Allie's War Season Three (107 page)

"Revik." I gripped his hair, caressing his face. "Baby, it's all right. This isn't you...it's not you. Listen to me, okay? We're being played right now..."

"Played?" His voice came out gruff, almost pained. "What the fuck are you talking about, Allie? Played by who? Ditrini?"

"Baby, no...no. Not Ditrini. Shadow..."

I saw that look in his eyes again, and it scared me.

I knew now why it was so familiar, even beyond my memory of him under Salinse. That same look lived in his face and his light the whole time he'd been a kid, during most, if not all of those sessions in the tank. Forcing him to relive the worst parts of his childhood brought that expression to his face even between sessions, until he was half out of his mind trying to avoid the pain that lived in those years. His light felt the same as it had then, too, strangled and pulled sideways in all the wrong ways. The light remained mostly his, but distorted, twisted, as if stretched too thin and viewed through a thick, cracked glass. He felt drained and manic all at once, as if he didn't have full control over who he was.

I fought the gray strands out of my own light, first...trying to get them out so I might be clear enough to help him. Fear exploded over my own aleimi as I felt my own buttons being pushed. I fought to breathe as a cascade of voices surrounded me, telling me that Revik belonged to them, telling me they would wear me down, wear us down...wear him down...no matter how hard I tried to keep them out. I held him tighter, feeling the hatred behind that clutch of silver and gray clouds, feeling that how badly they hated
me,
how much they wanted me dead. More than dead, they wanted me smashed, buried, annihilated. Most of all, they wanted me away from Revik. They hated me for interfering with him, for being in his light at all.

Overwhelmed, terrified, I screamed upwards through the Barrier.

I screamed for help.

I felt like I was drowning in the silver strands. I wanted Vash, but the feeling of him being gone overwhelmed me, too. Pain lived there, but more than pain, fear. I hadn't admitted to myself how much I counted on Vash to pull me out when I got lost in the dark, but that realization hit me now, too. I couldn't do it alone...I needed him. I was lost without him.

I tried to find him anyway, to find anyone who might help us.

Throwing up a packed cry for help, I managed to punch through the ceiling of that cloud. Fear had me half out of my head, but a part of me remained steady enough to go still, to search for that feeling of clarity.

I felt Balidor briefly, but kept going up, looking for an even clearer light...

When suddenly there it was.

A blue-white sun, intersected with a sword.

I'd never seen it before, not like this. I'd never seen it in the Barrier, never felt the shocking clarity of that sharp, white light. It felt so high up, I feared I would lose it...that I would fall and not be able to hold on to the utter stillness that hung there, so distant, yet somehow so close. When I looked for that other place I knew, the one Revik first showed me on that cruise ship all those years ago, the place of red clouds and diamond-studded ocean waters, it felt somehow connected to that blue-white sun, as if one reflected different aspects of the other.

In those few seconds, that white light burned those silver strands off.

Maybe not all of them, but enough that I could see again. I felt like myself, and I could see the tangle of threads below and know them for what they were.

I held on to that instant of clarity...fought to keep it with me as I came back to Revik.

Even as I did, I knew. Without thinking it consciously, I knew what I had to do. Still holding onto that sword and sun behind my eyes and somewhere high above my head...

...I slammed a shield around both of us, locking it as tightly as I could, connecting it to that clear, silent space. My arms tightened around him as I did it. He didn't fight me, but I felt him tense, even as tendrils of pain coiled off his light as I cut off that space he knew...that he hated and feared but knew so well it seemed completely real to him when he got lost there. I just held him while I wove the light of that higher clarity over and around his light, forcing out the strands I could still see fighting to slide into him all sides. The subtlety there frightened me, as much if not more than the power behind it. I feared those small resonances it found and tapped so silently, connecting with him from the lightest of touches before winding into deeper resonances below those. It made me think of water slowly filling a set of tiny cracks.

I wove the shield back and forth, again and again, for what felt like a long stretch of silence.

I couldn't let it go. That fear remained, even when I could feel I had finished...even when I could no longer find any holes. I went over it again. Then again.

I went over it another time after that.

By then, Revik was caressing my face, his expression softer, but tired now, looking more drained than I'd seen him in months. He held me tighter, without pulling his body or his light out of mine. I felt understanding on his light, along with a deeper fear.

When I finally managed to calm down enough that I noticed I'd dug my fingers into his back, I forced myself to relax. He winced as I did, but kissed me in the same moment, pressing his face against mine. Love pulsed off his light, along with a gratitude that was harder to let in for some reason. He kissed me again, his fingers soft on my face and hair. After a long moment, we were just looking at one another.

"Do you think the others are okay?" I said finally.

"I talked to Balidor," he said, still caressing my face with his fingers. "...Just now. I told him what happened. He felt it...felt you, when you sent up the alarm. His team is looking at the shields now...trying to figure out how they got in..."

"Should we go back?" I said, fear still in my voice. "Should we make sure everyone's okay?"

"We could," he said, kissing me again. "Do you want to?"

