Ignoring me, he started the car, gunning it slightly to blow out the exhaust. “Are you hungry?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Can I call my mom?”
The look in his eyes flattened. “No.”
He put the car in gear. The wheels crunched through gravel and garbage as he drove to the edge of the parking lot. We bumped over the low curb as he pulled onto the road.
“Where are we?” I said.
“Washington.”
“Washington? What happened to Oregon?”
“You slept through Oregon. I took us to the main highway.”
I gazed out at the gray-looking town, feeling my stomach start to cramp. “Why?” I said finally.
“I wanted to make some time. There is a safe house in Seattle. I thought—”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Why can’t I call my mother?”
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
“Say I believe you,” I said. “Say I believe some of it, anyway. Why can’t I call my mom, tell her I’m okay?”
He shook his head. “The Rooks will have infiltrators with your people by now.”
It took another few seconds for his words to penetrate.
“My people?” I said.
Not seeming to notice my stressed tone, he nodded, once. “They will use them to gather imprints on you. To track you.” He pointed to a sign with missing marquee letters. “...I could get us food there.”
I stared at him, my mouth ajar. My voice rose. “Use them? To track me? How does that work, exactly?”
He focused on a field beside the road, a stretch of sharply green, waving grasses dotted with wildflowers where cows grazed in the early morning light.
“Revik!”
My tone jerked his eyes over. His fingers tightened reflexively on the steering wheel.
“What does that mean?” I said. “Are they going to hurt my mom? My friends?”
After a flat beat of time, he looked back out the window.
“All right,” he said. “We will eat later.”
He turned onto the ramp for Highway 5 North. The Plymouth made a growling noise as he accelerated from the base of the hill.
In my defense, I didn’t actually know I was going to do it.
I didn’t plan it, which is probably why he didn’t look over until I already had my fingers on the handle of the car door.
By the time he lunged, I was in mid-motion.
My weight followed with a hard lurch as my fingers snapped the latch.
His foot slipped on the clutch...he miscalculated where he aimed his hand as a result, snatching at the edge of my ripped shirt, getting the blanket instead. I slid off the seat and into cold rushing air as the blanket unraveled around me...
There was a silence.
In it, I felt free, an odd rush of joy...
Then my body smashed inelegantly into the ground.
I hit, bounced, rolled, scraping arms and elbows and face as I tumbled down a rock and weed and garbage-strewn slope beneath the ramp.
My cuffed wrists smacked against my chest, then my face. I finally used them to slow my fall, digging the metal rings into the dirt as I slid on my stomach, my legs partly splayed. Coughing gravel dust and dirt, I stumbled drunkenly to my feet at the bottom, my ankles still stinging from the plastic bindings. Somehow I felt that more than the pain of the fall itself. Brushing bits of rock off my forearms and knees, I limped barefoot towards the main road.
On the ramp above, the GTX had come squealing to a stop.
Another car slammed it from behind, knocking it further into the middle of the ramp. Cars careened into angled stops in a rough line behind the first, and promptly began to honk.
Revik got out. Ignoring the other drivers, he walked to the edge of the ramp and looked down at me. A young guy in a stained shirt and cap got out of a rusted pickup and started walking towards the Plymouth.
“He’s a seer!” I screamed, pointing at Revik. “He kidnapped me!”
Revik stared down at me, his pale eyes hard.
The guy in the cap looked at me, then at Revik. His voice rose in excitement. “Call the cops, someone! Terrorist! Bona fide terrorist here! Call 911!”
Revik turned his head.
The boy with the stained baseball cap stopped in his tracks.
His face went into a childlike slump. After the barest pause, he turned around and walked back to his truck. He climbed into the cab and sat there without moving, not even honking. The two other people who’d gotten out of their cars also returned to them obediently.
Did you really think it would be that easy?
I jerked my eyes back to Revik, feeling my breath stop.
You know so much about seers, after all...
He was angry.
Really damned angry.
My throat constricted as I took in the expression on his face. I hadn’t been afraid of him before. I probably should have been, but I hadn’t been, not really. I was genuinely terrified of what I felt off him now, even as my physical vision slanted out, replaced by...
“Stay away from me!” I screamed.
...DARKNESS, HIM FLICKERING in and out, outlined in pale sky, shadowy and lean at the rise in the road, then stark in the negative, a brilliant light against indigo clouds. Dark gold meets red sparks through lines that make up his arms and chest.
I look at him and know I’m in the Barrier even as I take in his sharp, structured form.
I have barely wrapped my mind around this, when...
His arm surges with a fire-like light.
The light brightens, turns blinding, right before it leaves his fingers.
Before I can think what it might mean, the burst spins down upon me, aiming straight for me, like and I don’t think, don’t form a single conscious thought.
Instead, I step aside, even as a part of me reaches up, takes the fire-like ball and sling-shots it back at him in one smooth, reflexive motion...
It bears down on him, fast.
I stare, bewildered as I realize it’s going to hit him, that I just threw something at him, and I have no idea what it will do to him. Just before the fiery burst touches his outline, however, a white density of light materializes around him.
