Shield (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2): Bridge & Sword World
Page 54
But that was a detail, really.
I wasn’t someone who could just hole up in the mountains, waiting for Armageddon. I would go to the Chinese seers, maybe. See if they would talk to me.
I was still mulling this over in my mind, nearing my segment of the caves, when I pulled up short.
Stopping dead, I listened.
Feeling my heart tighten in my chest, I stared up through the darkness, sure suddenly I wasn’t alone. I looked back from where I’d come, towards the torches lighting the mouth of the cave. Nerves rippled through my light, but I couldn’t pinpoint their source.
“Cass?” I said. “Hey, this isn’t funny.”
No one answered.
Most of the other seers were asleep by now, and not many lived on this side of the settlement anyway. Generally, my only visitors were Cass and Jon, and occasionally Balidor. I missed my friends, but I understood, too.
I wasn’t much fun to be around these days.
The truth was, I’d mostly been alone since we got back from Salinse’s stronghold, which was probably why Vash had asked to see me.
My friends tried their best… for the first few weeks, at least.
Eventually I wore even them down. It was exhausting being around other seers, too. I affected them, and I hated the look on their faces while they wondered about me, about what I would do now, given my options.
I took another step.
Holding my breath, I listened.
Before I could resume breathing, pain slid through my light.
It was so powerful I couldn’t move, couldn’t see past the light that flared in my eyes. Maybe it was for all the reasons everyone told me it would get worse––the phase we’d left things, the fact that we’d both been alone for far too long, the fact that I still felt him sometimes, watching me, wondering about me.
I stood there, half-crouched, fighting past the flood of emotions that tried to sort themselves out behind my eyes, when he appeared beside me.
Shock flooded my light.
I was sure I was dreaming…
Before I could make a sound, he laid a hand over my mouth, pressing into me, holding me against the wall of stone.
I didn’t fight him, but I didn’t relax either.
“Shhh,” he murmured. “Come with me.” His pain worsened, turning so raw I closed my eyes, gasping against his hand. “Come with me… please, Allie.”
I stared up at his face, trying to think past it, to see him as real.
“Don’t scream,” he said. He pressed against me. “Promise you won’t?”
I barely hesitated before I nodded.
“How did you get in?” I said, when he took his hand away.
“Come with me. Please, Allie… please.”
Pain flooded his light in another surge, so much of it, I could barely see him. I felt him pulling on me. My knees buckled when he pulled harder, winding into me, much the way I had him, at the cabin.
For a long moment, I couldn’t breathe.
“Forgive me,” he murmured. Tears filled his eyes, right before he kissed my face. “Gods, Allie. Forgive me, please. I love you. I’ll do anything.”
Images tried to rise in my mind, fragments of what I’d walked in on that night in the White House. I closed my eyes, forcing them away.
“Where?” I managed. “Where could we even go?”
He pressed against me again, kissing my face. “Please, love… just come. Let me make everything up to you. Come with me.”
I felt the boy in him––and the other, the one who frightened me.
I stared up at his face, though, and I saw Revik, too. He felt me wavering. He maybe even felt my decision, or maybe, like me, knew what it would be before I made it.
“Come with me,” he said. He kissed me again, his voice low, cajoling. “Please, love. Please… I’ll do anything you want. Anything.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes… you can. You’re my wife. You’ll always be my wife, Allie.”
Pain hit my heart that time, made it impossible to speak. I faltered again.
“I won’t be able to stay,” I said.
He smiled. It was the smile that broke my heart the first time I saw it on the boy. I couldn’t look at it now, not on that face.
“One day you will,” he promised, kissing my mouth. “I’ll wait. I’ll wait for you. However long it takes. You’ll love me again. You’ll see, Allie.”
I felt my throat close. “I do love you. More than anything.”
He smiled sadly, touching my cheek. “No,” he said. “But you will.”
Tugging on my fingers, he put my hand between his legs and kissed me, harder when I returned it, sliding his other hand under the loose shirt I wore, caressing my skin until I was gasping against his mouth. His light turned more invasive, pulling on mine until I felt my limbs lose all resistance, until I started touching him in return.