"No." I held him tighter. "It was about you, wasn't it? That felt directed at you. Not at anyone else...not even me, except by proxy..."

Revik raised his head. I saw his eyes blur faintly as he slid back into the Barrier. After another few seconds, he made an affirmative gesture with his hand.

"They agree with you," he said. "Balidor...and Wreg. Yumi, too."

"Does he want us back there?" I said again. "Wreg. Does he need us in camp?"

"He says no," Revik said, shaking his head. "It may not have been aimed at them, but they felt it," he added, glancing at me. "You pulled the whole camp out of it...enough to allow them to compensate, and to realize we were under attack..."

"That was an attack?"

Revik nodded, nuzzling my face with his. "Yes." Raising his head, he gave me a more serious look. "Balidor agrees...we need to train you more in infiltration, wife. You need to be integrated into his team, and using all of their signals, not just providing irregular input when these things happen. You should have a direct link to them at all times...Balidor, at any rate. I've asked him to see if he can set one up temporarily for this op, before we move out." Kissing me again, he stroked my hair back from my face, adjusting his weight over me again. "You have an incredible knack for spotting psychic attacks...you know that, don't you?"

"I do when they're aimed at my husband," I said.

I tried to make it sound like a joke, but my voice shook a little.

When he smiled at me, I averted my eyes, wiping my face with the back of one hand. I was sweating, but I kind of doubted it was from the sex at that point. Something about seeing and feeling that wash of silver light had actually broken me out into a cold sweat. My whole body still felt clenched, as if I'd been groped by someone or something repulsive, something that continued to feel nearby, as if right within reach.

"Revik," I said, covering my face with the same hand. "What are we going to do? You're not safe here, are you?"

"I'm fairly sure none of us is safe here, Allie."

"Did I make a huge mistake, talking everyone into coming down here?"

When I glanced up from under my fingers that time, he met my gaze. I felt him wavering between saying different things, maybe to reassure me or to take more of the blame onto himself. I saw him dismiss each of those things, one by one, as his frown deepened. Once his expression had cleared, he gave a low sigh. Kissing my face, then my mouth, he laid his head on my shoulder, expanding his light into mine.

"I honestly don't know," he said. "Maybe this is a huge mistake." He tugged on my hair, blowing more warmth into my chest. "But we can't leave them here, Allie. We can't leave Cass. Or Chan. Or Maygar. Or that intermediary, Stanley." He kissed my neck, caressing my face with his. "...We can't even leave Feigran," he said, softer. "Whatever else he's been, he has a chance to be different now. If he stays here, we'll never get him back. He'll be lost forever."

I turned my head, looking at him.

It had never occurred to me before, that Revik thought we had a chance of helping Terian, at least not like that. When he said it though, I realized he was right. Terian had been made out of Feigran, just like Syrimne had been made out of Nenzi of Algathe. We couldn't abandon him, any more than I could abandon Revik.

We couldn't leave him here. We couldn't leave any of them.

Something in realizing that actually made me relax.

"We're not really here to negotiate, are we, husband?" I asked him after a pause.

Looking up at me, he seemed to think about my words. Clicking a little, he kissed my palm, shaking his head.

"No," he said. "I guess we aren't."

Before I could really think about what that might mean, to all of us, we were kissing again. In not too long a time, we were kissing harder, and he was rocking his body against me, fully extended again. Pain swam over me from him, but it felt different that time, more open. I felt his heart in it, and when I opened my light, he opened his even more...so much so that I lost myself in him again, still holding onto that white, high space. When I pulled him deeper into that, too, he wrapped his arms around me, coiling more of his light into mine.

For a long moment, somewhere in all of that, I got lost again.

That lost feeling swam in fear, a feeling of nearly having blown everything.

He felt like himself again, but somehow that only made the fear worse, and brought up that grief of the past few years, when I didn't know if I'd ever get him back. His own light softened, trying to comfort mine, but I couldn't make myself wholly let it go. That glimpse of him as he had been...broken, closed, filled with self-hate and hatred of pretty much everyone else, especially me...had been enough to scare the living shit out of me. However brief, the reminder of how close he'd come to being that other person permanently made me feel like something in me had been hit hard with a heavy board. I could feel that vulnerable part of his heart, and it terrified me how lost both of us could get, and how easily.

It also made me feel like I'd been kidding myself, thinking either of us could be entirely safe from his past.

When he couldn't distract me with his light, he tried to distract me with his body, until both of us were clinging to one another again, half out of our heads as he pulled on me, bringing me to the edge and holding me there. He kept me in that space until I couldn't hold out anymore, until I opened more of my light into his, releasing the fear as I let go.

I don't know how long we were doing that exactly, but at one point he rolled over to his back with me and sat up, tugging me deeper into his lap as he braced his weight on the nearby rock wall. From there, I found myself looking at his face, and that fear worsened again, however briefly, until he managed to help me soften it once more with his light.

I held onto the shield, though.

Even when he brought me to a slow climax, some time after that, I held on to that shield as if my life depended on it, gripping it tighter than I held even him...maybe tighter than I'd ever held onto anything in my life.

26

INVITATION