DRAGON
Bridge & Sword Series #9
by
JC Andrijeski
Copyright © 2018 by JC Andrijeski
Published by White Sun Press
Cover Art & Design by Damonza.com
2017
Ebook Edition, License Notes
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SYNOPSIS for DRAGON (Bridge & Sword #9)
“He is Dragon… He breathes.”
After the nightmare in Dubai, Allie and Revik are on the run, dragging the remains of their army to stay ahead of Shadow. Revik knows they can’t run forever. He comes up with a plan––a crazy plan, one that might just destroy everything he and Allie hold dear.
A plan that might mean sacrificing himself to keep his family alive.
Meanwhile, Allie returns to America to hunt Shadow’s network, working with the remnants of the human government to forge a cross-race alliance. Knowing Menlim might kill her husband, that her own leadership team has been infiltrated, as has the presidency of the United States, Allie fights to stop the remaining world powers from being manipulated into nuclear war.
Then Dragon appears, another broken intermediary with unbelievable power. He might just be the most dangerous seer Allie’s ever encountered––including her husband, who Dragon seems determined to hunt for reasons of his own.
For the real Revik, wherever he may be…
Breaking himself against the rocks for the one he loves
'I’lenntare c’gaos untlelleres ungual ilarte
The Gods love and keep you, most beloved brother
Prologue
THE BEACH
IT WAS REVIK’S idea.
Most of the truly crazy plans we came up with were. The ones that required us to turn ourselves inside-out, to maybe tear some part of our souls apart in the process.
But desperate times call for desperate measures, as the saying goes.
These were desperate times.
Moreover, my husband might be a romantic at heart, but when it came to military ops, his brain was in charge. His brain was a cold-hearted bastard pragmatist, through and through. He’d warned me about that part of him back when I first met him.
Of course, he’d often accused me of the same.
And really, we both agreed to this. We both added our own enhancements, our own thoughts, our own details to the overall plan. We both agreed we needed to do something drastic, something that the other side wouldn’t be expecting.
Both of us agreed to risk sacrificing what we had now, to reach that end.
I told myself all those things again now, like I had been for the last ten months.
I told myself those things as I fought to control my heart rate, sprawled on grainy sand in a ripped up silk gown covered in smoke and powder burns, panting, sand stuck to my face, sand in my mouth and fingernails and hair. I could see trash littered across the edge of the river, including around where I lay.
I felt the screaming flare of injuries on different parts of my body––burns, cuts, scrapes. At least one bullet that found its mark with my lack of armor. I hadn’t scanned yet to check, but I was pretty sure the metal passed through.
I knew that wouldn’t matter, either.
I was already dead.
I had only to wait out the finale.
I lay there, fighting the exhaustion that penetrated my bones, my mind, my very soul. I told myself this had been Revik’s idea, that the plan had been his––that it wasn’t my fault.
None of it felt very convincing.
And anyway, in the end, the fault had been mine. At the decisive moment, it had been me to pull the trigger––or not pull the trigger, as the case may be.
I’d let him down. I’d really let him down… all of them, really.
The humans too.
Maybe the humans more than anyone.
I turned my head, looking reluctantly up at the sky.
Mostly, I think I was in shock.
That shock worsened as I stared at the reddish clouds of smoke on the horizon.
I’m not even sure that shock was really about my own life. I’d known from the beginning I probably wouldn’t make it out of this. Revik and I talked about that, too, once upon a time––about how neither of us really believed we’d make it to the other side.
We only hoped enough others would make it that it would all feel worthwhile.
Jon. Wreg. Lily. Gods above––Lily.
Our daughter, Lily, who was the real reason we decided on this insane path.
All of our friends, our loved ones, those who had followed us to hell and back. Gaos, even Kali and her crazy cult, especially if they could help keep the List humans and seers alive.
But me and Revik? Yeah, I had my doubts.
So did he.
The thought came with regret, sure. I wanted to live.
I wanted to drink cappuccinos and go swimming. I wanted to watch Lily grow up. I wanted to be married––really married––and have a lot of long, leisurely mornings in bed with my husband and cappuccinos where I could watch Revik do things while he was naked. Anything, really. I still had a fantasy about a house somewhere, on the beach or in the woods.
Revik and I without the military gear on, without anything more pressing on our minds than whose turn it was to take Lily to school, and what we should have for dinner, and whether we should put on clothes or go swimming or stay in bed and fuck a few more times before we ate.
But yeah, it was a fantasy.
I guess that was the point.
My eyes focused on the columns of smoke I could still see in the distance. I didn’t really let myself take it in, though. I couldn’t go there yet. Not yet.
