By the time he’d moved a few steps away, he forgot Revik entirely.
Sighing, Revik moved his stool further into shadow and settled himself in to wait. On a ship of this kind, most wouldn’t even recognize the clip. He might have a long wait before he got approached, if he relied on that alone.
Still, it felt cleaner this way. If he got no interest after a few more drinks, he’d reassess. He let his eyes go to the monitor over the bar, which displayed the day’s news. He got through a few beers watching brightly-colored avatars argue about terrorism and China’s inadequate response to the threat of renegade seers on their own soil.
An hour later, he’d switched to bourbon.
He contemplated a walk to the neon bar to try his luck, when he felt eyes on him and turned. A slender woman in tan slacks and a form-fitting ivory sweater stood a few paces behind him, probably in her early forties.
He’d seen her walk in, but dismissed her when she pulled out a book and settled in a corner to read, an appletini parked on the round cocktail table in front of her. She had money, clearly, but looked the type who wouldn’t go near a seer bar if her life depended on it. The kind whose human husbands tended to be Ullysa and Kat’s most regular customers.
He saw her study the clip on his collar, then glance down the length of his torso and legs. Seeing his eyes on her, she hesitated only a second longer. Clutching a small black purse in one hand and the martini glass in the other, she walked briskly up to the bar, her lips pursed.
Approaching him directly, she leaned against the wood.
He didn’t move his leg when she pressed into his thigh. She glanced up at him cautiously, an odd mix of nerves and daring and curiosity in her eyes.
“Are you what I think you are?” she said, soft.
He nodded, still watching her face.
“Yes.”
She studied his eyes, looking from one to the other as if trying to see past them. It was almost a seer’s stare. He found he was already reacting to her, and kept his mind carefully away from hers. As if she’d heard him, she said,
“Are you reading me now?”
“No,” he said, smiling.
“Do you want to?”
“Yes,” he said truthfully.
When she didn’t move away, he slid down further in his seat, glancing for the bartender. The woman looked down at him, reacting to his mind’s nudge, and reddened. Giving a nervous laugh, she brought her martini glass to her lips.
“I see. How much?” She hesitated. “You charge, right?”
“Yes.” He thought fast. “Five hundred.”
“Five hundred? Are you worth that?”
He dipped lightly into her mind. She waited, as if she knew what he was doing. He pulled out a moment later, shifting slightly on the stool.
“For you, yeah,” he said.
She smiled wanly. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
He smiled politely.
“This is crazy,” she muttered, taking another swallow of her drink. “I’ve never even talked to one of you before.” She switched her purse to her other hand, looking down the bar to buy herself time.
Revik didn’t answer. He’d learned more than he wanted in his brief tour. She was lonely. Her husband was on the cruise, too, but with someone else, likely someone he’d arranged to have come on the ship so he could slip away from his wife every chance he got. This woman knew, obviously, but for some reason wasn’t ready to leave him.
Human sexual relationships depressed the hell out of him.
He was about to tell her to forget it, when she nodded decisively.
“Okay.” She downed the rest of the martini, her eyes bright. “What the hell. Do you have a place, or—”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
She pursed her lips. “Really? Then when?”
Revik hesitated. He hadn’t thought this through. Now that he had an actual person to react to, he realized he wasn’t worth anything close to the price he’d quoted. He needed an appetizer first, even if it was just his hand. He nodded towards the fireplace.
“In an hour? There’s something I have to do first.”
She looked doubtful, and he shook his head.
“Not that,” he assured her.
She nodded, but clearly didn’t believe him.
Hesitating another beat, he got up from the barstool, realized he still had an erection and paused, willing it to subside. When it wouldn’t, he felt his face warm. Instead of walking away, she lingered by him, shielding him from the rest of the room. His pain worsened briefly.
“Thanks,” he said after a moment.
