Shield (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  I glanced up, hiding my embarrassment with an effort. I smiled.

  “Never? Aren’t you like a hundred?”

  He raised an eyebrow, then smiled back. “Yes. But then, I don’t remember being with any seer who wasn’t a pro until I was at least forty.”

  I nodded, not looking up as I continued to touch him. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to know about that, at least right then. Or really… ever. He’d had a lot more years to collect notches on his bedpost than I had, and he hadn’t exactly wasted them.

  Beyond that, pros would know what they were doing.

  I, on the other hand, hadn’t known the basic facts of my own anatomy.

  I could tell it had shocked him. Whatever I’d said, whatever Tarsi told him, the reality that I’d never slept with another seer shocked the hell out of him while we were in the middle of it. I thought about what he’d said about never being with a virgin, about me seducing him, his worries about scaring me when we first started… and my face warmed again.

  No, I definitely didn’t want to hear about his past.

  “You said I was different,” I said, to change the subject. “Do you mean actually, physically…” I hesitated. “Different-different? Like down there?”

  Amusement touched his eyes, but I saw something else there, too.

  “Humans didn’t notice?”

  “Well, yeah. I didn’t think I’d be a weirdo in the seer world, too.”

  He slid a hand around my face, but I saw his mouth firm.

  Looking at him, I found myself wondering just how much he’d seen while following me all of those years. His eyes tightened perceptibly, and I decided talking about past lovers wasn’t a good idea for either of us right then.

  I felt another shiver of pain off him as he watched me look at him.

  “And?” I said, smiling. “Okay different? So-so?”

  The tension on his face broke. He laughed.

  “More like, ‘I’d better get used to this before my wife leaves me,’ different.” He smiled, but I felt his embarrassment again. “It’s not only the physical, Allie. Your light does something.”

  He sent the rest carefully, trying to show me. It was that folding sensation I’d been fighting. A liquid heat drove down from a structure in my aleimi, starting in my abdomen before it ran into his––until a part of us entwined, like two sinuous tails.

  I felt his breath catch, his weight grow heavy again.

  “Stop,” he gasped. “I know I started it, but stop… Allie. Please.”

  I fought with my light, shutting it down with an effort. After a few seconds, his hands relaxed. I swallowed as he caressed my cheek with his.

  “Gods,” he murmured. “You’re going to have to go easier on me, wife.”

  I felt my face warm again.

  “Revik, are you…” I couldn’t find the right words. “…all right? Now, I mean. Do you feel all right?”

  “No.” He kissed my face. “Better, I’m embarrassed to admit, but no.” He hesitated, looking at me. “What about you? I know it wasn’t much…”

  I tried to think past whatever was going on with me.

  I clutched his back, too hard I realized, but I couldn’t seem to make myself let go. I felt scars there, too, marring his skin, more than what I saw in front. Remembering how he’d looked in London, after Terian, I clutched him tighter, fighting emotion that wanted to rise with it, an irrational kind of grief mixed with fear.

  I couldn’t have explained any of that to him, though, so I didn’t try.

  “I feel different,” I said. “Already, I mean. Do you?”

  His eyes didn’t waver. “Yes.”

  “Do we need to talk? About that?”

  He kissed my cheek. “Yes. Do you want to now?”

  I hesitated, thinking about whether I did.

  “We’re really married now, aren’t we?” I said finally.

  His fingers tightened, right before his pain grew sharp.

  “Yes.” He pressed against me. His voice grew soft. “But I thought of myself as married before, Allie. I have since the ship.”

  Remembering what else he’d done on the ship, I fought another irrational flare of emotion. I was still struggling to control myself when he wrapped his arms around me. He kissed the nape of my neck, just before he melted into me, sending me… god, it felt like love. It came wrapped in a dense wanting, a near-surrender I couldn’t think past. It touched me deeper than anything I’d ever felt on him.

  Deep enough that briefly, it washed out all the rest.