I couldn’t think about the lives back there, or what the ripple effects would be. I couldn’t think about the people. I really, really couldn’t think about the people.
Revik.
I couldn’t think about Revik.
Even so, tears ran down my face, hot and sticky in the dirty sand as I looked up at that sunset- and fire-drenched sky. I couldn’t even look for him in the Barrier to get that final answer.
Or to tell him how sorry I was. About the last eight months.
About all of it.
I couldn’t open my light, not now, or it would all be for nothing. I had to get to Lily first. I had to set her free before I joined Revik––wherever he was now. I thought maybe I could tie her to Kali’s light, and Uye’s. Give them a second chance to try and be good parents.
Dalejem would help them. So would Balidor.
So would Maygar.
So would Jon and Wreg.
At least then maybe Lily could have a real life one day––an adolescence and an adulthood and adventures of her own––even if Revik and I weren’t there to be a part of them.
Thinking about that, about how Revik looked the only time I saw him in those eight months since he’d left me in Bangkok, something finally penetrated my mind beyond that crippling shock. Pain ripped off my light, cutting through me like a sword.
Like a fucking sword… which I guess is pretty apt.
When it did, I finally looked away from that blood-covered sky.
I screamed.
I screamed and screamed, but none of it came close to releasing me.
&n
bsp; The pain only worsened, even as I clenched my fists in the coarse sand, fighting the images out of my head, the look on his face the last time I’d seen him.
I love you, he’d murmured, in those few seconds we’d had. I’d felt jealousy on him too, but that fierceness of love, it heated my whole body, wiping out the rest. I’d do it for you again, Allie. All of it. I swear I would. I’d do anything for you. No regrets. None. Okay?
I nodded like I had then, gasping into the sand.
I was out of breath. Out of screams.
But Revik wasn’t there anymore. He was a ghost.
Gone, like the rest.
We knew it might come to this, he’d said, pulling my hand and arm closer to his chest, closer to his heart. We knew. Both of us. You can’t blame yourself. You can’t, Allie.
I nodded to that, too.
But he was wrong.
I could. Of course I could.
And whatever mental gymnastics I or Balidor or any of the others tried to play around this, whatever story we told ourselves about how we got to this point, none of it took away from the reality of what just happened.
None of it took away what I’d done.
My worst nightmares had finally come to pass. I’d seen the demon at the helm, looked them square in the face. I finally knew who the real villain was in this story.
It was me.
After all this time, it turned out those crazy Mythers were right.
That dark angel of death, the bringer of the end…
It really was me.
1
TEN MONTHS EARLIER
REVIK SHIFTED HIS legs, grunting when it brought a low shock of pain. Physical pain, but other kinds, too.
Enough to pull him out of the dark. Enough to make him want the light.
He struggled his way back to consciousness, opening his eyes groggily when his body met resistance, not on one side, but on two. For a long-feeling few seconds, he only lay there, breathing. He didn’t seem to be in danger. His light vibrated with past traumas, past fears, but nothing pressed in on him now.
No immediate danger.
He calmed gradually at the realization.
He still didn’t know where he was, how he’d gotten there.
Nothing came to his mind. Nothing.
He stared down at the two bodies coiled around him in sleep. One was a lot smaller than the other. It hit him, then, what he was looking at, and his throat closed.
Allie. And Lily.
Both of them.
They’d climbed into bed with him, one on either side of where he lay. They’d curled their bodies and lights into and around his and fallen asleep there.
They were feeding him light, too––both of them, including his daughter. He could feel it, both of their aleimi sliding easily into his, almost without him knowing it.
Warming him.
Revik stared down at their two dark heads, fighting the emotion that wanted to stick in his chest. His mind tried to trace back what happened, how he’d gotten here. He remembered Dubai, finding Allie at that club… her dancing on that stage, jesus christ. Even the thought of it hurt his light, enough to catch his breath, although he crushed his reaction at once, conscious of Lily lying next to him, immersed in his light.
He remembered leaving the club. The Waterfront.
The boathouse hidden behind a construct. The seers and humans in cages.
Terian. Terian brought them there.
His mind blurred into static.
He remembered Menlim. Menlim was there.
He spoke those words…
Allie shifted against him, snuggling deeper into his side. She murmured in her sleep, pressing her body into his, bringing a denser pulse of pain briefly to his light. That one felt a lot closer to pure separation pain, even with her wound so far into him. She had an arm wrapped around his waist, her hand under the loose, white shirt he wore. That same hand tightened, her fingers coiling firmly around his ribs.
He felt the possessiveness there, and it made the pain in his light worse.
Her cheek rested on his chest, her lips and breath and hair not far from where Lily’s arm had been thrown over him, too, where Lily’s significantly smaller fingers gripped his shirt.