The burst hits the shield, glances off and dissipates.
It all happens so fast I barely take it in, and when it’s done I feel something off him, surprise, but with another feeling following close behind...not quite pleasure, but a sharp flicker of interest, like a part of him waking up.
The predator raises its head, focuses on me intently, like a wolf meeting its own kind.
My eyes snap back into focus, and I see him in the physical again. His pale, light-filled eyes are watching me, and I see the predatory stare there, too.
“Hey!” I hold up a hand, panicking. “No! No! I didn’t mean it...”
He starts walking down the hill.
“Revik! Leave me alone! Please!”
He doesn’t slow his steps.
My fear bursts out as anger, panicking me, throwing me back and forth into that other place, so that his image flickers, positive to negative. “If you or any of your...” crazy friends has hurt Jon... “Or Cass, or my mom...” I swear to God... “I will kill you...!”
The predator’s interest flares again at my threat, but I feel him rein it in.
His legs lengthen stride, and he is coming towards me faster now.
It is not safe, what you are doing. His light flashes back to gold, exuding reassurance, calm. You are calling attention to us behind the Barrier, Esteemed Bridge, which is dangerous to both of us. Walk to me, Allie. Before it is too late...
“Go to hell!” I back up in equal measure.
You are untrained, he warns. It is not safe...and I do not wish to hurt you.
“You’re a liar!”
He stops, as if listening to something far off. When he returns, the predator is gone.
Allie, I am not playing anymore! Come to me...now! There is no ti
me!
The fear in his words disarms me, then confuses me.
Turning away from him altogether, I run, even as another negative image of him inside the Barrier fills my vision. Red and blue charges spark along his arms and legs, growing brighter. He throws another of those blindingly bright bolts at me, this one denser, and again I manage to sidestep it. Something above my head also reacts, pushing the bolt sideways.
The second reflex feels weaker than the first, though, almost like a muscle atrophied from lack of use.
I stumble towards the road, stub my toe on a rock and half-fall, pick myself up.
My limbs move muddily but I force them faster, fighting the rising sickness in my gut as his light reaches for mine, strangling some part of me I can’t see, making it hard to move. I make it to the road when the scene around me vanishes...replaced by dark blue clouds.
Blind, I try to manage my limbs, can’t.
Out of nowhere, a hard thud collides with the meat and bone of my physical body. Pain rockets up my leg, pools in the point of contact until...
I snapped out.
...and found myself staring into the chrome grill of a car, on my knees, holding my stomach. Nearby, a car door opened, and the sound is so loud it deafens me. I stared at the dotted dividing lines in the road, garnished with yellow reflectors.
“Get out of the road!” a man yelled at me.
A whisper of hope lifted my eyes.
And if you are the terrorist? the voice says. Will you still run to them to save you?
“Are you crazy, girl? Trying to kill yourself?”
Are you really so sure you’re not one of us?
Fear lurched me to my feet. My knees were bleeding but my first thought was that he was coming, that he was in my head, and even if he wanted to, this old man with the angry face and the bushy white eyebrows couldn’t save me.
I pushed past him, seeing his expression change as he took in my appearance, my hair matted with blood and dirt, my cut feet and hands, the ripped up waitress uniform and handcuffs.
“Girl.” He called after me. “Hey...girl! Are you all right? Where are you going?”
I looked back, but not at him.
The tall, black-haired seer had reached the bottom of the hill. He slid down the last of it on leather boots through dusty gravel and broken glass.
I ran, feeling each bare foot hit hard at the pavement. I darted into traffic, aiming for a nearby gas station, and again cars honked, swerved to avoid me, only now I tried to wave them down once more, too desperate to think about whether they could help me or not.
I pounded on the hood of a red compact when it screeched to a stop.
“Help! I’m being kidnapped! Please, help me...!”
The woman inside stared up at me, wide-eyed.
“Please!” I screamed. “Get me out of here!”
The woman flinched, cowering behind the steering wheel.
I ran on. People on the sidewalk reacted slowly, staring as they realized something unusual was happening, something they probably shouldn’t ignore. Someone might have called the cops by then, but he was right, I couldn’t be sure if they’d come to help me or to take me away.
Then, before I could decide what to do next, he took me down.
HE WATCHES HER from the Barrier, calculates how best to proceed.
He has frightened her, broken her trust with his honesty about the Rooks, or at least his refusal to lie. He is glad he chose to tell her less rather than more about them and the being, Terian, who Revik knows he did not really kill in San Francisco.
He does his best to shield her light, to keep her in her body, out of the Barrier.
When she runs into the street, he sees interest dawn on the faces of watching humans. It is too many for him to push. Worse, her light sparks in panicked waves that remind him that she is the Bridge, not just some fledgling seer with poor light control.
Although she is that, too.
When she starts pounding on car hoods, interrupting traffic, he splits his consciousness, leaving a lesser part to steer his physical body and jumping the rest out.
His aleimi leaps ahead, flashing across the road’s meridian to knock her out of her body.
Like any fledgling, she cannot yet split herself...and collapses.