She glanced down, a faint smile on her lips. “So the rumors are true, then? Is your kind always this...enthusiastic?” She waited for his answer, then added, “It’s good to know I don’t repel you, at least.”
Bitterness colored the last of her words.
Impulsively, he touched her hand that held the glass, letting his fingers linger on her skin. She shivered as it turned into a caress, and for another instant, he hesitated. He would lose her if he left now, he realized. He made up his mind as he felt her blush under his stare. He circled her wrist with his fingers.
“Forget the money,” he said. “And the hour.”
She blinked at him, and for the first time, he noticed her eyes were green. His cock hardened painfully again, even as nausea slid through his chest, making it hard to breathe.
“We’re not always like this,” he said, watching her look at him. “It won’t be as good.”
She studied his eyes. “It’ll be good enough.”
“Now,” he said, to be clear. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay.” She balanced her martini glass on the edge of the bar, following the insistent tug of his fingers. He unhooked the clip from his collar, shoving it in his pocket as he led her out of the room.
I THREW MY jacket on the floor of the cabin, unwinding cotton wraps from my hands with shaking fingers. A few choice swear words left my lips, loud in the empty room.
Sparring hadn’t helped my mood at all. I’m not sure why I thought getting my ass kicked for the hundredth time by Eliah would help under the circumstances, but maybe I hoped it would distract me at least.
I could already feel Revik hadn’t been back.
Still, a tendril of my light flickered out, examining the room to be sure. Realizing that no amount of scanning was going to change reality, I slumped cross-legged to the floor. Fingering my hair out of my eyes, I fought a sudden tightness in my chest and closed my eyes.
Barrier clouds appeared.
A wolf runs across the tundra, tongue flicking over black lips in a blood-stained grin, body elongating...
But I don’t want to see that again, either.
Clouds hang bright and sharp, still against liquid black.
The Barrier enfolds me in dark and light waves. I can see it now, easily, whenever I close my eyes and resonate with its vastness. More importantly, I can feel when I am inside it, not just looking at it from without, or glimpsing the places where the physical world and the Barrier world overlap.
I’m not supposed to be here.
Even without Revik’s warnings, my gut tells me so.
The construct should keep me safe. I’m in a big fishbowl of protected space, cut off from the Barrier proper...but even I know that what I’m doing isn’t strictly covered by the construct’s shield. It’s not enough to stop me, though.
Not now, and not the countless times I’ve done it before, when Revik wandered out of the room at night or in the early morning, or whenever he thought I was asleep for more than an hour. He thought I didn’t know he roamed the halls while I slept, but I did.
I’d wait for him to leave, and then I’d sit like this. I even snuck in a few jumps after he’d passed out on the bed.
Those were riskier though...he was a light sleeper.
I no longer need to pause at the edge of the sharp clouds. I’ve eliminated a lot of
the preliminaries, and even the intermediary steps. I’ve learned to make my jumps economical, due to the time constraints.
Even though I have time now, I do the same.
I don’t screw around, or look at the scenery. I don’t bother to play in any of the currents that flow in the waves above or below where I float in the clouds. I don’t visit nebulae, or stare up at the multicolored stars like I did the first few times I came here on my own. I don’t bother with vortices, either.
I aim directly at the gray wall around the spot at the top of the Pyramid.
Images hit me at once.
Most center on the keys I turned to get this far. The faceless man hides behind door after door, but it always starts in the same place, with a bearded man on a scaffold in a dying city that has a main square covered in broken shards of black volcanic glass. Before the Barrier jump with Revik, the image held no storyline, no meaning to me. Now I know, somehow, that the bearded man on the scaffold is the faceless man.
They are both Haldren, both Galaith.
Somehow.
I don’t understand, but I also don’t care.
Haldren whispers over an old man’s battered body.
Liego...Liego Kardek...why did you do it?
I know now that Kardek is the old man’s name.
