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

by JC Andrijeski

  Kat started touching him, and his mind blanked out briefly.

  He was back in the cabin for a few seconds, remembering waking up with Allie’s hands on him. A sharp ribbon of desire mixed with the sickness of having another seer in his light, making the separation pain worse… so bad, he wondered if he’d be able to hold it together at all without ranting at all of them.

  Or worse, trying to kill them.

  He looked at the other seers, looking for help maybe. But he could feel it already, in their light. He saw it in their faces as they looked at him. He was affecting them. They wouldn’t be able to help themselves.

  He looked at the old human. But Travers was already motioning over Ullysa. He patted the back of the love seat to indicate where he wanted her.

  Ullysa walked up behind where Revik sat. She laid her hands on his shoulders, exuding calm, and he reached up, clasping her arms. He closed his eyes, and she lowered her mouth to his. They were kissing before he knew he intended to, and instead of distracting him from what Kat was doing to him, it made it worse, until he was clasping at Ullysa’s hair, half holding her against him.

  When he ended the kiss, she lowered her mouth to his ear. She spoke Prexci, so the humans wouldn’t understand. She made it sound like lover’s talk, like she was urging him on, but he felt the sympathy behind it.

  “Revi’, listen to me. You can do this… you’re all right…”

  He fought back another thick surge of pain. He felt Ullysa react to it, even as Tobias walked up behind her. Looking up at the male, panic hit Revik, a reaction so physical he felt his breath stop, making him light-headed.

  “You can do this,” Ullysa repeated, soft, a near purr. “You can. She loves you. She’ll understand. She’ll know why you did this…”

  He gripped her tighter, crying out as Kat took him deeper. Then he was holding her hair too, fighting another urge to let his reactions turn violent. Since none of the seers wore real collars, none of their perceptions were muted, either. There was no way for Revik to block or even dial-down the others without calling attention to himself.

  Besides, the boy had to feel it.

  He needed to feel him here. He had to recognize his light.

  He forced his eyes up, looking for distraction, anything to pull his mind back from where it wanted to go.

  He tried remembering Allie at the cabin, but his pain spiked so sharply, he heard Tobias gasp. His eyes refocused on the chairs across from him. The humans sat there, nearly motionless. More than half of them held drinks they seemed to have forgotten. They were reacting to the display already.

  A pretty brunette in her thirties seemed riveted to Revik’s face, her eyes drifting down to where Kat had her mouth on him.

  They would feel it too, the separation. They wouldn’t know what it was, but they would feel it. He caught a whisper of the brunette’s thoughts as she swallowed, staring back at his face.

  She’d already decided she wanted to fuck him.

  He averted his eyes, holding Ullysa’s arm tighter.

  “Revi’,” Ullysa murmured. “Revi’… calm. Remember why we’re here.”

  He heard her, enough to fight it. She was right; he couldn’t blow this, not now. Closing his eyes, he tried to cooperate, to focus. He slid deeper into the silver strands, but couldn’t find any stability there, either.

  He reminded himself he was playing a part. If he broke down, really lost it, they’d probably think he was dangerous and call for help. It was a thin line for humans, between exotic difference and terrifying other.

  Fighting to turn his panic into at least the outer trappings of arousal, he arched towards Kat, but the reaction in her light nearly locked his muscles, right before she dug her fingers into his hurt leg. Then Tobias had his hand in his shirt and he felt sick all over again, trying to incorporate another seer’s light into his as the male massaged his chest, kissing his throat.

  Ullysa’s voice remained in the foreground, the only anchor he had.

  “She’ll understand,” Ullysa murmured. “She’ll understand…”

  He shook his head. “No,” he managed. “She won’t.”

  “She loves you, Revi’… she loves you…”

  She had, he thought. She really had before all this.

  He’d felt it. A part of him had tried to hold onto doubt, to protect himself maybe, give himself some latitude in case something happened, or she changed her mind before they finished. Even as recently as Sikkim, he’d convinced himself she might not know what she was doing, what she was saying to him.