  Slowly, as I calmed, that quieter version of him seeped back over his light, the one I’d always known––the one who felt like an infiltrator. Sliding down my body, he took his time, exploring me with his hands and mouth, reading me. A flicker of that animal feeling returned as his lips and tongue lingered, grew less tentative.

  He sent me questions, cautiously at first.

  He got more explicit as he felt me react… until pain made it difficult to think, to remember where we were. My eyes started to glow, a pale, iridescent green. They reflected in his, and I felt that do something to him, too.

  I didn’t really understand.

  It didn’t matter.

  Not long after that, I let go of the rest entirely.

  26

  DEAD

  CASS STUDIED THE broad, Asian-featured face, and wondered what it would be like to kill someone.

  Not at a distance, like most deaths seemed to happen these days, but to really do it, the way Revik had done when he killed Terian in that cave in the Caucasus.

  Sticking a knife into someone, having them die right in front of you, the blood flowing on your hands… it had to feel different than firing at gun from behind cover at people you could barely see, praying it hit something before you were struck down yourself.

  It had to feel different.

  The man’s muscular chest moved with slow, even breaths on the thick pallet. His skin shone an eerie pale under the deep tan. His lips were cracked from dehydration, yet the bruises had faded from his high cheekbones in the intervening weeks. The cut on his scalp had healed, along with the marks that once decorated his muscular arms. Now they lay soft and brown on wool blankets on either side of his thick torso.

  He wasn’t dead. Or even dying.

  The seer medical-types said he’d gone into a kind of coma, something seers did to heal themselves when seriously injured.

  The bunker-like room, lit with candles, held wisps of mist from the open windows to the jungle outside. Cass looked out the nearest of those, watching two monkeys climb into the higher foliage of a fern-like tree, chattering at one another. One had a baby clinging to its back. It swung a little from its mother’s tawny fur as she climbed nimbly up a thick branch.

  Cass looked back at the man lying on the pallet. She laid a hand on his chest, feeling him breathe. After another pause, she sat back in her seat, scrutinizing his still form.

  Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a book with a black leather cover. Flipping it open to a series of pages filled with painstakingly drawn hieroglyphs, she traced some of the more delicate ones with her fingers before letting her eyes drop to the text itself. She read the first sentence, which had been written in nearly calligraphy-styled English.

  “Feigran is alone now.”

  She paused, glancing back at the trees.

  “I wonder if it will bother him,” she read next. “Terian assures me there is nothing to worry about, that he prefers to live in this way. Yet I am not certain if his word can be trusted in a matter such as this, and not only due to his apparent callousness towards any but the most dominant and aggressive segments of his own personality…”

  Cass turned the page, following the neat handwriting to the top of the next.

  “What remains of him down here seems to lack empathy almost entirely––so much so, I cannot help but fear the eventual consequences of this experiment. I also cannot help but wonder how much of his true utility is being sacrifi
ced, when his mind is of such limited composition…”

  Cass told herself, every day, that she would give the book back.

  The minute she heard Allie and Revik were on their way back to the compound, she would return it to the exact spot she’d found it in Allie’s room.

  Flipping to a new page, she read on.

  “Terian seems so patently determined to cut off all feeling in the parts that remain, but I do not think it is self-punishment. A part of him is more of a child than Feigran himself. Like a child, he confuses lack of feeling with strength, and does not see how it limits him. It makes me wonder again if he is stable enough to act in the capacity Xarethe wants of him, even if we watch over him to the degree she suggests.”

  Cass's fingers traced the new name.

  “Xarethe,” she murmured.

  Her eyes returned to the book.

  “Yet, it must be Terian. There is no one else. I will not risk such a procedure on Dehgoies. Honestly, though, I am relieved to have Dehgoies watching over him through the length of this ‘experiment.’ He seems to have strong protective instincts. I will remember that, see if I can encourage this trait. He is not blind to the emotional limitations of his new friend. However, instead of fear, it seems to evoke compassion in him. He has already taken it upon himself to keep young Terian safe, if only from himself.”