Revik blames Kardek for the war that killed the Elaerian...the First Race...but I know better. I know Liego better by now, too. Liego and Haldren go way back, sharing a timeline I don’t understand, but that I am forced to accept on some level, at least enough to find him. I see Liego with Haldren when he is a child in that other world. A squalling, sickly child wearing rags, alone and abandoned. Liego rocks him to sleep, sings songs when the orphanage comes late to pick Haldren up from the school where Liego teaches.
Liego pities the boy. Eventually, that compassion becomes a deeper love.
The boy moves in with him and a man named Massani after no one claims him from the first set of wars. I watch Liego feed the four-year-old. I see him talk to an angry, confused adolescent, hold him as he cries at some disappointment or rejection.
I see Liego teach him in his private laboratory, ready him for exams, introduce him to a society that accepts him because of who Liego is.
Hatred wells up in me, mixed with a love that hurts more.
It is not my life, not my problem, but I take it personally. I take him personally. I crash through wall after wall, following the thread of that gaunt child.
He still exists...somewhere.
Haldren. His name is Haldren.
A recklessness lives in me. I decide I am tired of the slow way, the seer game of hide and seek, step by step, mapping and remapping of lines, all the cloak and dagger bullshit that I’ve tried my best to follow as Revik taught me. I don’t need to understand all the threads that tie me to this place and time. I am looking for the monster who killed my mother. I don’t care that he was once a child in some other version of Earth, except that it might help me find him now.
Dropping the pretense, I envision the child in the front of my mind.
I call to him.
I yell his name through the faceless shadows of a distant Pyramid, and most of the beings tied to that prison do not hear.
I think it is futile, that I am wasting my time, when...
I am with him.
Abruptly, I am there, at the top of all those chafing lines.
I float over the apex of the Pyramid.
Shocked by my success, I see him. He sits alone, in a structured room. Lines of silver and hard, metallic white stick to his head and heart.
The child is one of a thousand whispering masks.
He looks like a machine. The Pyramid has disappeared, I realize. It occurs to me that it disappeared because I am inside it. Haldren doesn’t move, doesn’t seem to see me at all. He rests inside a dream. A flat, pleasant emptiness.
Watching him exist in this state, I find I almost understand.
He is safe here. He is protected, in a way that the old man couldn’t protect him when he was alive. He is protected from feeling, from vulnerability, from caring about anything that might hurt him, or make him feel pain. He can sit in this empty space, untouchable, because the silver light ensures that he doesn’t have to feel any of it. He can give orders, and tell himself he is the cause of none of it. He can be the king of ghosts, of wasted machines.
He can kill my mom.
Or he can let it happen...and not care about that, either.
Anger flares my light.
A white arc leaves me, utterly different from the seething strands eclipsing Haldren on his metal throne. The flame sparks as it comes in contact with the Pyramid’s trembling strands. It finds one of the connecting points.
There is a strange silence.
Then a tangled, silver ball explodes.
I hear the crack below that single pearl of flame. Something totters, begins to fall. I hear voices scream, awakened from their collective dream. I watch that piece of the Pyramid tumble into a void-like abyss. Everything disappears below the connecting point I have broken. I watch lights disappear, erased from the network mind like branches cut from a dying plant...
Haldren disappears.
I fall. I fall for a long, long time...
Until I see only one face, one being.
A narrow, wasted mask looks at me, its eyes like poisoned urine. The face holds a dense knowing, a mirrored depth. The being smiles. I’m not looking at a person anymore. I am looking at one of the Rooks.
I see you, Bridge, it whispers.
I see where you are...
...AND I SAT up, gasping, batting at my head with my hands.
Just like that afternoon, I found myself lying on my back on the carpet, but instead of VR stars I see the low, white-painted ceiling of the stateroom.
My head hurts. There is sharp pain, but also a feeling of despair.
I realize I am still partway in the Barrier and dig my nails into my arm, trying to force myself the rest of the way out.
My eyes clicked back into focus.
