidor dropped entirely, realizing he was still being targeted. He landed on his hands, his face millimeters from the pavement.

  As he still clutched Cass’s arm, she landed with an “Oof” beside him. He felt a ripple of physical pain from her when her f
ace hit the step. The gun hanging off her shoulder knocked her head in the same instant, bringing another gasp of pain.

  He slid an arm around her body, holding her flat to the ground and doing his best to act as a shield. It occurred to him that he was thinking of Allie, even as he did that.

  The realization brought another flush of anger.

  Why could he not purge his mind of her, even now?

  He threw up a cloak with his light, disguising their appearance. Pulling his face off the tile only a few inches from the edge of the stairs, he sent up a brief thanks to his Ancestors that his enemies’ aim hadn’t been better.

  Renewing his grip Cass’s arm, he pulled himself swiftly to his feet and dragged her with him, prodding her mind to get her to move faster. He kept them both at a low angle, pushing her in front of him to shield her. Then, noting the position of the armed line of Adhipan and Lao Hu infiltrators still standing there, rifles cocked at their shoulders, faces grim, he caught hold of her again, changing direction to stay out of their line of fire.

  Even as he did, he saw three of them squeeze off shots at the crowd.

  He felt Baguen following behind them, along with a surge of the Wvercian’s irritation at him. Glancing at Cass’s face, he saw a possible reason for at least some of that anger.

  Blood ran down her neck from where the gun had smacked the back of her skull.

  Feeling a faint pulse of guilt, he gripped her shoulders tighter, as if to compensate.

  Gunshots grew more plentiful and frequent behind them, echoing in the small space. A lower-toned thunk sound signaled gas canisters being expelled from launchers. Screams erupted soon after the gas hit, echoing against the glass buildings, and Balidor felt a tiredness mixed with grief come over him as the crowd’s fear and anger expanded over him in a jagged wave.

  The seer world was once more ripping itself apart.

  Feeling the heat of emotion ripple out behind them, he pushed his way through the soldiers more aggressively, fighting his way towards the lobby of the glass-walled building.