He started to push the shirt up my body but I stopped him, clutching his hand, looking around as I tried to pull my light back from his, fighting to think.
I stared at his face, unable to look away. The light in my eyes turned his face a pale green, and I felt my chest clench.
“We can’t,” I said, fighting for resolve. “Not here. They’ll bring you in, Revik. They won’t listen to me, not about this.”
“Then come with me,” he said, soft. “Please.”
“Where?”
He smiled again––and I saw the pictures perfectly in his head.
I stood there with him again, watching a yellowing field turn red in dying sunlight. Clouds turned gold on the horizon over jagged mountains in the distance. I patted a horse with a white face while he pointed towards a house nestled in a valley under the mountains, food rotting in a small refrigerator powered by wind and solar, horses huddled against the night under the trees, broken glass and food and towels molding on the floor.
Pain slid through me, so intense that he clutched at me, kissing my throat, then my mouth, letting out a low sound, caressing my face.
I missed him so badly I wrapped my arms around him, as tight as I could, trying to pull him closer to me, as if to breathe him in under the rest.
“Shhhh,” he murmured. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’ll fix it up, Allie. I can get us food. I’ll call ahead. I have people helping me now.”
But that was too much reality.
The picture broke apart.
I nodded against his chest, forcing myself to smile.
“What about the horses?” I said, wiping my eyes. I smiled at him again.
“We’ll bring them inside,” he said, smiling back. “They’ll keep us warm, Allie. We can ride them to the bathroom.”
I looked up at him, helpless. “Revik––”
“Come with me,” he begged. “Please. Love… please.”
Looking at him, I knew I couldn’t refuse him.
But I also knew Vash was right.
Whoever he was, the man in front of me wasn’t really Revik.
Even as I thought it, the alarm went off inside the construct. I felt it even as Revik looked up, and I saw the predatory glint return to his eyes. The darker pieces of him shifted over his head, and the fingers on me grew tight.
“I’ll be back for you, Allie,” he said. He kissed me, and I felt the promise behind his mouth. “I’ll be back.”
Pausing for the barest breath, he looked at me, and the softness returned to his face. He caressed my cheek, tears in his eyes once more.
“I love you, wife,” he murmured. He kissed me again. “I adore you. I positively adore you. Wait for me, Allie… please.”
Before I could form words, he was gone.
I still stood there, my mind numb, in pieces, when Balidor ran up to where I stood. I stared at the gun in his hand without seeing it––then, without comprehending what it was. His steel-gray eyes looked angry, almost foreboding, until he looked directly into mine.
He clutched my arm.
“Alyson.” He s
hook me gently. “Allie. Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
I couldn’t answer.
I stood there, leaning against the wall, fighting to breathe as Balidor stared into my face.
Only one thought repeated in my head, on a loop I couldn’t stop, couldn’t even make sense of.
Vash had been right, I thought. He had been right.
My husband was dead.
Revik was really dead.
* * *
WANT TO READ MORE ABOUT ALLIE & REVIK?
Continue the Bridge & Sword: Awakenings series with:
SWORD (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #3)
RELEASES MAY 19TH!
After losing her husband, Allie finds herself the new official face of seers as she fights to prevent the human and seer races from exploding into all-out war. But her husband, Revik, isn’t really gone. Instead he’s transformed into someone she barely knows. Before she can adjust, the two of them are on different sides of a racial war––a war he wants to see play out, a war he’s ready for, and worse, one he’s already fighting. Compromise with him might be impossible, but it also might be the only way she can save him from himself and keep him from killing everyone she loves.
~ or ~
WANT TO READ ABOUT SEERS IN A WORLD MORE LIKE OURS?
Check out the Quentin Black World, starting with:
BLACK IN WHITE (Quentin Black Mystery #1)
Forensic psychologist Miri Fox has an uncanny sense about people. When police think they've nailed the "Wedding Killer," she agrees to check the guy out, but the suspect, Quentin R. Black, isn't at all what she expects. When he confronts Miri about the nature of her peculiar insight, she is drawn into Black's bizarre world and a game of cat and mouse with a deadly killer who just might be Black himself. Worse, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Black, a complication she doesn’t need with a best friend who’s a homicide cop and a boyfriend in intelligence.