  Cass felt her jaw harden. She flipped to the next page, glossing over the line of symbols to the right of the words written in English.

  “Xarethe thinks the process will help him. That it will provide a healthy means of taming him, and the war that rages forever in his mind. I hope she is right. If not, I may be guilty of creating a monster…”

  Cass bit her tongue, then read the last line.

  “…a monster the likes of which no one has ever seen, not even in Syrimne.”

  Rubbing her eyes, she laid the book on the edge of the bed.

  She didn’t like to think about it, but the fact was, she hadn’t slept well since Allie and Revik both left the compound. It started when Revik left for Sikkim, then returned when he went to find Allie. She tended to lean on one or the other or both of them.

  Well, since everything happened the year before, at least.

  She knew it was probably unhealthy, but couldn’t quite bring herself to care. But then, she’d always depended on Allie more than her friend seemed to realize. Since her time with Terian in that cage, some of that dependency had been transferred to Allie’s husband––and, to a lesser extent, Allie’s adoptive brother, Jon.

  Lowering her head to her arm, Cass closed her eyes.

  She had to find her way out of this.

  She had to, before she drowned in it.

  SHE WALKS INSIDE a metal and cement bunker. Exposed pipes run across the ceiling, rattling underground. She sees a wall at the end of the corridor––an unbroken pane of green, glass-like tile, shimmering faintly with a life of its own.

  A door appears as she watches.

  It is a thick, watery window, opening to what lies inside. It morphs while she watches, a living thing…

  Green glass surrounds her, running with water and blood. Metal tools hang from hooks in the ceiling, sparking over the water on the floor, dripping blood from sharper metal and glass-like edges. A man is chained to the middle of the room. His dark head is slumped, his back covered in scars.

  He doesn’t move, but sleeps there, his face taut as he speaks words into the damp floor.

  She doesn’t understand him.

  I’lenntare c’gaos untlelleres ungual ilarte… he murmurs. Y’lethe u agnate sol…

  Love emanates off him.

  Brotherhood. Sacrifice.

  In his own way, he is alone in here. Untouchable.

  Behind him, three cages stand, large enough to house a set of big dogs. Only two of them are in use.

  Jon lays in one, his hand bleeding where his fingers have been removed. He is bruised, marked with razors and knives, along with fists, shoes, elbows. He is so thin she barely recognizes him from the man she knew in San Francisco, who taught Kung Fu and ran a tech start-up and drank a lot of green smoothies.

  In an adjacent cage, a naked Asian girl with a cut across her face lays broken and crumpled, her hair half-obscuring her face. Her body is like Jon’s, only smaller, whiter, thinner, and instead of missing fingers, she is missing toes. Burns cover her pale skin, marks where his hands have been, where he cuts her.

  He’s been inside her.

  More than a few times. Over and over.

  He enjoys it. She feels that much off him, whispers and flushes of pleasure as he gets off. He even calls her name once, his cries thick with an almost juvenile release.

  He’d been affectionate after.

  Seers are made different, she discovers. He uses that against her too, trying to make her like it. He tries it on different parts of her, using his mind to confuse her, to manipulate her until she asks him for it.

  In the end, she can’t tell the difference.

  The jungle grows back, around that scene.

  Someone stands over her. Crushing her chest. She is in a dark room and this time, no one is coming for her. Instead of Revik and Jon, dogs sit in the other two pens. They look at her, blank-eyed and panting, waiting for his return.

  He will return one day. She feels it.

  From inside the jungle, two bright turquoise eyes stare at her, framed by black hair.

  She struggles, fighting to move, to scream––

  SOMEONE GRABBED HER shoulder from behind, shaking her roughly.

  Cass jerked violently, turning, gun in her hand.

  Panting, heart thudding in her chest, she raised her head from the foam mattress. She found herself aiming the Glock––the same Glock Revik gave her and taught her to use almost seven months ago, while they were still in Russia––directly at Chandre’s face.