Revik checks his own physical body, sees it running across the road, dodging cars with only slightly slower reflexes. Then he sees the truck, and lands more of himself in the physical to speed his legs...
...TIME LURCHED BACK, bringing him along its narrower lines.
The driver saw him and then her and slammed the truck’s brakes, careening cab and cargo to a slanted halt a few feet from them both.
By then, Revik crouched over Allie, his arms outstretched, protecting her, his eyes glowing a pale white the human wouldn’t see.
The driver leaned his bulky form out the driver’s side window.
“Hey! Wiseass! Get your damned girlfriend out of the road, unless you want to scrape her off the pavement with a spatula!” He paused, looking down. “And put some clothes on her, while you’re at it! Where the hell do you think you’re doing, with the...”
Trailing, he took in Allie’s crumpled form.
Her handcuffed wrists had welts on them from the two days of driving, made worse by her fall down the hill. Her small hands folded together in a neat gesture of prayer. The ripped up uniform with its low-cut blouse and short skirt was now decorated with splotches of blood and caked in mud and dirt, as were her hair and feet. She had a bloody nose from hitting the pavement, fresh cuts and scratches from the fall and she looked pale, overly thin without her light. Looking at her, Revik realized she looked bad. Really bad.
He was struck again by how small she was physically.
She moaned as he thought it, and he felt his body react, so that he had separation pain to deal with on top of everything else.
“Help me,” she murmured. “Help...”
It was soft, but Revik heard it. He also saw the truck driver watching her moving lips. The man’s eyes widened, as he seemed to put two and two together.
“What the hell—”
“Police!” Revik said. He pulled a flip ID with badge from his pocket, miraged it into a local configuration from memory. “Stay in your vehicle! This woman is in my custody!”
Revik felt the worst of his tension dissipate as the man’s face calmed.
He had blundered, but he’d contained it. He felt other humans around him start to relax as well, as soon as they saw the badge and heard his words. She had gone from fleeing kidnap victim to suspect fleeing police custody. Even so, Revik knew he didn’t have a lot of time. He shoved the ID back in his pocket, gave another look around before he bent his knees, crouching down beside Allie. When he glanced up next, the truck driver looked almost blank.
Something about the expression there made Revik pause, however.
Then Revik saw the man’s eyes roll up in his head, flashing with a silver light.
Fuck. They were no longer alone.
Without waiting, Revik looked back at Allie, shoving his arms under her jointed limbs, lifting her ungracefully to his chest before he straightened abruptly to his feet. He saw the truck driver reach behind him as he completed the motion, glimpsed the wooden stock of a worn, pump-action shotgun.
Seeing that much, he turned without wasting another breath.
He didn’t let himself feel, to second guess, or even think.
He gripped her tighter and ran, flat-out for the car.
8
FLIGHT
REVIK SPRINTED DOWN the sidewalk, holding me against his chest.
Unerringly rhythmic, his feet impacted the sidewalk as if he counted steps alongside his well-regulated breaths. He held me close, and that felt calculated too, as if he’d practiced with potato sacks approximating my weight. When he reached the gravel-strewn hillside, he barely paused before vaulting up the steep bank, sliding in its shale folds at each step but not stopping as he fought hi
s way back up the steep slope.
I felt sick, dazed, unsure on which side I lived.
It becomes clearer as images around me flash in negative...then the Pyramid is everywhere, all around us. Its silver threads shine like bright wires in rose-lit clouds. Tarnished silver entangles the lights of people I can see around us on the sleepy Washington street.
Red eyes surround me, bodies made of wire...
Laughter brings my own gaze higher.
A face hovers below the Pyramid, and I recognize it as a ghostly version of the man from Golden Gate Park. His face morphs in Barrier wind, distorted by silver light. There is symmetry to those flickers of light, though, like film stuttering in a projector. The Pyramid’s shifting cells split and reconfigure, moving on gliding rails like a carnival fun house, and I feel sick from the motion. I feel both out of control and strangely suffocated under that crushing weight as it strangles my light, fighting to insert itself deeper into my mind.
I see you! Pretty bird! Do you know who carries you on such swift wings?
I feel my chest clench.
My mother calls me her bird. She has since I was a kid.
I feel Revik again, his arms around me, the steady beating in his chest. No one has ever felt so much like me. But the other presence feels me thinking that, too.
Terian’s laugh rises. I could tell you such stories about your new friend! Do you know what he used to like to do for fun?
Images start to coalesce, movies that start once I focus directly on them. They draw me in, until I want to see, until I cannot help but look. I feel Revik there, and I know a part of my fascination comes from him. He and Terian stand in a cell-like room with no windows or furniture. On the floor sprawls a young girl with blond hair and inhuman, gold eyes, a beautiful face and Revik is watching her, his own eyes hard, calculating.
The predator is there, but he lives in silver light—
A jarring contact met my head and back. I gasped.
Pain brought the physical world into focus.
Staring down at me is Revik’s sweaty face. His eyes are still glass shards, but the silver light is gone, and the predator is, too. Fear lives in his face instead, faint but visible. I realized then, where we were...where I was. He’d laid me roughly on the hood of the GTX.
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