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THE BRIDGE & SWORD WORLD is a dark, unique and gritty apocalyptic world and alternate history of Earth. It features a young woman grappling with her role in bringing about the end of one world and the start of a new one. Follow Allie Taylor and her antihero partner in crime, Dehgoies Revik, as they fight terrifying enemies and one another in a passionate story spanning centuries, and filled with unpredictable twists, turns and betrayals.
THE QUENTIN BLACK WORLD encompasses a number of dark, gritty paranormal mystery arcs with science fiction elements, starring brilliant and mysterious Quentin Black and forensic psychologist Miriam Fox. For fans of realistic paranormal mysteries with romantic elements, the series spans continents and dimensions as Black solves crimes, takes on other races and tries to keep his and Miri’s true identities secret to keep them both alive.
THE ALIEN APOCALYPSE SERIES is a dystopian new adult romance about a tough girl named Jet Tetsuo who grew up on Earth following an alien invasion. Forced into living among her conquerors, she has to navigate a treacherous world full of enemies who pose as friends, even as she becomes their most famous fighter in the Rings, a modern day version of the coliseum.
THE GATE SHIFTER SERIES is an unusual shifter romance centering on shifters from another world altogether, called morph. Earth humans remained blissfully ignorant of the existence of alternate dimensions until Nihkil Jamri tries to save private detective, Dakota Reyes, while he is surveying Earth. Part urban fantasy, part detective series, part paranormal romance, part science fiction adventure, the Gate Shifter series explores crime solving, interstellar warfare and alien romance with the least likely candidates imaginable.
* * *
Read More from JC Andrijeski
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“Seeking Truth in Made-Up Worlds”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JC Andrijeski is a USA Today bestselling author who writes paranormal mystery, along with apocalyptic and cyberpunk-y science fiction, often with a metaphysical bent.
JC has a background in journalism, history and politics, and currently occupies herself by traipsing around the globe and reading whatever she can get her hands on. She grew up in the Bay Area of California, but has lived abroad in Europe, Australia and Asia, and from coast to coast in the continental United States.
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SHIELD
Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2
Copyright © 2017 by JC Andrijeski
Published by White Sun Press
Cover Art & Design by Damonza.com
2017
Link with me at: http://jcandrijeski.com
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Table of Contents
SYNOPSIS
ONE: Death
TWO: War
THREE: Feigran
FOUR: Leader
FIVE: Cave
SIX: Distraction
SEVEN: I’ll Find Us A Place
EIGHT: Claim
NINE: Custom
TEN: Consequences
ELEVEN: Recruited
TWELVE: Children
THIRTEEN: Found
FOURTEEN: Four
FIFTEEN: Wellington
SIXTEEN: Visitor
SEVENTEEN: First Jump
EIGHTEEN: Elaerian
NINETEEN: Not So Easy
TWENTY: Claustrophobic
TWENTY-ONE: Hello, Lover
TWENTY-TWO: Familiar
TWENTY-THREE: Husband
TWENTY-FOUR: Proposal
TWENTY-FIVE: Married
TWENTY-SIX: Dead
TWENTY-SEVEN: Tattoo
TWENTY-EIGHT: Honeymoon
TWENTY-NINE: Lost
THIRTY: Wvercians
THIRTY-ONE: Men
THIRTY-TWO: Rebellion
THIRTY-THREE: Wreg
THIRTY-FOUR: Memory
THIRTY-FIVE: Falling
THIRTY-SIX: Owned
Thirty-Seven: Caged
THIRTY-EIGHT: Nenzi
THIRTY-NINE: Infiltrator
FORTY: Family
FORTY-ONE: Broken
FORTY-TWO: Unwilling
FORTY-THREE: Rescue
FORTY-FOUR: Reunited
FORTY-FIVE: Failsafe
FORTY-SIX: Return
FORTY-SEVEN: Reintegration
FORTY-EIGHT: Syrimne
EPILOGUE: Pamir
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CREDITS
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