  He’d told himself she was just young, inexperienced––that the separation was fucking with her head. But he hadn’t really believed that, either.

  She’d loved him. In spite of everything he’d done to her, everything he’d been.

  But he wondered if she loved him enough.

  43

  RESCUE

  I JERKED AWAKE.

  I didn’t know where I was. I tasted bile in my throat, realized I was sweating. I didn’t know what was wrong with me.

  Whatever it was, it was bad.

  I rolled to my side… and found that I could.

  My wrists were chained together, but not to anything else. Even curled up in a fetal position––fighting not to panic from how badly every square inch of my skin hurt––it occurred to me that I was in a real bed.

  The mattress was thin. The blankets smelled like baby powder.

  I let out another gasp when the pain returned, then a moan when it only got worse. Cursing, I rolled to my back, but it didn’t help. Whatever was wrong, it felt separate from the pain of my legs and hips and arms. It lived so far under my skin, I couldn’t pinpoint a cause.

  It felt like I was dying.

  Or like something was trying to rip off my flesh.

  “Fuck,” I gasped. I stared up at the white ceiling, holding my belly tighter with my arm, squeezing it into the bed. I felt sick to my stomach. It was more than that, though, more like something vile was being forced down my throat.

  I wondered if Terian poisoned me.

  Then I wondered if Revik had died.

  I screamed as the thought formed, then choked when the pain worsened, now trying to crush my chest. I was still sweating, only now I wanted to throw up. My body convulsed a few times, but I couldn’t seem to make that happen, either.

  Curling up into a tight ball on my side, I closed my eyes, groaning.

  Somewhere in all that, the door must have opened.

  “Allie?” A voice broke through the sickness. “Allie, what’s wrong?”

  I glanced up, still holding my stomach, fighting to breathe.

  It was Maygar.

  Everything came flooding back.

  I realized then, where I was. I’d been brought to some kind of makeshift medical facility, part of the same underground series of rooms where I’d been kept since I got here. I was pretty sure I was on a different floor now, though, maybe one above my cell.

  I was still looking at Maygar when the lights flickered overhead. He looked up when I did, his hand resting on the headboard above me.

  Both of us watched the electricity cut in and out.

  “What’s going on?” I said. My voice was hoarse.

  “I don’t know,” he muttered.

  “Where is everyone?” We were alone in the white room. I didn’t see the boy, or Terian.

  “They left.” He looked at me. “Terian took the boy with him.” Looking down at my naked body, he seemed to realize what he was doing and forced his eyes back to mine.

  “Allie,” he said. “He did this to you, didn’t he? Terian.”

  “Can you get me out of here?” I said.

  Maygar looked at the door, then back at me. He didn’t quite meet my gaze.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Angry, I reached for him. I missed and ended up clutching the bedside table instead, squeezing it as hard as I could. Pain whited out my vision briefly, makin
g my voice harsh.

  “You owe me, Maygar. You fucking owe me! Now may be my only chance with you alone. If they’re distracted––”

  “I don’t know how long they’ll be gone.” He frowned, shaking his head. “We wouldn’t get far. The security is intense, and my mother––”

  “Your what?”

  He looked at the door again, then back at me. He lowered his voice. “Elan Raven. She’s the woman you saw earlier. With the blue eyes.”

  “That’s your mother?” I fought to think past this, clutching my stomach harder when another wave of sickness ran through me, bringing bile to my throat.

  For another few seconds, I had to fight not to throw up.

  I thought of the slim, athletic woman with the shocking turquoise eyes. I forgot sometimes, that seers weren’t the ages they looked in human years. She could be Maygar’s mother. Of course she could.

  “Okay.” I nodded, acknowledging this. “So you don’t want to leave her––”

  “It’s not that,” Maygar said. “Honestly, Allie, I’m a risk to you. She can feel me, wherever I am. I can’t get you out without leading her right to you.”