The clothes weren’t his. One of the medical techs must have put them on him.
Revik forced himself to relax, to lean back into the pillow. He forced himself to think, trying to decide why his light still felt so totally fucking panicked. Something about seeing those two people coiled around him made that jarring vibration worse.
The boathouse. There’d been a boathouse at the end of that man-made spit of land.
He couldn’t remember.
Why couldn’t he remember?
He looked at Allie again, even as the light went back on in his mind… then dimmed more. He found himself examining her body and her light for real that time.
Bruises. Not just on him, on her.
She was hurt. Fuck, she was really hurt…
From her light, it felt like she’d been beaten up. Like she’d been hit hard, with metal poles, with fists, like she’d been thrown from something––or thrown into something.
He could feel a lot more on her than he could see.
Cuts in the back of her head. Broken ribs, taped now, but her whole chest was probably black and blue. Her thigh was cut, her knees. One elbow was broken. Her hand––two fingers taped, also probably broken.
Her back.
Something was wrong with her back.
His mind turned over the information. She hadn’t been hurt when he saw her last. Not at that club. She just about gave him a heart attack on that fucking stage, but she’d been in perfect health, not even as banged up as normal for the two of them. She wasn’t hurt when they got to the Waterfront. She wasn’t hurt when they first saw those cages.
She’d been fine, all those times. Totally fine.
Revik had known Menlim would be there.
He’d felt his ex-guardian’s presence around every step they took once they entered that Dreng construct strangling Dubai. He’d ordered Chandre there as back up. Chandre was supposed to follow them. She would have, too, because she was Chandre and the only reason she wouldn’t make it there was if she was dead.
Since Revik could feel whispers of her light in the construct now, he had to assume she wasn’t dead––so Chan should have been at the Waterfront. Failsafe. If Revik couldn’t do it with his light, Chan was supposed to do it.
She was supposed to take Menlim out the old-fashioned way.
Of course, he knew there was a good chance they couldn’t kill Menlim for real.
Killing Menlim might be a stopgap at best, a delaying tactic.
If Menlim was what Allie suspected he was––meaning one of the Barrier beings called the Dreng––he wasn’t alive at all, but wore that Sark body like a cheap suit. He wasn’t even a “he” but an “it”––a walking parasite, an interloper on the material plane.
Revik had to assume killing him would take him out of the game though––at least for a short time. Maybe long enough to take down the Shadow cities. Maybe long enough to dismantle his network, and bring some sanity back to the world.
Maybe long enough to fix their daughter’s light.
Revik thought, if they could just take out Menlim, they could change enough down here to keep Allie safe––keep Lily safe. Without Menlim there to protect it, Revik could hunt down the network unencumbered, using his very attachment to that same network.
A calculated risk.
But something had gone wrong.
Something must have gone wrong.
Revik’s head hurt, and not only from whatever was wrong with him physically. His heart hurt, his light. It took him a few seconds more to even figure out why. When it hit him what it was, he didn’t understand what it meant, not at first.
He was missing time.
He was definitely missing time.
The realization spun through him, disturbing h
im more than even the injuries on his wife’s body.
He hadn’t been present when his wife got hurt. Or maybe he had been and he didn’t remember. Had he been drugged? Revik scanned his own light, trying to think through the panic building in his chest.
No. No one drugged him.
He was sure of it.
He was missing time. Really missing time. As in, he couldn’t explain where he’d been, what had happened to him or why he couldn’t remember. How could he be missing time? He hadn’t missed time like that, really missed time, not since…
Fuck, not since…
Not since he’d been a kid.
Pain broke somewhere in his light, paralyzing him, blanking his mind.
He had a memory of sitting outside a wooden house. It had been years ago, during the war, the First War, not the second. Back when he still carried a Luger and not a Glock. He remembered sitting there, holding the gun. It rested in his lap, splattered with blood. His face, clothes and hands were covered in blood. He’d been unsure how the gun got there. He’d been unsure how he got there––where he even was.
He couldn’t remember any of it, what it meant.
There had been blood on his hands. Blood. There’d been so much blood, and he’d been holding the Luger in his lap. Crying. He hadn’t known why he was crying, not yet.
That would come later.
Even now, the memories never fully came clear.
He’d been so fucking confused. Even after he saw the police standing there, approaching him, guns raised, he’d still been confused.
That one cop. He thought he was a monster. Like something out of a horror story. Like Jack the Ripper. He thought Revik was only pretending not to know where he was.
He thought he just didn’t feel anything.
He thought he was a monster.
He’d been outside a house. He had no idea how he’d gotten there.
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