The silver light clung to my head in some undefinable way, so I sparked outwards with my aleimi, trying to get it off me.
All I felt was amusement, laughter as the being left.
I was still sitting there, gasping, when a sharp knock rattled the cabin door. I turned to stare at it, fighting to regain my breath, fighting the fear that wanted to throw me back into the Barrier.
Revik wouldn’t knock.
“Allie?”
I recognized the Irish accent. Eliah.
“What the hell’s on in there, love?”
Only minutes had passed. Seconds, maybe.
White hands on green mirrors. Blood with water.
He was thirsty. So fucking thirsty. Everything hurt, and...
Pain whispered through my fingers. I held my head, biting my tongue as hard as I could to try and keep my light inside my body.
“Yeah,” I managed. “Okay. What do you want?”
I don’t remember saying he could come in, but the door opened. Eliah crossed the threshold into the room and stopped, looking around as if startled by a strange smell. Closing the door behind him, he studied me with cocked head.
“What’ve you been doing in here, love?”
I pulled myself shakily to my feet, wincing at the bruises from our earlier fight.
“Feeling sorry for myself,” I said, forcing a smile. My hands shook, so I clenched them at my sides, not meeting his gaze directly. “Why? Do you want to kick my ass again?”
He smiled wanly, but his eyes didn’t leave my face. “You all right?”
“I’m fine, Eli. What’s up?”
“Orders.” He hesitated, then glanced at the bed, as if he couldn’t help himself. “...To hear tell it, your other half will be out for awhile. I’m supposed to keep you company until he gets back. You know, keep you from being too bored...” Trailing, he watched me rub my temples. “Allie-bird? Seriously. You don’t look so good.”
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I flinched a little at the nickname, but didn’t answer.
My mother had called me that.
Still casting around for something to keep me focused on the room, I tried to hold a normal expression as Eliah sat down on the bed. When the pause went on too long, I forced myself to look at him.
Unlike me, he’d changed out of the sparring gear.
I’d never really seen him in street clothes before, not apart from glimpses through the door when he guarded our stateroom. He had two different-colored eyes, one nearly black, the other blue, yet with his hair combed back and the blue sweater he wore, the combination worked well with his square jaw and salt-and-pepper hair. Sitting casually on the end of the bed, hands clasped between the knees of his dark-brown slacks, he looked like a cologne ad, or maybe a television spot for high-end coffee. What was it with these seers, that all of them were good-looking? The men all looked like GQ models.
Eliah had the air of a man who’d never bother with a midlife crisis. He’d be too busy scuba diving the Norwegian fjords or tackling K2.
He smiled faintly. “Cheers, love. Although the ‘midlife’ crack stings a bit.”
Hesitating, I decided the normal thing to do would be to sit. I let my weight sink into the plush armchair across from him.
“So what now?” I said. “You’re on babysitting duty, is that it?”
“I suppose so, yes.” He continued to study my eyes. “That all right with you, love?”
I shrugged, keeping my voice studiously casual. “Sure. Whatever. Not sure why it’s necessary, though. It’s not like this is the first time Revik’s gone on walkabout.”
Eliah flushed a little.
I couldn’t help but notice him glancing at the bed again.
“Yeah, well.” He gestured vaguely. “I guess Chan was worried you might overreact this time. She doesn’t want anything happening. Not with a ship full of human witnesses.”
“Overreact?” I stared at him. “Meaning what, exactly?”
He gave me a shrewder look. “You know where he went, don’t you, love?”
I hesitated, wanting to ask, then didn’t.
“It’s none of my business,” I said after a pause. “If he wanted me to know where he was, he would have told me.” Averting my gaze, I busied myself examining a bruise on my arm. When the silence grew awkward, I bit my lip, then spoke up again. “You want to play chess or something? I need a shower, but then we could play. I could stand to eat, too. Have you had any dinner?”
Allie's War Season One Page 25