  “Oh.” I fought back another ripple of pain, this one through my spine. “Gods, what the fuck did they give me?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He pressed his lips together, looking worried. “Morphine for the pain, but that was hours ago. Are you sure it’s not just wearing off?”

  “This isn’t pain. Not like… that.” I fought back another wave, then struggled to sit up with my cuffed wrists. Hunched in an awkward pile at the edge of the mattress, I looked down at myself. I felt my jaw tighten.

  “Can you at least get me some fucking clothes? And get rid of these?” I held out the cuffs. “If you can get me out of the collar, too, I can do the rest.”

  “Allie.” Maygar reached out to touch my face, then withdrew his hand when he saw the look I gave him. “Allie, they’ll kill you before they let you go. I heard Terian talking to my mother about it. They’re worried you’re a bad influence on the boy. That you’re making him worse.” He hesitated. “I think the only reason he hasn’t killed you already is that he’s worried about what the boy will do. That, and he wants your husband for something.”

  I let out a gasping kind of laugh. “Yeah. So what else is new?”

  “Allie.” Maygar folded his thick arms, then sighed, looking at me. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but have you thought about…” He took a breath, gesturing with one hand. “You know. With the boy. Just to buy yourself time. Time for Dehgoies to get here with the calvary, if nothing else.”

  I turned my head, staring at him.

  Maygar’s lips pursed. “I know,” he said, his voice frustrated. “But the kid can’t be any worse than Terian, right? He seems to care for you. The boy, I mean.”

  I stared at him.

  Then, it all clicked into place. I’d just been too distracted to notice.

  This wasn’t Maygar.

  I stared at his face, my jaw hard.

  “Too far, huh?” he said, smiling faintly.

  I swallowed another rush of bile. “Terian.”

  He sighed. “I knew that last bit was probably over the line. But I just had to try.”

  The outline of Maygar phased. A thin line of static tore it neatly in two. I blinked, holding my stomach with my arm. I looked at where my ankles were cuffed together, and realized I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Gods. I’m an idiot,” I said.

  The image of the Scandinavian replaced Maygar’s briefly. He smiled at me.

  “You can’t blame a guy,” he said. “Can you?”

  Then, all at once, the lights went out––completely out.

  I was thrown into utter dark.

  I groped around in that impenetrable blackness, long enough to feel myself still sitting on the edge of a bed, to realize my hands and ankles were still cuffed, that the rest of my body still hurt like hell.

  I listened to myself breathe in the dark, feeling sicker than I could remember feeling, even that time I got food poisoning off bad sushi in Japantown. I was still sitting there, trying to decide what to do, when an orange light flared in the dark. From a corner of the room, it rotated within a metal cage, like one of those emergency lights that come on when a generator kicks in.

  I found myself in a cement-walled cell next to what looked like a heart monitor machine and two I.V. bags hanging from metal roll stands.

  I looked for a way out, anything that might help me. Through the rotating orange light, I made out a flat screen monitor that covered one wall. It was completely dark. The door was located in a different wall than in the VR version of the room Terian had been projecting.

  Also, in this version, cabinets covered most of one wall.

  On the counter below those, I saw glass jars filled with cotton balls, tongue depressors, long Q-tips, what looked like gauze. A rolling table sat in that same corner, draped in cloth and covered with metal instruments. Everything was stained orange in the rotating light that hung over an organic-looking door.

  I slid off the bed, shuffling in the ankle shackles to the table.

  I fumbled over the rows of neatly laid out instruments. I looked for anything that might saw through the organic cuffs. I finally located cutters of some kind, thick enough and sharp enough to give me some hope.