  Chandre didn’t move.

  She didn’t change expression.

  Her reddish-brown eyes narrowed though, as if measuring Cass's expression, the breadth of her intent. A seer’s eyes, they showed very little white. Red-tinged irises filled most of the visible orbs, making her always seem to be staring. Long, black braids hung around a sharp, feline face with dark skin. Sculpted lips added a sensual femininity to her otherwise hard features.

  She reached out, placing her hand on Cass's gun.

  Without looking away from her face, she lowered the gun slowly, until it pointed at the floor.

  Cass exhaled.

  Even as she did, a soft, reassuring wave washed over her like a breath. Shaking off Chandre’s hand, she flipped the safety on, laying the gun on the bed.

  The calming influence immediately retracted.

  Cass had warned her not to use her seer crap to push her around unduly, or their relationship would come to an abrupt end. Chandre seemed to have taken that warning to heart, at least as far as Cass could tell.

  Which, admittedly, wasn’t far.

  “What are you doing?” Chandre said. The seer’s red eyes slid slightly out of focus, which meant she was probably reading Cass's mind.

  It occurred to Cass only then, that she’d been asleep.

  She looked down at the cot, at the depression where her head had been, nestled against the side of the man who’d tried to rape her best friend. A man she’d shared a train berth with, who’d joked with her as he taught her sharpshooting and how to swear in Mandarin, who’d flirted with her when Jon wasn’t there, hovering over her protectively when they broke into buildings to retrieve records left behind by the Rooks.

  Who’d been her friend.

  Tucking the gun and the leather-bound book into her shoulder bag, Cass glanced out the window again, making her mind carefully blank.

  The forest stared back at her, empty and quiet, even of monkeys.

  “What are you doing here?” the seer said again. Her eyes looked worried now though, hidden behind a flush of anger. “Why, Cass? Why would you come here? With a gun? What are you doin
g?”

  Cass combed her long hair out of her eyes. “I wanted to see how he was.”

  Chandre’s eyes narrowed. “With a gun?”

  “The gun was incidental. I always carry it. You know that.”

  The seer frowned. “What were you doing? Just now?”

  Cass made a dismissive gesture in seer sign-language.

  “Sleeping,” she said. “And why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be guarding Allie?”

  “They relieved me.” Leaning over the bed, Chandre shut the open window. “It is a tomb in here,” she said. “Are you trying to freeze him to death, human? Or just yourself?”

  “Neither.”

  Chandre stepped back from the bed, hands on her hips. Her eyes grew hard, hunter-like. “Just now, what did you do? It is illegal to touch him. You should not be touching him.”

  Cass snorted. “Illegal? Give me a break, Chan. I wasn’t going to hurt him. I’d hardly be asleep in here if my master plan was assassination. Would I?”

  Chandre sat on the second chair beside the pallet.

  For a moment, she looked only at the man on the bed. Then her eyes flickered sideways, meeting Cass's.

  “I understand, cousin,” she said. “But you must let it go.”

  Cass contemplated playing dumb for about a half second before she shrugged, letting her tone go flat.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. From Allie. From Jon. Probably would be from Revik, too, if I’d seen him for more than five minutes since he got back. Maybe I should take up heavy drugs. That might help.”

  “Let it go,” Chandre advised. She gestured at the man on the pallet, her voice and hands dismissive. “Whatever happens to him… it is nothing. Save your emotion for your friend.”

  “What will happen to him?” Cass said.

  The dark-skinned seer shrugged. “Dehgoies will be even less rational once they are bonded. It should make things quick for this one, at least.”

  “What about his family?” She looked at Maygar’s sleeping face. “Friends?”

  “His mother is a Rook.” Chandre gestured dismissively, as if that, alone, explained everything. “He has friends, but they will not intervene. Maygar attempted a claim on the Bridge. Even if they did not fear her mate, they would not defend him for that.” She looked down at the slow-breathing seer.