  I sat on the floor, drawing in my feet so I could reach the chain on my ankles. Thinking the cutters were probably for bone, I worked one of the blades into and around a metal link in the chain. When I finally got it in deep enough, I turned the handles sideways so I could brace one end on the floor. Using my full weight, I pushed as hard as I could on the handle pointing up. It slipped the first time I tried. The second time, I felt the metal give.

  I bent down to peer at the chain link up close, bringing my ankles up to my body so I sat in cobbler’s pose. A tear had formed in the metal.

  Wedging the pliers or whatever they were back in the same link, I threw my weight on the handles again. After two more tries, I managed to get all the way through.

  The ankle chain was the easy one, though.

  After trying and failing to find an angle where I could do the same with my wrists, I got to my feet. Crawling under the hospital bed, I propped up one corner of the frame with my shoulder. Wedging the cutter’s blade around the organic chain linking my wrists, I set up the handles so that they would be directly under the bed’s foot.

  Luckily the bed had a lot of organics in it, too. It was heavy.

  Sweat dripped off my forehead as I set it up, holding up the metal frame with my shoulder until it dug into the muscle of my back. I was gritting my teeth at the end, but somehow, my shoulder was almost a welcome distraction after what crippled me before.

  I was starting to panic. Too much time had passed.

  I was going to get caught.

  At the thought, I got the handle under the bed frame’s foot, gasping as I lifted the bulk of its weight with my back, high enough to wedge the handle underneath at the right angle. Lowering myself as slowly as I could, I used the floor and the bed’s weight to squeeze the handles together.

  The first time, the handles slipped and went skittering across the floor.

  Letting the bed fall, I crawled around in the orange, semi-dark until I found them again. Wedging them back into the same link in the chain, which now had a tiny crack, I took a breath, then used my back to lift the bed frame a second time.

  This time, I forced myself to concentrate, holding my breath and ignoring the nausea as I held the handles in place tightly with my hands.

  Slowly, I lowered the bed.

  The weight of the bed closed the handles smoothly, cutting the metal clean through. I let out a startled laugh, staring down at my separated hands in something like disbelief.

  Immediately, I put my hands to the collar, feeling it with my fingers.

  I ran to the mirror, shoving the heart monitor out of the way while I looked at the cu
tters next to the thicker metal of the collar.

  There was no way.

  I tried to wedge them under the metal anyway. I only succeeded in cutting my neck so that it bled in a thin trickle.

  Dropping the instrument on the counter, I went through the drawers next, pulling out anything I could find and holding it up to the orange light so I could see it better. I went through the cabinets above, too, looking for anything that might cut or deactivate the collar.

  I found pills, instead.

  And, more importantly from my perspective, clothes––what looked like blue medical scrubs, now dark orange in the light.

  I threw them on without thinking twice, pulling the longer shirt over my head and yanking on the pants. I cinched tight the string in the waist to hold them up and rolled the cuffs to my ankles before running for the door, feeling all over it for some kind of lock, or even a handle.

  There was nothing. The whole surface was unbroken, and probably made of the same green, organic metal as my cage, although it was hard to tell in the light.

  I wondered if I should bang on it.

  When I pressed my ear to the door, I could hear nothing.

  I looked for a panel next, but after a few minutes of searching every wall of the room, I was forced to concede that the controls must be outside. I was going through drawers again when the door jerked open suddenly behind me.

  For the briefest second, my heart lifted…

  I turned, holding a small saw in my hand, and the only scalpel I found in the whole room. It was as dark outside the room as it was inside, with more of the rotating orange lights.

  Nenzi stood there, his eyes glowing bright green in the orange-colored dark.

  “Allie?”

  “What the hell is going on?” I said.

  My voice came out in a snarl.

  The sickness was worse.

  Holding my stomach with the arm whose hand clutched the saw, I held out the scalpel with the other like a weapon.

  If the boy reacted, I could see no sign.

  I fought the desperation that rose in me, the feeling of despair to see the kid there, when I was so close to being free––closer than I’d been since I got here. I was trying to decide what to say, when he held out a hand.